In the Shadow of Lightning

3

Thessa Foleer awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright in her tiny room in the dormitory of the Grent Royal Glassworks. She had dreamed of men dying; women weeping; and a city burning. It was a common nightmare, one she’d had for nine years, though it had grown more frequent as the newspapers ran story after story of the wars in the east. Sweat caused the sheets to cling to her body. She looked out the open window, unable to decide whether she’d been awoken by the nightmare or some sort of noise outside.

“I don’t wanna get up,” the figure sleeping next to her mumbled.

“Go back to sleep,” Thessa said, gently touching the head of golden hair lying on the pillow. The girl’s name was Palua. She was an apprentice at the glassworks and at nineteen just a couple of years younger than Thessa herself. Thessa grimaced. She wasn’t supposed to sleep with anyone of a lower rank. Kastora was going to give her an earful when he found out. If he found out. This would, she promised herself, be a one-time thing. No more bottles of wine and shared cigarettes late at night.

It wasn’t even a serious thing with Palua. But this was what Thessa did around the holidays, every damn time; find some way to avoid the loneliness of not having a family to visit. Last year it was that muscular guard, a real asshole of a man who turned out to be married. The year before that she’d eaten until she threw up. “I’ve got to stop doing this to myself,” she muttered, trying to work the ashy taste of cigarettes out of her mouth.

Thessa craned her head toward the sound of thunder in the distance, then forced herself to lie back down. It was just the Forge – a storm-prone series of cliffs a dozen miles to the north. The Forge could often be heard late at night, thunder rumbling distantly even when the air was calm in Grent itself.

Just below her window was a small racket, a series of feathery thumps and a high-pitched repeating screech. Thessa snorted irritably and finally swung her feet off the bed, padding across her cell to open the door with a creak, peering into the darkness of the dormitory. Most of the bunks were empty, siliceer apprentices sent home to celebrate the winter solstice. Thessa herself was the only journeyman left in the building, having volunteered to oversee the furnaces and the small handful of remaining apprentices. It seemed silly to take a holiday when she had no family to visit and her few friends were gone to see their own.

She pulled on a tunic, then hurried down the stairs, following the sound of angry screeching. Just outside the main floor was a large mews – a room-sized falcon cage with a thatch roof and iron bars. A large falcon, just a few inches shy of two feet tall, was hopping from perch to perch, fluttering his wings in agitation. “Ekhi,” she hissed, “shut the piss up! People are trying to sleep.”

The falcon hopped to the closest perch, cocking his head forward through the bars and staring at her until she reached out to stroke the top of his head. He nipped gently at her fingers and ruffled his feathers.

“What’s wrong, Ekhi?” she asked. “I didn’t forget to feed you yesterday, did I? No, I definitely fed you. Is the Forge bothering you? It never has before.” She sighed. He seemed calm enough with her right here. He must have just had a bad night. “I know I haven’t taken you hunting for a while, but I’ve been in charge of the glassworks. Once Kastora returns I’ll take an afternoon off and we’ll head into the countryside. Does that sound good?”

Ekhi nipped at her fingers again and she smiled. No matter how annoying the little asshole could be, she still loved him. “Breakfast is in two hours. Here, hold on.” She found a little crate nearby containing his anklets and jesses, then reached through the bars to put them on his legs. That always calmed him down – an implicit promise he was going to get to fly soon. “There, now settle down and don’t wake everyone up.”

Thessa ran her fingers through her hair, pulling out the tangles. Might as well do a round of the building. One of the apprentices should be up by now, lighting the furnace for the day’s work. Keep them on their toes, Master Kastora always said, or they won’t respect you. Thessa needed the respect. At just twenty-two in a profession that so often valued age over talent, she found herself too experienced to chum with the apprentices but too young to be properly respected by her peers.

