In the Shadow of Lightning

31

Kizzie spent the rest of the day working through the membership list of the Glass Knife. She created a personal dossier for each name, cross-checking them with easily verified alibis and hyper-loyal potential patsies. There was, she had to admit, a lot of guild-family power in this little Fulgurist Society: a matriarch, two heirs, seven direct children, and five cousins – as well, of course, as the Duke of Grent’s brother. The Dorlani, Magna, Kirkovik, and Stavri were all represented. A diverse group by any standards, and one that caused her stomach to tie itself in knots at the thought of them all working together toward a single conspiracy.

Her instinct was to go ask for Capric’s help. He was personal friends with one of the Stavri, and he might give her an in. Something stopped her, though. She couldn’t help but wonder why there wasn’t a Vorcien in the Glass Knife. Was that on purpose? Was this club some kind of secret check on Father Vorcien’s power within the Assembly? Perhaps it was a coincidence or perhaps there were other members not listed. A Vorcien might be among those.

Regardless, she needed to be cautious about who she mentioned this to. If the Glass Knife already had blood on their hands from other occasions, they would no doubt move to snuff out an enforcer they found sniffing around in their affairs.

She had to start somewhere, and it wasn’t hard to find a somewhat more public link between three of the names on the list: they all belonged to the Bingham Brawlers, a boxing club out in the far western suburbs of Ossa. She knew of the place, though she’d never been to it. It wouldn’t be hard to head out in that direction, mingle and ask a few questions, and either stay overnight or take a carriage home. At the very least she could gather alibis for one or more of them. The only problem was that the Foreign Legion was way out there facing a new Grent army, and a battle might take place in the morning.

She took a hackney cab to the edge of Ossa, where the driver insisted on turning back on rumors that a battle had already happened. Kizzie let him go and set off on foot. The walk was long but pleasant, taking Kizzie away from the city as night fell and a chill crept into her bones. She stopped twice for hot coffee at the small cafés that grew farther and farther apart as tenements gave way to tract housing, then to the small, lower-class farms that provided most of the fresh produce for Ossa. Eventually the gas lanterns that lit the highway stopped altogether, and she was left to finish the rest of her journey in the dark.

She was less than a mile away from her destination when she heard the clatter of hooves on the cobbles. It was a horse moving at a trot despite the darkness, and she put her braided godglass earrings in just long enough to make out the approaching silhouette: a military messenger in the black uniform of the Foreign Legion.

Kizzie hailed him with a shout and a wave, holding her hand out flat so he could see her silic sigil. He did not slow until he was almost upon her. When he did, he squinted hard at her hand and then gave her a respectful nod. “Good evening, Lady Vorcien,” he said.

She did not correct him. It was always amusing when people mistook her for a cousin rather than a bastard. “Any news from the war?” she asked. “My cabdriver seemed to think a battle had already taken place.” Looking closer, she could now see that the messenger was harried, his cloak askew, horse tired, head drooping.

“It’ll be in the newspaper in the morning,” he answered, his voice exhausted. “We suffered a mighty loss.”

Kizzie rocked back on her heels, genuinely shocked by the news. The Foreign Legion didn’t suffer losses often, and when they did they were on a distant continent, reported in the newspaper months after the fact. “I’m only going as far as Bingham tonight,” she told him. “Am I in danger?”

“You’re in no danger tonight, but I wouldn’t travel any farther west if I were you. The Grent and their pet mercenary hold the Copper Hills. Is there anything else? I must hurry to take news to the Assembly.”

“No, no,” Kizzie said, her thoughts suddenly filled with marching armies and roaming soldiers. If the enemy was closing in, the normal rules no longer applied; the region was no longer subject to the complicated alliances of guild-family enforcers and National Guardsmen, but to large groups of infantry. Despite his reassurance, she was tempted to turn back. “Good luck.”

“Thank you, Lady Vorcien. Oh, and just a suggestion: avoid the Bingham Brawlers Club.”

Kizzie’s breath caught in her throat. “Why?”

“I just came from there. General Stavri and his senior officers have stopped to, ahem, gird themselves with a drink before they have to report their loss to the Assembly tonight. The place is packed with angry officers right now.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Kizzie replied, waving the messenger on his way. She cringed as she listened to the sound of his horse’s hooves disappear into the darkness. Losing a battle to Grent this close to the capital was certainly more important than her mission, but it also seemed to have interfered directly. If the Bingham Brawlers Club was filled with officers trying to get very drunk very quickly, it was a bad time to go looking for alibis.

