In the Shadow of Lightning

41

Demir made his headquarters at Fort Alameda and watched with bated breath as hundreds of scouting reports poured in over the next day and a half. From the vantage of the fort he could see some of the washed-out remains of Kerite’s camp. It looked like a shoreline after a storm, muddy and covered in trash. Thousands of figures picked over the area, removing bodies and recovering equipment.

“What’s Kerite going to do next?” Tadeas asked. Uncle Tad sat in the fort commander’s chair, feet up on the commander’s desk while she was out overseeing the fresh overhaul of her fort. Demir’s maps, messages, and reports lay across every available surface, even covered much of the floor, laid out so he could see them as a whole in one glance.

Demir was not glancing at them now. He was watching the desolate floodplain from the fort commander’s office window. “It seems,” he said cautiously, “that she and the Grent are on the back foot. Over half their forces were washed down the river. Most of the soldiers seem to have survived, but it’ll take her a couple of weeks to bring them back up to fighting strength – they lost so much gear that she can probably only field a fully armed brigade at this moment.”

“The Inner Assembly will want you to press the attack,” Tadeas said, tapping his boot on the desk to whatever tune was playing in his head. It sounded like a funeral march.

“And I’d be a fool if I listened to them,” Demir snorted. “The Foreign Legion has had a couple days’ rest after that loss in the Copper Hills, but we’re still short on cureglass, and morale is low. Our enemy still has more glassdancers, better troops, and they’ve pulled way back to the coast where they can sit in the Grent suburbs and resupply easily. Any attack on them at this moment would be a fool’s errand.”

It wasn’t just cureglass they were short on. Demir was having a hard time finding enough forgeglass for the soldiers or witglass for the officers. Milkglass, and the blessed pain relief it offered, was also growing scarce. He didn’t tell Tadeas any of this, as it might lead to a more painful conversation. He simply wasn’t ready to mention the scarcity of cindersand to anyone yet.

“Is that why you’ve been ignoring Father Vorcien’s demands for an update?” Tad gestured at a neat little stack of messages marked with the Vorcien silic sigil.

“I’ve been ignoring them because I plan on telling him myself,” Demir replied, finally pulling himself away from the window and crossing to the desk, where he pushed his uncle’s feet to the floor. He picked up the stack of messages and put them in his uniform jacket pocket. “I’ve given orders to redouble our scouting efforts, secure lines of communication to Harbortown, and speed up citadel maintenance across every one of our star forts.”

“You’re going into Ossa?” Tadeas asked with a scowl. “Is that wise?”

“I won’t be gone for more than twelve hours,” Demir promised. “If Kerite or the Grent so much as twitch from their positions, I’ll be back here fast as lightning.” He tilted his head at his uncle, whose scowl only deepened. “You don’t think I should say a word to the Assembly until I win another victory, do you?”

“It would cement your advantage. That maneuver with the flood was a damned good one, and the cuirassiers did give Kerite a genuine fight, but there’s not a lot of glory in either of those things. Ossa responds to glory.”

“I seem to remember that you don’t care much for glory.”

“I don’t. But my responsibility is to keep a single battalion of combat engineers alive. You’ve got to juggle the military, politics, and public perception all at once.” Tadeas grinned at him. “There’s a reason I gave you my spot on the Assembly all those years ago.”

Demir looked back across the stacks of messages, the spy reports, and the maps. He was plagued by a thousand little doubts, bouncing around inside his skull like bullet ricochets, all of them overshadowed by his greatest failure. He didn’t want to go back to Ossa. He didn’t want to face the Assembly, or see Thessa again, or have the safety of the Empire on his shoulders. He wanted to run away.

But despite everything, glimmers of his old self seemed to have returned. He could see a path to victory. It was a knife’s edge, depending on factors outside of his control, but it was still a path. He could defeat Kerite, and in doing so redeem his name in the history books. The cost, however, would be great.

Too great.

“I’m not going to fight another battle,” he told Tadeas quietly. “I’m going back to Ossa to try and convince Father Vorcien to sue for peace before the Grent can recover.”