She stilled her anxious thoughts and slipped on her thick-soled boots and heavy apron, then headed across the dark dormitory and down into the courtyard. Navigating the glassworks grounds in the dark was second nature, and she soon entered the main workshop. The furnace still burned hot; a permanent flame that took days to get up to temperature for working godglass. The reheating chamber, however, had not yet been lit and the workshop was empty. Thessa let out an irritated sigh. She found and read through the furnace schedule until she landed on today’s date. Axio. That flirty little shit.

She returned to the dormitory, where she found the third bed on the east wall and poked the snoring lump on the top bunk. “Axio.”

Axio snorted and rolled over.

“Axio!” She slapped him hard across the stomach.

“Ow! Son of a bitch, I … Thessa, what the piss was that for?” Axio sat up in bed, peering at Thessa. He was only two years younger than her, with scraggly blond hair and the kind of pretty face that would have looked more at home on either side of the transaction in a Grent whorehouse than in the glassworks. He was one of the many assistants who worked for the glassworks hauling firewood and keeping the workshops clean. Thessa held up the furnace schedule so he could see it in the moonlight. He ran a hand over his unshaven face and gave her a lopsided smile. “Oh, come on. It’s a holiday.”

“And you’re on the schedule,” Thessa said, tossing him the clipboard. “You were supposed to be up an hour ago tending the furnace and prepping the reheating chamber.” She turned and headed toward the stairs, listening to him swear as he pulled on his boots and apron. His footsteps followed her, and soon they were in the main workroom. Thessa lit the lanterns while Axio fumbled loudly with an armload of kindling.

“Hey,” he said as he loaded wood into the reheating chamber, “you never answered me about going into town for the solstice festival.” He shot her a coy smile. “We could even slip into Ossa. Their winter beer is so much better than ours.”

Ah. Damn, she’d completely forgotten about that. Thessa rolled her eyes as she lit the last lantern. Axio had been flirting with her ever since he arrived at the glassworks six months ago. Other than his looks, he had very little going on. He wasn’t from a rich family, or terribly ambitious or bright. He wasn’t even all that funny. Besides, she had already tangled herself up with Palua. She needed to make sure that wouldn’t blow up in her face before she went looking for more fun.

Court for love, money, or political gain, Master Kastora always said. Preferably two of the three. Anything else just sullies your reputation. Fun was never on that list, and Kastora had stopped turning a blind eye to her romps since her promotion to journeyman.

“I’ll think about it,” Thessa told Axio, before leaving him alone to finish lighting the reheating chamber.

She was on her way back to the dormitory when she was surprised to see a light on in Master Kastora’s office. The master had been gone for weeks, off working on one of his secret projects out in the countryside. He wasn’t supposed to be back until after the solstice.

Thessa changed directions and paused just outside his office to listen to the far-off thunder. Something was odd about that thunder, but she couldn’t quite place it.

She put it out of her mind and knocked.

“Come,” a soft male voice said.

Master Kastora’s office was an impeccably clean room containing a large drafting table, a single formal desk flanked by wingback chairs for visiting politicians, and two large iron safes stuffed to the brim with his formulas and technical drawings. Kastora himself was a widower in his sixties, “remarried to his furnace” as he liked to say. He was a thin man of medium height, with a bald patch taking over the center of his head of gray hair. His hands and arms were a patchwork of burn scars and permanent glassrot scales from a lifetime of godglassworking. He had a distracted but gentle face, giving her a smile as he looked up from his desk.

“My dear Thessa,” he said, “what on earth are you doing up at this hour?”

“Thunder woke me up,” Thessa replied.

“The Forge does seem to be unusually loud tonight. I heard Ekhi out of sorts. Did you check on him?”

“Of course. He’s just being a brat.”

Kastora chuckled. “How has the glassworks been in my absence?”

“Everything has gone smoothly. The shipment for the Atria went out two days early. A military contract came back with signatures – it’s on the corner of your desk there.”

“Wonderful, wonderful.”

