A Novel (7 page)

“Miss!”

 

CHAPTER

6

THE MAHWENI GIRL WITH
the tied-back hair who worked the newspaper stand was packing up as I arrived, and she gave me a baleful stare as she loaded unsold copies onto a pallet. The evening edition had added a new wrinkle to the story of the missing Beacon, one with actual content, and in spite of my distraction, I stopped to glance over the front page.

LUXORITE MERCHANT SUICIDE!
screamed the headline.

“Not a library, you know,” said the girl.

I scowled, my eyes flashing over the text.

In a shocking development apparently related to the theft of Bar-Selehm's landmark Beacon, authorities revealed that the body of a prominent luxorite dealer was found in the exchange building early this morning. He appears to have taken his own life. Speaking on behalf of the investigation, Detective Sergeant F. L. Andrews of the Bar-Selehm police department said that the identity of the trader was not being released at this time, nor was it clear what connection he might have had to the theft of the Beacon. He went on to say …

“Did you not hear what I said?” asked the girl, placing one hand over the print.

“Is there anything about the death of a steeplejack?” I asked. “A Lani boy.”

She frowned, considering Florihn's cuts on my cheeks. “Fell from a chimney, right?” she said, flipping the first page, then the second. She indicated a tiny square of print squeezed in between an advert for corsets and a piece about a garden party.

BOY FALLS FROM CHIMNEY.

The entire story was six short lines, and the only thing it said that I didn't already know was that his last name was Samar.

“Friend of yours?” asked the girl.

I didn't know what to say and took the opportunity of her distraction by a customer to slip away, breaking into a half run as I shed what was left of the evening rush.

*   *   *

I BEGGED A CRUST
from the baker on Lean Street as he was closing and wandered for an hour, inquiring at the shops and market stalls that were still open to see if anyone had work I might do. Most of them took one look at my soot-stained clothes and the slash marks on my face and cut me off. Two threatened to set the dogs on me. I tried the domestic agency at Branmoor Steps, hoping I could find an entry-level position as a charlady or scullery maid, but the white lady in charge just nodded toward the door with a sour, disapproving look.

In truth, I had other things on my mind. Each moment I waited, the gang leader's fate became surer.

Will he live or will he die?

Either way, the outcome for me was flight or death, but I needed to know, if only so I could come to terms with what I had done. Surely, by now, Tanish would be able to tell me that.

I closed my eyes at the thought of returning to Seventh Street, but when I opened them, I saw, standing across the road and looking directly at me, a familiar white man.

He was wearing city clothes: a pale linen suit and a brown cravat, the same clothes he had been wearing when—I was almost sure—he watched the police remove Berrit's body this morning.

Coincidence?

It was possible. But if he worked in this neighborhood, his clothes were wrong, and there weren't many gentry or factory owners who would be on the streets close to dawn and still out at dusk.

I guessed he was in his thirties, well built, even athletic under the suit. He turned away when he realized I had seen him, bending as if to tie his shoelace. I ran.

Moving quickly down Pump Street, I took a left by the underground stop, then wound my way through the city's darkest alleys, back to the shed and the tuppeny tavern on the corner, where the boys gathered for an hour before bed. If Tanish had wanted privacy, he may have already turned in, but I was hoping that he wouldn't want to be in the shed any longer than necessary.

I was right.

I scaled the timber-framed back wall and crawled to a sooty skylight through which I could see the gang's usual corner. They were all there—Tanish, Sarn, Fevel, three other boys, and two men, one of whom I didn't know—somber faced, staring at their beer. There was no sign of Morlak.

Tanish looked small and still, like a mouse hoping to go unnoticed. His face was pink on one side.

I watched them for almost a half hour before they began to trickle out. Sarn went first, then some of the younger boys. Tanish seemed to hesitate, and I thought he was looking around. For me, I was almost certain. In daylight I might have been a shadow against the grimy glass, but now I was invisible.

And then he was leaving. I started to go but realized he wasn't making for the front door. He was looking for the outhouse at the back.

