In the Shadow of Lightning

22

In an ideal situation, Thessa would have waited for several weeks before attempting to steal back the phoenix channel schematics. She would have gotten to know the guards, the other prisoners, and their habits. She would have a better grasp of Craftsman Magna’s personality. She might have even made several casual forays into the administration building just so she knew the layout.

This was not an ideal situation. She wasn’t in her early apprenticeship, dared by the other young apprentices to steal sweets from Master Kastora’s desk drawer. She did not know how much time she had until Demir actually mounted that rescue – whether it would come in hours, days, or months. She didn’t even know if she could rely on him, and so her own plans had to keep moving forward.

Despite her fears, despite a certainty of the consequences if she was caught, Thessa found herself depending on those silly skills learned as an apprentice in a glassworks dormitory. If she could steal low-resonance godglass to sell in town for beer, or sneak older boys and girls into her bunk for some teen fumbling without one of the garrison reporting her late-night movements to Kastora, then she could damn well outsmart some bored Magna enforcers and their small-minded overseer.

And he was small-minded. She knew his type, and better yet she had seen how Demir had talked circles around him. Filur Magna could be manipulated. She would take advantage of that.

The first thing she did was work late again. She didn’t need to, but after the rest of the prisoners had finished their own quotas and gone back to the dormitory was the perfect time to inspect the furnace room for loose paving stones. She found one just beneath workbench number seven, pried it up with her fingernails, and used her heavy shears to dig out a space large enough to hide the vellum schematics. She tossed the dirt into the fire and deposited Demir’s razorglass into the hiding spot before making sure the paving stone fit back in its spot without a wobble. She then left the furnace room, walking casually down the road that ran through the middle of the compound.

It was a short walk, but an important one. It was late, the night lit by a handful of gas lamps. Craftsman Magna’s carriage was still parked just inside the compound entrance, and lamplight flickered in the large window that overlooked the courtyard. Thessa couldn’t see the man himself from this angle, but she bet he was in there. A driver waited beside the carriage, and the horses stamped.

Thessa passed the administration building and walked around the corner to the end of a little-used alleyway. She was in clear sight of the courtyard, well within the light cast by the nearest lamp, when she knelt down and took three smooth stones out of her pocket. She stacked them one on top of the other, regarding them thoughtfully for several moments before bowing her head.

Religion was a peculiar cultural artifact in this part of the world. It was both meaningless and everywhere; dozens of belief systems and hundreds of sects practiced to some degree by millions of people throughout the Ossan Empire and its neighbors. The Empire itself had no official religion, but it tolerated pretty much anything as long as none of them threatened the unofficial worship of godglass and money. Thessa’s mother and father had been omniclerics – priests of a sort, with a thorough knowledge of many of those religions, who could offer advice, ablutions, blessings, or rites to locals and travelers alike. Thessa hadn’t revisited her religious upbringing in almost a decade. There was no time for religion in Kastora’s glassworks.

But that knowledge was still there, and Thessa had spent her entire day thinking about how she could use it to get back the schematics.

She heard a nearby door slam shut and the call of voices across the courtyard. At the sound of them she leaned forward, rocking back and forth in front of the three smooth stones, pouring her focus into them. For this to succeed, she had to get it right. She needed to pass as a worshiper not just to the casual observer, but to another worshiper.

Footsteps echoed across the courtyard. More words were exchanged. The driver of the carriage said something, and there was the click of an opening door. Thessa began to wonder if she’d been overlooked, or if her guess had been wrong, and genuinely began to pray to Renn, the Nasuud goddess of commerce, whose altar was a pyramid. Thessa didn’t think she had any actual belief left in her, but it was worth a glassdamned shot.

After a long silence, footsteps slowly approached. Thessa swallowed a lump in her throat and kept rocking back and forth.

“What are you doing?”

Thessa almost choked. It was Craftsman Magna himself. Thessa leaned forward all the way, pressing her forehead to the cobbles in front of the three smooth stones, then looked up. She pretended to do a double take and snatched up the three stones, shoving them in her pocket as she leapt to her feet. “I’m so sorry, sir. I didn’t think I’d disturb anyone here!”

Craftsman Magna’s eyes narrowed. “What’s in your hand? Show me now, quickly!”

Slowly, as if with great hesitance, Thessa removed the stones from her pocket and held them out.

“What is that?”

“It’s … it’s an altar, sir. I was praying.”

The overseer’s frown deepened. “It doesn’t look like an altar.”