“Your work in the countryside?” she asked. Kastora could be capricious and secretive with what he shared. He was one of the best siliceers in the world, and often had secret projects for the duke, foreign clients, and even Ossan guild-families. She did not expect him to give her a straight answer, and was surprised when he leaned back in his chair, a smile flickering across his face.

“Oh, Thessa. You have no idea.”

“That’s why I asked,” she reminded him gently.

He chuckled again, gesturing for her to come close. She leaned in, bemused by his conspiratorial expression. “I,” Kastora said victoriously, “have created a phoenix channel.”

Thessa blinked back at him. A phoenix channel was a hypothetical mechanism used to turn energy into sorcery. In short, it could recharge spent pieces of godglass, allowing them to be reused indefinitely. A phoenix channel wasn’t exactly mythical, but it was close to it. Every master in the world had tried to make one at some point in their career and they’d all failed.

“No you didn’t” popped from her mouth before she could stop herself. It was wildly disrespectful, but Master Kastora didn’t seem to notice.

“No joking,” he said with a grin. “I made a working phoenix channel. Just a prototype, mind you. The energy transfer was far from perfect – I had to burn six cartloads of hardwood just to charge a single piece of forgeglass.” He pulled something from his pocket and handed it solemnly to her.

It was a yellow piece of forgeglass – her own work, actually, a tiny stud with a flared tail that amplified the natural strength of most people who wore it. The sorcery didn’t affect her the way it affected others. She could hear the slight hum godglass gave off, and feel the resonant vibration on the tips of her fingers, but Thessa was sorcery-aphasic: she could not benefit from godglass, nor did she suffer from the effects of glassrot. It helped make her an especially good siliceer, for she could work longer hours with no cost.

The piece of forgeglass hummed powerfully in her hand. It felt like godglass. It sounded like godglass.

“It was spent when I started,” Kastora promised.

If he’d made a working phoenix channel – and Kastora had never been a liar or prankster – this could change the world. Recharging godglass would become a whole new industry, and help undercut the rising prices of cindersand. She looked closer at Kastora, seeing the exhaustion in his eyes and how his hands shook slightly. He was like a schoolboy having miraculously passed his tests after a weeklong bender.

“That’s incredible! What will you do next?”

“Well, the reason I’m telling you is because I’m going to move the phoenix channel here to the glassworks. I’ll put it in one of the furnaces, and once the solstice is over I’ll get a few of the journeymen to help me refine it. Like I said: it’s just a prototype. It needs a lot of work.”

Thessa looked at Kastora hopefully. Like any siliceer, she’d learned about the phoenix channel early in her apprenticeship and had daydreamed about making one. “Have you already chosen your assistants?”

“Of course!” he exclaimed. “You’ll be my number two on this project. The concept is sound, we just need to make it better!”

Thessa inhaled sharply, any last vestiges of sleep fleeing her thoughts. She’d been Kastora’s protégé for years and this would be by far the most important project he’d undertaken. His asking her to assist him directly, instead of calling in someone more experienced, was a massive honor. “You’re sure?”

“You are – and I will deny this if you ever repeat it – the second-best siliceer in Grent. Behind myself only, of course.” He continued to grin at her. “I wouldn’t want anyone else helping me. Now, you need to get more sleep. I’ve already taken the phoenix channel back to my rooms. We’ll unpack it after lunch and get working on ideas. If there’s rain, it’ll be a good day to brainstorm, I…” He trailed off, his head cocked slightly to one side. “Are you sure that’s thunder from the Forge?”

“I think so,” Thessa answered. She opened the door and listened to the distant sound. Several moments passed, and she heard Kastora get up and come over to stand behind her. She said, “Maybe you’re right. It’s too regular to be thunder. But what else could it be?”

Kastora shoved past her, and she was about to say something but caught a glance at the side of his face. A scowl had taken over his normally cheerful demeanor. “Come with me,” he called, striding off across the compound.

