A Novel (28 page)

“Didn't give one. Said he'd find me.”

“And he said nothing about where he had come from?” asked the detective.

“Nothing. And, to be honest, he seemed a bit, well, not entirely right in the head. Looked like he'd been out in the sun too long. Even his hands were burned up.”

“Wait,” I said, speaking for the first time since we had fled from Bessie's awful sorrow. “His hands were burned when he came to see you?”

“On the insides, yes. Blistered and pink. None too steady on his feet either.”

“Did he visit any of your neighbors?” Andrews asked.

“He got thrown out of a couple places,” said Macinnes. “Saw it myself. Not all my competitors have my eye for a bargain.”

“Or your flexible ethics,” said Andrews.

Macinnes scowled but said nothing.

“Did he go in there?” I asked, nodding across the street.

“To Ansveld's?” said Macinnes. “That he did.”

“And was thrown out?”

“Not so far as I saw,” said Macinnes, grinning now. “Was in there at least a half hour, then came out and wandered off down the street. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the high-and-mighty Mr. Ansveld, who thought he was too good to walk on the same cobbles as the likes of yours truly, made a little purchase that day.”

*   *   *

“LET ME GO IN
by myself,” I said to Andrews.

“This is a police matter, Miss Sutonga,” said the detective. “I'm letting you tag along. That's all.”

“I was talking to him earlier,” I said. “We don't want to alarm him.”

“‘We'?” said Andrews, lowering his voice and turning his shoulder so that the uniforms wouldn't be able to see his face. “There is no ‘we.' I represent the police. You—”

“Have helped.”

“That may be true,” said Andrews. “But you have also been, shall we say, an instigator. Trouble follows you like weancats after a wounded gazelle.”

“Just give me a minute alone with him,” I said. “If he doesn't tell me what we need to know, you can question him.”

“And if he lies?”

“I'll know,” I said.

“Really! And how does that work exactly?” said Andrews, his eyes starting to bulge.

“I'm a good judge of people. Of their moods,” I said.

“Are you getting anything right now?” said Andrews.

I gave him a wan smile.

“Fine,” he said. “One minute, then we come in.”

I turned, but he stopped me, and there was something different in his eyes that was almost compassionate. “Are you all right?” he asked. He was talking about Bessie.

“Fine,” I said.

“It wasn't your fault, you know,” he said. “Billy Jennings, I mean.”

“I know,” I said, only half believing it. “Make sure she gets this, will you?” I said, handing him Billy's two purses.

*   *   *

ANSVELD JR.'S EYES LIT
up as I stepped in. “I see the police paid a visit to the honorable Mr. Macinnes,” he said, not bothering to contain his glee. “What has the little scamp been up to this time?”

“They are coming here next,” I said.

His smile stalled, as much at my manner as at my words. “Here? Why?”

“Macinnes had dealings with an elderly black man,” I said, “an Unassimilated herder who came offering undocumented luxorite for sale. Macinnes sold one of his pieces to Dowager Hamilton. But the man also came here and had another stone.”

“You already asked me about this, and I told you I didn't know what you were talking about.”

“I know,” I said, “and I believe you. But it seems certain that the Mahweni herder did come here and spoke to your father.”

“My father would not have bought from him. An undocumented piece is a stolen piece. Simple as that.” He thought for a moment. “You think the boy got the piece from the herder?”

“Not directly,” I said, “but yes. When you first mentioned the boy, you said his fingers were burned. Is that right?”

He blinked, casting his mind back, then nodded. “A little, yes,” he said. “Why? Is that important?”

“I'm not sure,” I said honestly. “Luxorite can be broken up, right? Cut like diamonds?”

“Of course.”

“So one way to disguise stolen stones would be to recut them into new shapes?”

“Yes.”

“And does that process change the quality of the light that the stone produces?”

