There was a single cable at waist height, which served as a handrail, on the right. There should have been one on the left too, but it was missing. I pocketed the gun, gripped the cable with one hand, and holding the other out for balance, pressed on, eyes front, feeling my way with the soles of my boots. The fog was too dense to see where the bridge ended.
The voices from the square were louder now but less distinct, and for a moment everything seemed to fall away, even my horror of Billy’s death, so that it was just me up there in the night sky, trusting to hands and feet and instinct.
Below me, someone screamed. It was a strange, disembodied sound, and for a split second, I wondered if it was me, if the feelings I kept locked behind the dam had somehow broken out without me realizing.…
The bridge ended on the ornamental roof of an office building. I used a discarded ladder to cross onto the Merchant Marine headquarters next door, and then dropped onto the fire escape of the Dragon’s Head. I covered the next block and a half on rooftops and one decorative ledge, reaching the League of Magistrates’ chambers, and finally the south entrance to the Martel Court.
I scaled the clock tower as quickly as I could, shut myself in, and rushed to the child I had left there. The only good thing about the night was that she had not been with me, and the idea that being near me was likely to get her killed settled in my gut like a stone.
The baby was sleeping soundly. The strangeness of her peace after what had happened first shocked, then calmed me, and I lay with her, feeling her breathing, her heart, as I stared wide eyed into the blackness, the habbit clutched tight in my hands. Her safety was, I saw now, an illusion—something I had wanted to believe in but which was clearly impossible to achieve. I could maintain the pretense no longer.
*
I MOVED BEFORE DAWN, giving Captain Franzen’s square a wide berth and reaching the orphanage called Pancaris, the place I had vowed never to revisit, just as the city came to life. I laid the basket on the steps. In it, the girl I called Kalla slept. The nuns would give her a new name, I thought, as I rapped hard with the knocker three times, walking quickly away before the door opened. If I saw her again years from now, I could be introduced to her and still not know her. She would, of course, not know me either.
The morning breeze chilled my tear-streaked face, but no one pointed or shouted or seemed to see me at all, in spite of the guilt and failure, the terrible, exquisite sadness that seemed to burn in my heart like the lost Beacon.
It was the only choice, I told myself over and over as I walked, but though I believed it, the mantra did not help at all.
*
I STUDIED THE NEWSPAPER cutting I had recovered from Billy’s body. It was stained with his blood, but still legible. The headline read, ICONIC RED FORT TOWER TO COME DOWN BEFORE HANDOFF. It meant nothing to me. I felt weary in ways that went far beyond my lack of sleep and food.
For the first time in months, I thought of going out to that bit of the Drowning where Papa had lived, as if there was a chance that he might be there, sitting on the porch, watching the sunrise. I could tell him about Kalla, about my doomed investigation, and it would all be better for saying it. I thought of how his face would light up when he saw me, and the pain was suddenly as sharp, as paralyzing as the day he died.
But Papa was gone and I was alone. I didn’t know what I was doing. A man had died because of me. That seemed unavoidable. Whether I had made any kind of progress, what he might have told me, and if I was any closer to bringing justice or clarity to what was going on in Bar-Selehm, I had no idea.
*
“WHAT DO YOU KNOW about the Old Red Fort?” I asked the newspaper girl on the corner of Winckley Street.
She looked amazed to see me. “You’re famous, you are,” she said. There was a wariness in her face I hadn’t seen before. “Made the paper and everything,” said the Mahweni girl. “And here you are, walking around, big as life.”
“What makes you think that’s me?” I said, bluffing badly. “There’s no picture.”
“‘Former Lani steeplejack of marriageable age, Anglet Sutonga—’” she read aloud.
“Yes, all right,” I interrupted. “It’s me. But if you read the whole thing, you’ll see I wasn’t charged. The police don’t think I stole anything.”
The girl tipped her head on one side, and her eyes narrowed. “Stole?” the girl said.
“At the opera house,” I replied.
She hesitated, watching me, her eyes narrow. “You don’t know, do you?” she said.
“Don’t know what?”
She flipped over the paper and pushed it across her crate toward me. “You’re wanted for murder,” she said.
I stared, first at the photograph of Billy Jennings’s lifeless face, then back at her. My mouth moved, but nothing came out.
“Practically the only headline in the paper that doesn’t include the words ‘Beacon,’ ‘Grappoli,’ or ‘Protest,’” she mused.
I continued to gape, and for a moment the world swam so that I took hold of the edge of her crate to steady myself.
She considered me and came to a decision. “You know the alley that connects the back of the Hunter’s Arms to Smithy Row?”