A Novel (24 page)

My sister came up from the laundry, eyes flashing. “You're late,” she said as soon as she was out of earshot of the other girls. “And I don't have break for another hour.”

Word of the morning newspaper report clearly hadn't reached the Drowning, and that was all to the good.

“I don't have her,” I said.

“What?” said Rahvey, irritable.

“I gave her up,” I said, knowing I couldn't speak more fully without losing control.

“What?” said Rahvey again.

I took a breath. “Pancaris,” I said. “I just couldn't…”

Rahvey just looked at me, stunned, and the wrongness of what I had done coursed through me like cold, bright water. Then she was nodding woodenly, her face set, and turning quickly away. She said nothing as she walked, and I did not pursue her.

*   *   *

THE POLICE SEEMED TO
be everywhere. It may have been because of the rallies and protests that were cropping up all over the city, or it might have been because of me. It was hard to believe that the death of Billy Jennings would generate such a manhunt, but it was clear that Billy, as well as Ansveld and Berrit, was part of something much larger, a tiny wheel in a great mechanism that, as Willinghouse had warned, was ticking toward disaster.

And now I am at its heart.

I traveled almost a quarter of a mile over rooftops and fire escapes and scaffolding—the best way to stay unseen, since ordinary people never look up—before dropping from a signal gantry into the yard behind the Great Orphan Street railway station. I bought a ticket on the western line, which arrowed its way right across the continent to Gronmar and the bronze coast: Grappoli territory. The local trains went nothing like so far, and the long-distance services had been suspended pending the resolution of the current diplomatic dispute.

The train I boarded was a Blesbok class locomotive with four coaches that served the farms, homesteads, and mines forming a narrow corridor of land bought or stolen in war from the Mahweni. I curled up under my coat, pulling it over my face and leaving the ticket sticking out of the pocket, so that the conductor wouldn't feel the need to “wake” me.

I climbed down from the train at Coldsveldt, a rural halt not far from the pit where Papa had died, and got off the road as soon as I was out of sight of the station. So far I was as sure as I could be that no one had recognized me.

Leaving crowds behind should have been a relief, but out here, there were other perils. There wasn't much cover, and what trees grew there were low and stunted, giving little or no shade from the hot sun. My best chance of reaching the fort unnoticed was to skirt the main defenses, trekking through the tall savannah grass, and circling round to the north side. I swallowed. If I came upon a weancat or clavtar, the revolver in my belt would not be enough to stop it. And it wasn't just predators that were dangerous. A spooked one-horn or nervous buffalo would be just as lethal.

It was a long, hot walk. My skin glowed under the relentless beat of the sun, and the thin, dry grass scratched my hands and face as I pushed through. From time to time I heard the rattle of mice scurrying through the stalks to get away from me, and once I startled a flight of franklins, which rose up, beating their wings and circling, so that I forced myself to keep still for several minutes, in case anyone was watching from the fort. As I knelt there in the grass, I heard something very large moving close by, a crunching, tearing sound. I rose cautiously and was horrified to see a solitary elephant emerging from a copse of marula trees, stripping bark from one of them not thirty yards away. It had not seen me. I kept agonizingly still for several minutes, trying to determine if I was up- or downwind of it, and in the process, it saw me.

It did not trumpet or charge, but it turned to face me, becoming motionless as stone, its ears spread wide, its brown eyes fixed on mine. I knew nothing of elephants and had no idea how you would gauge how old they were, but the eyes gave the impression of age and, beneath the caution, thoughtfulness. For a long moment, we watched each other, and I had the strangest sensation that she could see through to my heart, my soul. For reasons I couldn't explain, I found myself thinking of the baby I had left on the orphanage steps.

You could offer her nothing. She's better where she is.

Familiar ideas that I did and did not believe, though under the elephant's gaze, I felt a kind of peace with my decision. It might not have been the right thing to do, but I had done it for the right reasons, and that, for now, would have to be enough.

