“Really?” he said, genuinely interested. “You think so? And yet here I am, in this house, a man of power and influence because I chose to make it so, while you are … what? Not a reporter, that is for sure. Those cuts on your face are recent. So you are … what? A detective? A spy? Working for who? The Grappoli?”
His confusion seemed real, but his manner was somber, and it made me uneasy. I thought of Emtezu, wishing—despite the manner in which he had brought me here—that he had not gone, and I realized his mistake. The news he had wanted me to bring was about the outrage represented by the dead Mahweni herder in the ruins of the tower. He had wanted me to bring this to Sohwetti as evidence of racial atrocity perpetrated by men in the Glorious Third, something to be exposed and punished. But Sohwetti wasn’t interested in that. Not really. He was interested in the land deals, and not because he hadn’t known about them.
The house was utterly silent. I could hear no voices, no distant birdcalls. We were deep in the heart of the building. If I were to run, I would have to go through a labyrinth of rooms and corridors before I made it outside, where armed men and big cats with spiked collars patrolled the grounds.…
Sohwetti was still watching me, waiting for me to answer his question about who I was working for. His eyes were attentive, almost predatory in their focus, and I understood that whatever danger I was in could be held off so long as he thought I had important information. How he might opt to extract it, I did not dare consider.
“I have … connections,” I said. “But I am working for myself.”
“Doing what?”
“Investigating.”
“Come now, Miss Sutonga,” he said, suddenly brusque. “Do not play games with me. I do not have time for such things. What are you investigating?”
“Partly,” I said, watching him carefully, “the disappearance of the Beacon.”
He leaned forward fractionally, and his eyes contracted. “A strange occurrence indeed,” he said, giving nothing away. “Was it the Grappoli?”
“I have found nothing to suggest so.”
“That is my feeling too,” he said. “Though I fear that truth alone will not save us. But you said ‘partly.’ What else are you exploring?”
“The death of a Lani boy called Berrit,” I said simply.
His confusion seemed to deepen. He was either a skillful actor or had no knowledge of either matter. It was unsettling.
“Who is this boy?” he asked.
“Nobody,” I said, and even here, when things might go so very badly, the sadness of that truth pained me. “Just a boy who got in the way of other people’s plans and got killed.”
“I know nothing of any dead Lani boy,” he said.
“But you know about the land deals with Future Holdings,” I said. “You signed the deeds yourself.”
He smiled again, smaller this time, and there was something in the look that spoke of weariness and regret. “Yes,” he said. “Those I know about. I wish to the gods that you did not. I wish that our worthy corporal had not thought to bring you to me.”
“Why did he?” I asked, pressing for time to think. “He didn’t know about the land deals. He didn’t know you were involved. I expect he thought you had been cheated or deceived by enemies of the Mahweni people.”
He nodded sadly. “Corporal Emtezu is alert to enemies of the Mahweni,” he said. “It is his passion and his secondary occupation.”
I gave a sigh of understanding. “You pay him to inform on race issues within the military,” I said.
“Actually, he does it for free,” said Sohwetti. “I offered him money, but he declined it, said it was a matter of principle. He considers himself a”—he smiled at the word—“‘watchdog.’ And there is a great deal to watch. We say we are all equal in Bar-Selehm, but you know as well as I do that that is not even close to being true. You cannot simply take people’s land, property, freedom from them and then, a couple of hundred years later, when you have built up your industries and your schools and your armies, pronounce them equals. And even when you pretend it is true, you do not change the hearts of men, and a great deal of small horrors have to be ignored, hidden, if the myth of equality is to be sustained.”
It was, I suspected, a familiar speech for him, though he believed it still.
“I know,” I said.
“I am sure you do. The Lani have never organized as we have and they never had anything to barter, being themselves outsiders. So yes, I am sure you understand. Corporal Emtezu is, for the most part, focused on the smaller crimes, those little lingering uglinesses that people perpetrate when the world around them changes faster than they would like.”
“Like the imprisonment, torture, and murder of a Mahweni herder who had the misfortune to meet up with some old-fashioned soldiers?” I said carefully.
He sat back then, looking me up and down with something like respect, though it was colored by a resignation that drained him of the energy he normally conveyed. “Precisely like that,” he said, “yes.”