I WANTED TO HEAR all Willinghouse had learned about the circumstances surrounding Darius’s theft of the machine gun plans, but I knew he would not be home yet, so I decided to do something I had never done before: see him at work. Discreetly, of course. It would do his reputation no good at all—as well as blowing my cover as a detective, spy, or whatever I was—for him to be seen whispering in doorways with a Lani steeplejack.
The Parliament House stood at the end of the broad stone-paved and statued thoroughfare which was Grand Parade between Cannonade and Occupation Row and I arrived as an army of Lani street sweepers were being replaced by men in suits and a squad of ceremonial guardsmen. The building was 120 years old, built on the site of the old Administrative Center as the government had swelled to meet the demands of the similarly swollen, and increasingly independent, city. Bar-Selehm was just too far from Belrand, separated by too much ocean, Feldish jungle scrub, desert, and rival entities, human and animal. It had gorged itself like a leech, growing ponderous and unwieldy, so that though we remained a nominal part of Belrand, they acted less like the proud parent they had once been and more like an older sibling: stronger, wiser, perhaps, but without our vigor. If we hadn’t stopped paying our taxes into their administrative systems a century ago, we would, like most siblings, have surely come to blows. The Parliament House modeled the city’s curious separateness, its halls and towers shaped from a russet and pink local stone, but fashioned and trimmed in the old and fussy Belrandian style. The result, though dark now from the perpetual smoke of the city, was as unique as it was imposing, an architectural anthem breathing grandeur and formally restrained power.
I stood in the blacks and coloreds line for the public entrance under the watchful eye of a half dozen armed dragoons who took our bags and gave us reclamation tickets. They operated with an officiousness designed to make us feel small and irrelevant, as if the great stone portico alone was insufficient. They counted us in to the public galleries which, combined, amounted to less than a quarter of the space allocated to the whites’ section, and then divided us into male and female. I was the only woman in the colored section: a solitary bench at the back of the gallery.
I should have felt outraged, I supposed, but I could not quite escape a sense of confused awe, which filled the air like cigar smoke, heady and aromatic. The staircases and hallways were lined with monumental oil paintings of both heads of state and abstract ideas personified: liberty, justice, and fortitude, all modeled by women with spears and shields, their white nakedness discreetly draped with swaths of fabric like curtains or flags. The galleries looked down into the parliamentary chamber. Three hundred seats were arranged around a podium and desk where two men sat, one with a stack of large leather-bound books, the other beside a stand holding a ceremonial gold-hilted sword. The seats showed their party affiliation with a braided cord: Red—the most numerous—for the ruling National party, led by the prime minister, Benjamin Tavestock. Blue for the Brevard opposition (Willinghouse’s party). There was a handful of silver, which stood for an affiliation I did not know, and a solitary green cord for the recently appointed leader of the Unassimilated Mahweni Tribes, the only black man on the floor. I did not know his name and wondered suddenly if Mnenga had been involved in his selection.
You should find him and ask, I thought.
I had first thought Mnenga just a stray villager with a flock of nbezu to tend, but it had become clear that he had been sent to monitor events affecting his people. I never found out how he had been selected for that task or whether he might one day be more than the herder I had taken him for.
You never found out, a bitter voice in my head reminded me, because you never asked.
I frowned at the truth of the observation.
The man sitting beside the sword got to his feet and called for order, banging a little wooden hammer on the desk until the burble of conversation dropped to nothing. He consulted his notes and announced, “The Honorable MP for Eldritch North, Mr. Norton Richter, Heritage party, to present Bill 479—the so-called Bar-Selehm First Act—for final debate and voting.”
I watched as a slim, middle-aged man got out of one of the silver-trimmed seats and approached the podium, taking a pair of spectacles from his pocket and slipping them on.
Heritage party.
I realized that the gray suits they all wore were curiously similar, less, in fact, like suits and more like uniforms with silver buttons and black trim. They wore ties with enamel shield-shaped pins in red and silver, though I could not make out the details.
Norton Richter, the Heritage party leader, cleared his throat and read from a sheet.
