Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(77)
“What? Where to?” I gasped, the fear that had stilled for a moment rearing and plunging again in my head. I should have told Andrews and Willinghouse what I was doing. How could I have been so stupid?
“Not where to, who to,” he said, marching me out into the narrow corridor and slamming the wire door to the carrel behind him.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, moving his right hand to his belt and unbuttoning the flap of his pistol holster so that the heel of his palm rested almost idly against the curve of the revolver’s handle. “You are.”
CHAPTER
28
WE LEFT THE LIBRARY at a brisk walk, and as we crossed the great central lobby on the main floor, he even let go of my wrist, though his eyes held me almost as tight. As we passed the main desk, I caught sight of Miss Fischer, stamping cards methodically. I could call out to her, I thought, say something innocuous sounding but out of character that would make her suspicious, and then …
What? She’d summon the police to say a Lani girl had been seen leaving the building with a well-built Mahweni?
No help there. I kept walking, feeling the big man’s presence at my shoulder, and as I did so, a strange calm descended on me. Before Emtezu had led me up from the basement, there was a moment when he had looked me in the face and said, “Ready?”
It might have been a half threat that was supposed to drive away any thoughts of stunts involving Miss Fischer, just a caution with a chill core of menace, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt more like a pair of actors about to step into a scene together, an act not so much of warning as of solidarity. Whatever we were doing, we were in it together.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we went clattering down the library stairs.
He said nothing but hailed a two-seater and barked an address to the driver, who gave him a quizzical look.
“You sure about that address, sir?” said the cabbie.
“Just go,” said Emtezu.
We sat in the back and he looked out the side. His hand was still near his gun, but his attention seemed elsewhere and he looked troubled.
If you bolt now, leap down to the street, and break into a flat sprint as you come out of your roll, you might find an alley, a fire escape, a maintenance ladder. You might find freedom and safety.…
I could see it all in my head. It could go wrong, of course. It could always go wrong. I could be caught under the wheels of the cab or trampled by a horse going in the other direction. Emtezu might stand and draw and shoot me down with military precision before I made it across the street. But then again, maybe not. Maybe it would all work perfectly and I would vanish into Bar-Selehm as easy as winking.
I stayed where I was. Yes, I might get away. But I had looked into Corporal Emtezu’s eyes, and what I had seen there was not the henchman’s murderous chill, the sadist’s amused anticipation, or the drilled soldier’s unthinking and potentially brutal sense of duty. There was something going through the head of the man beside me, something complex and uncertain, and I wanted to know what it was.
I didn’t know this part of the city, a wealthy enclave on the north-side shore of the ocean, where the port traffic gave way to high-walled mansions and opulent oceanfront hotels. The railway had brought holidaymakers from all over Feldesland, though such visitors were almost exclusively white, so I was taken aback by the florid animal gateposts at the head of a long drive.
A uniformed Mahweni approached the cab, another a few paces behind, his rifle unslung and ready.
He spoke first in one of the tribal languages, as if on principle, then translated.
“You can go no farther,” said the officer. His uniform was unlike any I had ever seen, heavily decorated with gold braid and topped with a pith helmet sporting ostrich feathers. On other men the uniforms might have looked foppish, silly, but the earnestness of the soldiers themselves, their no-nonsense scowls and the ease with which they wielded their weapons, suggested it would be dangerous to underestimate them.
Emtezu pulled a sheaf of papers from an inside pocket and thrust it toward the guard, who considered it, then stepped back to allow us room to climb down. I did so as Emtezu paid and waved the cab away. The driver gave me a look, then wheeled the horse, glad to be leaving.
I shot Emtezu a similar look, but he shook his head fractionally. He was telling me to keep quiet, to let him do the talking.
We were escorted up the long drive by the rifleman, the outer gate closing and locking behind us with a clang that reverberated through the hot air, the metal ringing. The finality of the sound, the way it seemed at odds with the bright sky and manicured grounds, gave me a chill, though Emtezu kept walking, eyes locked on the house ahead, saying nothing.
I had expected a formal mansion, but this was more a vast and luxuriant villa sprawling like a great cat on the undulating grounds. The core of the house was brick, three stories high and sprouting a single broad chimney stack, but the rest was a pastiche of traditional Mahweni architecture with dense, sloping thatched roofs and wooden verandas. There was a swimming pool ringed with a grove of what looked to be patanga fruit trees, and svengalene bushes buzzing with hummingbirds. Statues of orlek and giraffes erupted out of the lawn, huge and stylized, the marbled stone dressed with garlands of flowers and feathers. The steps up to the house itself boasted a balustrade that combined classic urns with a handrail carved to resemble a massive python, all glass and semiprecious stones. As I turned back to consider the way we had come, a black weancat wearing a studded collar paced evenly across the gravel and on through the garden.