A Novel (31 page)

“What is this place?” I asked.

In answer, a young black man in impeccable livery appeared at the head of the steps and stood quite still, waiting till we reached the top before saying, “Welcome to the home of Farrstanga Sohwetti, head of the Unassimilated Tribes of the Mahweni Nation. Please follow me. His Excellency will see you shortly.”

*   *   *

THE INSIDE OF SOHWETTI'S
lavish villa reminded me of the opera house. Though every surface was decorated with Mahweni images and artifacts—large pots and masks, ceremonial skirts and headdresses, ancient spears and hide shields—it was all somehow bigger, shinier, richer than normal, and I remembered what Mnenga had said about its owner. This was not the stuff of the life Mnenga led, nor the culture of his village. This was a gilded memory of something no longer lived, like the glass eyes of a stuffed weancat. Somewhere between the performance of heritage and its rejection was this strange house that felt, in fact, less like a home and more like the souvenir shop in a museum.

We had been shown through a long hallway, through two separate open areas, and into a formal room with a great cold fireplace and no windows, deep in the heart of the house. I perched on a bench upholstered in zebra hide and stuffed with hair. Emtezu stayed standing, his face closed, and he looked at me only when he returned my satchel to me. The pistol Dahria had given me was still inside, but Emtezu had confiscated the ammunition.

At last a pair of double doors opened and Sohwetti himself strode in. I had seen his picture in newspapers, but I was unprepared for the scale of the man. He was tall and wide, heavyset but strong, and clad in cream-colored robes that flattered his bulk. His graying hair was worn in tight braids, and he wielded a stick like a riding crop, short and with a head of orlek hair that he might flick to keep flies away. At his broad leather belt he wore a curved knife with an elaborate gold knuckle guard.

And he smiled wide as the ocean, wide as the plains, wide as the sky itself, so that you felt his power and benevolence like heat. “Emtezu, my friend,” he said in Feldish, reaching for the corporal's hand with both of his, clasping it in the Mahweni way and looking him squarely in the eye. “It is good to see you.”

“Excellency,” said Emtezu with a nod that was almost a bow.

“And you have brought a guest,” he added, turning to me. “And such a pretty one. What is your name, child?”

“I am Anglet Sutonga,” I said. I almost added “Excellency,” as Emtezu had done, but the word felt strange in my mouth, so I simply lowered my eyes.

“Perhaps we should converse alone,” said Sohwetti to Emtezu. “If the lady would not mind. For a moment.”

“That is not necessary,” said Emtezu. “It's her you need to speak to.”

Sohwetti hesitated, and for a moment I was sure he was displeased, but the smile never went away, and when he turned it upon me, it seemed genuine again. He took a couple of long, ponderous steps, lowered himself into a thronelike chair beside a desk and nodded. “Very well, child,” he said, his voice low but still booming, like barrels rolling in a cellar. “What have you to tell me?”

I was confused and embarrassed. What I had to say, insofar as I had anything to say, concerned land deals on which this man had signed off. Unless the signature was forged, I had nothing to tell him that he did not already know. I gave Emtezu an appealing look, but he just nodded encouragingly.

So I told him about the body in the tower and my idea that it might be spite at the handoff of the fort, and he listened gravely as Emtezu nodded along, as if in time to a tune he already knew.

When I was done he added, as if it were an afterthought, “And tell him about the land deals.”

Sohwetti looked up, and his eyes moved from the corporal to me very slowly. His hands became unnaturally still.

“It's all public record,” I ventured in a small voice. “I've seen nothing that isn't open to anyone who looks in the right places and connects the pieces.”

“What have you seen, child?” asked Sohwetti. His voice was calm, even soothing, but it didn't make me feel better.

“Maps,” I said dully. “Charts of land parcels. Letters of agreement. Contracts issued by Future Holdings and signed—”

“I see,” said Sohwetti, interrupting. “Yes.”

He rose and turned to the desk so that for a moment I could not see his face. I felt a curious, thoughtful stillness about the man, although when he turned round again, he was his usual, beaming self.

