I stared at her. “Why would you harm Kalla?” I asked. “She’s not even Rahvey’s anymore.”
“Because it would hurt you,” she said, as if it were obvious. “You see, Anglet, how much better it is to be truly independent? Too late now. Climb through there, or I will find the child and kill it.”
I did as I was told.
The passage was already half packed with rubble, and I had to squeeze my way through, stooping so as not to hit my head on the low ceiling. Vestris followed, moving more awkwardly than usual and breathing heavily, but the pistol stayed leveled at my back. I wondered if she could really shoot me down, or murder her sister’s infant out of nothing more than spite.
Family is family, said the vestiges of the Lani way in my head.
No, I decided, and not just for Vestris. Willinghouse was right. Some things were more important. Or you made your own family. Tanish was family. So, I decided, was Mnenga. It couldn’t just be about blood.
We walked and the corridor turned, swelled, then clenched again, turning twice more before I was sure. It should have been dark as the inside of a chimney, but it wasn’t, and with each step, the light ahead grew stronger. I rounded the final corner and had to turn away.
I was standing in a vaulted cavern, but the details were impossible to see because it blazed with a hard, white light that pulsed from every inch of the rock surface, a blinding, constant wall of energy so intense, you could almost hear it.
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.”