“The Seventh Street gang,” I guessed. I don’t know why, but somehow I sensed that was coming. Everything was connected.
“Under the direction of Mr. Morlak,” she added. “Yes. But you can’t be considering going out there now. You’re on the run. The police will find you.”
“Probably.”
“So why do I get the feeling you’re going to go anyway?” asked Sarah.
“I suppose you are just a naturally intuitive person,” I said.
CHAPTER
22
I RODE TWO STOPS on the underground to save time, head down so that no one would recognize me, getting off the train when I saw a policeman board at Wallend. I walked the rest of the way to the Drowning, and made my way down to the river, where the massive hippos wallowed and huddled, backs to the water. I loitered high on the bank, watching them uneasily till one of the girls saw me and alerted Rahvey.
My sister came up from the laundry, eyes flashing. “You’re late,” she said as soon as she was out of earshot of the other girls. “And I don’t have break for another hour.”
Word of the morning newspaper report clearly hadn’t reached the Drowning, and that was all to the good.
“I don’t have her,” I said.
“What?” said Rahvey, irritable.
“I gave her up,” I said, knowing I couldn’t speak more fully without losing control.
“What?” said Rahvey again.
I took a breath. “Pancaris,” I said. “I just couldn’t…”
Rahvey just looked at me, stunned, and the wrongness of what I had done coursed through me like cold, bright water. Then she was nodding woodenly, her face set, and turning quickly away. She said nothing as she walked, and I did not pursue her.
*
THE POLICE SEEMED TO be everywhere. It may have been because of the rallies and protests that were cropping up all over the city, or it might have been because of me. It was hard to believe that the death of Billy Jennings would generate such a manhunt, but it was clear that Billy, as well as Ansveld and Berrit, was part of something much larger, a tiny wheel in a great mechanism that, as Willinghouse had warned, was ticking toward disaster.
And now I am at its heart.
I traveled almost a quarter of a mile over rooftops and fire escapes and scaffolding—the best way to stay unseen, since ordinary people never look up—before dropping from a signal gantry into the yard behind the Great Orphan Street railway station. I bought a ticket on the western line, which arrowed its way right across the continent to Gronmar and the bronze coast: Grappoli territory. The local trains went nothing like so far, and the long-distance services had been suspended pending the resolution of the current diplomatic dispute.
The train I boarded was a Blesbok class locomotive with four coaches that served the farms, homesteads, and mines forming a narrow corridor of land bought or stolen in war from the Mahweni. I curled up under my coat, pulling it over my face and leaving the ticket sticking out of the pocket, so that the conductor wouldn’t feel the need to “wake” me.
I climbed down from the train at Coldsveldt, a rural halt not far from the pit where Papa had died, and got off the road as soon as I was out of sight of the station. So far I was as sure as I could be that no one had recognized me.
Leaving crowds behind should have been a relief, but out here, there were other perils. There wasn’t much cover, and what trees grew there were low and stunted, giving little or no shade from the hot sun. My best chance of reaching the fort unnoticed was to skirt the main defenses, trekking through the tall savannah grass, and circling round to the north side. I swallowed. If I came upon a weancat or clavtar, the revolver in my belt would not be enough to stop it. And it wasn’t just predators that were dangerous. A spooked one-horn or nervous buffalo would be just as lethal.