The chamber was made entirely out of luxorite. Even in my despair, I quailed at the enormity of the thing.
“You knew, didn’t you?” said Vestris, who had stayed in the mouth of the passage so she could see me better.
“Yes,” I said, my voice low and flat, eyes shaded from the glare. “This is where the dowager’s necklace came from. That was why you had to get it from her. Couldn’t have people asking too many questions about its origins till you had secured the source for yourself. I assume that’s why Ansveld had to die too, yes? He wanted to know what had happened to the old Mahweni who showed him the stone. Went to his old friend Archie Mandel, which was unfortunate. Gritt met with him in his shop, tried to scare him off, but that didn’t work, so you killed him. I assume it was you. Climbing in through the upper story to cut a man’s throat isn’t really Gritt’s style, is it?”
Vestris said nothing. The light was unbearably intense, and my head was starting to hurt.
“You killed him,” I persisted, determined to say it all just to prove I knew, “but not before you risked a massive diversion. You wanted to suggest Ansveld was involved in some shady dealing with Morlak and the Grappoli, so you paid one of the boys to take a piece you got off the old Mahweni to lure him out. You stole the Beacon and planted it in Morlak’s tower. Then you killed Berrit, like he was just so much trash to be tossed away.”
I paused. It wasn’t just my head that was swimming. My stomach was starting to churn as well, but I saw the blankness in her eyes.
“The boy on the chimney,” I said. “Berrit Samar. You went to his funeral! But first you killed him and left him, as if no one would even notice. I noticed. I wear this in his memory.”
I showed her the pendant, and she considered it with scorn.
“So you are, what? An avenging angel?” she said, grinning with disdain. “I came to the funeral to see if anyone cared about him, anyone who might ask questions. I never thought it would be you. You didn’t even know him.”
I swallowed back my outrage, took a steadying breath, and found, for once, the kind of calm that comes from clarity. “Why does everyone keep saying that?” I remarked, realizing the importance of the question as I said it. “Why does whether I knew him or not matter? He was a child, a boy you murdered. I have to avenge him because I didn’t know him. Because he will never have what other boys his age look forward to. He was snuffed out, all his possibilities ended by your knife, and I am not supposed to care because I didn’t know him? Who are we if we care only for our own, Vestris? What are we? What separates us from the hyenas and the weancats is that we care for those we don’t know, those who have nothing and nobody they can rely on.”
Vestris actually smirked.
“I didn’t know him,” I exclaimed, “but I knew you, and you betrayed me and anything I ever believed in! Berrit called you his friend in high places, but that was a lie. To you, he was just a tool to be thrown away when you had used it. Not to me. No, I didn’t know him, but I will fight for him and people like him because I have to or the world makes no sense, and in that sense, yes, I am his avenger.”
“When did you become so talkative?” said Vestris icily. “You were always such a quiet, secretive child.”
“You killed Berrit,” I said again. “But that was where things started to go wrong, wasn’t it? Morlak never made it up to his tower room because I hurt him, so he never panicked and tried to get rid of the Beacon in ways bound to get him caught. And Berrit’s death, which was supposed to be dismissed as an accident, started to get attention. My attention. You used your friends’ connections to get Morlak to bury Ulwazi, the old Mahweni, in the rubble of the Red Fort, but you didn’t bank on the body being found. That was me too. And it was I who stopped the gunners you hired to wipe out both gangs.”
“You have a smug streak, Anglet, did you know? It’s not attractive.”
“I wasn’t trying to be. Ever,” I added. “Which is one of the differences between us.”
Her smile curdled further. “The Lani are rarely right about anything, Anglet, but I think there might be something to their ideas about third daughters. You really are cursed.”
If there had been any part of me that still thought of her as my sister, it died then, but I felt no pain at the loss. Indeed, it made things clearer, easier. Vestris mistook my silence for doubt or shame and pressed what she assumed to be her advantage.
