Firebrand

by A. J. Hartley

“You stayed in the Markesons’ room until the police came?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Alone?”

  “No,” she said. “Constance went with me to let me in. You will be surprised to hear that she can be very sweet. We often talk together. She can be most amusing when discussing the other ladies and their silly ideas and small-minded hatefulness.…” She almost laughed at the recollection, then remembered why I was there and came back to the matter at hand. “She had seen me during the fireworks and could tell I was upset. She brought me lavender water to cool my temples.”

  “She let you into the Markesons’ retiring room?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Markeson kept the key to herself, but Constance also had a room so she could let me in.”

  “I don’t think I understand,” I said. “Why did Constance’s key open the Markesons’ room?”

  “All the retiring rooms are the same,” she said. “That’s the sort of place Elitus is. They assume the bad people are all outside. Once you’re in, no one worries very much about security.”

  She said it wryly, and I found I was warming to her all the more.

  “What did you do after the alarm was raised about the intruder?” I asked.

  “I went back to the Merita parlor with the other ladies.”

  “All of them?”

  “No. Lady Alice never came, and several of the others only arrived later. Is that when it happened?”

  “I think so, yes. And you did not see the shawl again?”

  “The shawl? No. Why, is that relevant? Did she not have it on when she…”

  “No.”

  “You think someone killed her for her shawl?”

  “That seems unlikely,” I said, “though its disappearance is strange.”

  “It was very unusual.”

  “Expensive?”

  She shrugged fractionally. “I had never seen anything like it in the shops. The fabric was quite remarkable. It was like wearing water.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  She hesitated and bit her lower lip.

  “Was it a secret?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t feel very important now,” she said, “it being just cloth, after all, but Mr. Markeson did say I shouldn’t talk about where it came from.”

  “And did you?”

  She shook her head fervently.

  “Absolutely not. I may not have been what people said to Mr. Markeson, but he was kind to me and I sought to deserve his trust. But now…” She paused and looked at me. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I think it might help reveal who killed Mrs. Markeson.”

  “Really? I don’t see how. It was pretty, but surely … surely?” She faltered again, then blurted out, “Mr. Markeson’s friend made it, Mr. Horritch.”

  “Nathan Horritch?”

  “Well, not he himself, but people at one of his factories.”

  I considered this.

  “Have I helped?” she asked.

  “I believe so,” I replied, smiling. “Have I?”

  She beamed at me.

  “Most definitely,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  19

  THE WINELANDS BELL TOWER was the most decorative part of an ornate shopping arcade two blocks north of the Trade Exchange, a stone’s throw from the opera house. As such, it drew the fashionable society ladies and their servants, even the latter being mostly white, all brandishing elegant parasols to keep that whiteness pure. There were, so far as I could see, only two Lani in a quarter-mile radius: Tanish and me, and we were seventy feet above the street.

  The tower was accessible by rungs fastened into the masonry above the arcade’s roofline, but they only went as high as the clock gallery, and the gang had rigged a series of diagonal ladders to a scaffold gantry giving access to the cupola. It was good work, tight and regular, and I commended Tanish for it.

  “Can’t take all the credit,” he said, cleaning one of last season’s wood-stork nests out of the dammed up gutters with a hand rake. “Sarn insisted that the owners pay extra for a scaffolder. I know you don’t like him, but he’s looking after us better than Morlak did.”

  “Wouldn’t be hard,” I said, brushing the mildewed mortar and eyeing it critically. “Looks like you caught this just in time. Another wet season, and this would all need repointing.”

  “Strictly cleaning only,” he said. “If we see damage that needs repair, Sarn said he’ll renegotiate the contract.”

  I raised my eyebrows, grudgingly impressed, and said nothing. From here we could see Berrit’s Spire over the Exchange where the Beacon sat in its new lantern. Even in daylight, it made a hard prick of white light that you couldn’t look at directly without squinting. Around it the roofs of buildings rose above ornamental treetops, lamp posts, and the scattered statues and monuments of Bar-Selehm’s formal self-consciousness. This was the city at its most orderly, its most classical and regular. Its most Panbroke. It had a kind of noble restraint in defiance of the rest of the city and the wilderness at its edges, so that even the grackles and bee-eaters seemed out of place and dreamlike.

