A Novel (15 page)

He was young, close to my own age, clad in a simple drape that hung from one shoulder. He held the slender spear casually in one strong hand. His skin was black as the night itself.

My eyes flashed to the satchel, but otherwise I kept very still. The Lani and the Mahweni weren't enemies. The two peoples overlapped very little in culture, language, geography, work, or religion. Inside the city, the Mahweni were factory workers, laborers, market vendors, and street hawkers, like the newspaper girl. They dressed like white people, more or less, and did the same kinds of work, though usually for less money. They were what were called the Assimilated Tribes. But outside the city, the Mahweni were different. They were herders, hunters, and occasional traders, as they had been long before the whites came down from the north or the Lani from across the Eastern Sea. They were fiercely independent, a loose convocation of frequently squabbling tribes who held to ancient ways.

The Mahweni and the Lani kept themselves to themselves, speaking little, sharing less. We weren't enemies, but we weren't friends either.

The boy seemed to hesitate, feeling my eyes upon him. He looked at me, then bent at the waist, a graceful and stately bow that lowered his eyes for a moment.

I couldn't help smiling at the dignity of the gesture, and the smile moved through my body, relaxing the tension I had barely been aware of. The Mahweni nodded toward the fire, and his eyes widened a little in request. At this time of year, it could get quite chilly when the sun went down.

“You want to sit here?” I asked in Lani, checking the satchel. It was quite still. “I suppose so. Yes.”

I returned my gaze to the fire, marveling at the strangeness of my composure. Would I have done such a thing two days ago? No. I would have fled. But two days ago, I had not been a detective sitting in an abandoned temple outside the city to avoid a man who meant to kill me. It wasn't that I was braver now. I just had bigger things to worry about.

The Mahweni boy settled beside me, nodding and smiling but saying nothing. He had high cheekbones, and his head was shaved. He almost certainly spoke no words of Lani, but that didn't matter; I was in no mood to talk.

The boy unslung a pouch from round his neck and tipped some sorrel nuts into his hand. He offered them to me and I, more out of politeness than hunger, took one. He smiled broadly and watched me eat it. The nut was sweet and slightly fragrant, which meant it was fresh.

“It's good,” I said in Feldish.

The Mahweni boy's face lit up. “Yes,” he said in Feldish. “Good.” He considered me, still smiling, then added, “I am Mnenga.”

“Anglet,” I said.

He rehearsed the word in his mouth, enunciating it carefully till I smiled and nodded. There was a single chicken thigh left. I proffered it to him.

“Yes?” he said.

“Yes.”

He took it and bit into the flesh, his eyes closing in the ecstasy of the moment. When he was done, he thanked me extravagantly. “Much better than nuts,” he said.

I grinned in spite of myself. Normally around boys of my own age I got tense and silent, uncomfortable, as if my skin suddenly didn't fit right. But his presence was strangely calming, and all the fears and anxieties of the day seemed to have curled up by the fire and gone to sleep.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He frowned, trying to make sense of the question.

“I mean,” I said, “why are you in this place?”

“Oh,” he said, the brilliant smile snapping back into position. He had large black eyes, bright with curiosity and seemingly always on the point of laughing. “I have a…” He hesitated, looking for the word. “A
flock
?… Yes, a flock of nbezu, that way.”

Nbezu are something between a goat and an antelope, with tall straight horns that spiral to a point like the cone-shaped shells I sometimes found by the docks.

“Two of them came this way.”

“I haven't seen them,” I said. “You left the flock alone?”

He laughed at that, a delighted bark that threw his head back like a shout into the sky. “No, no,” he said. “My brothers are there. Otherwise—” He gestured with his hands, fingers splayed, palms pushing quickly away from his chest:
They would scatter
.

“I see,” I said, shielding the satchel with my body and surreptitiously checking to make sure the baby was still asleep. I didn't want him to see it. “I hope you find them. There are hyenas here.”

He considered that and sniffed the air, tipping his head onto one side as he said, “Not tonight, I think. Not unless they are very clever.”

