“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.