A Novel

by A. J. Hartley

  Long ago.

  By the time I was done, the sun was rising over the bay, and Bar-Selehm’s ragged industrial skyline was momentarily beautiful again. In an hour, as the day warmed fast, the streets would throng with people, and the Martel Court would be teeming with the anxious and desperate, watched over by dragoons and suited men with sheaves of papers bound with ribbon. It was time to move, but not to Rahvey’s house. Not yet. I had said I would take the child today, but I had not said when, and there were other things I had to do.

  I bought a newspaper at the stand on Winckley Street, enjoying the disbelief in the girl’s eyes when I put a silver sixpence on the counter and asked if she could make change.

  “There’s nothing about the boy,” she said, watching the way my eyes raked the front page. “The one who fell.”

  I nodded but didn’t speak.

  I scaled the water tower on the corner of Old Town, using a combination of access ladder and downspout to reach the roof. Watched by a pair of iridescent bee-eaters, I read the newspapers cover to cover as the light hardened and the temperature rose.

  There was no news about the Beacon, although—along with a story about potential land deals between white investors and the unassimilated Mahweni, with the tribal protests that always happened as a result—it still dominated the headlines. The coverage had moved to rabble-rousing. Why had there been no arrests? If the Beacon was still in the city, why had it not been seen? If it wasn’t in the city, where was it and how had it been moved? The Parliament had planned a special session to debate the matter, but wasn’t that merely a distraction from the lack of progress?

  Colonel Archibald Mandel, Secretary of Trade, had made a speech requesting an immediate ban on the sale of luxorite, not just in the city, but nationally and internationally as well. This measure would prevent the Beacon from being broken up and entering the legitimate market. Those whose livelihood depended on the trade had responded angrily, saying that the government should be looking more closely at some of those foreign powers who had no luxorite of their own, particularly the Grappoli.

  It was always the Grappoli, our neighbors to the northwest, whose troops, if the papers were to be believed, had been poised to cross vast tracts of bush to lay their hands on Bar-Selehm for close to a hundred years.

  The family of Mr. Ansveld, the luxorite trader who had been found dead, issued a statement saying that they had no knowledge of why the “beloved family man” would have taken his own life, and they requested that journalists leave them to their grief in private. A neighbor reported Mr. Ansveld’s son saying that had the conditions not made the suicide verdict undeniable, he would not have believed it.

  I scowled and rubbed the back of my neck, which had started to burn, then flipped through the large tissuelike pages until I found the continuation of the story.

  “Mr. Ansveld’s body,” I read,

  was found at 8:47 on the morning of the sixteenth by the building’s custodian in the company of Messrs. Jacoby Smithe (Under Secretary of Trade) and Hanson Boothes (of the Luxorite Commission), who were scheduled to meet with Mr. Ansveld that morning. The fourth-story room—which is windowless—was locked and bolted from the inside, and tools had to be brought up from stores to effect entry. Mr. Ansveld appeared to have cut his own throat with a razor that was found at the scene.

  I rubbed the back of my neck again, but did not move into the shade of the hatch. I combed through the rest of the paper, scanning the pages until I found a grainy halftone picture: a group of stuffy-looking white men in high-collared shirts and sober suits facing unsmilingly forward. The caption called them the Shadow Committee of Trade and Industry. Second and third from the left were two familiar faces, considerably younger than the others, one of them badly scarred: Mr. Josiah Willinghouse and Mr. Stefan Von Strahden.

  Shadow Committee.

  So my would-be employer had told a half truth. He was who he said he was, but he did not, strictly speaking, work for the government. He was a member of the opposition, the party not currently in power. Yes, he would work on bipartisan projects and initiatives with the current administration, but he was not in a position to make law, determine funding for state projects, or any of the other prerogatives of the ruling party.

  A slip of the tongue? I wondered. A minor embroidery designed to impress? Or a calculated misdirection?