He grinned at the idea, then blew out a breath so long that I wasn't sure if he was joking.

“I don't worry about hyenas,” he said, overenunciating so that his lips flexed. “I worry about the sun. We have to find water and shade. Even my people, who should know this, stay in the light too long and get burned. Three days ago, an old man, half-crazy from the heat, came down from the cliffs so badly sunburned, he could barely stand up! Sixty years old! Lived every day of his life out in the bush.”

I grunted my agreement, and silence crept over us for a long moment. We watched the last of the fire, the ashen branches forming smoldering, shifting caves that throbbed with orange light, then dulled to gray and crumbled. I couldn't decide if I wanted him to leave me alone or not.

“I saw you in the … the Lani village,” said Mnenga.

“The Drowning,” I said.

“Drowning, yes. I was up here.”

“I saw.”

He smiled, pleased, as if this meant more than the literal meaning of the words.

“Will you move on tomorrow?” I asked, deliberately changing the subject.

“The nbezu are stubborn creatures,” he said. “When they find the grass they like and a little water, they do not move. Also, soon we may not be able to come here, so we use it while we can.”

“Why not?” I asked, surprised by how much his inconsequential words soothed me.

Mnenga shook his head. He was still smiling with his mouth, but his eyes were troubled. “We have always been able to use this land,” he said. “But our leaders say it will perhaps be traded.”

“To who?”

“White men in the city. I do not know their names.”

“For what?”

“I do not know. ‘Development,' they say,” he added, poking the dusty earth with a stick.

“Out here? Development of what?”

He shrugged. “Not just here,” he said. “All over. Pieces of land our families have shared for generations. They will be fenced. We will not be allowed in.”

“Does this involve the Grappoli?” I asked.

He pulled a quizzical face. “Why the Grappoli?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I said, shrugging with a sudden sense of defeat. “Just something I heard. Are you being paid for the land?”

He smiled mirthlessly. “Some people will be paid,” he said. “Some of our elders say we will get iron tools from the factories. They say it is good for us, that most of the land is useless mountain slopes, not good for grazing. Perhaps they are right. But no one is asking us. The tribal leaders make deals in the city and then tell us afterwards. It is not good.”

“You have representatives in the government,” I said. “You can't talk to them?”

“We talk through our leaders, but in the end, we must go through Sohwetti, and he wants to sell.”

Farrstanga Sohwetti was the chief of the Unassimilated Tribes, the most powerful Mahweni in the country.

“He won't talk to your elders?”

“Oh, he will talk,” said Mnenga knowingly. “He is very good at talking. But I do not think he will listen.”

“Why not?”

“You know where he lives?”

I shook my head.

“Not in my village,” he said. “Not in any village. I have a beehive hut,” he added proudly. “One day, I will have a family there.”

I smiled but pushed the conversation forward. “Sohwetti does not live in a beehive hut?” I said.

Mnenga shook his head. “He has a big house in the city. His friends are white people. Government people. Rich people. He meets with our council, but he is not one of us. Not anymore. He likes his new life. I think that if he was paid enough, he would sell away all our homeland. And for a handful of nails and hinges and belt buckles, maybe a few guns and some money, my people will say yes. And you know what? I cannot blame them. We are tired of being poor.”

His smile was gone now, but he looked more sad than angry, lost, so that I was suddenly sorry for him and, without thinking, took his hand.

He smiled with surprise and gratitude but said nothing.

I don't know how long we would have sat there in silence, as I felt the polished smoothness of his fingers in mine, but at that moment, the satchel at my feet moved.

Mnenga leapt to his feet, startled, and his right hand reached for the spear he had laid on the ground. He raised the weapon to shoulder height as a mewing sound came from the basket.

Horrified, I seized the spear point, and the young man's brow creased.

“Cat?” he said.

“Yes,” I answered, my heart beating fast. “A kitten.”

“I thought snake,” he said, lowering the spear. “Can I see?”

