In the Shadow of Lightning

21

Idrian left the relative safety of the Ossan front line at around two o’clock in the morning. He wore a cloak that covered his civilian’s clothes, and a strip of cloth that acted as an impromptu eye patch to cover his godglass eye. A sack of Mika’s grenades hung from his belt, precariously close to his nethers – not that it would matter if one went off accidentally. He wore sightglass to let him see well in the dark, and enough forgeglass that his body was practically humming with sorcery. Every step felt light, as if he weighed practically nothing.

The night was as cold as any he’d ever experienced in Ossa, and he could see the fogging breath of the Ossan sentries as he slipped past them in the darkness. His footsteps made barely a sound. No one so much as twitched in his direction, and for that he was grateful.

Thanks in large part to the Ironhorns, the Ossan Foreign Legion controlled almost the entire wealthy district of townhouses that lay at the bottom of the palace hill. Beyond that was a wooded park – a no-man’s-land between the two armies – and then a series of barricades and entrenchments that worked their way up nearly a half mile of open hillside. Some two thousand troops camped on that lawn, many of them on guard against a possible night attack. There were at least six artillery batteries as well, but so far the Grent had not stooped to blasting away at their own upper-class townhouses.

Idrian could see those defenses, lit at regular intervals by torchlight, from his position beneath a tree in the park. Up ahead was the first row of sandbags, and he could see the eyes of the sentries at their watch. It was a daunting display that would have given him pause with a whole brigade at his back. On his own, it was downright terrifying. The one piece of good news was that Tadeas had gotten his hands on spymaster reports indicating that the palace itself had been abandoned by the ducal family – sent off to safety in the Glass Isles – and that it was now being used as a barracks for the Grent officers. He would face soldiers, but not the dozen breachers that made up the duke’s closest bodyguards.

Crouching, moving from tree to tree at a careful run, Idrian worked his way along the park parallel to the Grent defenses until he reached a babbling little brook. He took his turn there, following the brook into a narrow crevasse that wound up the hillside, all the way to a small spring just beneath the palace. It was the one piece of real topography on the hill, and it ran directly through the center of the Grent defenses.

Idrian gave himself a fifty-fifty chance of a guard being posted at the bottom of the gully against exactly this sort of thing. Why wouldn’t they? But, on the other hand, who would be insane enough to try to sneak into a Grent garrison alone?

He took the gamble, proceeding slowly up the gully, stepping lightly so as not to dislodge even the smallest stone. Each movement seemed painstaking and the forgeglass he wore caused his muscles to scream in protest that they weren’t being used to their full potential. He took deep breaths as he went, reminding himself he used to do this all the time hunting crag cats as a kid in the highlands of Marn.

Of course, that was thirty years ago.

Ten yards. Then fifty. Then a hundred. The gully got deeper and wider as he proceeded, and he watched the edges continuously for any sign of a sentry. He could hear talking; smell the waft of a late-night cigarette. Despite the forgeglass he wore, he felt naked without his armor – deeply exposed to the point where discovery was almost certainly a death sentence. Thankfully the gully proved empty.

He was almost to the palace itself, less than a stone’s throw away, when the sound of laughter stopped him in his tracks. He crouched and froze, looking up, watching for movement. Two shadows appeared just ahead of him. Six more feet and he could have reached up and yanked them down by their ankles. They were backlit by nearby torches, paused on the very edge of the gully.

“Glassdamn, man,” one said, “I swear I’m never drinking that stuff again. Barely gives me a buzz but I have to piss all the damn time.” As if to accentuate his statement, the sound of a stream of urine pattered on the stones just in front of Idrian. Idrian swallowed his disgust and didn’t move.

“Your choice,” the other chuckled, “I can’t get enough of it. Hey, did you hear that rumor that the Ossans are pulling out?” Another stream of urine joined the first.

“No. What’s going on?”

“Supposedly a few battalions withdrew just after dark, and more are going to retreat tomorrow.”

“Cease-fire?”

“Nah. They’re shifting troops to oppose Kerite’s Drakes.”

“Thank piss for the Drakes. Duke must have spent a fortune to hire her.” He made a disgusted sound. “We’ll have to go on the offensive tomorrow. Last thing I want to do with the Ironhorns sitting front and center.”

“No kidding. Did you hear what they did to the Two-Seventy-First? Absolutely cut them to ribbons. The Ram leapt off a four-story building and landed on their glassdancer!”