  If it was the latter, it had been a foolish one if it could be dashed by reading a newspaper. Still, it gave me pause, and I felt a tiny disappointment that the circles in which I was moving—albeit secretly—were not quite so elevated as I had thought. It was, I knew, a stupid response, perhaps even a dangerous one, and I found myself thinking about that phrase of his about the troubling occurrences that might overwhelm us all.

  Whatever was going on, it was bigger than the death of a Lani boy, or even that of a luxorite merchant.

  * * *

  THE LEADER OF THE Westside boys was called Deveril, a man in his midtwenties with a taste for slim, dusty suits; gold teeth; and a battered top hat with a crow’s feather stuck rakishly into the band. His parentage was mixed, largely Lani, but his eyes were the deep, dark brown of the Mahweni, and his hair tended to twist and curl. He wore it in chaotic braids that spilled from under his top hat—half undertaker, half pirate.

  He gave me an alarming smile and waved me into his “office,” away from the prying eyes of the boys heading out for their day’s work. The Westside gang was based in a half-collapsed warehouse, and the standing of the members could be read by how close their quarters were to being structurally intact. Deveril’s office doubled as his bedroom, the only room there that had four walls and a ceiling.

  He sat in a rickety chair tipped so far back, it seemed about to go over, his feet in hobnailed boots up on a stained desk scattered with paper. “You wannna know about Berrit, eh?” he said musingly. “Poor little bugger. Should never have traded him.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Business,” he said. “That’s how it goes sometimes.”

  “Morlak requested him specifically?”

  “Berrit? Nah,” he sneered, as if the question were idiotic. “To tell you the truth, I was offloading him. The boy was useless for anything but street sweeping and shoe shining, and even, then he was as like to cost me for getting bootblack all over the punters’ trousers.”

  “So Morlak didn’t request him?”

  “Didn’t know he existed till I put the boy in front of him.”

  “Did he test him, watch him work?”

  “Nah,” said Deveril, tipping his top hat forward so that the brim shaded his eyes. “Why do you want to know? He was only with Seventh Street ten minutes. You can’t have known him.”

  “He was going to be my apprentice,” I said.

  He pointed at me, nodding solemnly, as if this explained everything.

  “Was he sad to go?” I asked.

  “Not so far as you could tell,” said Deveril. “Kept himself to himself, you know? Didn’t really, as it were, socialize with the rest of the chaps. But no, didn’t seem sad.”

  “How long had he been here?”

  “Eight months. Maybe nine.”

  “And he came straight from the Drowning?”

  “That’s right. His grandmother set it up when his mother died. Tough old bird, she was. Wanted a five-shilling finder’s fee for bringing him, if you can believe that. Never even looked at him while she haggled. I gave her two, and she left without another word to him. Just walked out and never looked back.” He gave a hard, knowing smile. “No one much cared about Berrit,” he said. “Till you. What’s that all about?”

  “Was anyone else involved in the Morlak trade?” I asked, ignoring his question.

  “Like who?”

  I shrugged. “Berrit told people he thought he was moving up.”

  Deveril gave me a shrewd look. “And you reckon that, Mr. Morlak not being everyone’s cup of tea, there must have been someone else involved to make little Berrit feel
good about the move. Not that I know of, no. Though he said he had friends in high places.”

  “When did he say that?”

  “Last time I saw him. After Morlak had agreed to the trade, Berrit came back for his few bits and bobs. I had a little sit-down with him, make sure he was all right, you know?”

  “And he was?”

  “Better than,” said Deveril. “Quite content, flashing around his advance wages.”

  “Advance wages?” I parroted. That did not sound like Morlak at all.

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Deveril. “That’s when he said it. I asked him where that had come from, and he gave me this look. Sort of sly, pleased with himself, you know? And he said, ‘Friends in high places, Mr. Deveril.’ Always very respectful was young Berrit. I appreciated that.”

  “Did his advance wages include this?” I asked, producing the sun-disk pendant.