“It can,” said Ansveld Jr. “At the microscopic level, the stone is made up of crystals which are at their brightest when they are first cut. Over time, they dim. Nothing you do to the stone can reverse that process, but recutting the stone will rejuvenate it, though—of course—at the expense of its size.”

“Might it alter the color of the core light?” I asked. “From blue to green, say?”

Ansveld Jr. shook his head.

“Nothing can change the essential nature of the mineral,” he said.

I nodded, feeling disappointed, conscious of Andrews waiting outside. “And your father didn't speak to you about his meeting with the old man?” I asked.

“I was away on business in Thremsburg until two days before he died,” said Ansveld. “We barely talked.”

“Who might he have spoken to?” I asked. “If he thought there was something strange going on involving the illegal trade of luxorite.”

“The police, I suppose.” He shrugged. “My father was not what you would call the talkative type.”

“And if it was a delicate matter? One that had larger implications for the industry?”

Ansveld was shaking his head, but then his features brightened. “He might talk to Archie,” he said. “If it was a matter of trade interests or something. They have known each other for years.”

“Archie?”

“Sorry”—he grinned—“Archibald Mandel. Secretary for Trade and Industry. All very respectable. Used to be a colonel in the army. Technically, I believe he was still in charge of the Red Fort until a few months ago.”

I stared at him. Another tumbler of the lock turned over.

 

CHAPTER

26

I DID NOT TELL
Andrews or Willinghouse about the link between Ansveld, Mandel, and the Glorious Third. I probably should have done, but I didn't, because I didn't know who I could trust. Mandel was a powerful man.

And I wanted to act.

I didn't want instincts and possibilities, but facts. If there was a hard link between Mandel and the dead Mahweni herder, I planned to find it and hand it to Willinghouse, confident that it was watertight.

That night I did not go to the Drowning or to the temple grounds, though I guessed that Mnenga would be there, waiting for me. Instead I curled up in my blankets above the Martel Court clock, trying to keep my mind from turning over the questions in my head or from noticing the slightly sour odor of spilled milk.

*   *   *

THE NEXT MORNING, I
bought spiced meat and vegetable pasties with Alawi juice for Sarah and me, and we sat in Ruetta Park, watching doves and gray ibis squabble over crumbs.

“Where can I find out about the Glorious Third?” I asked.

Sarah gave me a cautious look. “What do you want to know?” she asked.

“Personnel,” I said. “Current and recently discharged.”

“Some of that would make the papers,” said Sarah. “Officers, war heroes, men who go on to become politicians or public servants. But the list would be incomplete. You might be better in the regimental museum.”

I raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“There's always a regimental museum,” she said. “Usually in a castle or training facility.”

“And for the Glorious Third?”

“It was at the Old Red Fort,” said Sarah, gazing through the trees toward the minarets of Old Town, “but it was dismantled when the garrison moved out. It is currently in storage facilities at the public library pending the identification of a suitable future home. It is not, at this time, open to the general public, and all correspondence concerning requests to view materials should be addressed to the office of Colonel Archibald Mandel, Secretary of Trade.”

I stared at her, unnerved as before by the command of her recall and the way it seemed to shelve her personality as it worked. She blinked and frowned, as if just now processing what she had said.

“As Secretary of Trade,” I said, “would Mandel know Willinghouse?”

“For sure,” said Sarah, “though they are on opposite sides of the aisle. They may not be friends, but they work in the same area. What?”

I shrugged.

“Willinghouse has never mentioned him,” I said.

“Should he have?”

“Probably not,” I conceded. “But then there's a lot of things he hasn't mentioned.”

“Is he just naturally taciturn?” asked Sarah. “One of the strong, silent types?”

I gave her a sharp look. She was grinning at me.

“He's my employer,” I said. “I don't spend much time thinking about his personality.”

“Oh,” she answered, still grinning. “I see.”

I blinked, pushing away the thought of whatever she was implying. For a moment, I felt a strange and swelling sense of vertigo, as if I had put a foot wrong and was a heartbeat away from falling off a tall chimney.

