A Novel

by A. J. Hartley

  “A box?” I asked. “How big?”

  Tanish motioned with his hands: about a yard long and almost as high. Big enough for the Beacon.

  “And he’s just sitting on it?”

  “Waiting to make ‘the trade of his career,’” he said mockingly.

  “Who is he selling to?” I asked.

  Tanish shrugged. “He’s talking to Deveril, but he’s just a whatchacallit: ‘third party,’” he said. “The buyer won’t show till he makes the handoff.” He eyed the pendant round my neck. “Wasn’t that Berrit’s?”

  I nodded.

  “Why are you wearing it?”

  Now I shrugged, uncertain. “Someone has to remember him,” I said.

  He gave me a shrewd look. “Why do you care about him so much?” he asked.

  “Because nobody else does,” I said, light as I could, keeping the doors barred, the dam bolstered.

  “But you didn’t even know him,” he replied.

  I took a breath and tried again. “It could have been you, Tanish,” I said. “Or me, or any of us, and no one cares. That’s not right. It can’t be.” He frowned and I redirected the conversation. “These men Morlak is trading that box to, what do they look like?”

  He shrugged again. “Black fellas,” he said.

  My stomach turned. “Not Grappoli?” I asked, pushing the image of Mnenga’s face from my mind.

  He shook his head. “Could be working for them, I s’pose,” he said, liking the idea. “You think there’ll be a war? Fevel says it’s time we gave the Grappoli what’s coming to them. Says they killed some Feldeslanders last week. A crowd of Grappoli tore them to pieces. Some of the killers are friends with Mahweni right here in Bar-Selehm!”

  “Fevel doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” I said.

  “Do you?” he asked, giving me a sour look. “Everyone knows you can’t trust the Grappoli or the blacks.”

  “You work with Mahweni all the time,” I said.

  “Those are city blacks,” he said. “The others—the Unassimilated who dress in skins and carry spears—those are the ones you have to watch out for. They aren’t like us. Sell us to the Grappoli in a heartbeat if they had the chance.”

  The remark annoyed and unsettled me, but I didn’t want to fight with him, so I changed the subject. “Who is paying for the demolition?” I asked.

  “Our first government contract,” said Tanish proudly.

  “Did they send an overseer?”

  “Nope,” said Tanish. “It’s just us.”

  I frowned.

  “What?” he asked, as if I were taking some of the shine off their achievement.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just seems odd that they’d give you a big job when Morlak can’t be here and not send someone to make sure it goes smoothly.”

  “Why?” said Tanish, getting irritable now. “What’s the big deal? It’s just a job.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “We can manage without you, you know,” he blurted.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. “I didn’t say you couldn’t do it.”

  He looked sulky and glanced back to the bright, weed-strewn square as if he wanted to leave.

  “Hey,” I pushed, nudging him and smiling. “I know you can do it. You are the most destructive hummingbird I know.”

  “Don’t call me that,” he said. “Makes me sound like a kid.”

  “All right,” I said. “I won’t.”

  “I should go. Fevel will be … I should go.”

  I nodded, biting back my sadness, patting him awkwardly on the shoulder as he pulled away.

  * * *

  I WATCHED HIM LEAVE, and the farther away he got, the stranger it all seemed. The newspaper had definitely said that the tower would come down next week, not today, so either someone had changed their mind, or the city had been deliberately misled.

  Why?

  The same reason that there was no official presence at a government-funded demolition, no representative from the military who had once run a historically significant base, nor any spokesperson from the Mahweni who had so wanted the tower destroyed? Bringing a tower down was a grand spectacle, but there was no press photographer to capture the moment, no one—in fact—of any kind to see anything.

  Someone wants this done quietly.

  I needed to get a look inside before it came down. What better place to hide something than in a building destined for demolition, one that would be left as rubble to be overgrown, a semisacred monument to an ancient and troubled past?

