AGAINST THE DOCTOR’S ADVICE, and with no sense of what I was supposed to do next, I did go home, or what passed for home: my lodging house was still, mercifully, just west of the redistricted line. I wished Dahria were there waiting for me, and though I’d known she wouldn’t be, I was still disappointed to get home and find the place empty. Why had I wanted to see her so badly? I was not entirely sure, and the question confused and upset me. My desire to be close to her in the midst of all that was happening, lost as it were in the spell of her, was perplexing, and I went upstairs with a still greater sense of distress. Resolving to consider the matter no more, I took medicine for the pain, knowing it would make me sleepy and—combined with the lingering effects of the luxorite poisoning—I found that by the time I got to my room, all I wanted to do was rest.
A nap, I thought. An hour at most, and then I would wake rested and think through what had to be done. If there was anything …
But I didn’t nap. I slept for three hours and would have slept considerably longer had it not been for a distinct tapping at the door around the time the evening lamplighters had begun their rounds.
I drew the bedclothes to my chin, trying to climb out of my weary sadness, at least for form’s sake. Perhaps the maid needed to know if I would be leaving the room so she could clean.
But when I got up and opened the door, it wasn’t the maid. It was my landlady, Mrs. Topesh, looking about as excited as her carefully restrained demeanor would allow. I stood to attention, feeling—as I always did in her presence—like a guilty child.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Topesh,” I babbled. “I thought it was the maid. I’m sorry to be in bed so early but—”
“You have guests,” she said. Mrs. Topesh did not like guests, particularly when they were unannounced, but while I might have expected her manner to be frostily formal, there was something cautious and watchful in her manner, which was almost impressed. “They insist upon your immediate attention.”
I frowned, and my confusion was chased by panic. I had made no secret of my presence at Muhapi’s rally and the party at his house that followed. As I had not hidden my association with Dahria. Yet the authorities—if that was what Richter’s goons now were—had insufficient knowledge of my investigation or other secret activities to want me arrested. Muhapi’s death had proved that. Still half asleep and drained from everything, the words came out before I could stop them.
“Am I in trouble?”
I heard myself, the defeated, hopeless childishness, and I felt absurd for ever thinking I could make a difference in this awful place. Mrs. Topesh looked at me as if startled. Instead of scorn, her face melted slightly, and she managed a weak smile. For a second, her eyes sparkled, and something of her rigid manner softened.
“No, my dear,” she said. “No more than the rest of us, though that, I fear, is not saying very much. Now, get dressed. Your guests—whom I have ensconced in the withdrawing room—are most insistent.”
I nodded gratefully, but with that last sentence, she had recovered her usual poise, and she merely inclined her head a fraction before slipping soundlessly out.
* * *
EVEN IN MY HASTE to see who had come to visit me, I paused to pick up the early edition of the evening paper from the side table in the downstairs hall. Several related stories dominated the front page under the heading
UNASSIMILATED TRIBES MASS FOR ATTACK!
TROOPS DEPLOY TO MEET MAHWENI THREAT
So it had begun. My eyes flashed over the smaller print—eyewitness accounts of hundreds, even thousands, of Mahweni bush warriors less than fifty miles north of the city, their certain connection to Willinghouse’s attempted coup and to “the disgraced black activist leader, Aaron Muhapi, who killed himself yesterday.” The warriors had surely been trying to starve the city of news and supplies during the past few weeks by attacking trade convoys and railway lines as they prepared their all-out attack on the city.… Their allies in the city, professing disbelief over the police account of Muhapi’s death, had clashed with the civilian militia in rioting all over the city.…
It was all wrong. All nonsense. And my plan to buy Willinghouse a little time had played right into it, feeding Richter’s thirst to spill the blood of Mahweni, whether they were of the city or of the Unassimilated Tribes.
For a moment the news drove all other concerns out of my head, and I pushed the door to the withdrawing room open with no idea what to expect on the other side. I instantly understood Mrs. Topesh’s strange, awed mood, because the people waiting for me—seventeen-year-old Lani steeplejack that I was—formed as strange and uneven a group as Bar-Selehm had seen in many a year.
Inspector Andrews, in uniform, sat on one ladder-back chair with Captain Emtezu on another beside him. Emtezu was dressed not in the patrol or combat attire, which had been confiscated, but in the dress uniform he kept at home. Opposite him was Madame Nahreem, draped in an austere black sari. Beside her, playing the elegant—and seemingly white—aristocratic lady about town, was Dahria, in resplendent mauve with matching parasol. And next to her was Mnenga, in formal tribal robes, sitting beside Lomkhosi, her breasts demurely covered, but still bedecked in beads, her hair raised in the same sculpted tower as before. Watching them warily from his position, cross-legged on the floor, was Tanish.
I stared, but only for a second, then I thrust out the paper I had brought with me from the hall and said to Mnenga, “What are you doing here? You need to get your people out of there!”
“That is done,” he said. “My people had moved west before this was printed.”
“Very well,” I said, relaxing a little. “But why aren’t you with them?”
“Because he has news,” said Madame Nahreem crisply, her usual self. “Be quiet and listen.”
“What is it?” I said, dragging my eyes off her and staring at Mnenga, feeling the tension in the room mount.
“I said my people were not responsible for the attacks on the railroads, on the trade convoys or on the journalists,” he said. “Now we know who was. There are Grappoli troops ten miles from the city and moving toward you. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. They will be here by moonrise.”
“The deployment of the white garrisons to the northeast has left the city largely undefended,” said Emtezu, “and Mnenga’s tribal contacts”—he nodded to the Mahweni woman, who inclined her head seriously—“say that a fleet of Grappoli war vessels were sighted off the western coast moving south toward the cape a week ago.”
