“I can’t think of a person I would be less inclined to listen to.” The words had teeth.
He winced. “The terranium hasn’t even been found yet, and already people will be hurt in its pursuit. More will follow.Afterit’s uncovered, every man and his dog will come scrapping for a piece. The entire continent will devour itself.”
Good, I thought.
“There’s another option,” Theodore said, his gaze skirting to Patrick and away. “A stalemate.”
“There ain’t a stalemate to be found,” Patrick said immediately. “Either we find the terranium before the House does, or we lose the fight.”
“They have no Alchemist, Colson,” Theo said. “Without one, the terranium is useless to them.”
“And so you’ll have them continue razin’ brink towns while they hunt me down,” Patrick said. “Or perhaps you imagine I’d give myself over to ’em, eh?”
“If it’s my loyalty you’re questioning, I’ll remind you thatI’mthe reason you’re standing here and not in a locked room,” Theo reminded him. “And no. I don’t propose we do nothing.”
“Then what, Theo?” I asked. “And to be clear, Idoquestion your loyalty.”
He seemed to find difficulty in keeping himself impassive. “Burn the book,” he said simply.
There was silence for a moment, the ringing kind.
I felt that void inside me shudder.
John seemed amused. “Burn it?” he said. “Son, that there is a map to more magic than we’ve ever known.”
“And it’ll do no good in the hands of my father. I know that now,” Theodore said, straightening his shoulders. “But your hands are no cleaner.”
Patrick’s head rolled back on his shoulders, and he laughed tiredly, the blue of his eyes icing over. “Ah, Teddy. You’ve no need to tell a miner of his dirty hands.” His blue eyes swept to Theodore’s neatly trimmed fingernails. “A less honorable man I’ve never seen.”
“Far more people will die if you do this,” Theo pressed on, imploring me, not Patrick. He turned his back to block the Colsons from my view, stepping closer. “Let the idium die out. Letno onehave it, Nina. Force a stalemate. My father will have no choice but to negotiate with the Union and find a truce.”
But I knew otherwise. I knew men like his father were born ravenous. The currency shifted: if not idium, then coal, timber, until another path to power was found.
Once, I’d have sided with Theo. I’d thought Belavere a slave to idium, and that we were each better off without it running through our blood.
Now, I didn’t care for what was right. I cared for that hole carved out in my middle.
“A truce?” I looked at Theo squarely, remembered all those times his father had invited me to dinner, his disgust for me swimming beneath the surface. “I don’t want a truce with your father. I want them all in the ground.”
I watched Theo war with it; his loyalty to me, to his father, to the Artisans.
“I don’t believe that,” he said, searching my face, I thought, for remnants he recognized. “I don’t believe you want to see people suffer.”
A rumble grew then, beneath our feet, beneath the foundations of the hotel, deeper still: a buried titan deep in the earth, clawing for the surface. The pendant light overhead shook. Dust fell. Tamir shrieked and stumbled against a credenza.
“God almighty,” John intoned, gripping hold of a chair.
The quaking ceased. Theo and I held each other’s gazes. “Do you doubt I could do it?”
He hadn’t moved. Hadn’t blinked. The only change came from two splotches of deep red, high on his cheekbones. “You don’t scare me, Nina.” But his jaw was tight. “I know who you are.”
Fury reared up. “Not anymore.”
But still, Theo stood there, breaths carefully measured.
“Go,” I told him. “Crawl home to your father. Pray he doesn’t hang you next.”
My voice cracked on this last, and Theo’s guard crumpled in response, his dark eyes hazing. He shook his head. “I want to stay. I’ve picked a side.”
