I smiled but pushed the conversation forward. “Sohwetti does not live in a beehive hut?” I said.
Mnenga shook his head. “He has a big house in the city. His friends are white people. Government people. Rich people. He meets with our council, but he is not one of us. Not anymore. He likes his new life. I think that if he was paid enough, he would sell away all our homeland. And for a handful of nails and hinges and belt buckles, maybe a few guns and some money, my people will say yes. And you know what? I cannot blame them. We are tired of being poor.”
His smile was gone now, but he looked more sad than angry, lost, so that I was suddenly sorry for him and, without thinking, took his hand.
He smiled with surprise and gratitude but said nothing.
I don’t know how long we would have sat there in silence, as I felt the polished smoothness of his fingers in mine, but at that moment, the satchel at my feet moved.
Mnenga leapt to his feet, startled, and his right hand reached for the spear he had laid on the ground. He raised the weapon to shoulder height as a mewing sound came from the basket.
Horrified, I seized the spear point, and the young man’s brow creased.
“Cat?” he said.
“Yes,” I answered, my heart beating fast. “A kitten.”
“I thought snake,” he said, lowering the spear. “Can I see?”
I shook my head, but as I did so, the baby began to cry.
Mnenga’s eyes widened. “Not cat,” he said.
I looked down, ashamed of the stupid lie. “Not cat,” I admitted, stricken once more by a sense of failure.
“Boy or girl?” said Mnenga.
“Girl,” I said miserably.
“She is yours?”
“No,” I replied, adding a little desperately, “a friend’s. But no one can know.”
“I see,” said Mnenga, nodding.
“I cannot feed her,” I said. “I have to wait for her mother.”
He looked at me, and his smile was grim, understanding, but when he reached for the basket, probing with one finger as if he was going to give it to the child to suck, I felt a sudden panic and flinched, half reaching to stop him.
He froze, looking at me, then withdrew his hand, nodding again. “I should go,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “It’s just…” But I could not explain because I did not understand myself. Instead I just said, “Please tell no one.”
He inclined his head seriously, then stood up, but he did not walk away. “You will be here again? Tomorrow, perhaps?”
“I … I don’t know,” I said, my former anxieties crouching hyena-like in the dark places of my head. “I suppose. I have to bring the child back to be fed.”
He seemed to sense my mood, and his smile was tempered with something like concern.
“Bye,” I said before he could add anything that might embarrass me further.
He began his bow, and I turned away. When I looked round again, he was gone.
* * *
I PICKED MY WAY to the city gates, endured the contempt of the guards when they saw the sleeping bundle in my satchel, and made my way toward Old Town, glad of the firm sidewalk and gas lamps after the darkness and rutted tracks of the Drowning. I could smell the ocean now, a clear, salt tang unlike the stagnant sourness of the river edge near Rahvey’s hut. Down by the water a few blocks away stood the pillar surmounted by the bronze of Captain Franzen. Tanish would be arriving to start work within the hour. I needed to see someone who would smile at me, someone who would tell me that taking Rahvey’s child had been the right thing to do.
Because it didn’t feel like the right thing. It felt stupid. I felt stupid, and the fact that I was responding to the Lani way that was at least as stupid, maybe more so, didn’t help at all. So I walked with the sleeping child slung against my chest, eyes on the ground, lost in misery and humiliation, and I didn’t see Morlak in the alley. I saw nothing till he lunged out at me, knife in one hand, the other grasping my hair, and everything went out of my head save one shrill, terrified thought:
The baby. Oh gods, the baby.
CHAPTER
14
I COULD NOT FIGHT back. My right arm flung out for balance as he pulled me into the alley, while my left clamped protectively over the satchel. He assumed I was going for a weapon—the dog I had stabbed him with before—and his knife went to my throat. I splayed my fingers in surrender and gave in as he yanked my hair, spun me around, and thrust me up against the wall.
My head hit the brick, but the pain was nothing to the panic, the dread.
Not the baby, I thought again. Gods, not the baby.
The thought shrieked through my raging, thumping heart, my shallow, ragged breathing.
“Put the bag down,” he snarled into my ear. He smelled of stale sweat and madness that had once been hate. “Came to see the boy, huh, little Anglet? So predictable.”
I hesitated and he pressed the knife once more, so that I craned my neck up like a giraffe. Then, very carefully, I began to lift the satchel strap over my head with my left hand. I could feel the weight of the baby within, could almost hear her breathing, and in my mind, I saw what would happen next: The bag would reach the pavement and, assuming my tools were in it, he would kick it away.…
I froze, overcome with a new and desperate horror.
“I said, put it down!” he spat, teeth bared.
I extended my arm as far as I could and slowly, carefully set the satchel on the ground, shrinking away from it as best I could inside his savage grip. His breath was sour, and his lank, greasy hair trailed into my face.
“Take whatever you want!” I gasped.
“All in good time,” he muttered, and his grin was dirty, cruel.
He was going to kill me. I knew it as sure as I knew the sun would rise. He would do what he wanted with me, and then he would cut my throat. Nothing else was worth the risk.