“Thank you, My Lord Secretary,” he said. “The third reading of the bill having met with sufficient support to merit a general vote, I hereby present Bill 479 for the House’s consideration. The bill’s summary—the full text of which has been circulated among all members—reads thus: ‘That in response to the dramatic increase in foreign immigration into Bar-Selehm, much of it illegal; to race-related protests, often violent and destructive; and according to a time frame to be decided by the House, all people living within two miles of this estimable House shall have ancestry demonstrably rooted in Panbroke, and that those failing to prove such ancestry shall be relocated outside the city walls or to the south bank of the river Kalihm.’”
He lowered the paper and whipped off his glasses as a murmur went round the chamber.
The man Richter had called “My Lord Secretary” looked up and said, “Bill 479 is now open for final debate, which will be limited to one half hour before voting commences.” Several men left their seats immediately, but in the shuffling that followed, the lord secretary identified one in the Brevard ranks who had raised his hand.
“The Honorable MP for Tulketh Brow, Jeromius Truit, Brevard,” said the secretary.
“I wonder,” said Truit, “if the honorable gentleman from Eldritch North has looked at a map of the city lately. If he had, he would realize that much of the district he has specified contains the abodes of citizens of Mahweni and Lani origin, many of whom work locally. Far from being an anti-immigration bill as he suggests, this would seem to be an attempt to create an all-white enclave within the city.”
“Your question?” prompted the secretary.
“Certainly,” said the MP. “Did the honorable gentleman think we wouldn’t notice?”
There was much chuckling at this. Richter smiled knowingly, and replied in the same measured tones. “I can’t say that I had noticed that particular implication,” he said, to much laughter and jeering from the Brevard side, “though I think we might consider it a happy accident. Bar-Selehm is a thriving city with many places of employment outside the recommended limits should the current factories prove inconvenient for those required to relocate.”
More laughter. I glanced around. Richter’s companions in the silver braided seats looked pleased with themselves, which was—I suppose—to be expected, but I was alarmed at how many in the red seats seemed to find the matter jolly amusing. I looked up and scanned the faces in the public galleries. The whites were divided in their mood, but the black and colored were all watchful and somber. A handful of Lani men I did not know—one was dressed as an elder—sat motionless on the other side of the divide from me, faces set, eyes boring into the chamber below us.
“The Honorable MP for Bar-Selehm Northeast, Josiah Willinghouse, Brevard,” said the secretary.
Willinghouse’s name brought my focus back to the floor. I sensed a ripple of interest pulse through the room, a slight leaning forward in the colored gallery, and a slight leaning back in the red seats. Either way, they thought something interesting was coming. Willinghouse was, as I said, one quarter Lani.
“Speaking as one of only two people currently on the floor likely to feel a personal impact from this bill,” he said, his tone full but frosty, his eyes hard, and with the smallest of nods toward the representative of the unassimilated Mahweni, “I would like to register not so much my doubts about its fiscal or administrative difficulty, which cluttered previous debates on this matter, but its essential moral wrongness. I am appalled that this house believes the matter worth serious consideration, and I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to decisively and unequivocally reject the proposed bill on the grounds of its fundamental inhumanity.” This brought murmurs of agreement from his own party and applause from the black men in the public gallery, which earned three loud strikes of the secretary’s gavel.
“May I remind the public that their role here is strictly observational,” said the secretary, eyeing the upper story sternly. “Further disruption will force me to clear the galleries. You have been warned. Mr. Willinghouse, you may conclude your question, assuming there is one.”
Another ripple of amusement, which Willinghouse had to override.
“There is,” he said, “though it is less, perhaps, for the Honorable MP for Eldritch North, who has proved himself unwilling or incapable of any scrutiny of beliefs so heinous—”
He did not get to finish the sentence, as the Heritage party roared their fury, supported by many of the National party members, and order was only restored with more thumping of the secretary’s gavel followed by another strident warning.
“I would remind the honorable gentleman of the rules of conduct of this chamber,” he said, eyeing Willinghouse. “Personal attacks and other forms of incivility will not be permitted. Pray conclude your question.”
