Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(19)

I braced for the impact of an attack, but nothing happened.

I turned to find a young white man in gold-rimmed spectacles and a crisp suit moving toward the desk as if nothing could be more normal. I say he was white, but as soon as I had made the assessment, I was less sure. He was tanned, though his skin was still several shades lighter than my own, and his hair was black and glossy as the wing of a starling, but when he looked at me through his wire-rimmed spectacles his eyes were a bright and unnerving green. Still more striking, however, was a cruel, sickle-shaped scar, which traced a pale and puckered line right down his left cheek to the corner of his mouth and then back toward his ear. It hollowed that side of his face and twisted his lip alarmingly.

“Please have a seat, Miss Sutonga,” he said in Lani, as if I had come for a job interview.

I stared at him, but when he said nothing else, I drifted back to the chair, though I remained standing, trying to look defiant rather than confused and afraid.

“I apologize for the manner in which you were brought here,” he said. “It was necessary.”

He was peering over his glasses at a notebook, turning the pages absently as if he were only half aware of my presence. When he looked up, snatching the glasses from his head and flinging them onto the desk, his green eyes were bright and amused. He had thin lips and a lean, intent face that looked sculpted out of something hard, but the scar made beauty impossible. His body was long and rangy, fit beneath his slightly mannered formal wear, and he gave the impression of wanting to sprawl and stretch, even as he perched on his chair behind the desk.

He nodded to the chair. “I’m sure you would be more comfortable if you sat,” he said.

Heart racing, I shook my head.

“As you wish,” he answered.

He had a northern, cultured voice, and he spoke with the air of one used to being in authority, but his Lani was impeccable, and he was no more than ten years older than I was. Perhaps less.

He considered my face. “You seem to have cut yourself,” he said.

“Where am I?” I managed.

“My home,” he said, as if I should be happy about it.

I could think of nothing to say.

“Tell me about Mr. Ansveld,” said the young man.

I frowned. “Who?” I asked.

“Mr. Ansveld,” he repeated, enunciating the words carefully. His eyes held mine, and his body was perfectly still.

“I don’t know who that is,” I said.

“Really?” he said. “Come now. This will all be much easier if we are honest with each other.” He smiled. It was a thoughtful, knowing smile, and I wondered if I would live longer if I humored him.

“Who is he?” I whispered, eyes down.

“He was a merchant in the city,” said the young man.

“I don’t know any merchants,” I said. “He left?”

The smile widened, thinning to a tight crease, and he tipped his head to one side, as if I were playing games with him. “In a sense,” he said. “He’s dead.”

I felt again that strangeness, as if the earth beneath my feet had shifted, changing the world in ways I did not understand. “I didn’t know him,” I said.

“He was a prominent businessman,” he continued, watching me like a mongoose at a snake hole. “A powerful man.”

“I don’t know powerful people,” I said. The young man’s probing green eyes were starting to get to me.

“His business was entirely concerned,” he said, careful as before, “with the buying and selling of luxorite.”

That last word flicked out with the force and precision of a cat’s pounce, but then just hung in the air between us. I fought to keep any kind of response out of my face, but he nodded.

“That you know,” he said, smiling again his knowing and uneven smile.

“I know what luxorite is,” I said.

“But I imagine you have few dealings with the mineral yourself,” said the man, considering the little bulbs that lit the room. “Not ordinarily, I mean.”

My mouth felt dry. “No,” I said. “I don’t deal with luxorite.”

“Not, as I say, ordinarily.”

He waited, watching, and I felt obligated to shake my head and mouth the negative again. What was going on here? The question rose in my mind and then repeated with a telling variation: What did he think was going on?

“You are, I am told, the finest steeplejack in the city,” he said.

I didn’t respond.

“But I hear you left work early today,” he continued conversationally.

I nodded.

“Why would that be?” he asked.

“I … I lost my job,” I said, looking down.

“By choice?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “Morlak wasn’t happy with my work.” I spoke as carefully as he did.

The young man nodded. His fingers, which he had steepled together, were long, the nails manicured. “So unhappy, in fact,” he said, “that he sent people to kill you, yes?”

There was no point denying it. His men—the phrase was odd, considering they all seemed older than he was—had obviously seen as much.

I nodded once.

“That’s a curious development, wouldn’t you say? You must have upset Mr. Morlak a great deal.”