Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(103)
Once on the ground, I looked up to where the urban shadows of the night had been driven into nothing by the hard, white light of the Beacon. Bar-Selehm would wake to its comforting glow, and the world would seem a little closer to being as it should be once more. I wasn’t sure what I thought of that. Too much had changed for me to believe that things would ever be the way they had, though I suspected that much of that change was in me, and that most people wouldn’t notice it.
“Content?” asked Willinghouse as I reached the bottom. He was watching me closely with those penetrating green eyes as I untied my hair, and in the bright light of the Beacon, his scarred face looked strangely tender.
“Content,” I said. “Is there anything else to do?”
“Always,” he said. For a moment, he gave me a searching look, and I was sure he was going to say more, but then he was turning and leading me back to the carriage and whatever else the city had in store.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This story was long in the telling, and I would like to thank those who encouraged me to complete it when it seemed that it would never find the right home, particularly my agent, Stacey Glick, who believed in it from the start; my editor, Diana Pho; and those who read early drafts, particularly David Coe and a little gathering of writers, including Faith Hunter (who also supplied notes) and Misty Massey, who heard me read the first chapter and liked it. Of such stuff is courage made. Thanks also to my guides and rangers in South Africa and Swaziland, particularly Brilliant Makhubele and Ezakiel Sibuyi, and to my wife and son, always my first readers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A. J. HARTLEY is the international bestselling author of a dozen novels, including several archaeological thrillers, the Darwen Arkwright middle-grade series, the Will Hawthorne fantasy adventures, and novels based on Macbeth and Hamlet. He is the Robinson Distinguished Professor of Shakespeare at UNC Charlotte. You can sign up for email updates here.