Guardian

by A. J. Hartley

  I thought of Richter’s own factory and wondered—if there was a Heritage connection to the device used to poison my sister’s children—why he had not made the metal shell himself. Perhaps he wanted to maintain what politicians called “plausible deniability,” particularly after his part in the scandal involving the machine-gun-mounted armored tractors. It had taken weeks in court to verify that his works had been commissioned by people within the government and that he had acted “in good faith”—a phrase inaccurate in every way except, alas, technical meaning.

  But then maybe it was simpler than that. Richter dealt in large-scale steel. The device I had seen was small and irregular, better suited to a jeweler than a producer of railway tracks, girders, and rolled steel sheet. Though the thing had no aesthetic appeal, it had taken time to weld a frame around all those tiny fragments of ancient luxorite, and however insidious its purpose, it had been the work of a craftsman, not a factory.

  By day, Smithy Row rang with hammers beating out their rhythms on anvils and bellows blowing air through the hot coal, but at night it was eerily quiet. It smelled of ash and soot and metal, a tang you could taste in the back of your throat. I squatted on the roof of the Hunter’s Arms, watching for signs of life beyond the fox-headed fruit bats and a lone, skulking jackal rooting through a garbage pail.

  I was at the back of the houses and shops in a narrow, unlit alley. Reaching into my satchel, I plucked out an expensive flashlight with a luxorite source and a mirrored lens, which I had purloined from the town house, and carefully rotated its screw cover till a narrow beam of yellow light shone out.

  Each of the houses had a front drive for goods haulage closed by heavy iron gates. Harding’s was the third on the left of the row, an untidy place with mounds of coal and barrels of scrap iron all over the place. It was surrounded by a brick wall whose mortared top had been set with fragments of broken bottle, but there was no guard dog, and I made it over quickly and unhurt. The main structure was both house and storefront, but the windows showed no lights, and I set to exploring the yard where the work itself was done. There were two complete forges, each with anvils and matching sheds. The latter were padlocked, but I was getting good with Namud’s picks and had them springing open in under a minute each, holding the narrow flashlight between my teeth. Both contained tools and boxes of work in progress or abandoned. In one was a heavy cabinet with large storage bins. The lock on this was trickier, and I labored on it for several minutes with my tools, listening to the night with mounting irritation. I didn’t want to leave signs I had been here, but if I couldn’t open the lock soon, I would have to set to work with my chisel. I took a breath, inserted a different tension wrench into the lower part of the lock, and started over, working the pick all the way to the back with my right hand, and applying a little pressure on the wrench with my left. When I felt the rear pin rise and hold, I pulled the pick back and did the same with the next, maintaining my half turn on the wrench. Two more, and it finally popped.

  I pulled the broad cabinet door open, realizing too late how loudly it creaked on its hinges. On the top shelf was what looked like two sets of full body armor such as you saw in pictures of knights from ancient times, complete with face-covering helmets, all of a dull gray metal I’d wager was lead. Lined up on the shelf below were three of the roughly welded luxorite devices, each as big as my head. Each had an elaborate shutter mechanism fitted with dozens of little metal flaps, all connected to a single lever. I pulled it experimentally, and they opened like the spines of a bush porcupine, revealing panels of brown luxorite that glimmered softly in the darkness, a dull, smoky glow like a poor candle behind a thick amber shade.

  Three of them!

  This was bad, but presented with the fact of my discovery, I wasn’t sure what to do next. Taking them with me, even if I could carry them, would only delay the danger and would expose my investigation while revealing nothing about who was involved beyond Kepahler.

  Go to the police. Find Andrews. They can force the truth from both the smith and the luxorite dealer.

  I closed the shutters on the device, shut the cabinet, and locked it. I was out in the yard again when I heard the door of the house slam.

  CHAPTER

  24

  FOR A MOMENT I froze like a roach in lamplight, staring back toward the house, where someone was opening the gates to the drive. Dimly revealed in the soft glow of a gaslight across the street, I saw what looked like a high cart or wagon drawn by a single horse. I snapped the padlock hasp over the shed door latch with clumsy fingers and caught a snatch of unintelligible conversation on the air, as I hastily turned the flashlight hood. The world went dark. They had been gruff, male voices, low and, at least for now, showing no sound of alarm.