Demir should have gone directly to the Assembly, where word had already been sent ahead for Father Vorcien and his Inner Assembly cronies to await Demir’s report. But his trip into Ossa was more than just a victory run. As Tadeas so succinctly put it, Demir’s position as both a general and guild-family patriarch meant he had to juggle military, political, and public perception all at once. He couldn’t afford to let anyone else shape his juggling act.

“I’ll be just a moment,” he told his carriage driver, then sprinted up the stairs into the Hyacinth. He paused briefly, taking in the quiet lobby and the small lunch rush in the hotel restaurant, before hurrying behind the desk and into Breenen’s office. He closed the door behind him, and the hotel concierge looked up in surprise.

“Master Demir! I didn’t know you were back.”

“Only to make my report,” Demir replied quickly. “I have special instructions.” He produced several papers from his pocket and handed them to Breenen. “I won a great victory the other day and have been holding back reports from the Assembly. I want this press release in every newspaper for the evening edition, and this press release to go out first thing in the morning.”

Breenen glanced at both press releases, a half smile forming on his face. “Ah! Staying one step ahead of the Assembly. Just like your mother.”

“Shaping reality is a skill just like any other,” Demir responded, “and the advantage always goes to the first person to give the public what they want. The Assembly wants to control information. The public wants that warm fuzzy feeling that everything will be okay.”

“Surely the Assembly won’t try to suppress a victory?” Breenen said.

“From me? I won’t risk it. I have at least two enemies on the Inner Assembly. I have to move quicker than they. I…” Demir trailed off, truly looking at Breenen for the first time. Despite that half smile, his brows were knit in worry, his body language that of someone holding uncomfortably to bad news. “What’s happened?” Demir asked. “Is it Thessa? Did something go wrong with her project?”

Breenen moved a few piles of papers around on his desk, not meeting Demir’s eye. “A couple of things, sir.”

“Go on!” Demir checked his pocket watch. He was going to be late for his meeting with the Inner Assembly. “Make it quick.”

“Perhaps it should wait, sir.”

Demir ground his teeth. It probably should wait, but if something bad happened it should slot into his calculations so he couldn’t make things worse. “Out with it.”

“The Dorlani attempted to burgle the hotel, sir. I sent a runner to let you know, but they might not have been able to make it through the military blockades.”

A cold trail of sweat sprang up in the small of Demir’s back. His swirling thoughts of powerful arguments and political maneuvering suddenly disappeared, and his focus was now entirely on Breenen. “Thessa’s project?”

“It was their target,” Breenen confirmed. “They tried to snatch notes, books, and even the project itself. They poisoned Montego’s tea and killed a cook and a porter. They might have gotten away with it if Lady Foleer weren’t up so late working. She managed to rouse Montego. The intruders were … dealt with.”

“Piss!” Demir swore. He began to pace around the small office. Their greatest weapon in this silic race for a phoenix channel was that no one actually knew they were participating. That advantage was now gone. “We must have a spy.”

“I…” Breenen grimaced. “I’m not sure we do, sir. I spent all night interviewing the entire staff with shackleglass. I don’t even know what she’s working on, and none of the staff do either.”

“Then how the piss did the Dorlani find out?” Demir demanded. He could feel a rising panic in the pit of his stomach and tried to fight it down. He couldn’t defend the Empire and his guild-family all at the same time.

“We managed to interrogate one survivor of the attack. Their orders came directly from Aelia Dorlani. She must already know what Lady Foleer is working on.”

“But how?” Demir demanded again. His pacing grew more frantic until he forced himself to take a calming breath and sit down in the little chair across from Breenen’s desk. “Shit and piss. Well, at least she was already one of our enemies on the Inner Assembly. Does she know her burglars failed?”

“She must by now,” Breenen said, “but we’ve kept it very quiet. She won’t know that we pried information out of her lackeys, and she won’t know that they’re all dead. The bodies are still in our ice cellar. Montego says he’s saving them for something special.”

“I don’t want to know what, but I probably should.” Demir considered heading right up to Montego’s suite and ordering him to stand down. They couldn’t escalate this, not right now. He checked his pocket watch again. He was definitely going to be late. “Where’s Thessa?”

