I looked at his face, which was now wearing a troubled frown. ‘Even so…’
‘Even so, nothing! Look, I don’t care what happens to the woman, but I seem to have got caught up in this thing just by being here. And in case it’s escaped your notice, whoever did kill that man in there is still at large. He could be right next door, listening to us through the wall.’ That had the desired effect, as Hunter cast a quick, nervous glance towards the nearest neighbouring house. ‘Maybe it would be an idea if you told me what all this is really about.’
The warrior hesitated before replying: ‘All I can tell you is, we knew she’d been asking after this man Hare. Don’t know anything about him, except that he’s some kind of merchant, from the hot lands on the coast. We know the woman’s up to something, though. So we thought we’d pay Hare a visit before she did. Pity we were too late.’
‘It looks as if you were, one way or another. What had the woman done to get you so suspicious, though?’
He sighed. ‘She’d been keeping bad company. That’s enough. We watch people, and they talk to other people, and we end up watching them too.’
‘Keeping bad company?’ I put a sulky expression on my face. ‘That’s hardly fair, is it? I mean, look at it my from my point of view. I’m a stranger here. How am I supposed to know who I can talk to, and who I’ve got to avoid? I could get arrested just for asking the wrong person the way to the marketplace.’
‘Not unless their name was Mother of Light,’ replied Hunter sardonically.
“‘Mother of—’” I checked myself, remembering that my interest in Lily’s doings was supposed to be casual. After a short pause, I added: ‘You and Rattlesnake aren’t parish policemen, are you?’
He smiled, as if he found that amusing. ‘No.’
‘And you aren’t constables.’ I meant high-ranking officers such as my brother, who might well be involved in investigating what they thought of as crimes against the state. My brother, though, would never dream of going anywhere on official business and not wearing his foil regalia, and I was sure the same would be true here.
‘No.’
‘Then…’
‘You ask too many questions. Look, I still don’t know what. I’m supposed to be doing with you. You’ve got to stay here, but that’s all I’m saying, for now, all right? Just don’t push your luck.’
I made the same submissive gesture as I had when Lily had told me to mind my own business earlier. Then I turned away, staring at the broken section of the wall while I thought about what to do next.
Eventually I said: ‘Mind if I take another look over the wall?’
‘Why?’
‘I just had an idea about what might have happened. After all, how else are we supposed to pass the time?’
‘I’ll come with you. I don’t want you getting ideas about climbing over it!’
Together we peered down the slope towards the stream.
‘It’s easy to see what happened,’ I said. ‘Our killer does the deed, runs into the courtyard, jumps over the wall and legs it down the hill. I bet if we checked the slope for footprints, we’d find some. Of course, he’d have gone straight for the stream to wash the blood off his feet, unless he was a complete idiot, so there wouldn’t be much of a trail to follow.’
‘Sounds reasonable. All right, what if it wasn’t the woman. Who was it, then?’
‘I don’t know. Who’d kill a… a merchant?’ I had remembered just in time that I was not supposed to know who the dead Texcalan was; for all I was meant to know, it was most likely Hare’s body lying inside the house. ‘A thief, I suppose. I noticed that chest in there was empty. And he’d had his labret and earplugs ripped off. Did you notice that?’
The other man glanced over his shoulder into the house and sighed. ‘It’s beyond me.’
Well,’ I said cheerfully, ‘never mind. Look, there’s your murder weapon.’
He whipped his head around and stared over the wall again. Where? What are you looking at?’
There was a fair amount of rubble around our feet: mostly mud bricks and chips of plaster. I might have wished for something more substantial, but I was not in a position to be choosy. Quietly picking up the heaviest thing I could reach, I replied: ‘Just beneath us. No, a bit to the right — it’s a big piece of obsidian, hardly chipped at all, so it can’t have been thrown away because it was rubbish… Can’t you see it?’
‘No,’ he said. Since I was making it up, this was hardly surprising, but as he stooped and craned his neck in an effort to follow my directions, he left the back of his head exposed and at just the right angle for me to knock him out with a brick.
Summoning all the force I could muster, I struck him hard enough to shatter the block of dried mud in my hands.
Nothing happened. He just stood where he was, bending over the wall, neither moving nor making a sound.
I gulped fearfully. It had not worked. The big warrior was going to turn around in a moment, his face dark and his eyes blazing with rage, and in my weakened state I would not stand a chance. I wondered whether he would be able to restrain: himself from killing me, to save me for a more painful punishment later.
A sound
