“So he gathers evidence against his superiors,” I said, “channeling it through you and the council you represent.”
“I have a voice in government,” said Sohwetti, drawing himself up. “I may not have the ear of the prime minister like some of my white colleagues, but I am a man of influence and I do my best to use it for my people.”
“But you also feather your own nest at your people’s expense,” I said, once more amazed by my own self-possession. “Secretly selling off their land, their birthright, despite the fact that they have clung to that land against the very men Emtezu is trying to expose.”
“The two matters are unrelated,” said Sohwetti, flicking his fly stick, color rising in his cheeks. “The casual murder of a stray Mahweni is a tragedy that has been played month after hellish month in and around this city since before your grandparents were born! The selling of land, land which—for the most part—my people cannot use, is a completely separate matter. The tribes will benefit directly from those sales. They will see profits they would never have gotten from grazing on that worthless scrub. It is no more than a few square miles of dirt and rock. If the truth were known, the only reason the white men did not take it from us before was because it has no value!”
“So why the sudden interest?”
“I do not know,” he said, “and it does not matter.”
“Is it about the Grappoli?” I asked, desperate to keep him talking.
He shook his head. “If we go to war with the Grappoli, the city will be in ruins long before they get here,” he said sadly. “I will have no hand in that. My duty to my people will be to keep all possible peaces. To do so, there must, alas, be sacrifices. You should not have come here. You have forced my hand most unfortunately.”
“It will all come out sooner or later anyway,” I said. “Silencing me won’t make any difference. The Unassimilated Tribes already know about the sales. What does keeping it quiet in the city for a few more days buy you?”
“The Unassimilated Tribes know we are discussing land transactions,” said Sohwetti carefully. “They do not know that they have already happened.”
I stared at him, horrified, and very slowly, he nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “I am sorry. I thought I would be able to change the council’s minds, and in time I am sure I would, but my buyers were impatient. Insistent. They wanted the land now or not at all. I just need a few more days of silence, time to talk the council ’round, after which we will announce the sale and no one will be any the wiser. The results would be the same. Only the date on some paper no one will ever look at will be wrong, and not by much. A clerical error, perhaps. Or it would have been, before you.”
“I’ll say nothing,” I said, fear taking hold. “I promise. I’ll tell no one.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I am weary of this conversation and must take time to consider my choices. Excuse me, Miss Sutonga,” he said, getting to his feet. “You seem like an intelligent and interesting young lady. I wish with all my heart that we had never met.”
And with that he left, locking the door behind him.
CHAPTER
29
I BLINKED, AND THE tears that had clung to my eyes broke through and ran down my face. He wouldn’t come back. Not Sohwetti himself. I was sure of it. Some nameless guard would come to get me, bind my hands, and shuttle me somewhere quiet and removed. Maybe they would just do it here, then dump my body in the ocean. There was a spot not far from here—Tanuga Point—famed for the yellow-finned sharks that haunted the bay. It had been, in the old days, a place of execution, first for some of the Mahweni tribes, then for the northern Feldeslanders, because it was safe to assume that corpses tossed into the water there would be shredded in minutes. No grave, no inconvenient bodies washing ashore to be venerated as political martyrs. To enter the water at Tanuga Point was to go through the great meat grinder of the world, and what emerged was as close to nothing as made no difference.
I could brandish Willinghouse’s name. Or Vestris’s. Both had power and influence, albeit of different kinds, and both would come to my aid if I could reach them. But their worlds were not Sohwetti’s, and their names alone would not save me here.
You have to get out.