“What you think you have achieved doesn’t add up to anything,” she said, barely suppressing what I could only describe as pleasure. “You will still die here, and no one will ever find you or this cave. Do you have any idea what it’s worth, sister mine? You can’t. The numbers are not big enough. What you are looking at is beyond wealth, beyond price, even beyond power. This cave is worth nations. Empires.”
And now, for the first time, I surprised her. She stared at me.
“Why are you laughing?” she demanded.
“Because you are all idiots,” I said. “Because you’ve been blinded by your own greed, which is brighter and hotter than the luxorite of which, sister mine, this cave is not built.”
“What nonsense is this?” she scoffed.
“Not nonsense,” I said. “It’s true. You must have noticed the color difference. New luxorite produces a white light tending to blue, but not this. This leans to green. It’s not the same mineral.”
“Even if that’s true,” she shot back, “it doesn’t matter. A minute color variation you can’t even see except under lenses? No one will care.”
“They will when they learn what it does,” I said, taking a step toward her and smiling. “You say this cave is nations, empires. It’s not. It’s hell. It’s disease and death. How are your fingers, by the way? You notice any burning where you have handled the stone? It’s subtle at first, but it’s only the first symptom. The dowager had been wearing hers for only a matter of hours, and she was already getting sick. I thought the old Mahweni herder had been tortured to death while Gritt tried to get the location of the cave out of him, but he just died, didn’t he?”
“He was ill when we found him,” said Vestris, a hint of panic in her voice.
“Yes, I’m sure he was,” I said. “From this place and from carrying pieces of it with him.”
“No.”
“Yes,” I pressed. “I see you are starting to lose your hair.”
One hand started to move to her head, but she stopped it.
“What you have bought, sister mine,” I said, feeling the doors close, the dam setting against the pressure beyond, “what you have killed for, is not just worthless. It’s a death trap, and you will never sell an ounce of it.”
She lunged for me then, swinging the gun at my head in a wild, desperate cut. I caught it, brought my knee up hard into her stomach, and as she crumpled, jabbed my elbow into the side of her face. She went down heavily and, once she hit the stone, did not move.
I took the gun, made sure I knew how to work it, and went back along the passage till I reached the half-blocked entrance into the circular antechamber. The men were working with their backs to me, so I climbed noiselessly through and stood tall, feet shoulder-width apart. Gritt straightened up slowly, turning, as if stirred by some military instinct that told him he was being sighted along a gun barrel. His eyes were hard with fury. Von Strahden stared with shock and horror, and as he put the pieces together, he took an unsteady step toward me. I swung the gun around on him, but even as I did so, I caught my sister’s name on his lips, saw the anguish in his face, and I hesitated.
In that half second, Gritt moved, throwing himself at me. I pulled the gun around, firing once, hitting nothing as the big man slammed into me, almost stunning myself with the deafening report and the muzzle flash in the low light of the cave. I fell hard, losing the gun, Gritt’s weight pinning me down.
“Lani bitch,” he grunted, swinging his fists at my face.
I kicked and rolled, but could not throw him off, and then when it seemed like he might just tak
e a rock and bash my skull in, he was scrambling to his feet and turning toward the sound of voices.
My head was ringing with the weight of his blows, but I managed to get onto one elbow and looked to where two black men had entered the cave. I had never seen them before, and neither, judging by their astonished and uncertain faces, had Von Strahden or Gritt. They were young men, bare chested and wearing only the belted grass skirts of the Unassimilated Tribes, and at shoulder height, poised to throw, they bore short spears with long, leaf-shaped metal tips.
Gritt’s rage was boundless. He did not hesitate, but snatched for the pistol in his belt and swung it round in a low, precise arc.
He pulled the trigger.
It clicked. Empty. It was my revolver. He lunged, snatching up Vestris’s fallen pistol, turning, and aiming at the black boys he so despised.
I was still on the ground, half behind him, but I kicked him hard in the ribs with my steeplejack’s boots, and his first shot went wide. There was a sudden silence. I did not understand why he had not fired again—not till he slumped beside me, one of the Mahweni spears buried in his chest.
