Chains (5 page)

Authors: A. J. Hartley

BOOK: Chains

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A spark like lightning as the bullet careened off the steel frame of the tower, a foot from my right hand. In that flash I saw my own madness and the stupidity of the world as if it were written across the sky in fiery letters. I shouted, but I did not stop climbing. Now I spotted Harkson above me, looking down, lips pursed and eyes bright and hard as the sparking steel.

Madness and stupidity
, I thought.
And greed
.

I knew what the washers meant now. I realized why Sarn had been working with a claw hammer on the Tsuvada Lanis' irregular scaffolding. It was the very platform Sir William would reach in a matter of moments if I could not stop him.

Harkson was looking for handholds on the girder frame now, trying to get off the ladder and intercept me before I reached the top. From a deep thigh pocket he slid out a length of metal pipe. I faltered for only a second and then increased my speed, swinging wildly to the left away from the tower. For a second I hung over the turgid depths of the river far below.

His outstretched arm reached for me in an equally wild and murderous swing. The pipe clanged against a steel beam as I sped past. For a second I thought the range of his attack had made him lose his grip. Checking behind me, I saw him clinging unsteadily to the tower.

Ten more feet before I reached Sir William's ankles just as he was about to step out onto the scaffolding platform.

“Stop! It's not safe!”

He twisted around and glanced down at me, apparently realizing I was there for the first time, and I saw the outrage in his face as the world beneath him swam into view.

“What are you doing up here, blast you?” he roared into the wind. “I told you to stay where you were!”

“I'm saving your life!” I shouted back. “The platform has been tampered with. Climb onto it and you'll fall.”

“Nonsense, girl,” he retorted. “You don't know what you are talking about.”

He went up two more rungs and put his hands on the platform, swinging the backpack up.

“Please, Sir William, you have to listen to me. Sarn rigged the platform.”

“Preposterous!” he replied. “I've never heard such outrageous accusations. Why would anyone do such a thing?”

“So you'll fall into the river.”

“With a week's wages for a hundred men which no one would ever be able to recover?” he sneered. “You should stick to painting and climbing. Leave the thinking to those better suited to it.”

“The wages are still in the safe!” I screamed at him. Beneath us, Harkson had recovered his nerve and was climbing the ladder once more.

“So what do you call this?” said Sir William, nodding at the backpack, his face purple as he started to haul himself up onto the platform. It creaked ominously.

“Nothing!” I said. “Bits of metal trash. Harkson switched it when we had our backs turned. You're supposed to fall. Everyone will see you take the backpack with you. They'll see Harkson come down empty-handed. The company will think the money's lost. But it's not. Harkson'll go back to the safe and take it all. No one will even know the theft took place.”

“You are delusional. I trust my people. Go down at once!”

“Look in the bag!” I shouted. “Use your eyes if not your brain.”

Furious, he kicked at me and made to clamber onto the platform. I dodged his fine leather shoe and seized his ankle. I held on one-handed as he shook it, his hands releasing the platform edge to cling desperately to the ladder.

“Let go of me, you Lani bitch!”

Even there, high above the river with the wind howling about us, with the killer foreman only feet away and a rifleman trying to get me in his sights down below, the phrase shocked me into stillness. Our eyes met. He saw the hurt in my face, and I think some small part of him was ashamed. Not of the words, but of what they showed him to be. My hurt turned to anger, and, without thinking, I raised a hand to slap him.

He winced, but the look in his face was more shock than fear.

“Don't you dare touch me,” he said.

I held his gaze, but slowly lowered my hand.

“Come down,” I said, quieter now, “and I won't.”

He gave me a long, defiant look, then nodded once.

It took longer to come down than it had to go up. Harkson watched me, hawkish all the way, keeping his distance. At the bottom, a crowd had gathered, black, white, and Lani mingled for the first time since the work had begun. Sarn was among them, his face hard, his eyes fixed on mine, but I could not tell if he was relieved or angry, and for the first time I wondered if his murderous pact with Harkson had been on Morlak's orders. When the dragoon gave Sir William his shoulder to lean on when all of us returned to the ground, the foreman offered to return the wage pack to the safe.

Another dragoon had joined them. Before I could react, he grabbed hold of me and pinned my hands behind my back. I cried out and saw the flicker of doubt in Sir William's eyes as they flashed from Harkson to the rickety tower platform and back to me. For a second he seemed to think, then he said:

“Yes, Harkson. Take it and see that it's locked up secure.”

He did not check inside the backpack. Deliberately.

A chain of command
Â â¦

Instead, Sir William turned away from me as the foreman relieved him of the backpack, which I knew bore its weight in discarded washers, and he saidâfor whose benefit I was not sure: “I think you should rejoin your gang, Miss Sutonga. I'm afraid I must cancel our previous arrangement, and you must go back to Mr. Morlak with your friends.”

Moments before, surprise would have frozen me. Instead, my lack of it fell like a coal, feeding the furnace of anger boiling inside.

“You know I was right,” I snapped.

He looked away for a moment.

“Remember my advice, Miss Sutonga,” he replied, and I thought that beneath the hardness there was something else which I did not understand. Something like disappointment. “You need to learn your natural place if you are to function in society. That is all I have to say on the subject.”

“I saved your life.” I held his gaze.

“You are a Lani steeplejackâand a bit of a girlâwho was insultingly insubordinate to my foreman, disobeyed my express wishes in spite of my kindnesses to you, and laid violent hands upon a peer of the realm. You are fortunate that I am returning you to Mr. Morlak rather than handing you over to the police.”

Tears welled in my eyes, but my grief was less about losing out on the life he had promised, and more that the world had shown itself to be what I had always suspected. Anger burned across my cheeks for my being so foolish.

“Go,” he concluded. “Your gang leader must be paid.”

“That,” I said, “is between you and him. I'll have none of your money.”

I caught the look on Sarn's face and knew I had not heard the last of this, but I would endure whatever he and Morlak had in store for me. I had done so before. The dragoon had relaxed his grip and I shrugged out of it, beginning the long, slow walk across the catwalk, with the city skyline in my sights. I would never escape Morlak's gang, and there were hard days ahead, but with each step I took I left the architectural jewel of Bar-Selehm in my wake as if shaking it off link by link. Their weight shed, I walked a little faster, lighter, resigned to what lay before me. My place was dead ahead among the chimneys, climbing high and alone. Not here over the treacherous water, fixing bridges I'd never be able to cross.

About the Author

British-born writer
A. J. Hartley
, author of the
New York Times
bestselling
The Mask of Atreus
and
On the Fifth Day,
is the Distinguished Professor of Shakespeare in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. As well as being a novelist and academic, he is a screenwriter, theatre director, and dramaturge. He is married, with a son, and lives in Charlotte. You can sign up for email updates
here
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