“Wait,” I said. “Barges? Not naval vessels?”
“Clippers if they go all the way to the north coast. Several of them together may take a frigate for escort, but generally no, why?”
“So these are privately owned boats?”
“Yes. And it’s quite lucrative. That’s one of the reasons the so-called business community doesn’t want to see the city’s antirefugee policy changed. The owners are paid by—”
“Government contract,” I said, realization dawning. “Markeson had one. So he was being paid by the smugglers at one end to bring refugees in and by the government to ship them back out again.”
Sureyna met my eyes, and we just looked at each other, feeling stupid and powerless, as if we were trapped in our own version of the sweet field octopus.
“Perhaps I can ask around in the docklands. Someone might know where those people have been taken,” I said.
Sureyna shook her head. “They won’t talk to you,” she said.
Because I was Lani, she meant. Apart from the owners and the senior foremen, the docklands was an almost entirely black area, which meant that Lady Ki Misrai wouldn’t be any help either. I gave her a sidelong look.
“Too bad I don’t have a black friend who speaks a few words of Mahweni…,” I said.
* * *
“I’M NOT ENTIRELY COMFORTABLE with this,” said Sureyna. The alleys and roughly cobbled streets of the docklands were thronged with people in the early dawn light, a long snaking line of silent black men and women dressed in the tough, drab clothes of factory laborers. They spilled out of terraced houses, filed over the fishwharf bridge, disembarked from slow, sleepy ferries, and processed toward the looming smokestacks of Dagenham Steps as if on some somber pilgrimage. “It feels like deception,” she added. “Manipulation.”
“It is,” I said. “But I swear no one we talk to will be hurt by what they tell us.”
“You can’t promise that,” she said. “Not if the people we are up against are as dangerous as you say.”
“Then we will do all we can to make it true,” I said, adding—before she could register her dissatisfaction with the halfhearted compromise—“and we’ll weigh that against the lives of the refugees we are trying to save.”
“They may be long gone,” she answered.
“Anything we learn about the smuggling ring may save others who haven’t even arrived yet.”
“So they’ll be stuck in their own land, forced to fight a losing war against the Grappoli,” Sureyna replied. She wasn’t being argumentative. She was thinking it all through. “What a mess,” she concluded lamely.
I just nodded, watching her eyes.
“All right,” she said. “But we do everything we can to keep these people out of trouble.”
“Agreed,” I said, pulling the scarf I was wearing up around my head. We joined the dour line to Horritch’s weaving factory in silence, trudging with the crowd like fish borne on the current.
The decision to explore Horritch’s place had been a simple one. Montresat’s munitions works was too heavily protected, and not just by his own people. As a military supplier, the factory had a complement of armed dragoons at each corner, and entrance required official papers. Markeson’s dockside warehouse was closed up by day, but guarded less officially—and therefore more menacingly—than Montresat’s. Horritch’s weaving shed was located a stone’s throw from both, just beyond the cluster of strange, bulbous chimneys of the pottery and brick oven kilns. There was a good chance someone working there might have seen refugees in the area. Moreover, I could not shake the idea that the three businesses were connected by more than club cuff links.
At first the workers seemed to me a uniform mass, ageless, sexless, a single body in slow, determined motion; as we moved along, however, I began to see the differences in face and clothing. Some were my age or a little younger, but most were older, men and women both, their hair tied back or pressed down with flat woolen caps. They wore trousers and dresses of thick canvassy stuff. The shirts below their overalls had spots of color or hints of decoration: a tiny embroidery here, an ornate button there, each a hint of something private and individual within the mass of humanity. They carried tin lunch pails and cloth packages with shoulder straps. They wore sturdy leather shoes and boots, or wooden clogs with hobnailed soles. Some of them—men and women—wore scent that gave the procession a strange and unexpected air of spice: another kind of privacy hinted at beneath the worker’s guise. Though I was not one of them, I felt a sense of something shared, a secrecy they kept beneath their clothes that prevented them from becoming part of the machines.
