Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(56)

“What?” said Rahvey, as if I were speaking another language.

“Did he seem like he was hiding something?” I said. “Or like he was scared, nervous? Did he mention Morlak?”

She shook her head. “Morlak,” she sneered. “These city Lani. You can’t trust any of them.”

*

I RETURNED TO BAR-SELEHM before the lighting of the streetlamps and got the baby safely tucked into her basket in the clock tower before making the cautious climb down. I had the pistol in my belt under my charcoal gray jacket. I did not know what to make of Billy’s sudden decision to be helpful, and I wanted to be ready for anything.

Old Town was the most respectable black district in the city, made venerable by age if not by space. The houses were small, the streets smaller, though their inhabitants kept them meticulously clean. In the square at the end of Range Street, under a pair of blue-tiled minarets that rose like lighthouses above the uneven rooftops, a group of Mahweni protesters were clearing up what was left of their rally, gathering up handbills so they couldn’t be done for littering. I thought of Mnenga’s stories of suspicious land deals, and the image of his face and his gift of the nbezu milk made me smile. I remembered the touch of his hand, the surprise in his face, and the pleasure that had followed it.

And then, as if the memory had conjured him, he was there. He was huddled among the remaining protesters in his Unassimilated garb, so he stood out among the coats and collared shirts. With the spear in one hand, he looked fierce and out of place. He was talking animatedly to one of the protesters, his face earnest, angry even, and as I watched, he gestured dramatically, his forefinger stabbing from his clenched fist so that the other man, who was dressed as a factory worker, shook his head and took a step back. I did not call to Mnenga, and not only because seeing him here in the city was so jarringly strange. He suddenly seemed quite different, his manner, his very presence here hinting at something I had not seen in him before, something he had kept from me.

What was he doing here? There was clearly more to him than the humble nbezu herder he had claimed to be. Were there even any nbezu? He could have bought that milk anywhere.…

Whatever the truth was, however innocent it might be, it was clear as luxorite that while I had trusted him with my private thoughts, I did not know him, and his appearance in my life suddenly seemed more than convenient. It was suspicious. I turned quickly away, so he would not see me, and kept walking. A policeman gave me a look as I rounded the corner, but—since I was neither friend nor obvious foe—went back to monitoring the protesters in the soft glow of a gas lamp, Mnenga among them.

I picked up my pace.

This time of year, the night came early, and as the temperature fell, the city became an entirely different place. The district around the Martel Court, where I had left the baby and which thronged with people in daylight, was deserted now, and its statues of old justices, brushed with the pearly light of the streetlamps, became ghosts of a forgotten world. It was only a couple of blocks to where the statue of Captain Franzen stood on his triumphal column, gazing forever out toward the coast with his bronze telescope.

A sound behind me. Footfalls, or just the echo of my own feet on the stone?

I faltered and they continued for a moment, then stopped. I turned and looked back the way I had come, but the mist that blew in from the river on cold nights had blended with the city’s persistent pall of smog, and I could see no more than twenty yards, even where the street was open and well lit.

I began walking and almost immediately, I heard the steps behind me start up again. They were uneven and punctuated with a rhythmic tap, like someone using a cane, someone very slightly off balance.…

Morlak.

I quickened my pace, dimly aware of Captain Franzen’s column looming out of the fog ahead, its shape cluttered with the scaffolding Tanish had been using. My pursuer matched my speed.

I reached for the pistol in my waistband but did not draw it. Not yet.

As the square opened up, I could see the base of the column clearly, with its four massive bronze rhinos turned outward as if guarding. A figure was sitting on the steps at the foot of the column itself.

He was slumped over sideways. Unmoving.

A puddle of blood was thickening around him. There was a wound in his chest. One I had seen before.

It was Billy.





CHAPTER

21

HIS EYES WERE OPEN, but when I stooped and touched his throat, I felt no pulse, though the body was still quite warm. I closed his eyes with one hand and sat on the stone flags in front of him in numb shock. I adjusted his jacket, which had rumpled, smoothing the front as I thought he would have liked, and I felt the bulge in his breast pocket.

Two purses and a quarter sheet of newspaper, carefully folded.

I took it all, but did not read the cutting. My mind would not process what had happened. I had doubted him, but he was true, and in trying to help me, he had died. Shock and grief and guilt threatened to overcome me, and I stuffed the newspaper into my pocket without another glance.

Two purses, one for the ring he will never buy …

I heard the footsteps. I don’t know how I had forgotten them, but I had. They were closer now, more careful, but they were the same ones I had heard earlier. I heard the tap of the cane, and suddenly I was sure that whoever was following me had been here already. He had known I was coming and who I was to meet. One half of his job was done. I was the other half.