CHAPTER
5
I FLED. BREATHLESS AND half-blind with tears, I dashed out of the alley—across Bridge Street and down the back of the Weavers Arms—torn between the terror that Morlak might be coming after me and the terror that he was already dead.
I blundered into the nearest alley. Not even an alley, really, more a ginnel, a mere crack between the backs of buildings, barely wide enough to turn in. I staggered into its darkest recess, mad with fear and fury, and stopped, hands shaking, fighting down the urge to vomit.
For a horrible, desperate second, I considered returning to the shed and cutting his throat where he lay. Just for a moment. I saw it through a red mist in my head, and it made a terrible sense, and not just for what he had tried to do. Morlak was a brute, a terror to the “apprentices” in his charge, and little better than a slave holder.
The world would not mourn him.
But to return, to slit him open in cold blood, to drain the life from him, that was beyond me.
For now, I thought bleakly.
Who knew what horrors I would become capable of now that life as I had known it had ended? I had no work, no means to feed myself or the child I had stupidly promised to care for, and if Morlak survived, I would not be safe in Bar-Selehm. Ever. He had promised to kill me, and in such matters, the gang leader was a man of his word.
* * *
I HAD NOWHERE TO go, no one to talk to, so I stayed behind the rubbish bins in the alley, trying to shut the terror and shock inside the iron-braced doors of my heart. Even alone, I could not give way to grief or fear. If I did, I might never get out from under them.
I was hungry, and it was getting cold. It was these that finally drove me out into the evening. I was back at the cement works, where I had begun the day so very long ago. A corner of the alley by the factory was still wet where it had been hosed down, but there was otherwise no sign that a boy had died there. Life had moved on, and insofar as the world had known Berrit existed, it had already forgotten him.
As it will forget me if Morlak finds me. As it forgot Papa.
The iron-braced doors creaked at the thought, but they held, and when I opened my eyes again, feeling my breathing steady and my muscles relax, I knew I had to do something, if only to ease the turmoil in my head.
I studied the wall at the base of the chimney, tied back my hair, then began to climb. There was a ledge ten feet below the cap and several bricks wide. I remembered sitting on it to eat my lunch the last time I had worked this chimney. It circled the stack and jutted out far enough that someone falling from there would hit nothing but the ground 150 feet below. With nerve and poise, it was walkable.
I kept my eyes open for Morlak’s men, but there was little danger of me being seen up here at this time. Even so, I had to go slowly. My hands were unsteady, and I paused midway up to wipe a fleck of blood from my left wrist.
Morlak’s? Or mine from where Florihn slashed my cheeks?
I squeezed my eyes shut to push the memories away, and began to climb again in earnest. I was losing light.
Hoisting myself carefully off the ladder, I moved onto the ledge. Carefully but not slowly. There was no advantage in being in a dangerous situation longer than you needed to be, and caution itself can be dangerous. For a moment, I got one of those rare vistas on the city as the smog shifted and the dying light of the sun picked out the towers, minarets, and spires in amber and gold.
There was no clue that Berrit had been here, no sign of a struggle, though I didn’t know what that would look like, and suddenly coming up here looked like a waste of time, a ruse to get my mind off other things.
If I were him, if I were a boy apprentice on his first day, what would I have done? Why would I have climbed up here before my tutor arrived?
To prove he wasn’t afraid? To make the initial ascent alone so he wouldn’t be embarrassed by how slow and scared he was?
Or because someone told him to?
But if he were meeting someone on the chimney, he’d see them as soon as he came up. Anyone planning to attack him—for whatever reason—would want the element of surprise up here, where one false move meant death.
So if you were his would-be killer, how would you give yourself an edge?
The side of the chimney with the ladder faced the city. The other side faced the river. Even without the usual smoky haze, anyone waiting around that side would be invisible from here, and almost certainly invisible from below. I put my back to the slow brick round of the chimney barrel and inched my way around the ledge.
At first I saw nothing. But at the halfway point, I paused and squatted. There were two distinct indentations in the mortar between the bricks of the ledge, about a foot and a half apart. They were new, unweathered, and sootless.
Hook marks.
* * *
THE POLICE STATION ON Mount Street was a blank-faced structure of pale stone steps and columns, undecorated but somehow outsized. It loomed out of the gathering evening breathing power and stability. Around it, the flying foxes were leaving their roosts in its eaves, and the lamplighters were rigging their ladders.
For a long moment, I sat on the steps of a bank across the street, looking at it. Reporting Morlak would achieve nothing other than getting me arrested for assault or murder, but that was not why I was there. I got to my feet, crossed the street between a pair of horse-drawn cabs, and ascended the long, tall steps to the entrance.
I had expected the lobby to be a bustle of noisy activity, but it was silent, and my feet echoed on the tiled floor of a vast, open chamber with a high counter at the far end. I’m taller than most girls, but I still had to look up to speak to the desk sergeant, though I refused to use the wooden step stool. I took a long steadying breath and tried to find the words.
“Can I help you?” he began, looking up from his evening paper and mug of tea, his smile curdling slightly when he saw me.
“The steeplejack case,” I blurted. My heart was beating fast and my mouth was dry. “I want to talk to someone. An officer working the steeplejack case.”
“Steeplejack case?” he said. “What steeplejack would that be?”
“The boy,” I said. “Fell from a chimney.” I was gripping the edge of the wooden counter with both hands, knuckles whitening.
“Oh, that,” he said, shaking off his momentary confusion. “There’s no case. He fell.”
“He didn’t,” I cut in. “I told the … the officer at the scene. He was stabbed.”
He frowned. “Saw it, did you?”
“I saw the wound,” I said.
“So someone killed him, then hauled his body all the way up one of those chimneys just to throw him off again?”
“No,” I said. “They killed him up there. They waited for him on a ledge below the cap. They used a body harness or rubble skip hooked to the edge. Then they attacked him from behind.”
The policeman was unmoved. “All that to kill a street kid?” he said.
“He was a steeplejack,” I said, defiance bristling. The muscles of my forearms were tight with the pressure of my grip on the counter.
“So?” he said. “Not exactly a rare commodity in Bar-Selehm, are they?” He looked me over pointedly.
I fought back the urge to run. I reached across his desk and tapped the headline of the newspaper he was reading. It blared, BEACON THEFT.
A change came over him then. He put down the mug he had been cradling, and his eyes narrowed. “You know something about the Beacon?” he demanded.
“No,” I said. “But whoever took it would need a skilled climber.”
He was alert now, his eyes fixed on me as one hand groped for a pencil. “What’s your full name?” he began, but I had said all I meant to. “Miss!” he called after me as I crossed the empty vestibule and pushed through the revolving door into the street.
“Miss!”
CHAPTER
6
THE MAHWENI GIRL WITH the tied-back hair who worked the newspaper stand w
as 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.
A Novel Page 5