  “Looking for the Gargoyle?” asked Tanish, grinning down at me from his work.

  “Hardly,” I said.

  “A policeman came to Seventh Street asking about it,” said Tanish.

  “The Gargoyle?” I said. “Don’t they have better things to do?”

  “Wanted to hear all the old stories,” said Tanish, clearly enjoying himself. “I told him the one about the mean old baker who wouldn’t pay the Lani chimney sweeps, so the Gargoyle came down his chimney and pushed him in his oven.”

  He grinned and made a noise that was supposed to sound like someone breathing his last. As Gargoyle stories went, this was one of the more benevolent ones, because it made the monster a guardian of the lowly steeplejacks. Most of them were rather less moral, and tended to involve unwary steeplejacks straying into the territory of the Gargoyle atop some spire or high chimney and paying dearly for their trespass.

  “Did the copper say why he wanted to know?” I asked.

  “Pursuing inquiries,” said Tanish, grandly. “I’m telling you, Ang. There’s something to it.”

  “What about Mr. Montresat and the rest?” I asked. “Any word on what they’ve been up to?”

  “Maybe,” said Tanish slyly. “What might be in it for a young steeplejack who is trying to make an honest living in a cruel world?”

  I shook my head, grinning, and fiddled in my pocket for a half crown. I flipped it to him, and he caught it deftly, whooping with delight when he realized what it was. I had been in his place not so very long ago. The fact that I didn’t have to worry about money for now was a constant source of amazement to me. And, if I was honest, pride. You never forget being poor. Not really. Though I was happy to share what I had with Tanish, I was still careful with my money, always coppering up before I made the smallest purchase as if I didn’t really believe there’d be anything in my purse tomorrow.

  “You sure?” he said, suddenly abashed because it was Tanish and he was too sweet to be conniving, even in play. “Not sure I’ve earned this much.”

  “Let’s hear what you have.”

  He stopped what he was doing and dropped carefully to the gantry, setting his tools down and sitting.

  “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I haven’t seen much. For Montresat and Horritch, it’s business as usual. They don’t like people prying around and keep watch according-like, but there’s nothing odd, at least from the outside.”

  I scowled.

  “What about Markeson?”

  “A bit more there,” he said. “Once when I got close, I got moved on by a big bloke with a boat hook who looked about ready to bust my head open, and that rather cooled my interest, you know?”

  “Understandable,” I said.

  “But, I’ll tell you this. Markeson’s in shipping, right? So most of his fleet when they’re not at sea are in the main docks south of the estuary, but—and
this is the interesting bit—he also has a warehouse right on the river, corrugated iron roof painted blue and big doors opening onto the water with a dock inside. It stays open at night, careful-like. Not many lights, but there are people there, and I’m pretty sure he takes boats in when the coast guard aren’t looking.”

  “Smuggling.”

  “That would be my bet,” he said.

  “That is interesting, Tanish. Good work.”

  “One other thing. That factory what burned? One of Horritch’s, right? Wasn’t empty. Wasn’t disused. Mate of mine swore he had seen lights in there too the night before the fire.”

  That made no sense. If the factory had been active, why make no attempt to save it when the fire took hold? Why not report the damage? Horritch must have been insured.

  “You sure?” I asked.

  “Archie Jenkins, white kid who joined the gang a month ago. Ran away from home and needed work.”

  “And?” I prompted.

  “He was poking around looking for scrap he could flog to the rag-and-bone man. Some of those old warehouses and factories just leave their machinery when they close. That’s a lot of steel if you can find a way to get it out.”

  “What did he see?” I said, pushing.

