Guardian

by A. J. Hartley

  There was a long, stunned silence and then a tap came at the door. It opened, and Sureyna peered in.

  “I was told you were in here,” she said.

  Mnenga managed a smile, but the rest of us were still in shock.

  “Any news?” Andrews asked her. It seemed my lodging house had—unknown to me—become the heart of some new resistance movement. Sureyna shrugged disconsolately, but before she could say anything, and as if to prove my previous thought, the window onto the flower beds outside rose, seemingly of its own accord. A slim brown hand reached in, and before we knew what was happening, someone was climbing up, through, and in.

  A veiled and hooded someone.

  Vestris.

  She looked … embarrassed, almost ashamed of herself, her face low, her eyes on the floor, her hands adjusting the ragged robe, which was both cloak and hood. Madame Nahreem got unsteadily to her feet, one hand clutched to her heart, staring at my sister as if she were a specter from beyond the grave. Vestris saw her and became leopard-still, as if poised to flee. Or strike. The room was suddenly charged with the weight of things unsaid.

  “You were right,” said Vestris half turning to me, but her eyes still on Madame Nahreem. “Someone has been in the cave. Part of the concrete poured in to seal it was cut away. The opening has been hidden, but it’s undeniable: someone has been inside.”

  Even without Madame Nahreem’s prior association with her, Vestris’s appearance, ragged and otherworldly as it was, had given the meeting a dreamlike quality from the moment she had clambered in. Andrews leaned forward, peering at her, the wheels in his head starting to turn.

  “This is a steeplejack friend of mine,” I said. Vestris caught my eye quickly, then looked down. Tanish, putting the pieces together, gaped.

  “How did they find the cave?” asked Mnenga.

  “Who is they?” said Andrews.

  “They didn’t find it,” I said. “Not this time. They have known about it for months. Am I right?” I almost called my sister by name, but I saw the way Andrews was watching her and held it back. There would be a time for Vestris to answer for her past deeds, but it was not today.

  “Mandel,” she said. The word came out as a snarl, grotesque and laden with malice. The man who was now head of Bar-Selehm’s security forces had betrayed her after all, though she was not alone in that. Emtezu rose slowly to his feet, and his face was hard and dark with anger. Mandel had once been his commanding officer. No one knew better than Emtezu what the man was capable of.

  “Where is he now?” said Emtezu.

  Andrews shook his head, but Sureyna spoke up.

  “I know where he will be,” she said, snatching my copy of the Standard from me and turning to the second page. She laid it on the coffee table where we could see it, reciting the text from memory. “Prime Minister Richter’s inaugural diplomatic celebration will take place this evening at eight o’clock on the private yacht belonging to Count Alfonse Marino, Grappoli ambassador. The governmental party will include senior cabinet members and head of state security, Colonel Archibald Mandel. Light refreshments will be served as the vessel makes its way east of the Ridleford pontoon. Once in the bay itself, a fireworks display will commence from the deck, allowing a magnificent perspective of the pyrotechnics over the city.”

  There was a stunned silence as everyone made sense of this.

  “My God,” said Andrews. “The ambassador is going to sail the core of the government right into the mouth of the Grappoli fleet! The yacht will be boarded, and the prime minister and his inner circle will be taken prisoner. The administrative and legislative heart of the city will fall before a shot is fired!”

  “We have to alert the government right away!” said Dahria.

  “I’ll report to my garrison HQ,” said Emtezu, heading for the door.

  “No!” I said, loudly. “Everyone just … be quiet.”

  There was another heavy pause, and they all stared at me.

  “We have not a moment to lose,” said Andrews.

  “No!” I said again.

  “We really don’t have time—” Andrews began, but Dahria elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Let the girl think,” she muttered.

  I did, the puzzle pieces swirling around in my head and then slotting into place.

