IT WAS AFTER SEVEN by the time I reached the river just east of butchers’ row in Evensteps. The Grappoli ambassador’s yacht was moored in the fashionable marina just south of where the triumphal arch spanned Broad Street. The water was deep here, and the embankment was sheer and well maintained, which meant no hippos and few crocodiles. Snakes were always a danger at this time of year, but I had my good boots on, and in spite of my former exhaustion, I was suddenly wide awake.
The Grappoli flag tugged disconsolately at the yacht’s mast as the evening’s festivities were prepared by a small army of servants. Even before the new laws, the only Lani or blacks here were employees paid to wash down the decks or scrape barnacles off the hulls of the sleek pleasure craft that called this portion of the river Kalihm home. Since it was after curfew, I could not afford to be picked up for loitering. I watched the area from a fishing pier a little upriver for ten minutes, until I was reasonably satisfied I knew how the guards and staff operated, then ducked into the nearest alley and waited for my chance.
I suspected that the serving staff for the event itself would be all white, but Richter cared less about the servants he couldn’t see. Some of the men and women carrying crates of fireworks, trays of food, and cases of wine bottles were black and Lani. I followed the returning line to the supply wagons, pulled my carefully folded maid’s apron from my satchel, put it on, and joined the line. There were armed dragoons wearing the green tunics and white, feathered pith helmets I had seen outside the Grappoli embassy watching the gangway onto the yacht, but no one looks twice at a Lani servant when she is carrying things to be used by her social superiors.
I, however, did and was taken aback to recognize one of them.
Bindi. The cleaning girl from Parliament, who had apparently been allowed to continue her labors outside the corridors of power. That meant the ambassador, Richter, and his cronies weren’t aboard yet. I considered staying out of her line of sight, then changed my mind. As I set down my crate of fine stemware, I nudged her in the ribs. Her eyes flicked to me and her mouth opened, but I raised a quick finger to my lips.
“Has the boat been cleaned?” I whispered.
She hesitated, thrown by my appearance, then nodded. That meant the cabins below would be unoccupied.
“Just finishing up,” she breathed. “They’re on their way.”
“Thank you.” A question I had wanted to ask occurred to me. “Bindi, when that tea chest we found upstairs in the Parliament House was delivered, did Mr. Shyloh see that it was moved there?”
She shook her head.
“He didn’t know about it,” she said. “Got quite hot under the collar about it taking two of the staff to move it. Waste of man hours, he said.”
“So who gave the order?”
“The Heritage party secretary,” she said. “Mr. Saunders.”
“Now the prime minister’s private secretary,” I said.
“That’s right,” she said. “Why? What are you doing?” she whispered, glancing uneasily around.
An excellent question, and one that could have a dozen answers, several of which involved getting myself killed.
“Trying to get you your old job back,” I said.
She stared at me, but her smile was doused as someone came into her line of vision. I turned, and there was Mr. Shyloh, busily orchestrating the preparations. My heart sank. He would know I was not one of the team.
Reading my look, Bindi said, “What do you need?”
I nodded at the stairs down to the lower deck. They were only a few yards away, but I could not reach them unnoticed. Bindi’s mouth set, and she gave me a short, decisive nod, then reached into one of the crates and plucked out a couple of wineglasses. As I took a hasty step to the side, she dropped them deliberately.
Shyloh was on her in a second.
“What are you playing at, you clumsy child?” he demanded.
With his focus on her, I was clear to make my dash for the stairs. Seconds later, I was below, closing the door behind me and shutting out Shyloh’s murmuring at Bindi’s incompetence. If I lived through the night, I’d repay her for that kindness.
If.
There were two staterooms at the foot of the stairs and then the luxurious main cabin before the carpeted hall led on to what I assumed was the galley. The doors were locked, but I had come prepared. Within a couple of minutes, I had gotten inside what was surely the ambassador’s private suite. The small circular windows meant no real curtains to speak of, so my only viable hiding place was under a three-quarter-scale couch that sat in the corner beside a writing desk. My ribs ached as I wriggled into position and lay, feeling the slow rock of the boat, relieved that the nausea from the false luxorite seemed to have passed.
I couldn’t have been down there more than a few minutes when I heard voices above me, followed by footsteps on the stairs and the snap of the door latch.
One set of feet. As they came into view inches from my head, I recognized the patent-leather boots of the ambassador’s dress uniform. He sat heavily in the desk chair, sighed, and began fussing with something that ended with the strike of a match.
The air was suddenly touched with a curl of cigar smoke.
I didn’t want to do anything. I wanted to lie there and listen, but I knew in my heart that if I had a chance—however slim—it was to act now, before the parliamentary delegation arrived. I tried to recall Madame Nahreem’s neutral mask, but it wouldn’t come, and in my heart I felt only the kind of true desperation that is passion without hope. I took a breath and rolled out from under the couch, standing slowly, silently, not reaching for my kukri, knowing that by the time I took my place in the chair opposite the ambassador’s desk, he would have a pistol trained on me.
He did. But his alarm changed to curiosity almost immediately, the result, I think, as much of my manner as my face.
“You?” he said in bemusement. “Willinghouse’s sister’s maid!”
The pistol was small and decorative, all nickel plating and dainty ornamentation, but at this range, it would do the job.