I rolled away in horror and revulsion, remembering only at the last instant to take the gun and train it on Von Strahden, who was motionless, braced like a cornered animal.
It was a long moment before I dared consider the two boys, and I saw the resemblance immediately.
“You are Mnenga’s brothers,” I said.
One of them nodded. “Mnenga said you might need help,” he said. “That you were alone among hyenas.”
“Thank you,” I gasped. “I was.”
CHAPTER
37
ONE OF THE BROTHERS—the elder, whose name was Embiyeh—led Von Strahden out of the cave and down by a hidden path to a point closer to the freight line, and I followed with the pistol while the other brother, Wayell, went back to guard Vestris, remaining in the antechamber so that he would not be exposed to the mineral.
The mineral that is slowly killing my sister, moment by moment.
We had not reached the bottom before we saw the mismatched carriages barreling along the Bar-Selehm road in a column of dust.
Among them were Andrews and a squad of armed officers, Willinghouse in the family coach, and a pair of cabs stuffed with reporters led by a dictatorial Sureyna. The last to emerge was Mnenga, who embraced his brother and spoke to him softly in their own language. Me, he kept his distance from, giving me simply a nod and a bashful, cautious smile when he found me looking at him.
I walked to him, folded him in my arms and held him tight to my breast, breathing my thanks and apologies. I felt the strength of his grip around my shoulders, the shuddering of his breath against my chest, and I was not surprised to see the tears in his eyes when we finally parted, though he immediately took a step back and away. The space between us yawned like a chasm, and for a long moment we just looked at each other. Then Willinghouse was beside me, and Mnenga took three quick strides away.
“Are you all right?” asked Willinghouse, his face pale save for the sickle-shaped scar, which glowed like hot metal. “That looks like a nasty cut.”
I unfastened my hair, shook it loose, and considered him.
I wanted to ask him how much he had known or suspected about Von Strahden, how much he had not told me, even though that might have put my life in jeopardy; I wanted to yell at him, to blame him, but I could not.
After a moment, he broke eye contact, gazing out across the bush toward the city, and he nodded. “Good work, Miss Sutonga,” he said.
Again, I considered him, and he opened his mouth to say something else, but then looked at his shoes. I had never seen him so ill at ease, and for all his finely cut clothes and air of authority, he looked thoroughly out of place.
“I’m glad that…” he said, then hesitated. “Well. Yes. Very good work indeed.”
And then he was walking away, and through the space where he had been, I saw Mnenga watching. For a second our eyes locked and something sad and pained passed between us, and then he too turned to face the city and began to walk away.
“Excuse me, Anglet, if it isn’t too much trouble!”
The voice came from the Willinghouse coach. The window screen was down, and Dahria was leaning out, her eyes full of exasperated boredom.
“Dahria,” I said as I approached.
“First name terms now, is it?” she said.
“I’m not pretending to be your maid anymore,” I said.
“Quite,” said Dahria. “Well, I have one final duty for you, and I would be obliged if you would take care of it immediately because it is exceedingly tiresome.”
“What?” I asked.
She opened the door and leaned back so that I could see inside.
Tanish was sitting in the corner—pale, tired, and bandaged, but very much alive and smiling like the spring.
“No time for children myself,” said Dahria, “but I thought it would cheer you up, his not being dead and all.”
“Out of the way, you maddening, bloody woman,” I muttered, climbing in and throwing myself on the boy, who laughed, albeit with difficulty.
I gripped Tanish to me, like holding life itself, laughing and crying at the same time till he begged me to stop.
“And there’s this,” Dahria added, picking up a basket covered by a blanket.
It was Kalla. I lifted her to my heart and kissed her forehead, inhaling the life of her.
I stepped down from the carriage and found Mnenga with my eyes. He hadn’t left after all. He was loitering at a distance, but watching so that I did not need to call my thanks. He met my eyes and nodded once, smiling in spite of everything.
