Swallowing the rest of her protests, she gave a short nod. “Okay.”
Kane clapped his hands as he leapt to his feet. “Excellent. Glad we settled that so quickly. Now, if you’ll both come with me, we’ve got another problem to contend with.”
Jules snorted. “I don’t have to go anywhere with you.”
“True, but I think you’ll want to. You see, Zaria has quite a bit of work to do, and she may require some assistance.”
Zaria frowned at Kane, her heart beating unevenly in the cage of her chest. A bad feeling was beginning to spread through her bones. “I didn’t think you needed anything alchemological just yet.”
“I don’t. Not personally. But unfortunately for the both of us, my services as kingpin have been invoked.” He lifted a brow. “I received a complaint last night about an unfinished commission. A complaint aboutyou.”
Zaria bit back her groan. With everything else going on, she’d given little thought to the commissions that were still outstanding, especially since she’d planned to be long gone from London by now. “What do you want me to do about it? I don’t know if you heard, but my workshopburned down.”
“Tell the client to bugger off,” Jules suggested.
Kane was visibly unamused. “Youareaware of what a dark market kingpin does, I take it? When a client has a problem, it becomes my problem. I don’t yet have the luxury of a good reputation, and if I can’t do my job, there are people who will happily take it.”
His words made Zaria stiffen. Did he know about Vaughan’s plan, at least in some capacity?
“Besides,” Kane continued, “you can use the workshop behind Moore & Sons. I’ll even let you use the necklace.”
Zaria narrowed her eyes, more confused than ever. She couldn’t tell whether Kane was pretending to be obtuse. “So it’s not a fake?”
“What?”
“The primateria source. I tried to use it so many times, without success. I assumed you’d slipped me a fake.”
Some of the color had begun to leave Kane’s face. “Why would I do that?”
“How should I know?” Zaria demanded. “Something to distract me so that I’d leave you alone? Maybe you were even trying to convince me that youcared? I can feel the magic in the necklace, but I’m not sure it’s the magic of a primateria source. It could well be the magic of a carefully constructed forgery.”
Kane’s expression tightened further. His gaze flicked to Jules, then back to Zaria. “If itisa fake, I didn’t know it.”
“Come off it, Kane.”
“It’s the truth,” he insisted harshly, yanking the necklace from the inside pocket of his coat and letting it dangle between them as if it were some kind of proof. “I didn’t need the damned thing once Ward was gone. Didn’t even want it. Hell, I’m not sure I understand all the reasonshewanted it. But you—” he broke off, the column of his throat shifting. “I knew you needed it. I saw what happened when you tried to create primateria on your own.”
Jules gave a strained laugh from behind Zaria’s shoulder. “Do you really expect us to believe you wanted to help Zaria? After she had just betrayed you?”
“With Ward gone, I was his natural successor. I knew it would fallto me to ensure Zaria fulfilled her damn commissions, and I didn’t particularly want to see her again.” Kane looked at Jules, not Zaria, as he spoke. “I knew if she had the primateria source, at least that part of the dark market would run smoothly, which could only help me while I found my footing as kingpin. Yes, I had initially intended to replace the necklace with a fake. Butthis”—he gave the pendant another shake—“is the real thing. At least, it should be.”
Zaria exchanged a glance with Jules. Kane still wasn’t looking at her, and she got the sense that he wasn’t being entirely honest. She just wasn’t sure which part was the lie.
“So this necklace,” she said, “is the exact one I took from the Waterhouse exhibit?”
Finally—finally—Kane’s eyes met hers, his face schooled to indifference. “Yes. It’s not my fault if you can’t figure out how to use it.”
“There shouldn’t be a learning curve. Logically, exposing it to flame in place of blood and soulsteel should be enough to generate primateria, whether the source is disguised or not.” Zaria had tried everything she could think of, and she wasn’t an inexperienced alchemologist.
“Ward wouldn’t have asked me to steal a forgery.”
“Maybe he didn’t know it was one,” Jules suggested.
“He would have done his research.”
“He wasn’t exactly infallible.”
“The real question,” Zaria said, “is what happened to the real source. Assuming Waterhouse ever truly had it at all.”