Thessa stacked the stones one on top of the other, largest on the bottom, in her palm. “It’s a pyramid, sir. Not a very good one, but the best I have. For the goddess Renn. She’s the Nasuud–”

“I know who she is,” he cut her off. In that moment, Thessa could have sworn the overseer’s eyes softened. “You’re a Rennite?”

“Yes, sir. My parents were Rennite priests, sir, before they died in the accident.”

“Why are you praying here?”

“I couldn’t find an omnichapel, sir, and this alley seemed quiet. None of the laborers bring their woodcarts through.” She kept her eyes fixed on the ground, daring only the occasional glance up at the overseer. He was deep in thought now, his expression turned down in a scowl.

“You insult Renn with such a rudimentary altar. And with nothing to offer!” He sniffed and turned away. “See that you stay out from underfoot.”

Thessa cursed silently as he began to walk back toward his carriage. She’d thought the bait would be too much for him to resist. On an impulse she called after him. “Sir!”

He paused and turned back, clearly impatient. “What is it?”

“I understand I’m a prisoner, sir, but is there an omnichapel somewhere nearby I can visit? Even just once? This” – she hefted the little altar – “does not bring me as close to Renn as I’d hoped.”

“Hah! What are you praying for, little Rennite?”

“The end of the war, sir. So that commerce may return to normal.”

“And your release, I assume.”

“If it pleases Renn.”

The answer seemed to satisfy Craftsman Magna. “It will be months until you are eligible to earn a town pass,” he replied. “You will have to be patient.…” Thessa hefted the little rudimentary altar and his eyes darted to it. He flinched. “Bah! Come with me.” He whirled and strode back toward the administration building. Thessa shoved the stones back in her pocket and hurried to follow. She had to force herself to breathe evenly, wondering if her luck – or Renn’s blessing, whichever it was – would hold.

The overseer led her inside through the front door, past a couple of curious Magna guards and down a long hall. They went up a rickety flight of stairs, doubled back down another hall, and then entered an office that was in surprisingly tidy shape. It didn’t look all that different from Master Kastora’s office: desk in the middle, chairs for receiving visitors, a heavy Purnian rug, and a pair of drafting tables off to one side.

Thessa did not have time to make a thorough examination. Craftsman Magna thrust his arm out toward a shrine tucked back in the corner of the room. It looked like a small wardrobe, opened at the front, papered over with a glittering sheen. On top was an incense holder – well used and, by the smell of the office, quite recently. Inside the shrine was a gold pyramid just too big to fit in the palm of Thessa’s hand.

“Pray,” the overseer ordered. His body language screamed of impatience, his expression both long-suffering and fearful. This was not a man who would test his god by rejecting a fellow worshiper.

“Oh, thank you, sir!” Thessa fell on her knees in front of the shrine. “Sir, may I light the incense?”

He made a get on with it gesture. Thessa found a match and lit the incense, then bowed to the shrine. She wondered, however briefly, if Renn was real. Was the goddess blessing her right now? Or would this come back later, when a vengeful goddess decided not to countenance a false worshiper? Just in case, Thessa whispered as she bowed.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, thank you.” Out of the corner of her eye she could see Craftsman Magna making magnanimous gestures, as if the words were directed at him.

She pretended to pray for as long as the incense burned – about ten minutes, she guessed. Long enough to look convincing, but not so long as to test the overseer’s patience. In the back of her head she took in the room and analyzed the overseer. Where would he keep the schematics? His desk? His safe? Hidden in some cubby under the rug?

She finished and dusted off her knees. On a whim of daring, she grasped the overseer, kissing him on the hand. His eyes widened momentarily. “You are too kind,” she babbled quickly. “I can feel Renn’s spirit strongly in this room.”

Craftsman Magna pulled his hand out of her grasp and wiped it on his tunic. “Yes, well. Do not think this will happen again.”

“Of course. Thank you so much.” Thessa waited while the overseer locked his office and let him escort her down and out of the administration building, where the same guards gave her a bemused look. “I’ll return to my dormitory now, sir,” she said.

“Wait!”

Thessa froze. “Sir?”

Craftsman Magna took on the expression of someone who thought they were being incredibly generous. “If you meet your quotas and keep out of trouble, I may consider allowing you to worship. On the weekends only.”

Thessa thanked him profusely and returned to her dormitory, pausing in the darkness of the doorway to watch as he got into his carriage and left through the front gate. Just inside the dormitory she could hear muted voices. It was, she realized, Three – the woman who’d warned her to take more breaks. Thessa waited for a few minutes, listening. Three seemed to have gotten her hands on a newspaper and was reading it out loud to the dormitory. The story detailed a series of gruesome murders in Glasstown; of siliceers found cut groin to chin and left dead in the Tien River. Thessa found herself engrossed in a moment of déjà vu until she realized she’d read the exact same article the night before the Ossan attack.

