The speaker was bent with age, so that he had to crane his neck to watch me, as if his eyes on my face would help him catch me out in any lie. I looked away, preferring to confront the policeman instead. ‘I don’t know, but I’ve an idea. And I do know it was me he was after.’ I explained how I had heard the hoarse, whispering voice utter my own name.
Then I told them about the otomi.
The reaction was as I had feared. There was an angry sound in the air; the rustling and shuffling noise of a crowd of people fidgeting impatiently and nudging their neighbours. I was becoming more nervous. Star had been a popular figure in this parish and if the feeling that I had somehow been responsible for what had happened to her started to spread, there was no telling what might happen next.
I appealed to Handy. ‘Look, I helped you bury your wife last night because you asked me to. I could have gone away. If that thing – man – whatever, was following me, maybe he’d have come after me somewhere else. But he was here before I was.’ I looked at Kite. ‘You know what’s been happening in the marshes. I talked to a fisherman and his children – Heart of a Flower and her brother.’
‘Zolin’s kids,’ he said automatically. The name meant ‘Quail’. There was a hissing sound from the crowd: my implicating still more of their neighbours in my adventures had not endeared me to them any more.
‘You can’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,’ I insisted.
‘I’ve heard things,’ he said non-committally. ‘But this... whatever people think they’ve seen, it’s never spoken to anyone before.’
‘You should lock him up.’ The speaker was that old man again. ‘Or take him away. Hand him over to the chief minister. He’s supposed to run the city for the emperor. And you’d get this man out of the parish then.’
I shivered at the mention of my former master. If the men lord Feathered in Black supposedly had watching over me had been nearby during the night, then they had done nothing to protect me. I was more than ever convinced they had never existed. It was not a surprise, to have to conclude that my former master had lied to me, but the thought did not make me any happier. Nor did it make the prospect of being handed over to him as a prisoner any more appealing.
There was a movement in the crowd, and suddenly I knew that things had come to a crisis, for there were two large men standing in front of me, arms already reaching in my direction. They looked like the identical twin offspring of a union between a mountain and a bear: blank faces set on torsos so heavily muscled as to be almost shapeless.
‘Leave this to us,’ one of them rumbled, the voice seeming to come from somewhere in his bowels while his lips barely moved.
I tried to back away but the press of people around me made movement impossible. I tensed, sensing that the massive, callused hands that were about to drag me away would not be gentle. I only hoped they were both going to pull me in the same direction, as they looked as though they could rip my arms and legs off without effort if they chose.
However, the policeman was having none of it.
‘That’s enough!’ he barked.
The two large men froze. They slowly turned their heads – something of a feat, considering neither had anything resembling a neck – and stared at each other.
‘Behave yourselves, you two. Isn’t it time you were back at the quarry? And as for you’ – he glowered at the old man, who looked defiantly up at him but said nothing – ‘this man isn’t going to the chief minister or anybody else until I say so! This is my parish, do you hear?’
Somebody coughed discreetly. There was an awkward shuffling of feet. Some outlying members of the crowd, sensing that their policeman had ruled that the fun was over, disappeared unobtrusively. The giants who had been so keen to arrest me shuffled uncertainly away. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Spotted Eagle opening his mouth as if to say something, but he thought better of it.
‘Now,’ Kite said, ‘I want to know what happened here last night, and what happened down by the lake as well, and I’m not minded to let anybody go anywhere until I get some answers. So who’s going to start? We know what happened to Yaotl. Handy, what have you got to say?’
The commoner was looking morosely at the hole in the ground where Star’s body had lain so briefly. ‘My wife,’ he muttered thickly.
Kite’s expression softened at that. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said in a gentler tone. ‘I’m trying to find out, old friend.’ He glanced at Spotted Eagle. ‘What can you tell me?’
The young man started, as though he had been woken from a dream. After a moment he said sullenly: ‘We were guarding the body. Then this – the slave calls it a monster, but I don’t know what it was – it came out of nowhere…’
‘We don’t know where it came from.’ I corrected him. ‘We were all asleep.’
Spotted Eagle bristled. ‘I may have closed my eyes for a second!’
‘While a freak gust of wind blew the torch out?’
‘Now listen…’
‘Shut up, both of you!’ the policeman bawled. ‘Just tell me what happened after you woke up.’
‘We were attacked.’ The youth would not meet his eyes. ‘Yaotl ran off…’
‘What did you do? Your father? Flower Gatherer?’
Handy answered. He was still staring into the empty grave. ‘We all ran,’ he said quietly. ‘We scattered. It was the surprise, and the noise. The scream…’ He shuddered. ‘By the time Spotted Eagle and I came back here, they were gone: Yaotl and Flower Gatherer.’ There was a brief pause. ‘And her.’ I glanced at the grave;
