In the Shadow of Lightning

18

Demir’s first destination the next morning was a visit to the hotel carpenter. The old man was in the large workshop and carriage house across the street, greasing axles when Demir arrived and dismissed all of the assistants. He found the carpenter’s workbench and laid out a pair of technical drawings he’d spent half the night on. The carpenter finished his work and joined him.

“I need you to modify a carriage,” Demir said. “Give me a cubby hidden underneath the seat like this, with a false top.”

“That looks big enough to hide a person in,” the carpenter observed.

“Sure does, doesn’t it? Can you do it?”

“Easy enough. Might have to shave a couple inches off to hide the cubby. Perhaps put decorative wings inside the wheels here and here.”

“Excellent. How long?”

“A week.”

“Make it five days.” Demir was about to elaborate when a porter appeared holding a calling card. He rolled his eyes, remembering why he’d always found life in the capital annoying. There was just so damned much to be done. “Who is it?” he demanded.

“Sir,” the porter said, handing him the card, “Master Supi Magna is here to see you.”

“Huh.” Demir took the calling card. He’d half expected this visit, but not so quick. He’d only just taken possession of the paperwork guaranteeing his share of the Ivory Forest Glassworks at midnight last night. He tapped the card against his cheek. “I’ll receive him in my office. No! Wait, in the restaurant, thank you.” It wouldn’t do to have Supi Magna walk into Demir’s office to find it filled with spymaster reports on the Magna.

Demir took his time crossing the street back to the hotel and went to the restaurant, where he arrived just as the porter showed Supi into a corner booth. Demir slid in across from him, shaking his hand with a warm smile. “Supi, what a surprise.”

The patriarch of the Magna guild-family was a tall, willowy, hawk-faced man whose tunic hung from him like from a scarecrow. He was in his late sixties though looked to be in his fifties, and rumors had circulated for years that his personal siliceer masters had created godglass that would keep him from aging. Demir suspected he simply took a lot of care in his appearance. Supi, along with the four other members of the Inner Assembly, was one of the most powerful men in Ossa. He was worth hundreds of millions, belonged to dozens of Fulgurist Societies, commanded an army of enforcers, and had a quarter of the Assembly in his pocket.

Supi did not return Demir’s smile. “Condolences on your mother’s death,” he said. “Adriana was a friend. But congratulations, of course, on taking her place at the head of the family.”

“Thank you. Breakfast?” Demir asked, raising his hand toward a waiter.

“I’m afraid I don’t have time for a meal. It’s come to my attention that Ulina, my foolish granddaughter, gambled away her share in the Ivory Forest Glassworks.”

Demir leaned back, raising his eyebrows. “Well, yes. We had a rather lovely afternoon together. The betting might have gotten a little heated. Do you often take such close interest in the family holdings?”

“When it comes to glassworks I do.” Supi produced a small satchel from within his jacket. Demir recognized it as the type banks would give to their rich clients when they wanted to carry a particularly large amount of money on their person. “I would prefer to keep one hundred percent of the ownership of the glassworks in Magna hands. You understand, I hope?”

“Of course.”

“I’m willing to pay one hundred and fifteen percent value for the immediate return of the shares my granddaughter lost.”

Demir gave Supi a quizzical look. One hundred and fifteen percent for part ownership in a glassworks with a government contract? Cheap bastard. “I’m afraid I will have to pass.”

“One hundred and thirty percent.”

“Pass,” Demir said again, meeting Supi’s eyes coolly. He could see some anger there now, but it was well-bottled.

“You’d pass up a thirty percent profit on something you’ve owned only since last night?”

Demir drew invisible pictures on the table with his finger. “I don’t need cash right now, Supi. I need investments. The mere fact that you are willing to buy at such a price means it’s more valuable than even I expected. I won’t let it go.”

Supi’s nostrils flared. “A hundred and fifty.”

“You’re notoriously cheap, Supi. You’re only reinforcing my decision.”

