“But it wasn’t me, either!” He looks down at Carlyle. “It wasn’t us! There has to be another explanation.” He starts to cough with panic, a cough that becomes an uncontrolled spasm. At last it stops. His ribs ache. He spits blood, and wonders if his lung is punctured from the beating.
He looks up at Akkarat, trying to control his words. To make them count. To sound reasonable. “There must be some way to find out what really happened to the Somdet Chaopraya. Some connection. Something.”
A Panther leans forward and whispers in Akkarat’s ear. Anderson thinks he recognizes him from the party on the barge. One of the Somdet Chaopraya’s men. The hard one with the feral face and the still eyes. He whispers more words. Akkarat nods sharply. “Khap.” Motions his men to push Anderson and Carlyle into the next room.
“All right, Khun Anderson. We will see what we can learn.” They shove him down on the floor beside Carlyle. “Make yourself comfortable,” Akkarat says. “I’ve given my man twelve hours to investigate. You had better pray to whatever Grahamite god you worship that your story is confirmed.”
Anderson feels a surge of hope. “Find out everything you can. You’ll see it wasn’t us. You’ll see.” He sucks on his split lip. “That windup isn’t anything other than a Japanese toy. Someone else is responsible for this. The white shirts are just trying to get us to go after each other. Ten to one says it’s the white shirts, moving on us all.”
“We will see.”
Anderson lets his head loll back against the wall, adrenaline and nervous energy firing under his skin. His hand throbs. The broken finger dangles useless. Time. He’s bought time. Now it’s just a matter of waiting. Of trying to find the next fingerhold to survival. He coughs again, wincing at the pain in his ribs.
Beside him, Carlyle groans, but doesn’t wake up. Anderson coughs again and stares at the wall, collecting himself for the next round of conflict with Akkarat. But even as he considers the many angles, trying to understand what has caused this rapid change in circumstance, another image keeps intruding. The sight of the windup girl running for the balcony and plunging into darkness, faster than anything he has ever seen, a wraith of movement and feral grace. Fast and smooth. And at speed, terrifyingly beautiful.
32
Smoke billows around Kanya. Four more bodies discovered, in addition to the ones they’d already found in the hospitals. The plague is mutating more quickly than she expected. Gi Bu Sen hinted that it might, but the counting of bodies fills her with foreboding.
Pai moves along the edges of a fish pond. They’ve thrown lye and chlorine into the pond, huge sacks. Clouds of acrid scent waft across everyone, making them cough. The stench of fear.
She remembers other ponds filled, other people huddled while the white shirts ranged through the village, burning burning burning. She closes her eyes. How she had hated the white shirts then. And so when the local jao por found her intelligent and driven, he sent her to the capital with instructions: to volunteer with the white shirts, to work for them, to ingratiate herself. A country godfather, working in concert with the enemies of the white shirts. Seeking revenge for the usurpation of his power.
Dozens of other children went south to beg on the Ministry’s doors, and all of them with the same instructions. Of the ones she arrived with, she is the only one who rose so high, but there are others, she knows, others like her, seeded throughout. Other embittered loyal children.
“I forgive you,” Jaidee murmurs.
Kanya shakes her head and ignores him. Waves to Pai that the ponds are ready to be buried. If they are lucky, the village will cease to exist entirely. Her men work quickly, eager to be gone. They all have masks and suits, but in the relentless heat these shields are more torture than protection.
More clouds of acrid smoke. The villagers are crying. The girl Mai stares at Kanya, her expression flat. A formative moment for the child. This memory will lodge like a fish bone in the throat; she will never be free of it.
Kanya’s heart goes out to her. If only you could understand. But it is impossible for one so small to comprehend the gray brutalities of life.
If only I could have understood.
“Captain Kanya!”
She turns. A man is coming across the dikes, stumbling in the mud of the paddies, stumbling through jewel-green rice shoots. Pai looks up with interest, but Kanya waves him away. The messenger arrives breathless. “Buddha smiles on you, and the Ministry.” He waits expectantly.
“Now?” Kanya stares at him. Looks back at the burning village. “You want me now?”
The young boy looks around nervously, surprised at her response. Kanya waves impatiently. “Tell me again. Now?”
“Buddha smiles on you. And the Ministry. All roads start at the heart of Krung Thep. All roads.”
Kanya grimaces and calls to her lieutenant. “Pai! I must go.”
“Now?” He masters his surprise as he comes over to her.
Kanya nods. “It’s unavoidable.” She waves at the flaming bamboo houses. “Finish up here.”
“What about the villagers?”
“Keep them roped here. Send food. If no one else sickens this week, we are likely finished.”
“You think we could be so lucky?”
Kanya makes herself smile, thinking how unnatural it is to reassure someone with Pai’s experience. “We can hope.” She waves at the boy. “Take me, then.” She glances at Pai. “Meet me at the Ministry when you have finished here. We have one more place left to burn.”
“The farang factory?”
Kanya almost smiles at his eagerness. “We cannot let the source go uncleansed. Is that not our job?”
“You are a new Tiger!” Pai exclaims. He claps her on the back before he remembers his station and wais apology for his forwardness and then hurries back to the destruction of the village.
“A new Tiger,” Jaidee mutters beside her. “Very nice for you.”
“It’s your own fault. You trained them to need a radical.”
“And so they choose you?”
Kanya sighs. “If you carry a burning torch, apparently it is enough.”
Jaidee laughs at that.
A kink-spring scooter is waiting for her on the far side of the dikes. The boy climbs on and waits for her to perch behind and then they are off through the city streets, weaving around megodonts and bicycles. Their little air horn blares. The city blurs past. Fish sellers, cloth merchants, amulet men with their Phra Seubs which Jaidee used to make so much fun of and which Kanya secretly keeps herself, close to her heart on a small chain.
“Currying favor with too many gods,” Jaidee observed when she touched it before leaving the village. But she ignored his mockery and still whispered prayers to Phra Seub, hoping for protection that she knew she didn’t deserve.
The scooter slews to a stop and she hops down. The gold filigree of the City Pillar Shrine gleams in the dawn. All around, women sell marigolds for offerings. The chanting of monks carries over the whitewashed walls along with the music of khon dances. The boy is gone before she has a chance to thank him. Just another of the many who owe favors to Akkarat. Likely the scooter is a gift from the man, and loyalty the price of it.
“And what do you get, dear Kanya?” Jaidee asks.
“You know,” Kanya mutters. “I get what I swore I would get.”
“And do you still desire it?”
She doesn’t answer him, steps over the barrier door to the shrine’s interior. Even at dawn, the shrine is crowded with worshippers, people crouched before the Buddha statues and the shrine of Phra Seub, second only to the one at the Ministry. The grounds bustle with people making offerings of flowers and fruit, shaking out their fortunes with divining sticks-and over it all, the monks chant, guarding the city with their prayers and amulets and the saisin that stretches from the shrine to the dikes and pumps. The sacred thread wavers in the gray light, held aloft on poles where it crosses thoroughfares, stretching miles from this blessed hub to the pumps and then circling the seawalls. The monks’ chanting is a steady drone, keeping the City of Divine Beings safe from the swallowing waves.