“The lady’s nephew,” I said. “Is he all right?”
“Always was,” said Andrews. “There was no kidnapping. The young man lives in Harrisberg. Officers were dispatched on the first available train and found him enjoying a champagne breakfast at home with friends. A simple ruse, but an effective one.”
*
WILLINGHOUSE MARCHED ME OUT of the station without a word, waiting until we were a block away before turning on me. I was dressed in my own—freshly laundered—clothes and boots, which he had brought from the house, and felt, insofar as was possible, more like my old self.
“Do you understand the meaning of the word ‘discretion’?” he snapped. “This will make the papers. Apart from the embarrassment you have caused my family, the professional difficulties I will face at work, you have blown any secrecy surrounding our investigation wide open!”
“Our investigation?” I replied. I had just tied my hair back as if I were going to work on a chimney, and the action made me feel confident, defiant. “What has your contribution been to this investigation so far?”
“Other than getting you out of jail, you mean?” he returned. “Without me, you would be languishing in there for days. Weeks, maybe.”
“And without me, you would have learned nothing!”
“And what, pray, have we learned from your being arrested?” he demanded.
I raised a single finger. If I didn’t talk, I would hit him.
“First,” I said. “We know that Berrit had access to luxorite before the theft of the Beacon and that he tried to sell it to Ansveld. I don’t know what the connection between them was, but there was one, and that was why he died.” I raised another finger. “Second, we know that the source of that luxorite was unknown to the trading community, and that when a piece found its way into the Dowager Hamilton’s necklace, the people responsible were determined to get it back. Third, we know that those people were connected to Ansveld through more than the boy. They almost certainly used his typewriter to print up the letter claiming to have abducted the dowager’s nephew.”
“Anything else?” he demanded, still defiant.
“Yes,” I said, raising a fourth finger. “We know that whoever stole the dowager’s necklace needed no help from an inexperienced apprentice steeplejack to steal the Beacon. He climbs as well as me. Maybe better.”
The admission deflated us both a little, and for a moment, we just stood there as the city’s morning began around us. Though I saw my investigation into Berrit’s death as a personal mission rather than a professional engagement, I needed Willinghouse’s money and protection. If there was more to it than that, if I also needed his respect, his admiration, I chose not to think about that too closely.
“I have to go to Parliament,” he said, glancing into the street for a cab. “This business over the Grappoli ambassador is escalating badly. If the Beacon isn’t found soon, we could be looking at a major international incident.”
“What kind of incident?” I asked. The chatter I had heard about the diplomatic breakdown had been little more than rumor and jokes at the Grappoli’s oversensitivity.
“There are powerful people in Bar-Selehm who would like nothing more than open war with the Grappoli,” said Willinghouse. “There was a rally last night in Morgessa. What they call a ‘demonstration.’” He said the word like it tasted foul. “The second of the week. Except that this time there was fighting: blacks on one side, whites on the other.”
“Why?” I asked.
He shrugged the question off. “Because it’s what happens in Bar-Selehm when tensions run high. Everyone wants someone to blame.”
“This is what you meant when you said we were on the brink of disaster,” I said.
“Not yet,” he said. “Not quite. But we are getting there. I don’t really know how or why, but we are.”
“Surely it can’t be that bad,” I said, scared of his earnestness.
He glowered into the street, then gave me a searching look. “If a shred of evidence, however flimsy, however dubious, links the Grappoli to the theft of the Beacon, the people who want war will get their wish. Do you know what that would do to this city?”
I shook my head.
“Pray to whatever gods you worship that you never do,” he said.
*
IF I HAD THOUGHT that was the end of the matter, I was sorely mistaken, as I discovered the moment I entered the Drowning. A girl, perhaps Tanish’s age, paused in her laundry to give me a long look, after which she hurried inside the tent she called home. A few minutes later, as I strode to Rahvey’s hut, I found I had accumulated a straggling tail of onlookers, not all of them children.