Firebrand

by A. J. Hartley

The woman gave them an imperious glare and one of them whimpered.

  “Keep still, girl,” she demanded, staring at me. “You are alarming them.”

  For a moment, I just looked at her, caught between relief and bewilderment. The woman seemed angry. With me. The hyenas had stopped their giggling, and when she pointed out onto the landing and barked their names, they trotted out. She caught one of them, stooping to it, and parting the fur around a thin wound on the back of its head.

  “What did you do?” she said, fixing me with her baleful stare. Her eyes found the discarded poker. “You hit her?”

  “Her?” I echoed.

  “Yavix,” said the old woman. “The hyena.”

  I sat up, rubbing my arm. It was bloody, and there were four clear puncture wounds near the elbow, but they did not look deep.

  “I asked you a question,” said the woman. She looked like she was eighty, but her eyes blazed. “Answer it.”

  “I was defending myself!” I shot back, aghast. “And protecting her!”

  I turned to face Dahria, who had not moved from the bed. There was no trace of terror in her face now. She was leaning back against her pillows, smirking.

  The thought came to me as it had before.

  This is all wrong.

  “What is going on?” I demanded, getting awkwardly to my feet.

  There was a creak from a wardrobe in the corner. I flinched, expecting another hyena, but when the door opened, I saw Willinghouse standing inside, looking nonchalant and a little bored.

  “Satisfied, Grandmamma?” he said.

  The old woman turned her glare on him for a moment, then returned it to me.

  “In part,” she said, in a low voice, unimpressed. “Took her a long time to start exploring.”

  “But she did what she was supposed to,” said Willinghouse. “She passed the test.”

  I stared at him.

  A test?

  “I felt like I was screaming for about half an hour before you came, Miss Sutonga,” said Dahria, back to her laconic self. “If it had gone on much longer, I might have lost my voice.”

  I gaped at her.

  “You were acting,” I said.

  She bowed extravagantly, first to one side, then to the other, as if the bed was a stage surrounded by people.

  “Thank you! Thank you!” she said to her imaginary audience.

  Willinghouse nodded with a benevolent smile and gave a little polite applause, first for her then, to my amazement, for me.

  “My little sister, ladies and gentlemen,” he said.

  “Good evening, Grandmamma,” said Dahria politely to the old woman. “A pleasure, as always, to see you. I trust you are suitably impressed by my discharge of the role assigned to me.”

  There was no attempt to make the formality sound heartfelt, but I didn’t care. I was too busy trying to make sense of what had just happened. My heart was still pounding, my arms and legs trembling with exertion and fear, but those feelings were quickly giving way to outrage.

  “You were testing me?” I said, glaring at Willinghouse.

  “Not him,” said the old woman who was, apparently, their grandmother. “Me. I heard you were afraid of wild animals. I wanted to see how you would react under pressure, particularly when others were in peril.”

  “I beg your pardon?” I said, my rage mounting.

  The woman waved away my outrage with a flick of her hand.

  “You were never in real danger,” she said, dismissively. “The pack was hand reared from birth. Better than guard dogs out here in the bush, and they do as I tell them.”

  I glared at her.

  “I’m supposed to be…,” I began, too blind with fury and humiliation to find the words. “How is this helping me to…? I’m leaving,” I concluded, striding for the door.

  The old woman blocked my path.

  “On foot?” she demanded coolly. “That would be unwise.”

  “I’ll take the carriage back to town,” I blustered.

  “Think again, Miss Sutonga,” she said. “I will not risk the horses after dark. Not all the hyenas around here are tame.”

  That was a kind of bleak joke that turned one corner of her mouth up a fraction. The four hyenas sprawled untidily on the carpet were eyeing me.

  “They won’t hurt you,” she said. “I will have Namud make up a room for you.”

  She had lost the edge in her voice, but her face was still patrician hard, her eyes appraising.

  “I will not be your pet,” I said to whoever was listening. “Your trained animal.”

  The old woman took a slow step toward me. When I did not shrink away from her touch, she raised my injured arm so that the luxorite glow fell on it, turning it slightly as she considered the damage.

