Firebrand

by A. J. Hartley

  The boat was pulling hard toward me, the riverbank, and the open doors of the warehouse. It was going to slide quietly in, and then the doors of the warehouse would close over it, like a crocodile taking an unwary flamingo. I had seen no other way into the warehouse except doors that were surely watched and locked, and that meant that if I was going to see inside, I needed to enter with the boat. I had no time to think. In moments, the barge would pass under the hopper and be swallowed by the warehouse.

  I uncoiled my rope, eyes locked on the approaching vessel, then lashed one end to the girders of the hopper arm, hastily calculating how much free rope I had to play with.

  Not enough.

  I was going to have to drop the last few feet to the deck. By the light from the warehouse doors, I saw the flat expanse of the boat’s top side, a single pilot’s cab located midway along the deck just in front of the chimney stack, and in it a solitary and shaded lamp. I could just make out the silhouette of a figure at the wheel staring at the prow through a brass-rimmed porthole.

  I dropped into a squat and waited for the boat to slide beneath me, its engine rumbling and hissing, and as the cab with its lone crewman passed under the hopper, I looped the rope around my waist. Gripping it with both hands—one in front of my face, the other in the small of my back—I closed my mouth and eyes against the smoke and, when I was sure the hot chimney had gone by, jumped. The cord slid through my hands as I dropped, heating fast as I clenched my fists around it to slow my descent. Twice I did it, staring down as the bow of the boat came into view. Go too slowly, and I’d miss the barge entirely and fall into the river. I relaxed my grip and dropped the last fifteen feet, running out of rope and falling the last five to the deck with an ungainly thump that left me on my back.

  The surface was wood and wet and smooth, which was a blessing. It knocked the wind out of me and left me momentarily stunned and breathless, but I had only narrowly missed a mooring cleat that would have done rather more damage. I rolled into a crouch and kept very still a few yards behind the chimney, watching and listening for any sign of alarm my arrival might have raised. In that moment, the river slipped below me and the rope was left hanging in our wake.

  The prow was already nudging its way into the warehouse. There was a juddering of gears, and I felt the engines reverse as we left the main flow of the river and drifted in through the doors. It was light inside, and I would be very obvious to anyone who was watching, though the air was thickening with blue-black smoke. I scanned the deck, spotted a hatch only a few feet from where I had fallen, skulked over, and flipped the heavy metal hasp. Seizing the handle, I dragged the hatch up and open, casting a glance around the inside of the warehouse as the barge slowed, bumping up against a jetty hung with rubber tires. Two men were working to secure the prow. I had to get below fast.

  And that was when I looked down into the hold and saw, with horrified surprise, a dozen faces, thin, tear-streaked, sickly, and black. Women and children all. They had been revealed as a cloud of coal smoke billowed out of the belly of the ship, chased by a wall of stench sour with the appalling aroma of excrement, vomit, and hot unwashed bodies, and they looked up at me with a mixture of dread and relief.

  CHAPTER

  20

  I WAS NOT WHAT they expected to see. A dozen empty hands reached up from the hold, fingers splayed so I didn’t know if they wanted me to pull them out or give them something—money, I thought first, then changed my mind.

  Food. Water.

  Gods knew how long they had been aboard. Days? Not in this shallow-draft vessel, which could be little more than a short-range ferry from whatever larger ship had brought them. For a moment I just stared, one hand clasped thoughtlessly over my nose to keep the foulness out as I took in their stained and ragged bits of clothing. I couldn’t tell if they were Quundu, Delfani, or Zagrel, but it seemed certain that they were members of one of those tribes from north of the desert, and that meant my estimate was wrong. They would have been at sea for weeks.

  I was still processing that thought when a man’s voice called out from the quayside, a wordless cry of menace and alarm that straightened me up.

  “Get back below till you’re called!” he yelled.

  He thought I was one of the refugees, caught in the act of coming above deck. He had a rifle on a strap over his shoulder, and he swung it round purposefully. I lowered my face so that he would not see his mistake, and glanced back to the doors through which the barge had come. They were already closing, drawn into place by a winch-and-chain system operated by another man on the jetty. The doors extended only a few inches below the lapping black water.

  But I couldn’t swim.

  I hesitated, feeling the presence of those upturned hands and faces at my feet like the strange swelling pressure you sometimes feel before a downpour, and then there were footsteps on the quay. The rifleman was coming, squinting at me in the low and smoky light, head lowered, the muzzle of his weapon coming up.

  “Nxephe,” I muttered, one of the few Mahweni words I knew—sorry—then turned, took three long strides and vaulted off the back of the boat before the gunman could get off his first shot.

  The water was thick and warm, smelling of the ocean and of the oil that trailed after the rusting vessel. I braced myself for a floor of weedy rock underfoot, but there was only water. It closed over my head, and I felt the full horror of what I had done before the bullet slapped down a foot from my shoulder. I surfaced again, panic hot in my throat as I gasped at the air, bobbed briefly, and went under again. Water filled my open, staring eyes, flooded my nose and mouth so that I rose coughing.

