The Demon of the Air

2

I stared into the jostling, swirling crowd, but in the gathering gloom there was no way of telling the dancers apart. I took a deep breath and yelled at the top of my voice, to be heard above the drums, the flutes, the conch-shell trumpets and the stamping feet.

“Lion!”

None of the dancers even missed a beat. I was torn between relief and frustration. None of the assembled warriors seemed to have heard me, but where was my brother when I needed him?

I took another breath, but it caught in my throat as a man fell out of the crowd.

He was at my side in seconds. At first I could not work out how he had recovered from the sacred mushrooms so fast, but then it was obvious. He had not had any, preferring to keep his wits about him.

“What?” Lion demanded, as I led the way indoors, out of the way of the gyrating bodies in the courtyard. We found ourselves in the same room as the Chief Minister, but, judging by the way his chin was bouncing on his chest, his mind was somewhere else. There had obviously been enough mushrooms left over for Handy too, since his head was moving in vague circles and he was dribbling.

“I’ve found the sorcerers.”

“That’s more like it! Let’s pick them up and get out of here. Where are they?”

“On a boat! Young Warrior and his son must be holding them there. The sorcerers trained a bird to call for help, though, and let it go …”

My brother stared at me suspiciously. “Have you been at the mushrooms?”

“No! Look, you remember what that offering of Shining Light’s said, before he died, about a big boat? Everyone thought it was a prophecy-something to do with those pyramids on canoes the Emperor told us about-but it wasn’t! He was just trying to tell us where he and the others had been held. He wanted to tell my master, because he knew old Black Feathers was looking for them, and he thought he would save them from Young Warrior. I’m so stupid, I didn’t realize it until just now, when Shining Light’s grandfather told me his family breeds birds. Big birds with red tail feathers-birds that can be trained to talk, Lion! And I saw one on the lake, that day I was kidnapped by Young Warrior and Nimble!” I groaned as I realized where I had seen signs of the bird, or others like it, since then: displayed among the stakes at the ball court, right in front of where Nimble and I had been sitting, and on the pitch at Tlatelolco market where Young Warrior had accosted me: the pitch belonging to Shining Light’s family. “The sorcerers must have been coaching the birds and they managed to let them go, or they got away, while Young Warrior and his boy were out abducting me. And it was the boat they were being held on, the big boat, that I came up under when I fell out of Young Warrior’s canoe, only I didn’t realize it at the time: I must have swum further under the water than I thought. That’s where Young Warrior’s warehouse is. It’s not a big roomy place in the merchant’s parish. It’s in some sort of narrow, confined space where you’d have to use a knife if you wanted to kill someone because there’s no room to wield a sword. It’s a shelter on the deck of a boat, out on the lake!”

“If you can tell me where the boat is,” said a low voice that was like cold water trickling down my spine, “I will owe you more than my life.”

Lion whirled as if he were still dancing. I turned around slowly.

Lily stood facing us in the doorway. Her eyes shone in the torchlight.I noted from the heavy rabbit’s-fur mantle drawn tightly across her shoulders that she had been out, and not hiding in the women’s rooms after all.

My tongue seemed to have turned into a lump of wood. All evening I had been seeking this confrontation and now it had come I could not get the words out. In the end I managed to say “Lily” in a voice so thick the name was barely intelligible.

Lion recognized it, though. “Lily? You’re Shining Light’s mother? Yaotl here reckons your son’s boyfriend’s holding a lot of sorcerers prisoner on his boat!” My brother was not known for his delicacy of manner.

Lily looked at me levelly. “He’s not my son’s … Yaotl, you said that to me once, but you were wrong. Shining Light wouldn’t be interested in Curling Mist-not in that way, anyway. Whatever that man’s hold is over my son, it’s not that. He …” She caught her breath before going on. “Shining Light likes them younger-he’s more likely to have wanted the boy. I think Shining Light may have done the father’s bidding for the sake of the son, at least in the beginning. I don’t know. I’ve never met Curling Mist.”

“Nor has anyone else, except me,” I said dryly. I felt a sudden rush of self-pity. “Young Warrior doesn’t go near anyone else-you, my master, Kindly-he sends the boy to see everyone else, but I’ve met him three times-and each time he’s done his best to kill me!”

“Is he still holding your son hostage?” my brother asked.

Lily hid her face in her hands and stood for a few heartbeats with her shoulders heaving silently. Then she took a deep breath and looked at us both, blinking rapidly.

“I told the boy what you told me, Yaotl-about the girl in the marketplace. He said … he said it wouldn’t be enough.”

“Go on,” I said grimly.