The elephant kept looking at me as it began to graze again, its trunk feeling for the leaves before tearing them off and gathering them into its mouth, but I felt no mounting sense of danger, and when I eventually stood up, it did no more than watch. Eventually, heart hammering, I walked slowly away. The elephant did not come after me.

The walls of the fort were only a hundred yards away, and though I could see no sign of movement, I could hear the steady, uneven clatter of tools on stone. After another ten minutes, with my sand-colored tunic and leggings dark with sweat, I cut west, approaching a half-collapsed turret. Reaching the foot of the escarpment, I began to climb.

I would be visible here, so I moved quickly and carefully, pausing only to check my handholds for scorpions and spiders. Once I saw a long, dark snake, spangled with aquamarine, sleeping away the winter in a hole, and kept watch for similar openings thereafter. I had assumed the pinkish color of the wall was paint, but it turned out to be the brick itself. It had crumbled over the years, and there were plenty of places to put my fingers and toes, but I was careful not to send telltale runnels of grit and chippings in my wake. The wall angled like a long-sided pyramid with a narrow battlement at the top, and in seconds, I was up and sliding cautiously over the parapet.

I could see them now, the huddle of Seventh Street boys gathered at the foot of the tower in the center, wielding their picks and shovels. They had a wagon, and one who was taller than the rest—Fevel, I thought—was unloading wooden beams. I was familiar with the process, one we used to bring down unwanted chimneys in confined spaces. It is precision work because the chimney has to fall just where you want it. In this case, the courtyard had several two-story buildings that were, presumably, to remain intact. That meant the tower had to drop eastward, losing some of its sixty-foot length as it fell if it wasn't to demolish the main gate in the process. The team would cut away the bricks from a corner of the tower's base, replacing them with pit props, till the timber struts were bearing much of the tower's weight, then set a fire. As the wood burned up, the whole stack would fall. The kids loved it.

But miscalculate the cutting point, the wooden joists, or the wind direction, and it could go all manner of wrong. I hoped they knew what they were doing. Morlak didn't do much in the way of real work anymore, but he generally oversaw this kind of thing personally.

Not this time.

I dropped into a crouch and moved slowly around the walls to get a better view.
No sign of him.

Tanish was using a hammer and bolster chisel to break up the mortar lines. He wielded them well, positioning, striking, and clearing like a professional.

“Nice work, hummingbird,” I muttered to myself.

I crept along till I came to a set of weathered steps down, and moments later I was watching the boys from the shadow of a long, narrow chamber only yards from where they were working.

It took ten maddening minutes to safely attract Tanish's attention. He made a great show of dropping his tools and checking with Fevel before trudging over, as if he just needed a break from the sun. I hugged him once, and we moved deeper into the dark chamber.

“They're saying you killed that Jennings bloke,” he said. It wasn't a question.

“Billy,” I answered. “I didn't, but I think someone wants it to look like I did.” He nodded seriously, satisfied, and I hugged him again gratefully. He tried not to look pleased, and when I let him go, he leaned against the wall as the older boys did.

“No Morlak?” I asked.

Tanish shook his head fervently. “Says he has better things to do,” he said.

“Such as?”

“Mostly sitting,” said Tanish. “He hasn't been able to get upstairs since you … you know.”

“Stabbed him,” I said.

“Right,” said Tanish, grinning again.

“Was he out last night?” I asked, thinking of the sound of the cane on the street where Billy Jennings had died.

Tanish shrugged. “He can walk around a bit, but not far, and no stairs. Mostly he sits in the old machine room on this box he had delivered by some Mahweni a few days ago. Barely takes his eyes off it. Smacks your knuckles with his stick if you so much as touch it. Like we care. Probably full of spades and brushes. He wants us to think he's the big crime lord when he's really just a hired man. Pathetic.”

This was as much a part of his pose as his careful leaning against the wall, but I didn't call him on it. He wasn't as safe now that I wasn't around to watch out for him, and if pretending he wasn't afraid of Morlak helped, that was fine by me.

“A box?” I asked. “How big?”

Tanish motioned with his hands: about a yard long and almost as high. Big enough for the Beacon.

