“She,” I corrected. “Not it.”
Rahvey glared at me, but I held her eyes, and for once, it was my sister who turned away first. “And I would appreciate it if you didn’t bring your sordid city friends out here,” she added.
I tensed. “Believe me,” I said, “I have no interest in talking to Morlak.”
“Not just Morlak!” she snapped. “There was another. Said his name was Jennings.”
“Billy?” I said. “What did he want?”
“Says he has to tell you something. Something he saw. Wants you to meet him tonight under the statue of Captain Franzen at eleven.”
I frowned. Cleaning that statue had been one of Tanish’s jobs, and though it was in the heart of Mahweni Old Town, it was only a stone’s throw from the Martel Court. It was also where Morlak had attacked me. The coincidence made me uneasy. If Morlak had gotten to Billy, this was a trap.
“How did he seem?” I asked.
“What?” said Rahvey, as if I were speaking another language.
“Did he seem like he was hiding something?” I said. “Or like he was scared, nervous? Did he mention Morlak?”
She shook her head. “Morlak,” she sneered. “These city Lani. You can’t trust any of them.”
*
I RETURNED TO BAR-SELEHM before the lighting of the streetlamps and got the baby safely tucked into her basket in the clock tower before making the cautious climb down. I had the pistol in my belt under my charcoal gray jacket. I did not know what to make of Billy’s sudden decision to be helpful, and I wanted to be ready for anything.
Old Town was the most respectable black district in the city, made venerable by age if not by space. The houses were small, the streets smaller, though their inhabitants kept them meticulously clean. In the square at the end of Range Street, under a pair of blue-tiled minarets that rose like lighthouses above the uneven rooftops, a group of Mahweni protesters were clearing up what was left of their rally, gathering up handbills so they couldn’t be done for littering. I thought of Mnenga’s stories of suspicious land deals, and the image of his face and his gift of the nbezu milk made me smile. I remembered the touch of his hand, the surprise in his face, and the pleasure that had followed it.
And then, as if the memory had conjured him, he was there. He was huddled among the remaining protesters in his Unassimilated garb, so he stood out among the coats and collared shirts. With the spear in one hand, he looked fierce and out of place. He was talking animatedly to one of the protesters, his face earnest, angry even, and as I watched, he gestured dramatically, his forefinger stabbing from his clenched fist so that the other man, who was dressed as a factory worker, shook his head and took a step back. I did not call to Mnenga, and not only because seeing him here in the city was so jarringly strange. He suddenly seemed quite different, his manner, his very presence here hinting at something I had not seen in him before, something he had kept from me.
What was he doing here? There was clearly more to him than the humble nbezu herder he had claimed to be. Were there even any nbezu? He could have bought that milk anywhere.…
Whatever the truth was, however innocent it might be, it was clear as luxorite that while I had trusted him with my private thoughts, I did not know him, and his appearance in my life suddenly seemed more than convenient. It was suspicious. I turned quickly away, so he would not see me, and kept walking. A policeman gave me a look as I rounded the corner, but—since I was neither friend nor obvious foe—went back to monitoring the protesters in the soft glow of a gas lamp, Mnenga among them.
I picked up my pace.
This time of year, the night came early, and as the temperature fell, the city became an entirely different place. The district around the Martel Court, where I had left the baby and which thronged with people in daylight, was deserted now, and its statues of old justices, brushed with the pearly light of the streetlamps, became ghosts of a forgotten world. It was only a couple of blocks to where the statue of Captain Franzen stood on his triumphal column, gazing forever out toward the coast with his bronze telescope.
A sound behind me. Footfalls, or just the echo of my own feet on the stone?
I faltered and they continued for a moment, then stopped. I turned and looked back the way I had come, but the mist that blew in from the river on cold nights had blended with the city’s persistent pall of smog, and I could see no more than twenty yards, even where the street was open and well lit.
I began walking and almost immediately, I heard the steps behind me start up again. They were uneven and punctuated with a rhythmic tap, like someone using a cane, someone very slightly off balance.…
Morlak.
I quickened my pace, dimly aware of Captain Franzen’s column looming out of the fog ahead, its shape cluttered with the scaffolding Tanish had been using. My pursuer matched my speed.