“Just don’t touch the bag,” I said. It wasn’t really a plea, and it certainly wasn’t a trick. It just came out.
His brow furrowed. Skeptical ideas chased themselves through his eyes, which flashed momentarily to the discarded satchel. He kneed me hard in the stomach, and I doubled over, wheezing.
“How stupid do you think I am?” he rasped. “We will not be making any deals. There is nothing you have that I can’t take for myself, and you have nothing worth having anyway. You have nothing, you are nothing, and that is what I’m going to teach you before you die.”
I kept very still. His hand was not on my mouth, but if I cried out for help, he would stab me where I stood, and there was no one to hear anyway—not here, not now.
And then, with the softest of sounds, and just as it had done when I was sitting by the fire with the Mahweni boy, the satchel moved.
If he had been looking directly at it, he might have been less surprised, but he caught the shifting of the fabric out of the corner of his eye and jumped. For the briefest of seconds, his knife hand was forgotten. I was forgotten.
I was still half doubled over, my head level with his stomach, with the bandaged hole in his side. I butted the spot hard as I could and he staggered back in pain, releasing my hand. I stepped between him and the satchel and, as he raised his hands to grapple, went low. I kicked him in the groin, then scythed at his left leg, catching him hard on the knee.
He crumpled, but I had bought myself only a few seconds. He was bigger than me, stronger. Stay a moment longer, and he would kill me. There would be no talk. Just the blade of his knife.
I had one advantage, and that was speed. I stooped to the satchel, snatched it up, and was running before I had it slung safely over my head.
Astonishingly, the baby never truly woke. I ran, taking a thoughtlessly direct route along the dirty side streets between Pancaris and the north wall to Morgessa and eventually out through the West Gate to the Drowning, and as the wind turned, I caught the familiar stench of filth and refuse on the air. Watching me as I approached the edg
e of the shanty was a huddle of heavyset baboons, so I doubled my pace and arrived at Rahvey’s hut breathless and trembling. Baboons are strong, fearless creatures with almost human cleverness, and they bite. I had always been more comfortable in the city than in the wilder places at its edges, but now it seemed that nowhere was safe.
My sister answered my knock with drowsy irritation, anxiously glancing back to where her husband lay snoring. She took the child from me without a word, seeming not to notice my mood and closing the door in my face.
I looked around for the baboons and then curled up on the porch. I did not, could not, sleep.
* * *
I WAS UP AT first light for my Kathahry exercises as soon as I had washed and changed, Rahvey watching, bleary eyed, as the child nursed.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her face skeptical, even contemptuous. “Not the exercises. Your life. Job. Are you still working for Morlak?”
I hesitated. “No,” I said. “I have a new position. I was going to talk to you about it. I was wondering…”
I faltered, and she framed a brittle smile.
“If I could keep the baby here,” she said.
“Well, yes,” I said. “Just for today. I can pay.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How much?”
Reluctantly, I showed her the last of Vestris’s silver coins. It was a week’s wages for anyone in the Drowning.
Rahvey took it, sensing what it cost me to give it up. “Trying to make a good impression?” she said, and this time the smile was less bitter, more knowing. “At work, I mean. Yes, all right. But don’t tell Sinchon, and be sure to get back here tomorrow.”
“Yes,” I said. “Thanks.”
“This changes nothing,” she said, in case I might get ideas. “You took the oath. The child is still your responsibility.”
“I know.”
She considered the baby at her breast, and her smile—a tiny pocket of joy glimpsed through the crack in a wall—betrayed her. She looked at me and closed the crack, but at the same moment, the door of the hut juddered open and Jadary, her youngest, shuffled out and gave me a sleepy wave. She drifted to her mother’s side, all eyes on the baby.
“You can help me with her today,” said Rahvey.
“We’re keeping her?” exclaimed the girl, her face lighting up.
“Just today,” said Rahvey sternly.
The girl crumpled but recovered quickly. “I’ll wash my hands,” she said, knowing that completing this tedious duty would get her to the baby faster.
Rahvey watched her go and the crack reopened, though this time the joy was mixed with sadness and regret, so that for a moment, and for the first time in many years, I almost threw my arms around her. She was afraid of Florihn and did not know how to be anything other than a Lani of the Drowning, but giving up the child was, I realized with shock, tearing her quietly apart.
She caught me looking and fought to get her face under control. When she spoke, it was to change the subject, and her voice had to shrug off a tremor. “You seem … different,” she said. “These last two days. Worried, but more confident. Why? What kind of work are you doing?” When I didn’t answer right away, she considered the coin and said, “How can you afford to give me this?”
“Let’s just say I have friends in high places,” I said.
I was almost out of the Drowning when it struck me that Berrit had used the exact same phrase mere hours before he died.
CHAPTER
15
I BOUGHT A PAPER from the Mahweni girl because I could, and then made my way to Crommerty Street, where the luxorite shops had not yet opened for the day. There was no sign of Billy, but that didn’t matter. I walked past Ansveld’s place twice, moving quickly, as if intent on getting somewhere else, not pausing to look into the barred windows. I noted the position of number 23, the Macinnes place, then crossed the street, took a left at the corner of Sufferance Avenue, and looked for a way down the backs of the shops.
