In the Shadow of Lightning

2

There was a time when Demir would have entered Ossa only with great pomp and circumstance; dancers, jugglers, wild animals, provincial exotics, bread for the masses. It was the prerogative of a popular politician when visiting the capital, and Demir had used it to build up massive amounts of goodwill with the Ossan people.

That was before Holikan. Before he ran away from his own damned failure.

Entering the city on a private coach service was … something else. For nine years he’d lived among poor provincials, experiencing the dirty, depraved depths of the human condition. In all that time nothing had compared to Ossa: the noise of millions of people packed together; the smell of Glasstown glassworks burning through whole forests every day to produce valuable godglass; the taste of soot and human suffering on the tip of his tongue. Returning to that was not a welcome experience, but it did feel a bit like home.

He went directly to the Hyacinth Hotel, where he stood in the street, looking up at the building where he’d spent much of his childhood. The Hyacinth was a magnificent structure, four vaulted stories of granite with golden gargoyles, immense windows, and a location in the Assembly District that would make an emperor jealous. Purple drapes hung from each window, stamped with the lightning-cracked silic sigil of the Grappo.

Incredible as it might be, it was a painful reminder that the Grappo had once been one of the most powerful guild-families in Ossa. Generations ago, to be sure, but the Hyacinth was all that remained of that wealth and prestige.

And Demir was practically all that remained of the Grappo.

All around him, the streets were full of people celebrating the coming winter solstice. Masked revelers, dressed scantily despite the cold, carried tin flagons of winter beer, throwing paper streamers back and forth across the street, following the bread wagons distributing free meals for the poor. On another day, Demir might have enjoyed the levity of it all. He would have admired the women, laughed at the clowns, and helped distribute winter beer from the front step of the hotel. Not today. Not with the hotel steps draped in a black mourning carpet.

Demir jogged up the massive marble stairs and through the big double doors of the Hyacinth, slipping a few banknotes into the hand of a surprised porter as he passed. During his journey he had made a transformation, changing out his provincial workman’s tunic for a scarlet jacket with purple and gold trim. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the fine clothes hanging uncomfortably, trying to take himself out of the role of Demir the provincial grifter, and back into Demir Grappo, dignified glassdancer and new patriarch of the Grappo guild-family.

Like the sights and sounds of the city, it was a change that felt regrettably natural.

He did not recognize most of the porters, bellboys, or waiters moving through the foyer, but he knew the rhythm with which they walked. He skirted the main floor, heading up the large double staircase to the second floor, where he was stopped by a Grappo enforcer dressed as a porter. She was a young woman, pretty face marred by a soldier’s scar across one cheek, a sword and pistol hanging from her belt along with a cork pouch filled with godglass. The pinkie nail of her left hand was marked with purple client paint to show her allegiance to the Grappo.

“Are you visiting someone, sir?” she said as she maneuvered herself between him and the hallway. To his surprise, she did not look at his hands before interfering, instead meeting his gaze without submissiveness.

Demir lifted his right hand, palm flat against his chest to display the silic sigil. “Adriana is dead already,” he said. “I think Breenen might be overdoing it by posting a guard now.”

A look of confusion crossed the young woman’s face, and then her eyes widened. “Master Demir?”

“In the flesh.”

She inhaled sharply. “Master Vorcien said you weren’t supposed to be here until tomorrow!” She looked around, seemed at a loss, and snapped a salute. “My name is Tirana Kirkovik. I’m the hotel master-at-arms.”

“We have one of those now?” Demir asked in surprise. His mother had always been light on security, insisting on treating the hotel as such, rather than as a guild-family mansion.

“Yes, sir. I’ve been with the hotel for four years.”

Demir searched her eyes. Still no fear, nor submission. She did not care that he was a glassdancer, and was only mildly embarrassed to realize that he was her new boss. Good. “You’re a Kirkovik.”

“Indeed. Hammish Kirkovik is my grandfather.”

“I like Hammish. Still with the Foreign Legion?”

“Retired last year, sir. He’s said a lot of good things about you.”

“That’s because he has very poor judgment of character.” Demir glanced Tirana up and down. She had a soldier’s stance, confident and erect, one hand resting comfortably on the pommel of her sword. At first impression, his mother had chosen her master-at-arms well. “Pleasure to meet you, Tirana. Could you let Breenen know that I’m examining my mother’s suite?”

“Of course, sir!” Tirana turned and hurried down the stairs back to the foyer.

Demir continued on his course, walking down the long, crimson-carpeted hallways of the hotel until he found a little side hall with a sign hung on a string to block the way. It declared this hallway HOTEL PERSONNEL ONLY.