  “Let us get this wound dressed before it becomes infected,” said the old woman.

  She gestured to the hyenas, flicking her wrist and uttering a handful of words in a language I did not recognize. The animals got to their feet and trotted down the stairs. I watched, amazed, reminded again of the strange sense of being inside a dream.

  “This way,” she said.

  She led the way along the landing to another door which she opened, showing me into a spacious bathroom, all porcelain and glossy ceramic tile. I was glad to leave Willinghouse and Dahria behind, and I burned with anger and humiliation still. Picking up an earthenware jug of clear water, their grandmother nodded at a basin. I held my arm out, and she poured water over it. As she took a clean towel and dabbed at the wound, I considered her brown, papery, and wrinkled skin, her silver hair. Lani in the Drowning rarely lived to such an age, and I doubted even the frailest of our elders had seen as many years as she had, though she seemed strong in mind and body.

  Privilege has its advantages, I reminded myself.

  “I’m sorry that my little test went so far,” she said. “But it speaks to your character that you passed.”

  “If I’d known who I was trying to rescue, I might not have bothered,” I muttered.

  She shot me a sideways look, and for a moment, her eyes flashed and the corner of her mouth buckled into a knowing smile. A second later, the look was so completely gone that I could barely remember it.

  “You dislike Dahria?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said quickly. “No. I don’t know. I just didn’t think…”

  “She would pull such a stupid and mean-spirited trick on someone who thought her a friend,” said the old woman shrewdly. “Yes. But then she was doing as I told her and my granddaughter has the emotional maturity of Yavix.”

  I gave her a questioning look.

  “The hyena,” she explained. “Don’t take it personally. Dahria keeps the world at arm’s length. It’s how she lives with herself for being so utterly useless to that world’s needs.” She said it simply, without malice but with a certainty that shocked me. When I looked down, unsure, she added, amused, “In your mind you just risked your life to save someone who spends her days gossiping and taking tea with friends, someone who would not acknowledge you in the street for fear of damaging her own reputation.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, not sure if I believed it.

  “Isn’t it?” said the old woman.

  I looked down, abashed.

  “Be courageous, by all means,” the woman continued, “but make sure you can achieve what you set out to. Dead heroes are no use to anyone.”

  She said that last bitterly, and I found myself confused.

  “You don’t think I should be working with your grandson,” I said.

  She replaced the water jug and handed me a clean towel.

  “I think you did not survive this long on the towers and chimneys of Bar-Selehm by taking unnecessary risks,” she said. “Believe me when I say that now is not the time to start. I hear you have done good work for my grandson, for the region, which is in need of it, but understand the danger of your situation. Be careful who you trust and what you believe. Nothing in Bar-Selehm is what it
seems, and the deeper you penetrate what we are pleased to call high society, the more you need to be on your guard.”

  I bridled slightly at her tone.

  “I can look after myself,” I said.

  She gave me a level look.

  “Yes?” she said. “Josiah thinks you passed the test tonight, and that is good, but if the test had been to see if you could discern truth from lies, what was real from what was merely staged, you would have failed. In a place like Elitus, that error would cost you dearly.”

  I felt the rush of blood to my face, but said nothing. I could see that she was right, but the fact of it gave me no clarity, nor did it ease my annoyance. It was a relief when Willinghouse appeared in the doorway. There was no sign of Dahria.

  “I’m sure the point has already been made,” he said, avoiding his grandmother’s eyes, “but I feel I should apologize for what happened. It was inappropriate.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, meeting his gaze and, like him, avoiding that of the old woman. “I understand.”

  I felt his grandmother’s eyes on me.

  “Thank you,” he said. His manner was still formal, his posture rigid, but there was a fractional change in his sharp green eyes that might have been relief. “And I must commend you on your use of the perfume bottle. Most resourceful. Even Dahria was impressed.”

  I blushed.

  “We were watching the whole time,” he added. “If things had gone badly…”

  “You were watching?” I interjected. “How?”

  “My father was a cautious man,” he said. “Paranoid, even.”

  “With good cause,” said his grandmother crisply.

