A Novel (26 page)

“Then he was tortured,” said Willinghouse.

Andrews's brows contracted, but he did not dispute the point.

“By whom?” asked Von Strahden. “The garrison hasn't been occupied for months.”

“That,” said Andrews, “is the good news.”

“Why?”

“Because the last thing the city wants is a scandal involving the Glorious Third,” said Willinghouse.

I gave Andrews a quizzical look.

“The King's Third Feldesland Infantry Regiment,” he said, “is the oldest and most storied outfit in the region. Instrumental in the initial conquest and the prime defense force over the next two hundred years, a breeding ground for diplomats, civil servants, and politicians, including a few prime ministers. Benjamin Tavestock himself was a junior officer for the regiment during the Mahweni rebellion. The Glorious Third are an institution in Bar-Selehm, and their roots go long and deep. Why do you think the Red Fort was demolished on the quiet like this? A lot of people didn't want to see it come down at all: powerful people, some of them. We're going to need to keep this business with the body quiet until we have a clearer sense of what happened here. The boys in the demolition gang didn't know it was there?”

“I don't think so,” I said. “My friend didn't.”

“A stray herder looking for work and sleeping rough out here?” said Willinghouse. “Stole from someone, or fell in with the wrong sort?”

Von Strahden thought for a moment before reluctantly adding, “Or someone just didn't like the look of him.”

“You mean the color,” I said.

“Could do without that,” Andrews said. “Racial tensions are high enough as it is with these rumors of land deals and the blacks working with the Grappoli to steal the Beacon. Better hope this fellow was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

This fellow
. The phrase struck a chord in my memory. Except that it hadn't been “fellow,” it had been “fella.”

“‘This black fella came in,'” I said.

“What?” asked Andrews.

I tried to remember the whole conversation that one word had triggered.

This black fella came in.…

Bessie. The maid at Macinnes's place who had hoped to settle down with poor Billy Jennings. That was what she had said.
A first
, she had said.
Just wandered in from the street, big as life!
And he hadn't been one of what the policeman had called “the city blacks,” either.
One of them 'unter types from the plains. Old bloke. Scared me 'alf to death, he did.…

It could have been another man. Of course it could. But it wasn't. And it suddenly seemed likely that this was also the old tribesman Mnenga was looking for. The elderly herder had come here, or he had been brought here. Which meant that there was a connection between the dead Mahweni in the tower and the luxorite dealers on Crommerty Street, possibly to Ansveld himself, and therefore to Berrit as well, a connection that—almost certainly—went through Morlak. It could be no coincidence that the gang Berrit had joined days before he died was the one employed to quietly pull down the evidence of another murder.

It also meant that Mnenga was involved, that his interest in me was not what it appeared, so that what had been a hunch solidified into something familiar, like disappointment. I told them everything and felt a thrill of vindication, even though it was mostly supposition and conjecture. Willinghouse nodded approvingly, and I fought to hide my smile.

“What?” asked Von Strahden, reading something in my face.

“One more thing,” I said, covering. “Morlak has a box he's planning to trade. He has it at the weaving shed on Seventh Street, but he's looking to move it soon. I suggest you keep an eye on the building.”

“Wait,” said Willinghouse. “You think it's the Beacon?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then we need to go in and get it now,” said Von Strahden.

“If you do you won't catch whoever set the thing up,” I said.

“We'll get it out of him,” said Andrews.

I shook my head. “He may not even know,” I said. “Not if it goes high up.”

“But we are on the edge of a major international incident,” said Von Strahden. “The Beacon is the heart of the city! If we can recover it, show progress, stability—”

“Miss Sutonga is right,” said Willinghouse, shaking his head. “Without proof of where the Beacon is going, the rumors about the Mahweni and the Grappoli will continue. They'll escalate. Wait till he tries to move it, and you'll learn more.”

“And if we miss it?” asked Andrews.

