‘Out of the way!’ Lion barked, shoving people roughly aside. ‘No, I’m not telling you anything, because I know bugger all myself!’
Handy helped me stagger along in my brother’s wake. One elderly man – the very same man I had accosted on the morning when Star’s body had gone missing – called out: ‘Hey, I know you! What’s this all about, then?’
I looked at him, the eyes in his lined and leathery face gleaming with curiosity like a child’s, and felt suddenly sick. I could have told him what he wanted to know by now – all of it, from the beginning – but I was too tired.
We stopped by the steward’s body.
‘Poor old Huitztic,’ Handy said magnanimously. ‘I never liked him, but I don’t know that he deserved that.’
‘I do,’ I said huskily. ‘And he did.’
The commoner stared at me. ‘What makes you say that?’
I sighed. ‘Can it wait till the morning? For now, let’s just say that he brought it on himself.’
Lion said: ‘It’s a pity we didn’t get the sorcerer. You reckon we might have done, if it hadn’t been for the fire?’
‘I saw him!’ someone called out.
‘Really?’ Lion cried eagerly. I glanced at the man who had spoken, noting indifferently that he was no-one I had seen or heard before, just a tonsured commoner in a plain, brief cloak and breechcloth. ‘Where did he go?’
The man gestured towards the path that led towards Handy’s house and the lake. ‘That way. He was running. He must have been near the temple – that’s how I know who it was – and he was screaming and trailing sparks like his cloak had caught fire!’
Lion grinned at me. ‘You stay here. I’m going after him. Handy, you can come too, if you want to get your hands on the man who killed your wife!’
Pain and fatigue and a peculiar sense that none of what I could see or hear was really happening were beginning to overwhelm me. My head was spinning. My voice fell almost to a whisper, but I just about managed to make myself heard: ‘Don’t bother!’
Handy and Lion stared at me, slack-jawed. Eventually my brother said: ‘You can stay here, then. No-one’s asking you to go. But if we don’t move now, we’ll lose him.’
‘No you won’t,’ I said weakly. ‘That wasn’t the sorcerer.’ I stumbled dizzily forward, stopping only when Lion seized my arm and held me upright. I looked at him and Handy, taking in both of their shocked faces in turn. ‘You’ll get your sorcerer,’ I assured them, ‘and the man who ran away – you’ll get him too. But they’ll keep, both of them. There’s plenty of time.’
As Lion lowered me to the ground, there was a disturbance near the edge of the crowd. Heads turned and feet started to move in the direction of some new spectacle, and I heard voices calling for help: a blanket, a couple of men to carry something, a brazier for warmth. Considering that flames were still crackling in parts of the parish hall, this last request struck me as funny. To find myself giggling inanely at such a time was all part of the unreality that surrounded me.
Handy disappeared into the crowd for a moment to find out what the fuss was about. He burst back out of it almost immediately.
‘Yaotl, you really need to see this,’ he said, grasping my wrist and pulling me to my feet again.
‘Let me go!’ I protested feebly, but the words died in my throat as he tugged me after him.
There was a small clear space at the edge of the plaza. In the middle of it was a large puddle. In the middle of the puddle, with water still dripping from her hair and clothes, sat Lily. Kite lay next to her, still strapped to his board. Both were clearly very much alive.
Handy thrust me towards them and then stood behind me, holding me up.
My mistress looked me up and down. I must have presented a sorry sight, covered in blood and soot, with my clothes and hair singed. She, on the other hand, looked well, apart from the bandages on her hands and the fact that she was soaking wet and still shivering slightly.
For a long moment neither of us said anything. Then we both uttered the same words at once: ‘What happened to you?’
I added: ‘I thought you were dead! I thought you’d been burned alive!’
She frowned at me. ‘Why would you think that?’
‘But... how did you get down?’
‘Yaotl, you can be so dense. Have you forgotten about the canal? It runs right past the building – or at least it did, before the building burned down. I had to push Kite off the roof – which wasn’t easy with these hands – and hope he didn’t drown before I got in to save him. It’s a good thing I’m a strong swimmer!’ She grinned then. ‘I’m surprised at you. You really don’t know me very well if you thought we were just going to sit up there waiting to be cooked!’
FIVE WIND
1
From the outside, the house looked almost as it had when Lily, Kite, Snake and I had last visited it. The only small difference was that the wicker screen had already been drawn back.
‘As if we were expected,’ Lion said.
‘We are,’ I said.
‘Do you want me to call out?’ Snake asked.
‘No, I think we can go straight in.’
We were a larger party this time: no Kite, but Lion, Spotted Eagle and Handy were
