The blades of the sword glittered. ‘As well as you could expect. I understand he stumped into the house and hasn’t said a word to anyone since. He’ll get over it.’ Kite looked at me. ‘I’m glad you’re here. I want you to look at something.’
He led us a few paces along the canal until we found ourselves opposite a corner of Handy’s courtyard wall. A narrow alleyway separated the commoner’s house from the one next door. Peering into it, I noticed how dirty it was. Little heaps of dust were banked against the whitewashed walls on either side, and I saw a couple of maize husks, the skin of a tuna cactus fruit and several smudges that may have been footprints.
‘Oh,’ said Lily mournfully. I shared her sadness. The litter was only a couple of days’ worth, nothing that could not be shifted with a few moments’ sweeping. Its being there at all was a sign of neglect. Star and the other women of her household would normally have kept the area around their home spotless; it was a duty owed to the gods, as sacred as washing the faces of the idols in their niches every morning.
I glanced along the canal. Between where we stood and the corner of the next house I saw three smudges like the one in the alley. As I looked at them, Kite said: ‘I don’t suppose either of you happened to notice whether these prints were here this morning?’
‘No,’ I said. I squatted beside the nearest of the marks, scratching at it experimentally with a fingernail. ‘But that doesn’t mean they weren’t here. We were all looking at the body.’ I looked at my finger, sniffed at it. ‘This is mud. Dried mud.’
‘Interesting, that,’ the policeman said, ‘considering we’ve had no rain lately.’
Lily was standing behind me as I stood up. ‘Then whoever left these must have come from the lake.’
‘Directly from there, and not very far,’ I added. ‘Or else all the mud would have been rubbed off before he got here.’
We both stared at the policeman. He used his sword to point to the footprints by the canal. ‘If you look at them again you’ll notice these are different shapes. See here? And here?’
‘That one was made by someone wearing sandals,’ I said. The flat oblong print was unmistakable. I glanced into the alley again. ‘Did they both go around the corner, or only one?’ I had an unpleasant suspicion that I now knew what Kite was getting at, and why he had been checking his sword so carefully.
‘Some of the prints out here, by the canal, were made by bare feet. The ones in the alley are all of sandals. So just one of them went in there, I’d say. They split up.’
‘Who?’ Lily asked in a worried tone.
‘Whoever attacked me and Spotted Eagle last night,’ I replied grimly. ‘The one who tried to jump on the young man must have gone around the backs of the houses here. That’s why his prints go off into the alley.’ I shivered as I contemplated the inhuman shape I had seen, perched on a rooftop. What sort of monster wore sandals? ‘The sorcerer stopped here. In fact this is about where I met him last night.’
‘If they did come from the lake, that’s pretty suggestive,’ Kite said, ‘considering what’s been happening to Quail and the others.’
‘Have you been able to follow these back to where they started?’ I asked.
‘Not yet. The pathways around here have been cleaned since this morning, except in this spot. But I agree with you that the pair of them must have taken a pretty direct route from the lake. So what I thought we could do, is try to retrace it. We’ll take the shortest path to shore and see if we can pick any more of these prints up along the way.’
‘“We”?’ Lily and I repeated simultaneously.
He hefted the sword. ‘I mean Yaotl, me and Spotted Eagle. What do you think I was waiting here for?’
I was speechless for a moment. I felt Lily’s hand rest on my arm again. ‘You can’t take my slave,’ she said firmly.
The policeman sighed. ‘Madam, I have to. He’s seen the makers of these footprints. He seems to have been the reason they were here in the first place. He must know more about them than anyone else...’
‘I don’t,’ I objected. ‘And it’s hardly my fault if they happen to know me, is it?’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that,’ Kite said darkly, ‘and what if you know more than you think? You might get a surprise if you come face to face with one of them in daylight.’
‘I doubt if surprise is quite the word for it!’
‘Yaotl can’t go,’ my mistress asserted. ‘He’s a slave. His tribute obligations were discharged when he sold himself and he only obeys me. And I’m a merchant, remember?’ Her voice wavered slightly as she said this, but her words were clear, and moreover, she was right. It was one of the curious ways in which I, as a slave, was freer than most men. I could not be compelled to fight in the army, form part of a work detail or perform any of the other tasks that an ordinary commoner might be made to do at the behest of the emperor or anyone else. Only my owner could give me orders. And my owner was a merchant, from Tlatelolco. The merchants of the city’s northern quarter were a law unto themselves. They had their own police, their own courts, and emperor Montezuma’s special favour, in return for the wealth and intelligence they brought him. Even here, on his own ground, Kite had no power over Lily or anything belonging to her, and she knew it.
So did Kite. He looked away to conceal a scowl. ‘Have it your way, then,’