  Willinghouse gave a nod of acknowledgment that was also a shrug, turning his head and closing his eyes for a moment, but he did not look at her directly.

  “The house is a warren of ventilation ducts,” he said, “many of which contain carefully positioned mirrors. From the central rooms upstairs, it is possible to glimpse activity all over the house. A security measure.”

  “So you saw everything I did?” I said, feelingly suddenly exposed, as if I might have betrayed my most private thoughts without realizing it.

  “It was all very impressive,” he offered, kindly. “As I had expected. A room has been prepared for you. We breakfast at seven, though I may have to be on the road before then. For work.”

  “And I will be doing what?” I demanded, still on my dignity.

  “You will begin the training we should have started three months ago,” said Willinghouse’s grandmother.

  I turned to her, taken aback, and her lips flexed with something like satisfaction.

  “Yes,” she said, reading my surprise. “I am Madame Nahreem. I will be your tutor.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  I WAS IN THE Drowning for the rice festival. It was raining, a fine, misting rain refreshing on the skin. The river was swollen up around the makeshift paddy fields where the green sprouts broke through the wet mirror reflecting a purple sky and the girls smeared with the saffron-colored powder paint as they danced for the harvest. Rahvey was there, happy as I almost never saw her, swaying from her neck to her hips in time with the shrill, wild music. And Vestris, radiant at the head of the dance in a fire-red sari.

  I was holding Papa’s hand and wishing I was old enough to join in, but when I asked my father if I could, he looked warily at the sky.

  “Rain’s getting harder, little one,” he said.

  And it was. The steady drizzle had become a downpour, and suddenly the music had stopped while everyone ran for cover, looking for their sandals amidst the piles of flowers on the ground. We made for higher ground, but a policeman in white gloves said we couldn’t go that way. At first everyone was laughing in the chaos, but then the mood shifted and I was overcome with a strange and powerful dread.

  Something awful had happened.

  It was the river. It had burst its banks, and now we were awash in flowers, chasing our sandals as they floated away. I reached for mine, and in that instant I let go of Papa’s hand. I turned, frantic, but he was lost in the crowd of flailing, crying people. I saw Rahvey splashing through the water, screaming the names of her daughters, her face a mask of horror and fear.

  The waters rose still higher, around our knees, our waists, our necks. We were all washing away, and now the colorful Lani crowd were mainly black, half-naked people I did not know, their eyes wide and desperate. I was lifted on a great brown wave. The river rolled like an ocean. Among the crocodiles and hippos, sharks circled, their dorsal fins knifing through what had been rice paddies, flower petals shredding in their wake. I was overcome by a desperate desire to find Mnenga amidst the black faces, but they did not understand me when I asked for him, and were too afraid of the sharks.

  I took refuge on a shrinking island, scrambling up its shore as the tide rose, and climbing onto a rock only a couple of yards across, suddenly alone in a vast mud-colored sea. There was a terrible silence. All the people who had been there—family, friends, Lani, and the nameless black people I did not know, had vanished inexplicably. There were only the sharks and the blank, surging waters of what had been the river. And then I looked down and found that the slope I had climbed was not rock at all, but bone: a pile of human skulls that was sinking into the water, eye sockets filling with brown murk as the ground beneath me crumbled. I cried out, but my scream turned into the dawn shriek of a go-away bird, and I woke with a start, unsure of where I was and how I had gotten there.

  I sat on the bed, sweating, waiting for my heart to slow, then plunged my face—after only a moment’s dreadful hesitation—into a basin of water, to wash the dream away. Taking a series of ritual breaths such as I would before performing my Kathahry exercises, I blew the air from my lungs like smoke.

  Just a dream. It doesn’t mean anything.

  I decided to believe that. I had real dangers enough without wasting energy on others that only existed in my head. And there were things I had to do today.

  Another deliberate splash of water, and the dream was gone.

