Guardian

by A. J. Hartley

  The government was in closed emergency session, all parties meeting separately and then together to determine a stabilizing course of action. This, at least, was what we were told. The late editions of the Clarion and Standard cut most of what had already appeared to give space to substantially new material, most of it gleaned from various parliamentary spokesmen. The ambassador from Belrand was assisting the government in the drawing up of plans to navigate what was already being called “the succession crisis,” though it was made very clear that Belrand had no official say in what would happen next. Ever since the separation of the city from its colonial forebear a century ago, Bar-Selehm had been entirely self-governing, and while trade and military relations with Belrand remained cordial, their involvement was strictly advisory. The papers seemed unsure whether this was a good thing or not, championing our independence on one hand and worrying about our sole responsibility to fix the situation on the other.

  Feeling pent up in the house, our silent pacing getting on each other’s nerves, Dahria and I went out and roamed the streets to see for ourselves what was happening. The largely unified hubbub I had seen earlier in the city had already begun to fragment along racial lines. The wealthy whites had withdrawn, leaving their poorer brethren to rumble dangerously on the street corners, where they demanded explanations if only to know whose house to menace. The blacks were gathering in and around Mahweni Old Town. They were quieter, warier, waiting for this to be blamed on them and steeling themselves for what would follow. In the main square, two black men addressed the crowd, urging caution and patience. One was Kondotsy Furwina, the new head of the Unassimilated Tribes. The name of the other, a younger and more intense man who wore the clothes of the city but with deliberate splashes of color, I did not know, though I was astounded to realize that he had spoken to me once. It was the man who had met with Willinghouse and the prime minister at the estate yesterday morning.

  Overwhelmed by it all, Dahria and I retreated to Willinghouse’s town home, where we sat in drained silence at the dining room table, staring at cooling plates of roast duck, lost in thought. At last Dahria got up and went to the window, gazing out into the dusk to watch the lamplighters.

  “The chancellor of the exchequer should take over,” she said at last. “According to parliamentary procedure.”

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  Dahria blinked.

  “I don’t know,” she confessed, humbled by her own ignorance.

  I got up and went to her, unsure what I was going to say.

  The door opened, and Higgins, the butler, looked in.

  “Forgive me,” he said, as we broke apart like guilty children. “There is a young lady of the press to see you. Should I send her in?”

  “The press?” exclaimed Dahria. “Absolutely not.”

  “She claims to be a friend,” said Higgins. “She is a young lady of the Mahweni persuasion—”

  “Sureyna!” I said.

  “I believe so, miss,” said Higgins.

  “Then yes,” said Dahria. “Send her in. And bring the girl something to eat. She’s probably been out there all day.”

  Moments later, the door opened once more, and Sureyna came in. She dropped her notebooks and reticule on the table and folded me into a firm embrace not unlike the one I had wanted to give Dahria. I wasn’t sure why I had not been able to.

  “How are you?” she demanded seriously.

  “As well as can be expected,” I replied.

  Sureyna turned to Dahria and, on impulse, hugged her too. Dahria stood motionless, her arms stuck awkwardly out, and said, “Well, yes. Quite so,” until Sureyna stopped.

  “He didn’t do it,” I said.

  “Of course he didn’t,” said Sureyna, “but that’s not a common or popular view outside this room.”

  “What do people think?” asked Dahria, smoothing her skirts.

  “Well, I can’t speak for all of them,” said Sureyna, eyeing the remains of the cold duck, “but some are saying it’s a Brevard coup, an attempt to derail the election they knew they were going to lose.”

  “That’s absurd,” said Dahria.

  “Obviously,” said Sureyna, her gaze flicking back to the table.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, girl, help yourself,” Dahria added.

  The reporter fell on the food like a starved dog. It was a mark of her distraction that Dahria said nothing about Sureyna’s table manners.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m really hungry. This is very good.”

  “What have you heard?” I asked.

