In the Shadow of Lightning

19

Thessa stared after the man as he left the workshop, his arm thrown around Craftsman Magna’s shoulders like they had been friends for years. A part of her was offended and deeply confused. “Girl”? “Adequate”? Thessa was a glassdamned woman and the work in her tray was stellar even with the corners she was cutting to get it done so fast.

But that wink and the silic sigil. Her heart hammered away at the inside of her chest with optimistic excitement. That was the Grappo silic sigil, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a common sigil, what with them being a small guild-family, but she’d seen it on several occasions. That man must have been a Grappo. A relative of Adriana’s? A brother? A cousin? The soldiers who’d captured her at the border had mentioned Adriana’s “failure” of a son. If he’d managed to track Thessa down in just a couple of days, he didn’t seem so much like a failure to her.

“Thessa, are you okay?” Axio whispered.

Thessa pulled her gaze away from the closed door to the furnace room. A couple of the other prisoners glanced in her direction but no one said anything. Behind her, Axio leaned over her workbench.

“He’s a piece of shit,” Axio said. “Don’t let it get to you.”

“I’m fine, thanks,” she replied, turning back to her work. She put her bit iron back in the furnace to reheat the glass for a few moments, then brought it to the metal plate on her workbench and began work on a new piece. She moved slowly, trying to think.

There were other possibilities, of course. Perhaps he was just an asshole? Maybe she misremembered the silic sigil and that man was simply one of the overseer’s friends and was flirting with her. If that was the case she would have to be careful around him. She did not know for certain and it drove her mad as she worked through the rest of the morning.

Of all the possibilities that haunted her, one stood out. If that was really a Grappo, and he was here to get her out, she had to find the phoenix channel schematics immediately. There was no telling when a rescue might take place. But could she manage to steal them back? The laborer had given her good information about the overseer’s office, but Thessa was no sleight-of-hand artist; a thief or a trickster. Did she really dare to sneak in there alone? And what if they were locked up?

The midday meal finally arrived, and the other prisoners filed out while Thessa remained behind to fill both her own and Axio’s trays. She touched Axio on the shoulder as he left.

“I’ll join you in a minute,” she told him, “and do me a favor: ask some of the hired help who that man was. Surely someone knows.”

Axio gave her a determined nod and left her alone in the furnace. She reveled in the moment of silence and solitude, bending to work the knot out of the small of her back and giving herself a minute of sitting on the floor with her boots off to rub her feet. She could hear one of the hired laborers clunking around at the back of the furnace, tossing more firewood into the flames.

Still on the floor, Thessa reached up and pulled down her tray, setting it in her lap to count the earrings. Something about the weight was slightly off. She frowned, searching around in the earrings until she found what appeared to be a piece of paper. No, something wrapped in paper. It was about six inches long, an inch wide, quite thin. She opened the paper, letting the object fall into her hand.

Her breath caught in her throat. It was a piece of razorglass. The blade was only about two inches of it, secured in a thin handle, the type of tool used by high-level craftsmen for delicate cutting work. Good razorglass was incredibly difficult to make and could slice through just about anything. She looked at the paper to find a message written inside.

Glassdamn, she was right. He was a Grappo, and he was here to help. The leering and arrogance had been an act – or at least she hoped it was – for the benefit of the overseer.

Thessa’s throat was dry as she looked over her shoulder, clutching both paper and razorglass to her chest. When she was triply sure she was alone, she threw the paper into the furnace. Using the razorglass, she cut a ribbon of heavy canvas off a spare siliceer’s apron hanging by the door, wrapped the razorglass in it, and stuffed it in her pocket.

She returned to her work and had only just managed to calm herself by the time Axio and the other prisoners came back from lunch. She snatched a hard biscuit from Axio, choking it down as he whispered, “His name is Demir Grappo. Everyone’s talking about him. I guess he won a share of the glassworks ownership from one of the Magna while gambling, and insisted on an inspection. The overseer is pretty shook up over the whole thing and so are all the guards and hired help. Glassworks ownership hasn’t left the Magna family for years.”

A shiver of anticipation went down Thessa’s back. Relief flooded through her, and the excited tightness in her chest felt less uncertain. She touched her pocket to be sure the razorglass was still there. For emergencies only.

She knew exactly what emergency she could use it for.

Idrian wasn’t often required to attend intelligence briefings, but when an order came down that breachers had been summoned along with the regular officers it never boded well. It was just past noon and the world was surprisingly still for midday. He’d heard nothing but distant shots for over an hour – it was almost like both sides of the war had agreed upon a little break while they independently figured out what the piss they were up to.

For all he knew, that was exactly what had happened.

