Walls of Wind and the Occasional Diamond Thief Boxed Set

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  “Whatever it is you’re trying so hard to hide. I’m not prying, I just want you to calm down.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your secret is safe with me, Kia,” Agatha says softly.

  How many times did I wish Owegbe understood me? And now Agatha does, always, and it’s infuriating. I stalk down the dirt street in silence, stirring up little clouds of dust that make Agatha cough.

  As soon as we reach the house I say, “I need to get out of these clothes,” and hurry into our room. My bags are both there. I grab my second robe out of the bag and feel along the hem. It’s there! A small, hard lump, barely discernable between the thick folds of wool. I toss the robe on the bed with a sigh. Tears of relief brim in my eyes. I blink them away fiercely, and pull off the clothes I’ve been wearing. Getting clean ones from my bag, I head for the shower. Tomorrow I’ll go straight to the spaceship and wait there till it’s time to leave.

  “Where’s Select Hamza?” I ask when I emerge in clean clothes and dripping hair.

  “He’s gone,” Agatha says quietly.

  “He’s gone to the ship?”

  “The ship? Kia, I’m sorry... The Captain had to leave. The ship’s two weeks in port were up yesterday.”

  “But... he’s coming back?” I try to keep my voice calm.

  “In two years.”

  “Two years?” My voice rises. “TWO YEARS?!”

  “Maybe something will come by sooner. But—”

  I race to the door and pull it open, rushing outside without bothering to close it behind me. They can’t have left without me! Hamza knew I was going back with the ship!

  When I’m too winded to run I walk, pacing myself, thirty steps walking, thirty running, dodging people on the streets, ignoring their stares. Was it this far? Have I turned the wrong way on the narrow streets? By the time I reach the granaries I’m limping, breathing in labored gasps. I keep going, out onto the landing field, before I allow myself to believe what I see: nothing.

  The ship is gone. I keep walking anyway, across the field of stiff gray weeds, across the darker slate-gray where the groundcover has been scorched by the heat of the burners, until I reach the bowl of churned-up mud where the ship sat. It’s that that convinces me: the dark circle of mud lying in the field like the leavings of some monstrous creature that paused here and moved on.

  There’s nothing to see, nowhere to go. I sink down onto the scorched weeds at the edge of the mud.

  The raw wind pummels me, wild in the open field. I didn’t stop to grab my woolen robe, and I shiver in my jumpsuit. As cold as prison. The thought jolts me. No wonder the Queen didn’t order me to stay on Malem: she kept me in prison until the spaceship left.

  After a while I get up and head back to Prophet’s Lane. I walk slowly, shivering with the cold and with exhaustion. I’ve had too little sleep over too many days, and have to stop to rest several times. The shadows in the street lengthen. Rounding a corner I hear voices laughing and calling. I stop walking. It’s the group playing kickball. I’ll have to detour to avoid them.

  “Hello,” I mutter to myself, turning wearily aside down another street, “I’m out of jail and ready to play again.” I can just imagine their faces. I probably won’t go back. The thought of playing kickball has lost its appeal. Was I really once upset because they wouldn’t check me?

  “Kia, is that you?” Agatha calls when I enter the house.

  I close the door, shivering even in the relative warmth of the house.

  “Where have you been? I’ve been worried,” she says, coming to the front hall.

  I stoop to unlace my boots and pull them off. She follows me to the bedroom. My robe is there, lying across the bed, with my father’s diamond sewn into its hem. I’m trapped here with it. It isn’t only the key to my father any more. My life might depend on finding out his secret, as quickly as possible.

  “Kia, two guards came while you were in jail. They searched through your bags, your room, they overturned the whole house. They didn’t find anything.”

  But they’ll come again. She doesn’t say it, but they will and we both know it. She doesn’t ask what they were looking for, either.

  “I need to sleep.”

  She does something strange then: she hugs me.

  I’m too tired and surprised to respond before she lets go just as quickly, and leaves. I lie down and pull the blankets over me. Warm. I close my eyes and feel my body relax after way too long.

