A Novel (40 page)

I was almost sure of it.

*   *   *

TANISH COULD NOT BE
dissuaded from rejoining the Seventh Street gang, at least for the short term, but he was escorted back to the weavers' shed by two police officers and a pair of mounted dragoons in dress greens, to make sure Morlak's boys got the message: Tanish was not to be touched. Tanish was to complete his recovery in peace. Tanish was to be happy in his work. If he wasn't, life for the gang would get very difficult indeed.

Morlak was arrested for assault and receipt of stolen goods, Von Strahden for conspiracy and treason. He would hang for the latter. His story was a sidebar in the papers whose headlines blared simply,
BEACON FOUND!

Archibald Mandel resigned under a cloud after the papers got hold of the fact that he owned sizable shares in Grappoli munitions factories. Given the war footing we had been on, said Sureyna's report dryly, “this should have been considered a conflict of interest.” Meanwhile, diplomatic relations were reestablished with the Grappoli, border troops stood down, and the nightly demonstrations that had threatened to plunge Bar-Selehm into chaos evaporated without a trace. It would be absurd to say that race relations were now harmonious, but with the truth of the Beacon's theft and the Mahweni land deals out in the open, the city took its step back from the brink of disaster at last.

The false-luxorite cave was secretly and reluctantly sealed by the government, but only after they proved that monkeys that were shut in there were dead within two days and that anyone who handled the mineral developed increasingly severe burning, headaches, nausea, and hair loss. Doctors had never seen the like of it before and didn't have the beginnings of an idea how to treat it, so they took a couple of tiny samples, which they protected inside a box alternating lead foil with ceramic and an outer casing of steel that they sealed in a vault, then pumped concrete into the cave mouth. That the substance otherwise looked like luxorite was, astonishingly, kept under wraps, to keep people from trying to dig their way in. Those of us who knew different were instructed not to breathe a word of it or we would face charges of high treason against the state. I felt I had to tell Sureyna after all she had done, but I made her swear she wouldn't print a word of it.

I appeared in the papers myself, though it was made to sound as if I had merely stumbled upon the cave and found the villains at work. I had acted “with honor and courage,” though the stories were not specific as to how, and soon the city was awash in rumors about a mysterious Lani woman who had saved the region from some terrible weapon. I told people it wasn't true, but they preferred the heroic version, and tended to just nod and smile when I said otherwise, as if I were being discreet or modest.

*   *   *

TWO DAYS AFTER IT
was all done, I returned to the Drowning in Willinghouse's coach, Dahria dressed to the nines at my side, escorted by Mnenga and a liveried driver. I led them wordlessly through the tumbledown huts and faded awnings, through the ripe smells of moldering vegetables, charcoal grills, and foraging warthogs, to Rahvey's house. We accumulated a watchful train, and word of our arrival went ahead of us like fire leaping from bush to bush till it seemed the whole community was out to see the return of their most curious prodigal.

In my arms I carried Kalla, openly for all to see.

Rahvey and her girls were already out on the porch, and Sinchon came running up from the river with a rusty pot in his hands. Dahria lifted her dress above the mud, but for once, said nothing, and her face was impassive, as if she had not noticed the way the crowd stared at her. Indeed, no one spoke, and I did not mount the porch steps, but stood below my sister, whose face was guarded. From the edge of the crowd I saw Florihn, the midwife, bustling imperiously to the front, her face hard. Four of the elders were there too. They looked cautious, watchful. Jadary, Rahvey's youngest, stood on her tiptoes to see the baby in my arms, her hands clasped in front of her chest.

“I have brought you your daughter, Rahvey,” I said. “I took her to the orphanage, but I have seen it, and it is a hard, unfeeling place designed not to nurture children but to break them. They should not have your little girl. I cannot keep her myself, for though I have feelings for the child, I have neither the skill nor the patience to be her mother. You do. It is your gift, and I think that in your heart, you love it. I have a job, at least for now, which pays rather better. If you want to take her back, I will bring you money. Every week. More than enough to feed and clothe the child, educate her too, if you don't object.”

Florihn snorted with scorn, but Rahvey said quietly, “Why would anyone object to educating a girl?”

I nodded cautiously, and for a moment, we watched each other. My focus was broken by a ripple in the crowd. A cab had arrived. Willinghouse, in tinted glasses and wearing a pale, elegant suit with a cravat, was watching from the road.

As if sensing something in the air, Florihn spoke. “The rule against four daughters is not merely about money,” she said, drawing herself up. “It is about what is seemly, what is traditional.”

“Traditions evolve,” I said. “People move on.”

“People leave, you mean,” said Florihn. “And when they do, they lose the right to decide what is appropriate for their people. You come here with your fancy friends, your
white
friends—”

“My grandmother was born just over there,” inserted Dahria brightly, in flawless Lani, pointing toward the river. “We're quite an astonishingly diverse little band.” She smiled as if she had just remarked upon the weather, and the crowd stared at her. “I'm sorry,” she added to Florihn, who was blinking but otherwise motionless, as if in the grip of some curious catatonia, “you were saying?”

“It doesn't matter what she was saying,” said Rahvey. “She does not speak for me. Or for the Drowning.”

Jadary stared wide eyed at her mother, a look of shock and delight.

“How dare you!” Florihn blustered, but the crowd was not on her side.

I don't know if something had happened or if I was merely glimpsing it for the first time, but Rahvey was right. The midwife did not speak for the people, and I saw two of the elders exchange sidelong glances. One of them tipped his head fractionally and raised his eyebrows, the smallest shrug I had ever seen.

And with that infinitesimal gesture, the Lani way buckled and reshaped itself, the curse was dispelled, and the Drowning changed.

“I shall keep the child,” said Rahvey, “and her name will be…” She hesitated, her eyes still locked on mine. “I was going to name her Cenu, after the goddess, but I think we will call her Kalla.”

I smiled then, though tears had started to my eyes, and before I could change my mind, I kissed the baby on her forehead once and handed her to her mother.

“Take this too,” I added, fishing the habbit from my satchel.

“But that was yours,” said Rahvey, gazing at it with wonder. “Papa gave it you.”

I nodded, weeping, and could just manage to say, “She likes it.”

“No,” said Rahvey. “You may have use for it.”

I managed a smile as I put it away, but I saw the sadness in her face and knew something else was coming.

“You have to go now, Ang,” she said. “Though I release you from it, you broke your vow. And I think killed our sister. I almost understand, and I am sure you could explain, but you cannot be here. Not now.”

“Rahvey!” I said, suddenly breathless. “You know what she did?”

My sister—my sole surviving sister—nodded, tears in her eyes.

“I know,” she said. “But in a way, Florihn was right. You are not one of us. Not anymore.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but no words came. Tears ran down Rahvey's cheeks, and she smiled sadly when I, after a pause that might have been a lifetime, nodded.

She embraced me then, and as we separated, she hesitated, to trace the thin scars on my cheeks with her fingertip. The wounds had closed, but I suspected the marks would be there forever.

“I'm sorry about your face,” she said.

I remembered the day Florihn had made the cuts with her knife so very long ago, and I said now what I had said then. “It doesn't matter.”

Then I turned and walked back to the carriage, eyes streaming, parting the crowd before me as Vestris had once done.

I knew then that I would never return, not really, and the pain was deep and exquisite, as if a fine blade had slit a thin, cruel wound in my heart.

*   *   *

AT WILLINGHOUSE'S URGING, MNENGA
and his brothers were given the Bar-Selehm Medal of Citizenry, an award by which they were both amused and baffled, but they bowed and thanked the people they were supposed to thank, and pleased the press and other onlookers with how little they cared about the whole thing. Since their activities were deemed related to exposing the theft of the Beacon, they also got a cash reward, some of which they bestowed upon their village as an investment in their community's future; they put the rest toward financing the Red Fort's monument to that community's past. It was, I supposed, a satisfying vengeance on Gritt and people like him. When reporters expressed amazement that they were keeping so little for themselves, Mnenga shrugged.

“There isn't much to buy in the bush,” he said.

*   *   *

TWO NIGHTS LATER, A
little after midnight, with the moon a vast and smoky yellow disk in the perennial fog, I scaled the tower of the Trade Exchange. Willinghouse, Andrews, and two armed officers stood guard in the street below, but there were no press, no cheering crowds. Replacing the Beacon was to be as stealthy an act as its removal had been.

Tanish served as my apprentice, lugging tools and ropes, checking fastenings and harnesses. There was a lot he still couldn't do, and he stayed on the top of the tower as I began the steeple climb, but he had insisted on being there. I worked my way up, using a leather loop around the narrowing column of stone to brace myself as I walked the spire, leaning back and out into nothing. It felt quite natural, a relief after all my other activities over the last two weeks, and I smiled to myself as I climbed. This was my life, a part of who I was, and regardless of what else came my way, that would always be true.

At the top, I opened my satchel, removed a hammer and chisel, and opened up four carefully spaced holes in the old mortar before calling to Tanish. As he winched up the pot of moist, fresh mortar, I positioned the brass plate Willinghouse had commissioned two days earlier. It was a simple piece etched with ladder trim, which was the sign of the steeplejack's trade, and in the center it read,
BERRIT'S SPIRE
.

There would be no announcement, no unveiling, and very few people in the city would ever know the plate was there, but I would know, and that was what mattered right now. Only when I was happy that it was securely in place did I call to Tanish for the larger bag. I opened up the iron gate of the great glass globe that was the steeple's crowning glory and, when the bag reached the pulley beside me, snapped the smoked lenses of my goggles down and opened it.

The goggles made little real difference, and I had to work with my eyes shut, fitting the massive chunk of luxorite into position on little more than memory, fumbling with the new and elaborate lock once I had the door closed. Before I descended, I looked out across the brilliantly lit streets of the city, gazing out over Bar-Selehm from Berrit's Spire as if I were the god who'd brought starlight to the world, as in Papa's story.

Once on the ground, I looked up to where the urban shadows of the night had been driven into nothing by the hard, white light of the Beacon. Bar-Selehm would wake to its comforting glow, and the world would seem a little closer to being as it should be once more. I wasn't sure what I thought of that. Too much had changed for me to believe that things would ever be the way they had, though I suspected that much of that change was in me, and that most people wouldn't notice it.

“Content?” asked Willinghouse as I reached the bottom. He was watching me closely with those penetrating green eyes as I untied my hair, and in the bright light of the Beacon, his scarred face looked strangely tender.

“Content,” I said. “Is there anything else to do?”

“Always,” he said. For a moment, he gave me a searching look, and I was sure he was going to say more, but then he was turning and leading me back to the carriage and whatever else the city had in store.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This story was long in the telling, and I would like to thank those who encouraged me to complete it when it seemed that it would never find the right home, particularly my agent, Stacey Glick, who believed in it from the start; my editor, Diana Pho; and those who read early drafts, particularly David Coe and a little gathering of writers, including Faith Hunter (who also supplied notes) and Misty Massey, who heard me read the first chapter and liked it. Of such stuff is courage made. Thanks also to my guides and rangers in South Africa and Swaziland, particularly Brilliant Makhubele and Ezakiel Sibuyi, and to my wife and son, always my first readers.

 

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