A Novel

by A. J. Hartley

  The morning breeze chilled my tear-streaked face, but no one pointed or shouted or seemed to see me at all, in spite of the guilt and failure, the terrible, exquisite sadness that seemed to burn in my heart like the lost Beacon.

  It was the only choice, I told myself over and over as I walked, but though I believed it, the mantra did not help at all.

  * * *

  I STUDIED THE NEWSPAPER cutting I had recovered from Billy’s body. It was stained with his blood, but still legible. The headline read, ICONIC RED FORT TOWER TO COME DOWN BEFORE HANDOFF. It meant nothing to me. I felt weary in ways that went far beyond my lack of sleep and food.

  For the first time in months, I thought of going out to that bit of the Drowning where Papa had lived, as if there was a chance that he might be there, sitting on the porch, watching the sunrise. I could tell him about Kalla, about my doomed investigation, and it would all be better for saying it. I thought of how his face would light up when he saw me, and the pain was suddenly as sharp, as paralyzing as the day he died.

  But Papa was gone and I was alone. I didn’t know what I was doing. A man had died because of me. That seemed unavoidable. Whether I had made any kind of progress, what he might have told me, and if I was any closer to bringing justice or clarity to what was going on in Bar-Selehm, I had no idea.

  * * *

  “WHAT DO YOU KNOW about the Old Red Fort?” I asked the newspaper girl on the corner of Winckley Street.

  She looked amazed to see me. “You’re famous, you are,” she said. There was a wariness in her face I hadn’t seen before. “Made the paper and everything,” said the Mahweni girl. “And here you are, walking around, big as life.”

  “What makes you think that’s me?” I said, bluffing badly. “There’s no picture.”

  “‘Former Lani steeplejack of marriageable age, Anglet Sutonga—’” she read aloud.

  “Yes, all right,” I interrupted. “It’s me. But if you read the whole thing, you’ll see I wasn’t charged. The police don’t think I stole anything.”

  The girl tipped her head on one side, and her eyes narrowed. “Stole?” the girl said.

  “At the opera house,” I replied.

  She hesitated, watching me, her eyes narrow. “You don’t know, do you?” she said.

  “Don’t know what?”

  She flipped over the paper and pushed it across her crate toward me. “You’re wanted for murder,” she said.

  I stared, first at the photograph of Billy Jennings’s lifeless face, then back at her. My mouth moved, but nothing came out.

  “Practically the only headline in the paper that doesn’t include the words ‘Beacon,’ ‘Grappoli,’ or ‘Protest,’” she mused.

  I continued to gape, and for a moment the world swam so that I took hold of the edge of her crate to steady myself.

  She considered me and came to a decision. “You know the alley that connects the back of the Hunter’s Arms to Smithy Row?”

  I nodded, mute.

  “There’s a storage shed behind the bins. Meet me there in twenty minutes. And stay out of sight.”

  * * *

  I WALKED, UNSEEING, STARING straight ahead, moving as if in a dream. The shock muted everything but my own horrified thoughts. I pieced it together: the cop who had seen me near the Mahweni rally; Billy’s girlfriend, Bessie, who would have been interviewed as soon as they realized who he was, and who would have mentioned my visit to Macinnes’s shop.

  Gods, Bessie.

  I felt the two purses in my pocket. Somehow I would have to get them to her. The emptiness of the gesture, the stupid pointlessness of trying to make right what I had done, kicked in my chest like an orlek.

  The alley behind the metal workers’ shops was heaped with coal ash and rusting iron. It smelled like blood. I paced, waiting, beside the shed.

  “I told you to go inside,” said the newspaper girl when she arrived. “Stand around out here, and they’ll get you for sure.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” I said.

  “For the likes of us,” she said, pushing the shed door open and ushering me inside, “that’s not always relevant.”

  “I have friends in the police,” I said, talking as much to calm my nerves as to convince her.

  “What were you doing out there at that time?”