He trudged back far behind the lines with Tadeas and Mika, wearing his officer’s uniform, his boots and godglass eye both freshly polished. Valient was in charge of the Ironhorns in their absence. Idrian felt torn about the brief respite – on the one hand, he’d get to spend a few hours without getting shot at. On the other, he needed the Ironhorns to continue their push toward the palace. They could take it today, and when they did he’d come away with that cinderite for Demir. He could feel it.

They arrived at a repurposed Grent dance hall that had remained undamaged during the fighting, shuffling inside with the rest of the weary officers, exchanging nods and a few words of greeting. Idrian spotted at least a dozen other breachers, their monikers stitched into their uniforms like his own – the Steel Horse, the Falcon, the Trebuchet, the Black Pit, the Glass Pisser. There would be more breachers in their midst, ones that hadn’t earned a nickname, but without their uniforms they were impossible to tell from the other officers. There were several dozen glassdancers too, their uniforms covered in brightly colored embroidery to show off their status and flout military regulation. While breachers mingled, glassdancers were most often alone.

Tadeas elbowed his way to a position along the side of the community hall, near an exit, and Idrian was happy to follow. He recognized some of the senior staff already on the stage at one end of the hall, and this position gave him a view of both the order givers and the order receivers. It was a good place to be to read the room.

“I hate these meetings,” Mika whispered to him, “makes me feel so exposed. A well-placed barrel of powder beneath the floorboards and an enterprising engineer could wipe out the cream of the Ossan officer corps for three brigades.”

“Four armed breachers,” Idrian answered.

“Eh?”

“That’s what it would take to kill everyone in this room and escape before a response could be mustered.”

“Even with the glassdancers?”

Idrian considered his assessment. “They’d still have a good chance at succeeding in full armor.”

A couple of nearby officers glanced worriedly toward Idrian and Mika. Idrian grinned back at them, noting the way their mouths opened – probably a rebuke – before their eyes fell to the ram stitched on the breast of his jacket. Once they saw that, they kept their thoughts to themselves.

Mika noticed it too, chuckling, and whispered, “I have two grenades in my pocket.”

“I thought you were walking funny,” Idrian said, still looking across the room for people he recognized. He noted a few absences. Otherwise occupied, or dead? He’d have to check up on friends later. “Didn’t Tadeas tell you to leave the explosives behind?”

“What? Regular officers can wear a sword or a pistol, but I can’t have a grenade handy? Pissing unfair and I won’t stand for it.”

“You two are making our compatriots nervous,” Tadeas said. He seemed to be doing the same thing as Idrian; scanning the room, occasionally exchanging a nod. “Glad to know you’re carrying, Mika. If something happens I’ll have Idrian light you on fire and throw you at the enemy.”

Mika narrowed her eyes at Idrian, as if gauging whether he could throw her far enough to be effective.

“Hey,” he responded to that glare, “I didn’t say it.”

“Shut your yappers,” Tadeas said, “General Stavri has arrived.”

A murmur rose through the hall as a number of senior officers took the stage. General Stavri was a robust man in his mid-fifties, with broad shoulders, a potbelly, and strong arms. He had short brown hair and a complexion that favored his father. He was the third in line for leadership of the Stavri guild-family and had made his bones all around the world in the Ossan Foreign Legion.

He had, in Idrian’s experience, no personality whatsoever. The military was his life, but he was only an officer of middling competence, and his command of the Grent campaign had left Idrian feeling neither confidence nor terror. Wariness, perhaps. Grent would need a tougher nut to crack it than Stavri. How long would the street fighting continue before he was replaced? General Stavri whispered with his aides for almost a full minute before walking to the front of the stage and clearing his throat. He was all business, his face expressionless, a sheaf of reports carried under one arm.

“Officers of the Third, Seventh, and Twelfth,” he said with the voice of a natural drill sergeant, “there has been a change in the winds of war today. Some of you may know that Kerite’s Drakes, the mercenary company, overwinters in the Glass Isles. Our government has been in negotiations for their services ever since Adriana Grappo’s murder.”

A pleased murmur swept through the assembled officers, but Idrian found himself frowning. General Stavri certainly didn’t sound happy about it. At the mention of Adriana, a few nearby officers glanced at Tadeas. Tadeas, for his part, kept his expression neutral.

Stavri continued, chewing on his next words in an obvious effort to keep his temper in check. “I’ve been informed that negotiations broke down, and the Grent government hired Kerite’s Drakes. They are landing just south of Harbortown as we speak, and plan to march on Ossa immediately.”

All around Idrian the pleased murmurs turned into angry muttering. “Oh, glassdamn,” a captain said. “We have to fight Kerite now too?”

“Pissing mercenaries!” someone shouted.

“Ach!” Another made a disgusted sound. “We’ll clear them from the field!”

Idrian exchanged a glance with Tadeas and could see his own worry reflected in Tadeas’s eyes. Devia Kerite, the Purnian Dragon, was widely considered the greatest battlefield commander in the world. Her career had spanned thirty-five years, mostly fighting in Marn and Purnia. She’d fought both for and against Ossa in proxy wars. To Idrian’s knowledge, she’d never lost a battle.

