In the Shadow of Lightning

32

Demir remained on his vigil on the front step of the Hyacinth for the rest of the day, though it was clear that the worst of things had passed. Enforcers cleared the streets, the Cinders and National Guard patrolled regularly, and by the late night the district was at peace once more. It was, he decided as he stood out front, looking across at the Hyacinth’s stables where the doors had been torn from their hinges, a fragile peace. Godglass prices would continue to increase, and these riots would only get worse.

Would he even be on hand for the next one? Or would Tirana be forced to deploy her enforcers to protect the hotel, escalating the violence until people ended up dead?

The questions haunted him as he went back inside, walking through the empty lobby where only a few gas lamps remained lit and a single porter was on duty at the concierge’s office. Demir paused at the desk. “It’s Mahren, right?” he asked the porter.

“Yes, sir,” Mahren responded with a smile. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“Find out the name of the captain of the Cinders who I defied this afternoon. I want you to send him a case of Ereptian wine.”

“Sir?”

“Best not to stay on the bad side of the Cinders,” Demir explained. He’d already drawn up an apology in his head, explaining with all earnestness that he’d only been looking out for the safety of the Cinders themselves and he might have overstepped his bounds. It was bullshit, but Cinders weren’t known for their grasp of subtlety. A case of wine and some contrition would go a long way.

“I’ll send it over first thing in the morning.”

“Perfect.”

“Good night, sir.”

Demir raised a hand in answer as he headed past the stairs, down the hall, and out into the dark, silent garden. Three weeks since his mother’s death, and a few candles had still been left in front of the family mausoleum. It was a testament to how much the hotel staff loved her. Demir paused to watch the candles flicker, searching his memories for the last time they’d been together in this very garden. It was probably during a quiet memorial on the anniversary of his father’s death thirteen or fourteen years ago. Half his lifetime. It seemed strange that it could be so long.

Lamps were still lit in the small workshop on the far end of the garden, but when Demir reached it he found Thessa missing. She’d been here recently – the workbenches were covered in pages upon pages of notes, and a fire still burned in the furnace. He sat down in her chair and looked over those notes. One page described every single aspect of the workshop itself, from the furnace walls to the tools. Recent repairs, it said in quick, flowing handwriting, keep an eye on crack at the back of furnace. There was a shopping list beside it. Better bit iron. Eight ounces of omnisand. Larger water bucket.

The notes quickly moved beyond the mundane, and he could see that she’d made a thorough examination of both the destroyed phoenix channel prototype and the original schematics. There were a dozen drawings of possible alterations, and extensive ruminations on alternative power sources.

How long was it since the riot? Nine hours? And she’d made this much progress already. Demir flipped through the pages, understanding only half of it, growing more and more impressed. She wasn’t just a siliceer with an ear for resonance. She was a proper engineer – someone who understood theory and science at the highest levels. He found a page that contained a small treatise on insulation and how it could be applied to the phoenix channel to increase the energy-to-sorcery return.

He sat back, pushing the papers away from him, lost in thought.

“Demir?”

He craned his neck to see Montego standing in the doorway. “How did it go?” Demir asked.

Montego looked tired, his wide brow creased by a scowl. He’d been gone since sunup, rushing around to make sure that there’d be no further action after the Ivory Forest Glassworks. “I think things are quiet,” he rumbled. “The Magna want to question both of us but have been distracted all day by the riots. No one followed us to Wagonside, so the Prosotsi are in the clear. Not a single mention of Thessa’s name or her pseudonym. They likely think she died in the fire, but that might change once they get a better count of prisoners and the corpses.” Montego paused. “I heard you stood up to the Cinders on behalf of rioting teamsters.”

Demir grimaced, bracing himself for a lecture. “I didn’t want to see people die,” he said.

“Good.”

Demir raised an eyebrow at Montego. “Good?”

“Yes. That is the Demir I know. The old Demir.”

“The old Demir would have never been so stupid.”

“Bollocks. The old Demir didn’t take shit from anyone. He used his power to help people.”

“Did I?” Demir asked faintly, trying to look into his own past. “I don’t even remember anymore. My whole past is a foggy tableau of sex, power, and arrogance.”

“You were still a child,” Montego pointed out gently. “Perhaps you had excesses, but I’ve always known you to have your heart in the right place. Remember that orphanage out past Bravectia? You seduced a woman three times your age to get those kids indefinite funding.”

Demir felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward at the memory. “Did I do it for the kids, or did I do it for the challenge?”