  I waited another half hour, thinking uneasily about Mnenga, and what Tanish had said about the Mahweni, not knowing what to believe and wary of my own instincts. It was almost a relief when the boys dragged their wagon into the shade to eat, and I could break into a skulking run, careful to keep the tower between me and them. As soon as I got close, I could smell the paraffin and oil with which the timber supports had been doused, and I winced away from it, eyes watering. I tried the tower door. Locked.

  Why seal a building destined for demolition?

  The tower windows were little more than rifle ports and far too tight to squeeze through. But the top of the tower was open, with only a timber frame remaining of what had once been a roof. There would be a way in from there.

  The tower was vertical and considerably higher than the perimeter wall, but its brickwork was no better maintained. I fished in my satchel for a chisel on a loop of cord, which I hung round my neck. I pulled my hair back and began to climb carefully, using the lintels and sills of the gun ports where I could.

  It was slow going. Twice I had to stop to work my chisel into the mortar line to give me a handhold, and by the time I reached the top, my shoulders ached and my hands were unsteady from the exertion. I was rewarded with a trapdoor in the floor. Unlocked.

  The boys had finished their break and were coming back across the square. Staying low, I unlatched the trap cover and folded it carefully back, revealing an ancient iron ladder set rusting into the wall below. I shinned down into a guardroom with an alcove containing a stained and fractured toilet bowl. The door, which was hanging open, gave onto a tight spiral of concrete steps, the only part of the structure not constructed from brick. I descended onto a landing with another solid door, this one locked.

  There was a screen in the upper portion, not unlike the one in the police cell, but it was stuck. I worked it with my chisel but didn’t want to use the hammer in case the sound carried to the boys outside. I strained at it, then tried cutting away the doorjamb around the hinges.

  But it was hard work and I was tiring. Partly it was the heat which—far from being less intense in the tower’s shady interior—seemed to be mounting, and I slumped against the door, trying to get my breath back, fighting the urge to cough. It was only then that I caught the acrid tang of woodsmoke on the air. The boys had set the fire.

  I had minutes before the tower became unstable.

  I jammed the chisel into the shutter groove, cursing, slamming the heel of my hand against it, and felt it shift a fraction. Gasping in the thickening air, I adjusted the chisel and tried again. Part of the rusted groove popped out. The shutter moved, and with three sharp blows from my hammer, I drove it open.

  The room inside was bare save for a heavy wooden chair with a high back and leather straps fastened to the arms. Restraints. Sprawled against the far wall was the body of a man.

  CHAPTER

  23

  HE WAS DEAD, AND probably had been for some time. Even through the smoke, it smelled sour in there. The corpse lay on its back, one arm twisted beneath it, the other splayed, hand open. He was black, elderly, his hair gray and unkempt, and he wore nothing but a loincloth and sandals, one of which had been kicked off. A bottle lay empty beside him. The floor was stained, and in one moist patch, something like fungus seemed to be growing pale pink tubes, delicate and foul.

  I pulled my face away, tried to gasp fresh air and got only smoke, which left m
e wheezing and hacking.

  I followed the concrete spiral down, but it was clear before I saw the flames that I would not be able to reach the door in the intense heat. The skin on my face was starting to shrink, and a wisp of hair stuck to my sweaty forearm curled and smoked. I would have to leave the way I had come in.

  I ran up the stairs, past the torture cell, and up to the ladder, breaking out into the hot, dry air with a cry of relief. There was nothing to be gained now by staying hidden, and I moved to the parapet and began to wave and shout to the boys below. They had retreated from the fire and were watching from a safe distance. For a moment I feared they wouldn’t hear me, but then one of them was pointing, and Tanish was jogging forward, shouting and gesticulating.

  “Put it out!” I yelled. “Put the fire out!”

  Tanish stopped, ran back to the building where they had been eating, and dragged out the water barrel, but he had made it only a few yards when someone stopped him. Fevel. I couldn’t hear what they said, but they were arguing, and when Tanish tried to push past him, Fevel knocked him down. Two of the other boys came to help him up, but they did not let him return to the barrel. I could just see the anguish in his upturned face.

