Guardian

by A. J. Hartley

  “For the good of the city,” said Shyloh, with undisguised bitterness. “A new coalition of the National and Heritage parties, under the leadership of our new prime minister, Norton Richter.”

  CHAPTER

  11

  THE EFFECT OF RICHTER’S new leadership was instantly apparent, and not only because the streets around Parliament were packed with uniformed, and frequently tearful, black and Mahweni serving staff wending their ways home. They moved like sleepwalkers, like people stunned out of consciousness. It was also rumored that the House was already debating making the redistricting plans that Richter had pushed through effective immediately, so that many of the local blacks and coloreds would have to leave their current homes and take up residency in Nbeki, Morgessa, or on the south bank of the river. How this was supposed to happen, where they were all supposed to go, and how they would maintain their current employment in the city, no one seemed to know.

  Or care.

  Not the men who were making this happen, at least. Not the Heritage party faithful and those Nationals too scared to stand against them. The world seemed suddenly hard, unfeeling, and devoid of hope. Bindi wept openly in the street, not knowing where to go, what to do, or how she was going to tell her aging mother that she would be bringing home no wages this week or for the foreseeable future. I put an arm around her awkwardly and told her everything would be all right, something would come along, a job, some kind of justice …

  I didn’t believe it. Not in that moment. I said it because she needed someone to, but I didn’t believe it, and I found that I suddenly missed Willinghouse’s energy, his moral certainty more than ever. I had no choice but to press on with my investigation, though my faith that it might help was itself a kind of pretense, something else I didn’t really believe.

  A demonstration—mostly black but with a few Lani and still fewer sympathetic whites sprinkled in—had begun in Ruetta Park. I could hear their chanting as I approached Crommerty Street and found that I was looking directly at the back of a makeshift podium where speakers with bullhorns were gathering to address the crowd. Among them, fiery and earnest, the obvious leader approving hastily painted signs and banners, was the young man Willinghouse had met with at the estate and Sureyna had identified as the activist Aaron Muhapi. Marching toward the protesters was a unit of fifty armed dragoons with fitted sword bayonets. I scanned their faces and, noticing that they were all white, wondered if some executive order akin to the banishing of the black and colored servants from Parliament had been applied to the military as well.

  Things were moving very fast. If no one put the brakes on soon, who knew where we would be in a few weeks? Or what we would be.

  I moved closer to see how big the crowd really was, and as I neared the rear of the podium, Muhapi happened to turn and see me. He was in midsentence to someone, but even as he continued to talk, his brow furrowed and his eyes held me. It seemed impossible that he had recognized me, having seen me only once before, and as a Lani maid, but he clearly had. He smiled in my direction and then, as his brain found where he had seen me, frowned again. He broke off his conversation and crossed the park toward me.

  “You work for Willinghouse,” he said. “Yes?”

  I had to remind myself that by work he meant “serve tea,” not “gather information for by hanging off rooftops.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Aaron,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Anglet,” I said on impulse. His was a face you wanted to trust. “You are making a speech?”

  “Until they move me on, yes,” he said, smiling. “Always I am making speeches. There seems,” he went on with a self-deprecating smile, “so much to talk about.”

  I returned his smile.

  “Is Mr. Willinghouse bearing up?” he asked.

  “The police will not let me see him,” I said.

  “No, that does not surprise me, and I doubt I can help you there. My relationship with the police is … rocky. Should you find a way to communicate with him, let him know that I will do what I can to aid his release.”

  “You think him innocent?”

  “Do you not?” said Muhapi.

  “I know he is,” I said. “And I believe he has been deliberately positioned to take the blame for someone else’s crime.”

  “Then we agree perfectly. Come. Let me introduce you to my wife and my colleagues.”

  “I can’t stay,” I said. “I have … things I must do. I’m trying,” I began, unsure why I needed him to understand things I normally kept to myself, “to help. In my own way.”