Or tried to.
They produced cards from jackets and purses and ran them through the clock-in machine that stamped the time of their arrival. Luckily, no one questioned me or Sureyna for not doing the same. Above the flow, like an angler by a stream, the white foreman, a mug of something in one hand and a newspaper open on his knee, watched absently as we entered. Occasionally, he looked up and checked a clipboard or told the crowd to slow down or hurry up. I couldn’t tell why.
I was almost at the door before I realized that I had been to this place only a week before, in the company of Sergeant Emtezu and his wife. She had said she would be starting a fortnight later, so she would not be here yet, but I remembered the other woman, her neighbor, who was probably inside somewhere. Rummaging through my memory, I pulled out a name.
Bertha.
The shed was cavernous inside, but while the ceiling was towering, it was not, I thought, as high as the building itself, though I saw no stairs. Most of the available space in the main chamber was filled with the looms themselves, which sat like great mechanical insects in serried ranks, waiting. The whole was lit by tall arched windows in the stained brick walls, but the glass was soot-smeared and the air had a thick, gray quality that felt strangely sepulchral.
I caught Sureyna’s eye, but we did not speak. A moment later, the looms came on, and conversation became impossible. I had not dreamed there could be such bedlam anywhere on earth. I was used to working outside the factories. Inside, the roar of the steam engines and the looms they powered was a constant staggering blast. The texture of the sound changed, becoming more shrill or more guttural, full of hissing or clanking, and there was the regular clock-ticking rhythm of the mechanisms sending the shuttles back and forth, resetting, and advancing like great metal heartbeats, but taken altogether, they made simply a wall of noise, hard and impossibly high. I tried to speak, to shout, but could make out nothing of that slim private self I had just been celebrating, as if I had been rolled beneath the wheels over which the leather belts ran, flattened out, and made part of the engine itself.
The workers were herded into their familiar stations and set to their tasks, standing, reaching, feeding the relentless machines. Around them the air stood hot, still, and smoky, as the great looms breathed their endless, deafening bellow like hungry beasts that could not be satisfied.
Deafening was no exaggeration. As I looked around, I saw how communication took place between the workers: not with words, but with twittering gestures of their hands. I remembered how hard it had been to communicate with Bertha, and I found myself thinking back to the eerie silence in which the workers had filed along the street and into the mill. They were all deaf, or close to it, made so by the steady roar of the machines.
As they took up their positions, Sureyna and I were left alone on the little free area of concrete floor. Keen to avoid the attentions of the patrolling foremen, Sureyna started to walk over to the closest loom. I caught her arm and mouthed, “Wait!” at her, my eyes flashing around for Sergeant Emtezu’s neighbor. I found her over by the wall on one side, her hands moving fluidly over the loom as the shuttle flew from side to side. She gave us a blank look, her eyes lingering on me, trying to place my face, and continued working.
Sureyna began speaking, but her voice was drowned out by the sound of the machine. When she reached out to touch Berth
a’s sleeve the woman turned on her, anger flaring in her face. Words spewing from her lips, though I could not catch their sense.
Scowling, she pushed a large red lever and the loom disengaged from the driving engine. She tilted her head up enquiringly, her gaze switching to Sureyna, till the newspaper woman motioned vaguely that she wanted to talk. Bertha glanced hastily around, then nodded across the floor toward a door with a glass pane in the upper half.
Sureyna nodded and the woman led the way. She was large and solid, though her back hunched from bending over the loom, and her arms and hands were powerful. She wore a white kerchief knotted around her head, and an oil-spattered apron over her oddly formal-looking dress of brown worsted.
The door led to a locker room, and the woman strode through it and another door without hesitation, turning the moment it was closed behind us. They were good, well-fitting doors, and the noise of the machines dropped by at least half.
“Yini?” she demanded, her voice very nearly a shout.
