A Novel (29 page)

“I suggest you find that Beacon,” she said. “And fast.”

“I think I know where it is,” I said, “but I don't know who paid to get it. What if it really is the Grappoli?”

“Then run,” she said grimly. “And don't stop till you reach people who have never heard of luxorite or Bar-Selehm.”

“Agreed,” I said. “Now, how do I get into the library's storage facilities?”

“That,” she said, getting to her feet and brushing crumbs from her dress so that one of the nearby ibis came strutting over, “is your department. Thanks for the pasty.”

*   *   *

MNENGA SMILED WHEN HE
saw me climbing up through the cemetery. He wanted to talk, and brandished the little milk bottles with the rubber teats as if they were a special prize I had won. He started telling me about a dream he had had, in which I was standing down by the river like some water spirit risen from the depths—

I was rude. Brusque, at very least, and I caught the hurt in his eyes, so that I wondered for a moment if my suspicions about him were mistaken. But in one respect at least, it was too late.

“I don't have the baby,” I said. “That's what I came to say. I left it at an orphanage.” I had forced myself not to call her Kalla, as if that would make me seem more sure of my actions.

Mnenga looked stung, his big black eyes wide with shock, as if I had slapped him. “Orphanage?” he repeated.

“It's a place where you take children, who…,” I began, angry that I was having to explain myself. “It doesn't matter. It's not my business anymore.”

“Anglet…,” he said, taking my hand, but I cut him off.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I have to go.”

“Yes,” he said, letting go of my hand with slow deliberation as if he were releasing a bird. “I understand.”

He didn't, of course. How could he? But I believed that he wanted me to feel better about the terrible thing I had done, and in that moment it felt like the kindest thing anyone had said to me in a long time.

Without thinking, I kissed him quickly on the cheek. His disappointed smile turned into something else entirely.

I fled, feeling guilty and harried.

As I walked, those feelings swelled till they seemed to trail behind me like the great anchor chains wrapped around the massive cleats of the dockside. I tried to shake them off, but the more I struggled, the tighter they became, so that in spite of my haste, I had to pause and be still.

I didn't know why Mnenga's care for me bothered me so much. I had liked him. I really had. And had trusted him, which was rare for me and exquisite as the ruby-petaled sunset flowers that sometimes grow from the fractured bricks atop Bar-Selehm's tallest chimneys. But I didn't trust him now. He was altogether too convenient, too supportive, too quick with his dreams and his kindness. They couldn't be real, and if they were, I did not deserve them.

I began walking again, wondering about Sarah's teasing hints so that for a moment I saw in my mind's eye Willinghouse watching me shrewdly with his sharp green eyes.

*   *   *

THE BAR-SELEHM PUBLIC LIBRARY
was one of the city's gems, a domed and colonnaded monument to egalitarian principles the region remembered only partially. It had wide doors, and though from time to time, powerful people had tried to make them narrow, they had survived the attempt, rooted as they were in what had once been so obviously right that they had come to stand for both progress and tradition. It was, perhaps, the only place in the city where you might see whites, blacks, and Lani, irrespective of class or gender, in the same room.

They knew me in the library. Vestris had gotten me my first library card when I was seven, and my record was immaculate. No lost books. No fines. Nothing overdue. It was amazing how disciplined you could be when you knew that there was no one to bail you out of trouble. But my addiction was to novels, not history, and certainly not military records. I spent a long moment studying an unhelpful floor plan and then scanned for someone familiar.

Miss Fischer was an elderly white lady who had worked there longer than I could remember. She was thin, austere-looking, her hair in a tight silver bun, her eyes peering over gold-rimmed reading glasses that she wore on a chain around her neck. Her dress was vaguely funereal, and she was the kind of person you could not imagine anywhere but inside the library's strictly maintained silence. She watched my approach with the stillness of a heron in the reeds where frogs abounded.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Miss Sutonga,” said Miss Fischer, taking in my slashed and bruised face, “so nice to see you are out of jail.” She said it without inflection, and I colored under her fixed gaze.