And yet … General Stavri’s little brother, Agrippo Stavri, was one of the names on her list, and was attached to General Stavri’s staff. That meant four of her fifteen suspects might all be under one roof. It was risky, but a very tempting target.

She decided to continue on, trekking through the cold evening until the street was finally lit once more with gas lamps. She was soon among the tract houses of Bingham, with proper evening traffic out on the streets. She could sense no agitation from the public. Word must have not yet gotten out about the nearby loss. Part of her felt for these people: if the Grent army pressed without opposition, Bingham could be under occupation in days.

The thought hurried her steps, and she wound through Bingham until she reached a side street with an old converted tenement whose entire second floor had been whitewashed, with the words BINGHAM BRAWLERS CLUB lit up by gas lamps. It was a quiet neighborhood, and she was surprised to hear nothing of carousing or angry shouts as she walked up to the front door. There was also no doorman. She paused outside, glancing around. Even quiet clubs had a doorman, often smoking their pipe, chatting with the locals. No doorman, no locals, no guild-family members enjoying a cigar in the crisp night air.

The hairs on the back of Kizzie’s neck stood on end. It wasn’t that she couldn’t hear carousing: she couldn’t hear anything. It was as silent as if the club were closed. She approached the well-lit doorway, one hand slipping into her jacket for her stiletto, and slowly pushed in the door. It wasn’t locked.

“What the piss is going on?” she whispered to herself. The front hall was empty, the club deathly silent. She stopped at the coatroom, glancing inside for an attendant. No one, but the coatroom was absolutely stuffed with uniform jackets and fine cloaks and dusters. She drew out her stiletto, trying to think of an explanation. Was the whole club participating in some kind of lark? Had they rushed out into the street to warn Bingham about approaching Grent soldiers? Had they fled entirely? If that were the case, she would have passed them or at least heard them. This didn’t make sense.

Perhaps everyone was on the top floor of the club watching a particularly riveting boxing match?

As it turned out, she did not need to go up to the top floor for answers. She didn’t need to proceed more than a dozen paces. She rounded the corner to where the narrow entrance hall opened up into a large, formal dining area surrounding a boxing ring only to stop dead in her tracks.

The room was filled with corpses. There were dozens of them, strewn about like confetti; splayed across tables, fallen in the aisle, slumped against walls. At a glance she could not determine what had killed them, but the amount of blood was truly horrific. There was no sound, not even a moan. The entire place was perfectly still, like a sculptor’s tableau.

The shock of it numbed her, keeping her from fleeing. She checked the nearest body: a young man in a smart dinner jacket, his throat slit. Still warm. Very warm, and the blood was still pooling around the corpses. These people had all been dead for a very short amount of time. A little further inspection showed that every piece of regular glass inside the room had shattered, and was either in or near a corpse. The work of a glassdancer. A very, very, very good glassdancer.

It didn’t seem possible. Kizzie had seen the work of the best glassdancers and it had never looked anything like this. No one had even had time to scream. The neighborhood wasn’t roused. Kizzie’s blood felt frozen in her veins and for only the second time in her life she realized she was terrified. Her feet seemed rooted to the floor and she struggled to make a decision. Shaky-handed, she fished a piece of skyglass from her pocket – almost dropping it in the process – and threaded it through one of her ear piercings.

The sorcery immediately calmed her, settling the tremble in her fingers and letting her think. She cocked her head, listening carefully. No sound from the floors above. Her glassdancer sorcery detected no glassdancers in the building. The killer – or killers – must have fled just before she arrived. This whole thing was terrifying, but it had also given her a unique opportunity.

Kizzie added her braided godglass earrings and, soaking in all four types of sorcery, launched herself into action. She hurried across the room, stepping carefully to keep from leaving footprints in the blood, looking at the face of each corpse. Over half of them were in uniform – the officers from the lost battle – and it was these she focused on.

In her search she recognized two distant Vorcien cousins and a school friend of hers from childhood. She did not give any of them a second glance. General Stavri was easy to identify, lying slumped across a table, the remnants of a shot glass embedded in the back of his skull. She found his little brother at the same table. Colonel Agrippo Stavri was still sitting, staring sightlessly and slack-jawed with a decorative, wind chime–shaped piece of chandelier lodged just above his sternum. Kizzie ransacked Agrippo’s uniform pockets. She found a pocket watch, a checkbook, a billfold, and a bundle of letters soaked in blood. She left the pocket watch and checkbook, searched the billfold, and wrapped the letters in a napkin before stuffing them in her pocket.