  “I thought we were dealing with two threats to the city,” I mused aloud, looking at no one. “One from inside—Richter, Heritage, and their attempts to suppress the black and colored population by any means they could use, including a deadly toxin. One from outside—the Grappoli attack. But they were always part of the same thing. Richter and his government aren’t about to be snatched by an unexpected Grappoli attack fleet. He is about to meet his Grappoli allies and hand them the city.”

  CHAPTER

  29

  “NO!” SAID ANDREWS. “SURELY not?”

  “Richter always said the Grappoli were white Bar-Selehm’s racial allies. He has always preached appeasement and alliance between the city and the Grappoli, an alliance against all the nonwhites in the region. This is to be his masterstroke, achieving both unity with the Grappoli and the banishment or destruction of the blacks and coloreds in one fell swoop.”

  “The city won’t stand for it!” said Dahria.

  “The city won’t have a choice,” said Mnenga. “Who will defend it?”

  “Most of the regular army have been sent north of the city to meet a threat that doesn’t exist,” said Emtezu, “and most of the black people in the city are still recovering from the effects of the green luxorite. Richter’s militia are virtually the only armed men in the city, and they will do what their leader tells them to.”

  “Then we’ve lost,” said Andrews. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  “If my brother were here—” Dahria began.

  “He’s not,” said her grandmother. “Another fragment of the resistance conveniently swept out of the way.”

  “If he were here,” Dahria persisted, “he would insist there is always something we can do, even if it feels impossible. Even if you cannot hope for success, the act of resistance is sometimes all you have.”

  “Aaron Muhapi would say the same,” said Sureyna. “And so do I.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then we will resist, whatever the hope of success. We will stand for the city we love, the version of the world we love, for right and for justice. Yes?”

  “Yes,” said Emtezu.

  “Yes,” said Mnenga.

  “Yes,” said Dahria.

  “How?” said Andrews.

  I smiled at him, suddenly struck with a disarming sense of compassion for them all, for their sadness, their desperation.

  “We gather our forces,” I said, pushing into the next sentence before Andrews could turn his obvious skepticism into words. “You reach out to the police you know you can trust. Mnenga, you put your warriors between the Drowning gate and the Grappoli soldiers coming from the west. Emtezu, you gather every black and colored soldier sent home by the recent ban and get what weapons you can, and we try to retake the coastal fortresses. Sureyna—”

  “I will alert Peter and as many of the city Mahweni as can walk,” she said. “They are very angry. They may not have weapons as such, but many have axes and wrenches, boat hooks and hammers—”

  “So do the Lani,” said Tanish. “I’ll bring the gangs from the Soot and Numbers, the Drowning too if I can get word to them. They might not all get along, but if they have to pick between fighting each other and fighting the Grappoli? No contest, is it?”

  I nodded with gratitude, then continued.

  “We will need to disarm the other devices that have put the remaining garrisons out of commission. They will be located in high, unobtrusive places, so perhaps I should—”

  “I will take care of them,” said Vestris. I gave her a look, but her eyes burned with a fury I dared not contradict.

  “I will go with her,” said Madame Nahreem. “I am not the Crane Fly I once was, but I can s
till climb.” As Tanish’s jaw dropped, the two women eyed each other for a moment. “And besides,” said Madame Nahreem, speaking with an entirely unfamiliar lack of command that was almost humility, “there are things to say. Things owed.” For a moment her face seemed to ripple with barely contained distress, but then Vestris inclined her head infinitesimally, and the old woman’s mask slid back into place.

  “And you?” said Mnenga. “What will you do?”

  I pulled my eyes from Vestris’s almost feral face and thought for a moment, hoping some other option would present itself, but I knew what was left to me. There was a polite tap at the door, and Mrs. Topesh appeared, dignified as ever, with a wheeled trolley loaded with porcelain cups and saucers.

  “Forgive me for taking the liberty,” she said, addressing me and my motley assortment of visitors, “but I thought your guests would appreciate some tea.”

  I couldn’t help laughing, and when she gave me a bewildered look, I said, “Mrs. Topesh, you are a good person.”