  “Meeting him,” I said. “He had something to tell me. He was dead when I got there. There was another man there. Morlak, I thought. Or…”

  Mnenga.

  “Someone,” I continued. “He had a cane. Maybe some kind of blade too,” I added, managing not to say “spear,” though the word floated up in my mind like driftwood dislodged by an unseen crocodile. “That was what he used.…”

  Billy. This was my fault. I hadn’t stabbed him myself, but if it wasn’t for me …

  “And he told you nothing?”

  “I told you. He was dead when I got there. He had this in his pocket,” I said, producing the newspaper clipping.

  She considered me for a moment and then stuck out her hand. “Sarah,” she said. “That’s my street name anyway.”

  I nodded vaguely, still stunned.

  She shrugged like it didn’t really matter. “And you are Anglet,” she said.

  “Ang. Why are you helping me?”

  “Haven’t done anything yet.” She shrugged again.

  “You have,” I said. “And you aren’t going to turn me in.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “We have to stick together,” said Sarah.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. People.”

  I put my hands to my temples and squeezed my eyes shut.

  It was all too much. But Billy had died to bring me information. I owed it to him to follow whatever trail he had left me.

  “Please,” I said, eyes still closed. “I’m in trouble, real trouble, and I don’t know what to do. Tell me about the Old Red Fort.”

  “You really ought to read the whole paper,” she said, very dry, “not just the bits about you.”

  I couldn’t manage a smile, but I opened my eyes.

  She nodded at the newspaper article. “It’s part of a deal negotiated last year,” said Sarah. “The fort is being turned over to the Unassimilated Tribes, a goodwill gesture from the government.”

  I thought of Mnenga again, his talk of land deals, and nodded, letting her talk in that strange way of hers, calling up what she had read and interspersing those fragments with her own editorial commentary.

  “It was built out on the Sour Ridge Road during the occupation three hundred years ago and was the battalion headquarters for the so-called Glorious Third—the King’s Third Feldesland Infantry Regiment—stationed to guard the city from the Grappoli and the tribesmen to the west. It was besieged by Mahweni warriors several times but was always repaired and became a symbol of northern military power. It hasn’t been used as a serious military facility for several years, and it’s starting to fall into disrepair. Since they don’t want to pay for the upkeep anymore, the military—very magnanimously—agreed to turn it over to the Mahweni for use as a cultural center, museum, and tribal meeting venue. It’s a token, a gesture, but not everyone in the government is in favor, and some of the Mahweni think it will be more expensive to run than it’s worth.”

  “A white elephant,” I said.

  She grinned bleakly at that. “White is right,” she said. “That’s why the tower is coming down next week. It was used as a holding pen for prisoners of war. A lot of my people—well, kind of—died there. It has the regimental badge on it, and some military types thought it should be preserved for that alone, but the government voted to demolish the tower and hand over the rest of the structure intact. The plan is to leave it as rubble until it gets naturally overgrown; turning back into the land is the idea. Responsibility for the demolition went to—”

  “The Seventh Street gang,” I guessed. I don’t know why, but somehow I sensed that was coming. Everything was connected.

 
; “Under the direction of Mr. Morlak,” she added. “Yes. But you can’t be considering going out there now. You’re on the run. The police will find you.”

  “Probably.”

  “So why do I get the feeling you’re going to go anyway?” asked Sarah.

  “I suppose you are just a naturally intuitive person,” I said.

  CHAPTER

  22

  I RODE TWO STOPS on the underground to save time, head down so that no one would recognize me, getting off the train when I saw a policeman board at Wallend. I walked the rest of the way to the Drowning, and made my way down to the river, where the massive hippos wallowed and huddled, backs to the water. I loitered high on the bank, watching them uneasily till one of the girls saw me and alerted Rahvey.

  My sister came up from the laundry, eyes flashing. “You’re late,” she said as soon as she was out of earshot of the other girls. “And I don’t have break for another hour.”

