I got to my knees and looked around.
Kindly had left his seat by the wall and was bending over Constant. Without looking round he said: “Forget it. You were much too slow. He’s long gone.”
I stood up. My stomach heaved. The walls seemed to rush in toward me and then recede equally fast. I took a couple of steps toward the fig tree and leaned on it gratefully.
“Didn’t you try to stop him?”
“You must be joking!” He straightened up, putting a gnarled hand to the small of his back. “I’d be as dead as he is.” He prodded Constant with his toe. “That’s if I could have got near the man in the first place, and there was no chance of that.”
I stepped cautiously over to the body.
“Did you get a good look at him, at least?”
“With eyes like mine? I haven’t had a good look at anything in years. Besides, I was listening to you howling and watching Constant’s blood running away. I can’t be everywhere.”
“You didn’t see him at all?”
He sighed impatiently. “Tall man, long untidy hair, face blacked up, puke all over his cloak. Is that enough?”
I looked at the body curled up at our feet. “I’m sorry,” I added belatedly.
“So am I,” said Kindly. “He may have been a bit of an old woman but he had his uses. You knew where you were with him.” He tried bending down toward the body again, groaned, thought better of itand stood up. “My daughter will miss him. Look, make yourself useful and turn him over for me, will you?”
I obliged, although my head was still swimming. It took a little effort as the dead man was stuck to the floor with congealing blood. As he flopped over on to his back I heard Kindly give a triumphant growl.
“Thought so! What do you think of that?”
He did not have to show me what he meant. A knife jutted from under Constant’s second rib. To pull it free I had to jerk it up and down, feeling it scrape against bone as I did so. When it finally sprang out, like a decayed tooth from its socket, I saw that its blade was like nothing else in Mexico: a long glittering sliver of brown metal.
I held it up, grasping it gingerly between thumb and forefinger, and shivered. I knew this blade welclass="underline" it had been held against my neck all through the long canoe journey from this house to the cove where I had seen the bird. It had come out at the marketplace, too, and on both occasions it had only been Nimble’s defiance of Curling Mist which had stopped it from being used. This time, I reflected sadly, the boy had not been around to prevent it.
“It’s bronze,” said Kindly. “It’s like copper, only much harder. The only people who know how to make it are the Tarascans-it’s a secret they don’t share with anyone. They won’t even trade the stuff, it’s so precious.”
“So it’s come a long way.” I put the knife down next to the body. “That man was no Tarascan, though.”
Constant’s eyes were wide open. As I looked at him I thought that even by Aztec standards I had seen a lot of dead people lately.
“That should have been me, shouldn’t it?” I said.
“It should,” said Kindly regretfully. “He was coming to help you, you know. He heard something amiss, so he went to investigate. He’d just got to the doorway when that madman came out, stabbed him and ran off. Constant was just in his way.”
I could hardly see the wound, despite all the blood. “He knew what he was about, didn’t he? Straight for the heart.”
“I need a drink.” The old man began walking slowly back to his place by the wall. A gourd lay there where he had dropped it.
I limped after him, to stand over him while he threw the liquid into the back of his throat and gasped with relief. He did not offerme any. I did not mind that in the least: after what had just happened, the thought of sacred wine made my stomach turn over.
At last, pulling the gourd from his lips with a sucking noise, he turned to look at me again, through eyes narrowed with disgust.
“So who was that man? I take it he wasn’t a doctor.”
“He was your grandson’s associate, Curling Mist.”
“Curling Mist?” He looked speculatively at his gourd, no doubt realizing for the first time that there was nobody to replenish it for him now. “Curling Mist? Here? Why?”
“Your daughter sent him,” I told him grimly. “So what he told Constant was half true. She told him where he could find me-and I don’t suppose for a moment she thought he was coming here to cure me of anything!”
I looked around me at the immaculately swept courtyard, all silence, cleanliness and order apart from a body lying in a pool of blackening blood in one corner. I did not know what to do. My bones still ached from the beating I had had, my head still swam from the sacred wine I had drunk, and I had nowhere to go. I knew only that if I stayed here I would be killed.
“I’m going,” I informed Kindly curtly.
“Wait!”
The urgency in his voice brought me up short. “What is it?” I asked suspiciously.
He waved his empty gourd toward Constant’s body. “Aren’t you going to clean up the mess? Someone will have to explain this!”
I started walking again. “You merchants police your own affairs, don’t you? Sort it out among yourselves. Only don’t involve me!”
I left, almost believing that could be the end of the matter.
2
With nothing to give to a boatman I made my way through the city on foot, keeping well away from anywhere I might be recognized. Fortunately I left Pochtlan at the hottest part of the day, when there were few people about. At last I stood beside the canal that trickled past one wall of the yard, staring at the little house I had grown up in and wondering whether it had been worth the journey.
With the Chief Minister presumably looking for his errant slave, it would not be safe to stay at my old home, and I had certainly not come for sentimental reasons. I was not here for a rest either, although my bones and muscles throbbed, my stomach still felt as if it had been kicked and my head did not belong on my shoulders.
It was not as if I expected to be made welcome anyway.
I had no choice, however. I had tried seeking out Shining Light and his allies and the attempt had nearly cost me my life and left me feeling betrayed and humiliated. I believed Lily’s fear for her son was genuine, and that whatever their relationship may have been before, Curling Mist was now using Shining Light to make his mother do his bidding, just as he had earlier tried using the sorcerers to force my master to hand me over. I also knew, especially after Curling Mist’s attack on me, that Nimble had wanted to know about my affair with Maize Flower and Curling Mist wanted to kill me. None of this information had gotten me any nearer finding the sorcerers, however.
Now I had another confrontation in mind, one which might prove as dangerous as the one I had just survived. I was going to look for my elder brother, to challenge him with his complicity in thekillings in Coyoacan, and demand to know just what it was about the Chief Minister and the sorcerers that he knew but had held back from me.
I dared not go near my brother’s quarters at the palace, for fear of being seen by my master or his servants. The only other option was to come home.
I watched an old woman emerge from the yard to empty a clay pot briskly into the canal. She had hair the color of ash, skin like old paper and arms and legs so thin they looked as if a child could snap them. Clad in an old blue skirt and blouse and limping on swollen joints, she looked frail and pitiable, although in reality she was neither.
She shot a curious glance at me before turning back into the house but showed no sign of knowing who I was.
“Mother?”
She was almost inside the yard before she stopped to glance over her shoulder.
“What do you want?” She might have been talking to a stranger, and an unwelcome one at that.
“You know who I am.” I started toward her. She half turned in my direction but took another step into the yard.