“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 threatened 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.