Guardian: Book 3 in the Steeplejack Series (Steeplejack, 3, Band 3) - Hardcover

Hartley, A. J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765388154 ISBN 13: 9780765388155

Verlag: TOR BOOKS, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

In A. J. Hartley’s thrilling and intriguing 19th-century South African-inspired fantasy world,
which started with the Thriller Award-winning Steeplejack and continues with Guardian, Anglet Sutonga is a teenage detective fighting in a race against time as her beloved city is pushed to the brink.

This is what Ang knows:

A dear friend is accused of murdering the Prime Minister of Bar-Selehm.

A mysterious but fatal illness is infecting the poor.

A fanatical politician seizes power, unleashing a wave of violent repression over the city.

This is what Ang must do:

Protect her family.

Solve a murder.

RESIST, no matter what, before it’s too late.

“Richly-drawn and diverse cast of characters, with an unstoppable plot!” —Carrie Ryan, New York Times bestselling author

“Smart political intrigue wrapped in all the twists and turns of a good detective story.” — Kirkus Reviews,starred review

“A political, multilayered mystery-thriller with a strong, impressively fierce heroine.” —Shelf Awareness, starred review

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

A.J. HARTLEY is the international bestselling author of a dozen novels including the Steeplejack series, the Darwen Arkwright series, and mystery-thrillers for adults. He is UNC Charlotte's Robinson Professor of Shakespeare, specializing in performance theory and practice, and has published several scholarly books on dramaturgy, political theater, and drama history.

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Guardian

By A. J. Hartley

Tom Doherty Associates

Copyright © 2018 A. J. Hartley
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7653-8815-5

CHAPTER 1

DAHRIA FROWNED, SHADED HER eyes, and turned to where a long-tailed whydah with a crimson beak was calling from a thorn tree.

"What a racket they make," she observed, put out. We were sitting on the porch of the Willinghouse estate, sipping plumet juice chilled with the last flakes of ice bought from the peddlers a week ago and stored in the house's deepest stone-lined cellar.

"I rather like it," I said. There were lots of birds that never braved the smogs of Bar-Selehm, and it was easy to forget just how wild the land was only a few miles from the city center. Dahria rolled her eyes.

"Of course you do," she remarked. "Being almost feral yourself. I'm amazed you aren't rolling in the dirt with Grandmamma's hyenas. And you wonder why I don't want to be seen in public with you."

"I am not feral!" I exclaimed, eyeing one of said hyenas as it trotted past and gave us an unreadable look that made the hair on the back of my neck prickle. "City girl, me. Born and raised. Well, raised."

The Drowning wasn't strictly the city.

"But not raised well," said Dahria.

"That's a matter of opinion," I said. "And perspective."

"Oh yes," said Dahria, lizard dry, "I keep forgetting your years of finishing school up someone's chimney."

"You can see a lot of the world from those chimneys."

"What's that?" said Dahria, putting a hand to her ear theatrically. "Ah yes, I think I hear the not-so-stealthy approach of a lecture: The Hard Realities of Life in the Slums and Gangs, by Anglet Sutonga, steeplejack."

"You'd rather I'd spent my school years on embroidery and watercolors, no doubt?" I replied, equally arch.

"Now, there's an image to conjure with. The steeplejack urchin with a palette of paints and some fine brushes, instead of a bucket of ... What do you call the stuff that holds the bricks together?"

"Mortar?" I said, wide-eyed. "How can you not know what mortar is? What did they teach you in those precious finishing schools of yours?"

"Not bricklaying."

"Or anything else useful."

"Not much call for mortar when taking tea with counts and duchesses in elegant withdrawing rooms."

"Well, it's a good thing someone knows what mortar is," I said, "else your elegant drawing rooms would be likely to fall apart and kill you all. And we all know what a great loss that would be."

"I didn't say I didn't know what mortar was," said Dahria, biting back a grin. "The word merely escaped my memory, it being something unbecoming to a young lady."

"Ah. That must be it. The word knew better than to sully your mind and fled."