He ducked under the string and walked down to the only door. It was locked, but pressing a catch beneath the gold leaf three inches to the right of the latch caused the door to click and spring open. He stepped inside.

His mother’s quarters occupied a pair of rooms that had once been a servants’ galley and recovery room. It was much as it was the last time he’d seen it: white walls with purple accents, a massive fireplace between two blue hammerglass windows that looked out over the park, fragrant cedar desk and bookshelves, with massive wingback chairs for entertaining guests. To the left was the closed door of the bedroom, next to a door that connected to the secret servants’ hallways that wound through the hotel.

The only thing missing was his mother’s papers. They were gone – all of them, including all the notebooks that had once filled dozens of shelves. There was no clutter, no encyclopedias at hand. It was like she’d just … moved out.

The appearance of the room shocked Demir almost as much as news of his mother’s death had. He checked the drawers only to find them empty, then the cabinets on the right and left. Personal effects remained: crystal drink holder, silver candlesticks, a small ivory carving of a Purnian elephant. But all her letters, notes, and personal correspondence were gone. Demir threw himself into one of the wingback chairs in frustration, resting his chin despondently on one hand.

He was staring at the empty bookshelf when he could have sworn he saw something out of the corner of his eye. It was a face, looking at him through the hammerglass window of his mother’s study.

It was there for only a moment, elongated and dark-skinned, with delicate features and an unnaturally long neck. Black beady eyes stared back at him over a deformed jaw with a severe underbite and jagged teeth. When he turned to look straight at the window, the face was gone. A cold sweat broke out across the back of his neck. The face was burned into his memory, like a face from a child’s illustration of something that walks the night. Except it was broad daylight in the Assembly District.

He reacted by instinct, using his sorcery to seize a water glass from across the room. It shattered into a dozen shards, each poised at chest height, ready to be thrown at an assailant with the effort of a thought. Demir got up slowly, his throat tight as he crossed the room. He slid the hammerglass windowpane open, sticking his head out to look up, down, and to the sides. Nothing there. Entirely his imagination. Could it be the stress of returning to the capital? Could it be a warping in the glass itself? He touched the hammerglass with his sorcerous senses. Like all godglass, it did not respond to his sorcerous touch. It was completely normal.

“Demir!”

Demir brought himself back in and shut and locked the window, to find Breenen standing in the doorway. The Grappo guild-family majordomo looked like he’d aged twenty years in the last ten. He was a small man with a mouse-like, scholarly face and a pair of spectacles perched on the end of his nose and light skin that betrayed his Purnian ancestry. He was in his mid-fifties, with short hair that had long since gone prematurely gray. He’d served Adriana since Demir’s childhood, and had been her circumspect lover for much of that time.

Breenen had been a military surgeon with the Foreign Legion in his youth – a hard man to crack during the best of times. Hiding beneath the clear exhaustion, Demir thought he could see hints of worry, grief, and anger in his eyes.

In the few moments that they looked at each other, Demir felt a thousand unsaid things lash at the air between them. Breenen likely wanted to ask him why he hadn’t been here to protect his mother. Demir wanted to ask why she’d gone to the Assembly without bodyguards. Reproach, recriminations, anger, and grief. It would all continue to go unsaid. The Ossan way.

Demir cleared his throat, using the sound to cover for himself as his sorcery placed the shards of drinking glass on the table on the other side of the room. “Thank you for taking care of everything,” he said quietly. “Has she been buried?”

“Next to your father in the mausoleum. It was a small ceremony, but a dozen guild-family heads insisted on coming.”

“Good. I’ll visit her as soon as I can.”

“I’ll make sure you’re given time to be alone.”

There was a long, awkward pause that Demir broke by sitting down. He still felt slightly unnerved by whatever he thought he had seen in the window. It must have just been the stress on his mind.

“This master-at-arms?” he asked pointedly.

“Captain Kirkovik is a trusted member of the guild-family,” Breenen said. “Adriana vetted her. Tirana has renounced her allegiance to the Kirkovik and is a Grappo client.”

“I like her. Where are my mother’s papers? Her notes? Her spy reports and documents?”

Breenen grimaced, finally walking into the room and sinking into the wingback chair opposite Demir. In that moment his age really showed, and he looked like a frail old man whom life had stabbed in the back by taking away his employer and lover all in the same blow. “The Assembly confiscated everything,” Breenen said. “Sent around the Cinders and packed up anything that had her handwriting or an official seal. She was a powerful member of the Assembly, privy to state secrets and government machinations. They didn’t want anything left behind.”

Demir swore. The Cinders were the elite imperial guard, beholden only to the small group of senior Assembly members that controlled the government. “I’d hoped to get my hands on those secrets and find out what got her killed. Do you have any idea?”