She resumed her search but found only one of the four suspects she’d originally come to research. Her name was Fioda Jaque, and she’d been walking toward the stairs when a wineglass had decapitated her. Kizzie searched her pockets as well but came up with nothing more than a watch and billfold. She left both.

The search had left Kizzie nauseous and shaky, her nerves a complete mess despite the skyglass. No amount of willpower could force her up the stairs to the next floor, no matter what kind of clues she might find. She took one last glance around and decided she’d stumbled on something military in nature. It couldn’t be anything else: the Grent must have sent glassdancer assassins after the losing Ossan officers.

Common sense finally made its way through her shock and the skyglass, and Kizzie realized she was the only living person inside a building full of important corpses. She needed to raise an alarm, and she needed to do it without being recognized.

She was almost to the front hall when a sound caught her ear. She paused, glancing back, wondering if she’d missed a survivor. She was caught in the sudden dilemma of trying to save them or getting out of here quickly. The sound repeated. Thump. Thump. Thump. Kizzie’s stomach tied itself in knots. Those were footsteps coming down the stairs on the far side of the room.

Kizzie tore her rooted feet from the floor and raced toward the exit, no longer caring to do so silently. As she ran around the corner to the narrow hallway she caught a single glance of someone stepping into the boxing hall: an impossibly tall man with white skin and a bald head. Their gazes met briefly.

Kizzie was not sure if he pursued her. She was practically flying now, summoning every ounce of sorcery that she could get from the forgeglass in her braided earrings. As she raced past the coatroom she snatched up a scarf still sitting on the counter, throwing it around her neck and pulling it up to hide her face. She emerged into the street at a sprint, screaming at the top of her lungs.

“Murder! Call the National Guard! Sound the alarms!” Before she’d even reached the end of the street she could see curious faces poking out the windows of nearby tenements. She found a watchhouse on the next street and banged on the doors until the National Guardsmen emerged, pointing them in the direction of the Bingham Brawlers Club.

As the National Guardsmen rushed past her with their weapons, she caught sight of the Tall Man. He was standing just across the street, a dark splash across the front of his gray tunic. He held no weapons.

He was staring directly at her.

Kizzie stared back, her heart in her throat, a feeling of absolute dread twisting her guts like the knots of a blackwood vine. No one else seemed to note or care about his presence, and she could not bring herself to call the National Guardsmen’s attention to the Tall Man. She tried to probe with her sorcerous senses, looking out for any sign of his sorcery, but she came back with nothing. Glassdancers could not hide their presence, and she could feel no imminent attack.

The Tall Man took a step toward her. She steeled herself against the dread. He wasn’t the glassdancer. What had Gorian said? Someone of his description might be connected with the serial murder of siliceers? Perhaps he was a Stavri agent, here to report to his master, and had arrived just moments before her to find the grisly scene. But then, why did he have blood on his tunic? Kizzie had no interest in a confrontation. She forced herself to relax, letting the growing crowd sweep her away. She was pulled along back toward the club, past the screaming and wailing, and then escaped against the growing torrent of onlookers in the opposite direction.

She hired a hackney cab and did not allow herself a sigh of relief until she was back in Ossa, sitting under the bright lights of a late-night café at nearly midnight. It was the second time in three days that she had witnessed that Tall Man near an important body. That couldn’t be a coincidence. But the club back there was full of officers, not lone siliceers or a blackmailed Magna. Shaken and exhausted, she ordered coffee and produced the bundle of bloodstained letters from her pocket, hiding them from the waiter with her menu. She did her best to put the Tall Man out of her thoughts.

The first letter was from one of Agrippo’s mistresses and it was very saucy. Kizzie kept that one. The second was barely legible, perhaps some correspondence with a banker. The third and fourth were too soaked in blood for her to read more than a few words. The fifth, however, was something else. It was a plain white envelope, spattered with Agrippo’s blood, and inside was a simple note. It said,

Kizzie stared at it for several moments before lifting the envelope. It was postmarked the day of Adriana Grappo’s murder.

For half a moment, Kizzie forgot all about the Tall Man and his room filled with corpses. This had to be something. Agrippo might not have been Adriana’s fourth killer, but had he blackmailed that someone into it?

Something about that letter was bothering her, though. She recognized that handwriting. But from where? A calling card? A letter? She hid the bundle of letters once more under her menu as the waiter brought her coffee, thanking him and then gathering her wits once more.

The Grent war, Adriana’s death, the secret sorcery war, the Glass Knife. This was all connected. But how and why? Agrippo might have been able to tell her, but he was dead. The blackmailed party probably couldn’t tell her, but at least she would be able to mete out some justice. She just had to find out who it was.