  “Well, like the warehouses, it don’t sound like they want people to know there’s anything going on. The windows are all shuttered up, and there are chains on the main doors, ‘keep out’ signs and such. So Archie was looking to bust in, and he said he could hear machinery inside. Went up close to see if he could look in, and guess what?”

  “What?”

  “The brick wall was hot.”

  “It was already on fire?”

  “Nah,” said Tanish scornfully. “This was the night before, remember? Only one bit of the wall was hot. Guess which bit.”

  “The base of the chimney,” I said, seeing where he was driving.

  “Right and correct,” he said, pleased with his little reveal. “During the day, cold, at night, hot. What does that tell you?”

  “That whoever was using the factory didn’t want anyone to see smoke coming out of the stack, so they were only running a night shift.”

  Tanish nodded sagely.

  “I’d say you should go have a look, but there’s nothing left,” he said. “The whole place was gutted. They’re already lining up bulldozers to push what’s left of the rubble and ashes into the river.”

  I frowned thoughtfully, picturing pale ash on boots.

  “Did you tell anyone else about this?” I asked.

  “Nah,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Let’s keep it that way, shall we?” I said, fishing out another half crown and holding it up till a smile lit his face. It was worth the money just to see that.

  * * *

  “THE MASK WORK HELPED,” I said to Madame Nahreem at our next training session in the remote estate’s private gymnasium. I had met Namud in the household carriage on the edge of the Drowning and had ridden all the way with a shotgun beside me and my eyes peeled for clavtar and elephant.

  Madame Nahreem looked startled by the admission and gave me a cautious look, as if I might be tricking her.

  “It was supposed to,” she said. “With the aristocratic bearing, or with the climbing?”

  “Both,” I said, a little reluctantly. She had received my veiled compliment without so much as a smile. In truth, I was still not sure how good I wanted to be at the mask work if, as Madame Nahreem had said, it was about being rather than playing: a change in who I was, rather than a role I put on like a costume. I saw the value of the mask—or the memory of the mask—if it gave me more physical control, and I supposed I even saw the use of suppressing my more powerful feelings, however strong I thought they made me. I felt, however, that she wanted more, as if my becoming the mask was really about erasing what I had been before, scratching out who I was. That felt wrong. I was, after all, still Anglet Sutonga, Lani steeplejack of the Drowning and Seventh Street, even if my job had changed. I could not just erase those things. They were part of me. I would wear the mask, but I could not become it. Not yet.

  Madame Nahreem just nodded.

  “Imagine how much better it will be when you are good at it,” she said.

  I stared at her in disbelief.

  “I was being nice!” I said. “You could at least—”

  “What?” she shot back, stone-faced.

  “Be more encouraging, supportive! Something less obviously critical and disappointed.”

  “I see,” she said, her mouth turning into a half smile, but her eyes still hard. “You wish me to return your politeness with the kind of pleasantries that would make you think you are further along in your studies than you are, a dangerous mental habit that might result in your working less hard or facing an adversary with less focus. You want me to assure you that you are ready to deal with a world of trained assassins who will not hesitate to use every ounce of skill, strength, and duplicity in their control to kill you if the chance presents itself? This is what you want?”

  I glared at her for a long moment, speechless.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “No,” I said.

  “Good. Mask on.”

  * * *

  NAMUD RODE WITH ME in the carriage back to the city, the shotgun in his lap and a wry smile on his face that suggested he knew how I was feeling about Madame Nahreem. I scowled at him.

  “I don’t know how you live with her,” I said.

  “You can put up with a lot from people you admire,” he said.

  “You admire her? For what? Wait, let me guess. She caught you—a guttersnipe kid—with your hand in her purse or with your lock picks at her door, but she opted to bring you into her stern but instructive service rather than turn you over to the constabulary, since when you have flourished, earning her respect and a comfortable life.”

  I said it sourly, and his smile was indulgent.

  “Wrong in every specific,” he said, “but the gist is not so very far off.”

  “So you feel that you owe her your life,” I said. “Does she deserve so much of your admiration?”

  “She took me in, as you put it, gave me a life when she did not have to.”

  “Why?”