“I know what you are referring to,” he said. “A small matter we did not think worthy of attention, but your curiosity—and your dedication, Corporal Emtezu—suggest that we may have miscalculated, and for that I thank you. We can resolve the matter publicly before anyone gets, as they say, the wrong idea.” The smile bloomed again, showing white, even teeth.

“And the dead herder?” asked Emtezu.

“That is most serious,” said Sohwetti. “I will follow the police investigation closely, publicly if necessary, and if it seems that it is being swept under the Glorious Third's rug, as it were, I will bring the matter to the council itself. Times have changed. Some of our northern brethren have been reluctant to accept this fact, but if they think they can torture and kill our citizens because they have lost a thimbleful of their power, they are deeply and tragically mistaken. We will bring the wrath of eight hells down upon them.”

His voice had swelled and his face darkened as he spoke, but now he breathed again, shrugging off his stately passion. When he smiled, he seemed ordinary.

“This has been most helpful to me and to the Mahweni Nation,” he said. “I am in your debt, Corporal.” He took the younger man's hand once more, clasped it, then made a fractional turn, which presented Emtezu with the door.

“And there is nothing else I can do, Excellency?” he asked.

“Nothing at all,” said Sohwetti genially. “I will see that my carriage gets you back into the city.”

Emtezu bowed, took a step toward the door, then glanced back to where I had begun to get to my feet.

“But Miss Sutonga has not enjoyed my hospitality before,” said Sohwetti. “She should stay here awhile.”

“I need to get back to work,” I said.

“Nonsense.” Sohwetti smiled, flicking the notion away with his fly stick. “I won't hear of it. I will treat you to a true Mahweni banquet. You have never had the like, I guarantee it. I will show you the estate personally and see to it that you get back home safely this evening.”

I hesitated. Emtezu was lingering in the doorway, one hand on the knob, looking back at me unreadably.

“I really can't stay, Your Excellency,” I said, trying for politeness. “My employers will be worried.”

“I will send word of your whereabouts to assuage their anxieties,” he said, magnanimous in his certainty. “I would take it as an affront if you were to decline.” He made a mock show of offense, though the smile crept back into place like a jackal stealing into an untended kitchen.

I gave Emtezu a last, uncertain look, but knew he could do nothing without upsetting the great man for no real reason. A moment later, he was bowing his way out, leaving me alone with Sohwetti.

“Sit,” he said, doing so himself. He said it almost casually, but the smile was gone. He took a long breath and reached for a silver box on the desk beside him. He opened it, took something, and pushed the box toward me.

“Help yourself,” he said. “Dried cadmium grapes. Sweet and tart. They are a small addiction of mine. Quite harmless, I believe, but it bothers me nonetheless, feeling like a slave to my body's cravings. Do you ever feel that, Miss Sutonga, that you are not completely in control of your own life?”

“I've never felt otherwise,” I said.

He nodded thoughtfully. “I used to feel that way,” he said, as if we were old friends at the end of a long evening's catching up. “Long ago. I used to feel powerless in the face of all I could not do because the world had taken from me what should have been mine. And not just mine. My whole people's. Robbed by diplomats whose friends had better weapons.”

He smiled again as broad as before, but bleak now. He chewed one of the dried grapes reflectively.

“It is a terrible thing, not to be in control of your own life,” he concluded.

“It's just how things are,” I said.

“Really?” he said, genuinely interested. “You think so? And yet here I am, in this house, a man of power and influence because I chose to make it so, while you are … what? Not a reporter, that is for sure. Those cuts on your face are recent. So you are … what? A detective? A spy? Working for who? The Grappoli?”

His confusion seemed real, but his manner was somber, and it made me uneasy. I thought of Emtezu, wishing—despite the manner in which he had brought me here—that he had not gone, and I realized his mistake. The news he had wanted me to bring was about the outrage represented by the dead Mahweni herder in the ruins of the tower. He had wanted me to bring this to Sohwetti as evidence of racial atrocity perpetrated by men in the Glorious Third, something to be exposed and punished. But Sohwetti wasn't interested in that. Not really. He was interested in the land deals, and not because he hadn't known about them.

