Guardian

by A. J. Hartley

  CHAPTER

  21

  “WHAT AM I GOING to tell Richter?” said Dahria, looking up from the paper that heralded the start of her brother’s closed-door trial. “I promised him information in return for his slowing proceedings. If I can’t deliver—today—it will be too late.”

  I had been mulling the same problem, and my answer was risky.

  “We invent something,” I said.

  “He’ll know.”

  “Not if we make it sound good.”

  “He’ll know eventually.”

  “Maybe. But we’re just trying to buy time.”

  “Till what? You’ve been investigating, or whatever it is you do, and you have no real evidence. If we stall Richter with bad information but can’t derail the trial, he will make sure it goes all the worse for Joss.”

  “How much worse can it go, Dahria?” I said. “He’s accused of assassinating the prime minister! You understand, don’t you, that there can be only two possible outcomes of the trial: either he is acquitted or he is hanged.”

  “So we have to give Richter real information,” she said, shrinking away from the bleak reality in my words, as if it was something grotesque she didn’t want to look at.

  “Not if it disrupts the activities of your brother’s friends and allies,” I countered, “and certainly not if it leads them to prison or worse. He wouldn’t want that.”

  “I’m not sure we have the luxury of honoring his wishes,” she said.

  I was about to say something pointed and hurtful about her being cavalier with her brother’s principles because she had none of her own, but I saw the desperation in her blanched face, the unsteadiness of her usually unflappable hands, and I relented.

  “We need a delay,” I said. “That is all. We know your brother is innocent, so the truth must be out there for the finding. I’m close. I’m sure of it. Perhaps we can get him to agree to a delay of only a day or two.”

  “Perhaps,” she said doubtfully.

  I had already strained my optimism as far as it would go. I could promise no more.

  “Yes,” I said. “It might prove crucial.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “I don’t know, Dahria. I don’t have all the answers or all the plans. All I know is that we try what we can, and if that doesn’t work, we try something else.”

  She sat, hung her head and sighed, but when she looked up again she seemed resigned to follow my lead.

  “Tell me what to say to Richter,” she said.

  “What he wants to hear,” I said. “He knows your brother was talking to Muhapi, whom they have already taken into custody. The papers are alleging some conspiratorial alliance between the assimilated and unassimilated Mahweni, and have already printed reports of tribal attacks on roads and railway lines north of the city.”

  “I thought Mnenga said none of it was true?”

  “He did, but that doesn’t matter. Richter and his friends want it to be true. They want to feel that there is a black threat to the city and that your brother was involved in it. Richter would love to try your brother not just for murder, but for treason, exposing the entire Brevard party as enemies of Bar-Selehm who are allied with Mahweni savages.”

  She stared at me.

  “That sounds like a very dangerous card to play,” she said. I nodded, my mouth dry. “Once we raise that possibility, it might be a very difficult ship to stop.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “They won’t just believe it. They’ll jump on it,” she said, her face full of warning. “It will be the propaganda coup of the century. It will end white resistance to Richter, his government and his policies in a heartbeat. You think the black and Lani population have it hard now, wait to see what happens to them if Richter proves collusion between my brother and the Unassimilated Tribes in an attempt to destabilize the city—proves it based on fake information supplied by me! It will be the end of everything!”

  “I know,” I said, my voice very low.

  “How sure are you that you will be able to bring enough evidence to save my brother and stop whatever destruction this will start?”

  I thought, not about the case and how much or little progress my investigation had made, but about how few alternatives there were that might save Willinghouse’s neck.

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  She gave me a searching look, so that eventually I turned away, feeling transparent, but at last she said, “Very well.”

  * * *

  THE DETAILS OF THE plan were picked from conversations with Mnenga and from Sureyna’s impeccable knowledge of what the Standard had been printing since she left. I think it helped to take her mind off Muhapi’s arrest; the event had merited no more than a few lines at the end of a story on page two, which also implied Aaron had been pulled in for being drunk in the street. She burned with cold fury all the time now, and when I explained our plan to her, she gave me a worried look.

  “They will use this against us,” she said. “Even when they know it isn’t true.”

  “Then we need to win a more decisive victory so they can’t,” I said.

  “Victory,” she said bleakly, shaking her head. Mnenga put his large, sinewy hand on hers and smiled at her.

  “I trust Anglet,” he said.

  Sureyna seemed irritated by the remark’s naïveté, but in the end she just shrugged and nodded.

  “What do you need to know?” she said.

  “Every report of unassimilated tribal aggression north of Bar-Selehm cited in the last month, and what sources supplied the information.”

  She rummaged in her overstuffed bag, pulling out old newspapers and a map of the area, which had been folded so many times the creases had worn through until the whole was like a collection of separate squares loosely taped together. She pushed them over to me, but instead of looking at them herself, she half closed her eyes and began scanning that remarkable memory of hers. Mnenga gave me a look.

  “And what do you want from me?” he said.

  “Something much harder,” I said. “And probably quite dangerous. You will need to get the support of the other villages.”

  “I can do that,” he said simply.

