"A little dirt will do no harm to a good carpet," the leader replied.

"But why is it necessary to unroll them all?" Bharat demanded, growing genuinely angry. "If your devil and his servants had rolled themselves up inside my carpets, surely men as astute as yours would notice the bulges!"

"This is a very clever devil. We do not know what he can do," the leader said, and gave Bharat a cockeyed sneer, showing a single gold tooth. "Perhaps you are even this devil in disguise."

The implication was clear enough. Too much protesting could be taken the wrong way. Bharat watched in silence as the searchers spread his carpets across the road, then started on his provisions and personal belongings. They looked inside everything, even water-skins, and felt inside the pockets of his extra clothes. They opened his food bags and ran their filthy hands through his rice and barley, and they drained his oil jar into a cooking pot.

Bharat could only shake his head. "This devil's magic must be very powerful," he said, "if you think he can breathe cooking oil."

"Very powerful indeed," the leader assured him. "He can fight four men at once and command ogres to do his will, and several Ffolk have seen him walk on air. Queen Rosalind herself told me he knows things no man should know."

Truly?" Bharat asked.

The leader nodded, and the corners of his mouth turned down in a self-impressed scowl. "She said we must catch him, or there will be Ysdar to pay."

When the searchers had finally emptied the wagon, they began to crawl around the cargo bed on their hands and knees, rapping the floor and walls with the hilts of their daggers. Bharat watched nervously.

"Are you not satisfied yet?" he demanded. "You have delayed me too long already, and I am expected in Borobodur."

The leader only grinned and waited, and it did not take long before one of the searchers located the hollow sound of the wagon's secret compartment.