  I ducked round the back of the farthest shed, feeling my way in the blackness, not daring to sprint across the open yard to the wall over which I had climbed in. There was no real cover there, and I would be seen by anyone who stepped away from the shed, so I reached up the timbered wall as quietly as I could, grabbed part of the frame, and pulled myself up. From there I dragged my way onto the pitched roof and rolled onto my back, listening. When nothing happened for a moment, I walked my elbows a few inches and risked a cautious look down, peering through the night to the pearly glow in the street. I could see that the wagon was russet-colored and that the horse drawing it had a strange blue tinge to its striped face.

  Wilderheld orlek.

  It was the circus people. It had to be.

  I remembered the taciturn knife thrower who had, I was sure, ended the life of his boy accomplice and then denied it with no trace of emotion. I flattened my spine to the roof once more, my heart pounding. Only then did I remember the wagon too. I had been in it. It had been parked outside the Parliament House the day Benjamin Tavestock was murdered, part of the little tableau of equipment designed to look like there was repair work on the building but that merely provided an escape for the assassin via the makeshift refuse chute.

  Another sideshow …

  I heard more voices, then footsteps coming closer and a rattle of something metallic.

  Keys.

  “In here,” muttered a voice.

  No one answered. I pocketed my darkened flashlight silently, and put the heel of my hand on the butt of the kukri in my waistband, not daring to draw it for fear that even that whisper of sound would draw their attention. I kept very still in case the smallest shift would set the roof creaking, watching the sky above the yard leap into ruddy light as one of them brought an oil lamp to show the way. My guess was that there were at least three of them. Maybe four. I let go of the kukri. Fighting my way out was not going to be an option.

  I heard the click of the padlock and wondered desperately if I had left any sign of my presence, relieved that I had not recently bathed. Soap smelled—not much, but enough. I heard the door open and close, but I had no idea if they had all gone inside, so I still couldn’t move. If I made a run for it now and there was some lone sentry out there, perhaps someone skilled with a throwing knife, I was as good as dead.

  So I lay where I was, listening in the dark, my back flat against the warm, pine-scented timber of the shed roof, and no muscle in my body stirring. I didn’t hear the cabinet lock turn, but I heard the creak of the door and some muffled words exchanged below me. I felt the rumble of their movement, even their inaudible conversation resonating through the boards of the shed and into my spine. There was a grunt and a gasp, which might have been exertion as one of them picked the heavy devices up, but I had no way of knowing, and then they were leaving again.

  I listened for the noise of the locks, but none came, just footsteps and the sound of bodies moving, labored this time.

  They’re taking the devices, I thought wildly. You missed your chance!

  But there was nothing to do but wait. I heard the clank of the gate, another snatch of conversation, still more distant now, and the sound of the strange blue orlek’s hooves on the cobbles as the
carriage turned and moved away. Even then, I waited to be sure, listening, and when I finally rolled and dropped into the yard, I hesitated before running for the wall.

  The shed was still open. I could make out the door hanging there. Not so very strange, I supposed, that Harding would leave it like that, but just odd enough to make me look inside. I pulled the flashlight from my pocket and, once I was inside and safe from the view from the house, I rotated the lens cap.

  A fraction of a second before the light came on, I knew what I would see. You don’t notice, not usually, especially in the light when the color is so much more compelling, but blood has a smell, sharp and coppery and brimming with alarm.

  It hit my nostrils just before the luxorite beam hit the body of the smith. He was lying on the ground, eyes and mouth open in astonishment, the life quite gone from his face, and a familiar wound through the center of his rib cage.

  * * *

  I MADE FOR THE Mount Street Police Station, though it was too much to hope that Andrews would still be there. The point, as it turned out, was moot. As I came down, Javisha, a policeman, stepped out of the shadows on the corner of Winckley Street and seized me by the scuff of the neck.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he sneered, twisting my face up to his so he could make doubly sure what I was. “Not supposed to be out round here, are you? New laws we have about your sort, or can’t you read the papers?”

