Precious Light was kneeling in her courtyard. She barely looked up at us as we filed in and variously squatted, kneeled or stood by the walls. She was intent on patting down the earth she had used to fill in a small hole in the ground beside her.
There was an earthenware cup by one of her knees. I eyed it warily. It was positioned so that she could snatch it up in an instant, but were its contents a weapon or a means of escape?
‘You’re later that I expected,’ she remarked.
‘I was late rising,’ I said. ‘It was a long night, last night.’
She looked up then and smiled. ‘Is your leg troubling you?’
‘A little,’ I admitted. I had remained on my feet. My leg was too stiff to bend easily, and the bandages swaddling it from the knee down did not help.
‘I can give you something for that, you know.’
‘I’m sure you can.’ I decided the pleasantries ought to end there: I could sense Handy and his sons becoming impatient. ‘But would it be anything like what you used to give Cactus?’
If I expected her to break down into some tearful confession, or even launch into a spirited denial, I was to be disappointed. ‘No, nothing like that,’ she said calmly. ‘Only a poultice.’
Handy could not contain himself any longer. ‘Why?’ he cried suddenly. ‘Why did you do it? You tried to use Cactus to get at Star through Slender Neck. When that didn’t work you put her out of the way and replaced her with Gentle Heart. You sent someone to the House of Pleasure to tell them my wife didn’t need a midwife – or was that you?’
‘It was me,’ the old woman responded calmly.
‘You even tried to use the curer to kill me, but why? What was it all for?’
‘You made my son unhappy.’
‘That’s ridiculous! What did I do to him? What about what he did to us?’
‘Oh, I understand all that. I don’t mean you did anything; but the fact that you and Star were alive, that was the cause of his unhappiness. Do you see? I just wanted to get rid of that, the thing that was making him miserable. That was all.’
‘And you wanted to kill us for that?’
She looked up, frowning slightly, an expression of puzzlement. ‘No, I didn’t want to kill you. I needed to.’
Spotted Eagle said: ‘Where’s my mother’s body?’
‘I made the otomi rebury it. It’s in the plot just to the south of yours. Really, I’m surprised it’s not been found yet.’
‘Why did you steal it in the first place?’ the young man cried piteously.
Precious Light’s answer to this was a sigh. Her hand drifted towards the bowl beside her. Alarmed, I said: ‘We don’t mean to weary you. Why don’t I try to answer the questions? Then if you’d be kind enough to fill in any gaps, we would be... grateful.’ I shot a warning look at Handy and Spotted Eagle.
Precious Light laid her hand on the earth beside the bowl. ‘I’ll tell you what you need to know. In a way, I owe it to you. You’ve only been doing what you had to as well. But not too many questions. I’m tired. It was a long night for me too.’
‘I don’t know where this starts,’ I continued. ‘I suppose with the otomi, looking for a way to get his revenge on me and Handy.’
‘He wasn’t that interested in Handy,’ Precious Light said. ‘You were the one he wanted. But it was a mutual arrangement, you see: he got his revenge, I removed the obstacle to my son’s happiness, we helped each other.’
‘Right. Anyway, somehow he got the idea of consulting a sorcerer, and maybe getting hold of a charm to make himself invincible.’
‘It was the other way around. I found him.’
‘Through Huitztic, the steward?’
‘That’s right. Everyone knew he came to the parish to see Handy, and I made a point of getting to know him.’
‘The steward,’ I said ruefully. ‘That’s someone else that hated me.’
‘Yes,’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘but I don’t think you were that important. It was the captain that mattered to the steward. He wanted to do something for the otomi – to make a friend of him, I suppose. He was terrified of him, but he seemed to be fascinated by him as well. When he talked about him to me, about how he’d come back to the city and what he wanted to do, I realised I could make use of them both.’
‘And pretending to be a sorcerer – to know how to do the dance with dead woman’s forearm – whose idea was that?’
‘It was the steward’s. I didn’t care for it, but he said the otomi would accept it, and he did. I scared him as much as he scared Huitztic. And Cactus was so easily impressed.’ The corners of her mouth turned down, as if the gullibility and folly of others were a source of regret. ‘Cactus would take any potion or herb or mushroom I offered him, if I assured him I had a second soul and could turn myself into an animal at will. And apparently lord Feathered in Black’s sorcerers would give his steward anything we needed.’
Handy said to me: ‘You said last night that Huitztic brought it all on himself. Is this what you meant?’
‘Yes.’ I looked at him, Lily and Lion. ‘If you remember, I kept wondering what the link was between the otomi and the sorcerer. In fact, the answer was staring us in the face. It had to be Huitztic, because apart from lord
