We were escorted up the long drive by the rifleman, the outer gate closing and locking behind us with a clang that reverberated through the hot air, the metal ringing. The finality of the sound, the way it seemed at odds with the bright sky and manicured grounds, gave me a chill, though Emtezu kept walking, eyes locked on the house ahead, saying nothing.
I had expected a formal mansion, but this was more a vast and luxuriant villa sprawling like a great cat on the undulating grounds. The core of the house was brick, three stories high and sprouting a single broad chimney stack, but the rest was a pastiche of traditional Mahweni architecture with dense, sloping thatched roofs and wooden verandas. There was a swimming pool ringed with a grove of what looked to be patanga fruit trees, and svengalene bushes buzzing with hummingbirds. Statues of orlek and giraffes erupted out of the lawn, huge and stylized, the marbled stone dressed with garlands of flowers and feathers. The steps up to the house itself boasted a balustrade that combined classic urns with a handrail carved to resemble a massive python, all glass and semiprecious stones. As I turned back to consider the way we had come, a black weancat wearing a studded collar paced evenly across the gravel and on through the garden.
“What is this place?” I asked.
In answer, a young black man in impeccable livery appeared at the head of the steps and stood quite still, waiting till we reached the top before saying, “Welcome to the home of Farrstanga Sohwetti, head of the Unassimilated Tribes of the Mahweni Nation. Please follow me. His Excellency will see you shortly.”
*
THE INSIDE OF SOHWETTI’S lavish villa reminded me of the opera house. Though every surface was decorated with Mahweni images and artifacts—large pots and masks, ceremonial skirts and headdresses, ancient spears and hide shields—it was all somehow bigger, shinier, richer than normal, and I remembered what Mnenga had said about its owner. This was not the stuff of the life Mnenga led, nor the culture of his village. This was a gilded memory of something no longer lived, like the glass eyes of a stuffed weancat. Somewhere between the performance of heritage and its rejection was this strange house that felt, in fact, less like a home and more like the souvenir shop in a museum.
We had been shown through a long hallway, through two separate open areas, and into a formal room with a great cold fireplace and no windows, deep in the heart of the house. I perched on a bench upholstered in zebra hide and stuffed with hair. Emtezu stayed standing, his face closed, and he looked at me only when he returned my satchel to me. The pistol Dahria had given me was still inside, but Emtezu had confiscated the ammunition.
At last a pair of double doors opened and Sohwetti himself strode in. I had seen his picture in newspapers, but I was unprepared for the scale of the man. He was tall and wide, heavyset but strong, and clad in cream-colored robes that flattered his bulk. His graying hair was worn in tight braids, and he wielded a stick like a riding crop, short and with a head of orlek hair that he might flick to keep flies away. At his broad leather belt he wore a curved knife with an elaborate gold knuckle guard.
And he smiled wide as the ocean, wide as the plains, wide as the sky itself, so that you felt his power and benevolence like heat. “Emtezu, my friend,” he said in Feldish, reaching for the corporal’s hand with both of his, clasping it in the Mahweni way and looking him squarely in the eye. “It is good to see you.”
“Excellency,” said Emtezu with a nod that was almost a bow.
“And you have brought a guest,” he added, turning to me. “And such a pretty one. What is your name, child?”
“I am Anglet Sutonga,” I said. I almost added “Excellency,” as Emtezu had done, but the word felt strange in my mouth, so I simply lowered my eyes.
“Perhaps we should converse alone,” said Sohwetti to Emtezu. “If the lady would not mind. For a moment.”
“That is not necessary,” said Emtezu. “It’s her you need to speak to.”
Sohwetti hesitated, and for a moment I was sure he was displeased, but the smile never went away, and when he turned it upon me, it seemed genuine again. He took a couple of long, ponderous steps, lowered himself into a thronelike chair beside a desk and nodded. “Very well, child,” he said, his voice low but still booming, like barrels rolling in a cellar. “What have you to tell me?”
I was confused and embarrassed. What I had to say, insofar as I had anything to say, concerned land deals on which this man had signed off. Unless the signature was forged, I had nothing to tell him that he did not already know. I gave Emtezu an appealing look, but he just nodded encouragingly.
So I told him about the body in the tower and my idea that it might be spite at the handoff of the fort, and he listened gravely as Emtezu nodded along, as if in time to a tune he already knew.
When I was done he added, as if it were an afterthought, “And tell him about the land deals.”
Sohwetti looked up, and his eyes moved from the corporal to me very slowly. His hands became unnaturally still.