Guardian

by A. J. Hartley

  They moved with grace and ease, as comfortable in the air as fish in water. Each leap, each somersault, each catch, ended with a haughty flourish, like preening turacos displaying in the mating season. I doubted the plainspoken and understated city folk had ever seen anything quite like it.

  I would wait the act out, I decided, as close to invisible as I could be, and as soon as they finished and the lights shifted, I would move along the gantry to the rear slanting spar, and make my way down into the backstage area. What I would do then, I wasn’t sure. Speaking to the child seemed reckless and pointless, but getting a name—posing, perhaps, as an enthusiast hunting autographs—meant I might have something I could take to Andrews. Perhaps I could learn whether the boy had been seen with anyone local, or whether he had come into money lately …

  The crowd below was quiet, focused in their attention, so the sudden roaring bark at my shoulder was doubly shocking. I skittered instinctively away, feeling the gantry shake and sway under me, as the first baboon leapt from the pole I had ascended, its teeth bared. It was a big male, only twenty or thirty pounds lighter than I was, its shoulders and hindquarters hulking as it stared me down. There were at least two more coming up after it. It seemed that the circus did not rely exclusively on human guards.

  The baboon roared again, and I felt the eyes of the trapeze artists lock onto me. Then it attacked.

  CHAPTER

  16

  BABOONS ARE POWERFUL ANIMALS, fast, strong, and as comfortable in treetops as they are on the ground. The cleverness of their hands is matched only by their intelligence, and I had grown up knowing that they would watch humans for hours, learning their routines so that they could get into their houses to steal food. More than cunning, they were capable of a ferocity that verged on savage. Twice in my youth, they had killed children in the Drowning; even faced by big men, they were fearless and dangerous fighters who knew how to work as a team. I had heard stories of them killing leopards and weancats, and I had responded by staying as far away from them as I could. A baboon is a wolf with hands.

  This one—the fur of its mane and shoulders standing on end so that it looked even bigger, close-set eyes fixed in its long, black doglike face—snorted, showing long pale fangs, and charged. I scrambled backwards, eyes locked on the creature, knowing I couldn’t outrun it but with no other choice than to try. As I ran, feeling the nauseating yaw of the gantry beneath me, I realized that the trapeze gymnastics had stopped. For a wild moment, I considered leaping from the catwalk and taking my chances on the aerial platforms, which at least had ladders to the ground, but I knew that the baboons would match and better any jumping or climbing skill I might use.

  I made it six or seven yards before the baboon leapt. It hit me in the small of my back, strong hands grabbing me by the neck and shoulders. The impact sent me sprawling forward. Astride me, the animal clawed at my head, and I felt, trampling on my fear, a squirming revulsion that made me cry out. I felt its long muzzle buried in my neck, its dagger-like teeth worrying at me, looking for a grip. The momentum of my fall had rolled me to the very edge of the catwalk. I scrambled to hold on, feeling the flesh tear under the monkey’s claws. As I fought against falling, the baboon was roughly unseated and almost thrown clear. For a second it hung by one arm from the gantry, and in that second I got back to my feet and ran a few more steps. The rest of the pack came at my heels, whooping and barking like creatures of death and nightmare, as the audience below turned to look up at what they probably thought was part of the show.

  At the end of the gantry, I turned to face them, kicking wildly at the closest. The big leader was back up on the catwalk now and fighting its way through. Two new ones were bringing up the rear. More than enough to tear me apart. I reached for my kukri, realizing too late that I had left it in the town house because it showed too much through my absurd maid’s dress. I was defenseless.

  There was nowhere to go but down. I practically vaulted onto the great slanting pole that reached through the torch smoke behind the stage, knowing I would never make it with the troupe coming after me. I did it anyway, clambering wildly down, reaching blindly with my feet, not daring to take my eyes off the baboons as they began their effortless, loping pursuit. They came down headfirst, staring at me, their black lips snapping back to show their teeth. I kept going, punching at intervals, to slow their attack.