I slid quietly across the broken slates of the roof till I could see into the yard behind the tavern. It had once been a coach house, but the outhouses were the only structures that had been maintained. I dropped and eased into the shadows, checking for snakes in the tumbledown masonry and fractured barrels. Even in winter it was wise to check for snakes. A moment later, Tanish emerged from the back of the tavern.

I called his name.

He stopped midstride, head tilted like a dog, trying to locate the sound, and I stepped out. I saw the shock, relief, and anxiety that chased each other through his young face. When he came toward me, it was like a guilty creature, hesitant and fearful.

“You shouldn't be here, Ang,” he said.

“I know,” I replied. “Morlak is—?”

“Not good,” said Tanish. “He lost a lot of blood. They've strapped him up, and he's sleeping in the shed. Can't walk up the tower stairs.”

“Will he—?” I couldn't finish the question, but Tanish knew what I meant.

“They say the next few hours are … Whether he'll live or not, I mean. Ang, listen to me. He has people looking for you. If they find you—”

I reached out to his cheek, tipping his head slightly so I could see the bruising.

Tanish blushed and looked down. “He had Sarn rough everyone up,” he said, “but it wasn't too bad. He can't do much himself right now,” he said, grinning wickedly for a moment before panicking as if Morlak might be watching. “But when he's back on his feet … I don't know. I'm just going to do my work.”

“Smart,” I said.

“What about you?” he asked. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” I drawled with feigned casualness. “You know me. Always land on my feet.”

“Yeah,” said Tanish, wanting to believe it. “You going to leave the city?”

“Leave beautiful Bar-Selehm, where I have riches at my fingertips and servants to satisfy my every want?” I said. “Never.”

He smiled at that, albeit ruefully, and looked down. “You can't stay,” he said. “I've never seen Morlak so angry.”

“I'll be all right. What are people saying about the Beacon?”

The boy blinked, then shrugged expansively.

“What about Berrit?” I tried.

“No one's talking,” he said, again glancing nervously over his shoulder. He fished in his pocket, and a smile—a real, unanxious smile—broke across his face. “I thought I might see you,” he said. “Brought you this.” He plucked out a threadbare cloth toy, soft and shapeless and missing one eye.

“My habbit!” I exclaimed, taking it and pressing it to my heart. “Thanks.”

It had been a rabbit when Papa first gave it to me, but time and love had made it unrecognizable, though I slept with it to this day. It had once been about comfort. Now it was about habit, hence the name.

“Didn't want to see it get thrown out,” said Tanish, pleased by my delight. “I thought you might want it.”

“I do. Thank you, Tanish.”

“I'll try to save your books too.”

“Thanks,” I said again.

“Welcome. And Ang?”

“Yes?”

“If you do leave,” he said, giving me a heartachingly open look, “take me with you.”

For a split second I saw the hope and sorrow in his eyes, the panic and anxiety, and I pulled his frail little body to mine and hugged him quick and hard. Then I turned him around and gave him a little shove. “Go to sleep, Tanish. I'll see you soon. Promise.”

He did not look back.

I should have slunk away, climbed the broken stone wall up onto the courtyard roof, and melted into the night, but I didn't. I waited, watching him go, so I was facing Fevel and the other man as they came through the back door, looking for him.

Fevel was a weasel of a boy, fifteen, Lani, and skinny—all bone, sinew, and long muscles. After me—and not by much—he was the best climber in the gang. I'd split his lip for him once when I caught him stealing pennies from my room, but that was over a year ago. He was bigger now. The man he was with was older and black. I had seen him around the shed but did not know his name. He carried a heavy crowbar in arms with biceps that rolled like kegs of brandy.

I took a step backwards, but it was too late. Fevel had seen me. He pointed, eyes and mouth wide, savage, and then they were both coming at me, crossing the courtyard with vengeful purpose.

I dragged myself up just as Fevel reached me, so that for a moment he was snatching at air as I scrambled away. I didn't need to look back to know he was coming after me. I ran along the roof, then dropped softly in the alley, not breaking stride as my boots slipped on the cobbles. My pounding feet echoed, and then I was out the other end and running.

