Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(94)

“You said he was dead.”

“He is,” I said. “Where did he come from? Before he came to the city, where had he been?”

“The bush,” he said. “The mountains.”

“Yes,” I said. “But where. Show me.” I rolled out the maps.

He peered at them, then me. “What is this about?” he said.

“I will tell you everything,” I said. “I promise. But right now, I just need to know where he was before he came to Bar-Selehm. Your people saw him after he had been sunburned and before he came to the city. Where was that?”

Mnenga scanned one map and shook his head, then considered another. “I do not understand these,” he said. “I cannot read them.”

“Look,” I said, trying not to sound impatient. “Here is the city. These are the mountains. The ocean is here. See? We are here, so the bush goes this way, away from the river.” I turned the map and pointed.

He nodded thoughtfully, then leaned over the map and put one dark hand over it. “Here,” he said. “There are … high walls of stone.”

“Cliffs?” I said.

“Cliffs, yes. And streams when the rains come with—” He gestured vaguely with his hands: something rolling down.

I gently pushed his palm aside and put the tip of my index finger on one of the circled topographical symbols, the stream, broken by a short line.

“Waterfall,” I said.

*

I TOLD HIM HOW to find Sureyna and—on impulse—gave him the address of Pancaris. Perhaps with Willinghouse’s help, the nuns would let him return Kalla to Rahvey so she could make one last appeal to the elders. I had to try. The orphanage was a terrible place, and I couldn’t set off for the old freight line that snaked out of the Riverbend sidings without feeling like I had at least tried to save the girl from it. I may never get the chance again.

So I hopped on the back of a locomotive hauling a mixed cargo of coal and grain, knowing that I was asking too much of Mnenga, but that there was no one else I could trust.

Trust.

I reflected on the word miserably as the train slid its slow way north, leaving behind the weedy, soot-blackened brick of the railway yards, the signal boxes, and gravel access roads as we circled the city like an aging lion, then began the climb toward the mountains.

And who do you trust now, Anglet? Who, apart from the Mahweni boy you have rejected, will stand by you now?

I rode on the footplate because cargo can shift with the movement of the train, crushing those unwise enough to be sleeping between pallets. Not that I would be sleeping. The sun beat on my arms and face, sweat ran down my neck, and the noise and smoke from the rattling engine overwhelmed my other senses, but I had never been more awake in my life. I watched the increasingly wild and ragged bush, catching sight of a herd of black wildebeests and a loping group of rinx giraffes—the ones with the gray and yellow mottling—but no people.

I had never been comfortable outside the city.

Suddenly, strangely, I found myself missing Papa again, and I wondered if the day he died had been the day I stopped trusting anyone.

They would be ahead of me. I knew that the moment I saw the empty house. The police, and maybe a reporter or two, would be following, but my enemies were ahead of me.

Curious that people I barely knew could be my enemies, but they were, and not merely because they wanted me dead, something they would feel more strongly with every step I took toward the point marked on that map. I was more than an inconvenience to them, someone who would upset their plans. I stood for something. Or they did. I wasn’t sure what those things were exactly, but I knew they were opposites, and that was why we were enemies.

The collared weancat prowled my mind.

I didn’t study the map, but as soon as I saw the water tower, I started looking for a place to jump down where I was least likely to turn an ankle. There was no cover to speak of, just elephant grass and the occasional thorn tree, and no way to go but to follow the streambed till the slope became a cliff. If they were expecting me, they might pick me off with a rifle long before I got there, but I was trusting their arrogance and condescension. They didn’t think me worth watching for.

I was fairly sure of my destination now, the only spot where Ulwazi’s wanderings overlapped with the parcels of land sold by Sohwetti. The rest, I was sure, added up to little more than a ruse, a screen so that no one would notice the one location that mattered.

Well, I had noticed, and as soon as I was certain of all the details, they would answer for their crimes.

At the edge of the dried river, the grass had been beaten flat, and I could see the prints of work boots. Lots of them. Deep wheel ruts and hoof marks crossed the riverbed back toward the city, and under a wizened marula tree I found an abandoned water cooler and a helmet. A work team had been here recently.

I wanted to believe that they were all gone, but I knew they weren’t. My enemies were here to bury their traces for the time being, and if I didn’t find them quickly, they might still walk away rich and free. I couldn’t wait for assistance—if it would ever come—from the police. I was on my own.

But then, you always are, aren’t you? However much you pretend that isn’t true, you will always be alone. You are the blind and blundering rhino, hornless, staggering about alone, lost, waiting for death, incapable of protecting those dearest to you.…