  “That is all we can do,” he said. “Use what talents, what opportunities you have, and I will use mine.”

  “I wish I could stay to hear you speak,” I said, meaning it.

  “I feel sure,” he said, giving me an appraising look and a satisfied nod, “that you are with us in spirit.”

  “I am.”

  “Good. Excuse me,” he said, turning and seeing the expectant faces of the men and women at the podium, one of whom I recognized from his visit to the estate. “I must go, but I hope to speak to you again. Find me.”

  “I will,” I said.

  He hurried back, just as I heard his name announced through the bullhorn and a shout of appreciation came up from the crowd. Muhapi bounded up the steps onto the stage, embraced the man who had spoken his introduction, and took the bullhorn from him.

  I really did have to go, had things to do, but I hesitated as he welcomed the audience and thanked the previous speakers. He paused, and the crowd fell silent with anticipation, and then he said, “Someone once told me that if a black man wants to scare a white person for a moment, all he has to do is draw a gun.” He let the observation hang in the air, and a murmur of assent went through the crowd. “But when you do that, you confirm in the white man’s eyes what you are and all you are capable of. He wants to think you are an animal. A barbarian. Because that makes him feel better about himself, his culture, and what his people have done to ours. Show him the gun, and you scare him, but you also prove in his head why he needs more and better guns, why he needs the police to be white, why he does not need to believe you when you say that you did not mean to point the gun at him or that the gun is not yours. When you have the gun, you are the black man he wants you to be, the black man he needs you to be, and you become his fantasy, his nightmare. And I say become. Because when he treats you this way and you respond with understandable rage, he is in your head, telling you what you are, so that you start to believe him.

  “But this is a lie. What the white man wants, what he needs from you are his problems, not yours.” The crowd stirred at this. I heard voices shouting, “Yes!” and I felt a stirring in my breast, a quickening of my heart, as if I was seeing something that had always been there, but never understood before. “You are your own person. The white man does not own you, does not define you, does not say what you are worth. You do that yourself. We do that. We celebrate what we are, our beauty, our intelligence, not just our strength and our righteous anger.”

  The crowd swelled beneath him, and Muhapi’s voice grew in power and conviction so that they did not miss a word.

  “So I say this: if you want to scare a white man for longer than it takes him to call the police, read a book. A book about yourself, the things you love, the things that make you feel, the things that make you want to live another day, the things that make you a complete and glorious person. This is what scares him! And if you want to terrify him, tell him that you didn’t just read the book, you wrote it! Then join with your black brothers and sisters, your Lani brothers and sisters, and with all people—including those white men and women who will recognize you as equals—stand beside them, shoulder to shoulder as fellow human beings, and sing your uniqueness, your specialness, and your common humanity!”

  The crowd roared. The sound of their voices ringing in my ears, I walked away, feeling that there might yet be hope for the world. But before I got completely
out of earshot, I saw a shiny black carriage parked on the street corner. Its emblems had been draped with fabric, so that the coach might pass as a cab, but the harnesses on the horses were fine polished leather with brass hardware unlike any I had ever seen on a public vehicle. The window on one side was open, and a man was sitting motionless, leaning out to listen to Muhapi’s speech. He wore a hat pulled down around his brows, trying to be inconspicuous perhaps, but his focus on the speaker had undermined the attempt. He was turned toward the square, his eyes were closed in rapt attention, and the soft light of the late afternoon fell full on his face.

  It was, I was almost sure, Count Alfonse Marino, the Grappoli ambassador.