In response, Breenen reached into his tunic and withdrew a small, string-tied book.

“What is that?” Demir asked.

“It’s Adriana’s death journal. She started it years ago, and it was the one thing she instructed me to hide from the Cinders in the event of her untimely demise. I was told that giving this to you was the most important thing I could do to honor her memory.”

Demir took it, running his hands across the calfskin cover. His chest suddenly tightened painfully. Was this what grief felt like? “Do you know what’s in it?” he asked.

“I have a general idea, but she asked me to keep it secret from everyone. I assumed that included myself, and I respected her wishes.”

Demir undid the string and opened to the first page. There was a note scrawled in his mother’s perfect handwriting. It said:

Demir pursed his lips. “Fulgurist Societies” was simply the name given collectively to Ossan social clubs. There were at least a thousand in the capital alone, and everyone belonged to at least one. He still paid dues to three, though he hadn’t kept in touch with any of his old friends and contacts from any of them. His mother belonged to dozens. Her Societies might prove useful, but only if they allowed him entrance. He put that thought aside for the time being. There, at the bottom of the page, was an addendum. It was written in smaller letters in the same handwriting, dated eighteen months ago.

Demir read the addendum several times, a feeling of disquiet creeping into his belly. He opened his mouth to ask Breenen what he knew about Master Kastora, but the wording of the addendum stopped him. Secrecy may be the only thing that saves us. What a strange thing to write. She was not normally one for hyperbole. How serious must it be to be included in the very front of her death journal?

Demir glanced toward the window where he thought he had seen that otherworldly face. It wasn’t there, of course. It never had been. Just a figment of his stressed imagination. He cleared his throat, read the letter again, and then closed the death journal before carefully retying the string.

He knew the name. Master Kastora was one of the most highly regarded sorcerous engineers in the world; a genius of a siliceer, admired even by his critics. What might Mother have been working on with him? She wasn’t a siliceer, she was a politician.

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. A porter stuck her head inside. “Master Capric Vorcien is here,” she informed them.

Demir exchanged a glance with Breenen. “He’ll have news. You can stay if you’d like.”

“It’s best if I get back to the hotel,” Breenen said reluctantly. “Shall I have a suite made up for you?”

“Please. Go ahead and send Capric in.”

Breenen made his way out of the office, only to be replaced by Capric a moment later. Demir’s friend walked in with a cane under one arm, dueling sword at his belt, his stride purposeful. “Ah, Demir! I didn’t expect you back until tomorrow. I just came by to leave an update with Breenen. Are you feeling all right?”

“Just suffering from a quick, sad journey,” Demir said, waving off the question. He felt terrible, and that strange addendum had made him feel worse. He needed time to gather his wits. Chasing down a side project of his mother’s shouldn’t be his top priority, yet the tug of her postmortem instructions was suddenly very powerful indeed. He forced himself to focus. “What news about the killers?”

“As a matter of fact, they’ve caught one.” Capric held his gloves in one hand, shaking them emphatically at the air. “Two days ago, they tracked him down trying to take a coach service into Grent.”

Demir scowled, trying not to jump to conclusions. “Only one?”

“It’s the only one they could identify from all the witnesses. He’s a former Grent soldier, and he confessed under shackleglass that he was sent – along with the rest – by the Duke of Grent. He doesn’t know why he was sent, but the duke wanted Adriana killed publicly.”

Grent was Ossa’s twin city, located just a few miles down the river, their suburbs practically bleeding into each other. On a clear day Demir could see Grent buildings from the roof of the hotel. While Ossa was the head of an empire, Grent was a small but powerful city-state with a massive merchant fleet, independent of the larger nations around it. Grent and Ossa had a history of contention, but mostly small trading disputes. Nothing to get a guild-family matriarch killed.

Except … Kastora was a Grent siliceer master. That couldn’t be a coincidence. “Glassdamn,” Demir muttered. “And the Assembly?”

“The Assembly has voted for war.”

Demir inhaled sharply. The Assembly rarely acted this quickly. “So soon? On the murder of a single politician? Grent is our neighbor!” Even with no small amount of bloodlust in his heart, Demir could not imagine his mother’s death reason enough for an entire war.

“It’s … more complicated than that,” Capric admitted. “I’m not a senior member of the Assembly so I’m not privy to everything, but I can give you the gist. The duke has been meddling in Ossan affairs for decades and he’s grown increasingly bold over the last few years. He’s stolen trade contracts, bribed Ossan magistrates, and even had Ossan officers assassinated out in the distant provinces. He’s been warned repeatedly to back off. Your mother’s murder is the last straw. The Foreign Legion has already been activated. We invade tonight.”