Willinghouse turned to me. “You are sure of your contact within the gang?”

I thought of Tanish, of the way the boy's attitude to me had wavered, but I nodded. “I'll tell you when to move,” I said, hoping beyond hope that I could keep my word.

Willinghouse said nothing. Once more I found myself wishing that he would show more … what? Pride in me? Admiration?

Don't be absurd.

Andrews kicked the dirt at his feet. “You had better make it fast,” he said. “The city is on a knife edge.”

Willinghouse turned to me. “Will you return to the house with me?” he asked. “Looks like you could use a decent night's sleep.”

The prospect of falling into one of Willinghouse's inevitably sumptuous feather beds was impossible to resist, but I pretended to think about it before shrugging.

“I suppose so,” I said, like I was doing him a favor.

 

CHAPTER

24

I OPENED THE DOOR
to Ansveld's shop and eased myself inside, trying to look inconspicuous.

“I'll be right with you,” said Ansveld Jr. He was sitting at the counter, studying a piece of luxorite under a set of smoked, folding lenses. I took the opportunity to move in close so that even if he chased me from the shop, I'd have a few yards to try to change his mind.

He finished what he was doing, snapped the velvet-lined lid on the presentation box closed, and looked up. His smile died immediately and his eyes narrowed, but he did not shout. “You!” he said. “The maid who wasn't. The woman from the opera!”

“You were there?” I said quietly.

“Of course I was there,” he returned. “Everyone was there. I went to see the dowager's necklace, remember?”

“Oh, yes, I remember,” I said. “You went to see if the luxorite in her necklace was the same piece the Lani boy showed your father.”

He said nothing.

“And was it?” I said.

“The paper said you killed a man,” he said.

“I didn't, and the police believe me,” I answered. “But the man who died had wanted to tell me something. I'm trying to make sure he did not die in vain.”

Ansveld considered me seriously, and I took his silence as acceptance.

“So,” I continued. “The dowager's necklace. Did it contain the luxorite the Lani boy showed to your father?”

“No, but it came from the same source.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked.

“Who are you really?” he said. “The boy's mother?”

“Gods no,” I said. “That's one disguise I couldn't pull off.”

Which is why Kalla is at Pancaris.…

“But you are also not a thief, unless the police are even less competent than I thought.”

I gave him a rueful smile and shook my head. “I may have snagged the occasional crust when times were hard—well, harder than usual—but no, I'm not a thief. I really do work for the Willinghouse family, but not as a maid.”

“I thought as much. You are a private investigator, are you not?”

“Yes,” I said.

He clapped his hands together, pleased with himself. “I knew it!” he announced to the empty shop. “And this is somehow all about the Beacon?”

“I think so,” I said.

Ansveld smiled, satisfied.

I pressed my advantage. “In the days before your father died,” I said, “did an elderly black man, a bush herder, come here?”

The question seemed to surprise him. He pulled a face of utter bafflement and shook his head.

I rubbed my temples, feeling the tenderness of my fall from the tower.

“Sorry,” he said. “That was clearly the wrong answer.”

I tried a different tack. “Am I the only Lani, other than the boy, who has been in your shop in the last few weeks?”

He screwed up his face in thought as he cast his mind back. “I can't think of any others, why?” he said. “Do you have someone in mind?”

“A gang leader by the name of Morlak,” I said. “Big man. Wears his hair long and tied back. You'd know him if you saw him.”

“Never been in here,” he said at last and with finality.

“Or visiting any of your competitors? Mr. Macinnes, for instance?”

Again the comically furrowed brow followed by a head shake. “I'm afraid not,” he said with a sigh. “Much as I would like to incriminate that old fraud across the street, I fear I can tell you nothing.”

“Or Billy Jennings,” I tried. “The man who died. Did he ever come in here?”

“I recognized him from his picture in the paper,” said Ansveld. “I used to see him in the street from time to time, and I believe I saw him with one of the girls who works for Macinnes, but he never came in here.”