He quietly asked Tadeas, “How many soldiers do the Drakes have?”

“Last I heard?” Tadeas chewed on his bottom lip. “Around ten thousand. She’s got breachers, glassdancers, and artillery.”

“Quiet! Quiet!” Stavri shouted, raising his hands until he could command silence. “Pissing mercenaries is right, and we will sweep them from the field. But Kerite should be taken seriously. To that end the Assembly has summoned every available brigade from the provinces; ten whole divisions are coming to our aid.”

“Yeah, but when will they be here?” someone shouted from the back.

Stavri glared toward the voice, clearly trying to figure out who had spoken out of turn. Finally he said, “Weeks until the first of them arrive. Our orders have changed!” he shouted over a rising wave of discontent. “We are pulling everything out of Grent and focusing on the north bank of the delta. Our orders are to stall Kerite’s forces until our troops arrive from the provinces.”

A stunned silence quelled the group in a way that Stavri’s glares couldn’t. Idrian could hear his own heartbeat. His mouth was suddenly dry, his thoughts jumbled.

“Holy piss,” Mika whispered. She stood on her tiptoes and shouted, “All that glassdamned street fighting and we’re pulling out?”

Idrian choked on his own words, but managed to get out, “We’re half a mile from the ducal palace! We’ve conquered half the city!” A well of emotions seemed to spout from within him, lending an angry edge to his voice. It wasn’t just the losses they’d already suffered; the fighting for a city they didn’t care to conquer, on the orders of an Assembly that wasn’t here to fight the war themselves. If they pulled out today, he wouldn’t get a crack at the palace. He wouldn’t retrieve that cinderite for Demir.

He and Mika weren’t the only ones shouting. Curses flew across the hall, people shouting questions and demands, lamenting the soldiers they’d lost in the last few days for, apparently, nothing. Others questioned this new arrival, demanding to know how the Assembly could be so stupid as to let the Grent outbid them for such a large and famous mercenary company.

Beside Idrian, Tadeas was notably silent. He glanced sidelong at Idrian and shook his head.

“What?” Idrian demanded. He felt hot under the collar now, his left eye twitching. From somewhere in the back of the hall he heard a child’s laughter.

It took a full five minutes before order was restored again, and General Stavri stood red-faced in front of them all. When he could finally be heard, he said, “We must protect Ossa at all costs! We will oppose Kerite in the Copper Hills. The Grent forces in the city will surely dog our withdrawal, so extraction orders will be given carefully to each battalion and they are to be followed to the letter. Wait outside until you get your orders. Dismissed!”

The hall vomited out its contents – a hundred furious officers, swearing quietly, some of them still shouting at Stavri long after the general had left through a back door.

Idrian followed Tadeas and Mika through the crowd and across the street, to a quiet spot in a hillside park where Tadeas paused to produce his pipe and tobacco pouch. He packed the pipe in silence, his calm almost as infuriating as General Stavri’s announcement. Idrian looked around for something to punch. When he didn’t find it, he sat down on the hillside and gripped the grass with both hands like he might fall off the world at any moment.

Mika plopped beside him, and Tadeas came around in front of them both as he puffed his pipe to life. “They’re doing the right thing,” he said.

Idrian scowled at his friend. “Don’t,” he said, raising a finger in warning. He was in no mood for this.

“They are,” Tadeas insisted, plowing on. “I’m not happy about the soldiers and engineers we’ve lost over the last few days. Feels damned meaningless to give up all the territory we gained through sweat and blood, but if Kerite and the Drakes are attacking, we need to pull everything back and face her head-on. If we don’t, she’ll just go around us and burn Ossa to the ground. We are the Foreign Legion, after all.”

“Let her attack,” Mika snorted. “She’ll bounce off our defensive lines.”

“You mean the ring of star forts around Ossa?” Tadeas shook his head. “I used to play cards with one of their commanders. They haven’t been updated in a hundred years. They are undermanned, underarmed, and dilapidated.”

It made sense. Of course it made sense. Idrian wasn’t even thinking about giving up the gains they’d made in the city anymore. He was furiously casting about for some other way to get a piece of cinderite for Demir. He’d made a promise to do anything Demir needed in exchange for use of the phoenix channel, and if Idrian didn’t fulfill it, he would slowly, painfully, descend into madness.

If, of course, he lived through the war.

As Idrian fumed, he slowly became aware that both Tadeas and Mika were staring at him. He scowled back. “What is it?”

“Something is going on with you,” Mika answered, and Tadeas nodded in agreement.

“Don’t know what you mean,” Idrian responded. Even to his own ears it sounded half-hearted. His fury seemed to whistle out of him like air from an inflated pig’s bladder, replaced with cold uncertainty. He had no idea what to do next, and that was more terrifying than charging an artillery battery alone.