  “I’m going to the police station!” I said.

  “That you are,” he replied with grim amusement.

  * * *

  “I NEED TO SEE Inspector Andrews!” I protested.

  “Oh, do you indeed?” scoffed the policeman as he shoved me through the cell door. There were four other women already inside, three black and one Lani. “Anyone else you’d like to speak to? The Lord Archbishop, perhaps? King Stefan? The lead cellist of the Bar-Selehm Symphony Orchestra? Tell you what: you wait here, and I’ll go get some paper so I can make a list.”

  “Funny,” I said.

  He slammed the cell door and I turned, meeting the blank faces of the other women, who were sitting in sullen silence on a pair of benches. The other Lani woman was looking at the floor, her eyes red from crying. One of the black women met my eyes, held them, and when I gave her a cautious nod, smiled unexpectedly and returned it.

  I sat beside her, and she gave me a sidelong look.

  “You wanted to see a policeman?” she said.

  “A particular policeman,” I said. “Yes.”

  “Only white policemen left.”

  “I know.”

  She leaned back a little, as if to get a better look at me.

  “You asked to see a white policeman?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I have met him before.”

  She shook her head and looked at the woman beside her.

  “This one is crazy,” she observed conversationally. The other woman considered me, nodding.

  It was going to be a long night.

  * * *

  ANDREWS DIDN’T COME FOR me. The three black women and I took turns napping on one bench, coming to a silent, mutual agreement that the Lani woman, who sobbed quietly to herself all night, should get the other bench. I tried to console her, but she turned her face away, ashamed of being there. It awoke a sleeping anger in me, and when morning came and the duty officer arrived to take our names for filing, I didn’t trust myself to speak.

  The inspector, it turned out, knew I was there. He intercepted me as soon as I picked up my bag—which, fortunately, had not been searched—walking quickly through the lobby as I stalked ahead, furious.

  “I couldn’t come,” he said. “My position is shaky enough as it is. I’m being watched. The last thing I needed is to be associated with a young Lani woman picked up for breaking curfew.”

  “So long as you’re all right,” I said darkly.

  “I couldn’t have done anything, anyway,” he protested. “Things aren’t like they were. I don’t have the power I had before. Willinghouse is in jail pending—”

  “And you are doing what about that, exactly?” I said, turning on him.

  “I haven’t had any good leads—” he began.

  “The circus was a lead,” I said. “You should have arrested them.”

  “On what charge? They denied the boy had been killed, and we had no body and—

  “For the killing of the prime minister!” I exclaimed. “You have his body, don’t you?”

  “And no evidence that there was anyone with him except Willinghouse!”

  “You have my evidence,” I shot back. “I saw a footprint on the roof. I swore to you I’d seen it. Or is that not good enough anymore?”

  “For me, yes, but not for the commissioner.”

  “Because my skin color makes me blind? A liar?”

  Andrews looked away, his lips pursed. He could think of nothing to say. I stared him down, and at last he hung his head.

  “These are bad times, Miss Sutonga,” he murmured.

  “Worse times,” I said. “They were bad before. For some of us. You just didn’t notice.”

  He looked at me then, and the truth of the remark seemed to register slowly.

  “So I am beginning to see,” he said.

  I nodded. It didn’t make sense to take my anger out on him.

  “You need to go to Smithy Row,” I said. “A place called Harding’s. You’ll find some odd armor and a body there.”

  “What? Whose?”

  “A metalworker hired by Heritage sympathizers to create a toxic device.”

  “What?” said Andrews again, dazed.

  “The wound in his chest is the same as the one that killed the boy climber.”

  That seemed to focus his mind. “You think it was the knife thrower,” he said. He must have been wearing the strange leaden armor for protection against the false luxorite; in it, he would make as good a Voresh goblin man as any in Lani legend.