  * * *

  FOR ALL ITS STOLID opulence, the estate was sparsely furnished and drafty, but I slept in a vast, quilted bed so comfortable that, if not for my unsettling dream, I might have forgotten my anger at Madame Nahreem’s test. I had feared the chamber would be stuffy, since—remembering what Willinghouse had said about mirrors in the air shafts—I had thrown clothes and rugs over every vent I could see, but it was quite pleasant. The room was in a corner of the house, and the shuttered windows looked out upon a range of hills, some fenced and sprouting orderly crops, but most wild and untended brush. I had woken several times in the night to the sound of animal calls, one of which was surely the repeated grunting roar of a lion, and morning had come with a cacophony of screaming birds and chattering monkeys. Before going downstairs, I sat at the window scouring the countryside for elephants or one-horns. Apart from a solitary, browsing giraffe, I saw nothing, but given that I knew to expect hyenas inside the house, that wasn’t much consolation.

  My shoulder felt better than it had, but it was still tight and ached when I rolled it. Whatever training I had coming today, I hoped it would not be unduly taxing on my already bruised and battered body.

  For someone used, until very recently, to snatching a roll of bread from a bowl before the rest of the gang took it all, breakfast was bizarre. A white maid greeted me on the landing with a bobbing curtsy and an apparently unsarcastic “good morning, miss,” then led me down to a formal dining room where a long table draped in a starched white cloth was laid with plates and assorted cutlery. The others—Willinghouse, Dahria, and their grandmother, Madame Nahreem—were already there, eating in silence as a second maid, this one black, ministered to them under the watchful gaze of the young Lani butler I had seen the night before. They looked up from their food, and Willinghouse nodded me into a chair opposite Dahria, who was smirking at the way I refused to look her in the eye.

&
nbsp; I helped myself to a dish of curried rice with smoked fish and hard-boiled eggs, and tried not to eat like it was the last meal I might get. That such plates of delicious food were mine for the taking still struck me as strange, and though I reveled in it all, I could not quite escape a lingering sense of guilt when I thought of Tanish, my erstwhile apprentice, and what he might be eating this morning.

  “Miss Sutonga,” said Willinghouse brightly, “I trust you slept well. Your training will begin in one hour. I hope to return later today with an update from Inspector Andrews on the theft from the war department.”

  His manner was businesslike, and as he spoke, he laid down the newspaper, checked his pocket watch, and got to his feet. He kissed Dahria lightly on the top of her head as she spread marmalade on her toast, nodded to Madame Nahreem with a polite “Grandmamma,” dithered in front of me, and left the room.

  There was an awkward silence while Dahria swallowed.

  “Just us girls together, then,” she deadpanned. “What japes we shall have.”

  Madame Nahreem checked the clock on the mantel and turned to me.

  “Meet me here in … thirty-seven minutes,” she said. Dahria rolled her eyes and went on eating as her grandmother left, the servants following in her wake.

  “I haven’t forgiven you,” I said to Dahria, as soon as the door was closed and we were alone.

  “However will I live with myself?” she remarked. “Oh, come off it. It was only a joke. You weren’t in any true danger.”

  “It was cruel,” I said. “And humiliating.”

  “Ah,” said Dahria, sitting back and smiling. “Your pride is wounded. Understandable, if a little surprising in one such as…”

  I glared at her over the rim of my teacup, and she grinned wider than ever.

  “Another joke,” she said.

  “You should be a low comic in the music halls,” I remarked. “You clearly belong onstage.”

  “You wound me, my dear steeplejack,” she said. “You wound me.”

  I finished my food in silence, palmed a dusk peach on my way out, and left her sitting at the table looking sardonically amused. When I got back to my room, I found that clothes had been laid out for me: a tea gown in pale lustrous green with white lace trim. It wasn’t perhaps as fine as what Dahria wore, but it outstripped anything I had ever owned by a considerable distance, and I felt a peculiar confluence of powerful feelings at the prospect of putting it on. At first I was angry, resentful at the impertinence, but then I reminded myself that I was being trained to pass as a society lady—albeit one from far away—and this was doubtless a part of that. That hurdle past, I allowed myself the prospect of enjoying the dress, the softness of its material, the way it seemed to shift in the light, and finally the way it made me look when I put it on and stood in front of the mirror that had been set up for the purpose.