‘So we were right, then,’ I said, relieved, but the girl’s next words shocked me into silence. She let out a joyous shout, bouncing excitedly up and down and bawling out her own name like a war cry: ‘lx Men! Ix Men! Ix Men!’
Kindly heard her through the blanket. I felt a bony hand yank at my ankle, pulling me off balance. At the same time Nimble pulled me forward, and I went over with a yell, landing on my hands and knees.
‘And then I cut your throat!’ my son cried triumphantly.
‘No need to sound quite so pleased about it,’ I grumbled. ‘I suppose you’re right, though. But what about Hare?’
It was the girl who answered. Once more she plucked at her hair. This time, however, she dropped it immediately, before suddenly leaping up and racing towards Nimble and me as my son stooped to help me up.
‘Look out!’ Nimble cried. ‘I think she’s going to show us what she did for herself…’
None of us was prepared for what happened next. Yelling her war cry once more, she skidded across the floor to come to a halt in front of me, and before I could react she thrust her broken wooden doll towards me.
I frowned. ‘Is she saying she attacked the Texcalan with the wooden spike? We didn’t see any sign of that, though. His throat had been cut.’ I looked down at the girl, and in response she shoved the doll in my direction again, firmly but not aggressively.
‘Odd,’ commented Kindly. ‘Doesn’t look to me as if she’s trying to attack you. I think she’s trying to give the thing to you.’
‘Why would she do that? And what about Hare?’
Mention of the name stirred something inside the girl. Suddenly she turned on my son, leaped up at him and thumped him viciously in the small of the back with the doll. Nimble uttered a sharp cry of alarm and pain and spun on his heel, with his arm poised as if to strike, but when the girl stumbled backwards, her eyes widened in a show of fear, he lowered his hand.
‘It’s all right,’ he said gently. He bent his knees to bring his face level with hers. ‘It’s all right. It didn’t hurt really.’ He twisted his mouth in a mock grimace, and Little Hen let out a giggle.
I grinned. ‘Well done!’
Nimble spoke to the girl again. He pointed to the ground. ‘Hare?’ he said.
She responded by making a dragging motion and slapping the earth vigorously, saying something vehement in her own language.
‘Thoroughly dead and buried, I guess,’ I said, I dare say I — I mean, the Texcalan — was too heavy for her to move, not to mention too big to fit in the hole. Ix Men?’ I asked.
She gestured towards the doorway.
I looked around at the other two. ‘So what does all that mean?’ I asked, baffled.
Nimble said slowly: ‘Hare’s dead and hidden in the hole. The Texcalan’s dead. She killed Hare with the spike — that’s what she meant by whacking me with the doll, I guess…’
‘No, that’s not it.’ Kindly corrected him. ‘She gave the spike to the Texcalan.’
‘But we know Hare was killed with it. So it was the Texcalan who used it on him…’
‘But then who killed the Texcalan?’ I asked, capping their dialogue in a resigned tone. ‘Let’s face it, none of this adds up, does it? We thought we knew what had happened here, but we’re as far from the truth as ever. All we know is that both men were killed and the girl ran away.’ And there was no conclusion to be drawn from that: in Little Hen’s position I would not have wanted to be found near the corpses of my master and another man, even if he did turn out to have been a burglar. It would have made no difference to her whether or not she had actually had a hand in either man’s death.
‘Of course,’ I pointed out, ‘what she did was murder, you know. Technically.’
‘Technically,’ Nimble repeated remotely. He was not looking at me, but there was a defiant edge to his voice as he added: ‘What do you want to do about it, turn her in?’
A vague scheme to trade the girl for Lily had begun to form in my mind, but even before I met Nimble’s hard, determined eyes I realized it would not work. ‘What do you take me for?’ I replied, trying to look hurt.
Kindly said: ‘So she stabbed a man to death and hid the body. Or she got someone else to do it, and that’s even more impressive if you think about it. What a girl! She reminds me of my daughter.’
At the mention of Lily, I felt the grin freeze into position on my face as the muscles around my mouth tightened. I shut my eyes for a moment, while I reminded myself that what we had just done amounted to nothing more than a little play-acting, which brought us no nearer to finding what we were looking for: the message, whatever and wherever it was, whose content might exonerate Lily. Her trial, I realized, must be due to begin today or tomorrow at the latest, and it would in all likelihood end the same day as it started. As things stood, there could be little doubt about the verdict, or the sentence. The one thing I did not know now was what Rattlesnake and his cronies might be doing to their caged prisoner in the meantime.
I opened my eyes slowly, blinking a few times to get rid of the tears. Then I looked at the girl again.
‘We have to find someone who speaks her dialect.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ Kindly said sadly. ‘I’ve no doubt there’s someone among all the smartarses in this city who’s fluent in it — it’s the kind of place where people learn things like