“Among other things,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, realization dawning. “Elitus, no? You bear an uncanny resemblance to a visiting dignitary who came through the halls of that worthy establishment a few months ago.” I just smiled, not bothering to deny it, and he beamed delightedly. “How remarkable! And you have come here tonight to … what? Assassinate me? Kidnap your prime minister in return for Willinghouse’s freedom? You know there are already troops aboard and will be many more soon.”
“I do,” I said. “And not all of them will be from Bar-Selehm.”
That quelled his smile. One eyebrow rose fractionally, and he sat a little taller, impressed, I thought, but with none of the playfulness that had been alive in his face a moment before.
“Ah,” he said. “So you have fathomed our little ruse. Such a lovely word that: fathomed. Plumbed the depths and found out the bottom. Feldish is such a rich language, don’t you think, Miss…”
“Sutonga,” I said. “Anglet Sutonga.”
He considered me, then smiled again. “You know,” he said, “I do believe you are telling the truth.”
“At this point,” I answered. “What else is there?”
Again the smile evaporated and a heaviness descended upon him. He set the cigar down and gave me a frank look. “What do you want from me, Miss Sutonga?” he said. “I have, as you know, a busy evening ahead.”
“Cancel it,” I said.
“That is impossible,” he replied, but not dismissively. He looked weary. Sad.
“It’s not,” I said.
“Diplomats serve the interests of their nations,” he said. “I do not make the policies I enact. I do not even always agree with them. I rarely like them.”
“Especially not this one,” I said.
“As I said, I do not always get to do what I wish for. I regret that I may have been a trifle unguarded in my speech last time we met. Some things are best left unsaid. Now, if you don’t mind—”
“You like it here,” I said.
“Of course. That does not mean—”
“You like what the city is,” I pressed. “What made it, who made it, and what it might yet be. You don’t hold with your country’s expansion, and you certainly don’t hold with Richter’s Whites First policies. The city as it is now is crumbling, and if you hand it over to the Grappoli and set Richter up as some tin-pot regent, it will cease to exist in every meaningful way. You know this.”
For a moment he gazed into my eyes, then, as if unable to hold them any longer, focused on his cigar. He picked it up and drew upon it, blowing out a long stream of aromatic smoke.
“I can’t do anything about it,” he said. “The matter is completely in hand, the result of months of planning. What happens tonight is only the end of something that has been in the works for a long time, like a garment or a piece of equipment that emerges from one of your wonderful factories but began as seed or ore months ago.”
“Machines can always be shut off.”
“Not this one. It is an opportunity my government has anticipated for years.”
“You could stop it.”
“If I tried, they’d shoot me on the spot.”
“Not necessarily. Not if you gave them information that convinced them the machine was broken, that their plan was not going to work.”
“And as soon as they found out I was lying, they would shoot me and then do what they came to do in the first place.”
“Not if you were telling the truth.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?” he said.
“I am not the only one who knows what is about to happen here. You tell the Grappoli fleet that they are walking into a trap. That we know they’re coming. That our coastal guns are about to send their ships to the bottom—the very fathomless bottom—of Bar-Selehm bay. That the streets are full of soldiers ready to defend the riverbanks from incursion. That the city is united against them and they cannot take it, even with our government on their side.”
“None of this is true.”
“It’s all true. Tell them. Stall them for an hour, and I swear you will be telling the truth.”
Again the scowl, but complex now, calculating, still dubious, but wondering.
“It’s all nonsense,” he said. “Your troops have all marched north to fight a foe that doesn’t exist.”
“Not all of them.”
“Enough.”
“Their absence has been compensated for.”
“By whom? You don’t have other troops except the civilian militia, who will welcome the Grappoli with open arms.”
“You make the mistake that Richter makes,” I said, and now I smiled too, if a little sadly. “He is so used to thinking of the city as only the white people that he ignores the rest of us, and believe me when I say that is a grave mistake. Ambassador, we have a lot of other troops.”
He breathed out then. It was almost a gasp, a slow, vocalized exhalation of realization and thought that brought with it a trace of cigar smoke. He laid the pistol down and used his free hand to rub his temples, his eyes closed. “You should be in Parliament,” he said, almost smiling. “But you know what is even more eloquent than you?”
“What?”
“Music,” he said. “Samosas.”
He smiled again, the same sad smile as before, and reached for his waistcoat pocket. Drawing out a small key on a ring, he unlocked the drawer in his desk. He reached in and pulled out a bundle of paper bound with string, which he flipped to me. I glanced at them.
Letters.
“What are these?”
“Reading material for a later date,” he said, suddenly breezy, casual, his tone a kind of audible shrug. “Keep them safe.”
I stowed them in my satchel, but I was concerned.
“Does this mean…” I began.
“You need to go before my friends arrive,” he said, rising. “Both sets. It has been a genuine pleasure.” He extended his hand, and I, dazed by the speed of the transition, rose awkwardly and shook it. “Go. Quickly.”
I made for the door, but turned before I opened it.
“You think you are going to die,” I said.
“Everyone dies, Miss Sutonga. Not everybody lives.”
He smiled, a generous if slightly strained smile, and nodded me out, sinking back into his chair.