“You saw the paper,” I said. “They got the wrong end of the stick.”

“It would not be the first time,” said the librarian. “I assume you have come to read rather than practice your climbing.”

“Yes, Miss Fischer,” I said.

“And you were looking for a recommendation?”

“Actually,” I said, “I am looking for two things. First, where can I see details of recent real estate transactions?”

The heron stirred fractionally, as if something unexpected had swum into view. “We have listings of house sales by county—” she began, but I cut her off.

“I was thinking more of land outside the city,” I said.

The Mahweni didn't want to go to war with the Grappoli, I reasoned, but that wasn't all they were protesting. There were rumors of land deals, ancestral territory sold off to the highest bidder. But sold off to who? And was the Beacon somehow a factor in the trade? Were the Grappoli? I had been treating all these things as separate issues, but what if they weren't? What if this was finally about something ordinary but important: something that fell squarely under the control of Colonel Archibald Mandel, Secretary of Trade? What if the Beacon was the center of something much larger, something people were prepared not just to commit murder over, but which would drive us to war and annihilation?

Again, Miss Fischer's movement was fractional, a contracting of her eyebrows. She was intrigued but would not dream of asking.

“Fourth floor,” she said. “Cartography. What some of our less erudite visitors call ‘the map room.' The Regional Transactions card catalog there cross lists sales by date and region.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You have been most helpful.”

“It is the nature of my job, Miss Sutonga, if not my personality. Is there any other assistance I can offer?”

“I'll need to look at regimental memorabilia as well,” I said. “But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

Miss Fischer maintained her level stare. “So long as crossing bridges doesn't lead to you scaling the masonry or falling through the ceiling,” she said.

“You can't believe everything you read, Miss Fischer,” I said.

“Yes, thank you for that,” she answered. “Being a librarian, I had no idea that print was not always reliable. Do come back if you find you need books on flower arranging or how to assemble a steam engine, won't you? Your interests have become so diverse of late.”

It was, I think, as close to a joke as Miss Fischer ever came, and I shot her a quick, if slightly abashed, smile before heading upstairs.

*   *   *

I HAD NEVER BEEN
on the fourth floor. It smelled different from the books I was used to, though perhaps that was some kind of olfactory hallucination brought on by the places the room evoked. There were racks of rolled-up charts in tubes bound with ribbon, and high ceiling hangers of vast maps drawn on parchment, vellum, and leather. It made me think of standing down by the docks and watching the ships bound for strange and foreign parts.

I studied the various maps and associated deeds and bills of sale, monitoring the way the borders fluctuated by date. Those shifting dotted lines told a tale of steady conquest, a military snatching beginning quickly and dramatically, then turning into the slow rolling sprawl of the last century and a half. The Mahweni territory shrank and pushed into the dry west under the gaze of the watchful Grappoli, while Bar-Selehm swelled like a gorging leech. I saw the Lani's token independence from the whites who had brought them from their homeland dry up entirely as they became absorbed by the city, and the fracturing of the old Mahweni kingdoms as some tribes assimilated, and others did not.

And then, about forty years ago, it all stopped. The borders solidified, the military incursions and rebellions evaporated as diplomacy, politics, and institutionalized tolerance became the watchwords of the day. Unrest persisted in pockets, and there were occasional demonstrations that turned into riots and police actions, but for the most part the maps grew quiet, even the restless and expanding city growing sleepy with all it had consumed.

But then, a week ago, something had happened. In fact, it looked like
somethings,
since all the trades were separate and apparently unconnected, but the coincidences could not be ignored, though the map refused to explain them. This was a single event. It had to be. But, I thought, as I hastily scribbled down some notes and rough charts, the sales made no sense.

One was a patch of lush mudflat on the edge of one of the river's tributaries, while another was a square of rocky crag in the mountains overlooking the city. One raggedly shaped parcel included a piece of coastline, while another was an arid bit of semidesert. There were eight deals in all, totaling no more than a hundred square miles, scattered around the land to the north and west of the city, none of them connecting, all of them traded within the last week by the Mahweni council to an independent development company calling itself Future Holdings. The deals were all signed by the man Mnenga had dismissed as a profiteer, Farrstanga Sohwetti, head of the tribal council.

I was on the brink of a realization. I could feel it. But I did not know what it would be and knew that to find it I needed to learn more about the Glorious Third. I wasn't sure why, but the prospect frightened me.

 

CHAPTER

27

THE LIBRARY'S BASEMENT WAS
a warren of narrow corridors between floor-to-ceiling cages. The silence was oppressive, so that my footsteps on the varnished hardwood made me feel clumsy and obvious, but as I neared the storage hold for the Glorious Third, I heard something beyond my own movement: the grunting of incautious exertion and the dull thud of something falling. There was a muttered curse, and then what sounded like the shuffling of papers.

I moved quickly and, rounding the corner, saw a man with his back to me, bent at the waist and muttering irritably. He was black, and broad shouldered. On the opposite wall of the cage where he was working was a navy blue jacket trimmed with gold and crimson. A soldier's jacket.

I straightened up, ignoring the ache of my battered back and shoulders as I took on the stance of a corseted lady. “Excuse me,” I said.

He turned hurriedly, startled, dropping some of the papers he had gathered into his arms, and struggled to his feet. “Yes?” he said, looking me up and down, his gaze lingering on my bruised face. “Can I help you with something?”

He had a tiny scar above his right eye.

“I'm sorry,” I said, all bashful smiles and a voice I had borrowed as best I could from Dahria. “I realize you are not employed here, but I wonder if you might be of assistance.”

He looked momentarily puzzled by the juxtaposition of my aristocratic Feldish and my Lani appearance, then recovered something of his gallantry. “If I can,” he said.

“That's sweet of you,” I replied, dropping my eyes and pressing my hands together at my waist girlishly. “I'm looking for the storage records of the Glorious Third.”

He blinked and smiled, albeit a slightly baffled smile, and said, “You've found them. They're here. But they aren't open to the public at the moment, I'm afraid.”

“Oh, that is a nuisance,” I said with a petulant scowl. “Not sure what I'm going to do now.”

“What is it exactly that you were hoping to find?” he asked.

I put my hands to my face. “It's my senior project!” I exclaimed.

“Your…?”

“Senior project!” I shot back, as if it should be obvious, my voice rising and developing an emotional crack.

“You're in school?” he asked, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice.

“Clock Street Girls',” I said, dropping the name of one of the city's most exclusive preparatory schools as if it were an old apple core.

“Oh,” he managed. “I didn't realize they took…” He blundered to a halt, and I gave him a sharp look.

“I'm adopted,” I said crisply. “Not that it's any of your business.”

“I'm sorry,” he said, cowed. “I didn't mean to suggest—”

I pressed my advantage. “We're supposed to be sewing banners in support of local institutions for the Settlement Day parade,” I said with earnest hauteur. It was amazing how easily the words came when I wasn't being myself. “I was assigned the Glorious Third by Miss Foster—who is an absolute beast to her pupils, I don't mind saying—but she flatly refuses to help, and when I told her the museum was gone, she told me to ‘use my resourcefulness,' and frankly, I'm not sure I have any, and now the deadline for our research is almost here and I have nothing to show for it, and Miss Foster will report me to my parents, who have devoted every penny they can spare to making sure I get a good education so that I can be a useful member of society, especially if I can't find a suitable husband, but who would marry a Lani girl who failed out of prep school…?”

This may have been the longest sentence I have ever uttered, and as it wended its way toward its strangled ending, it got higher, shriller, more desperate, so that the poor soldier looked positively alarmed, saying, “There, there,” and, “I have a spare moment. Let's see what we can do.”