  It almost worked. Despite the ease with which they climbed down, they didn’t want to be knocked off and seemed to hold back. I realized that as soon I reached the ground, they would inevitably drop on me. There was blood in my eyes from where the big male had caught me and worse cuts on my back that I couldn’t see. The closest one was still coming. Babbling with fear and dread that it would reach me, touch me, I climbed down another ten feet, dropping dangerously past several rungs and feeling myself almost roll off the canted beam. The baboon thrust its head down till it was mere inches from mine, screamed, and snapped its jaws. It filled my vision like a black lion, and suddenly I could stand it no more.

  I let go. I had no idea how much farther I had to descend, how long and lethal the fall. I simply could not bear it any longer. I dropped, half rolling through the air as I fell.

  Ten feet.

  Twenty.

  I had not reached the canvas panel separating the performance ring from the backstage, so I landed hard on my back in front of the baffled audience. That saved my life. While there was no safety net below the trapeze, the floor had been heaped with lumpy and irregular mattress-like pads faced with canvas. They puffed sawdust from the seams as I thumped into them. I sank through, the air momentarily driven from my body, but my spine and limbs intact. I would be cut and bruised in the morning, but knowing it could have been so very much worse, I almost laughed.

  Then I processed the hush, the patter of uncertain applause, and the ominous thuds on the pads around me as the baboons dropped to attack. Someone in the audience screamed.

  The sound was contagious. It spread through the big top like fire. People were getting to their feet, shouting, running, panicking. They did not need to be told that baboons at close quarters could be lethal.

  I rolled woozily, feeling the pain awaking in my back and shoulders, and wiped the blood from my face, but even as I did so, I scanned the stage area first for the baboons, and next for the trapeze artists. The animals, though far from spooked by the crowd noise, were watching the uproar in the seats with cautious interest as if deciding what to do next. The green-skinned performers were talking to each other in frustrated whispers. Except for the boy. He was looking directly at me.

  His eyes were wide, his mouth set firmly shut, and in his face there was fear and recognition. He knew who I was, and before I could do anything else, he ran.

  As the ringmaster strode into the ring, calling in his commanding voice for order in the house, I went after the boy, who had ducked through a flap into the backstage area. I ran cautiously, testing my bones, but though the ache in my back was swelling fast, the only sharp pains were from the baboon’s teeth and claws. The tented area behind the big top was a maze of square, dirt-floored chambers, part greenroom, part storage. I weaved round colorful boxes with trick panels, racks of costumes, weapon stands, and crates of animal feed, but the boy was fast. His green-hued feet and shaved head stayed agonizingly out of reach, and then he was diving under another flap of the tent and was gone. I hesitated just long enough to be sure he wasn’t waiting on the other side, knife at the ready, then got down on my belly and slithered through after him.

  It was darker here, the canvas walls closer so that the space felt less like the main circus and more like the corridors of a sideshow, a makeshift gallery …

  But a gallery displaying what?

  The air smelled heavily of soil and animals, and after my encounter with the baboons, that gave me pause. I wasn’t sure what the residents of Bar-Selehm would pay to see that they weren’t already accustomed to, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out. Not alone in the d
ark like this, anyway. For a second, I stood quite still, and in that moment, I heard the distinct snap of a lock, then the groan of a cage door used to staying firmly shut.

  And then came a deep chuffing breath from something big. It wasn’t a thousand miles from the bark of the baboon, but it was deeper, and it resonated in the chest of an animal much, much larger than any monkey. I took an uneasy step back toward the flap I had crawled under, but even as I did so, a large shadow came round the corner in front of me.

