*
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.”
“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.