The house was utterly silent. I could hear no voices, no distant birdcalls. We were deep in the heart of the building. If I were to run, I would have to go through a labyrinth of rooms and corridors before I made it outside, where armed men and big cats with spiked collars patrolled the grounds.…

Sohwetti was still watching me, waiting for me to answer his question about who I was working for. His eyes were attentive, almost predatory in their focus, and I understood that whatever danger I was in could be held off so long as he thought I had important information. How he might opt to extract it, I did not dare consider.

“I have … connections,” I said. “But I am working for myself.”

“Doing what?”

“Investigating.”

“Come now, Miss Sutonga,” he said, suddenly brusque. “Do not play games with me. I do not have time for such things.
What
are you investigating?”

“Partly,” I said, watching him carefully, “the disappearance of the Beacon.”

He leaned forward fractionally, and his eyes contracted. “A strange occurrence indeed,” he said, giving nothing away. “Was it the Grappoli?”

“I have found nothing to suggest so.”

“That is my feeling too,” he said. “Though I fear that truth alone will not save us. But you said ‘partly.' What else are you exploring?”

“The death of a Lani boy called Berrit,” I said simply.

His confusion seemed to deepen. He was either a skillful actor or had no knowledge of either matter. It was unsettling.

“Who is this boy?” he asked.

“Nobody,” I said, and even here, when things might go so very badly, the sadness of that truth pained me. “Just a boy who got in the way of other people's plans and got killed.”

“I know nothing of any dead Lani boy,” he said.

“But you know about the land deals with Future Holdings,” I said. “You signed the deeds yourself.”

He smiled again, smaller this time, and there was something in the look that spoke of weariness and regret. “Yes,” he said. “Those I know about. I wish to the gods that you did not. I wish that our worthy corporal had not thought to bring you to me.”

“Why did he?” I asked, pressing for time to think. “He didn't know about the land deals. He didn't know you were involved. I expect he thought you had been cheated or deceived by enemies of the Mahweni people.”

He nodded sadly. “Corporal Emtezu is alert to enemies of the Mahweni,” he said. “It is his passion and his secondary occupation.”

I gave a sigh of understanding. “You pay him to inform on race issues within the military,” I said.

“Actually, he does it for free,” said Sohwetti. “I offered him money, but he declined it, said it was a matter of principle. He considers himself a”—he smiled at the word—“‘watchdog.' And there is a great deal to watch. We say we are all equal in Bar-Selehm, but you know as well as I do that that is not even close to being true. You cannot simply take people's land, property, freedom from them and then, a couple of hundred years later, when you have built up your industries and your schools and your armies, pronounce them equals. And even when you pretend it is true, you do not change the hearts of men, and a great deal of small horrors have to be ignored, hidden, if the myth of equality is to be sustained.”

It was, I suspected, a familiar speech for him, though he believed it still.

“I know,” I said.

“I am sure you do. The Lani have never organized as we have and they never had anything to barter, being themselves outsiders. So yes, I am sure you understand. Corporal Emtezu is, for the most part, focused on the smaller crimes, those little lingering uglinesses that people perpetrate when the world around them changes faster than they would like.”

“Like the imprisonment, torture, and murder of a Mahweni herder who had the misfortune to meet up with some old-fashioned soldiers?” I said carefully.

He sat back then, looking me up and down with something like respect, though it was colored by a resignation that drained him of the energy he normally conveyed. “Precisely like that,” he said, “yes.”

“So he gathers evidence against his superiors,” I said, “channeling it through you and the council you represent.”

“I have a voice in government,” said Sohwetti, drawing himself up. “I may not have the ear of the prime minister like some of my white colleagues, but I am a man of influence and I do my best to use it for my people.”

“But you also feather your own nest at your people's expense,” I said, once more amazed by my own self-possession. “Secretly selling off their land, their birthright, despite the fact that they have clung to that land against the very men Emtezu is trying to expose.”