  Deveril peered at it and grinned. “Nah,” he said. “Had that when he first came. It was his mother’s, he said. Only time I saw him really angry—and I mean serious, animal angry—was when one of the bigger kids took it from him. Boy went off like a cannon. They left him alone after that, I can tell you.”

  “And that’s all he said. ‘Friends in high places’?”

  “Not a word more, like it was his little secret,” said Deveril. “Like he wanted me to know he was moving up, even if he couldn’t say how. Ironical, really, ain’t it?” he added.

  “What is?”

  “Well, he did go up in the world, didn’t he?” said Deveril with a bleak smile. “Just came down again right quick.”

  For a second I just looked at him, then managed to say, “You have his grandmother’s name written down somewhere?”

  “Written down?” he scoffed. “Nah. Writing is for the slow and clumsy. Me, I like to stay agile.”

  “Meaning you can’t read,” I said.

  He grinned. “Writing makes people sloppy,” he said. “Me, I keep all I need up here.” He tapped the side of his jaunty top hat.

  “Including the name of Berrit’s grandmother?” I prompted.

  “Minel,” he said proudly. “Minel Samar. Didn’t think I’d know that, did ya?”

  * * *

  AS I MADE MY way to the Drowning, I considered what I would say to Florihn and Rahvey. I could not take the child now. That was clear, blood oath or no blood oath. Things had changed in ways I could not have foreseen, and to take the baby would only put it in grave danger.

  Surely they will see that?

  I wasn’t so sure, and the prospect of another confrontation with Florihn and the Lani world she stood for drained all conviction from me. But there was something else I had to do in the Drowning, and I would tackle that first.

  Minel Samar was one of those Lani women who was probably only about sixty but looked at least a hundred. She was so hunched over that her toothless, wrinkled face was below her shoulders, but Deveril’s assessment of her as a tough old bird was absolutely right. She looked like one of the ancient, scrawny chickens she was feeding with refuse as I arrived, bobbing around the fenceless yard, head twitching on her fleshless neck. I told her who I was and expressed my condolences for the loss of her grandson, but she kept on clucking at the chickens, scattering kernels of grain from the top of her viselike fist so that I began to wonder if she was deaf.

  I tried to move into her field of vision, but she turned abruptly. I put a hand on her shoulder and she spun round, not with surprise, but with a baleful stare that made me take a step back, even though she was half my height.

  “What?” she snapped. “You got money for me? Whatever Berrit earned is rightly mine now.”

  “No,” I said, taken aback. My hand was in my pocket, fingers closed around the sun-disk pendant, but something stopped me from producing it. “I’m just trying to find out more about—”

  “I’ve got nothing to say,” she spat. Her dialect was thick and old-fashioned even for the Drowning. “Useless boy. Always was. Even dead, he’s nothing but trouble.”

  “Trouble?” I said, doing my best to ignore the outrage I felt swelling inside me. “What kind of trouble?”

  “People like you,” she said, prodding me hard in the chest with a bony finger. “Coming around here, asking questions. Not the first, you know. Bothering me.”

  “Someone else came to talk to you about Berrit?” I asked. “Who?”

  “The chalker with the watch,” she said. “Gave me a lousy penny.”

  “For what?”

  “Nothing. Didn’t tell him anything, did I?”

  “What was his name?”

  “Never said. Fancy, though. Old feller. Suit. Gold watch. Came in a rickshaw till they ran out of road. Got his shoes all muddy coming down here, I can tell you.” She grinned malevolently, and I had to fight an impulse to get away from her. She was poisonous.

  If her visitor had come by rickshaw, I might be able to find whoever brought him.

  “What time did he come?” I asked.

  “Time? What’s it worth to you?”

  I fiddled with my purse and produced a sixpence, watching as her eyes got greedy. I held it up, hand closed tight around it. “When?”

  “Afternoon,” she said, giving it up as if it pained her to part with something she had not yet been paid for.

  “When?” I pressed.