“I don’t believe that.”

“My cousin is in the battalion that was supporting them. Said it was the scariest thing she’s ever seen, and one of those damned grenades blew off her hand.”

The other snorted. By now both streams of urine had finished, and the two men left the gully, continuing their conversation as they went. Idrian let out a sigh of relief when he was finally alone. Even knowing that a single sound might get him killed right then he’d nearly laughed at them talking about him. What a damned way to go out that would have been.

He proceeded to the genesis of the gully and pulled himself up over the lip, checking carefully before rolling across the ground and sprinting to the dubious cover of one of the big, decorative square columns that marched down the face of the palace. He remained there for as long as he dared, listening carefully for any sign of more sentries. There would be fewer here by the palace proper, but they’d also be more likely to catch him in torchlight.

Idrian tried to assess the situation within the palace itself. An officers’ garrison could mean anything: well-ordered and quiet from sundown to sunup, or a damned festival with bottomless drinks and whores dancing on the duke’s billiards tables. It seemed, much to Idrian’s relief, that it was the former. Other than the occasional officer going for a piss, the palace was relatively quiet.

Somewhere in the distance he could hear a child’s laughter. He ignored it petulantly.

Idrian found a servants’ entrance and slipped inside, treading carefully down the darkened hallway. Everything was still. No sign of the officers or the servants. Could it really be this damned easy?

He answered that question himself after winding his way through the servants’ passages, getting lost twice, before finally entering the main foyer. This room was well-lit by gas lamps, causing him to double his speed lest a stray messenger find him here. He hurried to the middle of the room, looked up, and had to choke down a shout of frustration at the sight above him.

The case that had held that cinderite upon his visit just a few months ago was empty.

Idrian hurried back to the dark servants’ halls and swore quietly in every language he knew. The cinderite wasn’t the only piece missing. The walls were conspicuously bare of art and tapestries, the display tables bereft of vases. They must have moved all the valuable art as soon as the Foreign Legion got close. Maybe even at the beginning of the war. It made sense.

A fool’s errand. He would have to return to Demir empty-handed, and hope that Demir gave him another shot. He leaned against the wall for a quick breath, pressing on his godglass eye to get rid of the headache creeping across the front-center of his skull. The child’s laughter was getting closer, as if it were coming from the next room. Time to go back the way he’d come.

Or …

Idrian could hear the soft, steady footsteps of someone patrolling the marble hallways just around the corner. Should he risk it? Was it worth his damned life? He crept forward, head cocked to follow the source of the sound, until he reached an open door into one of the main hallways. It was darker than the foyer, but he could see a tall woman in orange-and-white ducal livery walking slowly down the center of the hall.

She faced away from him, hands clasped behind her back, and she didn’t seem to be listening for anything in particular. One of the duke’s staff? A chaperon for the officers borrowing his palace? The woman stopped at the bottom of a staircase, half toward Idrian, looked around once, and sank to sit on the bottom stair. She looked exhausted, her hair mussed though her uniform was spotless. She gave a yawn and set her head against the banister.

A few minutes later, her eyes were closed.

It was the opportunity Idrian needed, though quite risky. He crept out of his hiding spot and hurried across the hall. He was on her before her eyes could even open, and he yanked her up into his grip with one hand on her neck and the other on her mouth. She tried to scream, but the sound was muffled into his hand.

“Your silence or your life,” Idrian hissed.

To her credit, she kept trying to scream. Nerves of glassdamned steel, and it called Idrian’s bluff. He wasn’t going to kill a servant just for a piece of information. He would give her a good shake, and he did exactly that.

“Tell me where everything is,” he whispered. “The tapestries, the art. Did they move it to a warehouse? Is it in the city, or secreted to the countryside?” The woman glared back at Idrian over his hand. She’d stopped trying to scream, and it was clear she was readjusting her line of thinking – an assassin might be worth losing her life over. But a thief? He slowly took his hand off her throat to encourage thinking of him as the latter. “Tell me and you’ll live through the night.”

She looked down at his hand. Slowly, ready to clap it right back into place, he pulled it away from her mouth. In a low voice, disgust dripping from her tone, she said, “It’s all downstairs, moved to the undercroft in case of Ossan shelling.” Idrian held in a sigh of relief. Right under his damned feet. She stared at the strip of cloth covering his eye, and he hoped she didn’t make the connection between a large Marnish man without an eye and the Ossans’ most famous breacher.