“Well, yes,” said Dahria, regarding the baby like an unwelcome parcel. “Quite. It’s very hot out here. Has anyone noticed? It would be much more pleasant at home. I merely mention it—”
“You have a baby,” said Willinghouse, nonplussed. “Whose is it? Why do you have a baby?”
“Oh yes,” said Dahria, dry as the desert air. “Master detective, you are.”
* * *
MNENGA’S BROTHER WAYELL CAME staggering down the path all by himself. After a good deal of heated chatter with his brothers, he told a story of how he had waited for a long time before venturing back into the false-luxorite cave, but found no sign of Vestris. It was so bright up there that I had not seen the other passage, which seemed to turn into the mountain before creeping out into the air.
Embiyeh fumed and said he had let the family down, and Andrews chuffed about the killer’s escape, but I was neither surprised nor—in the face of Tanish’s survival—as upset as I might have expected. Vestris was sick, sicker than she realized, but there was no point searching the mountain for her. She would climb and she would hide—she was good at both—and eventually the strange illness that came from the false luxorite would overcome her. Animals would get to her body, and we would not see her again.
I was almost sure of it.
* * *
TANISH COULD NOT BE dissuaded from rejoining the Seventh Street gang, at least for the short term, but he was escorted back to the weavers’ shed by two police officers and a pair of mounted dragoons in dress greens, to make sure Morlak’s boys got the message: Tanish was not to be touched. Tanish was to complete his recovery in peace. Tanish was to be happy in his work. If he wasn’t, life for the gang would get very difficult indeed.
Morlak was arrested for assault and receipt of stolen goods, Von Strahden for conspiracy and treason. He would hang for the latter. His story was a sidebar in the papers whose headlines blared simply, BEACON FOUND!
Archibald Mandel resigned under a cloud after the papers got hold of the fact that he owned sizable shares in Grappoli munitions factories. Given the war footing we had been on, said Sureyna’s report dryly, “this should have been considered a conflict of interest.” Meanwhile, diplomatic relations were reestablished with the Grappoli, border troops stood down, and the nightly demonstrations that had threate
ned to plunge Bar-Selehm into chaos evaporated without a trace. It would be absurd to say that race relations were now harmonious, but with the truth of the Beacon’s theft and the Mahweni land deals out in the open, the city took its step back from the brink of disaster at last.
The false-luxorite cave was secretly and reluctantly sealed by the government, but only after they proved that monkeys that were shut in there were dead within two days and that anyone who handled the mineral developed increasingly severe burning, headaches, nausea, and hair loss. Doctors had never seen the like of it before and didn’t have the beginnings of an idea how to treat it, so they took a couple of tiny samples, which they protected inside a box alternating lead foil with ceramic and an outer casing of steel that they sealed in a vault, then pumped concrete into the cave mouth. That the substance otherwise looked like luxorite was, astonishingly, kept under wraps, to keep people from trying to dig their way in. Those of us who knew different were instructed not to breathe a word of it or we would face charges of high treason against the state. I felt I had to tell Sureyna after all she had done, but I made her swear she wouldn’t print a word of it.
I appeared in the papers myself, though it was made to sound as if I had merely stumbled upon the cave and found the villains at work. I had acted “with honor and courage,” though the stories were not specific as to how, and soon the city was awash in rumors about a mysterious Lani woman who had saved the region from some terrible weapon. I told people it wasn’t true, but they preferred the heroic version, and tended to just nod and smile when I said otherwise, as if I were being discreet or modest.
* * *
TWO DAYS AFTER IT was all done, I returned to the Drowning in Willinghouse’s coach, Dahria dressed to the nines at my side, escorted by Mnenga and a liveried driver. I led them wordlessly through the tumbledown huts and faded awnings, through the ripe smells of moldering vegetables, charcoal grills, and foraging warthogs, to Rahvey’s house. We accumulated a watchful train, and word of our arrival went ahead of us like fire leaping from bush to bush till it seemed the whole community was out to see the return of their most curious prodigal.
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