“That was the evening of the day you told me about the girl. He said I would have to … that his father would come to the house the next day, and …”

“And you had to tell the slave to let him in. You let that bastard in to attack me! I nearly died! Constant did die!”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” she cried. “The boy didn’t tell me he meant you any harm. He just said there was something he had to know. My son’s life was at stake!”

“So was mine!”

“Yaotl,” my brother warned me, in his best imitation of a soothing voice.

“And where were you?” I yelled. “Couldn’t bear to watch, is that it?”

She seemed to flinch, as if I had slapped her, before screaming back: “Where do you think? I was trying to find my son! The boy told me to go back to the ball court in the morning, and I’d find him there, only”-her voice suddenly turned into a long, descending wail-“he wasn’t there!”

I wondered why that was. Perhaps my would-be assassin, piqued by his failure, had managed, in his flight from her house to the ball court, to overtake Shining Light’s mother, and had got her son back on board his boat, hoping the young merchant might still be useful if he wanted to make another attempt on my life. It seemed more likely that Young Warrior had never intended to honor the bargain Lily had made for her son’s freedom, and she had set out that morning on a fool’s errand. As much as I resented what she had done I felt a twinge of pity.

“Lily,” I began gently, but Lion interrupted me.

“Before you two wake the Chief Minister up, let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re saying we have to look for a boat-a big one?”

“That’s right,” I replied.

“Where do we start, then?”

“It was in a cove on the western side of the city,” I said, “but that was days ago. They may have moved it since then.”

“So it could be anywhere on the lake? On any of the lakes?” Lily’s voice was low with disappointment. Young Warrior had chosen his hiding place well: finding one craft among the many thousands plying the vast complex of lakes around the city could be almost impossible.

“What does this boat look like?” Lion asked me.

“I don’t know. I scarcely saw it-I was busy being kidnapped at the time, remember.” I thought for a moment. “If it’s being used as a warehouse, it must be unusually big-like one of those seagoing craft the Mayans have, carved from a whole trunk, or even several lashed together. And that means it won’t move very far or very fast-especially if it’s just Young Warrior and his boy handling it. I don’tthink there’s anyone else working with them.” I glanced at Lily, who did not demur.

My brother gave her a shrewd look. “Madam,” he asked, his tone carefully polite, “did you report to the boy this evening?”

“Sir-of course I did!” she snapped back defiantly. “I had to tell him Yaotl was here.” She caught my expression. “Oh, don’t worry-he won’t come here tonight. There are too many people about.” So much for my plan to lure Young Warrior out of hiding, I thought.

“You must have had a prearranged meeting place.”

“Yes. On the Tlacopan causeway, at the nearer end. He’s there regularly, at dusk, in case I need to report anything. I have to get there before they pull the bridges up, though.”

Lion and I looked at each other, the same calculations running through both our heads. If Young Warrior and Nimble lived on the boat-and how else could they guard their hostages? — then the boy must return to it every night. But if he needed the bridges open, that meant he had to cross the causeway. So the boat could only be moored on the western side of the lake, opposite the city, not far from the mainland end of the causeway.

“What do you do if you’re late?” I asked.

“I don’t see him at all that evening. I’d have to wait until the following night, unless we’ve arranged something else, like the ball court.”

“So he has to be on the other side of the causeway by nightfall.”

“There are lots of little inlets and places you could hide a boat on the edge of the lake,” Lion pointed out. “How would we know where to look, especially if he keeps moving about?”

“But he won’t move the boat every day,” I said, “and I don’t think Nimble would want to go blundering around there after dark. There can’t be that many places close enough to the causeway where you could hide a boat that big.”

“We need a boatman to tell us where to look,” Lion observed. “Where are we going to find one at this time of night?”

I stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘at this time of night?’ No one’s going anywhere now. Send a squad of warriors first thing in the morning.”

“No time,” said my brother. “We’ve got to get to those sorcerers before your master does.”

“We have to go now,” said Lily quietly.

“But you can’t go!” I protested. “This is men’s work-warriors’ work!”

“My son is on that boat,” she said simply. She turned on her heel and walked away. “You can do what you like. I’m going to find a boatman!”

“Come on,” Lion said as he set off after her.

I had taken one step toward the doorway when a familiar voice stopped us all in our tracks.

“Not so fast! Just where do you think you’re going?”

Lord Feathered in Black was sitting up. He was bright and alert. I stared at him in confusion for a moment before it registered that he, like my brother, had obviously felt the need to keep a clear head, and had not taken any of the mushrooms. No wonder there had been some leftover for Handy. My master must have heard everything that had been said around him while he was pretending to sleep.

Lily glared defiantly at him. Lion and I looked at each other the way two small boys might if they were caught stealing squashes.

“So my sorcerers are on a boat, are they?” my master gloated as he rose, a little unsteadily, from his seat. “Let’s go and pick them up, then!”

