He studied my face. "Probably," he conceded. "But that assumes I'll just hand it over to you."
"Not at all," I said, letting my gaze drift slowly around the courtyard as I settled my mind back into Westali investigator mode. The Lynx had to be here somewhere, I knew. Stafford wouldn't risk stashing it someplace where he couldn't keep a close eye on it.
But he wouldn't be carrying it on him, either, especially not after what happened to Künstler. He also wouldn't leave it someplace where one of his fellow artists might stumble over it. That left out most of the maze of rooms and cubbies in the amphitheater, which were out of his sight as well as being out of his control.
Buried in the courtyard somewhere, then? But ground that had been recently turned over was pretty obvious even to a casual observer. Besides, unless Stafford was digging under his own tent—which was itself way too obvious—the operation would be bound to attract unwelcome attention.
Unless he'd buried it under someone else's tent? Someone he knew would be gone at a given hour, thereby giving him the necessary privacy, or someone he trusted enough to bring at least partially in on the secret?
I looked at Stafford, at the taut wariness in his eyes and cheeks and throat. No, he wouldn't have risked a stranger noticing something odd about his tent and investigating. And he certainly wouldn't have trusted anyone here that far.
So it wasn't hidden in the amphitheater complex or in the courtyard. What was left?
I looked past Stafford toward the end of the indentation where he'd been working. Silhouetted against the smoky firelight was the lump of claywork he'd been playing with when he'd been so rudely interrupted.
Clay.
I smiled. Rule number one in the investigators' handbook: if you can't hide something, disguise it.
I started into the indentation. Before I'd gone five steps Stafford was at my side. "Where are you going?" he demanded, an anxious edge to his voice. "Don't mess with my sculpture."
"I'm not going to touch it," I assured him. The fire was still pretty hot, but no longer unbearably so. I reached the inner edge of the indentation and looked down.
The logs feeding the fire had been stacked in the middle of the pit in a standard crisscross pattern. There were four layers of them, the ones in the top tier mostly burned to ash, those on the bottom blackened but still reasonably intact. Each of the logs was about sixty centimeters long and twenty in diameter, a convenient size for handling.
Stafford was hovering at my side now, trying very hard not to look nervous and not succeeding very well. "Clever," I complimented him. "Even if someone figured out where it was, he'd have to wait until the fire died down to get at it."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Stafford insisted.
"There's only one small problem," I said. "Remember I told you the Viper you came here to buy didn't exist anymore? That's because it exploded."
He seemed to shrink back a little as he looked down into the fire pit. "What do you mean, exploded? How?"
"I don't know, exactly," I said. "Best guess is that the sculpture's made of some kind of exotic explosive." I looked back at the logs, searching the lower tier for one that didn't show the same scorch pattern as the others on its level.
And there it was. The closest one, naturally, to our particular indentation. "So far you've been lucky," I said, pointing to it. "You put it there on the bottom, where it's coolest, and all that glazed ceramic clay wrapped around it probably protects it pretty well from the heat. But we'd still better get it out of there as soon as possible."
He looked at me, his eyes uncertain for the first time since I'd met him. "This isn't just a scam, is it?" he asked hesitantly. "I mean …to get me to …?"
"To admit to what I already know?" I shook my head. "As to the Viper blowing up, I've seen the damage. In fact, they're holding an art auction at the museum tomorrow night to raise funds to fix the pit it made."
He exhaled carefully. "I'd heard stories," he murmured. "I thought they were just rumors."
"They weren't," I assured him. "So. You trust me yet?"
He gave me a tentative smile. "Well, you at least have to keep me alive until you can get the Lynx out of there, don't you?"
"Absolutely," I said. "While we're waiting, let's find a quiet place to talk."
The best place for a private chat turned out to be the damaged section of the amphitheater where Fayr had taken the five Tra'ho juvenile delinquents. We kicked the six of them back out into the tunnel—Stafford confirmed that the gang really did help keep out the riffraff at night—and Bayta and I settled down to hear Stafford's story.
"He'd been getting offers to buy the Lynx for probably three weeks before the robbery attempt," he told us. "Strange offers, from a mysterious unnamed buyer."
"How strange?" I asked.
"The man was naming a price way above what the Lynx could possibly be worth," he said. "That alone made Uncle Rafael suspicious. He started looking into the current status of the rest of the Nemuti sculptures, which was how he found out they'd been disappearing right and left. He doubled the guard on his estate and the gallery and started trying to backtrack the would-be buyer."
"Only they got in anyway," I said.
Stafford winced. "Yes," he said grimly. "I think that was what hit Uncle Rafael the hardest. There was no way they could have penetrated the security system without the help of one of the guards."
"Not necessarily," I said. "There are techniques people in my former line of work would know."
He looked sharply at me. "Oh?"
"And I was out of the solar system when it happened," I hastened to assure him.
"I'm sure you were," Stafford said. "Anyway, Uncle Rafael decided he'd better get the Lynx off the estate before whoever it was tried it again."
"So he gave you the sculpture, a handful of cash sticks, some fake ID, and told you to lose yourself?"
"Basically. I hopped the next flight out of Paris and headed for the Quadrail."
"Did Mr. Künstler also suggest you come to Ghonsilya to find the Viper?" Bayta asked.
"Actually, that was my idea," Stafford said. "I'd been off the estate a couple of weeks, just riding the Quadrail and staying away from anyplace where I might be recognized, when I got a message from him. His would-be buyer had surfaced again, this time offering to trade the Lynx for the Hawk that had been stolen from a collector on Bellis. He told me he was thinking about going to Bellis to contact the person and size up the situation."
"Secure in the knowledge that the Lynx was well out of the buyer's reach," I said grimly. "Unfortunately for him, the buyer didn't know that."
"And I gather arranged an ambush," Stafford said, a shiver running through him. "What the hell are these damn sculptures, anyway? And don't tell me they're just bombs. No one kills just for bombs."
"I don't know," I said. For the moment, at least, there was no need for him to know about the sensor chameleon aspect. "But for our current purposes it doesn't really matter. Just on general principles, if the bad guys want something, you want to keep it away from them."
"And hope you can stay alive in the process," Stafford murmured. "Do you at least know who killed my uncle?"
"We know who ordered the attack," I said, choosing my words carefully. "It's not quite clear yet which specific individuals carried it out."
"But you'll get them, won't you?"
"The plan is to ultimately nail the whole gang," I said. "But it might take a while."
"Doesn't it always?" he said. "So what's the plan? Grab the Lynx and get out of here?"
"We definitely grab the Lynx," I said. "The getting out part is going to be a little trickier. It turns out that the gang is holding a couple of hostages for my good behavior. An ESS agent named Morse, who was sent to find you and bring you back to Earth." I braced myself. "And a young lady named Penny Auslander."