Chains (2 page)

I stared at him.

Yes, I knew them. They were real brick houses with painted wooden trim and slate roofs and little squares of garden by the front doors where flowering bushes grew. They had fireplaces, and running water, and the streets outside were plumbed for gaslight. More pointedly, they were not the squalid tents of the riverside camp or the derelict weavers' shed on Seventh Street where I normally lived with the gang.

I generally tried not to speculate on impossible things. My hopes for the future rarely went beyond food for my belly, my own fierce privacy, and a roof over my head. Longer term health, wealth, and happiness were the stuff of novels and of my most secret of fantasies. In those idle dreams I might have allowed myself to imagine a day when, as a result of skill earned from exacting repetition day after long, dangerous day, I came to live in one of those neat brick houses …

Sir William waited for my answer. I only nodded.

He seemed pleased by this. “Well then, follow me.”

The steady drumming of the rain on the umbrella was hypnotic. As we walked, I risked a glance up at him and found him gazing at the work site which had, by this time, become a little town in its own right. Tents, shelters, cabins, and sheds had sprouted along the south bank of the river at the other end of the bridge, the whole impromptu settlement thick with noise and smoke and a steady, sour stink at all hours. The work crew had to be fed and clothed, their tools maintained, their boots and aprons mended. Every morning new pieces of equipment were rolled into place, and every night the place flared with drunken squabbling and the occasional bellow that you had to consider for a moment to figure out if you'd caught the end of a joke, or the end of a life. The dragoons kept to the edges of the camp, their rifles loaded and bayonetted, but it was clear that they were there to keep us from straying and didn't much care what happened inside.

The camp was segregated, of course: the Mahweni were on what had been waste ground on the dock side, sleeping in prefabricated sheds they had raised themselves in the first days of the job, while the whites—the smallest group—had spacious, individual cabins on the opposite bank, closer—as it were—to civilization. The Lani camp (which would, at this time of day, be growing fragrant with the nostril-tingling aromas of curried dahl cooking on a makeshift stove) was under the southernmost bridge tower, squeezed in between the river and the higher, drier ground claimed by the Mahweni. The Lani kept to themselves. The blacks kept to themselves. The white men—the site foremen, the architects, and the bankers—watched over us, gave us our daily orders, paid us our wages, and drank tea out of the rain. And here I was, walking with the most important of all of them …

The sound of hammers on steel rang out and I was startled from my thoughts to see we had come all the way to the city-side tower. A dozen shirtless black men were pounding rivets while others used a great steam-driven device to drill the holes for retainer screws tall as a man and fashioned from wrought iron.

“This way, Miss Sutonga,” said Sir William, showing me into one of the only truly completed parts of the bridge: a stone turret connected to one of the suspension chain anchors. It was a fortified structure designed to hold several soldiers, and its windows were wedge-shaped notches into the thick masonry through which they could shoot. Conflict was, after all, never far from Bar-Selehm.

We entered an inner office where he took his place behind a broad and unadorned desk piled with papers. Behind him, set into the wall and guarded by a dragoon in his scarlet tunic and white belt, was a safe with a heavy iron door, a series of key holes, and a dial with numbers on it. In other circumstances its construction might have intrigued me, but I had other things on my mind.

“I'm sorry, Sir William, sir, but I don't think I am allowed to leave Morlak.”

“Because you are an indentured servant,” said Sir William. “Little better than a slave.”

“A junior steeplejack, sir,” I said.

He rolled his eyes as if I was splitting hairs.

“You have no future in that gang,” he said. “It's barbarous. They should be outlawed. I know where the company's money goes when I pay Morlak, and I know how little of it goes to those who do the actual work.”

The mention of money seemed to remind him of something, and he patted his belly pockets till he found the watch he kept on a long gold chain and flipped its cover open. I saw the yellow glow from within and caught my breath. The dial was set with a grain of luxorite.