“I met that woman, Demir. You definitely did it for the kids.” Montego clapped his hands together. “Bah! I’m exhausted from pretending to care about the Magna all day. I’m going to bed.”

Demir turned back to watch the fire in the furnace. Was it the old Demir? Had that shadow of himself escaped the prison in the back of his mind? It didn’t feel like it. He still had no confidence. He still feared reprisal from the Cinders, or censure from the other guild-families. Taking the side of a mob so blatantly would surely have consequences.

Sick of his own thoughts, Demir went looking for Thessa. It was with some surprise that he found her on the roof, sitting beside the mews, one hand reaching through the bars to gently stroke the injured falcon inside. He shut the door behind him, sure to make just enough noise that his presence didn’t go undetected. The roof was lit only by a sliver of moonlight, and he found a piece of sightglass in his pocket to enhance his vision.

“Is he yours?” he asked.

To his surprise, Thessa sniffed and dabbed at her face with a sleeve before turning toward him. Her eyes were red, her cheeks damp. “You didn’t know?”

Demir came over to sit beside her, looking at the falcon through the caging of the mews. Its left wing was bandaged but it seemed to have calmed down since first arriving at the hotel. It bore Thessa’s stroking with remarkable patience, huddled close to her. He said, “I couldn’t be sure. Kastora told me you were an accomplished falconer, so when I saw an injured falcon outside an empty mews, I made a leap.”

“You brought him all the way back from a war zone?”

Demir chuckled. “It was a pain in the ass, really. I had to use a glove as an impromptu hood until I could borrow one from an officer. Your guy was not happy.” He paused, tapping the ground with one finger to get the falcon’s attention. “I inherited a falcon from my dad when I was a kid. He died right around the time my political career started to pick up, and I just never had the chance to go back to it. I suppose it left me with a soft spot.”

“His name is Ekhi,” Thessa told him. “He’s the last thing I have from my parents. I thought I’d lost him. It twisted my gut into knots, and here he is.”

Demir examined the side of Thessa’s face, surprised at how raw and vulnerable she looked over a single falcon. “I was going to mention him earlier today, but the riots took my attention.”

Thessa lowered her hand from the bird, pulling it back through the narrow bars. She gave a little shudder, and that vulnerability seemed to melt away. “About that … look, I’m sorry about the forgeglass. I acted on instinct, and it was completely out of my rights. You had things in hand. I shouldn’t have intervened.”

“I’m not so sure I did.” Every instinct told Demir to give Thessa a dressing-down. That was what a guild-family patriarch did when someone overstepped themselves. It wasn’t just his right, it was his duty. He could hear his mother’s teachings in the back of his head. He needed to maintain his authority, or no one would respect him. Instead, he just shook his head. “There’s no telling what a mob will do. Maybe my dumb speech was enough. Maybe this was enough.” He touched his glassdancer sigil. “The mob might have even turned on us in the effort to get free forgeglass. But the fact is they didn’t. The Grappo earned a lot of goodwill today, and I have you to thank for it.”

“Me?” Thessa scoffed. “You stood up to the Cinders for commoners. When’s the last time that happened?”

“And I’ll probably lose some alliances for it,” Demir said thoughtfully. “I suppose I did gain some friends. One of the union bosses came to me this evening asking to become my client. Just him and his family – not the whole union – but it’s a powerful message. He’s abandoning the Stavri for us.”

“May he be the first of many.” Thessa wiped her eyes again and smiled at him. It was a sad smile, but pretty, and it caught Demir off guard. The moment suddenly reminded him of his first sweetheart; sitting under the stars on the hotel roof, sharing a bottle of pilfered wine while her father searched the hotel for her. He tried to remember her name and found he could not. What happened to her, he wondered. Her father was a traveling merchant, and Demir had never seen her again after that night.

Demir moved away from the mews, shifting to sit across from Thessa with his back to a chimney. She stretched out, tapping his feet with hers. For the first time he noticed that she was clutching a sheaf of papers. “Did you have a chance to look over the contract?” he asked, guessing at what they were.

“Ah.” She lifted the papers, handing them across to him. “I had Breenen draw up a copy. All signed.”

“No alterations?”

“None. The contract is perfect. If anything, it favors me by a large margin.”

Demir stared at her signature for a few moments, then at the place where his own would go, before he went to bed. They’d already shaken hands on their deal, but he’d nursed a pervasive worry that she would back out at the last minute. “A partner isn’t quite the same as a client-patron relationship, but all the same: welcome to the Grappo guild-family.”

