Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(3)

And now it was gone. I strained my eyes, disbelieving, but there could be no doubt. The Beacon was not dimmed or obscured by the smoke. It was gone, and with that, the world had shifted on its axis, a minute adjustment that altered everything. Even for someone like me, who was used to standing tall in dangerous places, the thought was unsettling. The Beacon was a constant, a part of the world that was just simply there. That it wasn’t felt ominous. But it also felt right, as if the day should be commemorated with darkness.

Papa.

I touched the coin I wore laced round my neck, then took a long breath. There was still no sign of Berrit, and my satchel needed emptying.

After moving to the top of the ladder, I reached one leg over, then the other. There was a little spring in the wood, but the dogs I had hammered into the brickwork were tight, and the ladder felt sure under my weight. Even so, I was careful, which was just as well, because I was halfway over the perilous cap when someone called out.

The suddenness of it up there in the silence startled me. One hand, which had been moving to the next rung, missed its mark, and for a moment, I was two-thirds of the way to falling. I righted myself, grabbed hold of the ladder, and stared angrily down, expecting to see Berrit, the new boy, made stupid by lateness.

But it wasn’t, and my annoyance softened.

It was Tanish, a Lani boy, about twelve, who had been with the gang since his parents died three years ago. He was scrambling recklessly up, calling my name still, his face open, excited.

“Stop,” I commanded. “Wait for me on the roof.”

He looked momentarily wounded, then began to climb down.

Tanish was the closest thing I had to an apprentice. He followed me around, learning the tricks of the trade and how to survive in the gang, gazing at me with childish admiration. He was a sweet kid, too sweet for Seventh Street, and sometimes it was my job to toughen him up.

“Never call up to me like that,” I spat as soon as we were both at the foot of the chimney. “Idiot. I nearly lost my grip.”

“Not you, Ang,” the boy answered, flushed and sheepish. “You’ll never fall.”

“Not till I do,” I said bleakly. “What are you doing here? I thought you were working the clock tower on Dock Street.”

“Finished last night,” said Tanish, pleased with himself. “Superfast, me.”

“And it still tells the right time?”

Tanish beamed. Last time he had been working a clock with Fevel, they had left the timepiece off by three and a half hours. When the owner complained, they climbed back up and reset it twice more, wildly wrong both times, too embarrassed to admit that neither one of them could tell time. Eventually Morlak had done them a diagram and they had had to climb up at double the usual speed to set the mechanism. Even so, they had left the clock four minutes slow, and its chime still tolled the hour after every other clock in the city, so that the gang jokingly referred to Tanish Time, which meant, simply, late.

“Well?” I demanded, releasing the hair I keep tied back while I work. It fell around my shoulders and I ran my fingers roughly through it. “What’s so important?”

“It’s your sister,” said Tanish, unable to suppress his delight that he was the one to bring the news. “The baby. It’s time.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, my jaw set. “Are they sure?” I asked. “I wasted half of yesterday sitting around out there—”

“The runner said they’d brought the midwife.”

Today of all days, I thought. Of course it would be today.

“Right,” I said, half to myself. “Tell Morlak I’m going.”

My pregnant sister, Rahvey, was three years my senior. We did not like each other.

“Morlak says you can’t go,” said Tanish. “Or—” He thought, trying to remember the gang leader’s exact words. “—if you do, you better be back by ten and be prepared to work the late shift.”

That was a joke. Rahvey and her husband, Sinchon, lived in a shanty on the southwest side of the city, an area traversed by minor tributaries of the river Kalihm and populated by laundries, water haulers, and dyers. It was known as the Drowning, and it would take me an hour to get there on foot.

Well, there was no avoiding it. I would have to deal with Morlak when I got back.

Morlak was more than a gang leader. In other places, he might have been called a crime lord, and crossing him was, as the Lani liked to say, “hazardous to the health.” But since he provided Bar-Selehm’s more respectable citizens with a variety of services, he was called simply a businessman. That gave him the kind of power he didn’t need to reinforce with a stick and brass knuckles, and ordinarily I would not dream of defying him.

But family was family: another infuriating Lani saying.

I had two sisters: Vestris, the eldest and most glamorous, who I barely saw anymore; and Rahvey, who had raised me while Papa worked, a debt she would let me neither pay nor forget.

“Take my tools back for me,” I said, unslinging the satchel.

“You’re going?” said Tanish.

“Seems so,” I answered, walking away. I had taken a few steps before I remembered the strangeness I had felt up there on the chimney and stopped to call back to him. “Tanish?”

The boy looked up from the satchel.

“What happened to the Beacon?” I asked.