I nodded, mute.
“There’s a storage shed behind the bins. Meet me there in twenty minutes. And stay out of sight.”
*
I WALKED, UNSEEING, STARING straight ahead, moving as if in a dream. The shock muted everything but my own horrified thoughts. I pieced it together: the cop who had seen me near the Mahweni rally; Billy’s girlfriend, Bessie, who would have been interviewed as soon as they realized who he was, and who would have mentioned my visit to Macinnes’s shop.
Gods, Bessie.
I felt the two purses in my pocket. Somehow I would have to get them to her. The emptiness of the gesture, the stupid pointlessness of trying to make right what I had done, kicked in my chest like an orlek.
The alley behind the metal workers’ shops was heaped with coal ash and rusting iron. It smelled like blood. I paced, waiting, beside the shed.
“I told you to go inside,” said the newspaper girl when she arrived. “Stand around out here, and they’ll get you for sure.”
“I didn’t kill him,” I said.
“For the likes of us,” she said, pushing the shed door open and ushering me inside, “that’s not always relevant.”
“I have friends in the police,” I said, talking as much to calm my nerves as to convince her.
“What were you doing out there at that time?”
“Meeting him,” I said. “He had something to tell me. He was dead when I got there. There was another man there. Morlak, I thought. Or…”
Mnenga.
“Someone,” I continued. “He had a cane. Maybe some kind of blade too,” I added, managing not to say “spear,” though the word floated up in my mind like driftwood dislodged by an unseen crocodile. “That was what he used.…”
Billy. This was my fault. I hadn’t stabbed him myself, but if it wasn’t for me …
“And he told you nothing?”
“I told you. He was dead when I got there. He had this in his pocket,” I said, producing the newspaper clipping.
She considered me for a moment and then stuck out her hand. “Sarah,” she said. “That’s my street name anyway.”
I nodded vaguely, still stunned.
She shrugged like it didn’t really matter. “And you are Anglet,” she said.
“Ang. Why are you helping me?”
“Haven’t done anything yet.” She shrugged again.
“You have,” I said. “And you aren’t going to turn me in.”
It wasn’t a question.
“We have to stick together,” said Sarah.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. People.”
I put my hands to my temples and squeezed my eyes shut.
It was all too much. But Billy had died to bring me information. I owed it to him to follow whatever trail he had left me.
“Please,” I said, eyes still closed. “I’m in trouble, real trouble, and I don’t know what to do. Tell me about the Old Red Fort.”
“You really ought to read the whole paper,” she said, very dry, “not just the bits about you.”
I couldn’t manage a smile, but I opened my eyes.
She nodded at the newspaper article. “It’s part of a deal negotiated last year,” said Sarah. “The fort is being turned over to the Unassimilated Tribes, a goodwill gesture from the government.”
I thought of Mnenga again, his talk of land deals, and nodded, letting her talk in that strange way of hers, calling up what she had read and interspersing those fragments with her own editorial commentary.
“It was built out on the Sour Ridge Road during the occupation three hundred years ago and was the battalion headquarters for the so-called Glorious Third—the King’s Third Feldesland Infantry Regiment—stationed to guard the city from the Grappoli and the tribesmen to the west. It was besieged by Mahweni warriors several times but was always repaired and became a symbol of northern military power. It hasn’t been used as a serious military facility for several years, and it’s starting to fall into disrepair. Since they don’t want to pay for the upkeep anymore, the military—very magnanimously—agreed to turn it over to the Mahweni for use as a cultural center, museum, and tribal meeting venue. It’s a token, a gesture, but not everyone in the government is in favor, and some of the Mahweni think it will be more expensive to run than it’s worth.”
“A white elephant,” I said.
She grinned bleakly at that. “White is right,” she said. “That’s why the tower is coming down next week. It was used as a holding pen for prisoners of war. A lot of my people—well, kind of—died there. It has the regimental badge on it, and some military types thought it should be preserved for that alone, but the government voted to demolish the tower and hand over the rest of the structure intact. The plan is to leave it as rubble until it gets naturally overgrown; turning back into the land is the idea. Responsibility for the demolition went to—”