To his surprise, Thessa gave a happy little shudder. “Oh! So strange. I knew a day like this would come eventually, but I expected it was a decade off.”

Demir regarded her for a moment. Perhaps it was the high emotion of facing down a crowd, or the fact that Thessa was finally wearing a sleek tunic that fit her properly, but he felt like he was looking at her with different eyes. She looked so young, but everything about her was old – her poise, confidence, professionalism. She didn’t just have the skills of an experienced siliceer, she had the body language of one too. It was, as much as he hated to admit it, deeply attractive.

“I don’t mean to pry,” she said shyly, “but I saw the mausoleum in the hotel garden. A few of the porters lit candles there while I was working. Is that … where your mother is?”

“It’s where all the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Grappo get buried,” Demir replied. He looked up into the sky, staring at the glittering of the stars, his thoughts turning to that purple-and-white marble. “I think I might be the last one.” He looked sharply at Thessa, immediately regretting the words – and the glimpse into his fears that it gave her – but she was also staring into the sky.

“You don’t think you’ll have children?” she asked.

“I’m twenty-nine. If I had a child next year I’d be ten years too late on creating the brood for a new generation of Grappo. At least according to most guild-families.” Demir felt a spike of anger at all the responsibilities and expectations piled on his shoulders, but forced it back down. “You?”

“Hah!” Thessa blurted. “Most female siliceers don’t even start thinking about kids until their thirties. The opposite of you guild-family types, I suppose. Until a week ago my plan was to finish my tutelage under Kastora and start my own glassworks. Maybe even inherit his. I’d think about a family after.” A half smile formed on her lips. “You know, I’ve always preferred men, but figured I’d end up with a woman. Easier that way. Cleaner. We’d just adopt, and I’d never have to worry about the rigmarole of pregnancy.”

“Smart,” Demir commented, watching her carefully. The conversation had turned more personal than he’d intended. Was that by happenstance? Or was she probing? “Does business come into it?”

“Business always comes into it,” Thessa replied, “as I’m sure you know better than I.”

Demir snorted. “It’s what’s expected.” He paused, biting his tongue, knowing he should guard himself. He barely knew Thessa, and she was his new business partner. He needed to remain closed off. “The truth is, I don’t want to make a deal with some guild-family for a wife. That’s what they all do and it sickens me. I’d take her family prestige, she’d take my money. We’d have misters and mistresses on the side and grow to hate each other over cold dinners in empty dining halls.” Demir swallowed a mouthful of bile. “I think I’d leave again before it came to that.”

“Even though that’s what everyone does?”

“Especially because that’s what everyone does.” Demir tapped Thessa’s boot with his own. “The thing is, I know that there are good people among the guild-families. Interesting people. Intelligent people. If you gave me a week I could probably come up with a dozen women in Ossa who I could live with, and even enjoy. But it’s the trappings of it all that I hate. The expectations. The coldness of the contracts.”

“I would never have pegged you as a romantic.” Thessa was grinning now, and it made Demir laugh.

“Maybe I am. I’ve always liked the idea of the world being better than it really is. Comes from not being allowed a proper childhood, I suppose. I never got to grow out of childish ideas.”

Thessa’s grin slowly faded, and Demir wondered if he’d said the wrong thing. After a few moments of silence she said, “Mine was cut short too.” Demir waited for her to explain further, but she just stared at her hands. “I don’t know where Kastora is buried.”

It was an odd non sequitur. “I’m sure we can find out. Might have to wait until after the war.”

She seemed relieved by this. She continued, “I’d like that. I still don’t know where my parents are buried. I’d already been sent to study under Kastora when they died and I just … never returned.” Demir peered at her. Not a non sequitur after all. Thessa paused, looking thoughtfully over Demir’s shoulder. “I wasn’t there, and I blamed myself for that for a long time. It’s funny, I have nightmares about their deaths even though I didn’t see it. I sometimes wonder if my imagination is worse than the event itself.”

“How did they die?” Demir asked, his curiosity getting the better of him. She just shook her head, but Demir got the distinct impression that they’d been killed. He put his hands in his pockets, his attention returned entirely to Thessa. “Why did you blame yourself?”

“Because,” she said with a shrug, “I … I’m not even sure. I guess I felt like I could have done something. But I was a thirteen-year-old girl. How crazy is that?”

“I could have done something to protect my mother,” Demir said unhappily. His mirth was gone, and he regretted it. “I’m a glassdancer. Six thugs with cudgels would have been a pile of meat before they could have struck her.”