“She’s in the garden, working on her project. Would you like to see her?”

“Not right now.” Demir opened the door to make sure no one was standing at the hotel’s desk just outside, then closed it again and turned to Breenen.

In a low voice he said, “Thessa is a Holikan orphan.”

Breenen’s whole face fell. “You’re joking, sir.”

“No. We almost slept together the other night. We likely would have if I hadn’t been called away by the Cinders. I saw her just briefly before heading to the front and that’s when she told me.”

“Does she know…?”

“No. I don’t think she does. She was practically a child when it happened, and wasn’t present in the city. My guess is that Master Kastora shielded her from most of the information, but she’s going to figure it out eventually. Those press releases have my old nickname all over them. Another victory for the Lightning Prince. If she doesn’t make the connection then, the newspapers will make it plain as they dig into my past. Everything Mother buried is going to get brought to light.”

“Do you not want me to send the press releases?”

“The Grappo name is more important than my relationship with Thessa,” Demir said flatly. He’d been warring with himself about this for days, and it was the only possible conclusion. “I will tell her when I return, and then we’ll see how she reacts. I … You’re giving me that look again.”

“What look, sir?”

“Like you have bad news you don’t want to have to tell me.”

Breenen made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “You’re very good at reading people, sir.”

Demir checked his pocket watch one last time and finally put it away. He should take Breenen’s advice and put everything off until later. There was a war on, after all. “Tell me,” he ordered.

“Sir,” Breenen said, removing something from his inner jacket pocket, “a letter came for you earlier today. It only contained this.”

Demir took a yellowed piece of paper from Breenen. He recognized an old military missive right away, from the shape and weight of the paper. It was folded down the middle, and he opened it to find a very short note.

It was signed by Capric Vorcien, and dated the night that Holikan was sacked.

Demir felt nothing for a very long time. He stood next to Breenen’s desk, staring at the paper, vaguely aware of the sounds of the hotel outside the little office. He finally licked his lips only to find them parched, both lips and tongue as dry as a mouth full of sand.

“Who sent this?” he asked.

“No idea, sir. Whoever it was didn’t want to be found out. They routed the envelope through at least two post offices before it arrived here.”

“Is it authentic?”

Breenen hesitated for too long before nodding. “I believe it is, sir.”

Demir cast about himself. He still couldn’t feel anything. His thoughts and mind were absolutely blank, as if they’d simply been unable to comprehend the crime – the betrayal – evidenced before him. He read the missive over several more times. His breath grew short, his eyes having trouble focusing. For half a moment he thought he felt the gentle tickle of his victor’s cloak rubbing against his neck. The last time he saw it, it was still wrapped around that poor dead child in Holikan.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Breenen said quickly. “It’s my fault. I should have waited to show you. I…”

“Did you put a tail on Capric?”

“The moment I laid eyes on this note.”

“Where is he?”

“Sir, I don’t think it’s a good idea to respond right now.”

“Where is he?” Demir couldn’t remember a single time – since childhood, perhaps – that he’d raised his voice at Breenen. The words came out as a frantic, furious shout and in that moment it was like a stopper had shot out of a wine bottle and all his emotions suddenly bubbled out bereft of logic or stability. He could feel the cracks forming in his mind, battered by an unstoppable maelstrom of fury. “Where the piss is he, Breenen?”

Breenen flinched away. “At the High Vorcien Club, sir.”

“Give me the shackleglass you keep in your desk.” Breenen hesitated for just a moment before fetching it and handing it over. Demir slid it into his cork-lined pocket and was out of the office and halfway to the Hyacinth front doors before he realized that he didn’t have a plan or any faculty for measured reason. He tried to stop himself – to arrest this idiot course of action – but his feet just kept carrying him forward.

“Sir, the Inner Assembly!” Breenen said, catching up to him and physically pulling on his sleeve.

“Can glassdamned wait.” Demir whirled back toward Breenen and took the concierge by both shoulders. “He was my friend,” he said softly to Breenen. “He was my friend and he murdered thousands of people and destroyed my life. I want answers and revenge, and I want them now.”