Satisfied, he nodded to the foreman at my back, whereupon Harkson stamped the rain from his boots and slipped past me. Wordlessly, Sir William took a bunch of keys from his waistcoat, nodded to the dragoon, and handed them to Harkson. As the foreman squatted at the safe and began turning the heavy locks, Sir William returned his gaze to me, watching the play of emotions in my face.

“I'm afraid I must ask you to avert your eyes,” he said. “You too, corporal,” he added, including the dragoon before bending over and whispering, “We have rather a lot of money in the safe. The keys only unlock part of it. There is also a combination. Devilishly tricky and really rather ingenious.

“Now,” he went on, “I realize that it is unusual to enter into such an arrangement with one so young, but I believe in investing in talent. I am prepared to buy out your contract with Mr. Morlak—which is to say, to buy your freedom. There are many projects to which my company has ties, enough to keep good workers employed for several years. I'd pay you six shillings a day with seasonal bonuses based on performance each quarter. After a year, if you do not like the work, you give a week's notice and walk away whenever you wish. Does this sound like an offer which might appeal to you, Miss Sutonga?”

It seemed impossible, a scene from a book, and I blinked, horrified to find my eyes swimming. I managed only a single “Yes, sir,” and a nod which was so emphatic that it set the tears spilling down my face.

In that moment there was clunk of metal disengaging and Harkson, still squatting, said, “All set, Sir William.”

We turned to where Harkson was drawing three plain cloth bags of coins from the safe: it was payday. As if to allow me time to compose myself, Sir William looked away, gave the bags a thoughtful heft, then transferred them into a single leather duffel, more like a backpack than the briefcase I would have expected. He slipped his arms through the straps, hoisting the bag onto his back, and offered me a surprisingly boyish grin as the foreman got to his feet, closed the safe, and led the way back out and onto the catwalk.

“Would you care to join me in my end-of-day inspection?” Sir William said lightly. “I like to know what I'm paying everyone for, even after a day as confounding as this one.”

His voice was cheerful enough, as if resigned to the way the weather was hampering our progress, and his eyes positively twinkled as I returned his smile.

“Yes, sir. I'd be pleased to.”

“Excellent.”

That began my weekly routine with him, walking the length of the catwalk as he discussed how much had been done and how much was yet to be done with the foreman and the crew managers, finally climbing right up to the very tops of both towers to look down on the bridge. For all his frustrations with the pace of the work, he clearly took a delight in it, insisting on scaling the ladder all the way to the scaffold and surveying the scene. This unexpected activity—and his need for both hands—explained the choice of a backpack in place of a briefcase. I was always too respectful, however, to give in to my mirth at the slightly absurd image of a man of his girth and formal bearing shinning purposefully up the ladder like a steeplejack; I actually liked him all the better for it. And all the while, he talked to me, like one confiding secrets to a friend. He pointed out not just what was there but what would be there, painting the air with his index finger, using terms like
eyebar
,
cantilever
,
derrick
, and
parabola
as if they were magic words charged with possibility, with progress.

“It will be magnificent,” he breathed.

If we ever finished, it would be. But the rainy season had come in earnest and we were only half done. Every day the great blue sweep of the Feldesland sky would turn purple gray, bringing torrents of warm, blinding rain that turned the streets to streams and raised the river Kalihm eight feet or more. The land was awash in snakes of types we only saw at this time of year, and upriver, the Lani shanties where Tanish and I had been born were half submerged. Up on the bridge's towers and gantries, the air was thick with mosquitoes and kuval flies which got into your hair and burrowed into your scalp so that we spent our evenings burning them off each other. The crocodiles claimed whatever ground the engorged river gave them, and the city huddled in a little closer, waiting for it all to stop.

During one particularly bad morning drench, Sir William blustered, “Damned inconvenient, this rain,” from under the silk brim of a top hat that gleamed like the flank of a wet buffalo. “Wouldn't you say, little Anglet?”

I blinked and looked down, studying my hands.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Though…”

I faltered as he turned his gaze upon me. Once more it felt like being eyed by an aging lion.

“Yes?” he prompted.

“Nothing, sir,” I whispered.