  It was bigger than me. Much. It turned, leaning into what little light remained, and I sucked in my breath and held it. An ape, but far bigger than any I had ever seen, its head high, almost conical, its arms massive. It rested on its immense knuckles, and I felt its eyes on me, as it stretched the vast expanse of its shoulders, filling the narrow hall like a cloud. At first it seemed black as night, save across those shoulders where the hair seemed touched with silver, but then it moved its face into the light and I gasped. A name from books drifted back to me, a word loaded with legend and horror.

  Xipuku.

  It was something between a mandrill and a gorilla, a massive, hulking beast with a red muzzle and a bright pink line along its nose set improbably in a silver-blue face. The buttocks showed the same garish colors, but the rest of the animal was black as night, save its calculating yellow eyes. They were creatures of the mountain rain forest, and I knew them only from stories.

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even think. I had been ready to fight the baboons, even if I knew they would overwhelm me, because I knew them, and however much they frightened me, they were familiar. This was different. This was a distillation of all the strength and strangeness of the circus, a creature I had barely believed in but that had the strength of half a dozen men, and could—quite literally—rip me into pieces like I was paper.

  It stood no more than five yards away, breathing, watching me. Who knew what horrors it had been through in the past at the hands of the circus folk, how it had been captured and kept, what it had been fed? Who knew how deeply it had come to hate people and what it would do to them now that it had the chance?

  Outside I heard the rush of footsteps as the circus emptied, the outraged voices of audience members who wanted their pennies back, the shouts of sudden argument, and I saw that the xipuku heard too. It took two rolling steps toward me and grunted again, longer this time, following the noise with a series of panting breaths that raised the hair on the back of my neck. Another step, and it was close enough that I could see its nostrils flare as it inspected me. Tears rolled down my face, but I still could not move. It reached toward me, took another hopping step, and with a kind of gentleness, pushed me aside and lay flat on the ground, one finger raising the canvas flap I had crawled under, so it could peer out.

  I stared, disbelieving, and then, with an extraordinary effort of will, I moved a fraction. The xipuku’s eyes flicked to me with mild interest, then returned to whatever it could see outside. I took a step away, then another, my eyes still fixed on the colossal beast, the leathery soles of its feet exposed like an infant, unconcerned. Two more steps, and I was round it and moving through the dim canvas passage. I turned the corner, to where the cage sat, fetid smelling, its gate hanging open, and then, unable to think of whether it was a good thing to do or not, I ran, a desperate, sprinting dash through the gloomy corridor with its darkened tanks and cages of who knew what, and out.

  I emerged at a flat run, tripping over the prone, green body of the boy climber. I recovered from my fall and rolled him onto his back, revealing the triangular-tipped throwing knife that was buried in his heart.

  The child assassin was dead, and with him, any hope that I might turn my one discovery into information that might free Willinghouse.

  CHAPTER

  17

  I TRIED TO REVIVE the boy, but it was too late. I called for help, and when none came—the crowds all being out front—I went looking for Dahria. I found her sitting primly on a bench at the north end of the park, where she had, apparently, been preparing her opening line.

  “First the opera house, now this,” she remarked. “Are there any forms of theatrical entertainment you haven’t disrupted by falling from the ceiling? The baboons were a nice touch. Most dramatic. Though I fancy the circus owners may be less enthusiastic—”

  “The boy is dead,” I said. “I went after him, and someone killed him.”

  Dahria looked momentarily abashed, then frowned. “Why kill him and not you?” she said. “I mean, I’m glad they didn’t, but if they were trying to stop you learning anything from him…”

  It was a good point, one I hadn’t considered till now.

  “Because if a Bar-Selehm citizen is killed by a foreigner with a traveling show, there’ll be an investigation?” I tried.

  “Whereas if one of their own is killed…” Dahria mused, agreeing.

  “I suppose we’ll find out.”

  “You want to go the police?”

  “To Andrews,” I said. “He’ll take us seriously, and there’s no clear link to your brother’s case, at least as far as the police are concerned, so no one will stop him.”