  * * *

  CROMMERTY STREET AND I were old friends, though I had not visited there except to cut through for months. It was among the wealthiest and most exclusive shopping districts in the city, and its core establishments all dealt in luxorite. I checked the address on the card I had taken from the tea chest in the Parliament House and swept my eyes over the brass numbers fixed above the lacquered doors. Kepahler’s stood midway along, two doors down from Ansveld’s, which had been central to what I now thought of as my first case for Willinghouse. The memory of that came flooding back now as I walked the well-maintained sets of the street in the low light and declining heat of the early evening. It seemed so long ago that I had been poking around here, relaying my information to then Sergeant Andrews, a timid Lani steeplejack unsure of her place in the world, but certain that it wasn’t among the elegant customers of Crommerty Street …

  So much had changed since then, but other things—things well outside my control—had not, and I was unsurprised to see the WHITES ONLY sign in Kepahler’s window, stamped in metal as if to show the world how deeply the sentiment was held.

  I considered my options. Involving Andrews was impractical and would show what little hand I had to whoever might be watching. I could send Dahria, but while she might once have found such a mission a diverting adventure, her mood now was so hopeless that it would feel insensitive even to ask. But not all the luxorite dealers on Crommerty Street had signs like Kepahler’s in the window. I walked back down the road and glanced in Ansveld’s window, where a familiar middle-aged man sat behind the counter with a set of luxorite lenses around his head and a jeweler’s loupe pressed to his eye. He was such a welcome sight that I tried the door before I had truly made the decision to go in.

  Ansveld Jr. was a pink-faced man in his late thirties who was beginning to spread around the region just above his waist. He looked up at the tinkle of the bell, but it took a second for his eyes to refocus on me and another for recognition to dawn. His smile was positively radiant with joyful surprise.

  “Well, well, well,” he said, rising and extending a hand to greet me. “Anglet Sutonga. Woman of mystery. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  I shook his hand, feeling slightly overwhelmed by the genuineness of his pleasure. Even now, after all I had done in the last six months, I was unused to being welcome. Ansveld—I did not recall his first name, if I had ever been given it—was one of the few people outside Willinghouse’s special sphere who had some idea of what I did, though he had proved the soul of discretion. The case I had worked had involved his father’s death, a matter on which I had managed to shed some light, and he had been most appreciative.

  “I wondered if you could tell me a little about one of your neighbors,” I said.

  “Absolutely,” he said, positively thrilled by the possibility. “Is it inappropriate to inquire to what it pertains?”

  “Let’s say it’s a matter of the very highest import,” I said, matching his mood and giving him what I knew he wanted.

  He clapped his hands together with glee like a child.

  “Excellent,” he said. “Which of my naughty rivals in trade has earned your scrutiny this time?”

  “Johannes Kepahler,” I said.

  Ansveld’s eyebrows floated to the top of his head, and he mused aloud, “Really? Kepahler, eh? That is most interesting. What do you want to know?”

  “It’s a simple matter, actually, and I would ask him myself but…”

  He nodded sagely. “Not all my neighbors are quite as welcoming as I try to be here at Ansveld and Sons.”

  “Indeed. I have a box that seems to have belonged to him. A tea chest, to be precise. I’m trying to determine how it came to be where it is now.”

  Ansveld’s enthusiasm flagged a little.

  “A box?” he said.

  “A tea chest. Yes.”

  “And you want to know…”

  “If it’s still his. If he loaned it to someone. Or threw it away…”

  Ansveld drooped still further.

  “I have reason to believe it was involved in a serious crime,” I said.

  “Really?” he said, perking up. “Well, now. Let me see how I can help.”

  “Are you close to Mr. Kepahler?”

  Ansveld gave his head a decisive shake, like an orlek shrugging off flies.

  “I’m afraid we move in somewhat different circles,” he said. “My father knew him a little better, but Mr. Kepahler and I share neither friends nor beliefs, and that rather keeps us apart.”

  “You don’t see eye to eye politically,” I probed. My gut sense of Ansveld had always been that he was more liberal than his elevated social position might lead you to expect.

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “Though that will not help you learn anything further about this mysterious box.”

  “And you haven’t seen such a box in the last week or so?” I tried. This was starting to feel futile.

  Again, a defiant head shake. “Sorry.”

  “What about friends,” I said, changing tack. “Does Mr. Kepahler have a lot of visitors?”

