Kindly suddenly asked: ‘Why do you suppose so many people are interested in that house? And who are they all, anyway?’
Able to speak again, I said: ‘I don’t know. Maize Ear’s men are looking for spies, we know that. Do you think the one who followed us yesterday was another spy? If he was the litde man I saw in the marketplace, then I’d guess he was. Maybe he s working for the King’s rival, Black Flower.’
Could be. And don’t forget Mother of Light — the woman he was meant to be giving the message to. Do you think she wanted it on her own account, or for someone else?’
I groaned. ‘I don’t know! But you’re right — that’s at least three lots of people, besides us, trying to get their hands on this thing. And finally there’s this other group: the Texcalan, and whoever he was working with, the people selling Hare’s stuff off in the marketplace. That makes four!’
The more I thought about this fourth group, the more uneasy I became. I knew I had to find them, because in spite of what Kindly had said there was every likelihood that they had taken Hare’s message along with the rest of his possessions when they raided his house. There was something curious about the way they were behaving, selling the merchant’s possessions piecemeal in such widely scattered places. A thief might do that, because to sell stolen goods in bulk was asking to get caught, but I could not see why he would pretend to be doing it on behalf of the man he had stolen it from. It seemed to me that was bound to attract the wrong sort of attention.
Unless, I thought, that was exactly what they wanted: to attract attention. To lure somebody who might be interested in the contents of Hare’s house, and one item in particular. Somebody such as me. No, I realized, and the thought brought me up short, so that I stopped walking and for a moment could only stand and stare straight ahead of me in blind horror, not somebody such as me, but me, myself, Cemiquiztli Yaotl.
That was why the Texcalan had been at the house. The men who had burgled it were after me personally, and either he was one of them, or they had brought him along to help them identify me. Somehow they had known that I would be coming to the house and had set out to trap me there. It was no comfort at all to know that it had gone wrong for them.
And I had to confront these men.
‘Kindly,’ I said, ‘we really need to think about what we’re going to do next.’
‘No, we need to sleep on it. I turned in much too late last night, and I think much better when I’m rested! Look, here are our lodgings… Hello, what’s going on?’
Turning the last corner before our guesthouse, we found the place in uproar.
A small crowd thronged the gateway. Its members were gathered in a rough circle, with a man I recognized as our landlord in its centre. The men and women around him, who mostly seemed to be our fellow guests, were jostling each other, pushing and gesticulating and shouting as each tried to get closer to the man in the middle. Whether they wanted to harangue him or hit him was not clear.
‘Don’t like the look of this,’ muttered Kindly.
‘We’d better find out what it’s all about, though.’
As it happened, the people in front of Kindly and me were all too eager to explain themselves. Someone on the edge of the crowd glanced at us over his shoulder, and a moment later there was a cry of ‘There they are!’ and we were being mobbed.
‘This is all your fault!’ someone screamed at me. A merchant’s wife slapped Kindly, making him stagger, and shouted: ‘Do you know what the clothes in my chest were worth? I hope you can pay for all this!’ Little silver bells hung from the plugs in her earlobes and tinkled incongruously as she continued her assault. ‘It’s all ruined now, thanks to you! I’ll have you both sold into slavery!’
‘Wait a moment! Stop it!’ I protested. ‘What are you talking about?’ Spying the landlord over the heads of some of my assailants, I called out: ‘You! What’s happening here?’
The man’s face had turned purple with rage. ‘You and that old man are buggering off out of my house, that’s what’s happening!’ he yelled back. ‘Pack up what’s left of your stuff and leave, now!’
‘Now hang on,’ I began, but my voice was lost in the commotion. I was beginning to lose my own temper now. Being abused was not a new experience for me, but I thought the least the people screaming at me could do was tell me what they were upset about.
There was a small man in front of me. The top of his head came up to about the level of my nose, although he was hopping up and down so that with every other breath I was staring straight into his spittle-flecked mouth. I waited until he came down off his toes and then suddenly grabbed both his ears and yanked him upwards again by them.
He let out an outraged squeal. Judging I had his attention, I shouted into his face: ‘What is this all about? What are we supposed to have done?’
‘Let go of me!’
‘Bloody well answer my question!’
‘Put him down!’
I felt a pang of dread when I realized that the tall woman who had hit Kindly was trying to get between me and my I victim. It looked as if she was his wife.
I went so far as to release one ear. ‘You tell me what’s going on, then.’
‘It’s your fault we all got robbed last night! And his son—’I she jerked