  I heard the snap of the rifle being reloaded and forced myself to thrust my head down under the noxious water as I lashed out for the doors, arms and legs flailing, my saturated boots terrifyingly heavy. I made little headway and broke the surface again, blind with the stinging river in my eyes, shrinking powerlessly as I heard the second report of the gun. This time he hit the door itself, spraying splinters as the slug buried itself in the wood.

  Again I dipped, launching myself forward as best I could, too scared of drowning to hate the feeling of vulnerability as I turned my back on the gunner. I splashed ineptly in the direction of the doors, and this time, caught in some strange backward current, I felt my body carried forward. With scrabbling fingers I reached the thin fissure between the doors, stabilized my frightened drift against them, then reached below the surface for their lower edge. I did not look back at the gunman, who was now only a few yards away, feverishly reloading his weapon. With a breath—no more than a gasp that took in water as well as air and didn’t come close to filling my lungs—I dived once more, levering myself down under the warehouse doors and pulling myself out.

  I broke the surface with a great, shuddering breath, sucking in the night air as I fought to hold on to something—anything—that would give me a purchase on the structure. I was lucky to have lived this long. If I drifted off into the river, that luck would quickly run out.

  Behind me I heard raised voices and the clank of the winch as the men inside struggled to get the doors open again. I had only seconds to get ashore and escape into the alleys of the dockside. I blinked back the oil-smeared water and—I suspect—some of my own tears, and reached for the shore, using my arms as I had seen swimmers do, stretching, plunging my hands into the water like I was grabbing it, pulling myself forward, kicking wildly.

  Only then did I see the log that seemed to be drifting toward me. Drifting against the current. I saw the bumps on its topside blink, and suddenly they were bright as green glass.

  Crocodile.

  I cried out, lunging and flailing as before with a new desperation as the animal picked up speed, halving the distance between us in a single, breathless moment. Another leaping, desperate surge, and my knee struck painfully—blessedly—on something hard and immobile. Stone. Concrete. A last blundering thrust, and I was stumbling in waist-deep water, one hand tugging a chisel from my work belt as
I spun to face the crocodile. I slashed the water, weeping, backing up still farther, waiting for the attack.

  The chisel cut through the black water of the Kalihm, but the croc had gone under. I stepped back, feeling the stony and uneven ground below my soaking boots, and saw the warehouse doors open, saw the gunman, who had leapt into the water as he forced himself through the widening gap, gun barrel first. I felt his eyes lock onto me in the dark, saw his wide-eyed terror, heard his shriek of agony before the crocodile pulled him under.

  * * *

  “HUMAN TRAFFICKING?” EXCLAIMED Willinghouse. “Markeson? He’s a pillar of the community!”

  I had told him the story twice already, but he still seemed incapable of processing its implications.

  It had taken me almost two hours to make my circuitous way back to the town house, crossing the river by the catwalk on the incomplete suspension bridge and skulking through the streets, one eye always open for a patrolling officer who would arrest me on suspicion of being Lani in the city at night and therefore Up to No Good. It was a warm night, but I was soaking and miserably cold, unable to shake off the fear of the gunman, the crocodile that had surely killed him, and the river itself.

  Something else too, that was harder to put my finger on. There had been a second, when the gunman had first seen me, when he had thought I was one of the refugees. I thought back on that moment as I made my cautious way through the city, and I came to a strange, nagging sense that he was almost right. I was one of them, as I had been in the dream of the rice festival when the Drowning flooded, and we were suddenly all homeless, lost and fighting to stay afloat. I turned the idea over in my mind as if I was explaining it to Mnenga, the one person I thought might understand, momentarily fingering the sorrel nut in my pocket. But the more I imagined picking my way through the words, the more I saw his listening face in my mind, the more I concluded that I was being absurd, that thinking of myself as a refugee was ridiculous and grotesque. I might not have a home I called my own, I might not have a clear sense of where I belonged in the world, and my new life might seem to be a series of continuous and dangerous attempts at pretense—hiding behind one of Madame Nahreem’s masks—but I had food, security, even money. I wasn’t a refugee, and their suffering, their powerlessness in their own lives, was not mine.

  Also, my thoughts prompted in Mnenga’s voice, your life was saved by a crocodile. This is very strange. And good. Think about that and celebrate what you have instead of weeping for what you don’t.

  I had to grin at that.

  So I relayed my news to an excited Willinghouse, who had emerged in a dressing gown over pressed pajamas.

  “Thomas Markeson,” he said for the fifth time. “You’re sure?”

  “He wasn’t there himself, but it was his place, yes,” I said.

  We were sitting in a police carriage, waiting for Andrews to finish giving orders to the squad of armed officers he had summoned from Mount Street. At the inspector’s kind insistence, I had washed hurriedly and changed into clothes last worn by a young footman. Willinghouse had been surprised by this, as if he had somehow not noticed that I had arrived dripping wet and stinking from the filth of the river.

  “Markeson,” Willinghouse mused, gazing at the gas lamps outside the police station.

  “You’re glad,” I said, as the realization dawned.

  “What?” he said.

  “You’re glad that he’s involved,” I said.

  “Nonsense,” he said, quelling the smile I had seen ghosting his twisted lips.