  She shrugged. “An hour before sundown,” she said, palm out for the coin. I gave it to her, catching myself only when she had snatched it away.

  “Yesterday?” I said.

  “No,” she said, her wicked grin returning, her hand reaching out for more money.

  I sighed. “What day, then?” I demanded, offering her a single penny.

  “Days are bigger than hours,” the old woman returned. “You should pay more for them.”

  I checked my purse reluctantly and produced another sixpence. “That’s all I can spare,” I said.

  She snatched it before I could change my mind.

  “Plainsday,” she said, already returning to her chickens.

  Plainsday?

  But that was three days ago. The day before Berrit died.

  I looked up thoughtfully, my eyes drifting over the tent peaks and tar-papered hut roofs, and I saw up on the rise toward the old monkey temple a young black man with a spear, wearing the plain robes of the Unassimilated Tribes. He was an unusual sight in the Drowning, and my eyes lingered on him.

  “He’s been around here too,” said Berrit’s grandmother, spitting another racial slur. “Ought to be a law.”

  * * *

  ANGER AT BERRIT’S GRANDMOTHER drove me through the shanty to Rahvey’s hut. There was no sign of Sinchon, but then, there almost never was. I knocked once and stepped in, finding Florihn sitting by Rahvey’s bedside, the infant slumbering on my sister’s breast.

  They were surprised to see me. I saw it in their faces. They had talked about me, how I would let them down, break my word, violate the heart of the Lani way. All my reasoned arguments fell away in the need to prove them wrong.

  It was the wrong time. The worst time. But I would no longer be judged by these people. I would leave the Drowning with Rahvey’s baby and figure out the rest later.

  “Is she ready?” I asked.

  The two women exchanged looks; then Florihn began fussing with towels and a basket.

  “I’ll bring her back when it’s time for you to feed her,” I said to Rahvey. My face was set, but a part of me desperately wanted her to say she’d changed her mind, that she would keep the baby, raise it, love it.…

  “If you don’t, Anglet,” she said, “I shan’t ask what happened.”

  I stared at her, and I suppose something of my horror and revulsion showed in my face.

  “What?” she said. “Florihn is right. Not everything in life is the way you’d like it to be. Sometimes it’s best to accept that and move on.”

  “Vestris went to Papa’s grave,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I said it except as a way of stabbing at Rah
vey, and I immediately wished I hadn’t.

  “When?”

  “Before I did,” I said. “She left flowers there.”

  Rahvey’s face closed up.

  “It was probably before she got Florihn’s message about the baby,” I said, trying to cover the cruelty of what I had done.

  Rahvey nodded but said, “She still hasn’t been, but then, it really was you two who were Papa’s girls.”

  I gazed at her, baffled and upset, then looked away. “I didn’t mean to suggest she cared more about the grave than about visiting you,” I said.

  “No?” she said. “Even if it’s true?”

  I couldn’t answer that, so I looked back at her and responded to her previous remark instead. “Papa loved you, Rahvey. No less than he loved me or Vestris.”

  She nodded a little too fast, smiling tightly and not meeting my gaze. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. She passed me the baby, then turned away so I could not read her face as I settled the child into the basket of towels.

  “What is her name?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “The baby. What do you call her?”

  Rahvey shrugged. “We only thought about boys’ names,” she said. “Call her whatever you like.”

  I picked up the basket. As I did so, the baby stirred, jaws flexing and closing in a yawn. I gazed at her, then looked up, momentarily still.

  I felt the eyes of the world as a presence like the rumble of the ocean or the still, insect-singing heat of the savannah. Outside, the Drowning and Bar-Selehm in general were crouched, waiting.

  Fourth daughter. Doubly cursed. The child that should not be.

  I tried to carry the basket as if it were lighter than it was, as if it held nothing of value. I gave my sister one last look, but Rahvey had closed her eyes.

  “Tell no one where she is,” I said.

  I opened the door and stepped out into the world.