"Quite right too," said Dahria, and then she laughed, and I laughed, and for a while we forgot that the world was falling apart at the seams.

* * *

WAS THAT OVERSTATING THE case? Perhaps a little, but I don't think so. We had known as soon as the newspaper began to scream about the so-called "Arms for Rebels" scandal that the ruling National party was going to be embarrassed, since several of its highest-ranking members had been connected to the illegal supplying of the northern tribes with Bar-Selehm machine guns. What we hadn't seen right away was how quickly Norton Richter's Heritage party would seize the initiative, using the crisis in the government to push for more extremist policies. A revised version of Richter's Bar-Selehm First bill, minimally adjusted to allow small areas of the city to remain exempt, had been forced through, and many of the local black and Lani people would have to move out of white areas of the city by the close of the year. Willinghouse had led the Brevard party charge against the policy shift, but the law had been passed anyway, the Nationals caving to pressure from Richter's swaggering, uniformed bullies and voting en masse to approve. It wasn't yet clear how far this would all go, but there were elections on the horizon and the fear — which was widespread — was that there would be huge gains for the Heritage party at the Nationals' expense, and that a coalition government might well be in power by year's end, with Willinghouse's Brevard party stripped of what little authority it currently had. Worst of all, Prime Minister Benjamin Tavestock — a reasonable and occasionally decent man with whom I disagreed about everything — was considered ripe for the plucking, though who might take his position, I couldn't say.

It was unlikely to be an improvement.

"What are you thinking?" Dahria said suddenly.

"Nothing," I replied. "Why?"

"You were looking at me in that probing, impertinent way again," she said. "Like you were burrowing into my head to see what was inside." She paused, waiting for me to respond, and when I went back to looking at the garden, added a peremptory "Well?"

"You remember that abandoned vault they found under the bank near Mahweni Old Town?" I said. "The police cordoned off the area, and they sent military engineers in to blast it open in the hope of gold doubloons or something from the days of Captain Franzen."

Dahria screwed up her face. "What are you babbling about, girl?" she said. "Of course I remember. What has that to do with what we were talking about?"

"I imagine seeing inside your head is a bit like that."

"How so?"

"Very hard to get into and really not worth the effort."

Again the half flicker of a grin quickly doused in affronted outrage. "You work for my brother!" she exclaimed. "You're staff. I should thank you to remember your place."

"I bet you would, but I don't think it's going to happen," I remarked.

Now she gaped, her face full of mock indignation. The fact that she was a little less guarded around me might have come from the assumption that I didn't matter, that I wasn't truly a person in the way her society acquaintances were, but I didn't believe that. I thought it was friendship, closeness, even if that was something we rarely acknowledged aloud, and never in front of other people.

"I should have you horsewhipped!" she said.

"Probably." I considered my drink. "My ice has all melted. Shall we go in?" She harrumphed. "I suppose so. Will this summer never end? I swear I'm sweating like a steeplejack."

"Hilarious."

"The underclasses are so thin-skinned," said Dahria with a mischievous grin.

"Maybe we should test how thick-skinned the landed gentry are," I replied, reaching to the small of my back and sliding my brand-new kukri from its sheath. "I've been wanting to test the edge of this blade —"

She made a breathy noise of panic and pretended to run away. I went after her, menacing her with the heavy, curved knife, till she squealed and ran giggling to the door, with me in mock pursuit.

The door slid open, and there was Madame Nahreem clad in formal black, roused by our noise, glaring at us. We stuttered to a silent halt under her imperious stare like naughty children caught out of bed. She didn't say anything. She just looked. Even in her regular clothes, her countenance with all its labored patience, exasperation, and thinly veiled disdain would have left us chastened for our frivolity, but in the complete and utterly unexpected mourning she had taken to wearing since the death of Namud, we felt young and stupid. We watched Dahria's black-wreathed grandmother walk silently back into the house.

"If she had been fifty years younger," Dahria whispered to me, "I might have found myself rethinking the nature of their relationship."

I gave...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: TOR BOOKS
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0765388154
• ISBN 13: 9780765388155
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar