The Windup Girl

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.

Kanya buys her own incense and food offering, takes it into the cool confines of the pillar shrine, down the marble steps. She kneels before the old city pillar of sacked Ayutthaya, and the larger one of Bangkok. The place where all miles are marked from. The heart of Krung Thep, and the home of the spirits that protect it. If she stands in the shrine’s doorway and looks out toward the dikes, she can see the rise of the levees. It is obvious that they are in the depths of a bathtub. They are exposed on all sides. This shrine… she lights her incense and pays her respects.

“Don’t you feel like a hypocrite, coming here, of all places, at Trade’s whim?”

“Shut up, Jaidee.”

Jaidee kneels beside her. “Well, at least you’re giving some good fruit.”

“Shut up.”

She wants to pray, but with Jaidee bothering her, it’s useless. After another minute, she gives up and goes back outside to the increasing morning light and heat. Narong is there, leaning against a post, watching the khon dances. The drums beat and the dancers go through their stylized turns, their voices raised high and stark, competing with the drone of the ranked monks across the courtyard. Kanya joins him.

Narong holds up a hand. “Wait until they’re done.”

She masters her irritation and finds a seat, watches as the story of Rama is played out. Finally Narong nods, satisfied. “It’s good, isn’t it?” He tilts his head toward the pillar shrine. “Have you made your offerings?”

“You care?”

Other white shirts cluster in the compound, making their own offerings. Asking for promotions to better paying assignments. Asking for success in their investigations. Asking for protection from the diseases that they run up against every day. By its nature, this is a shrine for the Environment Ministry, almost as important as the temple of Phra Seub, the biodiversity martyr. It makes her nervous to speak with Narong in front of them all, but he appears entirely unconcerned.

“We all love the city,” he says. “Not even Akkarat will fail to defend it.”

Kanya makes a face. “What do you want from me?”

“So impatient. Let’s walk.”

She scowls. Narong seems unhurried, and yet he has summoned her as if it is an emergency. She tamps her fury and mutters, “Do you know what you’ve interrupted?”

“Tell me as we walk.”

“I have a village with five dead and we still haven’t isolated the cause.”

He glances over, interested. “A new cibiscosis?” He guides her out of the compound, past the marigold sellers. Walking onward.

“We don’t know.” She masters her frustration. “But you’re delaying me from my work, and though it may please you to make me run like a dog when you call—”

“We have a problem,” Narong interrupts. “And though you think your village is important, it is nothing in comparison to this. There has been a death. A very prominent one. We need your help in the investigation.”

She laughs, “I’m not the police—”

“It’s not a police matter. There was a windup involved.”

She stops short. “A what?”

“The killer. We believe it is an invasive. A military windup. Heechy-keechy.”

“How is that possible?”

“It is something we also are trying to understand.” Narong looks at her seriously. “And we cannot ask the question, because General Pracha has taken control of the investigation, claiming jurisdiction because the windup is an interdicted creature. As if it were a cheshire or a yellow card.” He laughs bitterly. “We are blocked entirely. You will investigate on our behalf.”

“That’s difficult. It is not my investigation. Pracha will not—”

“He trusts you.”

“Trusting me to do my job and allowing me to meddle are two different things.” She shrugs and turns away. “It’s impossible.”

“No!” Narong grabs her and yanks her back. “This is vital! We must know the details!”

Kanya whirls, throws Narong’s hand off her shoulder. “Why? What is so important about this? People die all over Bangkok, every day. We find bodies faster than we can shovel them into methane composters. What’s so important about this one, that you’d have me cross the general?”

Narong pulls her close. “It’s the Somdet Chaopraya. We have lost Her Royal Majesty’s protector.”

Kanya’s knees buckle. Narong drags her upright, keeps talking, fiercely insistent. “Politics has become uglier since I started in this game.” He has a smile on his face, but now Kanya sees the rage banked below. “You’re a good girl, Kanya. We have always held our part of the bargain. But this is why you are here. I know this is difficult. You have loyalty to your superiors in the Environment Ministry as well. You pray to Phra Seub. This is good. It is right for you. But we require your help. Even if you have no taste for Akkarat anymore, the palace requires it.”

“What do you want?”

“We need to know if this was Pracha’s doing. He has been quick to take over the investigation. We must know if it was he who drove the knife. Your patron and the safety of the palace depends on this. It is possible that Pracha wishes to hide something. It could be some of his December 12 elements striking against us.”

“It’s not possible—”

“It is too convenient. We have been locked out entirely because it is a windup who did the killing.” Narong’s voice cracks with a sudden intensity. “We must know if the windup was planted by your ministry.” He passes her a bundle of cash. Kanya stares at the amount, shocked. “Bribe anyone who gets in your way,” he says.

She shakes off her paralysis, takes the money and stuffs it into her pockets. He touches her gently. “I am very sorry, Kanya. You’re all I have. I depend on you to find our enemies and root them out.”

The heat of a Ploenchit tower in the middle of the day is stifling. Investigators clog the dingy rooms of the club, adding to the swelter. It is a sick place to die. A place of hunger and desperation and appetites unfilled. Palace staffers crowd in the halls. Watching, conferring, preparing to collect the Somdet Chaopraya’s body for placement in his funeral urn, waiting as Pracha’s people investigate. Anxiety and anger hang in the air, politeness filed to an exquisite edge in this most humiliating and frightening moment. The rooms have the feeling of the monsoon just about to break, electric with energy, fraught with the unknown darkness of roiling clouds.

The first body lies on the floor outside, an old farang, surreal and alien. There is little physical damage to him, except the bruising where his throat was crushed, the livid torture that was done to his windpipe. He sprawls beside the bar with the mottled look of a corpse raised from the river. Some gangster bit of fish bait. The old man stares at her with wide blue eyes, two dead seas. Kanya studies the damage without speaking, then allows General Pracha’s secretary to lead her to the interior rooms.

She gasps.

Blood stains everything, great swirls of it spatter the walls and drool across the floors. Bodies lie in tangled heaps. And among them lies the Somdet Chaopraya, his throat not smashed as was the old farang, but literally torn out, as though a tiger has fed upon him. His bodyguards lie dead, one with a spring gun blade buried in his eye socket, the other still clutching his own spring gun but peppered with blades.

“Kot rai,” Kanya murmurs. She hesitates, uncertain of what to do in the presence of this sordid death. Ivory beetles tangle in the bloody froth. They skitter and scatter through it all, making tracks in the coagulant.

Pracha is in the room, conferring with his subordinates. He looks up at her gasp of dismay. The others have their own looks of shock, anxiety and embarrassment flickering on their faces. The thought that Pracha could arrange such a killing fills Kanya with sickness. The Somdet Chaopraya was no friend of the Environment Ministry, but the enormity of the act makes her ill. It is one thing to plot coups and counter-coups, another to reach inside the palace. She feels like a bamboo leaf drowning in floodwater currents.

So we all go, she tells herself. Even the richest and the most powerful are only meat for cheshires in the end. We are all nothing but walking corpses and to forget it is folly. Meditate on the nature of corpses and you will see this.

And yet still she is unnerved, almost panicked by the sight of a near-god’s mortality before her. What have you done, General? It is too horrifying to consider. The flood currents threaten to suck her under.

“Kanya?” Pracha waves her over. She searches her general’s face for signs that he carries the guilt for this act, but Pracha seems only puzzled. “What are you doing here?”

“I—” she has words prepared. Excuses. But they fail her with the Crown Protector and his retinue strewn about the room. Pracha’s eyes follow her gaze to the Protector’s body. His voice softens. He touches her gently on the arm. “Come. This is too much.” Guides her out.

“I—”

Pracha shakes his head. “You’ve heard already.” He sighs. “By the end of the day, it will be all over the city.”

Kanya finds her voice, spills her lie, pretending to the role that Narong has given her. “I didn’t think it could be true.”

“Worse than that.” Pracha shakes his head grimly. “It was a windup that did it.”

Kanya forces herself to show surprise. She glances back at the bloodshed. “A windup? Just one?” Her eyes trace along a peppering of spring blades embedded in the walls. She recognizes one of the other bodies as a Trade Ministry official, the son of a secondary patriarch. Another from a Chaozhou manufacturing clan, a man making his way in the business press. All of them faces from the whisper sheets. All of them great tigers. “It’s awful.”

“It doesn’t seem possible, does it? Six bodyguards. Three men additionally. And only a single windup, if we believe the witnesses.” Pracha shakes his head. “Even cibiscosis kills more cleanly.”

His eminence the Somdet Chaopraya’s neck has been ripped entirely away, breaking it, snapping and tearing so that though the spine seems attached still, it acts as a hinge rather than a support. “It looks like a demon tore him open.”

“A wild animal, anyway. It’s the sort of thing a military genehack would do. We’ve seen this sort of activity in the north, where the Vietnamese operate. They use Japanese windups as scouts and shock troops. We’re lucky they don’t have many.” He looks seriously at Kanya. “It will go hard on us. Trade will say that we failed in this. That we allowed this animal into the country. They’ll try to take advantage. Make a pretext out of it to seize more power.” His expression turns bleak. “We have to find out why this windup was here. If Akkarat has set us up, has used the Protector as a pawn, to seize power.”

“He would never—”

Pracha makes a face of dismissal. “Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power. We think Akkarat was here before. Some of the staff seem to recognize his image, seem to recall—” he shrugs. “But of course, everyone is afraid. No one wants to admit too much. But it looks as if Akkarat and some of his farang trader friends brought the Somdet Chaopraya to the heechy-keechy.”

Is he playing me? Does he know that I work for Akkarat? Kanya stifles her fears. If he knew, he would never have promoted me to Jaidee’s position.

Jaidee whispers in her ear. “You never know. A snake in its nest is better than a snake slithering through the jungle. This way, he always knows exactly where you are.”

“I need you to go to the records department,” Pracha says. “We don’t want information to conveniently disappear, you understand? Trade has its own agents amongst us. Pull everything you find and bring it to me. Find out how she lived here, and survived. As soon as word gets out, there will be a cover-up. Men will lie. Permit records will disappear. Someone was allowing the windup to exist against all our laws. The Ministry is vulnerable on this. Someone took the bribes. Someone allowed the windup to live here. I want to know who, and I want to know if they are on Akkarat’s payroll.”

“Why me?”

Pracha smiles sadly. “Jaidee is the only one I would trust more.”

“He’s setting you up,” Jaidee comments. “If he wants to blame this on Trade, you’re the perfect tool. The mole in the ministry.”

There is no guile in Pracha’s face, but he is a clever man. How much does he know?

“Find the information for me,” Pracha says. “Bring it to me. And speak to no one of this.”

“I will do it,” she says. Inside though, she wonders if the records even exist anymore. So many ways to profit. A cover-up would have already been effected. If it is truly a murder plot against the Protector, the payoffs would go to all levels. She shivers, wonders who would do such a thing. Political killings are one thing. To touch the palace in this way… Rage and frustration threaten to overwhelm her. She forces it down. “What do we know of the windup, so far?”

“She claimed to be a Japanese discard. The girls here say she has been in place for years.”

Kanya makes a face of distaste. “It’s difficult to believe that anyone would soil-,” she breaks off, finding herself on the verge of scorning the Somdet Chaopraya. Sick feelings of confusion and sadness overwhelm her. She masks her discomfort by asking another question. “How did the Protector come to be here?”

“All we know is that he was accompanied by Akkarat’s ilk.”

“Will you question Akkarat?”

“If we could find him.”

“He’s missing?”

“You’re surprised? Akkarat was always good at protecting himself. It’s why he’s managed to survive so many times.” Pracha grimaces. “He might as well be a cheshire. Nothing ever touches him.” Pracha looks at her seriously. “We must find who allowed this windup creature to live here so long. How it got into the city. How the assassination was arranged. We are blind in this, and when we are blind, we are vulnerable. This news will make everything unstable.”

Kanya wais. “I will do everything I can.” Even if Jaidee peers over her shoulder and laughs at her. “I may need more information than this. To track down those responsible.”

“You have enough to start. Find where this windup came from. Who took the bribes. This is what I must know.”

“And Akkarat and these farang who introduced the windup to the Protector?”

Pracha smiles slightly. “I will attend to it.”

“But—”

“Kanya, it is understandable that you wish to do more. We all care for the well-being of the palace and the Kingdom. But we must secure and protect the information we have about this windup creature.”

Kanya controls her response. “Yes. Of course. I will locate the information on the bribes.” She pauses delicately. “Will someone be required to demonstrate their regrets as well?”

Pracha makes a face. “A little harmless bribe income is one thing. It is not a rich year for the Ministry. But this?” He shakes his head.

“I remember when we were respected,” Kanya murmurs.

Pracha glances at her. “Do you? I thought that had ended by the time you came to us.” He sighs. “Don’t worry. This will not be a cover-up. Atonements will be made. I will ensure it personally. Do not doubt my commitment to the Kingdom or Her Royal Majesty the Queen. The guilty will be punished.”

Kanya studies the Protector’s body and the dingy room where he met his end. A windup. A whore and a windup. She tries to contain her sickness at the thought. A windup. That someone would try to… she shakes his head. An ugly affair. A destabilizing move. And now some young men will have to pay for it. Whoever took the bribes in Ploenchit, perhaps others.

On the street, Kanya flags down a cycle rickshaw. From the corner of her eye, she catches a glimpse of palace Panthers, formed in ranks at the door. A crowd is gathering, watching with interest. In a few more hours rumors and news will be all over the city.

“The Environment Ministry, as quickly as you can.”

She waves Akkarat’s bribe money at the rickshaw man, encouraging greater effort, but even as she does, she wonders on whose behalf she waves it.