  “You don’t know what I want yet,” I said, marveling at his faith in me.

  “We know who our friends are,” he said.

  I held his eyes, then Sureyna’s eyes snapped open, and she spoke.

  “I know what you need.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Willinghouse has family connections here and here,” she said, pointing at the map, areas north and west of the city. “His grandfather owned silver mines on land bought directly from Unassimilated Tribes. Both areas have been connected to recent acts of sabotage, though to be honest, I don’t think there was anything to them. They came third hand through Arthur Besland, the reporter whose body you brought.”

  “You want to invent another story supposedly sent in by Besland?” I said. “What if they know he’s dead?”

  “We backdate a report,” she said. “Make it sound like it got lost in transit.”

  “What would we put in it?”

  “Depends what you want it to do,” she answered, eyeing me. I had been cagey about what I was up to.

  “Something that will describe a gathering of Unassimilated Tribes on Willinghouse family land,” I said.

  “A gathering?” said Mnenga warily. “What kind of gathering?”

  “Hunters,” I said. “A raiding party. Men with spears and—”

  “An army,” said Mnenga, his face hardening, his eyes fixed on mine. Sureyna whistled in wary disbelief.

  “You want to create a fake threat to the city,” she said. “Why?”

  “Because Richter will believe it,” I said. “Because it’s what he has been praying for, and because while he verifies it and packages it to share with the Bar-Selehm population, he’ll make sure Willinghouse stays alive.”

  “And you want the Standard to pass this on
to him?” said Sureyna.

  “Not at first,” I said. “I want the tip to come from Dahria.”

  Sureyna’s eyebrows hovered just below her hairline, then she said, “Eventually the papers will weigh in. They won’t confirm the story, however much they want it to be true, unless they think it’s right. They might be in the government’s pocket, but they’ll want evidence.”

  “That’s where Mnenga comes in,” I said, turning to him, conscious that he had said nothing since I floated the idea. “He gets some of his people to be seen in the area.” I waited, but he sat there saying nothing, and eventually I spoke. “I know it’s asking a lot.”

  He laughed, a short, hollow laugh. “Yes,” he said. “It is.”

  “Just a glimpse, Mnenga!” I said. “A few men with weapons. We make sure they get seen, then they get out of there before anything—”

  “Before the real army comes,” he replies flatly. “The Bar-Selehm army, with rifles and machine guns.”

  “Your people will be gone by then,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But maybe the dragoons will move quickly. Maybe they will move by train and by horse. Even come up the coast by boat. And then maybe they will come looking for my people. And then what, Anglet?”

  “I know it’s risky—”

  “But not your risk,” he said. “Not Willinghouse’s risk. My risk. My people’s risk. For what? For whom?”

  “It’s not just about saving Willinghouse,” I said, surprised by how bad this all sounded now that I had said it aloud, how much it sounded like I was using him, and I realized how much it sounded like I was choosing Willinghouse over him.

  Again.

  But it wasn’t like that. Not really.

  Sureyna was watching me, chastened and embarrassed as if she had stumbled on something painful and intimate, while he just looked … sad. Disappointed.

  “No harm will come to you or your people,” I said. “I promise.”

  “You don’t know that,” he said. “You can’t.”

  “I can if we do it right,” I said. “A few people seen together dressed as a raiding party who move quickly from place to place so that they are seen in different areas. A few well-spaced campfires whose smoke can be seen from a distance.”

  He watched me thoughtfully, tipping his head on one side.

  “My people are good at hiding in the bush,” he said. “They have to be.”

  “And white people can’t tell one Mahweni warrior from another,” said Sureyna, “so no one will realize they are seeing the same handful of blokes.”

  I gave her a disbelieving look, but Mnenga nodded and laughed.

  “This is true,” he said.

  “Fighting racism with racism,” said Sureyna. “Interesting.”

  “By the time word gets back to the city, your people will be long gone,” I said, seeing the conviction building in his face.

  “How many do you think we need?” asked Sureyna.

  “A dozen?” I suggested. “Two dozen?”

  Mnenga shook his head, and for a moment I thought he was going to shut down the whole plan.

  “At least two hundred,” he said. “For people to believe it. And it’s safer to move in larger groups where there are one-horns and weancats.”

  I gazed at him gratefully.

  “You will not regret it,” I said. “I promise you. If we can save Willinghouse, I will make sure that he knows what you did.”

  “I know,” said Mnenga.

  “Right,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut for a second to refocus my thoughts, then studying Sureyna’s ragged maps. “Where do we need to make our imaginary army appear?”

  Sureyna leaned in.

  “Here and here,” she said, pointing to parcels of Willinghouse’s land some fifty miles north of the city. Both were close to a freight line.

  “You said these were silver mines, yes?” I said. “That suggests armed escort for cargo. Is there anything that will be less well protected? I don’t want Mnenga’s men stumbling into security guards with guns.”

  “There’s a coal mine here,” she said, indicating a spot a little farther west. “The Lilac Roller. Mostly disused now, but Willinghouse still owns the land, and some of it has been fenced for grazing. That might be a good spot. Not well protected and far enough from the railway line that armed support will take time to get there. Sound good, Mnenga?”