  Word of the morning newspaper report clearly hadn’t reached the Drowning, and that was all to the good.

  “I don’t have her,” I said.

  “What?” said Rahvey, irritable.

  “I gave her up,” I said, knowing I couldn’t speak more fully without losing control.

  “What?” said Rahvey again.

  I took a breath. “Pancaris,” I said. “I just couldn’t…”

  Rahvey just looked at me, stunned, and the wrongness of what I had done coursed through me like cold, bright water. Then she was nodding woodenly, her face set, and turning quickly away. She said nothing as she walked, and I did not pursue her.

  * * *

  THE POLICE SEEMED TO be everywhere. It may have been because of the rallies and protests that were cropping up all over the city, or it might have been because of me. It was hard to believe that the death of Billy Jennings would generate such a manhunt, but it was clear that Billy, as well as Ansveld and Berrit, was part of something much larger, a tiny wheel in a great mechanism that, as Willinghouse had warned, was ticking toward disaster.

  And now I am at its heart.

  I traveled almost a quarter of a mile over rooftops and fire escapes and scaffolding—the best way to stay unseen, since ordinary people never look up—before dropping from a signal gantry into the yard behind the Great Orphan Street railway station. I bought a ticket on the western line, which arrowed its way right across the continent to Gronmar and the bronze coast: Grappoli territory. The local trains went nothing like so far, and the long-distance services had been suspended pending the resolution of the current diplomatic dispute.

  The train I boarded was a Blesbok class locomotive with four coaches that served the farms, homesteads, and mines forming a narrow corridor of land bought or stolen in war from the Mahweni. I curled up under my coat, pulling it over my face and leaving the ticket sticking out of the pocket, so that the conductor wouldn’t feel the need to “wake” me.

  I climbed down from the train at Coldsveldt, a rural halt not far from the pit where Papa had died, and got off the road as soon as I was out of sight of the station. So far I was as sure as I could be that no one had recognized me.

  Leaving crowds behind should have been a relief, but out here, there were other perils. There wasn’t much cover, and what trees grew there were low and stunted, giving little or no shade from the hot sun. My best chance of reaching the fort unnoticed was to skirt the main defenses, trekking through the tall savannah grass, and circling round to the north side. I swallowed. If I came upon a weancat or clavtar, the revolver in my belt would not be enough to stop it. And it wasn’t just predators that were dangerous. A spooked one-horn or nervous buffalo would be just as lethal.

  It was a long, hot walk. My skin glowed under the relentless beat of the sun, and the thin, dry grass scratched my hands and face as I pushed through. From time to time I heard the rattle of mice scurrying through the stalks to get away from me, and once I startled a flight of franklins, which rose up, beating their wings and circling, so that I forced myself to keep still for several minutes, in case anyone was watching from the fort. As I knelt there in the grass, I heard something very large moving close by, a crunching, tearing sound. I rose cautiously and was horrified to see a solitary elephant emerging from a copse of marula trees, stripping bark from one of them not thirty yards away. It had not seen me. I kept agonizingly still for several minutes, trying to determine if I was up- or downwind of it, and in the process, it saw me.

  It did not trumpet or charge, but it turned to face me, becoming motionless as stone, its ears spread wide, its brown eyes fixed on mine. I knew nothing of elephants and had no idea how you would gauge how old they were, but the eyes gave the impression of age and, beneath the caution, thoughtfulness. For a long moment, we watched each other, and I had the strangest sensation that she could see through to my heart, my soul. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I found myself thinking of the baby I had left on the orphanage steps.

  You could offer her nothing. She’s better where she is.

  Familiar ideas that I did and did not believe, though under the elephant’s gaze, I felt a kind of peace with my decision. It might not have been the right thing to do, but I had done it for the right reasons, and that, for now, would have to be enough.

  The elephant kept looking at me as it began to graze again, its trunk feeling for the leaves before tearing them off and gathering them into its mouth, but I felt no mounting sense of danger, and when I eventually stood up, it did no more than watch. Eventually, heart hammering, I walked slowly away. The elephant did not come after me.

  The walls of the fort were only a hundred yards away, and though I could see no sign of movement, I could hear the steady, uneven clatter of tools on stone. After another ten minutes, with my sand-colored tunic and leggings dark with sweat, I cut west, approaching a half-collapsed turret. Reaching the foot of the escarpment, I began to climb.

  I would be visible here, so I moved quickly and carefully, pausing only to check my handholds for scorpions and spiders. Once I saw a long, dark snake, spangled with aquamarine, sleeping away the winter in a hole, and kept watch for similar openings thereafter. I had assumed the pinkish color of the wall was paint, but it turned out to be the brick itself. It had crumbled over the years, and there were plenty of places to put my fingers and toes, but I was careful not to send telltale runnels of grit and chippings in my wake. The wall angled like a long-sided pyramid with a narrow battlement at the top, and in seconds, I was up and sliding cautiously over the parapet.

  I could see them now, the huddle of Seventh Street boys gathered at the foot of the tower in the center, wielding their picks and shovels. They had a wagon, and one who was taller than the rest—Fevel, I thought—was unloading wooden beams. I was familiar with the process, one we used to bring down unwanted chimneys in confined spaces. It is precision work because the chimney has to fall just where you want it. In this case, the courtyard had several two-story buildings that were, presumably, to remain intact. That meant the tower had to drop eastward, losing some of its sixty-foot length as it fell if it wasn’t to demolish the main gate in the process. The team would cut away the bricks from a corner of the tower’s base, replacing them with pit props, till the timber struts were bearing much of the tower’s weight, then set a fire. As the wood burned up, the whole stack would fall. The kids loved it.

  But miscalculate the cutting point, the wooden joists, or the wind direction, and it could go all manner of wrong. I hoped they knew what they were doing. Morlak didn’t do much in the way of real work anymore, but he generally oversaw this kind of thing personally.

  Not this time.

  I dropped into a crouch and moved slowly around the walls to get a better view. No sign of him.

  Tanish was using a hammer and bolster chisel to break up the mortar lines. He wielded them well, positioning, striking, and clearing like a professional.

  “Nice work, hummingbird,” I muttered to myself.

  I crept along till I came to a set
of weathered steps down, and moments later I was watching the boys from the shadow of a long, narrow chamber only yards from where they were working.

  It took ten maddening minutes to safely attract Tanish’s attention. He made a great show of dropping his tools and checking with Fevel before trudging over, as if he just needed a break from the sun. I hugged him once, and we moved deeper into the dark chamber.

  “They’re saying you killed that Jennings bloke,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Billy,” I answered. “I didn’t, but I think someone wants it to look like I did.” He nodded seriously, satisfied, and I hugged him again gratefully. He tried not to look pleased, and when I let him go, he leaned against the wall as the older boys did.

  “No Morlak?” I asked.

  Tanish shook his head fervently. “Says he has better things to do,” he said.

  “Such as?”

  “Mostly sitting,” said Tanish. “He hasn’t been able to get upstairs since you … you know.”

  “Stabbed him,” I said.

  “Right,” said Tanish, grinning again.

  “Was he out last night?” I asked, thinking of the sound of the cane on the street where Billy Jennings had died.

  Tanish shrugged. “He can walk around a bit, but not far, and no stairs. Mostly he sits in the old machine room on this box he had delivered by some Mahweni a few days ago. Barely takes his eyes off it. Smacks your knuckles with his stick if you so much as touch it. Like we care. Probably full of spades and brushes. He wants us to think he’s the big crime lord when he’s really just a hired man. Pathetic.”

  This was as much a part of his pose as his careful leaning against the wall, but I didn’t call him on it. He wasn’t as safe now that I wasn’t around to watch out for him, and if pretending he wasn’t afraid of Morlak helped, that was fine by me.