  I wake in the middle of the night from a dream of being back in jail and lie in the dark shaking until I recognize where I am.

  ***

  “Come with me,” Agatha says in the morning as she prepares to visit a Malemese family she’s come to know. “You need some sun...” She peers out the window. It’s raining again. “...Exercise.”

  I shake my head. When she leaves, I conjugate verbs in Kandaran as though I will someday be a student again. The precise grammatical rules soothe me.

  “I’m going to visit Naevah,” she says the next day. “Her husband spoke to the High Priest on your behalf. When he learned you’d been taken to the Queen he brought me to the palace and convinced the guard to let me in. Come with me, Kia. They’re good people.”

  “I’ll come next time.”

  Agatha assigns me chores, since I won’t go out. The girl hired by Select Hamza left to get married during my absence and Agatha won’t hire another. “We didn’t come to employ them,” she says when I complain. “We’ll live like they do, on their terms, as long as we’re here.”

  “They don’t even have dust-bots,” I reply. “It’s like being part of an historical re-creation society.” But Agatha is unmovable on this.

  I get up from dinner and run water into the sink to wash the dishes. Through the window over the sink I see evening coming on, the shadows lengthening. Two years.

  “Select Hamza should have gone to the High Priest.” I frown down at my hands in the soapy water. “He could have got me out of jail in time to leave with him.”

  Agatha stands still. I look up. She’s staring out the window into the gathering twilight.

  “What is it?”

  “Select Hamza isn’t on the ship. He disappeared the day after you were put in jail.”

  “He’s missing?” My breath catches. Is anyone safe here? “Did you speak to the High Priest?”

  “Yes I spoke to the High Priest. He told me the Select often journeyed to the farms to talk with the people outside the city.”

  “He wouldn’t go without telling you.”

  “No,” she agrees. She turns abruptly and leaves the room.

  I look down at the sink. Soap bubbles glisten under the ceiling light, tiny rainbows trembling inside them. They remind me of my father’s diamond. Gently, I try to lift one out of the water.

  It bursts apart in my hand.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I can’t hide in the O.U.B. house forever. My best defense is knowledge. Stealing information will be harder than stealing jewelry, but there must be a way. I decide to go back to playing kickball. I couldn’t care less who wins, now. They’ll probably love that.

  I’m afraid there’ll be awkward questions when I show up, or they won’t let me join them, but Jumal says, “Hey, duckling,” and waves me over. I frown when he says it, remembering how he reamed me out. I’d tell him not to call me that, but he’d probably just do it all the more.

  “Welcome back,” Micah says, and he drops the ball to signal the game’s begun.

  I know what they want now. Whenever I get the ball, I cycle through our team of five, making sure I pass it to everyone at least once. Except Jumal. He can get it for himself.

  When the game’s over I go over to Mehda and congratulate her on the score she made. But then Kaline comes up and they leave quickly. I didn’t do anything wrong! I want to yell after them. I think of the boy with the missing fingers for everyone to see, and the choice the Adept offered me, and for the first time, d
espite everything, I’m grateful to her. If I get out of here alive, that is.

  Everyone leaves but Jumal. When I head home, he falls into step with me.

  “You don’t talk much,” he says after three streets of silence.

  “My name is Kia.”

  He lets it go for a beat. “Okay,” he says. “Kia.” He doesn’t look at me but he smiles, as though he thinks I’m funny. I want to tell him, I know four languages, how many do you know? But he’d probably ask if one of them is duck.

  We walk for a while without talking. It’s getting dark. The streets are full of shadows. I haven’t been out in the dark since... A door slams across the road. I gasp and jump back.

  Jumal clasps my elbow, steadying me. “It’s alright,” he says. “It’s just the wind blowing a door closed.”

  I stand there, shaking, catching my breath. He must think I’m an idiot. Again. But he waits beside me quietly, his hand cupping my elbow.

  The Malemese never touch anyone in public. I feel his hand through my robe and the sleeve of my jumpsuit, warm and strong. I’ve caught my breath, but I don’t want to move.

  “It’ll be summer soon...” We hear a man’s voice and the quiet response of a woman, coming from a side street.

