A Novel (23 page)

Morlak hobbling on his stick.

Or Mnenga with his spear?

The thought horrified me, but would not go away. I had seen the Mahweni boy only a few blocks away, in a place he should not be, and armed.…

I spun around, trying to locate the source of the sound in the eerie glow of the gaslit fog, and as I did so, I snatched the heavy pistol from my belt and pointed it into the shadows.

Another careful footstep.

“Who's there?” I demanded. “Step into the light. I'm armed!”

Silence. Then the distinctive ring of steel: a long knife or sword sliding from its sheath.

I cocked the gun's hammer and aimed the long barrel into the gently swirling mist, but there was nothing to see. How close might he get before presenting me with a target? Ten yards? Five? The fog seemed to confuse the sound so that I wasn't sure which way I was facing, and when a distant train blew its whistle, the sound seemed to bounce from all directions.

My gun hand trembled. I had just enough presence of mind not to shoot blindly. Some of the buildings around me were residences. A stray bullet could go through a window.…

I pointed the revolver's barrel into a patch of exposed dirt where a fractured flagstone had been removed, and fired once.

In the silence, the sound was a cannon blast, and its reverberation slapped around the facades of the square like thunder. My ears rang, and for a moment the world seemed muffled. I heard a window open somewhere to my left, and then the distant but unmistakable shriek of a police whistle.

From my attacker, the man I assumed had already killed Billy before turning his attention on me, there was no sound.

Then there were footsteps again, coming toward me. I turned, seized the lowest bar of the scaffolding, which crisscrossed its uneven way up the column to the bronze pirate on the top, and began to climb, my hair swinging in my face. The pistol was still in my hand, but the last I saw before the fog swallowed the ground beneath me was the shape of a man moving to Billy's body, hesitating, and looking around as the shrill blast of the police whistle sounded once more.

I could not see who it was.

I climbed higher, faster, hoping against hope that I would not be trapped at the top of the column. The earth fell away beneath me. The fog swallowed me up. And still I climbed. At the top, a set of four gas lamps gave a faint opalescent aura to the bronze figure, but the column itself was utterly dark, so that the statue seemed to float like a specter above the city. It was not till I reached the top that I found what I had hoped for: a slim and rickety bridge made of ladders and cable, which the cleaning crew used to bring supplies from the roof of a nearby building.

It sloped downward, creaking when I put my feet on it, and it had never been designed to be used in the dark, but I could hear voices below, muffled by the fog. The police? Billy's killer? Perhaps both. I took my first unsteady step onto the slim bridge and felt it wobble under my weight.

There was a single cable at waist height, which served as a handrail, on the right. There should have been one on the left too, but it was missing. I pocketed the gun, gripped the cable with one hand, and holding the other out for balance, pressed on, eyes front, feeling my way with the soles of my boots. The fog was too dense to see where the bridge ended.

The voices from the square were louder now but less distinct, and for a moment everything seemed to fall away, even my horror of Billy's death, so that it was just me up there in the night sky, trusting to hands and feet and instinct.

Below me, someone screamed. It was a strange, disembodied sound, and for a split second, I wondered if it was me, if the feelings I kept locked behind the dam had somehow broken out without me realizing.…

The bridge ended on the ornamental roof of an office building. I used a discarded ladder to cross onto the Merchant Marine headquarters next door, and then dropped onto the fire escape of the Dragon's Head. I covered the next block and a half on rooftops and one decorative ledge, reaching the League of Magistrates' chambers, and finally the south entrance to the Martel Court.

I scaled the clock tower as quickly as I could, shut myself in, and rushed to the child I had left there. The only good thing about the night was that she had not been with me, and the idea that being near me was likely to get her killed settled in my gut like a stone.

The baby was sleeping soundly. The strangeness of her peace after what had happened first shocked, then calmed me, and I lay with her, feeling her breathing, her heart, as I stared wide eyed into the blackness, the habbit clutched tight in my hands. Her safety was, I saw now, an illusion—something I had wanted to believe in but which was clearly impossible to achieve. I could maintain the pretense no longer.