  I thought of the dead boy, of the baboons, and the xipuku in the sideshow, and all my aches and pains came back to me like weariness or grief. Dahria leaned in and pushed my hair aside with one hand tenderly.

  “You are bleeding,” she said. “We should get you to a doctor.”

  Her closeness, her kindness flustered me. I could smell the fragrance she brushed through her hair.

  “Later,” I replied deliberately, drawing away so that I would not lose myself in the moment. “The boy…”

  I didn’t know what to say. I had been so caught up in my own dramas that the weight of the child’s death was only just beginning to register. He might have been a killer, but he had also been younger than Tanish. He had been an instrument used by someone else and discarded as soon as he became troublesome.

  I could not have known this would happen, and it was hard to feel deep remorse for the death of a killer, however young he might have been, but if I had not gone after him, he would still be alive, and that was something I was going to have to live with.

  I found that I was angry. I had been played like one of the gullible fools who got lured into the cardsharps’ games, tricked. So had Willinghouse. Indeed, so had the whole city. Someone had arranged all this.

  So find them.

  “Are you all right?” said Dahria, breaking into my reverie. “You are crying.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. It wasn’t true. Not yet. But it would be. The tears I wiped away were hot.

  “I see you have managed to lose another of my maid’s dresses,” said Dahria, deliberately not looking at me. “You must be the patron saint of the city’s homeless women.”

  “What?” I said. Numbness was descending on me.

  “Nothing,” she said. “We’ll take a cab to the police station.”

  * * *

  ANDREWS RETURNED WITH US to the circus site, but his questions produced nothing. The trapeze boy had taken ill, said the other members of the company, almost word for word, and had decided to leave the organization. His parents—the trapeze group had been a family act—were annoyed, but his work had not been entirely satisfactory, so they had raised no objection. There were plenty of other agile little children keen to learn the secrets of show business …

  It was both maddening and bizarre.

  “There’s nothing I can do,” said Andrews. “They aren’t citizens of the city, and they deny a crime has taken place. No one will support my holding all of them based on your testimony, and in a few days, they’ll be gone.”

  “Then you were right,” said Dahria to me. “They killed him because it would make less fuss than killing you.”

  I didn’t want to think about that, but knew she was right. For a moment she looked exhausted, worn out with whatever Dahria had in place of emotions. She squeezed her eyes shut, then got to her feet.
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br />   “I’m going to wait outside. Someone might recognize me. And besides,” she added, wrinkling her nose, “I have smelled enough circus to last me a lifetime.”

  I watched her go, but her concern reminded me of something.

  “He knew me,” I said to Andrews. “The boy. I saw it in his face. That’s why he ran. He must have seen me at the Parliament House. He may even have still been in the tea chest when I was hiding in the Roll Closet, watching me through a crack. Or maybe he saw me on the roof by the dome. Either way—”

  “Roll Closet?” said Andrews.

  I told him all I had learned while posing as a cleaner in the Parliament House.

  “So someone got him in and lured Willinghouse to the crime scene,” Andrews mused. “You say the boy was killed by a throwing knife?”

  “Yes. A broad blade with a weighted, triangular tip, like those the showmen use in the circus.”

  “Then we are not done,” said Andrews, grimly. He made for the strutting ringmaster. “I want to speak to your knife throwers,” he said.

  “We are busy. Your little friend caused us a lot of trouble tonight,” he said, eyeing me with cool dislike.

  “Perhaps you’d like to show us your immigration papers instead,” Andrews said levelly.

  “You can’t touch us,” said the ringmaster. “We have letters of support and invitation from some very powerful people.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Andrews, “but I am confident that they would prefer not to be drawn into this sordid little matter. Fetch your knife throwers. Now.”

  “What people?” I said, sitting up. Andrews had commandeered one of the caravans for his interviews. He gave me a blank look. “With international tensions being what they are, it can’t be easy to travel across borders like the circus is doing, but he says they have letters of support from powerful people. Which people?”