Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(80)

His confusion seemed to deepen. He was either a skillful actor or had no knowledge of either matter. It was unsettling.

“Who is this boy?” he asked.

“Nobody,” I said, and even here, when things might go so very badly, the sadness of that truth pained me. “Just a boy who got in the way of other people’s plans and got killed.”

“I know nothing of any dead Lani boy,” he said.

“But you know about the land deals with Future Holdings,” I said. “You signed the deeds yourself.”

He smiled again, smaller this time, and there was something in the look that spoke of weariness and regret. “Yes,” he said. “Those I know about. I wish to the gods that you did not. I wish that our worthy corporal had not thought to bring you to me.”

“Why did he?” I asked, pressing for time to think. “He didn’t know about the land deals. He didn’t know you were involved. I expect he thought you had been cheated or deceived by enemies of the Mahweni people.”

He nodded sadly. “Corporal Emtezu is alert to enemies of the Mahweni,” he said. “It is his passion and his secondary occupation.”

I gave a sigh of understanding. “You pay him to inform on race issues within the military,” I said.

“Actually, he does it for free,” said Sohwetti. “I offered him money, but he declined it, said it was a matter of principle. He considers himself a”—he smiled at the word—“‘watchdog.’ And there is a great deal to watch. We say we are all equal in Bar-Selehm, but you know as well as I do that that is not even close to being true. You cannot simply take people’s land, property, freedom from them and then, a couple of hundred years later, when you have built up your industries and your schools and your armies, pronounce them equals. And even when you pretend it is true, you do not change the hearts of men, and a great deal of small horrors have to be ignored, hidden, if the myth of equality is to be sustained.”

It was, I suspected, a familiar speech for him, though he believed it still.

“I know,” I said.

“I am sure you do. The Lani have never organized as we have and they never had anything to barter, being themselves outsiders. So yes, I am sure you understand. Corporal Emtezu is, for the most part, focused on the smaller crimes, those little lingering uglinesses that people perpetrate when the world around them changes faster than they would like.”

“Like the imprisonment, torture, and murder of a Mahweni herder who had the misfortune to meet up with some old-fashioned soldiers?” I said carefully.

He sat back then, looking me up and down with something like respect, though it was colored by a resignation that drained him of the energy he normally conveyed. “Precisely like that,” he said, “yes.”

“So he gathers evidence against his superiors,” I said, “channeling it through you and the council you represent.”

“I have a voice in government,” said Sohwetti, drawing himself up. “I may not have the ear of the prime minister like some of my white colleagues, but I am a man of influence and I do my best to use it for my people.”

“But you also feather your own nest at your people’s expense,” I said, once more amazed by my own self-possession. “Secretly selling off their land, their birthright, despite the fact that they have clung to that land against the very men Emtezu is trying to expose.”

“The two matters are unrelated,” said Sohwetti, flicking his fly stick, color rising in his cheeks. “The casual murder of a stray Mahweni is a tragedy that has been played month after hellish month in and around this city since before your grandparents were born! The selling of land, land which—for the most part—my people cannot use, is a completely separate matter. The tribes will benefit directly from those sales. They will see profits they would never have gotten from grazing on that worthless scrub. It is no more than a few square miles of dirt and rock. If the truth were known, the only reason the white men did not take it from us before was because it has no value!”

“So why the sudden interest?”

“I do not know,” he said, “and it does not matter.”

“Is it about the Grappoli?” I asked, desperate to keep him talking.

He shook his head. “If we go to war with the Grappoli, the city will be in ruins long before they get here,” he said sadly. “I will have no hand in that. My duty to my people will be to keep all possible peaces. To do so, there must, alas, be sacrifices. You should not have come here. You have forced my hand most unfortunately.”

“It will all come out sooner or later anyway,” I said. “Silencing me won’t make any difference. The Unassimilated Tribes already know about the sales. What does keeping it quiet in the city for a few more days buy you?”

“The Unassimilated Tribes know we are discussing land transactions,” said Sohwetti carefully. “They do not know that they have already happened.”

I stared at him, horrified, and very slowly, he nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I am sorry. I thought I would be able to change the council’s minds, and in time I am sure I would, but my buyers were impatient. Insistent. They wanted the land now or not at all. I just need a few more days of silence, time to talk the council ’round, after which we will announce the sale and no one will be any the wiser. The results would be the same. Only the date on some paper no one will ever look at will be wrong, and not by much. A clerical error, perhaps. Or it would have been, before you.”