“Does Willinghouse have ties to the Glorious Third?” I asked, my face carefully neutral.

“Not that I ever heard,” she answered. “And if he had a military background, I doubt it would be with them.”

A flicker of something in her manner caught my attention. “Why?” I asked.

“You said he's mixed, right? Racially, I mean.”

“His grandmother is Lani,” I said, “though you might not know that to look at him. Does it make a difference?”

“To the Glorious Third? I'd say so.”

I gave her a quizzical look.

She munched on her pasty for a moment, then shrugged. “Every Feldesland regiment was racially integrated within forty years of the Settlement War.”

“So?”

“Not the Glorious Third,” she said. “It took them another one hundred and fifty, and when they did, it was through the creation of a
colored
company—Lani and Mahweni—that was kept separate from the rest of the regiment. Effectively, they were a separate unit created to appease the tribal council and the likes of your boss man's father.”

“Willinghouse?”

“Willinghouse senior, yes. Led the charge to break up the region's last whites-only regiment after reports of racially motivated beatings and imprisonments during citywide police actions.”

There it was again, that sense of the girl accessing some unthinking storage region of her brain. But it was different this time. Her voice was edged with bitterness.

“This was all in the papers?” I said.

She shook her head. “Bits of it, cleaned and polished for polite society reading, perhaps, but the guts of it, no.”

“So how do you—?”

“My uncle was one of the first enlisted into the
colored
unit,” she said, framing the word in a way both snide and a little sad. “Thought he was doing his part for Bar-Selehm's race relations.”

“And?”

“He wouldn't talk about it,” she said. “Equal parts discretion, pride, and fear, I'd say. But I'll tell you this: they made his life a misery. I don't know the details. I think my mum knew more, but she wouldn't say anything.”

“Could I talk to him?” I asked.

“You got some special Lani way of crossing over the River of Souls for a cup of chai and a chat?” she asked.

“He's dead?”

“Two years now,” she said. “Took a head wound during—wait for it—peacekeeping operations during a Mahweni protest over food prices. One of his own people threw a paving stone at him. Didn't seem bad at the time. Had it all bandaged up, and he was walking around. Making jokes about it. Two days later, he collapsed. Never regained consciousness.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“To the stars we are as flies, and they do not note our fall,” she intoned, one of the bleaker Mahweni phrases. She smiled mirthlessly and turned to watch a vervet monkey squabbling with the ibis. “Well,” she concluded, “this was cheerful.”

I grinned. “Has anyone ever written about it?” I asked.

“Like a newspaper piece?” she asked. “No. Some things are still too hot to touch.”

“For some people, perhaps,” I said. “Maybe one day, you could do it.”

“When I'm living off my column inches instead of how many papers I can flog?” she said, unable to keep the grin out of her face.

“Why not?”

“Well, the
Bar-Selehm Standard
isn't the Glorious Third,” said Sarah, “but you won't find many of my color—or yours, for that matter—turning in stories to delight and inform our ever-expanding readership. One day, perhaps, if we survive whatever the Grappoli have in store for us.”

“You think there might be war?”

“Wars have been fought over less,” she said. “I think the disappearance of the Beacon is unlike any other kind of theft we've ever experienced. It's like our heart. And it's spectacularly valuable, which makes things dangerous. Whenever you have an international dispute over something valuable, things get dangerous. But in this case, you've also got a potential war over a commodity that most of the people who will do the actual fighting could never afford.”

People like her father, she meant, and all the other Mahweni who would be conscripted to protect the Crommerty Street merchants with their
NO COLOREDS
signs.

“Fight for Bar-Selehm? Sure,” she said. “For liberty, for principle. But for luxorite and those who trade it? I think we'd tear ourselves to pieces long before a shot was fired at the Grappoli.”

I stared at her, registering for the first time the depths of our divisions and the peril Willinghouse had glimpsed on the horizon, barreling toward us like a rogue bull elephant.