“Out with it, girl!” he said, nudging my chin up with the crook of a pink finger.

I didn't know what to say. Everyone stayed inside this time of year, of course, except us, the Lani steeplejacks and the black Mahweni laborers who were the masons and brick layers. We were out in it at all hours, a hundred feet up in the air as the lightning flickered around us and the wind threatened to blow us right off and into the churning waters a hundred feet below. I tried not to think of that nameless Lani boy who had fallen weeks ago and focused on Sir William; he was the one I needed to impress, after all.

Or at very least, the one I should not offend.

I shook my head, but I could not avoid his shrewd blue eyes, and suddenly he was smiling, though without much humor. “You were about to say,” he continued, “that the rainy season comes at the same time every year and we should have anticipated as much. Correct?”

I blushed.

“It would be impertinent to say such a thing, sir,” I said.

“It would at that,” said Sir William, considering the bridge's massive brick towers and the chain that looped between them. “Though that wouldn't make it any less true. We're behind and over budget into the bargain. If we'd had the backing of the dashed city from the outset we'd be watching coal and granite trains rolling across Bar-Selehm's first suspension bridge right now.”

That might have been overly optimistic.

“Two more hours of daylight,” Sir William mused aloud. “Let's get the next section dried off and see if we can get a lick of paint on her before we knock off for the day. Think you can manage that for me, little Anglet?”

I wasn't, in fact, little. I was tall and slim and strong, as strong as any of the boys my age, but next to Sir William, whose round, well-fed belly was draped with a frock coat big as a tent, I felt little, inside as well as out.

“We can try, sir,” I said, eyes down.

“That's the spirit, Miss Sutonga,” he remarked, walking out onto the suspended catwalk. “That's the spirit.”

I watched him stroll away, unaware of the boy at my back until he spoke.

“He needs to get you a leash,” said Vernal, one of the white boys whose masters supplied the paint. “That's what they do with pet monkeys, ain't it?”

“I'm not his pet,” I shot back, my face suddenly hot.

“No?” said Vernal, leaning into my face. “Didn't know his lordship's tastes ran to little Lani scrubbers,” he added, pouting his lips and making kissy noises.

I reached back to punch him, but he ducked away and skipped off whistling, pleased he had annoyed me. He made for the lead paint wagon, absently patting the striped orlek that drew it, and it was clear that he had forgotten me already. I should have been used to that kind of thing, but I wasn't.

I took my paint, my brush stuffed into my tool belt, and climbed the ladder temporarily fixed to the side of the southern tower, moving fluidly, hand over hand.

Like a pet monkey
.

I pushed the thought aside irritably. At the top, right below the burnished saddle over which the great chains ran, I climbed onto a scaffolding platform, listening to the whistle of the wind through the temporary timber frame. I took one of the harnesses from the hook on the wall, moving a little faster than usual. I was sure of the ladders because it was my team that had rigged them, but the scaffolding had been trucked in and hoisted into place by a crew I had never seen before, and I didn't trust their work. They were Lani, like me, but they had come down from Tsuvada, a mountain town two hundred miles north of Bar-Selehm, and they were a strange bunch, their Feldish so heavily accented that the white foreman complained of not being able to understand them.

I kept Sir William's offer to myself, worried that the other painters would observe the way he talked to me, the way he took me aside at the end of each day to compliment me on my work. I didn't even tell Tanish, though I caught him looking at me once as Sir William walked beside me, chatting amiably. The boy's eyes were wide with surprise and, I thought, anxiety on my behalf, but when he asked me about it later, I dodged, shrugging it off as unimportant. I don't think he believed me. That evening I watched Sir William take his seat next to Harkson between a pair of armed dragoons as each of the work crew filed forward to receive their wages, the foreman checking off their names in the great ledger. That somebody who handled so much of the company's money on a daily basis, someone on whom the very city depended to make its trade and traffic run, would take the likes of
me
seriously seemed preposterous. I grinned to myself and Tanish, watching sidelong at my elbow, frowned.