  Sureyna swallowed.

  “Nothing you haven’t already heard, I suspect,” she said. “Panic, mostly, and rumor. Willinghouse—sorry, Mr. Willinghouse—is the only suspect so far. There was a story about footprints on the roof, but the police didn’t find anything.”

  “It rained,” I said.

  Sureyna’s eyes got big.

  “It was something to do with you!” she said.

  “I saw the print,” I said. “That’s all. Someone got out through the dome just as Willinghouse went in. He found the prime minister’s body moments later.”

  “Out through the dome?” said Sureyna.

  “Presumably he had a rope,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I said he, but I did, avoiding their eyes and picking at a duck thigh. “There was no other way up, even from the public galleries. Must have come in that way. Scaled the outside of the building, then dropped through the dome access hatch down a rope and went out the same way. There was a refuse chute up to the roof, which might just have been convenient or might have been set up on purpose.”

  “Would have to be a pretty strong climber, no?” said Sureyna.

  I shrugged, but there was no point denying it.

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “Like a steeplejack?” said Dahria.

  “Free climbing on a rope?” I said. “Not likely. We’re mostly ladder types.”

  “The Gargoyle!” Sureyna said, eyes alight. “It has to be!”

  Dahria gave her a strange look, but I stared doggedly at my food, saying nothing.

  “Ang!” Sureyna pressed. “It must be! It fits the pattern of those Gargoyle attacks that made the papers a few months ago.”

  “This was indoors,” I said, still not looking at her. “Those were all in alleys, and in some pretty dodgy areas. This is totally different. Breaking into the Parliament House and assassinating the prime minister? No. This isn’t the Gargoyle.” I could feel Dahria’s eyes on me, but I forced myself to look thoughtfully nonchalant and said, “We need to find a political motive. If a skillful climber could do this, bypassing parliamentary security and timing it perfectly so that the blame would fall on Willinghouse, it can’t be some random lunatic or disgruntled voter. It feels organized. That reminds me: there was repair work on the building’s northwest cornice, but I didn’t see anyone there and didn’t recognize the wagon. Can you find out what company was doing it and who hired them?”

  “Easily,” said Sureyna. “You think this was a professional killing? That someone paid for it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But who? The Grappoli?”

  “Cut off the head of the city and exploit the resulting chaos by encroaching on our territory?” said Sureyna.

  “Would it work?” I asked.

  Sureyna cocked her head on one side, then waggled it doubtfully. “The Grappoli have gone quiet,” she said. “Stopped expanding in the north and regrouped at home. If they were trying to exploit division in the city, something else has to happen. Right now, Bar-Selehm is as unified as I’ve ever seen it.”

  “Against my brother,” said Dahria.

  She spoke quietly, wonderingly, and there was a brittleness to her manner that worried me. The more Sureyna and I talked politics, the more distant she seemed, as if all her attention was on her brother’s predicament. I looked at her now, registering her uncanny stillness, and I felt that, in spite of everything I had thought about her cynical detachment and her att
itude toward Willinghouse, she was close to breaking down. Again I felt the urge to reach out to her, but whether it was Sureyna’s presence or something else entirely, I could not bring myself to do it.

  “Why are you writing about the Grappoli?” I asked Sureyna. “Hardly your usual job.”

  “Our foreign correspondents are missing,” said Sureyna. “They haven’t reported in for two weeks. We don’t even know for sure where they are. There have been rumors of Mahweni resistance fighters impeding road traffic, even blocking railway lines. There’s not much news getting into Bar-Selehm from the north right now. We’re rather hoping no one notices.”

  My heart sank, but I nodded sympathetically.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I understand the paper’s silence. The last thing we need right now is a racial row in the city. Speaking of which, who is the man leading the Old Town rally with Kondotsy Furwina?”

  “Young man with glasses? That’s Aaron Muhapi. Born in Nbeki, son of a schoolteacher. Compelling, isn’t he?”