Sureyna began with a few words of Mahweni, but the woman clearly couldn’t hear and made a face. Sureyna tried again, louder this time, but she seemed far from sure of herself.
“Feldish,” Bertha roared. “I speak it.”
“Right,” said Sureyna. “Good.”
“What?” roared the woman, exasperation tightening her features.
“I just … good,” Sureyna shouted.
The woman nodded and looked at me.
“No more jobs,” she shouted.
It took me a second to realize her misunderstanding.
“I’m not here looking for work,” I said.
“What?”
“I’M NOT HERE LOOKING FOR WORK!”
“You are Tsanwe’s friend,” she said, considering me beadily.
“Yes,” I said.
“And you?” she said, turning to Sureyna.
“She is my friend too,” I said. Bertha raised her eyebrows, then shrugged fractionally, waiting for more.
“I work for the newspaper. The NEWSPAPER,” said Sureyna, reading the woman’s confusion. “My name is Sureyna.”
It was the first thing to soften Bertha’s fierce demeanor. She smiled at the word, transforming into a different person entirely as she nodded approvingly. “Bertha,” she said, putting one large hand on the middle of her chest.
Sureyna and I both relaxed visibly. This was progress.
“We are looking for some women and children from another country,” said Sureyna.
“Another country?” echoed the woman, puzzled.
“Quundu, Delfani, or Zagrel,” I said.
Bertha considered me warily. For several seconds, she said nothing, and the words, which I had said loudly, seemed to linger in the air between us like the ever-present noise and oily smoke of the machines. If I had to put a name to what I saw in her face, I would call it caution. She shook her head, but said nothing.
“They are refugees,” I added.
“They are in trouble,” said Sureyna, simply. “We want to help them.”
Bertha looked doubtful, then considered me.
“You worked with Tsanwe,” she said. “Helped him.”
I shrugged.
“A little,” I said. “He helped me too.”
Bertha nodded thoughtfully.
“Yesterday,” she said, at last. “Men came. White men. Looking.”
“Police?” asked Sureyna.
Bertha looked away and bit her lip, then shook her head with grim decision.
“Who?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“Did you see any of the women? The children?” Sureyna followed.
Another head shake from Bertha, another half check over her shoulder before saying, “But. Maybe someone saw.”
“Who?” I asked, but she avoided my eyes. She wasn’t going to tell us that.
“What did they see?” tried Sureyna.
“Children,” said Bertha, and now her face was closed as if she did not trust herself to show any emotion. “Hungry. Frightened. They were in the street but ran away before morning.”
“Where did they go?” I asked.
Again the shrug, the head shake. She didn’t know, and not knowing hurt her a little.
“How many?” asked Sureyna.
Bertha tipped her head on one side.
“Ten?” she said. “Twenty? I don’t know.”
“All right,” said Sureyna. “Thank you.”
I said the same, and when the woman gave me a nod of acknowledgment, I added, “The cloth you make here for Mr. Horritch, it is cotton? Wool?”
“Cotton, yes,” she said nodding and smiling, and this time there was a glimpse of the private self again, a hint of pride and pleasure.
“Not Bar-Selehm silk?” I said.
She gave me an odd look, confused, then shook her head as if I had said something slightly ridiculous. I looked around the room.
“What is upstairs?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. Her eyes flashed to a heavy door, and when she realized I had seen, she added, “Locked. Always. We don’t go up there.”
“But there is a steam elevator,” said Sureyna, nodding across the room to where a pair of metal screens covered the front of a great platform hung with slack, heavy cable. A squat steam engine sat beside it.
“Not used,” said Bertha.
There was something in her face when she said it that seemed careful, noncommittal.
“Never?” I asked.
Again the half glance over her shoulder.
“They say not,” she remarked.
“But?” I prompted.
“The water gauge on the tank,” she said, leaning forward and lowering her booming voice a fraction. “Sometimes full, sometimes not. And the coal bin. Sometimes full, sometimes not.”
