‘That’s your fault,’ Kindly said. ‘You didn’t nominate a successor!’
The King looked startled at the old man’s accusation, and his eyes flashed angrily, but he seemed to relent straight away.
I know,’ he said regretfully. ‘I thought, after seeing what was to come, that to choose one of my sons to succeed me would be to give him a death sentence. Kings and emperors don’t often survive having their rule overturned. I didn’t expect things to turn out the way they have… but it’s too late to change my mind now.’
I was watching Little Hen playing with her maimed doll. She had brought the toy with her all the way from Huexoda, via the skirmish at Hare’s house. I wondered just how far they had come together.
‘I didn’t understand everything she told me,’ Hungry Child said, as though he had overheard my thoughts. ‘I’m not that familiar with her dialect, and she talks very quickly! I’ll need to speak to her again, at greater length, but I picked some of it up. Originally, she came from somewhere called Chactemal, near the coast of the Divine Sea in the East. Very different country from ours; it’s low-lying, very hot, overgrown, and it rains almost all year round.’
‘I’ve heard of the place,’ Kindly said. ‘They grow cocoa there.’
‘Now, this little girl, Ix Men — what do you call her?’
‘Little Hen,’ I supplied.
‘Little Hen’s father seems to have been some minor chieftain who fell foul of the King. Of course, that’s not the way she put it — he was a great ruler, according to her, but, anyway, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that her father was sacrificed, and his household broken up and its members sold into slavery.’
‘When would this have been?’ Nimble asked curiously.
‘She’s a bit vague about dates, but perhaps three or four years ago.’
‘So she’d have been about seven or eight years old.’ My son sighed sympathetically. The events the former King was describing must have represented a common enough occurrence among barbarians, but no doubt Nimble was thinking of what the little girl must have gone through at the time.
‘About that,’ Hungry Child said indifferendy. ‘She seems to have passed through several owners since then. I have the impression that she was a little too wilful for some of them, and she seems to have run off altogether at least once. Why she wasn’t sacrificed to one of their gods I don’t know, but I suppose she’s a fine-looking creature by their standards, and too valuable to waste.’
Nimble was getting restless, fidgeting uncomfortably and biting his lip, and I spoke up on purpose to cut off an outburst that I knew he would quickly have regretted. ‘So how did Hare get hold of her?’
‘A Mayan merchant took her to Cozumel, a big island just off the coast where there’s an Aztec warehouse, and she caught his eye there. After spending so long among the Mayans, I suppose he’d got used to their notions of beauty, but it can’t have been long before he realized that what she had to say might be worth money in the right places. So Hare bought her, and soon after that he brought her back here.
‘He was a nasty piece of work, this Hare. Very unpleasant tastes.’ He raised his eyebrows at my son’s troubled expression. ‘Well, that isn’t a surprise, is it? You must have guessed as much for yourselves. And he went to extraordinary lengths to keep the girl’s existence secret. She spent most of the journey from the Mayan country to Tetzcoco in a wicker basket and was only let out at night when no one was looking. Then when she got here Hare rented a house in a quiet suburb, far away from where the merchants usually congregate, and made her hide in a hole he’d dug in the floor.’
Nimble could contain himself no longer. ‘Little Hen!’ he cried reproachfully. ‘How could you let him? Why didn’t you run away — you’d done it before!’
‘Easy, son,’ I said gently. ‘I don’t suppose Hare was the first. And you know why she didn’t run. Where would she have gone, and what would she have done for food? It wasn’t like living among her own people. She’d have been alone in a strange city, where no one spoke her language — except Hare, and she’d have been used to him.’ I looked at Hungry Child for confirmation.
‘True enough. But it seems she did take matters into her own hands eventually, doesn’t it? She broke a leg off that doll and used those viper’s teeth of hers to turn it into a weapon. I think you’ve already worked out what happened then. She was babbling too quickly for me to get the details.’
‘We think she heard Hare fighting with an intruder, surprised the other man, and then killed Hare when he told her to get back in her hole,’ I said.
Hungry Child raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Quite an achievement! I suppose her blood was up by then.’
‘She’s not exactly shy of a fight,’ I said. ‘So we know where she came from.’ I looked keenly at Hungry Child. ‘But what did she see? What was this message of hers?’
Hungry Child frowned. ‘I’m not sure. I think I know — but as I said, I need to talk to her further, and think about what she says in the fight of the omens. I think… No, I need to be sure.’
Kindly said: ‘All right, put it another way. Whatever it is, what is it to Maize Ear and Black