  “Well,” she said, coloring, but standing tall, “at times like these, if we can’t all stick together, what use are we?”

  * * *

  EMTEZU LED THE WAY through the darkening city, his purposeful stride, and that of the twenty or thirty men matching him step for step behind me, clearing the streets. They weren’t wearing uniforms, and the city was already starting to forget that black men had made up a sizeable portion of its armed forces, but there was no mistaking their military bearing. I think the guards on the gate at regimental headquarters recognized that before they realized who he was.

  “Something I can help you with, Captain?” said one of them, opting for casual, while one of his colleagues unslung his rifle cautiously and nodded to another to alert the men inside.

  “The city is under attack,” said Emtezu without preamble. “We need access to your armory.”

  The sentry, a ruddy-faced man with a blond mustache and watery blue eyes, rubbed his hands absently, biding for time.

  “An attack, eh?” he said at last, trying to sound interested but neutral. “I haven’t heard the alarm, gunfire, anything like that.”

  “That’s because elements within the government don’t want us to fight back,” he said.

  “Is that right?” said the sentry, still carefully noncommittal, as if they were merely debating a point of protocol. “Which elements would those be, then?”

  “The prime minister,” said Emtezu, smiling openly at the preposterousness of the claim.

  “Oh,” said the sentry, returning his smile. “That element. Look, Captain, you know I can’t help you. I understand why you are upset, and I think you know that a lot of us here sympathize with your position, but this,” he glanced pointedly at the men lined up behind us, “is not the way. Go home and we’ll say no more about it, yes?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Corporal,” said Emtezu. “The government is about to hand our city over to the Grappoli, and we can’t let that happen.”

  “The Grappoli, is it?” said the sentry, playing along, but not believing a word of it. “Well, if they have marched all the way down here, they’re going to walk right into the first infantry regiment about twenty-five miles up the coast, along with a whole lot of cavalry and artillery. I don’t think we need to rely on you and your, er, friends here.”

  “They aren’t up the coast,” said Emtezu, biting back his impatience. “They came around the cape by ship and are about to steam up the river mouth. The city is largely undefended.”

  The sentry’s easy smile wavered for just a second as a note of confusion flitted through his pale eyes.

  “Up the river mouth?” he said. “If that were the case, we would not be able to hear ourselves speak for the noise of the guns in the emplacements by the docks and the harbor fortress.”

  “The gun emplacements have already been taken by the enemy,” said Emtezu. “It’s up to us to take them back.”

  I was glad he didn’t say that the coastal forts had been taken by troops disguised as circus performers and using baboons as sappers, but the sentry still made a face.

  “You’re joking, right?” he said. “I mean, you can’t expect me to believe this.”

  Emtezu looked down, sighed, then looked at me and, almost under his breath, said, “This is a waste of time.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not.” I looked up at the sentry, then said, “What if they just take their uniforms? And the guns, but no ammunition?”

  “What use would that be?” said the sentry.

  “The man has a point,” said Emtezu.

  “The Grappoli are expecting the city to be undefended,” I said. “We might not need an actual army to make them think twice about coming in.”

  “If this is real,” said the sentry, “and the Grappoli are here with an invasion force, thirty men aren’t going to stop them, whether they are uniformed or not.”

  “Perhaps not,” I said. “But that sounds like our problem, not yours.”

  He peered at me, as if I were rock that had started speaking. “Who is this?” he said to Emtezu. “Why are you listening to this girl?”

  “Right now,” said Emtezu, “she is the only person in this city that I trust, the only person who might get us through the night in one piece.”

  The sentry seemed to hesitate, then shook his head. “I can’t authorize this,” he said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Emtezu. “I was hoping we could do this the easy way.”

  He stepped past the sentry, deflecting the muzzle of his comrade’s rifle and kicking him square between the legs. As the man went down, Emtezu wrested the gun from his hands and turned back to the sentry, jabbing the butt into his midriff and doubling him up. Leaving the sentry wheezing behind him, Emtezu strode through the gate and into the building, checking the rifle’s breach as he did so.