“Only if you’d been there,” Thessa pointed out.

“But I might have been. If I’d been in the capital at the time, I probably would have walked her home from the Assembly. I used to be on the Assembly myself. I…” He trailed off. “I guess I technically am still. You know, I’ve been thinking about her death every day since word arrived. What I would have done. The pain I would have inflicted on the people who wanted to hurt her.”

“Those people,” Thessa said softly, “were not stupid. You’re a glassdancer, and they would have made sure to do it when you couldn’t defend her.”

Demir didn’t want her to be right. It was easier to think poorly of himself, to give in to recrimination and anger, than it was to face reality. He knew because it was the same thing he’d done inside his head for years. “You’re far too wise for your age,” he said.

“And you’re far too haunted for yours,” she replied. She swallowed hard, her eyes widening slightly, as if realizing that she might have stepped over the line.

Demir knew he should be irritated. She had overstepped her bounds, and any other guild-family patriarch would have put her in her place. But as before, he just couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. “Oh? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Thessa hesitated. “It means I can tell that you think you’re some kind of monster, like when you took off your glove in the omnichapel this morning. But it’s obvious you’re not a monster. I saw the way you protected your hotel, and then those people in the street that you owed nothing.” Thessa gave an embarrassed laugh. “I’m so sorry, I’m waxing philosophical about things that I know nothing about. Please forgive me.”

Demir stared at her, feeling both touched and bemused. “You are something else,” he said.

“I really am sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Montego is the only one who’s spoken so candidly with me for … since I can remember. I’m not sure I agree with you, but I can appreciate your honesty.” He snorted, looking down at the contract in his hands. He got the distinct feeling that he’d made out better in this new partnership than she had. “You’re a very likable person, Thessa Foleer. Use that to your advantage.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, her chin rising toward him. “Are you tired?” she asked, reaching one hand behind her as if by instinct to pet Ekhi through the mews bars.

“Pardon?”

“I’m just saying … we have a new partnership.” She pursed her lips in a smile. “Why don’t we go back to my suite and split a bottle of wine? You’ll have to spring for the wine, though. I seem to have left my wallet in Grent.”

Demir felt a warm little pleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach. The darkness that had swirled around inside him just moments ago seemed to have fled. His inner thoughts were quiet, his body relaxed, and he returned her smile. Why not? He pretended to pat his pockets, looking around in mock alarm. “I’m not sure if I can afford it either. Maybe something very cheap, I … Yes! Of course, let’s go raid my glassdamned wine cellar.” He got to his feet and reached a hand down to Thessa. She clasped it, and he pulled her up.

She rose to his side and threw her arm around his waist in a half hug. Demir turned them toward the roof access and they walked like that across the darkness. It was quiet and peaceful, and he enjoyed the friendly intimacy.

They reached the main floor and were walking arm in arm toward the stairs to the wine cellar when Breenen came hurrying around the corner. Demir felt all his good feelings evaporate as he saw the look of worry on the majordomo’s face.

“Demir!” Breenen called, looking over his shoulder as he approached.

Demir extricated himself from Thessa. “What’s wrong?”

“The Cinders,” Breenen said in a low voice. “They’re in the foyer, and they’re demanding your presence. They say they have orders to take you to the Inner Assembly.”

“It’s after glassdamned midnight,” Thessa said. “What could they possibly want?”

Breenen was clearly shaken. Demir kept his own concerns to himself. The Assembly’s elite killers weren’t known for their patience, and they weren’t known for making pleasant calls, either. “Is it an arrest?” he asked. “Did I break some glassdamned obscure law earlier today?”

“They didn’t say it was.”

Demir swore under his breath, considering his options. “Then don’t wake Montego. Best if I go quietly, find out what the Inner Assembly wants. It’s probably about the riot.”

“Are you sure?” Breenen asked. “They’ve never summoned anyone from the hotel like this on my watch. People who go with the Cinders tend to disappear.”

Demir put his hand on Breenen’s shoulder and injected confidence into his voice. “They’re taking me to the Inner Assembly. If those assholes want to talk to me, they’re going to do it one way or another. Besides, I’m hardly defenseless. Sorry, Thessa. Let’s put a cork in that bottle of wine.”

She gave him a smile and a nod, but it was clear she was concerned.

Demir adjusted his tunic and strode to the foyer, pausing just once to look back at Breenen and Thessa. “Oh,” he called to Breenen, “if I’m not back in a few hours, then you can wake up Montego.”