“To what ends?” Demir asked.

Capric spread his hands. “An international slap on the wrist. We kill some soldiers, occupy the ducal palace and the senate buildings, and then the duke surrenders with a formal apology and a massive restitution payment. You might even see some of that money.”

The idea of some government payout for his mother’s death felt more insulting than vindicating. Demir scowled. War. The word made his insides twist. And not some distant foreign war, fought through proxies on another continent. War right on their doorstep, mere miles away. Cannons and armies and fires. He tried to remember the last time the Ossan capital had seen actual military combat. Not in his lifetime, nor in those of his immediate predecessors.

It all felt so sudden, but if what Capric said about the Duke of Grent was true, it made sense. The Assembly moved so quickly only when they felt personally threatened, and one of their number murdered by a foreign assassin was awfully damned personal.

Demir said, “I’d like to question the killer.”

“Impossible, I’m afraid,” Capric said with a grimace. “The high-resonance shackleglass drove him mad. He’s a raving lunatic now.”

“Convenient.”

“Convenient or not, it happens with such powerful shackleglass.” Capric’s grimace turned into a scowl. “I know what you’re thinking. I don’t sense any foul play, at least not in the assassin’s madness.”

“There were five other killers,” Demir pointed out.

“And the Cinders are searching for them.” Capric shook his head sadly. “I suggest you let them do their jobs. We’re invading, Demir. Justice will be done for your mother and a hundred other slights, insults, and attacks.”

Demir bit hard on his tongue. It was not unheard of for shackleglass to drive a man mad, but it did seem awfully convenient. He would have to resort to unconventional means for his answers, if he was to get any. He glanced down at the death journal in his hands. He desperately wanted to show it to Capric and ask him what he thought it meant. Secrecy may be the only thing that saves us. Again, those words stopped him from acting. Mother was working with a Grent siliceer master, only to be killed by the Duke of Grent. Had she been betrayed? Was the work close to completion? What was the work?

Something was wrong about all of this. Demir’s hand itched to reach for his witglass, to churn through the possibilities. But witglass had done nothing but give him headaches since his breakdown at Holikan.

“Thank you for letting me know,” Demir said quietly.

“Of course. I know they…” Capric glanced around the office. “… ransacked things to preserve state secrets. I’m sorry that you have to stay so much in the dark. I’ll pass on whatever I can without getting into trouble.” He slapped his cane against his palm. “I should go, and I know you have a lot to catch up with. If you need anything, just call on me.”

Demir walked Capric out to the top of the stairs in the hotel foyer. He said goodbye, and then went and found Breenen in the concierge’s office. He stood in the doorway, watching Breenen write tiny, neat numbers into his ledgers for a few moments before asking, “Is my uncle’s battalion posted near Ossa?”

“It is.”

“Where are they?”

“Garrisoned just to the southwest of the city, I believe.”

Demir chewed on the inside of his cheek. On a normal day, he might have jumped in a carriage and headed into Grent directly to confront this Master Kastora and find out what he knew. If he did that now, he wouldn’t be able to return before the invasion began tonight and would be stuck behind enemy lines – a bad idea, even for a glassdancer.

“Find out exactly where they are. I might need their help with something.”

“Right away.” Breenen nodded.

“Wait!” He paused, wrestling with the question on the tip of his tongue before forcing it out. “This may seem like an odd question, but has the hotel become haunted in the last nine years?”

Breenen scowled. “Are you being serious?”

“Only slightly.” Demir decided not to follow that line of questioning. The staff would already be on edge with Adriana’s death and the return of the glassdancer prodigal son. It would complicate things if they thought his mental breakdown had caused him to go insane. Besides, Demir was a modern man. He didn’t believe in hauntings.

Demir watched Breenen hurry off across the foyer, his brow furrowed, trying to find his way through the confusion clouding his mind. He was tempted to disappear: to flee back into the provinces, where he could live out the rest of his life as a friendly grifter. Why bother himself with his mother’s puzzles and the Assembly’s new war? He could go somewhere far away where he might – someday – have the chance to be happy.

Happiness had no place in the Ossan guild-families. Only wealth, prestige, power, and progeny. Demir had little of those things, but he did have people that depended on him now. Abandoning his duties meant abandoning the hotel and everyone who worked in it. Many of them were new, but some he’d known since he was a child. He could not discard them.

Besides, there was enough of the old Demir to be intrigued by that addendum in the death journal. He could always disappear into the provinces later. For now, he needed to find out what got his mother killed.

“You left me a real shitshow, didn’t you, Mother?” he muttered to himself. “I think I will need some help.”