“And he's just sitting on it?”

“Waiting to make ‘the trade of his career,'” he said mockingly.

“Who is he selling to?” I asked.

Tanish shrugged. “He's talking to Deveril, but he's just a whatchacallit: ‘third party,'” he said. “The buyer won't show till he makes the handoff.” He eyed the pendant round my neck. “Wasn't that Berrit's?”

I nodded.

“Why are you wearing it?”

Now I shrugged, uncertain. “Someone has to remember him,” I said.

He gave me a shrewd look. “Why do you care about him so much?” he asked.

“Because nobody else does,” I said, light as I could, keeping the doors barred, the dam bolstered.

“But you didn't even know him,” he replied.

I took a breath and tried again. “It could have been you, Tanish,” I said. “Or me, or any of us, and no one cares. That's not right. It can't be.” He frowned and I redirected the conversation. “These men Morlak is trading that box to, what do they look like?”

He shrugged again. “Black fellas,” he said.

My stomach turned. “Not Grappoli?” I asked, pushing the image of Mnenga's face from my mind.

He shook his head. “Could be working for them, I s'pose,” he said, liking the idea. “You think there'll be a war? Fevel says it's time we gave the Grappoli what's coming to them. Says they killed some Feldeslanders last week. A crowd of Grappoli tore them to pieces. Some of the killers are friends with Mahweni right here in Bar-Selehm!”

“Fevel doesn't know what he's talking about,” I said.

“Do you?” he asked, giving me a sour look. “Everyone knows you can't trust the Grappoli or the blacks.”

“You work with Mahweni all the time,” I said.

“Those are city blacks,” he said. “The others—the Unassimilated who dress in skins and carry spears—those are the ones you have to watch out for. They aren't like us. Sell us to the Grappoli in a heartbeat if they had the chance.”

The remark annoyed and unsettled me, but I didn't want to fight with him, so I changed the subject. “Who is paying for the demolition?” I asked.

“Our first government contract,” said Tanish proudly.

“Did they send an overseer?”

“Nope,” said Tanish. “It's just us.”

I frowned.

“What?” he asked, as if I were taking some of the shine off their achievement.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just seems odd that they'd give you a big job when Morlak can't be here and not send someone to make sure it goes smoothly.”

“Why?” said Tanish, getting irritable now. “What's the big deal? It's just a job.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

“We can manage without you, you know,” he blurted.

“What's that supposed to mean?” I asked. “I didn't say you couldn't do it.”

He looked sulky and glanced back to the bright, weed-strewn square as if he wanted to leave.

“Hey,” I pushed, nudging him and smiling. “I know you can do it. You are the most destructive hummingbird I know.”

“Don't call me that,” he said. “Makes me sound like a kid.”

“All right,” I said. “I won't.”

“I should go. Fevel will be … I should go.”

I nodded, biting back my sadness, patting him awkwardly on the shoulder as he pulled away.

*   *   *

I WATCHED HIM LEAVE,
and the farther away he got, the stranger it all seemed. The newspaper had definitely said that the tower would come down next week, not today, so either someone had changed their mind, or the city had been deliberately misled.

Why?

The same reason that there was no official presence at a government-funded demolition, no representative from the military who had once run a historically significant base, nor any spokesperson from the Mahweni who had so wanted the tower destroyed? Bringing a tower down was a grand spectacle, but there was no press photographer to capture the moment, no one—in fact—of any kind to see anything.

Someone wants this done quietly.

I needed to get a look inside before it came down. What better place to hide something than in a building destined for demolition, one that would be left as rubble to be overgrown, a semisacred monument to an ancient and troubled past?

I waited another half hour, thinking uneasily about Mnenga, and what Tanish had said about the Mahweni, not knowing what to believe and wary of my own instincts. It was almost a relief when the boys dragged their wagon into the shade to eat, and I could break into a skulking run, careful to keep the tower between me and them. As soon as I got close, I could smell the paraffin and oil with which the timber supports had been doused, and I winced away from it, eyes watering. I tried the tower door. Locked.