  “Only customers,” said Ansveld. “He does not live on-site, so what he does in his free time, I couldn’t begin to guess.”

  “You don’t like him,” I said.

  “Not especially,” Ansveld confessed. “It may sound odd coming from one in my line of work, but the man is a snob and—if the two might be yoked together—a barbarian.”

  “In what way?”

  “Little things. He is a man of wealth and privilege, but no education. His taste in luxorite, as in all things, is gaudy, unsophisticated. He comes in from time to time, to see what I have and to keep some kind of private score. He flouts his sales, brags about how cheaply he bought things and how expensively he sold them on. He mocked me once for reading. I had a book behind the counter. Oh, he thought that was most droll! ‘Books are to be sold,’ he said, like it was wisdom. Philosophy. Odious man.”

  I smiled with understanding, liking Ansveld better, even though I knew this was leading nowhere.

  “He bought something from me a couple of weeks ago,” he added. “Odd purchase. A piece of luxorite carved into the shape of a rabbit, couple of inches high. Pretty in its way. Would have been worth an absolute mint if it were new.”

  The light luxorite produces softens dramatically over time in ways that significantly reduce its value.

  “Yellow?” I asked.

  “Beyond that, I’m afraid. My father, when he thought we might still sell it, called it orange, but it was really a dull red. I can’t imagine what Kepahler wanted with it. I overcharged him quite outrageously, but he didn’t so much as quibble!” he said, his victorious grin turning into a disappointed shrug. “He must have had a particular collector in mind. It never appeared in his shop window.”

  “Is there a rag-and-bone man who comes through here?” I asked, redirecting the conversation. “Someone who might have given him a few pennies for the box?”

  “Rag-and-bone man?” said Ansveld, smiling again. “On Crommerty Street? My dear young lady, they’d beat him off with sticks.”

  “Garbage collection, then?”

  “Round the back, every Plainsday. But I wouldn’t see what he had put out.” He stopped abruptly, sitting up. “There he is now!” Ansveld ex
claimed, pointing through the window to where a tall, lean man with a supercilious expression was crossing the street. “I’ll call him in.”

  He was moving across the store to the door, driven by his dislike for the man, ignoring my sputtering doubts.

  “Kepahler!” he called.

  The tall man span on his heel and glared hawkishly at him.

  “What do you want, man?” he said. “I have an appointment.”

  “You had a box,” said Ansveld, his face hard, like he was squaring up to throw a punch. “What happened to it?”

  “Box? What box?”

  “A tea chest.”

  I had sidled toward the window to watch surreptitiously, but Kepahler saw me and gave me a derisive stare.

  “Yes, I had a tea chest,” he sniffed. “What of it? It’s gone now.”

  “I was going to make you an offer for it,” said Ansveld, improvising.

  “For a tea chest? What the devil for, man?”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Donated it, with some other lesser items,” he said grandly.

  “To whom?’

  “What business is it of yours? It was only a tea chest. You can buy a dozen just like it at any market.”

  “I wanted that one.”

  “Well, that’s too bad, though I confess your disappointment gives me a little pleasure. I take still more,” he added, giving me a pointed look, “in knowing that my donation went toward building a brighter future for Bar-Selehm.”

  On that note, clearly pleased with himself, he stalked away.

  I frowned after him, disliking the man even though I had not understood his parting words.

  “What did he mean?” I asked. “Building a brighter future. How?”

  “A jab at your expense, I fear,” said Ansveld, closing the door but still scowling after his rival. “They say brighter, but they mean whiter.”

  “They?” I said.

  “The Heritage party,” said Ansveld, giving me a dour look. “Kepahler is an active member. Organizes fund-raising drives and the like. I’m afraid he donated your tea chest to the organization led by that cretinous bully, Mr. Richter. Or rather—and it pains me to so abuse the title by attaching his name to it—Prime Minister Richter. Kepahler probably has Richter’s ear, thanks to his connections to that old snake Mandel.”