Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [141]
Wataru’s face reddened. “I gathered from what they said that she was helping them…she wasn’t going along with their plans willfully, I hope?”
Kutz glanced at the Highlander official. Gil, still sitting, leaned toward Wataru. “Indeed. Those two boys threatened her and made her help them steal. She pretended to be a victim to save you, in fact. How did you know?”
Wataru explained how he had put it all together: the girl whispering “I’m sorry,” how she could have used her tail to cut her own back with a knife, and how he realized if he claimed to know who the criminals were, they would suspect Meena had ratted them out and come to get her.
“That’s some brain you got, Wataru!” Kee Keema said, clapping his hands. “Why I could be as old and grizzled as the Elder, and I’d never come up with that!”
Wataru didn’t bother explaining that co-conspirators pretending to be victims were a pretty common plot twist in the TV shows his mom watched.
“You want to meet them?” Kutz said, standing up and dangling a ring of cell keys in her hand. Wataru quickly followed after her.
“It turns out they’re both refugees from the north,” Kutz explained as they walked down the hall. “Five years ago, when they were nine and eight years old, they paid a smuggler to take them and their parents on a merchant ship crossing the sea. Sadly, the ship ran into trouble, and their parents died. These two washed up on the shore near Bog and moved to a refugee camp. Apparently they didn’t care for life there, so they escaped and began their career as thieves. They’ve been moving from place to place, stealing and worse, for about a year now.”
“I don’t get it. They risked their lives to cross over here, only to become thieves? Why?”
“Ask them yourself.”
The two were being kept in the same tiny cell that Wataru himself had been thrown in when he was the suspect. One was lying down on the bed, but the other—the older of the two, Wataru thought—was sitting on the floor, and his eyes gleamed when he saw Wataru in the doorway.
“Having fun, boys?” Kutz asked cheerfully. “I brought you a friend. He went through quite a lot on your account. Thought you might want to apologize to him, hmm?”
The sitting boy looked to the side and spat on the floor. The boy on the bed sat up and glared at Wataru. Seeing them in the light of day, Wataru realized he had seen them before that night. During the day, when everyone had been visiting him at the lodge after he claimed to know the identity of the criminals, they had been there, standing apart from the onlookers.
They looked better fed now than they had been then, for sure, but their eyes were still hungry.
Trone appeared at the end of the hallway and began walking toward them when the older of the two leapt suddenly to his feet, grabbed the bars to the cell and began shouting. “Keep that stinking foul beast away from us! I don’t want his stench in our room!”
Shocked, Wataru took a step backward. Trone kept walking toward them, grinning broadly. On the other side of the bars, both of the boys were standing up now, spitting and raging.
“See?” Trone said, coming to stand beside Wataru. “They risked their lives to escape from the north, yet inside their hearts, they’re still living firmly within the borders of the Empire.”
In the Northern Empire, the dominant ankha had decided that other races were inferior and without value, Trone explained. They imprisoned and killed his kind for the slightest offense.
“Oh be quiet, you two,” Kutz snapped. “If you don’t like it in there, I’m happy to send you back up north.”
Kutz’s words only agitated them further. “You look like one of us, but you smell like one of them,” the older boy growled.
“Death to you all!” his brother joined in.
“I’m afraid the one on its way out is your empire, not us,” Kutz said, almost sorrowfully. “By pushing the non-ankha out of the way, you’re ignoring so many resources, so much potential.”
“Shut up, beast-lover! All of you together don’t add up to one of us!” the older