  No, I thought. They wouldn’t.

  But as I stood there shouting and waving stupidly, it was increasingly clear that they would. They were going to let me burn.

  Except that the tower itself, being brick and stone and concrete, would fall rather than burn. I considered climbing down the outside wall, but as I took a step toward the far parapet, something gave beneath me. One of the pit props had collapsed in the inferno, and the tower shuddered. I didn’t have long. I took another step, but before my right foot had come down properly, the world shifted sideways. A terrible sound came from the base of the structure, a creaking that swelled, turning into an animal bellow, as the tower began to split.

  The floor beneath my feet tipped toward the boys, and realizing I had no other option, I turned and ran down the sudden slope to the parapet and stepped up onto it as the tower began to fall. I had one foot up, one back, arms spread, like I was riding a great wave. For a moment, I seemed to hang there in the hot air, almost motionless but tipping fractionally earthward, and then I was hurtling toward the ground in a long, deadly arc that threw up dust and hunks of brick as the tower collapsed.

  I timed my jump, waiting for the last possible moment, springing forward and rolling as the top of the tower broke against the square below.

  The swelling roar ended in a deafening explosion and I tumbled head over heels, knees and elbows tucked tight into my body as bricks rained down around me. I felt the skin strip from my arms and legs, the impact of the debris on my back and shoulders. Eyes and mouth shut, head buried in my hands, I rolled, then I stopped, and pain boiled over my body like fire.

  It took all my concentration to reach into my belt and pull the revolver out, and by the time I had rolled onto my back and raised the weapon, Fevel was almost on me.

  He had a chisel in one hand, and his eyes were mad and vengeful, but he felt the black eye of the gun on his heart and he stopped as I snapped the hammer back.

  For a long moment, he fought with his own survival instinct, and then, at last, he spat and took a step backwards. He turned as Tanish came running past him, slashing at him with the chisel, but the younger boy danced away and came skidding to my side.

  I had not moved. Every bone and muscle seemed to cry out in agony. The fall had reopened Florihn’s slashes across my face, but I was still training the gun on Fevel’s retreating back, my finger curled around the trigger.

  “Ang,” whispered Tanish. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”

  But I barely heard him over the furious roaring of the blood in my veins. It was a long time before I lowered the gun and got clumsily, painfully to my feet.

  I leaned on Tanish, staring back to where the dust still swirled over the fractured heap of rubble that had been the tower. Fevel recovered his swagger as he neared the other boys, and then, very slowly, I limped away.

  * * *

  IT TOOK TANISH AND me two hours to get back to the city. It would have taken me twice that without him. My right ankle had twisted in the fall, and I could put no weight on it, but while I didn’t think I had broken anything, it felt like I had been beaten head to foot, and the longer we walked, the more the aching stiffness blossomed into torment. At least we encountered no animals. We would have been easy prey for a clavtar or hyena pack, gun or no gun.

  At the city walls I approached the nearest dragoon and gave him my name. “I should be in your records,” I said. “I’m wanted for murder. You are going to want to find Detective Sergeant Andrews.”

  I said it coolly. The police had no terrors for me worse than what I had already gone through, and I felt, however misguidedly, the confidence of innocence. I had, after all, not killed Billy. Even so, my composure was unexpected, and I realized how much the last few days had changed me. Not so very long ago I would have been hesitant and tongue-tied in the presence of the authorities. Now, at least in my own head, I had some authority of my own. I had earned it.

  The police response was almost comically excessive. Three armed men chained my hands and feet and bundled me into an armored carriage, watching me as if I were a wild animal, though I was mild and compliant throughout.

  At the jail I was grilled by the duty officer about my relationship with Billy, and my movements the previous evening. He was openly scornful of my version of events, the “cloak and dagger nonsense” of messages and secret meetings, and particularly of my claim to have heard another man in the fog, a man I took to be Billy’s killer. I told him about Morlak, but not Mnenga, though I wasn’t sure why. After I had recounted my story twice, I said I would not speak again till Andrews arrived. This might have earned me a beating, but the command with which I spoke of Andrews gave the duty officer pause, and they decided to save their more physical response till my claims had been debunked.

  “Two death-defying falls in as many days,” said Detective Sergeant Andrews as he walked in a half hour later. “You do live on the edge, don’t you, Miss Sutonga?”

  The duty officer stared at him, gaping like a fish astonished to find it had leapt onto dry land.

  While a nurse dressed my wounds and plied me with grilled sausages and vegetable soup, I told Andrews what I had seen, saying what they would find in the rubble of the tower. He watched in silence as I ate, then called for a uniformed officer to “ready a vehicle” for the Red Fort.

  “We can discuss Billy Jennings on the way,” he said.

  The carriage’s route took us past the bleak high railings and blank windows of Pancaris, and I had to force myself to look away.

  * * *

  AS THE SUN BEGAN its slow drop into the horizon over the city, I returned to the walls I had scaled only a few hours before. Sitting opposite Andrews in the police carriage, I said nothing.

  Tanish had returned to Seventh Street, insisting that the gang was still his home and that it was better he returned of his own volition than be found by Fevel and the others, having turned his back on them. They might even respect him for it, and in the end, he said, their fight was with me. I had expected the gang’s attempt on my life to jar Tanish out of the belligerence he had shown me before I went into the tower, but it had only increased his confusion and resentment. When I asked him to keep me informed as to anything unusual happening at the weaving shed, he gave a noncommittal grunt.

  “Not betraying my friends, Ang,” he said. “I’ll help to keep you safe if I can, and I already told you about the box Morlak’s going to trade, but I’m not turning on my own kind.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that or what he meant by “kind.” Lani, I supposed, though not all the gang were. Poor? Bound to work in danger with only the fear of Morlak’s cruelty to keep them going? What kind of identity was that to cling to?

  But they did. I had done it myself, making pride and honor out of shared m
isery and deprivation. It was how you lived with yourself, how you survived.

  “I’m just trying to find out what happened to Berrit,” I said.

  “This has nothing to do with Berrit,” Tanish said. “This stuff at the fort. You want it to be about Berrit because you want it to be about Morlak, but it’s not.”

  I had nothing to say to that, so I just nodded and told him that if he ever wanted to get word to me, to speak to the newspaper girl on Winckley Street and I’d come find him.

  “Bye, Ang,” he said. It felt sad. Final. But I didn’t know what else to say, so I let him go.

  Andrews and I entered the fort through the main gate, which was surmounted by what I took to be the regimental crest: the head of a one-horn inside a laurel wreath. Two other vehicles were already there: a horse-drawn ambulance and another wagon from which two men got down with sleek, tan-colored dogs on leashes, their noses low to the ground. It took them no more than a few minutes to start barking at a particular area of the tower’s shattered remains, but it was almost an hour before the policemen had painstakingly picked the rubble clean.

  “There is indeed a body,” said Officer Andrews, returning to me.

  “I know,” I said. “I told you.”

  “But you don’t know who he is?” Andrews asked.

  “You’ve asked me this twice,” I said. I wanted to crawl into a real bed and lie very still for a long time. “No. I don’t know who he was.”

  “An elderly Mahweni tribesman, by the looks of things. Unassimilated. He has been dead several days.”

  “Yes,” I said. I turned at the sound of another carriage arriving at speed. The crest on the door was all too familiar. Willinghouse and Von Strahden clambered out and strode over, demanding to know what was going on. The detective moved to greet the two politicians, and I got a second to compose myself.

  But only a second.

  “You’re hurt,” remarked Von Strahden, striding toward me and turning my face into the light.

  “A little bruising is all,” I said, embarrassed, avoiding Willinghouse’s unreadable gaze.