  Jumal lets go of my arm. We start walking again. When we reach Prophet’s Lane, he walks me to the door and stops.

  I look at him and smile, like Jaro said, but I have to look away again, because of the way his lashes look against his skin and how that lock of hair curls on his forehead, never mind his eyes looking straight back into mine...

  “Kia,” he says, “Don’t be afraid. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  I look up at him then, wondering how he knows and how much he knows, and not really comfortable with him knowing anything. But when he smiles I believe him, and I’m not afraid.

  Until I get inside, and he’s gone, and I remember Hamza holding my elbow at the square, holding me from falling, just like Jumal. And if a Select of the O.U.B. can’t keep me safe—can’t keep himself safe, because where is he?—then how can an eighteen-year-old apprentice priest?

  I begin going with Agatha on her visits so people will see me with her. The Queen said she couldn’t get rid of Agatha. If the Malemese associate me with the Select, the Queen might find it hard to dispose of me, too.

  Unless she does it secretly. Lying alone in my bed—Agatha has moved into Hamza’s old room—I wonder what happened to him. Agatha says the city police are searching for him now.

  The ones who put me in jail? I said.

  Agatha goes to their office every few days to enquire if there’s any news, a not-so-subtle reminder. There’s nothing more we can do.

  Going visiting with Agatha is like growing your hair. All it takes is time. The Malemese women talk about their housework, their children, the things that make up their daily lives. I listen politely and try not to fall asleep. Agatha gives them her full attention, as though everything they have to say is fascinating. They don’t seem to mind repeating themselves with gestures and extravagant expressions to make their meaning clear to her, or waiting while she composes her thoughts into the limited Malemese at her command. She won’t let me interpret for her unless it’s absolutely necessary. After a while I understand why.

  I would be a barrier between them, a wall cutting them off from Agatha’s intense brand of listening. Their conversation would hinge on interpretation instead of understanding. That’s Agatha’s gift: understanding. My gift is only language. Even Agatha’s lack of language endears her to them; they laugh together at her malapropisms and the shared humor erases their differences. She’s winning them over one mistake at a time.

  “Let’s visit Naevah and her husband,” I suggest one morning over breakfast. “I want to thank him for helping me.” Also, who knows if I might need his intervention again?

  Agatha gets up from the table, leaving a mug of hot coffee. Coffee is how the O.U.B. pay for their property on Prophet’s Lane. It’s too frivolous a product for the Malemese to waste their limited farm land on, but coveted enough that it’s worth sacrificing the little thirty-by-thirty-foot lot for a regular supply every two years. Agatha only kept two containers for our use, and one is reserved for guests, so it’s a rare treat.

  I watch her cut a slice of rice bread and apply a thin spread of jam to it. Her delay in answering wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else, but I’m getting nervous.

  I cut myself a slice of bread as I wait, carefully spreading the jam as thinly as possible over every inch of it. I’m barely aware of the scrimping—that’s the way things are on Malem.

  “We can visit Naevah,” Agatha says when she sits down again. “But her husband’s not at home. He’s been sent to administer to the farmers. He’ll be gone four months.”

  “I thought only younger priests do that, those without wives and families?”

  “Not this time,” Agatha says, biting into her bread.

  “He’s been sent away for helping me.”

  “There’s no reason to think that.”

  “Or else to prevent him from helping me again.”

  “The High Priest doesn’t explain his directives. That doesn’t mean they’re suspect.”

  We finish our bread and coffee in silence. As I get up to clear the table, there’s a knock at the door. I drop the plate, catching it just before it smashes.

  “It’s a light hand,” Agatha says, going to open the door.

  “Jumal. Come,” I hear her say in Malemese.

  I walk into the room feeling foolish. I need to get a grip here. “Hey, Jumal.” I smile.

  “Kia.” He nods as though he hardly knows me and turns back to Agatha. “My aunt asks you to visit her. As soon as possible.”

  “Naevah asks me? Now?” Agatha says in her atrocious Malemese.

  Naevah? Jumal’s uncle is the man who helped me?

