Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(93)

As I ran, I replayed the one thing I felt sure of in my head.

It’s not about the Beacon. It never was.

It was about money, of course, and about the deaths of a boy and an old man who no one thought worthy of attention. These were what really mattered, and I felt suddenly ashamed that it had taken me so long to recognize as much.

*

SUREYNA WAS WAITING FOR me at her spot on Winckley Street. The lamps were still lit, and the dawn was, for the moment, cool and fresh, but there was broken glass in the street, burned-out carriages on the corner, and shops with their windows shattered and shelves ransacked. And blood. Not a lot. Not yet. But there would be more. “Unrest,” the papers would call it, if there still were papers. The protests were souring, the city splintering along lines of race and faction, and Willinghouse’s dire prophecies were coming true. We were falling over the brink, and the blood would run in rivers through the streets long before the Grappoli ever got here.

Mnenga’s among them.

The idea shocked me, but a part of me was sure it was true. The city blacks would revolt against the rich whites who were leading them into war, and the Unassimilated would come to their aid, bringing spears and hide shields to fight men with machine guns. For a second, I could see his face in the crowd, proud and open and strong even as the gunfire rang out.…

Sureyna looked anxious and checked over her shoulder as I approached. I spoke urgently, telling her what had happened at the warehouse, all I knew and suspected, so that she took out her pencil and started scribbling.

“You need to go to the police,” she said.

“That’s your job,” I answered. “There are some things I have to do first, and not all of them are strictly legal.”

“Why am I not surprised?” said Sureyna.

I gave her a bleak smile. “I have no choice,” I said. “I have to end this before anyone else gets hurt. And, Sureyna?”

“What?”

“This is not about the Grappoli. It never was. Say so. Say it clearly.”

She nodded with grim understanding, then—as if remembering something important—snatched one of the newspapers from her stack and thrust it into my hands. “There’s a follow-up piece in there you are going to want to read.”

I looked at the cover story. For a long moment, the headline stopped my breath and closed my eyes. It read:

SECRET LAND DEAL COALITION CROSSES PARTY LINES

And there were photographs.

*

BREAKING INTO THE HOUSE on Canal Street was no harder than finding it. I entered through a third-floor window accessed via a downspout, emerging in a well-appointed bathroom. The house was empty of people, as I had expected it would be, and though I moved silently from room to room, I felt no sense of danger. The Lani decorations in the bedroom gave me pause, but I swallowed back any feelings of sadness and remorse as I rifled the office cabinets till I found the charts I had been looking for. The locations were scattered, but I knew what connected them because I had seen the same locations in the land deal records in the library. Each one was marked, the same topographical symbols circled on each map: a broken, wavy line that might have been a stream intersected by a slash mark, over crowded contours. The locations, however, were miles apart, scattered all around the bush north and west of the city. I needed to narrow my search.

In my heart I had suspected it would come to this, though I had hoped to find another way, and I climbed out of the windows and down as if carrying a great load.

Outside, a squad of dragoons was clearing the road. A curfew had been imposed on the city. The streets would be silent until I either unearthed the truth at last, or Bar-Selehm devoured itself in blood and fire.

*

IT TOOK ME ALMOST an hour to reach the Lani temple on the edge of the Drowning. I did not think Mnenga would be there, would not blame him if he wasn’t. And if he was, I had no time to discuss what was on his mind. So though I ran every step of the way, I dreaded getting there, and feared finding him almost as much as not.

He was there. He stood up when he saw me, and his smile was lit by relief, by hope. It broke my heart to see it, to know that I was breaking his, but I had no time to soften the blow.

“I did not come to take back what I said before,” I said. “I’m sorry. I came to ask you about something.”

“You do not treat me well, Ang,” he said, sad rather than angry. “Do you know this?”

“I know,” I said. “You are right. I know and I’m sorry. But I must ask you this.”

He looked away, his eyes squeezed shut as if he did not want me to see his face.

“Please,” I said. “I will ask nothing more of you after today.”

He turned back to me then, his face hot as if I had slapped him. “What about me?” he said desperately, hating to have to put it into words. “After today, what about me?”

I looked down and tried to find something to say.

“I see,” he said in a hollow voice. “Very well. Ask your question.”

“Mnenga,” I said, “it’s not that I don’t—”

“Ask your question,” he repeated.

I took a breath. “The old man,” I said.

“Ulwazi,” he said. “It is important that you call him by his name.”

“Ulwazi,” I said. “Yes. I’m sorry.”