  “He is,” I agreed.

  “Get used to him,” said Sureyna seriously. “He is the future.”

  I raised an eyebrow, impressed.

  “If so, he’s going to need help,” I said, “and that means getting Willinghouse back in Parliament.”

  “Which will happen how?” said Dahria, politely. “He was caught, as the vulgar expression has it, red-handed. There are no other suspects, and the one possible clue we have was washed away in a storm. If this was engineered, if he was—as another vulgar expression has it—set up, then whoever did so has done a masterful job. He can neither prove the guilt lies elsewhere nor clear his name.”

  “He doesn’t need to,” I said decisively.

  “And why not, pray?” asked Dahria.

  “Because that’s what he has me for.”

  * * *

  I SOUNDED CALM AND in control, clear in my mind and sure of my course of action. In fact, I was none of those things. Willinghouse’s arrest had shaken me badly, and though I would admit it no one, I had wept for the injustice of it and what it must be doing to him. I did not fully understand my dashing, irritating, powerful, but perpetually absent employer. I knew I liked and respected him, that he had saved me from Seventh Street and the Drowning, that he had placed trust in me when no one else had, and that he was dedicated to the good of the city and its people. I had worried about those last points, but I was resolved in my mind now. Willinghouse was a good man, and one day he might even be a great one, but that would not happen if his name were not cleared beyond the merest shadow of a doubt. Otherwise, if the police were incapable of proving his innocence, his potential for greatness wouldn’t matter a damn. He’d hang for murder and treason.

  * * *

  I WAITED FOR INSPECTOR Andrews on the steps of the Mount Street Police Station early the following morning, huddled under a blanket like a beggar and rattling a rusty can. Dahria had gone back to the War Office, hoping to get another interview with her brother. I did not hold out much hope that she would get her wish or that she would learn much that was useful to me if she did.

  “Penny for a lost girl?” I said, using the street slang that was supposed to work on the superior morals of the city’s middle-class whites: one of those benevolent terms attached to prostitutes, drunks, and opium addicts.

  His gaze slid off me at first, so I added, “Come on, mister. Help you catch a killer.”

  He peered at me suspiciously, and I, smeared with mud and coal dust, winked at him. His mouth fell open, and momentarily his face took on a look of panicked despair, as if Willinghouse’s fall had already brought me to this deplorable state. I took pity on him.

  “It’s a called a disguise, Inspector,” I said. “You’d think a policeman would have encountered them before.”

  He relaxed.

  “Miss Sutonga,” he said. “We shouldn’t be seen conversing in public—”

  “That,” I whispered, “is why we’re going to meet in the alley behind the tradesmen’s entrance in ten minutes.”

  For a split second he just looked, then he nodded once and, for the appearance of the thing, fished a farthing from his pocket and flipped it to me.

  “Most generous, sir,” I called after him. “You’re a gentleman and a scholar, you are, sir.”

  He did not look back, but went into the police station through the main doors, brandishing his papers to the guards as he did so. I sat where I was, still shaking the rusty can in which Andrews’s farthing now rattled, for a couple of minutes, then got slowly up and drifted apparently aimlessly in the direction of Ruetta Park and the back of the building. Once out of public view, I dashed along the alley to the rubbish bins by a loading dock with a pair of blue painted doors, and waited.

  Andrews arrived a few minutes later. He looked harried and pale, his eyes flitting about as if scared he was being watched.

  “What is it?” he demanded, just this side of annoyance.

  “I want to know the state of the case,” I said, as if that were obvious.

  “I don’t know it,” he snapped, “and even if I did—”

  “You’d tell me, because I’ve earned it, and so has Willinghouse,” I said.

  He looked about to protest, but thought better of it.

  “The commissioner is overseeing the case personally,” he said. “I’m not sure why. Security, he says, which probably means he doesn’t trust me or the other local inspectors to be objective. He’s telling us nothing.”