Bessie.

This was getting me nowhere. I changed course. “So. The luxorite in the dowager's necklace
…”

“Yes!” he said, slapping his hand on the counter. “The reason I think it was a sister to your young friend's piece is not just because the light was unusually bright. It was—and pay very close attention to this because it is most singular—the same
color.
” He said the last word like he was unveiling something magical, then stepping back to let me see it in all its glory.

“Is that unusual?” I asked, baffled.

“The color,” he said, touching the side of his nose, “was. Very.”

“I don't follow,” I said.

“When I saw the boy's piece, something about it struck me not just as impressive, but as very slightly odd too. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time, but it nagged at me. So when I went to see the dowager flaunting her pendant at the opera, I went prepared.”

“Prepared? How so?”

“You are familiar with these?” he said, showing me a selection of goggles and spectacles with smoked-glass lenses.

“Of course,” I said. “They protect your eyes from the glare.”

“In part,” he said, “but they are subtly shaded to screen out different colors of light as well. Combining these lenses helps me to get a precise sense of the luxorite's color and therefore its age. Here. Try these.” He handed me a pair of wire-rimmed glasses with an array of lenses and produced a tray of tiny luxorite fragments from a drawer in the counter.

“Now,” he said as I scanned each piece, “luxorite when first mined blazes with a hard, white light whose heart, if properly screened, shows distinctly bluish. See?”

He flicked a couple of lenses into place, and in one of the jewels, I saw a chill blue, like summer lightning.

“As luxorite ages, the mineral's light follows the same pattern as metal taken from a hot fire. White heat gives way to yellow, then to gold and amber, then red, and finally dulls to black as the piece spends the last of its energy. This takes decades, of course. Sometimes even centuries.”

I took the spectacles off because they felt strange on my nose, and considered him. He was clearly preparing another magical revelation.

“So, imagine my surprise,” he said, his face full of boyish excitement. “Out swans the Dowager Lady Hamilton with her precious necklace, and I put on my special spectacles, and lo and behold, I find that at its heart, the light of her pendant—though seeming brilliant and as white as any luxorite I have ever seen—is very slightly—” he paused dramatically, “—
green
.”

I stared at him. “Are you sure?” I asked.

“On my father's grave,” he said. “I have never seen its like before except in the hands of that Lani boy.”

“What does this mean?” I asked.

“I do not know,” he said, “but it is all very mysterious and very exciting.” His eyes got wide, and he grinned broad and mad as a doll.

“You think your father made the same discovery?”

His smiled faded. “I do,” he said. “I think he realized he had seen something unique and tried to find where the boy had gotten it.”

“You think that is why the dowager's necklace was stolen?” I asked. “Because it was unique?”

“Or because the thief didn't want anyone to see just how unique it was, yes,” he said. “Thievery,” he added wonderingly. “It is everywhere these days. It did not use to be so. I had one—a thief, I mean—right here in the shop two days ago. And he didn't look the type at all. A white gentleman in a frock coat. Very civilized.”

“And he stole from you?”

“While I was helping another customer,” he said, nodding.

“Did you report it?”

“I did not,” he said. “Because what he stole was not mine to begin with.” He peered past me toward where I had been standing when I visited with Dahria, so that I turned and my eyes fell on an empty umbrella stand.

“The cane,” I said.

“You remembered!” he exclaimed, pleased.

“A cane with a silver top,” I said.

“Not just a cane, as it turned out,” he said. “A sword stick. I took the liberty of looking at it more closely after you had gone.”

A sword stick.

I heard it again, the slight metallic tapping between footfalls in the fog, the silken swish of steel coming out of a sheath, and now I saw the wound in Billy's chest.…

I pictured the cane that had been in the umbrella stand, and something clicked into place like the tumbler of a lock. “It had a design on the handle,” I said. “An emblem containing the head of a one-horn,” I said.