The Demon of the Air by Simon Levack

grandson, he’s gone away and we don’t know where he’s gone or when he’ll be back.”
    â€œWell, do you know anything about his offering?” I demanded. “Where did he get him from?”
    â€œI don’t know anything about it,” he said firmly. “It was nothing to do with me. Look,” he added with a touch of impatience, “you’re talking to the wrong person. My daughter handles our business now. It’s her you need to speak to.”
    â€œThen may I see her?”
    â€œSure. You’ll have to wait, though. She’s got the chiefs of the merchants’ parishes with her at the moment.”
    He gestured to Constant, miming the action of upending and draining a gourd full of liquid. As the scowling slave went to fetch his drink, the old man said: “You can keep me company, in the meantime.”
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    The old man’s name was Icnoyo, which meant “Kindly.” He told me this as he pulled the maize cob out of the neck of the gourd to let the contents splash freely into his mouth. As an afterthought he offered it to me. He seemed surprised, although not offended, when I waved it away.
    â€œIt’s against the law,” I pointed out primly.
    He laughed. “Not for me, son. I won’t see seventy again and I’m a grandfather, I’m allowed as much as I can hold!”
    As he tipped the gourd up again I decided I had better ask him something before he fell into a stupor. “You think your grandson owes this man Curling Mist money? Is that why he went away?”
    â€œCould be. I’ve heard him mention the name—and Shining Light spends a lot of time hanging around the ball courts.”
    â€œSo he’s a gambler?”

    â€œYou could say that. Aren’t we all?” There was a trace of bitterness in the old man’s voice. “You know the mistake my daughter made with that boy? He was born on Two Rabbit, and you understand what that means.”
    â€œProne to drunkenness,” I responded automatically, like a student answering an examination question on the Book of Days. I had spent much of my youth in the Priest House poring over screenfold texts, committing to memory the fate of every man and woman ever born, on pain of a beating if I later got any of them wrong. I could still recall the stiffness of the bark paper under my fingers and the crackling sound the pages made when I turned them over. I had no trouble recognizing the destiny prescribed for a man born on Two Rabbit: to be ruined by sacred wine. I wondered how his parents had chosen his name. An exemplary life: I knew only too well how hard that would be to live up to.
    â€œThat’s right. But believe it or not, our Shining Light never touched a drop, except when he had to as part of a festival. He was never let near it, because his mother was so terrified he would fall victim to his fate. But she didn’t realize there are other vices that can seduce a man.” He sighed and upended the gourd, draining it once and for all. “You can’t blame her, poor girl. He was the only one she had, and with his father gone …”
    â€œHis father? What happened to him?”
    The old man closed his eyes. He sat like that, neither looking at me nor speaking, for so long that I wondered if he had been taken ill. I was on the point of doing something—shaking his arm to rouse him or calling for a slave—when abruptly he opened them again and said one word.
    â€œQuauhtenanco.”
    I had been a very young man when the inhabitants of a province in the far Southwest had risen against the Aztecs, killing some merchants and besieging the survivors in a town called Quauhtenanco. The merchants had held out for four years, beating off their attackers and making captives of many of them, and when a young general named Montezuma had come to their rescue at the head of the Aztec army, the merchants could only apologize to him for his