  “Take his weapon,” he commanded, over his shoulder, “but don’t use it unless I give the order. I’d rather we didn’t have to lock him and his friends up. Actually, I’d rather they came with us.”

  I stared at him as one of his men unholstered the sentry’s revolver and popped its cylinder out.

  “This is a court-martial offense!” gasped the sentry.

  “That depends,” said Emtezu.

  “On what?” demanded the sentry.

  “On who is in charge in the morning,” called Emtezu as he walked away.

  “Tsanwe!” I called after him. He turned.

  “You need to go,” he said, anticipating my remark. “It’s all right. I’ll get the Northbank Fortress back under our control. They don’t know we’re coming and won’t expect it. If we can take it without too many losses, I’ll send men across the river to the Ridleford battery, but I doubt they’ll get to you in time.”

  “I know,” I said. “Just … be careful.”

  “You too,” he said.

  “And thanks.”

  I turned quickly before I had time to think better of it, to try and find other words about what his friendship meant to me. It was, after all, almost certainly the last time we would see each other alive.

  CHAPTER

  30

  IT WAS AFTER SEVEN by the time I reached the river just east of butchers’ row in Evensteps. The Grappoli ambassador’s yacht was moored in the fashionable marina just south of where the triumphal arch spanned Broad Street. The water was deep here, and the embankment was sheer and well maintained, which meant no hippos and few crocodiles. Snakes were always a danger at this time of year, but I had my good boots on, and in spite of my former exhaustion, I was suddenly wide awake.

  The Grappoli flag tugged disconsolately at the yacht’s mast as the evening’s festivities were prepared by a small army of servants. Even before the new laws, the only Lani or blacks here were employees paid to wash down the decks or scrape barnacles off the hulls of the sleek pleasure craft that called this portion of the river Kalihm home. Since it was after curfew, I could not afford to be picked up for l
oitering. I watched the area from a fishing pier a little upriver for ten minutes, until I was reasonably satisfied I knew how the guards and staff operated, then ducked into the nearest alley and waited for my chance.

  I suspected that the serving staff for the event itself would be all white, but Richter cared less about the servants he couldn’t see. Some of the men and women carrying crates of fireworks, trays of food, and cases of wine bottles were black and Lani. I followed the returning line to the supply wagons, pulled my carefully folded maid’s apron from my satchel, put it on, and joined the line. There were armed dragoons wearing the green tunics and white, feathered pith helmets I had seen outside the Grappoli embassy watching the gangway onto the yacht, but no one looks twice at a Lani servant when she is carrying things to be used by her social superiors.

  I, however, did and was taken aback to recognize one of them.

  Bindi. The cleaning girl from Parliament, who had apparently been allowed to continue her labors outside the corridors of power. That meant the ambassador, Richter, and his cronies weren’t aboard yet. I considered staying out of her line of sight, then changed my mind. As I set down my crate of fine stemware, I nudged her in the ribs. Her eyes flicked to me and her mouth opened, but I raised a quick finger to my lips.

  “Has the boat been cleaned?” I whispered.

  She hesitated, thrown by my appearance, then nodded. That meant the cabins below would be unoccupied.

  “Just finishing up,” she breathed. “They’re on their way.”

  “Thank you.” A question I had wanted to ask occurred to me. “Bindi, when that tea chest we found upstairs in the Parliament House was delivered, did Mr. Shyloh see that it was moved there?”

  She shook her head.

  “He didn’t know about it,” she said. “Got quite hot under the collar about it taking two of the staff to move it. Waste of man hours, he said.”

  “So who gave the order?”

  “The Heritage party secretary,” she said. “Mr. Saunders.”

  “Now the prime minister’s private secretary,” I said.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Why? What are you doing?” she whispered, glancing uneasily around.