  “Yes,” he said. “This is good.”

  “Ang?” Sureyna prompted. “You all right?”

  But I barely heard her. My fingers went unthinkingly to the double-headed coin I wore on the thong around my neck, and when I blinked, tears ran down my cheeks.

  “Anglet!” said Mnenga. “What is it?”

  Sureyna took my hand and gazed, mystified, into my shocked face, but when she implored me to say what had caused the sudden change in my mood all I could say—whispering vaguely, recalling the word like I was quoting something from a dream—was “Atonement.”

  * * *

  “YOU KNOW WHAT YOU are going to say?” I asked Dahria, as we made our way back to the Heritage center. It was two hours since my conversation with Sureyna, the conclusion of which I had resolved to bury as deep in my heart as was humanly possible. I imagined myself standing on the highest chimney in Bar-Selehm, writing the truth out on paper, then wrapping the paper around a stone and dropping it down the barrel of the chimney like I was casting a coin into a well.

  An unwishing well.

  I swallowed, wiped away my tears, turned my face into the hot sun, and got on with things, because that was what you did. In this and this alone, the very poor were like the very rich. You did not indulge your feelings. You bit down hard, you strangled sentiment, you said nothing—absolutely nothing—and you continued.

  So. There was work to be done, and I set out to do it, though we had been turned away from the Parliament building by the Saunders rodent, Richter’s private secretary.

  “Of course I know what to say. Stop asking. You’re making me nervous.”

  We kept walking in tense silence.

  “I can go over it again if—” I began.

  “I may not live by my wits, swinging from roof to roof like some overstimulated monkey, but that doesn’t make me a moron,” she shot back.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that Mnenga—”

  “I know all about Mnenga.”

  “And his people—”

  “And his people,” she replied. “Now, shut up and let me concentrate.”

  As it happened, her attempt to prepare herself mentally for the interview was premature. Richter was annoyed.

  “What do you mean, coming to see me in Parliament?” he snapped as soon as we were shown in. “Are you stupid, woman, or were you just trying to embarrass me?”

  I felt Dahria stiffen beside me, but for once she swallowed down her pride.

  “I am sorry, sir,” she said, “I did not think—”

  “That, madame, is self-evident,” said Richter. He enjoyed the power he had over her. I could tell. For all his previous dismissal of the idea that he might want anything from a beautiful woman, I sensed that he enjoyed humiliating someone like Dahria precisely because of who she was and what she looked like. “I hope the information you have to offer me has been better thought out than the manner in which you chose to deliver it.”

  “I hope so, sir,” said Dahria, hating him.

  “Well, let’s hear it, then,” he barked, checking his pocket watch. “Haven’t got all day.”

  “Well, sir,” Dahria began, “I think this will be of interest to you, and I hope that you will agree that it is worth commuting my brother’s trial—”

  “I’ll be the judge of what your information is worth,” he snapped. “Out with it, woman. I have no patience with the roundabout politenesses and small talk of your class. Say what you have to say and get out.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Dahria, faltering but trying to regain her composure.

  There was a gh
ostly tap on the door, and a moment later it opened, revealing Saunders, apparently newly arrived from Parliament. Richter looked up expectantly and extended a hand toward Dahria, silencing her as if she were an unruly child. The slender private secretary stooped and whispered in his ear like a bird hunting for seeds. Richter’s face went from puzzlement to calculated amusement.

  “He’s here now?” he said.

  “He is, sir,” said the secretary.

  Richter rose and said to Dahria, “Wait here.” His supercilious gaze lingered on her just long enough to see if she would dare express outrage, then he turned toward the door. As he opened it, I realized that with the secretary’s entrance, I had caught a woody aroma, which had blown in with him from the hallway. Not just wood. There was a citrus note there too.

  Hair tonic.

  The ambassador was here again. But Richter’s manner was curious. I stepped toward the door after him, but the secretary stopped me with a look.

  “Where are you going?” said Saunders. I might have been a mangy dog.

  “My mistress’s conversation with Mr. Richter is private,” I offered.

  “I think you mean the prime minister,” said the secretary. “Or the Lord Protector. Either one is acceptable.”

  “Yes sir, sorry sir,” I said.

  “Very well,” he said, stepping aside. “Wait in the kitchen.”

  As Saunders settled behind Richter’s desk, looking Dahria up and down in a manner that managed to be both leering and contemptuous, I stepped into the hallway just in time to see a door click shut. It was the room where I had seen the Grappoli ambassador before. I walked toward it, but the door was heavy and I could hear nothing of the conversation from within. I stopped entirely, but it made no difference, and I knew that were I caught, I could not possibly claim I thought this was the kitchen. I dithered, trying to remember what I had seen in the room when I had been there last. An internal chamber. There were no windows at which I might eavesdrop and no chimney that might carry some of the dialogue in the unlikely event I could find a vent higher up. There was nothing I could do. I should do as I was told: find the kitchen and wait patiently for once.