  He hesitated.

  “She has been fortunate herself,” he said. “This is her way of creating a little balance within the universe. Call it atonement.”

  It was an odd word, but when I gave him a swift look he pretended to be checking the shotgun, so I snorted. He was holding something back. In my book, such half deception stripped you of the right to be sanctimonious.

  “So she took in a fellow Lani to make herself feel better about marrying into riches,” I snapped.

  He glanced at me quickly then, and there was fire in his face, anger and something else that I couldn’t place.

  “That’s not it,” he said tightly.

  “Then what?” I pressed, getting irritated again. “What else makes her so bloody special? Was she a concert pianist? A diplomat? A circus act: Madame Nahreem and her amazing hyenas?”

  His turn to scowl.

  “I think we should save this conversation for a time when you are more … receptive,” he said.

  “Fine,” I snapped, and sulked the rest of the way to the city.

  * * *

  THE MARKESON WAREHOUSE SQUATTED on the south bank of the river in Dagenham Steps, five hundred yards seaward of the great incomplete suspension bridge. It was squeezed in between an old-fashioned tanner’s shop and a massive grain silo with hoppers that fed the river barges on the one side and the railway sidings on the other. I knew better than to wander alone around the alleys that ran between the squalid tenement buildings and the industry yards where the inhabitants worked. It was an area as poor as you could find within the city proper, and it had an ugly reputation for being, in every sense of the term, cutthroat. It stank of cheap gin, seaweed, and a heavy industrial sourness with origins I could not guess. The whole
area was cluttered with every size and style of chimney belching a thick, foul smoke at all hours. The air was thick and acrid, and no light from moon or stars fought through to lessen the unwholesome night. Among the various conventional stacks were some two dozen bottleneck kilns that marked the potteries and brick ovens: strange bulbous structures, some in the open, some sprouting from the roofs of sheds and factories like baby cuckoos grown too big for their nests. They were round at the bottom and as big as a house, swollen in the middle and tight at the top, where they smoked constantly and were hot enough to make the air above them shimmer even in the dead of winter. I was used to them, but they still had a strange unearthly feel quite unlike the straight, regular chimneys that stabbed up into the smog elsewhere in the city.

  I kept to the riverwalk occasionally leaving the raised concrete rampart and descending to the stony shore, always alert for snakes and crocodiles. The tide was out, and the river was low enough to expose the oyster beds and the gray, silty mudflats. The hippos remained on the north bank, and there was no point down here close to the great marine estuary where the river was shallow enough for the beasts to cross.

  But animals were hardly my concern. If what Markeson was doing was illegal, as seemed likely, he would have men on watch. Perhaps even one I had met before.

  Barrington-Smythe.

  It was strange. This was one of the lowest, most dangerous and disreputable parts of Bar-Selehm, but it was, it seemed, central to the income of men who frequented the city’s most exclusive club. You’d think that by now I would have been unmoved by the paradox of wealth and power bound to poverty and destitution, but the sheer fact of it was still confounding. None of the men who roamed the streets here would ever be allowed across the threshold of Elitus, but it was their labor on which the club was built. It was one of the truisms of the city that it was generally best not to think about too deeply.

  I watched the warehouse with the blue corrugated iron roof for fifteen minutes from the vantage of the silent grain silo, waiting to see what kind of security patrols might show themselves, but there was nothing. Or nothing obvious. The boom of the silo’s hopper stuck out over the river downstream of the jetty, and I crawled closer to the end, remembering all too keenly my struggle with Barrington-Smythe on the crane the night Darius died. Below me the river surged toward the sea, and to my right the shadows of the dockyard structures groaned and clanged with the noise of industry, so the sound of the warehouse doors opening onto the dock were quite muted. If it hadn’t been for the soft spill of light from within, which made the black water suddenly a drab olive-brown, I would never have noticed. I peered into the darkness toward the river mouth and could just make it out, a small steam-driven barge, its running lights out, laboring against the current as it approached, belching smoke from a single squat chimney.