Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(36)

The snap of a twig, and my memories were blown away like smoke.

I stared into the shadows where I had glimpsed the movement. There was a roughly plastered shrine, crumbling with age and overgrown with vines, little more than an altar within a miniature apse, wreathed by day in the smoke of a dozen incense sticks. The more I looked, the more sure I was that there was something beside it. Something that had not been there before.

It moved fractionally again, though the trees behind it stayed quite still and I could feel no breeze. Whatever it was, it was alive and watching. I could feel its eyes upon me.

But the darkness was the wrong shape for a hyena.

The figure rose from its crouch and stepped forward, slowly, letting what was left of the firelight fall upon him.

It was the Mahweni boy with the spear I had spotted when I went to see Berrit’s grandmother.

He was young, close to my own age, clad in a simple drape that hung from one shoulder. He held the slender spear casually in one strong hand. His skin was black as the night itself.

My eyes flashed to the satchel, but otherwise I kept very still. The Lani and the Mahweni weren’t enemies. The two peoples overlapped very little in culture, language, geography, work, or religion. Inside the city, the Mahweni were factory workers, laborers, market vendors, and street hawkers, like the newspaper girl. They dressed like white people, more or less, and did the same kinds of work, though usually for less money. They were what were called the Assimilated Tribes. But outside the city, the Mahweni were different. They were herders, hunters, and occasional traders, as they had been long before the whites came down from the north or the Lani from across the Eastern Sea. They were fiercely independent, a loose convocation of frequently squabbling tribes who held to ancient ways.

The Mahweni and the Lani kept themselves to themselves, speaking little, sharing less. We weren’t enemies, but we weren’t friends either.

The boy seemed to hesitate, feeling my eyes upon him. He looked at me, then bent at the waist, a graceful and stately bow that lowered his eyes for a moment.

I couldn’t help smiling at the dignity of the gesture, and the smile moved through my body, relaxing the tension I had barely been aware of. The Mahweni nodded toward the fire, and his eyes widened a little in request. At this time of year, it could get quite chilly when the sun went down.

“You want to sit here?” I asked in Lani, checking the satchel. It was quite still. “I suppose so. Yes.”

I returned my gaze to the fire, marveling at the strangeness of my composure. Would I have done such a thing two days ago? No. I would have fled. But two days ago, I had not been a detective sitting in an abandoned temple outside the city to avoid a man who meant to kill me. It wasn’t that I was braver now. I just had bigger things to worry about.

The Mahweni boy settled beside me, nodding and smiling but saying nothing. He had high cheekbones, and his head was shaved. He almost certainly spoke no words of Lani, but that didn’t matter; I was in no mood to talk.

The boy unslung a pouch from round his neck and tipped some sorrel nuts into his hand. He offered them to me and I, more out of politeness than hunger, took one. He smiled broadly and watched me eat it. The nut was sweet and slightly fragrant, which meant it was fresh.

“It’s good,” I said in Feldish.

The Mahweni boy’s face lit up. “Yes,” he said in Feldish. “Good.” He considered me, still smiling, then added, “I am Mnenga.”

“Anglet,” I said.

He rehearsed the word in his mouth, enunciating it carefully till I smiled and nodded. There was a single chicken thigh left. I proffered it to him.

“Yes?” he said.

“Yes.”

He took it and bit into the flesh, his eyes closing in the ecstasy of the moment. When he was done, he thanked me extravagantly. “Much better than nuts,” he said.

I grinned in spite of myself. Normally around boys of my own age I got tense and silent, uncomfortable, as if my skin suddenly didn’t fit right. But his presence was strangely calming, and all the fears and anxieties of the day seemed to have curled up by the fire and gone to sleep.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He frowned, trying to make sense of the question.

“I mean,” I said, “why are you in this place?”

“Oh,” he said, the brilliant smile snapping back into position. He had large black eyes, bright with curiosity and seemingly always on the point of laughing. “I have a…” He hesitated, looking for the word. “A flock?… Yes, a flock of nbezu, that way.”

Nbezu are something between a goat and an antelope, with tall straight horns that spiral to a point like the cone-shaped shells I sometimes found by the docks.

“Two of them came this way.”

“I haven’t seen them,” I said. “You left the flock alone?”

He laughed at that, a delighted bark that threw his head back like a shout into the sky. “No, no,” he said. “My brothers are there. Otherwise—” He gestured with his hands, fingers splayed, palms pushing quickly away from his chest: They would scatter.

“I see,” I said, shielding the satchel with my body and surreptitiously checking to make sure the baby was still asleep. I didn’t want him to see it. “I hope you find them. There are hyenas here.”

He considered that and sniffed the air, tipping his head onto one side as he said, “Not tonight, I think. Not unless they are very clever.”