  “You must have learned something from the beat officers? Has there been a house-to-house inquiry for witnesses to whoever was on the roof?”

  “They found no footprint on the roof of the dome.”

  “Well, they wouldn’t have, would they? It had rained by the time—”

  “The guards saw no one up there. Neither did anyone in the street. The public galleries were empty, and the only person seen entering the building even close to the time of the killing was a young Lani woman dressed as a maid. You, I take it.”

  I grunted in assent.

  “I thought so,” he said. “They found your skirts in a storage room with roof access. Fortunately, the timing of everyone else leaving the chamber and Willinghouse going in, coupled with the coroner’s report, suggests that the attack had already happened. They think you were just frightened of the guards and ran, so no one is looking for you. The bad news is that they clearly aren’t really looking for anyone else either. Everything points to Josiah.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “Perhaps so, but from a certain perspective, it is both plausible and…” He hesitated.

  “What?” I prompted.

  “Sometimes cases are determined not by absolute truth but by what will allow the world to go back to normal as quickly as possible.”

  My bitter laugh had a snarl in it. As a brown person in Bar-Selehm, I knew all about that. The newspapers were full of Lani and Mahweni who had been picked up for crimes based on the testimony of better-represented members of the city’s community, and the less lucky ones, whose names rarely made the papers, didn’t always make it out of the justice system. The most frequent casualty of crime in Bar-Selehm was absolute truth.

  Andrews read my face but did not argue the point, so I moved past it.

  “Have they suggested a motive?” I asked.

  “Professional jealousy, an attempt to delay the government’s redistricting policies—”

  “That’s absurd!”

  “Of course it is. The only thing more absurd is the suggestion that he thought he might step into the prime minister’s position himself.”

  “His party isn’t in power!”

  “I know that. They think he might have been trying to create a coalition with the Nationals to keep Richter and Heritage out. Tavestock wouldn’t play ball, so Willinghouse killed him, thinking he could force the coalition by sheer personal magnetism in the resulting power vacuum. His star has risen of late.”

  “It’s not r
ising now.”

  “Well, yes. Quite,” said Andrews. “Look, Miss Sutonga, your employer’s predicament is bleak indeed, but I feel sure that the one thing that he would not want is that he take you down with him.”

  I frowned, trying to make sense of the remark. Andrews held my gaze significantly.

  “You think I should drop it?” I said, disbelieving. “You think I should leave him to whatever the police commissioner finds convenient in getting the city back to its daily business?”

  “Of course not,” said Andrews. “Josiah is…” He faltered. “But this is a deep and dark business, and at the moment I see no light at all. I am afraid for your employer, but I would not be doing my duty as his friend if I encouraged you to risk your life on so slender a prospect of hope.”

  I nodded, then looked him squarely in the face—something I wouldn’t have been able to do before I began working for Willinghouse—and said, “I do not need your encouragement. My own sense of obligation will suffice. If I learn of evidence that will help his case and bring it to you, will you act on it?”

  “I am not on the case, and the commissioner has made it quite clear that … But yes,” he said, straightening up. “I will act on whatever you find.”

  I put out my hand. He blinked, considered it, then shook it decisively.

  * * *

  I RETURNED TO THE town home on Harrington-Clark Street to wash my face, but found the place in an uproar. Servants were bustling about looking panicked, one of the maids had clearly been crying, and even Higgins seemed jolted from his usually unflappable composure. With Dahria out and Willinghouse incarcerated, I could not understand what might have created such a frenzy of anxiety.

  “The lady of the house has graced us with an unexpected visit,” said Higgins, guardedly.

  “Dahria?” I said. “But she’s—”

  “The lady of the house,” said Higgins with careful emphasis. “Madame Nahreem.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  I GAPED. NO WONDER the place was in chaos. Willinghouse’s grandmother hadn’t been into the city for months, to my knowledge. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that it was actually years.