“Show me,” he told her.

The woman’s glare did not go away, but she did not struggle or try to flee as she led him back to the servants’ passages and wound them most of the way back to where he’d entered. She indicated a door, paneled to look like the wall around it. Idrian gave it a shove, and it creaked open to reveal a dark, narrow staircase going down.

“How many exits?” he asked.

“From the undercroft? Just two – this one, and another into the stables on the west end of the palace.”

Idrian considered his options. Going down into the undercroft might well seal his fate. Up here, if an alarm was raised, he could make a break for it and hope the darkness fouled the aim of the guards. If he was cornered underground he wouldn’t have that luxury. He reached into the stairwell and found a gas lantern by the tiny flicker of its pilot light, and turned it up to illuminate the stone walls.

He was still considering it when a light suddenly illuminated the other end of the passage some thirty feet from him. It bobbed into sight, showing another figure in the duke’s livery, who held his lantern up over his head and peered hard in their direction. Idrian didn’t even have time to say a word before a voice was raised. “Intruder! Intruder! Raise the alarm, for the enemy is upon us!”

“Son of a…!” Idrian swore. He shoved his captive in the direction of her compatriot. He had moments to decide on his next course of action. With another curse, he leapt into the stairway of the undercroft and slammed the door shut behind him. It didn’t have so much as a latch, so he reached into Mika’s sack of grenades and pulled out one she’d painted black. It was about the size of his fist with the gauntlet on, and had a little chain and hook coming out of one end. Carefully, he hung it from the inner doorframe so that the chain would be pulled from the grenade if someone hastily opened the door.

Trap set, he hurried down the stairwell.

The undercroft was a massive basement, a single room twenty feet tall, broken up by the even march of columns from one end to the other, that took up the entirety of the palace floor plan. Even lighting several gas lanterns around the base of the stairwell, he could not see very far into the dark.

But he didn’t need that much light to see the treasure hoard before him. As the woman had promised, the valuables of the palace had been brought down here. Crate after crate were stacked head-high, rolled-up tapestries shoved between the stacks. Paintings were wrapped in linen. As a young man he’d taken a job in the Ossan Museum and had spent a summer moving around displays. This looked much like the basement of the museum.

Idrian moved quickly, no longer caring for stealth. Even down here he could hear that a commotion was being made up in the palace. He could not afford to let them barricade him in here. He estimated the size of the cinderite, ruling out everything smaller, and began attacking the stacks of crates. He found a crowbar quickly, and used it to pry lids off as fast as he could move. He found a sculpture of some philosopher. Old pottery. Gold and silver knickknacks. He ignored the treasures before him, knowing that none stacked up to the price of his sanity, and that slowing even for a moment could cost him his life.

A massive set of expensive porcelain dinnerware. Silver goblets. Crystal goblets. Platinum goblets. Godglass goblets. Glassdamn, someone in the ducal family loved goblets.

He could hear boots thumping up above. Soldiers were probably flooding the corridors upstairs at this very moment, demanding answers from the poor servant who’d raised the alarm and trying to figure out how stupid someone had to be to attempt to rob the ducal palace while it was being used as a barracks. He’d wasted valuable minutes already. How long did he have until they got over their confusion and came after him?

An explosion split the air, causing him to flinch and reach for the shield he wasn’t carrying. He placed the size and sound – Mika’s trap grenade. The soldiers were coming. With any luck, that had taken away their courage for a while longer.

He continued his search, kicking over crates, cracking the lids off them, bashing through wood with the crowbar. He wondered just how loudly his old overseer from the Ossan Museum would scream if she saw him now. Very, he imagined, but he had no time left. He knocked a box of crates over with his shoulder, grabbed the top one to tear off the lid, and froze. It had cracked when it fell, and through the crack he could see a familiar bit of stone-like texture. He slowed immediately and, taking great care, removed the lid the rest of the way.

The cinderite was about three feet long, four inches thick, with branching protrusions at irregular intervals. It looked like the trunk of a young tree turned to stone. He held his breath as he pulled it from the box and lifted it up to the light. No damage that he could see.