“You…” Supi growled, his eyes widening.

“Oh, come now. Don’t be so agitated. I really did have a lovely time with Ulina. Maybe in a year or two you’ll get it back in the family!”

“As if a Magna would stoop to marrying a Grappo,” Supi said quietly.

“As if,” Demir replied. He did not let the smile leave his face, but he was sure his eyes told a different story. The greater guild-families had tried to push him around when he was a young politician. They hadn’t succeeded then because he could outthink them. They wouldn’t succeed now because he had proper steel in his spine. “You sure you won’t stay for breakfast?”

Supi stood up suddenly and stared down that hawkish nose at Demir. “Your mother was my friend. I had hoped you’d be more reasonable.”

“My mother was everyone’s friend, Supi. That didn’t mean she was a fool.”

“Be careful, young Grappo. You might have once been a commanding politician, but Ossa has changed since you left. If you forget your place, you will be ground underfoot.”

Demir placed both hands flat on the table in front of him, presenting Supi with the dual sigils of glassdancer and Grappo. Inner Assembly or not, Supi needed to be reminded who Demir was. “Where is my place, Supi? Under your chair like a good pet? We may be a small guild-family, but be sure to remember my mother’s legacy: the Grappo sit at the table with the rest of you. You can be my friend or you can be my enemy, but I assure you that the latter will cost you more.”

“You’re impudent.”

“We’ve met before, Supi. A lot has changed, I know, but that has not.”

Supi made an angry sound in the back of his throat and whirled, striding out of the restaurant. Demir waved away the waiter and counted to sixty before he practically ran across the hotel foyer to Breenen’s office. “Get Montego and a carriage,” he said. “I have decided to visit my new holdings.”

Demir spent the long ride up to the Ivory Forest Glassworks studying spymaster reports that he’d managed to bully, steal, or bribe from the Dorlani, Vorcien, and Stavri. Some of it touched upon the Ivory Forest, but most was just generally useful. He was going to need every scrap he could get if he was already making enemies among the Inner Assembly. They were only just approaching the glassworks when he broke the long silence between him and Montego.

“Something else is going on here,” he said, gesturing out the window.

Montego looked up from the book he’d been reading. “Oh?”

“Supi was very angry that I wouldn’t sell him back Ulina’s shares in the glassworks. I’ve known him a long time and he doesn’t often take things personally. Either he thinks that I’ll use my sixteen percent share to destroy the place and lose them their government contract, or they are hiding something.”

“What could they be hiding?” Montego asked.

Demir shook his head. “The usual: laundering ill-gotten gains, prisoner abuse, selling their wards. It’s a glassworks so maybe they have their prisoners working on illegal godglass. We won’t know until we dig around, but my focus is going to be on finding Thessa. You remember her description?”

“Early twenties, a couple inches taller than you, dirty-blond hair.”

“Keep your eyes open. I’ll work the people.” Demir fixed a smile on his face as their carriage rumbled over the uneven streets of the dirty little glassworking town. Outside the left window he could see a twenty-foot wall meandering along the roadside, with a couple of guard towers occupied by armed Magna enforcers. “This really is a serious operation,” he commented to Montego as they turned into the gatehouse.

The carriage jerked to a sudden stop, nearly throwing him into Montego’s lap. He stuck his head out the window to see a dozen enforcers crowding the gate, all of them shouting angrily at Demir’s driver. Demir put a glove on his left hand to cover his glassdancer sigil but left his right hand naked. He was here to make friends, not threaten people. He opened the door, hopped down, and gave them all a grin. “Is something the matter?”

A man wearing a flatcap, differentiated from the other enforcers by a Magna silic sigil stitched on his jacket, pushed his way to the front and pointed at Demir, then at the carriage. “Tell your driver to back up. This is a restricted compound and we will shoot if he tries to push through.”

“You will shoot?” Demir asked, laying his right hand flat against his chest. The captain’s eyes fell to Demir’s silic sigil and his shoulders slumped.

“Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were a guild-family member.”

“Demir Grappo, at your service. Summon the overseer, let him know that I am now sixteen percent owner in the glassworks. I’d like to take an immediate tour.”

The captain’s mouth hung open for several moments. “Uh … that’s … not possible.”

“My ownership? Or a tour?”

“The tour. Either. I mean…”

Demir knew that look in the captain’s eyes – a low-level functionary just trying to do his job, confronted with something he hadn’t expected. Was he allowed to tell Demir to piss off? Or would he bring shame on the entire guild-family if he did? He was flustered. Exactly where Demir wanted him.

Finally the captain said, “I’ll summon the overseer.”

“I’ll come with you. Baby, bring the carriage!” Demir threw an arm around the captain’s shoulders, pulling him through the gate and pretending to ignore the desperate way he motioned to one of the other enforcers to run on ahead. Once inside, Demir ran his eyes across the general layout of the place: halfway between a prison and a labor camp, it appeared to have one main road going through the center of the compound and another wrapping around just inside the wall. It was probably twenty acres, with dozens of buildings, each of them labeled with its function in large black letters.

Demir cast everything to memory. He never knew what information he might have need of, from how readily the enforcers carried their weapons to the width of the roads.

“Incredible,” he said. “I’ve only seen a few glassworks bigger, and I had no idea we had a forced labor camp just for siliceers. Amazing world!” He strolled to the nearest workshop, yanked open the door, and shoved his head inside. The workshop was hot, well-lit by high windows, and showed a row of men and women in heavy siliceer aprons and boots toiling at spartan-looking workbenches. A few glanced in his direction. The rest ignored him.

“Stop it! You can’t…” The captain clearly struggled to get control of himself as he tugged at Demir’s sleeve. “You shouldn’t do that. You need permission. Please, sir, wait until you’ve met the overseer.”

Demir remained long enough to make sure that Thessa was not one of the siliceers in the workshop before allowing himself to be dragged away from the door. He turned to the captain, grinning ear to ear. “You have no idea how exciting this is! I’ve owned small glassworks before but this is really something else.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “How do you keep them in line? Is that a problem? What if one gets violent?”

“Sir, please save your questions for the overseer.”

“Come now, I am part owner in this place and you will get to see me quite often from now on.”

The captain stifled a groan. “Sir…”

“Don’t worry about the overseer,” Demir said in a low voice, turning away from the other enforcers and slipping a thick stack of banknotes into the captain’s hand. “I’m generous to the people under my employ.”

The captain worked his jaw, staring down at the banknotes for a moment before hurriedly stuffing them in his pocket. He cleared his throat. “Ahem, um, no we really don’t have any problems with the prisoners. Most violent siliceers are treated like common criminals and punished in their own provinces. These are mostly debtors, thieves, foreigners. That sort of thing.”

“Is being a foreigner a crime these days?” Demir asked.

“Well, no. Depends on where they came from. We’ve got a couple of Grent siliceers that were caught trying to cross into Ossa when the war started. Then there’s the Balkani who got caught up in the revolution. You know, it’s–”

He was interrupted by shouting from across the complex. Demir turned to find a short, wiry man in a clean siliceer’s apron rushing toward him, waving his arms. “Get them out of here! What do you think you’re doing! This is a government site, restricted to the highest levels! The Assembly will hear about this!”

Demir met the shout with a grin and thrust out a hand. “Demir Grappo. The large man trying to extricate himself from the carriage is Baby Montego.” The overseer’s eyes grew wide at Demir’s name, then wider at Montego’s. Demir continued, “I am now sixteen percent owner of the glassworks and am here for my inaugural tour.”

The overseer reached him finally, staring warily at Demir’s outstretched hand. “I wasn’t notified of any of this.”

“That’s because I only took ownership at midnight last night.”