  “You are,” I said. “A political enemy, a member of the elite, implicated in human smuggling in violation of everything his cronies say about Bar-Selehm looking after its own and staying out of foreign affairs that don’t concern us? Of course you’re glad.”

  “He’s not a politician,” said Willinghouse.

  “But he has friends who are,” I answered. “Friends who sit on the opposite side of the house than you do.”

  “There is that,” he conceded, and suddenly the smile was back and sprawling into a grin he did not bother to conceal. “There is certainly that. Those hypocritical, isolationist, flag-waving liars. This will wipe the supercilious grins off their nationalist faces! I can’t wait to see their response when the newspapers get hold of it, and they will get hold of it if I have to dictate the story myself.”

  “So, glad then,” I concluded.

  “Maybe a little,” he said, then surprised me by laughing once, a single bark of delight hastily stifled. “Good work, Miss Sutonga. Very good work indeed.”

  The carriage door opened.

  “You find nocturnal raids amusing?” asked Inspector Andrews, climbing in.

  “Mr. Willinghouse was just reflecting on the discomfited condition of his enemies,” I supplied.

  Willinghouse glared at me.

  “A politician does not have enemies,” he remarked. “Just colleagues with whom he has a difference of opinion over the betterment of his country.”

  “A politician’s answer if ever I heard one,” said Andrews, taking his seat. “On, driver,” he barked through the window. “Dawn is upon us.”

  * * *

  HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT the dawn, and that meant a long time had passed since my little adventure at the secret quay. Too much time. The warehouse was empty, the barge deserted and hosed down. The duty foreman swore blind that it had been moored there for three days having brought in a load of coal mined in the southern cape, as he could easily demonstrate from its logbook and manifest. The bullet holes in the inlet doors had been caused during events leading to the tragic death of one Albrecht Imsenga, a Mahweni barge worker who had been attacked by a crocodile.…

  I waited in the carriage, but the moment between receiving the news and returning to me had only given scope for Willinghouse’s furious disappointment to bloom.

  “Why did it take you so long to get back to the house?” he demanded. “They knew someone had been in and seen what was in the boat.”

  “Who,” I said.

  “What?” sputtered Willinghouse.

  “They were people,” I said, stupidly. “Someone had seen who was in the boat. Not what.”

  “Do you think that’s the major issue at the moment?” Willinghouse snapped. “Grammar?”

  “I’m just saying,” I remarked with a gesture of weary surrender, “that our failure to catch Markeson red-handed is perhaps less important than our not knowing what happened to the refugees.”

  Willinghouse deflated.

  “You are right, of course,” he said. “Yes.”

  “I will say,” said Andrews addressing me, “that you might have saved time going directly to the first policeman you saw.”

  “Right,” I said, “because the worthy constabulary of Bar-Selehm think so highly of Lani women who emerge from the shadows with seaweed in their hair.” I sniffed it and made a face. My hasty ablutions had not gotten rid of the tang of oil.

  “You could have given my name,” he said, slightly put out at what he took to be my impugning the reputation of the police force.

  “You will recall that we’re trying to get Miss Sutonga to keep a low profile,” said Willinghouse, as if I wasn’t there.

  Andrews scowled and looked away.

  “Politics,” he muttered.

  “I don’t suppose we could go back and search properly in daylight?” Willinghouse ventured.

  “No,” said Andrews shortly. “I’m going to catch an earful from the commissioner as it is without further alienating the esteemed Mr. Markeson. And how am I going to explain myself, Willinghouse? Tell me that. There is such a thing as an evidence chain, something I can present to document why I acted as I did. Hunches from anonymous sources do not qualify.”

  I looked at Willinghouse in the early morning light cutting soft and warm through the slats of the carriage window. Apparently I wasn’t the only one whose name was to be kept out of the official record—and the papers.

  “I am sure you are
a man of great invention,” he said.

  Andrews snorted but did not dignify the remark with a response.

  * * *

  “GOOD GOD,” SAID DAHRIA as I entered Willinghouse’s hallway, “you smell like you’ve been dead a week. Go upstairs and do not return until you can approximate a human being.”

  “I may go to bed for a few hours after I’ve properly bathed,” I said. “I’m exhausted. But I’ll come down and eat first.”

  “Of course you will,” she said. “I’ll have Cook roast you a warthog or two.”

  “Most amusing,” I said.

  “I’m so glad you think so. Remember your good mood as I pass along a piece of information.”

  “What?” I said, instantly on my guard.

  “Madame Nahreem is expecting you for a full day of training at the estate.”

  The noise I made in response did not, strictly speaking, contain words.

  CHAPTER

  21

  I HAD NEVER BEEN to a white person’s funeral, let alone that of a society lady, and I was only able to attend Agatha Markeson’s by reprising my role from a few months ago as Dahria Willinghouse’s maid, complete with demure frock and coal-scuttle bonnet. It looked frightful and amused Dahria to no end, but it kept my face hidden, which would be especially useful since I would be rubbing elbows with the same ladies who had last seen me as Lady Ki Misrai.

  “Did you like Mrs. Markeson?” I asked, as the fly taking us to the church rolled off.