Setting the crowbar to one side, he laid his sheepskin out flat. He could hear shouting now, as officers at the top of the stairs argued loudly over whether to proceed further. Someone was screaming in pain somewhere in the palace – probably whoever had tripped the grenade trap. Idrian set the cinderite on the sheepskin, put a few long scraps of wooden crate on either side of it for stability, and then wrapped the whole package up and tied it with twine.

Using a leather strap, he slung it across his back, then ran to the base of the stairs. The arguing among the soldiers upstairs was fierce. They no longer thought he was a mere thief, and were wondering if he was a saboteur. He had moments until someone braved it again. Producing another of Mika’s grenades – this one painted orange – he set it down very obviously on the bottom step.

Just the doubt would slow them down.

What had the servant woman said? An exit into the stables on the west end? Idrian sprinted into the darkness, the sightglass hanging from his ears helping him stretch the light of the lanterns behind him just enough that he didn’t trip or run into anything as he went. He could hear his boots splashing in puddles on the stone floor, his breath coming out ragged. Even his hands were trembling.

Any moment now he was going to have a fight on his hands, and it wouldn’t be pretty. He was armed only with grenades. He reached the west wall and followed it, looking at the ceiling so hard that he almost missed the door just to his left. He threw it open only to find himself bathed in lamplight, blinking into the sudden brightness.

The blast of a carbine was deafening, a bullet ricocheting off the doorframe inches from his head. He threw himself backward into the undercroft with only a glimpse at his surroundings, and paused to catch his breath. The door let out into the back of the stables. He’d caught sight of two rows of stalls, stacks of hay bales, and the room filling with armed Grent soldiers.

So much for that way out.

There was shouting behind him now, back on the other side of the undercroft. Shouting ahead of him in the stables, too. Idrian growled softly, cursing himself for a fool. Trapped, just like he knew he’d be. What kind of a pissing idiot would do this to themselves? Searching through Mika’s sack of grenades, he found another orange one and pulled hard on the string coming out one end. Counting to three, he opened the door just enough to roll it into the pile of straw farther from him.

“Grenade!” someone shouted, and he could hear soldiers leaping for cover. A few moments passed, followed by a distinct cracking sound, and then someone else shouted in a far more frantic voice, “Fire!”

“Deal with that, assholes,” Idrian spat. He’d spotted another door now, farther along in the undercroft. He needed something; a crawlspace, a window – anything that would let him get out of here. He could see torches and lamps back by the treasure hoard, and he pulled a grenade out of his sack at random, yanked the string, and hurled it in that direction. It clattered along the stone, making it only about half the way toward those torches before it exploded.

Blinking the flash from his vision, Idrian reached that other door and wrenched it open. Even with his sightglass he could only really see vague shapes: tools hanging from the walls, a massive hopper of some kind, a great furnace. He stuck his hand in the hopper, running his fingers through what felt like chunks of coal before it dawned on him: this was the palace furnace room. It smelled dusty, perhaps completely disused. He found the coal chute, but the latch was chained securely.

He felt his way to the furnace, with a door big enough he barely had to duck through it.

And looked up at a chimney. It was narrow and dark, ascending for a very long time but there, at the very top, he could see stars.

He could imagine the newspapers back home: BREACHER IDIOT DIES AFTER GETTING STUCK IN A DUKE’S CHIMNEY. There would be crude jokes. The Ironhorns would never live down the shame. Demir would pretend to have never known him. Piss on all of them, he thought. He lifted himself to a lip immediately above the firebox and was struck by sudden claustrophobia. He forced himself to push through it.

Here went nothing.

Bracing arms and legs carefully, Idrian began to climb his way upward. The chimney walls were dusty rather than properly dirty, lending credence to his idea that the whole thing was disused. Soon he could smell smoke. Had someone lit a fire under him? He stopped long enough to look. No flame. It was probably from the stables. The chimney narrowed very slightly as he climbed, causing his claustrophobia to grow. He was forced to pull in his arms and legs but still exert enough strength to keep himself from falling. Despite all his forgeglass his whole body trembled with the effort. Muscles burned like they hadn’t in years.

Idrian’s head bumped into something. He paused, breath held, and carefully looked up. He was at the top, and he only had to push past a narrow lip to squeeze his way out through the opening. The roll of sheepskin caught on the lip and for half a moment he thought he would lose the cinderite – and then he was free.