At the corner of Randolph Road I risked a glance over my shoulder. They were gaining on me. I made another turn straight through the bare fruit stalls of Inyoka Court, and a pair of monkeys skipped out of my way, whooping and chattering in alarm. I overturned a garbage crate, but my pursuers vaulted and dodged without slowing.

The Mahweni with the crowbar was closing fast, his massive strides eating up the road between us like some great steam-powered machine. While I was starting to tire, he seemed to have hit a steady rhythm. I had no more than a few seconds.

A wagon sat on the corner of the square, one of the high, four-sided things they used to ferry crates of fruit and vegetables. I ran straight at it, timed my jump off the wheel rim onto the top in a scrambling flurry of fingers and torn nails, and landed in a powerful crouch behind the driver's seat. The black man tried to drag himself up, but I kicked at his hands, and he hesitated, then swung the iron bar murderously at me. I hopped back, but the crowbar splintered a crate inches from my arm. I retreated, using the height of the wagon as a springboard up to the gutter of the drapers' on the corner.

It was a good gutter, sturdy iron, and though it shifted under my weight, it held. I scrabbled with my feet for purchase against the corner wall and shinned up to the roof. The Mahweni tried to follow, but for all his strength, he couldn't copy my leap and fell in a heap against the wall.

I moved quickly up the steep rake of the tiled roof, set one foot on either side of the slope, and ran unevenly along the ridgeline, gathering speed for the vault to the next building at the end of the row. Glancing back, I saw Fevel scrambling up after me. He paused when he saw me look, and even in the thickening darkness, something flashed in his hand. A blade.

I vaulted the gap to the next terrace and kept moving, conscious that the tile was glazed and slippery underfoot.

Careful.…

I glanced into the street to get my bearings and saw the big man with the crowbar running along the sidewalk, glaring up at me. For a moment, all the terrible things of the day loomed in my head and I froze, unable to think, the tide of feeling straining to burst out and wash me away.

Think.

I needed somewhere they couldn't follow, and for a second or less, my feet slowed. In my mind, I flew high above the city, looking down on it from the vantage of the steelwork smokestacks I had worked last summer.

I was on Coal Street.

One block over was the South Road fish market: I could smell it through the smog, a sourness on the air, like memory.

Down the side was the Old Dockside theater, whose roof was being repaired. There was scaffolding all over it with access to …

The Skevington Arms public house, whose fire escape—with a little enthusiastic persuasion—gave on to …

The railway bridge over the canal and in to …

The sparrow islands, a tight grid of narrow alleys between warehouses and seedy factory dwellings, where any half-wit could lose himself, even with a pack of bloodhounds on his tail. There were no gas lamps on those streets.

That will do.

I ran and jumped, rolled and ran again, then slid the length of a downspout and was across the road before the man with the crowbar knew I was there. I bolted down the side of the deserted fish market and scaled the iron rungs set into the back wall. In seconds, I was across the roof and clambering out over the scaffolding of the theater.

Fevel was still coming, but I had pulled away from him during that last transition. If I could make it over the pub's fire escape before he had me in sight, I was home free.

Well, not home free, but not dead or dragged back to Morlak, which amounted to the same thing.

My heart was thumping with the exertion of the chase, but I was in my element up here, scrambling, swinging, gripping, and hoisting over iron and brick and stone. And though a mistake might send me to my death, I felt strangely composed, far more than I would have been on the ground. My conscious mind was silent now as other parts of me—arms and legs, fingers and the toes in my boots—took over. I focused on each step, each handhold, each shift of weight, so that the whole escape felt choreographed.

Just the leap from the fire escape to the painted iron girders of the railway bridge to go.

If challenged to attempt it any other night, I might have hesitated. Fatally.

Not tonight.

I touched the two-headed coin around my neck, then broke into a sprint along the gantry of the staircase. At the end, I planted my hands on the rail and vaulted into nothing, turning slowly in space so that for a moment I looked bound to land in a bloody heap in the street, and then I was grasping the metal of the bridge and swinging gracefully up.