“I will have to check with the proper authorities,” the overseer huffed. “I can’t have just anyone traipsing about the complex!”

Demir sought to remember his name from the files Lechauri had sent him. “Filur, was it? Excellent name, by the way. I had a great-great-uncle by the name of Filur. Strong name. Manly name.” Demir clenched a fist and thrust it in front of him in pantomime of the flexing cudgelists sometimes did in front of the audience. “Baby! The paperwork!”

Montego came to Demir’s side and handed him a bundle of papers, which Demir then handed to Filur. He gave the overseer a full minute to read over them.

“As you can see, it all checks out,” Demir said proudly.

“This certainly seems official,” Filur said slowly, looking slightly ill.

“Filur, my friend, I have a really glassdamned busy life. I drove all the way up here for a tour. I’m a sixth of your owners and I have it on good authority that Ulina was one of the few owners who actually liked you. You want to make me happy, Filur.” It was all a fiction, of course, but in Demir’s experience most marginalized guild-family members were in constant terror of someone younger, more charming, better looking, or simply more convenient taking their spot.

Filur swallowed hard. “I see.”

“Here’s a thousand ozzo,” Demir said, thrusting the money into the pocket of Filur’s apron. “If for some reason my paperwork doesn’t check out, then you’ll have shown around a couple of famous tourists. If the paperwork does check out, you’ll have pleased one of your new overlords. Do you have wine?”

“I … uh, up in my office.”

“No need, I brought plenty. Baby, a bottle of wine for the overseer and the captain and then … a dozen bottles to the enforcers. Did we bring that wheel of stiarti? I’ve never met an enforcer who didn’t love cheese. Take it to their barracks.” He looked over the overseer’s shoulders, cementing his memories of this place. “Oh, and a few bottles of wine for the hired help. Laborers get thirsty too! Now then, my tour!”

Demir began walking, forcing the overseer to choose between restoring order as his enforcers mobbed Montego, or following him. The overseer followed him.

“How many furnaces?” he asked as Filur caught up.

“Uh,” Filur responded, clearly still quite out of sorts, “eleven. Well, twelve.”

“Twelve? Wonderful, I’d like to see them all.”

Filur blanched. “I can … show you nine of them, I suppose. They all look the same, I assure you.”

“What about the other three? I want to see what I’ve bought, Filur. I want to make sure this place isn’t going to burn down, fall down, or fall victim to the accidents and malfeasance that other glassworks have suffered recently.”

At the mention of malfeasance, Filur perked up. “Oh, that won’t happen here. We have thirty enforcers on the premises at all times! No one can get through that gate without my say-so. As for the other three furnaces, they are restricted. I really will have to get permission to show you those.”

Demir was a little disappointed. Not enough creativity to come up with a good excuse. Restricted, even within a restricted compound? Those furnaces were almost certainly being used to produce illegal godglass. But which ones? Rageglass? Fearglass? Ailingglass? He strolled to the next furnace room and opened the door to stick his head inside. It looked exactly like the last workshop, all the way down to the dejected, tired expressions on the faces of the siliceer prisoners. No one matched Thessa’s description.

“Are they overworked?” he asked, whirling on Filur, who seemed to have finally resigned himself to showing Demir around.

The overseer gave him a wan smile. “Well, they would certainly say so. It’s part of how we maintain order: we give them big enough quotas that they’re always on the edge of dropping from exhaustion.”

“Can’t get good-quality godglass out of siliceers like that.” Demir frowned.

“It’s a trade-off for sure, but one we’re very happy with. We’ve refined the process over decades, you see.”

“Hmm.” Demir continued walking down the main road through the center of the compound. He opened doors, looked in closets, showed himself around two dormitories and a mess hall, all while Filur tagged at his heels like an unwilling hound. Demir was certain to keep up a barrage of questions, punctuated by nonsense anecdotes. As intended, the overseer seemed completely overwhelmed by it all, rocking back frequently on his heels and managing to successfully deflect only a handful of questions.

