Guardian by A. J. Hartley

Author:A. J. Hartley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER

17

I TRIED TO REVIVE the boy, but it was too late. I called for help, and when none came—the crowds all being out front—I went looking for Dahria. I found her sitting primly on a bench at the north end of the park, where she had, apparently, been preparing her opening line.

“First the opera house, now this,” she remarked. “Are there any forms of theatrical entertainment you haven’t disrupted by falling from the ceiling? The baboons were a nice touch. Most dramatic. Though I fancy the circus owners may be less enthusiastic—”

“The boy is dead,” I said. “I went after him, and someone killed him.”

Dahria looked momentarily abashed, then frowned. “Why kill him and not you?” she said. “I mean, I’m glad they didn’t, but if they were trying to stop you learning anything from him…”

It was a good point, one I hadn’t considered till now.

“Because if a Bar-Selehm citizen is killed by a foreigner with a traveling show, there’ll be an investigation?” I tried.

“Whereas if one of their own is killed…” Dahria mused, agreeing.

“I suppose we’ll find out.”

“You want to go the police?”

“To Andrews,” I said. “He’ll take us seriously, and there’s no clear link to your brother’s case, at least as far as the police are concerned, so no one will stop him.”

I thought of the dead boy, of the baboons, and the xipuku in the sideshow, and all my aches and pains came back to me like weariness or grief. Dahria leaned in and pushed my hair aside with one hand tenderly.

“You are bleeding,” she said. “We should get you to a doctor.”

Her closeness, her kindness flustered me. I could smell the fragrance she brushed through her hair.

“Later,” I replied deliberately, drawing away so that I would not lose myself in the moment. “The boy…”

I didn’t know what to say. I had been so caught up in my own dramas that the weight of the child’s death was only just beginning to register. He might have been a killer, but he had also been younger than Tanish. He had been an instrument used by someone else and discarded as soon as he became troublesome.

I could not have known this would happen, and it was hard to feel deep remorse for the death of a killer, however young he might have been, but if I had not gone after him, he would still be alive, and that was something I was going to have to live with.

I found that I was angry. I had been played like one of the gullible fools who got lured into the cardsharps’ games, tricked. So had Willinghouse. Indeed, so had the whole city. Someone had arranged all this.

So find them.

“Are you all right?” said Dahria, breaking into my reverie. “You are crying.”

“I’m fine,” I said. It wasn’t true. Not yet. But it would be. The tears I wiped away were hot.

“I see you have managed to lose another of my maid’s dresses,” said Dahria, deliberately not looking at me. “You must be the patron saint of the city’s homeless women.

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