“She means,” Tadeas said between puffs on his pipe, “you’ve been like a man possessed since we shifted over to the palace assault yesterday morning. The engineers could barely keep up. I haven’t seen you like that since our second tour in Marn.”

Idrian regarded them both warily. What excuse could he give? Both of them had been with him for twenty years. They knew his tics. They knew why his eye was so important to him.

“You gonna explain what’s going on?” Tadeas asked. “Or why you’ve been acting like this ever since you got that note from my nephew?”

Idrian chewed on the inside of his cheek. He couldn’t betray Demir’s confidence, even if he wanted to. That secret – the cindersand running out – was too dire to let roll from his tongue. He was given a brief respite by the arrival of one of General Stavri’s messengers.

“Major Grappo?” the messenger asked, offering a note to Tadeas.

Tadeas took the note and broke the general’s seal, reading the message within. He said, “We’re pulling out first thing in the morning. The Green Jackets will cover our withdrawal, and we’re to report to the Copper Hills to help prepare for the confrontation with Kerite.”

Idrian pulled back into his own thoughts, forcing himself to calm down and think. Eighteen hours until their withdrawal. Could he work with that? Perhaps, but it would be risky. He would need help. Could he say anything without breaking his promise to Demir? Did he have a choice?

“Demir gave me a secret mission,” he said quietly.

If he’d lost his companions’ attention, he had it back immediately. Mika actually laughed, while Tadeas groaned. “Glassdamn,” Tadeas said, “of course he did. Were you going to tell me?”

“Not if I could avoid it.”

“So why now?”

Mika laughed again. “It’s the palace, isn’t it? You barked about capturing it all day yesterday and all this morning.”

“Yeah,” Tadeas said slowly, “you did. This isn’t just about cutting off the Grent from their seat of power and forcing them to surrender. What does Demir want with the glassdamn Grent ducal palace?”

Idrian glared back at the two, feeling like he was being ganged up upon. It wasn’t especially pleasant, but he used the moment of defensiveness to gather his wits. “I’ve promised to steal a piece of cinderite from the duke’s personal collection,” he told them.

There was a long silence, broken by Mika. “You gonna give us any more details than that?”

“I’ve already betrayed too much of Demir’s trust. No more.”

Tadeas waved Mika off, his forehead creased in a considering frown. Idrian could see him putting pieces together in his head. He might not be Demir, but he was still a Grappo. Too clever for his own good but, thankfully, smart enough not to guess out loud.

“Fine,” Tadeas finally said, “so why tell us now?”

“Because tonight is my last chance to retrieve it. You’re going to notice my absence anyway, so I might as well get some help.”

“Your absence?” Mika echoed. Realization dawned on her face. “Oh shit, you’re going in there alone?”

Idrian nodded. It was the only option available to him. The fact that their orders were to withdraw tomorrow instead of today was a damned gift. If he didn’t take advantage of that, he would never forgive himself.

“That,” Tadeas said with a chuckle, “is why you told Valient to find you a sheepskin.”

“Correct.”

Tadeas paced back and forth, chewing violently on the stem of his pipe. Idrian waited for the rebuke; the chastisement; perhaps even a direct order to stand down. He wondered if he’d be able to disobey. In their long friendship, they’d truly butted heads only a few times and Tadeas had won all those contests through sheer willpower.

Tadeas suddenly stopped his pacing and spun to face Idrian. “What do you want from us?”

The plan in Idrian’s head was less than half formed, considered only these last two minutes since the arrival of their orders. He raised his hand for Tadeas to give him a moment to think, then said, “I’ll have to go in without my armor. Too noisy. So I’ll need a shitload of forgeglass. A sack of grenades. Architectural drawings of the ducal palace, and spy reports about the enemy lines.”

“Mika?” Tadeas asked.

“I can do the grenades easy, and I think Valient has some medium-resonance forgeglass squirreled away.”

“I think I can take care of the rest once we return to the front,” Tadeas said. “The Green Jackets owe us from that maneuver you pulled yesterday, and their commander is the sister to Stavri’s spymaster. They’ll ask questions. What do I tell them?”

“To mind their own glassdamned business,” Idrian snorted.

“I think I’ll say it nicer than that.”

Idrian let out a shaky breath. They did not know just how important this was. Without that cinderite, he didn’t have a deal with Demir. Without a deal with Demir, he would continue to slide into madness without hope of reprieve. He could practically see himself swinging his sword at imaginary enemies on the battlefield. He opened his mouth to voice his thanks but Tadeas stopped him with the shake of his head.

“Don’t say a glassdamned word,” Tadeas said. “If Stavri’s staff finds out about this, both of us could be court-martialed. You better believe I’m having words with my nephew when all of this is over.”