The boy was standing beneath the great chimney, motionless. In fact, he wasn’t so much standing as stooping, frozen in the act of picking up his little duffel of tools. He was staring fixedly down the narrow alley that ran along the wall below the chimney stack. I called his name again, but he didn’t respond, and something in his uncanny stillness touched an alarm in my head. I began moving toward him, my pace quickening with each step till I was close enough to seize him by his little shoulders and demand to know what was keeping him.
But by then I could see it. Tanish turned suddenly into my belly, clinging to me, his eyes squeezed shut, his face bloodless. Over his shoulder I saw the body in the alley, knowing—even from this distance—that Berrit, the boy I had been waiting for, had not missed our meeting after all.
CHAPTER
2
BERRIT WAS LANI, LIKE Tanish and me. He had been, maybe, ten. I had met him once over our communal meal at the Seventh Street weavers’ shed two nights ago, when Morlak thrust him in front of me, barked his name, and told me he would be shadowing me for a few days. I had just grunted, nodding at the boy, who looked subdued and frightened. I had meant to take him aside later on, introduce myself properly—without Morlak standing over us, ready with his clumsy jokes designed to embarrass me—but I never did. Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, he had slunk away to sleep, unnoticed. It was a smart and useful skill to have on Seventh Street, inconspicuousness, and I privately commended him for it, but since I was summoned to Rahvey’s bedside the following day, I hadn’t set eyes on the boy again until I saw his broken body huddled by the factory wall.
Tanish was distraught. He had spent more time with the new boy and had never seen the result of a long fall before. I sent him to get help, and he fled, eyes streaming. Driven by an inexplicable sense of failure, of guilt, I forced myself to look.
I had seen death before. For someone of my age and background, living in the highest and—figuratively speaking—lowest places of Bar-Selehm, it was impossible not to. That does not mean that I was immune to the horror of death, and if you do not know what a fall from a great height does to a human body, thank whatever god you believe in and hope you never find out. I will not be the one to show you.
He looked so very small. Under the horror of how he had died I felt the stirrings of something deeper and more awful: something like grief, which drained my soul and brought to my eyes the tears that I had not allowed myself to shed in front of Tanish. He needed me to be strong, and I had been, but now I was alone and might crack open the door to my feelings. I felt pressure from the other side, like deep water held in check by a dam, and I squeezed the door shut once more.
I took refuge in thought, in reason, which kept feelings at bay. The drop from the chimney was sheer. There was nothing on which the boy might have cut himself before hitting the cobbled ground, so the sharp, precise incision, no more than an inch across and located directly over his spine, was strange. It would need to be cleaned and studied by people who knew what such things meant, but it raised a possibility.
The fall did not kill him.
The idea came before I could dodge it and hung in my head like the absent Beacon, blazing.
Around his neck he wore a copper pendant on a thong, a pretty thing with a sun rendered in gold enamel on a cobalt blue disk. I removed it carefully and pocketed it. There would be someone who had loved him. They should get it.
*
“YOU FOUND HIM?” ASKED the uniformed policeman who attended the ambulance orderlies. He was tall, white, with an overly tended mustache that was barely the right side of comic. He spoke to me in Feldish, which I spoke fluently, albeit with a Lani inflection. If you worked in Bar-Selehm, you had to, even the Lani, when we left our own communities. It was the language of the whites, and as such, it had become the language of government, of finance, trade, law, and all things that mattered. Lani like Rahvey’s husband, Sinchon, who knew only a few words of it, were virtually unemployable beyond the Drowning. I spoke it and, thanks to Vestris, even read it.
I’m not an eloquent person. I read a lot, but I spend my days up with the roosting flying foxes and the silver-winged night crows, who aren’t great conversationalists. At night I’m surrounded by adolescent boys, who are worse. I love words, but mostly they stay in my head, especially in the presence of authority.
“I was with the boy who found him, yes,” I said.
“His name is Berrit?”
“Yes.”
“Last name?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s a steeplejack?”
“Apprentice. This was his first day.”
“And he was going to work with you?”
“Yes.”
“And you are?”
“Anglet Sutonga. I work for Morlak.” I frowned, and he gave me a hard look.
“What?” he demanded.
“Nothing, sir,” I said.
“You were thinking something,” he pressed. “What? I won’t ask again.”
“Just…” I faltered. “I wondered why you weren’t writing this down.”
“Got a good memory, me,” said the policeman, gazing off down the alley. “And the city has other things to think about today. Get it all up, lads!” he called to the ambulance men. “There’s a tap on the wall. Hose off the street when you’re done.”