  “Before you come to my home I have to explain something.” He’s speaking slowly so Agatha can understand, but he’s looking at me.

  “Come, sit,” Agatha says. “Anything you say... we’ll be silent of it.”

  Jumal looks at me. I nod. My throat’s too dry to speak.

  “My cousin Tira is sick.” Jumal’s hands clench at his side. He has large hands, strong hands. They look helpless now.

  “Tira has CoVir.” Agatha guesses, when Jumal doesn’t continue.

  Jumal shuts his eyes. “Yes.”

  I gasp, and can’t help myself—I shrink back, away from him.

  Agatha leans forward. “When?”

  “This morning.”

  “No one knows?”

  “Me. My Aunt.” He looks at us. “You.”

  “We come.”

  Is she crazy? His cousin has CoVir!

  “We can’t go,” I say in Edoan, so Jumal won’t understand. “Tira’s mother can nurse her.”

  They both just look at me. “I... I’ll go for a doctor,” I say, this time in Malemese, since apparently Jumal’s a good guesser.

  “When the doctor comes,” Agatha says in Edoan, “Tira will be sent to the fever house in the swamp. She is two years old. Her family will be quarantined in their home. I am going to visit Naevah before the doctor is sent for. You can come or stay here.”

  No way in the universe am I going to... I catch Jumal watching me. Agatha’s already headed for the door. I take a step, and stop. It’s lunacy! Agatha’s never seen those fevers, that vacant look in the eyes of someone who’s supposed to love you... And what can we do, anyway?

  Jumal’s uncle put himself in jeopardy to come to my aid. That’s why he isn’t here, taking care of his family. That’s why Jumal’s here, asking us for help.

  Suddenly I’m angry. How can he ask this of me? Don’t be afraid, I won’t let anything happen to you, he says, and then asks me to go catch CoVir when there’s nothing I can do for his cousin, anyway. And if I don’t go I’ll look terrible and selfish, and he’ll hate me, and God knows what Agatha might offer to do to help th
em when I’m not there to stop her. And if she dies, where will I be?

  “I’m coming,” I say, but I’m furious. And Jumal knows it, because he looks at me, and it’s the same look Jaro gives me just before he says, “F-.”

  ***

  Naevah comes to greet us as soon as Jumal opens the door to their apartment. The relief on her face when she sees Agatha confirms my suspicions. She’s going to ask her to do something awful, and Agatha will do it, unless I can stop her.

  A thin, fretful wail comes from somewhere in the apartment. A little girl runs toward us and throws her arms around Jumal’s legs, brushing against me. I jump back into the hall.

  “This is Liat,” Agatha says, “Tira’s twin sister.”

  I let my breath out and step into the apartment again. Jumal shuts the door. He picks up his cousin and looks at me above the little girl’s dark curls. His eyes look worried. I look aside. Jumal’s right to be worried, no matter what Select Hamza said about the CoVir strain being weaker now.

  The tiny background cry continues. Jumal puts Liat down and starts toward the back bedroom but Naevah stops him and goes herself. Agatha and Jumal and I stand there in silence listening to the soft murmur of Naevah’s voice in the next room. The crying eases, but when Naevah returns it starts up again. I try to ignore it, and find myself staring at Liat, who has crept up against her mother’s leg.

  Naevah picks Liat up. One of her hands brushes through Liat’s hair, easing the tangles free, cradling the little head against her shoulder. She holds Liat tightly, as though memorizing the feel of the child in her arms. Agatha takes a step toward them. I grab her arm, stopping her.

  “I’m going with Tira into the fever house,” Naevah says. She buries her face in Liat’s hair.

  “You can’t!” Jumal says. “The swamp is full of diseases. No one ever comes back.” His voice breaks.

  “Tira cannot go alone,” Naevah says gently.

  “Aunt Naevah—”

  “I’ll go,” Agatha says. “You have Liat and Jumal to think of, as well as Tira.”

  “No!” They all look at me. I don’t care, she can’t die! She’s all that stands between me and the Queen’s fury. It’s selfish. I know I’m being selfish, but so are they.