“Oh,” he managed. “I didn’t realize they took…” He blundered to a halt, and I gave him a sharp look.
“I’m adopted,” I said crisply. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, cowed. “I didn’t mean to suggest—”
I pressed my advantage. “We’re supposed to be sewing banners in support of local institutions for the Settlement Day parade,” I said with earnest hauteur. It was amazing how easily the words came when I wasn’t being myself. “I was assigned the Glorious Third by Miss Foster—who is an absolute beast to her pupils, I don’t mind saying—but she flatly refuses to help, and when I told her the museum was gone, she told me to ‘use my resourcefulness,’ and frankly, I’m not sure I have any, and now the deadline for our research is almost here and I have nothing to show for it, and Miss Foster will report me to my parents, who have devoted every penny they can spare to making sure I get a good education so that I can be a useful member of society, especially if I can’t find a suitable husband, but who would marry a Lani girl who failed out of prep school…?”
This may have been the longest sentence I have ever uttered, and as it wended its way toward its strangled ending, it got higher, shriller, more desperate, so that the poor soldier looked positively alarmed, saying, “There, there,” and, “I have a spare moment. Let’s see what we can do.”
I apologized for my shameful outburst, thanked him for indulging my weakness, and joined him in the little storage carrel. He clearly had no idea what to make of this strange young woman who looked so unlike the things she was saying and how she was saying them, but he didn’t dare offend me in case it was all true. On the battlefield, he would be sure of his authority, but in here, he was as out of place as I was.
As he dutifully showed me racks of medals won in old campaigns, I wrestled with how to ask a Mahweni why he was serving in a famously white regiment, then realized that embarrassment about such things was my old Lani self speaking. Society ladies had no such compunction.
“I had no idea there were blacks in the King’s Third,” I said flatly. “It must be terribly exciting for you.”
He seemed caught off guard again, as if I had revealed that I outranked him. “Yes,” he said. “It is. It’s an honor to be a member of such a fine old regiment.”
“And your family don’t mind?” I asked, unabashed.
“Miss?”
“I mean, the Glorious Third have fought your people for a long time,” I said matter-of-factly.
“In the past,” he said, his jaw tight. “That is true. But I am a citizen of Bar-Selehm. So are my parents. The regiment defends the city against threats foreign and domestic, and I am proud to serve.”
“Are there many black members of the regiment?”
“I am Corporal Emtezu, commander of a twenty-five-man company,” he said, his polite smile rigid.
“Really?” I exclaimed, willfully missing the tension. “How extraordinary. I had no idea. And do the black soldiers perform the same duties as the other men, or are they more like servants and cooks?”
This time his hesitation, and the way his knuckles blanched on the edges of the box he was holding, seemed impossible to ignore, but I held his eyes, my chin tipped up.
“The Mahweni company,” he replied carefully, “is as well trained and equipped as the rest of the men, and we function in exactly the same capacity.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, jolly good for you, Corporal Emtezu. Could I see some photographs of the current regiment?”
Another hesitation. He took a breath. “Certainly,” he said. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”
“Not really,” I said, shrugging. “Why don’t you show me your friends?”
He opened a wooden filing cabinet and drew out a folder of posed sepia photographs showing a company of black soldiers in dress uniforms standing on what looked to be the central square of the Old Red Fort. They were arranged in a horseshoe around a brass cannon on a carriage, the men at the front kneeling, their rifles augmented with sword bayonets. Standing on the far right, beside the men at the back, was Corporal Emtezu himself, and on the other side were two older white men.
One of them had a handlebar mustache and a monocle. The other, draped in a heavy cape and staring down the photographer beadily, was leaning on a cane. I couldn’t see much of the cane’s handle, but it had the stiff, glossy look that might well have housed a long, slender blade.
It was my turn to hesitate and breathe. “Who are these gentlemen?” I asked.
The corporal indicated the man with the monocle. “This is Colonel Archibald Mandel,” he said, “the former regimental commander.”
“The politician?” I asked.
He gave me a sharp look, and to cover my interest, I said, “His granddaughter goes to our school.”
“He retired last year, when it was determined that the regiment would be restructured.”
“And the fort closed,” I supplied.