He pulled himself into a sitting position on top of the smokestack and appraised the situation: he was on top of one of the palace turrets, balanced precariously some sixty feet in the air. He could see what felt like forever in every direction with the lights of Grent and Ossa to his east and the rest of the delta spreading out to his south and west. There was a fleet way out there where the delta met the ocean. Probably Kerite’s mercenaries. If Idrian survived this, he would be fighting them in a couple of days. A shadow passed beneath the moon; a speck of an animal soaring through the night.

“That,” he whispered to himself, “is a big bat.”

Sound beneath him brought Idrian back to the present. There were voices, and then the flash of lights. They’d found his exit. Idrian fished into the sack of grenades and pulled one out at random.

Green for big boom, as Mika liked to say. Perfect. He pulled the string and dropped it.

The explosion caused the entire building to shudder violently. Idrian’s stomach lurched into his throat. He clung to the stone until he was certain he hadn’t just blown up the entire tower, then let out a long shaky breath and wasted no more time. He dropped to the roof, slid down the copper shingles, and then leapt across a gap to a windowsill one floor below.

How his arms and legs managed to carry him down without failing, dropping one floor at a time until he reached the ground, Idrian did not know. When he did hit the ground, he might have fallen to his knees to kiss the solid earth if not for a nearby shout.

“There he is! Rouse the troops!”

Muscles feeling like they’d been run through a washerwoman’s wringer, Idrian began to sprint downhill. A musket blast went off, then another, then another. Bullets whizzed overhead and thumped into the dirt around him as he silently prayed that the darkness would continue to foul their aim. He ran straight through the center of the camp on the ducal hillside, and could see soldiers climbing out of their tents to respond to the call of alarm, looks of surprise as Idrian passed them. One ill-advised young soldier tried to leap into Idrian’s way. Idrian lowered his shoulder and plowed over the poor bastard.

Idrian leapt a row of sandbags, crossed an artillery battery filled with small cannons, and then threw himself off a twenty-foot drop. He hit the ground hard enough to stagger, his legs buckling and finally giving out. He tripped, fell off another smaller drop, and twisted his body so as not to land on the cinderite. The landing knocked the wind out of him, only his forgeglass protecting him from a broken ankle or worse.

He had not yet caught his breath when he heard the sound of hoofbeats.

Would these pissing Grent not let up? He looked to see that he was nearly at the bottom of the ducal hill, probably less than fifty feet from the ring of trees that marked the no-man’s-land between armies. It was an easy jog, except that several squads of dragoons were riding toward him hard from the side. They would be on him in moments.

Idrian reached for his sword, remembered that he didn’t actually have it, and then fled toward the trees as fast as his tired legs could carry him. He was completely spent, and despite all his forgeglass would not beat the dragoons in a contest of speed. Without slowing, the dragoons drew their carbines. They would pepper him with bullets and then run him down. Sloppy, but effective.

The tree line of the park suddenly erupted in thunder and flame. Half the dragoons went down among the screaming of men and horses. Idrian stared at them for several moments, confused, before he heard his name shouted from the underbrush. He could see figures there, and then heard a shouted order to fire. Thunder and flame erupted once again, dropping even more of the dragoons. Those that hadn’t already fallen turned and fled.

Limping, still wary of any infantry nearby, Idrian made it to the tree line.

He found Tadeas and Valient waiting for him with over a hundred soldiers. They didn’t bother waiting for him to catch his breath before the whole group began an immediate withdrawal. Tadeas grabbed Idrian by the arm, pulling him along. They were soon out of the trees and back among the townhouses, where bewildered Ossan sentries watched them breeze their way back to camp. When they arrived, Idrian found Braileer waiting for him with a worried expression.

Idrian waved him off and collapsed in the street, panting.

“Well,” Tadeas demanded, “did you get it?”

Idrian gave him a flat look and unslung the sheepskin from his back, shoving it into Tadeas’s hands. “As long as it didn’t break in my fall back there, yes.”

“Did you, uh, light the palace on fire?” Valient asked, staring past Idrian back toward the ducal palace. Idrian glanced that way to see smoke and light. There was a lot of screaming coming from that direction. Part of him felt a little guilty – there was a lot of art in that undercroft – but another part of him realized he couldn’t hear children’s laughter.

“Mika will be proud,” he replied. “I dropped her biggest grenade right down the duke’s chimney. Tadeas, start coming up with excuses. I imagine General Stavri’s staff will have a lot of questions for us come morning.”