Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(99)

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 take 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.