‘I’ll tell you something, though. Pass this one to the policeman and tell him it’s from me, won’t you? If whoever robbed this woman’s grave is a sorcerer, he must be a very strange one.’
‘What makes you say that?’ I asked curiously.
‘Why did he take the body?’
‘For the forearm,’ I said automatically. ‘It’s well known what a sorcerer can do with a dead woman’s forearm: he can dance with it and the magic can lull an entire household to sleep.’
‘So why not just cut the arm off, then?’
I frowned. ‘Well, because…’
He chuckled, delighted at his own cleverness. ‘You see? A sorcerer wouldn’t want to drag a whole corpse across the city when he could easily conceal an arm under his cloak. Doesn’t make sense.’
I thought about this. ‘There are other things he might have wanted,’ I pointed out. ‘The hair, a finger…’
‘A sorcerer would have no use for them. They’re warriors’ charms.’
‘Maybe the thief thought a warrior might buy them from him.’
‘No, I don’t think so. After all, how’s the buyer to know for sure how the woman died, or whether she even had any children?’ He asked the question as confidently as any man used to pitching his wares to sceptical customers. ‘She could have been anybody. If you were a warrior about to go into battle, would you risk your life on a charm unless you were sure it was genuine?’
‘So you think a warrior must have taken it. No, that doesn’t make sense either,’ I said impatiently. ‘The hair and finger would be even easier to carry than an arm. Why’d a warrior have taken the body?’
He curled his lip. ‘Can’t help you there,’ he admitted cheerfully. ‘But I thought I’d save you and our policeman wasting your time looking for the wrong man.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ I said insincerely. ‘I’m beginning to wish I’d not mentioned Kite now. Tell you what, forget what I said about helping him. If you want any favours from him just offer him a bribe!’
And I was about to add under my breath a fervent wish that Kite would be mortally offended by the offer and beat this cynical impostor until there was no longer an unbroken bone in his body, when a horrible thought made me catch my breath.
Suppose Cactus were right. It made no sense for either a warrior or a sorcerer to take a whole body when he only wanted a single, easily portable part of it, but what if he wanted more than that? What if he did, indeed, have a need for the hair as well as the arm because he was both a warrior and a sorcerer?
‘Perhaps he had time to take just one charm,’ I muttered. ‘You could cut off an arm or a scalp, but how long would it take to get both? Maybe it was easier to take the body, after all.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Cactus asked. I ignored him, appalled and mesmerised by the idea that had occurred to me.
To be on the trail of someone who was both invincible by day and invisible by night. It was almost too frightening to contemplate, but I forced myself to admit that it made sense of one thing that had happened to me.
The creature that had attacked me during the night, the being that had no human shape, had carried a sword.
7
Goose’s niece had emerged from the house with her aunt, and was standing next to me holding a basket with some dough balls in it. There were not many of them and they did not look appetising – unevenly shaped, burned in places, almost raw in others. Nonetheless she proffered them as correctly as if she were serving at a feast, balancing the basket in her right palm, with her eyes downcast in a modest expression.
I accepted one out of politeness, taking it left-handed and looking around quickly for Goose, who had the bowl full of dipping sauce. ‘Thank you.’
‘Tlacotl made these herself,’ Goose told us.
‘Well done. They look delicious.’ Cactus sounded more sincere in his appreciation than I would have done, although when I bit into one of the cakes I found it tasted better than it looked.
I looked at the little girl, whose name meant ‘Osier Twig’. She appeared slightly older than I had thought at first: perhaps ten or eleven, almost ready for her first day at the House of Youth and old enough now to be of some use to her mother about the house in the meantime. Then I remembered, with a pang that almost made me choke on my dough ball, that she no longer had a mother.
‘Thank the gentleman, Osier Twig,’ her aunt prompted her.
The girl looked up at Cactus, to speak to him, and her lips parted, but the only sound she made was a faint ‘Oh!’ of surprise as she quickly hid her face again.
Goose frowned in annoyance. ‘I’m sorry,’ she started to say, ‘but my niece has had a trying couple of days…’
Cactus had recovered himself, however. ‘I didn’t realise we’d met!’ he said, addressing the girl.
‘Where?’ Goose asked sternly. No doubt she was concerned to learn that her niece had had an encounter with a strange man.
‘No, no we haven’t,’ the girl said, stammering in confusion while the remaining dough balls shook so vigorously in their basket that two flew out onto the floor. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’
‘Yes, you have,’ the curer said. He caught Goose’s eye and said: ‘Oh, I’m sorry, madam. It’s perfectly innocent. I saw her the day before yesterday, running through Atlixco plaza. You were looking for a midwife,’ he reminded the girl.
‘I thought your father sent you to the House of Pleasure?’ I said. I assumed Osier Twig was the girl Goose and Handy had both told me about.
‘Yes,’ said the girl wretchedly. She looked as though she would rather be anywhere than where she was
