I pulled the bag over my head and lost the world entirely.
In the confusion that followed, I was manhandled firmly but without obvious cruelty out into the night, then into somewhere more confined, where the soles of my boots rang on hard floors. My hands were held behind my back, but I was not bound, and I was guided expertly, so that only once did I jar my shoulder against a doorjamb as I was steered through. Then I was pushed into a chair and released. I snatched the blindfold from my head as the door behind me closed heavily, and I heard it lock as I swiveled to see if I was alone.
I was.
The room was unlike anywhere I had ever been, and I rose from the chair with a new sense of strangeness. It was pristine, the floor matted with expensive grass braid, the furnishings fashioned from lustrous, striped timber. Most of the decoration was elegantly northern, and the books that lined the walls were in Feldish, but there were tribal masks in red and black that looked Mahweni, and there was a statue of an elephant god in black stone. There were Lani paintings on the wall, showing the story of the young god Semtaleen, who stole light from the stars to bring fire to man—as Papa had told me when I was very young.
A candelabrum suspended from a plaster rose in the center of the ceiling was lit by a dozen tiny glass globes. I stared, barely able to believe it: Each globe contained a grain of luxorite. The light was clear and strong and only very slightly yellow. It would take a Lani day laborer the better part of a year to earn enough to purchase one of those little lights.
There were two doors into the room, but the only windows were set near the high ceiling and showed only the night sky. I would need to stack at least one chair onto the desk to reach the ledge. I moved to it and took hold of its exquisitely inlaid top, hoping to drag it under the window, but it was too heavy. I was around the other side, bent at the waist, and pushing when I heard the door behind me click open.
I braced for the impact of an attack, but nothing happened.
I turned to find a young white man in gold-rimmed spectacles and a crisp suit moving toward the desk as if nothing could be more normal. I say he was white, but as soon as I had made the assessment, I was less sure. He was tanned, though his skin was still several shades lighter than my own, and his hair was black and glossy as the wing of a starling, but when he looked at me through his wire-rimmed spectacles his eyes were a bright and unnerving green. Still more striking, however, was a cruel, sickle-shaped scar, which traced a pale and puckered line right down his left cheek to the corner of his mouth and then back toward his ear. It hollowed that side of his face and twisted his lip alarmingly.
“Please have a seat, Miss Sutonga,” he said in Lani, as if I had come for a job interview.
I stared at him, but when he said nothing else, I drifted back to the chair, though I remained standing, trying to look defiant rather than confused and afraid.
“I apologize for the manner in which you were brought here,” he said. “It was necessary.”
He was peering over his glasses at a notebook, turning the pages absently as if he were only half aware of my presence. When he looked up, snatching the glasses from his head and flinging them onto the desk, his green eyes were bright and amused. He had thin lips and a lean, intent face that looked sculpted out of something hard, but the scar made beauty impossible. His body was long and rangy, fit beneath his slightly mannered formal wear, and he gave the impression of wanting to sprawl and stretch, even as he perched on his chair behind the desk.
He nodded to the chair. “I’m sure you would be more comfortable if you sat,” he said.
Heart racing, I shook my head.
“As you wish,” he answered.
He had a northern, cultured voice, and he spoke with the air of one used to being in authority, but his Lani was impeccable, and he was no more than ten years older than I was. Perhaps less.
He considered my face. “You seem to have cut yourself,” he said.
“Where am I?” I managed.
“My home,” he said, as if I should be happy about it.
I could think of nothing to say.
“Tell me about Mr. Ansveld,” said the young man.
I frowned. “Who?” I asked.
“Mr. Ansveld,” he repeated, enunciating the words carefully. His eyes held mine, and his body was perfectly still.
“I don’t know who that is,” I said.
“Really?” he said. “Come now. This will all be much easier if we are honest with each other.” He smiled. It was a thoughtful, knowing smile, and I wondered if I would live longer if I humored him.
“Who is he?” I whispered, eyes down.
“He was a merchant in the city,” said the young man.
“I don’t know any merchants,” I said. “He left?”