She wasn’t waiting for the end of the story, however. She was waiting to see how the guards reacted once Craftsman Magna was out of the compound. As she predicted, things changed almost immediately. It was not unlike when Kastora went off on one of his trips. The few remaining laborers stopped to have a smoke. Guards congregated on the walls to gossip. Security wasn’t exactly lax – the gates were still locked and enforcers posted to exits – but the general air of the place grew significantly less watchful.

Thessa joined the rest of the prisoners, lying in her bunk, listening to Three finish reading from the newspaper. Soon the dormitory was filled with snoring, punctuated only occasionally by someone leaving to use the outhouses in the far corner of the compound. It was a long, exhausting vigil. Thessa stared at the ceiling, trying not to think of all the ways her plan could go wrong.

It was, she decided around midnight, time to act.

Thessa retrieved Demir’s razorglass and used it to cut the lock on the administration building. She passed the guard post where, true to her informant’s word, the enforcers meant to be on watch were occupied quite graphically with each other. She hurried up to the overseer’s office, where she did not waste time. This was meant to look like, as she’d heard a less-savory assistant once describe a robbery, a “smash and grab.” She used the razorglass blade to cut carefully into Craftsman Magna’s safe, then his desk. She found the schematics in a false bottom of the latter, along with what appeared to be a number of illegitimate ledgers.

She gathered everything she could easily carry and took it with her.

The trip back to her furnace was a harrowing one, and she hid both inside another dormitory and in the compound outhouses to avoid patrols. No sound of alarm went up. No one stopped or questioned her. Thessa slipped in through the service hatch of her own furnace room. She read the ledgers by the light of the furnace flames, scoffing to herself. Illegal godglass shipments. Under-the-table sales. Illegitimate trading. There was enough information here to destroy Craftsman Magna’s career, but only if she could actually get it out of the compound.

Wishing she had another choice, she burned everything in her possession but the phoenix channel schematics. It was vitally important that Craftsman Magna believe that the whole lot had been stolen by a rival guild-family spy. If he even suspected that they’d never left the compound, she’d be done.

A sound brought her attention back to the present, and she quickly made sure all the evidence was destroyed before shoving the schematics up the back of her tunic and securing them in place with her belt. Someone had entered the workshop. She kept her head low, peering through from inside the furnace itself to see one of the hired assistants roll himself a cigarette on one of the workbenches. Much to Thessa’s chagrin, he turned up a lantern, pulled a book from his pocket, and began to read.

Piss and shit. With him there, Thessa could not reach her new hiding spot.

She waited as long as she dared, but the assistant was going nowhere. Thessa finally snuck out through the service entrance. She still had both the schematics and the razorglass on her person. The discovery of either would damn her, but she had no choice. She would have to wake up early and hope she reached the workshop before anyone else.

Slipping back into the dormitory, Thessa returned to bed. No point in holding her breath any longer. What was done was done. Exhausted, her body hurting from the tension, she let herself get some rest.

She woke from a restless sleep. The compound was quiet save for the early-morning sound of laborers hauling firewood. The faintest tinge of light touched the sky outside the dormitory windows. It was perhaps six o’clock in the morning, and she didn’t have much time until the whistle was blown and everyone rolled out of their beds. Some of the other prisoners already stirred.

Thessa quietly sat up and pulled on her tunic and siliceer’s apron, then laced up her boots. She had only minutes to spare to go hide her ill-gotten goods, and … The thought trailed off. Three beds down, Axio was not in his bunk. The blanket was thrown back, his boots missing but not his apron. Gone to take a shit? Or maybe up to try and practice what she’d been teaching him? She hoped it was the latter.

Thessa tilted her head, listening for the call of an alarm. The overseer would be here soon, no doubt, and when he discovered the robbery heads would roll. She had to move.

She was halfway to the dormitory door when it opened. A word of greeting for Axio died on her tongue at the sight of two Magna enforcers. They were both armed with cudgels, and they looked directly at her.

“Oh good,” one said pleasantly, lifting his cudgel, “you’re already up. The overseer wants to see you.”

Demir and Montego arrived at the Ivory Forest Glassworks right at dawn, their carriage laden with more gifts – silver pocket watches for the overseer and captain, heavy winter tunics for the enforcers, tin flasks for the hired help. Their arrival was greeted far more enthusiastically this morning, and Demir was pleased to see them waved through the front gate and directed to the little compound square just inside, where they were mobbed by enforcers.