I shook my head, but as I did so, the baby began to cry.

Mnenga's eyes widened. “Not cat,” he said.

I looked down, ashamed of the stupid lie. “Not cat,” I admitted, stricken once more by a sense of failure.

“Boy or girl?” said Mnenga.

“Girl,” I said miserably.

“She is yours?”

“No,” I replied, adding a little desperately, “a friend's. But no one can know.”

“I see,” said Mnenga, nodding.

“I cannot feed her,” I said. “I have to wait for her mother.”

He looked at me, and his smile was grim, understanding, but when he reached for the basket, probing with one finger as if he was going to give it to the child to suck, I felt a sudden panic and flinched, half reaching to stop him.

He froze, looking at me, then withdrew his hand, nodding again. “I should go,” he said.

“I'm sorry,” I repeated. “It's just…” But I could not explain because I did not understand myself. Instead I just said, “Please tell no one.”

He inclined his head seriously, then stood up, but he did not walk away. “You will be here again? Tomorrow, perhaps?”

“I … I don't know,” I said, my former anxieties crouching hyena-like in the dark places of my head. “I suppose. I have to bring the child back to be fed.”

He seemed to sense my mood, and his smile was tempered with something like concern.

“Bye,” I said before he could add anything that might embarrass me further.

He began his bow, and I turned away. When I looked round again, he was gone.

*   *   *

I PICKED MY WAY
to the city gates, endured the contempt of the guards when they saw the sleeping bundle in my satchel, and made my way toward Old Town, glad of the firm sidewalk and gas lamps after the darkness and rutted tracks of the Drowning. I could smell the ocean now, a clear, salt tang unlike the stagnant sourness of the river edge near Rahvey's hut. Down by the water a few blocks away stood the pillar surmounted by the bronze of Captain Franzen. Tanish would be arriving to start work within the hour. I needed to see someone who would smile at me, someone who would tell me that taking Rahvey's child had been the right thing to do.

Because it didn't feel like the right thing. It felt stupid.
I
felt stupid, and the fact that I was responding to the Lani way that was at least as stupid, maybe more so, didn't help at all. So I walked with the sleeping child slung against my chest, eyes on the ground, lost in misery and humiliation, and I didn't see Morlak in the alley. I saw nothing till he lunged out at me, knife in one hand, the other grasping my hair, and everything went out of my head save one shrill, terrified thought:

The baby. Oh gods, the baby.

 

CHAPTER

14

I COULD NOT FIGHT
back. My right arm flung out for balance as he pulled me into the alley, while my left clamped protectively over the satchel. He assumed I was going for a weapon—the dog I had stabbed him with before—and his knife went to my throat. I splayed my fingers in surrender and gave in as he yanked my hair, spun me around, and thrust me up against the wall.

My head hit the brick, but the pain was nothing to the panic, the dread.

Not the baby,
I thought again.
Gods, not the baby.

The thought shrieked through my raging, thumping heart, my shallow, ragged breathing.

“Put the bag down,” he snarled into my ear. He smelled of stale sweat and madness that had once been hate. “Came to see the boy, huh, little Anglet? So predictable.”

I hesitated and he pressed the knife once more, so that I craned my neck up like a giraffe. Then, very carefully, I began to lift the satchel strap over my head with my left hand. I could feel the weight of the baby within, could almost hear her breathing, and in my mind, I saw what would happen next: The bag would reach the pavement and, assuming my tools were in it, he would kick it away.…

I froze, overcome with a new and desperate horror.

“I said, put it down!” he spat, teeth bared.

I extended my arm as far as I could and slowly, carefully set the satchel on the ground, shrinking away from it as best I could inside his savage grip. His breath was sour, and his lank, greasy hair trailed into my face.

“Take whatever you want!” I gasped.

“All in good time,” he muttered, and his grin was dirty, cruel.

He was going to kill me. I knew it as sure as I knew the sun would rise. He would do what he wanted with me, and then he would cut my throat. Nothing else was worth the risk.