“So they will attack from the south as well?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” said Emtezu. “If they came by ship, it doesn’t make sense to disembark on the cape and march a hundred miles north, risking discovery with every step. With the city as poorly protected as it is, I think they will sail round the cape, up the east coast, and into the city via the river mouth.”
I stared at him, aghast.
“What about the coastal defense batteries?” I said. “There are guns overlooking the bay. They would shred a navy that tried to enter the city that way.”
“The forts north and south of the river mouth went strangely quiet last night after reports of a strange contagion gripped them,” said Andrews. “The green luxorite devices were not merely a way to target the blacks and coloreds. They were designed to bring the city to its knees.”
“So we tell the garrisons what we know,” I said, “get in, find the devices before the Grappoli ships arrive.”
“The silence from the forts suggests more than sickness,” said Emtezu. “I think the enemy has already exploited the weakness of the soldiers.”
Mnenga had taken to whispering translations into Lomkhosi’s ear as we talked. She nodded, earnestly.
“You think the coastal forts have been taken by the Grappoli?” I exclaimed. “How? If troops had come into the city we would have seen—”
“Not ordinary troops,” said Emtezu. “We got uneven civilian reports saying that strange people had been seen scaling the walls of the Ridleford fortress. No shots were fired. If there’s any truth in it, I think we are dealing with specially trained soldiers skilled in assault tactics, climbing, hand-to-hand combat.”
“Troops who were already in the city,” said Andrews. “In disguise.”
I gaped, and the truth hit me at last.
“The circus,” I said sitting down heavily in the room’s only unoccupied chair.
“I’m afraid so,” said Andrews. “They may even be using those damned baboons.”
There was a long, stunned silence and then a tap came at the door. It opened, and Sureyna peered in.
“I was told you were in here,” she said.
Mnenga managed a smile, but the rest of us were still in shock.
“Any news?” Andrews asked her. It seemed my lodging house had—unknown to me—become the heart of some new resistance movement. Sureyna shrugged disconsolately, but before she could say anything, and as if to prove my previous thought, the window onto the flower beds outside rose, seemingly of its own accord. A slim brown hand reached in, and before we knew what was happening, someone was climbing up, through, and in.
A veiled and hooded someone.
Vestris.
She looked … embarrassed, almost ashamed of herself, her face low, her eyes on the floor, her hands adjusting the ragged robe, which was both cloak and hood. Madame Nahreem got unsteadily to her feet, one hand clutched to her heart, staring at my sister as if she were a specter from beyond the grave. Vestris saw her and became leopard-still, as if poised to flee. Or strike. The room was suddenly charged with the weight of things unsaid.
“You were right,” said Vestris half turning to me, but her eyes still on Madame Nahreem. “Someone has been in the cave. Part of the concrete poured in to seal it was cut away. The opening has been hidden, but it’s undeniable: someone has been inside.”
Even without Madame Nahreem’s prior association with her, Vestris’s appearance, ragged and otherworldly as it was, had given the meeting a dreamlike quality from the moment she had clambered in. Andrews leaned forward, peering at her, the wheels in his head starting to turn.
“This is a steeplejack friend of mine,” I said. Vestris caught my eye quickly, then looked down. Tanish, putting the pieces together, gaped.
“How did they find the cave?” asked Mnenga.
“Who is they?” said Andrews.
“They didn’t find it,” I said. “Not this time. They have known about it for months. Am I right?” I almost called my sister by name, but I saw the way Andrews was watching her and held it back. There would be a time for Vestris to answer for her past deeds, but it was not today.
“Mandel,” she said. The word came out as a snarl, grotesque and laden with malice. The man who was now head of Bar-Selehm’s security forces had betrayed her after all, though she was not alone in that. Emtezu rose slowly to his feet, and his face was hard and dark with anger. Mandel had once been his commanding officer. No one knew better than Emtezu what the man was capable of.
“Where is he now?” said Emtezu.
Andrews shook his head, but Sureyna spoke up.
“I know where he will be,” she said, snatching my copy of the Standard from me and turning to the second page. She laid it on the coffee table where we could see it, reciting the text from memory. “Prime Minister Richter’s inaugural diplomatic celebration will take place this evening at eight o’clock on the private yacht belonging to Count Alfonse Marino, Grappoli ambassador. The governmental party will include senior cabinet members and head of state security, Colonel Archibald Mandel. Light refreshments will be served as the vessel makes its way east of the Ridleford pontoon. Once in the bay itself, a fireworks display will commence from the deck, allowing a magnificent perspective of the pyrotechnics over the city.”
There was a stunned silence as everyone made sense of this.
“My God,” said Andrews. “The ambassador is going to sail the core of the government right into the mouth of the Grappoli fleet! The yacht will be boarded, and the prime minister and his inner circle will be taken prisoner. The administrative and legislative heart of the city will fall before a shot is fired!”
“We have to alert the government right away!” said Dahria.
“I’ll report to my garrison HQ,” said Emtezu, heading for the door.
“No!” I said, loudly. “Everyone just … be quiet.”
There was another heavy pause, and they all stared at me.
“We have not a moment to lose,” said Andrews.
“No!” I said again.
“We really don’t have time—” Andrews began, but Dahria elbowed him in the ribs.
“Let the girl think,” she muttered.
I did, the puzzle pieces swirling around in my head and then slotting into place.
“I thought we were dealing with two threats to the city,” I mused aloud, looking at no one. “One from inside—Richter, Heritage, and their attempts to suppress the black and colored population by any means they could use, including a deadly toxin. One from outside—the Grappoli attack. But they were always part of the same thing. Richter and his government aren’t about to be snatched by an unexpected Grappoli attack fleet. He is about to meet his Grappoli allies and hand them the city.”