Demir leapt from the carriage, shaking hands and handing out the tunics, addressing every enforcer by name and giving them a warm smile. “Cold morning,” he said, “wrap up tight. My, that looks threadbare. Ostis, you look like you could use new boots. Send your measurements to my hotel. Fedia, I heard you’re a big fan of Baby Montego – he brought you a signed cudgel.”

He kept his glove on his left hand to cover his glassdancer sigil, and it made all the difference in the world. Surely these enforcers knew he was a glassdancer – it was a rumor hard to quell – but without the reminder, they didn’t have that fear in their eyes. They told him jokes and responded to his words with grins. The whole damned garrison was practically eating out of his hand. Demir spotted the captain running toward him, nightcap on his head, pulling on his jacket as he waved a greeting.

“Morning, Captain,” Demir greeted him.

“Master Grappo! I thought you weren’t going to be able to visit us again any time soon.”

“I got to thinking about that,” Demir replied with an easy grin, “and I was so impressed with this operation that I thought I’d make sure everyone here is taken care of.” He put his arm around the captain’s shoulders, pulling him off to one side and saying quietly, “I know that the Magna aren’t exactly happy about my new ownership share. I thought maybe I could prove to them that I’m serious and they’d take me seriously.”

The captain looked over his shoulder before replying in a whisper. “It’s true. We validated your credentials last night, but we also got a message from Supi Magna himself. He’s … well, ‘unhappy’ undersells it a bit.”

“And like I said, I’m going to prove to them – and you and the overseer, of course – that I’m no fool. Now, where is Filur? I have some thoughts I’d like to share with him.”

“I’m not actually sure,” the captain replied, rubbing his chin. “He normally doesn’t arrive for another hour or so, but his carriage is parked just over there. Oi, Fedia! What time did the overseer arrive?”

“He came in about three,” came the reply. “He spent half the night in Furnace Number Nine.”

“Furnace Number Nine,” Demir replied slowly. “That’s one of those secret furnaces, isn’t it? One of them he wouldn’t show me yesterday.”

The captain went slightly pale. “It’s … complicated. I’m sure he’ll explain in due time.”

“Of course! He’s a busy man. Is there an officers’ mess in this place? I brought some very lovely caviar and scones for our breakfast.”

“Caviar?” the captain coughed in surprise. “Glassdamn. I … Yes, let me go make sure it’s all cleaned up!”

Demir sent the captain running with a pat on the back, then looked around. The enforcers were clustered around the wagon now as Montego continued handing out loaves of expensive bread, still warm from the bakery from the next town over. A few dozen of the hired laborers hung about on the fringes, clearly hoping for some scraps but boxed out by the enforcers. He wondered if any of them had been treated this well in their lives.

Probably not.

At that moment, something caught his eye. A pair of enforcers emerged from a nearby dormitory. Held between them closely was Thessa Foleer. They walked by quickly, without so much as a glance toward the hubbub at the front gate. Demir swore under his breath. He knew that walk. He’d seen it in prisons and labor camps all over the provinces, both as a governor and as a grifter. It meant the prisoner was in for a bad time.

Demir felt his stomach tighten at the implication. If she’d been discovered, all of his plans would be for naught. Filur Magna would know her mission and her skills. Even worse, what if she was questioned with shackleglass and Demir’s involvement came out? This needed to be dealt with, quickly and quietly.

Demir hurried to Montego, pushing through the enforcers and then whispering in his ear, “We might have a problem. I’m going to cause a distraction and slip away. Be ready to back me up.”

A curt nod was the only response he got, and Demir plastered that easy smile on his face and found one of the hired help still hoping to receive a gift. The woman was tall and scarred, and she glared at the enforcers with ill-disguised anger as they received all the attention from Montego.

Demir sidled up next to her and produced a stack of banknotes. “How well are you paid?” he asked.

The woman glanced down at his guild-family sigil, then averted her eyes. “Very well, sir. Thank you for asking.”

“Tell me truthfully and there’s money in it for you.”

The woman glanced left, then right, hesitating for a long time. In a quiet voice she said, “The laborers here are not paid or treated well.”

“I’ll give you a thousand ozzo if you start a fight. But don’t look like you’re trying to.” He palmed the banknotes and flashed them to her.

“Done.”

He slipped them in her pocket, took a step back, and watched as she steeled herself with a deep breath and elbowed her way into the enforcers. She stepped on feet, bruised some ribs, and within moments had the attention of several very angry-looking enforcers. Chaos erupted immediately, and Demir slipped away, following Thessa and her guards.