Thessa ran to catch up, her boots thumping across the hard-packed dirt. They walked past the dormitory, then down a slight incline toward the small gatehouse that oversaw the main entry into the glassworks. Thessa felt her heart racing, and couldn’t help but glance at Kastora every few steps. Kastora kept his eyes on the horizon even after they dipped beneath the curve of the hill and could no longer see the lights of Grent. She could see the outline of Master Kastora putting bits of godglass into his piercings. She couldn’t benefit from them herself, of course, but she knew the glassworks enough to follow him without tripping in the near darkness.

They reached the gatehouse, where Kastora poked his head inside the tiny room. “Get me Captain Jero,” he told the guard on duty. “Yes, I know the hour. Get her immediately.” Within the minute, a dark-skinned, middle-aged woman stumbled out of the door pulling on her white-and-orange royal infantry jacket.

“Master Kastora?” Jero asked.

“I want you to wake everyone up.”

“Excuse me?” she yawned.

Kastora reached out and grabbed her by one of the braided epaulets on her jacket. “You hear that? That’s cannon fire. It’s coming from eastern Grent. Wake everyone up, put them on alert, and send someone to the palace immediately.”

“I can’t … I…” It was clear that Captain Jero was still shaking the sleep from her mind. “It’s probably just part of the solstice celebrations.”

“At four in the morning? I don’t give a damn what it might be. Send a messenger to find out. Until we’re notified differently, I want you to assume that we’re under attack.”

“By who?” Jero asked incredulously.

“Does it matter?” Kastora whirled on his heel and marched back up the hill.

Thessa struggled to keep up. She had never seen Kastora like this before and it frightened her. “You really think we’re under attack? We’re a neutral city-state! Who would attack us?”

“Cannon fire in the east? It has to be the Ossans.”

Thessa laughed nervously. “We’re at peace with Ossa. We’re trading partners! Why would they attack us?”

“Because all of the rules are about to change. We’re running out, Thessa.”

“Of what?” Thessa’s fear grew deeper. Why did he not seem surprised at the prospect of an Ossan attack? What did he know that she did not?

Kastora ignored her question. “If it is an attack, it means things are worse than I suspected. Ossa will want our cindersand reserves, our research, even our siliceers. She warned me about this. I thought she was wrong. I thought we had more time. I…”

“Master!” Thessa snapped her fingers. It was the only way to get Kastora out of his own head sometimes. “What is running out? Who warned you about an Ossan attack? I can’t help if you don’t tell me anything.”

He finally seemed to focus on her. “Adriana Grappo warned me,” he said. “The woman who hired me to make the phoenix channel. She told me that Ossa’s lust for cindersand was going to push it toward war. All we can do is…” He turned his head sharply and glared down the hillside back toward the gate, where Thessa was surprised to see that a trio of soldiers had appeared, standing just outside in the torchlight. They all wore the uniforms of Grent royal infantry, and it seemed that Captain Jero was about to let them in. “Keep that gate barred!” Kastora bellowed.

Jero turned in surprise. “They say they’re from the capital with a message from the duke,” she called up the hill at them.

“And what do they say is going on there?” Kastora shouted back.

There was a brief discussion. “Just the festivities. Should I let them in?”

Kastora stared warily toward the gatehouse like a dog sizing up a stranger at the dinner table. Quietly, he said, “I want you to go to my office. Open both the safes. The key to the left one is hidden under the floorboard beneath the front left foot of my desk. The key to the second is in the first.”

Thessa’s breath caught in her throat. “What’s going on?”

“Keep that gate locked!” Kastora shouted to Jero. “No one in or out except for the messenger you send to Grent.” Aside to her, he continued without answering her question, “I want you to gather every paper in both safes. You take them to the furnace, and if I give the signal I want you to burn them.”

Thessa fought a wave of nausea. Those safes contained the cumulative research, discoveries, and technical drawings of the entire Grent Glassworks – even some of her own. Burning all that would be burning generations of silic advances. And, she realized, all the Grent state secrets pertaining to godglass. “Should I wake the apprentices?”

