It was a long, hot walk. My skin glowed under the relentless beat of the sun, and the thin, dry grass scratched my hands and face as I pushed through. From time to time I heard the rattle of mice scurrying through the stalks to get away from me, and once I startled a flight of franklins, which rose up, beating their wings and circling, so that I forced myself to keep still for several minutes, in case anyone was watching from the fort. As I knelt there in the grass, I heard something very large moving close by, a crunching, tearing sound. I rose cautiously and was horrified to see a solitary elephant emerging from a copse of marula trees, stripping bark from one of them not thirty yards away. It had not seen me. I kept agonizingly still for several minutes, trying to determine if I was up-or downwind of it, and in the process, it saw me.
It did not trumpet or charge, but it turned to face me, becoming motionless as stone, its ears spread wide, its brown eyes fixed on mine. I knew nothing of elephants and had no idea how you would gauge how old they were, but the eyes gave the impression of age and, beneath the caution, thoughtfulness. For a long moment, we watched each other, and I had the strangest sensation that she could see through to my heart, my soul. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I found myself thinking of the baby I had left on the orphanage steps.
You could offer her nothing. She’s better where she is.
Familiar ideas that I did and did not believe, though under the elephant’s gaze, I felt a kind of peace with my decision. It might not have been the right thing to do, but I had done it for the right reasons, and that, for now, would have to be enough.
The elephant kept looking at me as it began to graze again, its trunk feeling for the leaves before tearing them off and gathering them into its mouth, but I felt no mounting sense of danger, and when I eventually stood up, it did no more than watch. Eventually, heart hammering, I walked slowly away. The elephant did not come after me.
The walls of the fort were only a hundred yards away, and though I could see no sign of movement, I could hear the steady, uneven clatter of tools on stone. After another ten minutes, with my sand-colored tunic and leggings dark with sweat, I cut west, approaching a half-collapsed turret. Reaching the foot of the escarpment, I began to climb.
I would be visible here, so I moved quickly and carefully, pausing only to check my handholds for scorpions and spiders. Once I saw a long, dark snake, spangled with aquamarine, sleeping away the winter in a hole, and kept watch for similar openings thereafter. I had assumed the pinkish color of the wall was paint, but it turned out to be the brick itself. It had crumbled over the years, and there were plenty of places to put my fingers and toes, but I was careful not to send telltale runnels of grit and chippings in my wake. The wall angled like a long-sided pyramid with a narrow battlement at the top, and in seconds, I was up and sliding cautiously over the parapet.
I could see them now, the huddle of Seventh Street boys gathered at the foot of the tower in the center, wielding their picks and shovels. They had a wagon, and one who was taller than the rest—Fevel, I thought—was unloading wooden beams. I was familiar with the process, one we used to bring down unwanted chimneys in confined spaces. It is precision work because the chimney has to fall just where you want it. In this case, the courtyard had several two-story buildings that were, presumably, to remain intact. That meant the tower had to drop eastward, losing some of its sixty-foot length as it fell if it wasn’t to demolish the main gate in the process. The team would cut away the bricks from a corner of the tower’s base, replacing them with pit props, till the timber struts were bearing much of the tower’s weight, then set a fire. As the wood burned up, the whole stack would fall. The kids loved it.
But miscalculate the cutting point, the wooden joists, or the wind direction, and it could go all manner of wrong. I hoped they knew what they were doing. Morlak didn’t do much in the way of real work anymore, but he generally oversaw this kind of thing personally.
Not this time.
I dropped into a crouch and moved slowly around the walls to get a better view. No sign of him.
Tanish was using a hammer and bolster chisel to break up the mortar lines. He wielded them well, positioning, striking, and clearing like a professional.
“Nice work, hummingbird,” I muttered to myself.
I crept along till I came to a set of weathered steps down, and moments later I was watching the boys from the shadow of a long, narrow chamber only yards from where they were working.
It took ten maddening minutes to safely attract Tanish’s attention. He made a great show of dropping his tools and checking with Fevel before trudging over, as if he just needed a break from the sun. I hugged him once, and we moved deeper into the dark chamber.
“They’re saying you killed that Jennings bloke,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Billy,” I answered. “I didn’t, but I think someone wants it to look like I did.” He nodded seriously, satisfied, and I hugged him again gratefully. He tried not to look pleased, and when I let him go, he leaned against the wall as the older boys did.
“No Morlak?” I asked.
Tanish shook his head fervently. “Says he has better things to do,” he said.
“Such as?”
“Mostly sitting,” said Tanish. “He hasn’t been able to get upstairs since you … you know.”
“Stabbed him,” I said.
“Right,” said Tanish, grinning again.