Mnenga shook his head. “He has a big house in the city. His friends are white people. Government people. Rich people. He meets with our council, but he is not one of us. Not anymore. He likes his new life. I think that if he was paid enough, he would sell away all our homeland. And for a handful of nails and hinges and belt buckles, maybe a few guns and some money, my people will say yes. And you know what? I cannot blame them. We are tired of being poor.”
His smile was gone now, but he looked more sad than angry, lost, so that I was suddenly sorry for him and, without thinking, took his hand.
He smiled with surprise and gratitude but said nothing.
I don’t know how long we would have sat there in silence, as I felt the polished smoothness of his fingers in mine, but at that moment, the satchel at my feet moved.
Mnenga leapt to his feet, startled, and his right hand reached for the spear he had laid on the ground. He raised the weapon to shoulder height as a mewing sound came from the basket.
Horrified, I seized the spear point, and the young man’s brow creased.
“Cat?” he said.
“Yes,” I answered, my heart beating fast. “A kitten.”
“I thought snake,” he said, lowering the spear. “Can I see?”
I shook my head, but as I did so, the baby began to cry.
Mnenga’s eyes widened. “Not cat,” he said.
I looked down, ashamed of the stupid lie. “Not cat,” I admitted, stricken once more by a sense of failure.
“Boy or girl?” said Mnenga.
“Girl,” I said miserably.
“She is yours?”
“No,” I replied, adding a little desperately, “a friend’s. But no one can know.”
“I see,” said Mnenga, nodding.
“I cannot feed her,” I said. “I have to wait for her mother.”
He looked at me, and his smile was grim, understanding, but when he reached for the basket, probing with one finger as if he was going to give it to the child to suck, I felt a sudden panic and flinched, half reaching to stop him.
He froze, looking at me, then withdrew his hand, nodding again. “I should go,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “It’s just…” But I could not explain because I did not understand myself. Instead I just said, “Please tell no one.”
He inclined his head seriously, then stood up, but he did not walk away. “You will be here again? Tomorrow, perhaps?”
“I … I don’t know,” I said, my former anxieties crouching hyena-like in the dark places of my head. “I suppose. I have to bring the child back to be fed.”
He seemed to sense my mood, and his smile was tempered with something like concern.
“Bye,” I said before he could add anything that might embarrass me further.
He began his bow, and I turned away. When I looked round again, he was gone.
*
I PICKED MY WAY to the city gates, endured the contempt of the guards when they saw the sleeping bundle in my satchel, and made my way toward Old Town, glad of the firm sidewalk and gas lamps after the darkness and rutted tracks of the Drowning. I could smell the ocean now, a clear, salt tang unlike the stagnant sourness of the river edge near Rahvey’s hut. Down by the water a few blocks away stood the pillar surmounted by the bronze of Captain Franzen. Tanish would be arriving to start work within the hour. I needed to see someone who would smile at me, someone who would tell me that taking Rahvey’s child had been the right thing to do.
Because it didn’t feel like the right thing. It felt stupid. I felt stupid, and the fact that I was responding to the Lani way that was at least as stupid, maybe more so, didn’t help at all. So I walked with the sleeping child slung against my chest, eyes on the ground, lost in misery and humiliation, and I didn’t see Morlak in the alley. I saw nothing till he lunged out at me, knife in one hand, the other grasping my hair, and everything went out of my head save one shrill, terrified thought:
The baby. Oh gods, the baby.
CHAPTER
14
I COULD NOT FIGHT back. My right arm flung out for balance as he pulled me into the alley, while my left clamped protectively over the satchel. He assumed I was going for a weapon—the dog I had stabbed him with before—and his knife went to my throat. I splayed my fingers in surrender and gave in as he yanked my hair, spun me around, and thrust me up against the wall.
My head hit the brick, but the pain was nothing to the panic, the dread.
Not the baby, I thought again. Gods, not the baby.
The thought shrieked through my raging, thumping heart, my shallow, ragged breathing.
“Put the bag down,” he snarled into my ear. He smelled of stale sweat and madness that had once been hate. “Came to see the boy, huh, little Anglet? So predictable.”
I hesitated and he pressed the knife once more, so that I craned my neck up like a giraffe. Then, very carefully, I began to lift the satchel strap over my head with my left hand. I could feel the weight of the baby within, could almost hear her breathing, and in my mind, I saw what would happen next: The bag would reach the pavement and, assuming my tools were in it, he would kick it away.…
I froze, overcome with a new and desperate horror.
“I said, put it down!” he spat, teeth bared.