We made a strange party, all looking for the same things-a boatman and a boat, to take us to where the sorcerers were-but at odds over what we would do if we found them. We worked our way along the landing stage outside Lily’s house in a wary silence, while the noises of the banquet faded behind us and the water lapped loudly in the space under our feet.

Finding a boatman turned out to be as easy as finding a boat. Some of Lily’s guests, including my master, had sent their canoes home, but others had left theirs tied up against the landing stage. Many of their crews had been left as well, to wait with their charges until their masters were ready for them sometime after daybreak. Most had curled up and gone to sleep in the bottom of their boats, but we eventually found one awake.

He sat gazing up at the stars, as well he might. It was a clear winter’s night and the sky was ablaze. He seemed oblivious to our approach until he had my master standing next to him.

“We need this boat,” Lord Feathered in Black told him bluntly.

The man almost fell in. He was still recovering himself as the rest of us gathered around my master, holding onto the jetty with one hand as he tried to stop the canoe swaying under him.

“What do you mean, you need the boat? You can’t have it, it isn’t yours! Who do you think you are, the Emperor?”

“Almost,” said his Lordship dryly. “Handy, bring that torch over here.”

Handy was approximately sober. Before we had left the house Lion and I had poured four cups full of strong honeyed chocolate down his throat. My brother had suggested tipping a fifth over his head, but there had been no need. At least he was capable of speech and had not stumbled into the canal, and the torch we had borrowed swayed only a little as he held it over the Chief Minister’s headdress.

The boatman made an inarticulate noise.

“If this boat belongs to my cousin, the Emperor,” my master went on pleasantly, “then I will apologize to him personally in the morning. If it doesn’t, then it’s mine!”

“But it’s the middle of the night!” the poor man protested. “You can’t go anywhere in the dark!”

“Nonsense! The merchants travel by night all the time!”

The boatman went quiet. At night a woman’s voice heard out of doors was as likely as not to be a portent. She might be the goddess Cihuacoatl, or the soul of a dead mother returned to Earth to haunt the streets and bring sickness to men, or one of those hideous hunchbacked dwarfs that would accost a man visiting the latrines after dark to tell him he was about to die. Lily was none of these, but the boatman did not know that.

The next voice he heard was Lion’s. “If you won’t do it for the Chief Minister,” he growled, “then you can do it for me. I’m the Guardian of the Waterfront. Either you do what you’re told or I’ll cut your legs off!”

The man slumped miserably in the bottom of his boat. “All right. Tell me where you want to go, but you’ll need another boat-this is a one-man job.”

“Fine.” My master lurched into the canoe and installed himself in the bow. “Lily can come with us, she doesn’t weigh much. Bring the torch.”

“We’d better get in the next boat,” I said, as Handy gave the woman the torch.

“It’s empty,” protested Lion. I raced along the line of moored canoes until I found one with a boatman in it, but the man was fast asleep and snoring resoundingly.

“Hurry up!” cried my master, as Lily settled herself in his boat. His boatman, probably eager to put some distance between himself and my brother, pushed off from the jetty immediately.

I ran back to join Handy and Lion.

“They’re getting away!” My brother’s tone was anguished. “We’ll never rouse another boatman in time to catch them up.”

“Then we’ll have to do without,” I said. “We’ll take this one. Handy, you can paddle a canoe, can’t you?”

Once we had cleared the last of the canals and reached the open water of the lake we turned left, following the glint of torchlight in front of us until the Chief Minister, Lily and their boatman reached the causeway. There they stopped.

As we drew alongside it became plain that something had got them excited. We could hear raised voices and see the boatman’s paddle waving uncertainly in the air as he tried to make his point.

“What’s up?” Lion called out.

Lily answered. “This man thinks he knows the boat we’re looking for!”

“If it’s the boat with the birds,” the boatman replied, “then everyone on the water knows it. Anyone could have told you, if you’d asked, and they’d have told you to give it a wide berth, too! I’m not going anywhere near it. There’s no telling what would happen!”

“I can tell you exactly what will happen if you don’t go on,” my master snapped. “What are you afraid of, anyway?”

In a low voice, the man said: “Sorcery.”

“Aha!” cried his Lordship triumphantly. “We’ve found them!”

“What do you mean by sorcery?” I asked.

“There are sorcerers on that boat. You can tell, because they can change themselves into birds and fly away. I haven’t seen it myself, but I know people who have. And why isn’t it moored near the city, instead of tucked away in a creek by itself? And strange sounds have been heard from it-horrible sounds, like men screaming.”

Lily sat impassively, holding the torch up unwaveringly as she listened.

“How do you know the birds are sorcerers?” I asked. “How do you know they aren’t just birds?”

“They talk,” the boatman said in a hushed voice.