Demir simply reworded them and asked them a few minutes later.

It was in the fifth workshop that he spotted someone who matched Thessa’s description. It was a young woman, dirty-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, leaning over her workbench with one ear just inches from a piece of godglass. Demir looked up the line until he found another siliceer – probably in her mid-twenties, with dark skin and a shaved head. She was quite attractive.

Demir fixed a leer on her and bent in toward Filur. “Tell me,” he said quietly, “do you ever … you know?”

“Excuse me?”

“The young women.”

“Oh. Oh! Of course not. No, the government oversight of this compound is much too strict to afford a scandal like that.”

“Just thought I’d ask,” Demir said, feigning disappointment. He kept his eyes on the Marnish siliceer, then looked toward Thessa. It was far better to be thought a degenerate than to give up his real purpose here. He strolled around the circular furnace, examining each workstation. When he reached the blond young woman he suspected was Thessa, he turned toward her. “What’s your name, girl?”

“Ah, ah!” Filur interjected. “I really don’t think you should talk to the prisoners, sir.”

Demir folded his hands across his stomach, careful that his silic sigil was pointed toward her. “Come now, I have a new ownership stake in this place. I’m not going to completely ignore the gears of industry! Girl, tell me your name.” He adopted the tone he’d heard so often throughout the Empire: that of a man who believes his underlings are little better than animals.

The woman barely seemed able to keep a look of disgust off her face. “Teala, sir.”

Demir’s heart soared. Found her – the exact woman Duala had told him was being held, and she definitely matched the description. Glassdamn. Now he just needed to get her out of here. That would probably take a lot longer. “Teala, what are you working on?”

“Forgeglass earrings, sir.”

Demir drummed his thumbs against his stomach, trying to draw her attention to his hands. It worked. She looked up at his face sharply, then back at his silic sigil. Once he was certain she’d gotten the message, he reached into his pocket and palmed a small piece of razorglass, then dropped it into the tray that held her finished products. He picked one up, put it to his ear, then did another. When he finished, he ran his fingers along the earrings so they covered the razorglass.

“Adequate work,” he said with a yawn. “Filur, I do hope some of the other prisoners have more talent.”

Thessa didn’t hide her glare. When he was certain no one else could see, Demir winked, then looked pointedly at the tray. She stared at him suspiciously until he whirled away from her, leading Filur back to the street.

“Of course,” Filur said, “she’s just a senior apprentice from Grent. No one special.”

“I certainly hope not!”

Demir finished his tour, making sure not to alter his behavior in any way. He talked to a few more of the prisoners, checked the godglass, split a bottle of wine with the overseer, and then retired to his carriage, with Filur and the captain standing nearby to see him off. “It’s a good operation,” he told Filur through the window. The overseer nodded eagerly. Demir had him on the hook. “See that you keep up this good work, and I’ll make sure you’re well-rewarded. And of course, feel free to check back with Ossa about my credentials so there is no confusion on my next visit. If you need anything from me, I’ll be at the Hyacinth Hotel. Baby, let us be off!”

They were moments out of the compound when Demir turned to Montego. “Found her,” he said. “She seems unhurt. As long as she can remain that way for a couple of weeks, we’ll just have to make frequent visits and watch for our chance to slip her out. I’ve already got the hotel carpenter refitting one of our carriages with a hidden compartment.”

“Did you make contact?” Montego asked.

“Not in so many words, but I think she knows who I am. I left her a piece of razorglass just in case she needs to defend herself. I don’t think the guards are allowed to get handsy, but she’ll not be unarmed on my watch.”

“What excuse will we use to return?”

Demir grimaced. “Anything we can think of. If I have to pretend to be friends with that rat of an overseer, I’ll do it. Let’s come back first thing in the morning. The quicker the guards, laborers, and overseer get used to my presence, the less suspicious I’ll seem. I might even get the chance to talk to Thessa alone.”