The Macinnes store was across the street from Ansveld’s. If a Lani boy had visited the dead trader, there was a good chance someone inside would have seen him.
The buildings formed an imposing terrace, all three-story structures of rich sandstone. They had gated backyards—locked—with outhouses and storage sheds, all surrounded by high walls topped with wrought iron spikes, fair deterrents against casual thieving but no obstacle to serious burglars.
Or steeplejacks.
I chose a point in the shade of a sisal currant tree, startling a pink roller from its perch, and climbed up, over, and in.
One flight of stone steps went up to the back door of the shop and main residence while another led down to the servants’ quarters below ground level. There was a hand pump and trough beside the outhouse, but neither looked well used.
Indoor plumbing, then.
That meant I couldn’t count on Billy’s lady friend coming outside anytime soon. I tried to remember what he had told me about her and realized I had forgotten the woman’s name. She was a scullery maid, the lowest of the household servants, and would be responsible for unskilled chores: fetching and carrying, scrubbing floors and washing dishes, boiling water, disposing of kitchen refuse. That would have to be my way in. I steeled myself to talk, even to act, then descended the steps and rapped on the door.
It was opened by a harried-looking white woman in her forties, too old and plump to be Billy the pickpocket’s belle.
“Yes?” she said, looking past me to the locked gate.
“I was wondering if I could speak to whoever is responsible for your trash collection,” I said.
“That would be the butler, but he doesn’t talk to tradespeople without an appointment,” said the woman. She had opened the door only wide enough to squeeze her florid face through it, and she was already starting to close it again.
“Actually, I would prefer to speak to the person who actually handles the refuse,” I said, improvising. “We have a new line of pails and crates specifically for trash that are lighter and stronger than what most people have access to.”
“I don’t think we’re interested,” said the woman I took to be the housekeeper.
“Enables the carrying of twice as much in considerably fewer trips,” I pressed, wondering where this newfound confidence came from. “Our clients say the kitchen operates far more efficiently for their use.”
The closing door hesitated. “Wait here,” said the woman.
The door closed. Somewhere inside, pots clanged. I heard voices, distant and muffled, one of them low and masculine. There was another silence, and then the door flew open.
It wasn’t the housekeeper or the scullery maid. It was a man in formal black and white, and his face was flushed with an anger that made his eyes flash. “How did you get in here?” he demanded.
“The gate was unlocked,” I lied, taking a step backwards.
“No, it wasn’t,” he shot back. “Reporters!”
“Not a reporter, sir,” I said, fighting the urge to run, all my usual diffidence returning like a blanket thrown over my head. He was a big man, and for all his civilized attire, he looked capable of taking a swing at me. “I’m a consultant working with a governmental office—”
“Ha!” he sneered. “Badge? Warrant?”
“I don’t carry any formal identification—” I began.
“I’ll bet you don’t, you Lani whore,” he said, taking another step toward me. “Now, get out of here before you feel the back of my hand and I have you arrested for trespass.”
I did not need telling twice.
* * *
“I HAVE NO AUTHORITY!” I protested. “I’m not police. I’m not army or government. I’m not even a licensed private investigator. No one will talk to me!”
Driven by frustrated humiliation, I had taken a cab all the way to Willinghouse’s town house, insisting that I be reimbursed for the expense the moment I arrived. This was my one day away from the baby. I had to achieve something with the time
I had bought.
“Pretending to be a salesman?” Willinghouse shot back, his scar reddening. “You are supposed to be using your abilities to investigate. No one hired you because of your people skills. I must say that I had hoped you would have made more progress by now. Now, I have to get to Parliament, so if you don’t mind—”
“I do mind!” I exclaimed, surprising us both. I stood in front of him, face hot, fists clenched, but when he gave me a long, thoughtful look, I managed to calm down enough to say what I meant. “I can’t do what you want me to without earning people’s trust. The police can demand that people tell what they know. I can’t.”
“But that is the point!” Willinghouse shot back, returning his gaze from the cuff link he was trying to fasten. “You are supposed to use unofficial channels. I can combine those with the official channels in order to get to the truth.”
“Then I need to partner with the police.”
“Unacceptable.”
“Then how can I do my job?”
“The police will not share information with a private investigator,” said Willinghouse.
“So they can tell you and you can tell me.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me,” I said, snatching his shirtsleeve and deftly fitting the cuff link in place. Morlak wore cuff links; he thought they made him look sophisticated.
Now Willinghouse gave me a fierce look, but when I held his gaze, he sighed and glanced away. When he turned back to me, it was with eyes and voice lowered.
“I am not entirely sure that the police can be trusted,” he said. “That is why I need someone to investigate independently.”
I hesitated, taken aback. “I don’t know that I can,” I said, mentally sidestepping the implications of what he had just told me. “Can you at least protect me if I am arrested?”
“Probably,” he replied.
“Probably?”
“I don’t suppose we’ll know for sure till we have to try,” he said.
“Not good enough,” I said.
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