He smiled again, that same thin smile, then tapped his fingertips on the desktop. “Let’s just say,” he said musingly, as if making an important decision on impulse, “that you can trust us.”
I made a scoffing noise without thinking. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t trust people who kidnap me.”
He chuckled. “Very well,” he said. “My name is Josiah Willinghouse, and I work for the government housed in the fair city of Bar-Selehm.”
“You are a civil servant?” I returned, not troubling to mask my skepticism.
“A politician,” he said. “Albeit a junior one.”
“This is not a government building,” I said. “It’s a town house. Your men drove me around for a while, but I’m guessing from the sound of the cobbles that we’re still east of Old Town, close to Ruetta Park.”
He smiled again. “Very good!” he exclaimed. “I like that you pay attention. That will prove most useful.”
“Useful?” I shot back, bridling at the sense of being patted on the head.
“Not all government work—good work,” he said delicately, “work for the benefit of the nation and its people—is done at official buildings where there are reporters and assessment committees and battles over public opinion. Some of it must be done more … quietly. In the shadows, as it were. Things are happening in Bar-Selehm, Miss Sutonga. Troubling things. Occurrences that must be stopped before the situation overwhelms us all.”
I said nothing, but he read my skepticism.
“If you are dissatisfied with this simple truth after you have begun work,” said the man who called himself Willinghouse, “you will be permitted to leave. No questions asked.”
“Work?” I echoed blankly.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, smiling once more. “I thought I had made that clear. I mean to hire you.”
I stared at him. “As a steeplejack?” I asked.
“Oh, dear me, no,” Willinghouse answered, beaming with genuine pleasure. “I want you to investigate the murder of Berrit Samar.”
CHAPTER
8
IT WAS, OF COURSE, absurd. I was to be a private detective? I couldn’t even say the words without smirking. Did such people really exist? If so, they were not stray Lani girls who spent their days dangling from chimneys in the hope of a decent meal.
And yet.…
All my life I had been told that anything significant was beyond me, that I was no more than a tool, an implement like a spade or a pick, useful to wealthier, more powerful people—useful, that is, until I fell and broke, when I would be replaced by another implement with a different face, as Papa had been replaced by another man with a pick. I was nothing—like Berrit, like all Lani street brats—except that I was less even in the eyes of my own people because I was the cursed third daughter.
But here was this sophisticated and powerful man telling me I was special, remarkable as a two-headed coin.…
And then there was what he had said about how the death of Berrit heralded crimes yet to come, troubling occurrences that would overwhelm us all if not prevented.
“Your friend Berrit is the lion’s tail,” Willinghouse said. “A detail you spot but think is part of the bush until the beast pounces. There are larger things afoot here, Miss Sutonga. We stand on the very brink of disaster.”
The goat curry was, as promised, remarkably good. It was served with tea in translucent china cups and saucers by a silent, elderly white man who I could only describe as butlerish, and I wolfed it all down as if I hadn’t eaten for days.
Willinghouse watched me, fascinated, as hunger stripped me of pride.
The door opened and another white man leaned in. He was tall, about Willinghouse’s age, and dressed in a slightly old-fashioned suit. He had sandy hair, no mustache, and freckles that emphasized his youth, as did the smile that lit his face when he saw me. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “Our new employee! The steeplejack, yes?”
I blinked at him and checked Willinghouse, who frowned with disapproval.
“We are still working out the details,” he said.
“Nonsense!” said the newcomer, striding over to me.
I rose, flustered, wishing I had left my hair down.
He took my hand and shook it vigorously. “Charmed and delighted,” he said, beaming. “I am Stefan Von Strahden. Call me Stefan. I’m a colleague of Willinghouse’s.” He had pale blue eyes and an infectious manner, but his familiar frankness was unnerving.
“A colleague?” I managed.
“In Parliament,” he said, adding in response to my chastened look, “Oh, it’s not so grand as all that. Shuffling papers and making dull speeches most of the time. Powerfully tedious compared to what you do up there in the clouds! That must be extraordinary!”
“Shouldn’t you be at dinner, Stefan?” said Willinghouse icily, the scar contracting into a thin pink line.
“I should,” he said, “but I just had to meet this talented young lady. And now I seem incapable of leaving her company.”