“Only after the notes have been burned. Those are more important than any of our lives.”

She gave him a nod, hoping she didn’t look too frightened, and began to jog toward his office. A gunshot suddenly rang out, and she whirled to look back down the hill just in time to see Captain Jero stumble back and fall. One of the “Grent” soldiers held a smoking pistol. “Tear down the gate! Company One-Forty-Two, grapple those walls!” The orders were barked in a soldier’s authoritative voice, with an Ossan accent.

Fear seized Thessa so powerfully that she almost tripped and fell in the dust. Only momentum kept her going.

“You two, stop!” the soldier’s voice shouted.

Thessa looked over her shoulder as she rounded the dormitory. Kastora was on her heels, waving her forward with one hand and pushing godglass through his ear piercings with the other. “Go, go!” he shouted.

“Get that gate down!” Thessa heard a voice call in Ossan. “Secure the siliceers!”

Thessa reached the office just a step ahead of Kastora. He tore through the door behind her, barely winded, and aided by his forgeglass threw aside his desk with the strength of three men. He snatched up a loose floorboard, then opened the left safe, then the right, and began piling stacks of papers into Thessa’s arms. When it became clear she could carry no more, he slapped her on the shoulder. “The furnace!”

Thessa sprinted back across the courtyard, tears streaming down her face. She burst into the workshop, barely avoiding a collision with Axio. “What’s going on?” the apprentice asked in a panic. “Did I hear pistol shots?”

Thessa ignored him until she could get the furnace door open, throwing her armload of notes straight into the glowing fire, her eyes drying instantly from the intense heat and stung by smoke.

“What…” Axio tried to ask again as she ran back past him.

She stopped only long enough to bark instructions. “Wake up the apprentices and then the stable boys. No, stable boys first. We need horses saddled. Foreign soldiers are trying to capture the glassworks. We have to get everyone out. Go!” She tried to inject Master Kastora’s sense of urgency and authority into her voice. It sounded frantic to her ears. “And make sure Palua gets out. She’s in my bed.”

She sprinted back to Kastora’s office and was surprised to find him standing outside, leaning on the long, engraved blowtube that he used when he worked on bigger projects. Smoke billowed from the open door and windows of his office. Thessa skidded to a halt. “You … you set the building on fire!” Fire was one of the great fears of a glassworks. A mismanaged furnace could destroy a workhouse. A deliberately set fire would put an end to the whole complex.

Kastora’s face was ashen, expression grim but determined. “This way is faster,” he said, “and more efficient. I’m not letting my work fall into Ossan hands.”

“I told Axio to wake the stable boys,” Thessa said, trying not to think of all that silic knowledge going up in a blaze. “They’ll saddle the horses.”

“Good, we should flee as quickly as possible.” Kastora jerked, as if pulling himself out of a reverie. “The prototype…” He paused. “No, it’s too heavy for you, and there’s no time.” He turned one way, then another, seemingly frozen with indecision.

Thessa grabbed him by the arm, pulling him along toward the stables. “We can make another one,” she told him. “Leave it to the fires.”

“Yes, of course. You’re right.”

Soon they were running side by side, around the mess hall, skirting the compound walls. They rounded the dormitory, and Thessa paused only long enough to stop at Ekhi’s mews. The pistol shots had set him off and he was screeching terribly as he banged around inside the cage. Thessa didn’t have time to think about her decision – she simply threw open the door to the mews, unable to stomach the idea of him being trapped in a raging fire. “Go on, Ekhi! Go!” He stared at her for half a moment, hopped to a closer perch, and then leapt over her head. With a beating of his wings, he was off into the night.

Thessa stared painfully after him until she felt Kastora’s tug on her arm. “He’ll be fine,” Kastora promised, and she allowed herself to be pulled after him. They hurried past the next dormitory and around the corner just as the rear gate of the compound suddenly burst open, a squad of soldiers wearing Grent uniforms pouring inside with bayonets fixed on their muskets. Thessa barely stopped herself from calling for help before realizing that these, too, might be impostors.