*   *   *

I MOVED BEFORE DAWN,
giving Captain Franzen's square a wide berth and reaching the orphanage called Pancaris, the place I had vowed never to revisit, just as the city came to life. I laid the basket on the steps. In it, the girl I called Kalla slept. The nuns would give her a new name, I thought, as I rapped hard with the knocker three times, walking quickly away before the door opened. If I saw her again years from now, I could be introduced to her and still not know her. She would, of course, not know me either.

The morning breeze chilled my tear-streaked face, but no one pointed or shouted or seemed to see me at all, in spite of the guilt and failure, the terrible, exquisite sadness that seemed to burn in my heart like the lost Beacon.

It was the only choice, I told myself over and over as I walked, but though I believed it, the mantra did not help at all.

*   *   *

I STUDIED THE NEWSPAPER
cutting I had recovered from Billy's body. It was stained with his blood, but still legible. The headline read,
ICONIC RED FORT TOWER TO COME DOWN BEFORE HANDOFF.
It meant nothing to me. I felt weary in ways that went far beyond my lack of sleep and food.

For the first time in months, I thought of going out to that bit of the Drowning where Papa had lived, as if there was a chance that he might be there, sitting on the porch, watching the sunrise. I could tell him about Kalla, about my doomed investigation, and it would all be better for saying it. I thought of how his face would light up when he saw me, and the pain was suddenly as sharp, as paralyzing as the day he died.

But Papa was gone and I was alone. I didn't know what I was doing. A man had died because of me. That seemed unavoidable. Whether I had made any kind of progress, what he might have told me, and if I was any closer to bringing justice or clarity to what was going on in Bar-Selehm, I had no idea.

*   *   *

“WHAT DO YOU KNOW
about the Old Red Fort?” I asked the newspaper girl on the corner of Winckley Street.

She looked amazed to see me. “You're famous, you are,” she said. There was a wariness in her face I hadn't seen before. “Made the paper and everything,” said the Mahweni girl. “And here you are, walking around, big as life.”

“What makes you think that's me?” I said, bluffing badly. “There's no picture.”

“‘Former Lani steeplejack of marriageable age, Anglet Sutonga—'” she read aloud.

“Yes, all right,” I interrupted. “It's me. But if you read the whole thing, you'll see I wasn't charged. The police don't think I stole anything.”

The girl tipped her head on one side, and her eyes narrowed. “Stole?” the girl said.

“At the opera house,” I replied.

She hesitated, watching me, her eyes narrow. “You don't know, do you?” she said.

“Don't know what?”

She flipped over the paper and pushed it across her crate toward me. “You're wanted for murder,” she said.

I stared, first at the photograph of Billy Jennings's lifeless face, then back at her. My mouth moved, but nothing came out.

“Practically the only headline in the paper that doesn't include the words ‘Beacon,' ‘Grappoli,' or ‘Protest,'” she mused.

I continued to gape, and for a moment the world swam so that I took hold of the edge of her crate to steady myself.

She considered me and came to a decision. “You know the alley that connects the back of the Hunter's Arms to Smithy Row?”

I nodded, mute.

“There's a storage shed behind the bins. Meet me there in twenty minutes. And stay out of sight.”

*   *   *

I WALKED, UNSEEING, STARING
straight ahead, moving as if in a dream. The shock muted everything but my own horrified thoughts. I pieced it together: the cop who had seen me near the Mahweni rally; Billy's girlfriend, Bessie, who would have been interviewed as soon as they realized who he was, and who would have mentioned my visit to Macinnes's shop.

Gods, Bessie.

I felt the two purses in my pocket. Somehow I would have to get them to her. The emptiness of the gesture, the stupid pointlessness of trying to make right what I had done, kicked in my chest like an orlek.

The alley behind the metal workers' shops was heaped with coal ash and rusting iron. It smelled like blood. I paced, waiting, beside the shed.

“I told you to go inside,” said the newspaper girl when she arrived. “Stand around out here, and they'll get you for sure.”