  “I’m almost sure,” I said. “I also know how the boy killer got inside the Parliament House. The evidence is circumstantial, but if you ask the right people—”

  “No,” he said, suddenly sure. “Your word is good enough for me. I’ll assemble a team of constables and you and I will return to the circus to make some arrests.”

  “Will the commissioner authorize such action?” I said, taken aback by his sudden certainty.

  “The commissioner can go hang himself,” snapped Andrews. “I can do this on my own authority and explain myself later. Wait here.”

  * * *

  IT TOOK NO MORE than twenty minutes for Andrews to gather his team of armed officers. They were, like all the active police now, white, and several of them gave me appraising looks.

  “Yes?” demanded Andrews of one of them. “Is there a problem, constable?”

  “No, sir,” said the officer, dragging his eyes from me to the inspector. “But…”

  “Yes?”

  “Wasn’t she in jail last night?” said the policeman, caught between embarrassment and genuine confusion.

  “She asked for me and was ignored,” said Andrews, drawing himself up.

  “Oh,” said the constable, not really sure what this meant but sensing the kind of professional danger he needed to get away from. “Very good, sir.”

  I rode in the lead coach beside Andrews with two other officers armed with truncheons and revolvers as we followed the underground line to Atembe, then down to Great Orphan Street and the Hashti temple. We could see the big top almost as soon as we entered Nbeki, but the closer we got to the park, the more obvious it was that something had changed.

  It was quiet, an ordinary morning, without any of the oily bustle generated by the sideshows and their strange, foreign staff. The reason became clear as soon as we entered the park. The big top, its vivid red and gold striped canvas flapping in the breeze, had a desolate and faded air, and felt not exotic and exciting, but tawdry and cheap in the flat morning light and the silence. The sideshows, caravans, car
ts, games, exhibits, and animal cages, the steam organ, the hawkers, and roustabouts, were all gone. Litter blew through the abandoned big top, and without the aromas of sweet and unusual food, the rutted, dung-heaped ground held none of its former mystique.

  The circus, it seemed, had left town.

  * * *

  THAT AFTERNOON, I WENT with Dahria and Madame Nahreem to see Willinghouse, playing the lady’s maid once more, a role to which my stony silence was well suited. Dahria watched me, not knowing what to say; my father’s death hung between us like a curtain, making us separate, alone, even as we walked together. Sometimes she would catch my eye, and her face would freeze with the stunned pain you feel immediately after being slapped. Her upbringing had not given her the words to navigate her feelings, let alone mine, so she said nothing, fidgeting with her purse and parasol like a child before giving a recital for which she had not practiced. If I hadn’t been so paralyzed by my own feelings, I would have felt sorry for her. As it was, I was almost relieved.

  But only almost, because those similarities between the poor and the rich I mentioned earlier were only almost true. We did not handle emotion well, but that superficial resemblance just concealed how different we were. Indeed, though I had come to like Dahria, the news of my father’s death in her family’s mine was a measure of the gulf between us, a marker of her extraordinary wealth and privilege. It somehow also showed the extent to which my family were, as we had always been, little more than tools. That Madame Nahreem’s solution to the problem of Papa’s death had been to hire first Vestris, and then when that unraveled, me, employing us, as if a little money would compensate for our loss, left me cold. The fact that I didn’t know what I would have preferred did not make me feel better.

  I imagined Papa’s broken body being drawn up from the black depths of the mine and being inspected by—whom? Willinghouse senior? Madame Nahreem herself? I wondered if my employer had also been there, a keen young man still a student at Ashland University College, Ntuzu, who had not yet set out upon the meteoric political career that had ended days ago with his arrest for murder. He sat before me now, his usually sharp and focused face glazed with hopelessness. They had moved him on the third night, stowing him in a secure cell in the bowels of the Mount Street Police Station a corridor or two over from where Aaron Muhapi was being held. The room was almost identical to the one in which he had been imprisoned in the War Office, a blank, whitewashed brick box with bars across the front and a sliding wooden screen door that afforded him a little privacy. We were made to talk to him through the bars.