Master Kastora pulled her back around the corner, a scowl on his face. Back in the direction they’d come, Thessa could hear shouting and gunshots. The garrison, it seemed, had not been taken completely unawares.

“We’re fighting back!” she whispered to Kastora.

“Indeed.” Kastora seemed to make a decision and, from a satchel at his waist, produced a sheaf of vellum that he thrust into her hands. “We’re going to split up.”

“What?”

“It doubles our chances of getting away. Flee the compound. I’ll rally our garrison and try to save as many of them as I can.”

“Where am I supposed to go?” Thessa asked desperately.

“Take these schematics to Adriana Grappo at the Hyacinth Hotel in Ossa.”

“It’s the Ossans who are attacking us!” Thessa protested.

“Not all Ossans are alike,” Kastora replied sharply. “Adriana helped me with the design. Tell her that the prototype was lost, but that these are the schematics.” He snatched her by the front of her shirt, pulling her close. “If something happens to me, I want you to rebuild the prototype.”

“But…”

“Don’t give these schematics to anyone else. No two-bit Ossan siliceer is going to finish my work. You will. Understand?”

Thessa was trembling all over now, but she tried to get ahold of herself, rallying her courage to meet the determination in Kastora’s eyes. “I do.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t think it’ll come to that. I’ll rally the garrison long enough for you to escape and then we’ll retreat into the city. If all goes well, I’ll meet you at Adriana’s hotel by the end of the week. Go!”

Before Thessa could protest further, Kastora was off, running along the base of the compound wall, his figure periodically outlined by the occasional gas lamp. Thessa waited for a few moments, part of her hoping that Kastora would return and come with her. When it became apparent he would not, she steeled herself with a series of deep breaths. She could do this. She’d been to Ossa many times. It wasn’t hard to blend in. All she had to do was escape Grent during a foreign invasion.

Right.

She rounded the back of the stables, pausing for another calming breath. She smoothed the stack of vellum on the ground and then rolled it into a tight scroll before stuffing it into her boot. Making sure it was hidden, she crept to the stable door.

“Axio,” she hissed into the darkness. “Axio, are the horses saddled?” No answer. She swore to herself, not sure of her ability to saddle a horse in the dark. The moment of indecision cost her as a sharp voice suddenly barked from her left.

“Stop there, missy! Show your hands and no sudden moves.”

A shiver of fear went up Thessa’s spine as she turned to see the middle-aged man in an ill-fitting Grent uniform. He held a musket across his chest, bayonet fixed, and looked like he’d use it without hesitation. His accent was most assuredly Ossan.

Thessa was still struggling for a reply when a shape suddenly swooped down from the morning darkness, hitting the soldier directly in the face. A flurry of screeches and swearing followed until the soldier managed to fend Ekhi off. Ekhi hopped twice across the ground and leapt into the air, disappearing from Thessa’s vision. The soldier raised his musket, aimed, and shot.

The crack of the musket was followed immediately by a single, agonizing screech. Thessa’s heart leapt into her throat, breath snatched away, terror for her own life giving way to immediate fury and grief. She would have thrown herself at the damned soldier if she hadn’t been grabbed from behind.

“Go!” Axio hissed in her ear. “I’ll buy you time, just run!” Without waiting for an answer, Axio hefted a heavy wood-splitting ax and squared off with the swearing soldier.

Thessa found herself fleeing at a sprint, tears streaming down her face. Cutting through the stables and out the back, she unlocked a small service door in the compound wall and slipped through. Within moments she was hurrying as fast as she dared along the paths that led into the woods outside of the glassworks, her way lit by the brightening glow of Kastora’s burning office.

Tired, shocked, her adrenaline still pumping, Thessa stifled her guilt over leaving Axio alone with that soldier. She had one mission in mind: she had to get out of Grent and then into Ossa, where she could wait for Master Kastora in the house of an enemy.