“I didn't kill him,” I said.

“For the likes of us,” she said, pushing the shed door open and ushering me inside, “that's not always relevant.”

“I have friends in the police,” I said, talking as much to calm my nerves as to convince her.

“What were you doing out there at that time?”

“Meeting him,” I said. “He had something to tell me. He was dead when I got there. There was another man there. Morlak, I thought. Or…”

Mnenga.

“Someone,” I continued. “He had a cane. Maybe some kind of blade too,” I added, managing not to say “spear,” though the word floated up in my mind like driftwood dislodged by an unseen crocodile. “That was what he used.…”

Billy
. This was my fault. I hadn't stabbed him myself, but if it wasn't for me …

“And he told you nothing?”

“I told you. He was dead when I got there. He had this in his pocket,” I said, producing the newspaper clipping.

She considered me for a moment and then stuck out her hand. “Sarah,” she said. “That's my street name anyway.”

I nodded vaguely, still stunned.

She shrugged like it didn't really matter. “And you are Anglet,” she said.

“Ang. Why are you helping me?”

“Haven't done anything yet.” She shrugged again.

“You have,” I said. “And you aren't going to turn me in.”

It wasn't a question.

“We have to stick together,” said Sarah.

“Who?”

“I don't know. People.”

I put my hands to my temples and squeezed my eyes shut.

It was all too much. But Billy had died to bring me information. I owed it to him to follow whatever trail he had left me.

“Please,” I said, eyes still closed. “I'm in trouble, real trouble, and I don't know what to do. Tell me about the Old Red Fort.”

“You really ought to read the whole paper,” she said, very dry, “not just the bits about you.”

I couldn't manage a smile, but I opened my eyes.

She nodded at the newspaper article. “It's part of a deal negotiated last year,” said Sarah. “The fort is being turned over to the Unassimilated Tribes, a goodwill gesture from the government.”

I thought of Mnenga again, his talk of land deals, and nodded, letting her talk in that strange way of hers, calling up what she had read and interspersing those fragments with her own editorial commentary.

“It was built out on the Sour Ridge Road during the occupation three hundred years ago and was the battalion headquarters for the so-called Glorious Third—the King's Third Feldesland Infantry Regiment—stationed to guard the city from the Grappoli and the tribesmen to the west. It was besieged by Mahweni warriors several times but was always repaired and became a symbol of northern military power. It hasn't been used as a serious military facility for several years, and it's starting to fall into disrepair. Since they don't want to pay for the upkeep anymore, the military—very magnanimously—agreed to turn it over to the Mahweni for use as a cultural center, museum, and tribal meeting venue. It's a token, a gesture, but not everyone in the government is in favor, and some of the Mahweni think it will be more expensive to run than it's worth.”

“A white elephant,” I said.

She grinned bleakly at that. “White is right,” she said. “That's why the tower is coming down next week. It was used as a holding pen for prisoners of war. A lot of my people—well, kind of—died there. It has the regimental badge on it, and some military types thought it should be preserved for that alone, but the government voted to demolish the tower and hand over the rest of the structure intact. The plan is to leave it as rubble until it gets naturally overgrown; turning back into the land is the idea. Responsibility for the demolition went to—”

“The Seventh Street gang,” I guessed. I don't know why, but somehow I sensed that was coming. Everything was connected.

“Under the direction of Mr. Morlak,” she added. “Yes. But you can't be considering going out there now. You're on the run. The police will find you.”

“Probably.”

“So why do I get the feeling you're going to go anyway?” asked Sarah.

“I suppose you are just a naturally intuitive person,” I said.

 

CHAPTER

22

I RODE TWO STOPS
on the underground to save time, head down so that no one would recognize me, getting off the train when I saw a policeman board at Wallend. I walked the rest of the way to the Drowning, and made my way down to the river, where the massive hippos wallowed and huddled, backs to the water. I loitered high on the bank, watching them uneasily till one of the girls saw me and alerted Rahvey.