“I apologize for my incivility,” said Willinghouse, biting off the last word like a jackal and spitting it out. “I sometimes forget the way that House decorum takes precedence over honesty—”
Another boiling of discontent erupted, and the secretary beat his desk once more.
“Mr. Willinghouse,” he exclaimed, “you will follow the procedural norms of this chamber, or you will be removed, sir. Ask your question.”
“My question,” said Willinghouse, composing himself, “is this. What kind of world do we want to live in? The strength of Bar-Selehm is its people, regardless of color or creed. You speak of illegal immigration, of racially based resentments that have sparked protests and yes, sometimes, violence, but we do not end the root causes of that discontent by closing our doors against the unfortunate who wish to build a better life here or by pushing those who once owned this land aside, turning a blind eye to their concerns, and adding to the daily injustices they suffer by banishing them from the city they have helped to build. This assembly should yoke its energies to redressing the grievances of those less fortunate and of those who, though less well represented by this chamber, have to live by the consequences of its decisions. It is abominable, sir! And the day we must prove our ancestry to gain any kind of privilege is the day we shelve our common humanity. To vote for this bill assumes that you are more important than the Mahweni, the Lani, or those who flock to our shores daily to escape the horrors of their own world, but such a vote does not make you more. Indeed, it shows you to be less!”
And then the chamber exploded in shouting. Defiant applause rang down from the black and colored galleries; boos and hisses rang out from the chamber below, particularly from the silver seats, but also from many in the red, and even a few in the blue who were more than a little affronted. The secretary rose and, getting no peace with his gavel, raised the golden-hilted sword, whereupon the great doors of the chamber boomed open and dragoons marched in. As one went to escort Willinghouse from the room, others appeared in the galleries, ordering us out, truncheons drawn.
* * *
“SO,” I SAID TO Willinghouse. “That went well.”
We were sitting outside in a rear courtyard, waiting till it was Willinghouse’s time to vote and watching the brown industrial fog of the city thickening around us as the day warmed up.
“Stupid of me,” he muttered, though his face showed no contrition, only the burning anger that had flared when he made his speech. “Madness. But what did they expect? How can we sit around debating such things as if we are civilized people? It’s monstrous.”
“How will the vote go?” I asked.
“Richter will lose,” said Willinghouse. “This time. There are enough men of good conscience among the Nationals to ensure he does not get their full support, but it will be closer than I would like, and he will be back soon enough. He already has another bill on the docket proposing increased trade with the Grappoli.”
“But he’s a nationalist. I’d think he would hate the Grappoli.”
“He says they are our natural allies on the continent,” said Willinghouse bitterly. “Meaning racial allies. Anyone from Panbroke, however greedy and merciless, is—to him—a more suitable ally than anyone—”
“Brown,” I concluded for him. “Or black.”
Even in his anger, the baldness of the statement seemed to embarrass him. He nodded and sighed. “We have a noninterference treaty with the Grappoli, which basically says that so long as what either of us does doesn’t directly involve the other, we stay out of each other’s way.”
“Which is why we’re sitting on the sidelines while they tear through the tribal lands in the north,” I said.
“Richter wants to expand the treaty,” said Willinghouse. “Turn it into an alliance. And we have an election coming. Look to see the Heritage party make greater inroads into the House until the Nationals feel more and more compelled to take them seriously.”
“That would be good for you, wouldn’t it, dividing their supporters?”
“In the short term,” he said. “But one day we may find ourselves looking at a National-Heritage Alliance with Richter at the head, and that would be calamitous for the city.” He paused to reflect on this, then turned back to me, as if just realizing who I was. “Why are you here?” he asked. “We should not be seen together, especially since I have attracted so much … attention.”
“I wanted to get more details about the theft of the—”
“Not now,” he said, looking quickly around. “I have to vote, and then I have been summoned to the whip’s office, where I will be lectured on maintaining the dignity of the Brevard party.”
“I will go,” I said. “You have enough to worry about.”
He nodded, his green eyes thoughtful and sad, and then said, “Thank you.”