And then it—whatever it was—was done. Her manner became businesslike again.
“Now you should go,” she said.
“Thank you,” said Sureyna.
“Thank you,” I agreed. “You’ve been very helpful. Your Feldish is excellent.”
“Not much use here,” she said, unsmiling. “I went to school. Wanted to be a teacher. Wanted to talk to people. But now I am stuck here in a place where we can’t talk at all.”
As if to make the point, she opened the door to the main shed and the roar of the machines hit us like thunder, deafening and relentless.
“Would you like to?” I asked on impulse.
“What?”
“Would you like to teach?” I said. “I know some children who need a teacher.”
CHAPTER
23
I NEEDED TO GET a look at the upstairs of Horritch’s factory, but that would have to wait till dark, and until I had a better idea of where to look for the refugees, I could do nothing on that front. Given how heavily guarded Montresat’s munitions works were, I really had no choice as to where to go next, though I went reluctantly. Norton Richter made steel, and he believed Bar-Selehm should be more closely tied to the Grappoli. If anyone had motive for the theft of the machine gun plans, it was him. The fact that he repulsed me, that he frightened me, could not be allowed to derail my investigation.
Remember the mask. Be composed. Neutral.
I knew his factory complex, though I had never worked on its chimneys. It was only a few blocks from the Seventh Street weaving shed in the area of the city known unofficially as the Soot. Richter’s Steelworks was a large, modern facility with a number of distinct parts, all red brick, all efficient and smelling—in a grimy sort of way—of progress. I thought I knew what to expect, so the scene as I reached the factory gates came as a surprise. A stage of sorts had been erected, and the area thronged with white people waiting for something to begin.
I hesitated, feeling uneasy, out of place.
My first thought was that this was some kind of protest, but I was quickly disabused of that notion by the cheering and clapping as Richter himself took the stage. He was clad in his gray
and black almost-uniform, and flanked by similarly dressed impressive young men who stood like standard-bearers with a pair of flags, one for Bar-Selehm, one the red and silver lightning-fist of the Heritage party. Standing beside the stage in the same uniform, half master of ceremonies, half sergeant major, was Barrington-Smythe, and hanging at his waist in a purpose-built leather holster was a familiar little pickax.
I suppressed the urge to run.
Instead I lowered my head and pushed my hands into my pockets, skirting the edge of the crowd and trying to make myself inconspicuous. That at least was not hard. All eyes were focused on Richter, who had started to address the crowd like a general surveying his troops, speaking in sharp, clipped sentences punctuated with broad gestural flourishes like an actor in one of the larger theaters where you need to be big and loud to reach those in the back. I had never seen anything quite like it. There were torches set into the stage, and the foggy haze of the city seemed to glow about him like an aura, making him a figure of power and magic.
And there was the voice, ringing, precise, and sure of itself.
“Let me draw your attention to the marvelous edifice behind me. Ten years ago, the plant on this site produced three percent of the city’s steel. Three! Now we produce fifty-one percent! And the city’s overall consumption of steel has gone up by three hundred percent. A remarkable achievement made possible by what has come to be known as the Richter Conversion Process. Now, my competitors, such as they are, would have you believe that my contribution to the industry is all about quantity, but in this they are, as in many other things, mistaken. Yes, I produce a great volume of steel, more than they ever will in their wildest dreams, but how do I do that? What is the true heart of the Richter process? I will tell you. Because it isn’t about quantity. Quantity is a by-product of what we do here. The heart of the process is quality and, more particularly, purity.
“I see there are ladies in the audience, so I won’t bore you with a lot of confusing technicality, but the Richter process is about converting pig iron to steel. Now, don’t get me wrong, iron is a good material. It’s hard, and it—with luxorite—is the bedrock of Bar-Selehm. It’s what the city is built on, what it was built with. But iron is also full of impurities like carbon, and that makes it brittle. Give me a girder cast from pig iron, and I, if I find the right spot, could shatter it with a hammer.
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