In the Shadow of Lightning

62

Thessa had never felt such pain. It coursed through her, roiling out from her side in great waves that caused her to convulse, only worsening the horrible feeling. Her vision was cloudy, her thoughts were a mess, and it took her some time to understand that someone was shouting in her ear.

“Thessa! Jailbird, listen to me! You have to bite down on this cureglass.”

Thessa blinked until her eyes finally began to focus. The voice belonged to Pari. Both she and Tirana crouched over her. They were still in the lighthouse, though half the wall was missing. She could smell smoke and burnt meat, a terrible heat like a Balkani sauna. Tirana held one hand tightly against her own mangled bloody shoulder, but she had both milkglass and cureglass in her ear.

“I’m sorcery-aphasic!” Thessa finally managed, shoving Pari’s offering of godglass away. “It’s not going to bloody well help me! I need a surgeon.” She tried to shift herself, only for the pain to hit her again. Her memories began to fit together preceding the blinding white light that still echoed in her mind’s eye. “Did Breenen shoot me?”

“The traitor shot us both,” Tirana spat, looking down at her shoulder. “But he didn’t shoot to kill. He was too much of a coward to finish the job. Him and his glassdamned traitor enforcers. I’m going to skin every one of them.”

“After we save Thessa,” Pari snapped.

“Fine. Come on, this is going to hurt.”

“Hurt” was an understatement. Thessa nearly fainted twice as they got her to her feet, one of them under each arm. She looked around, trying to get her bearings, before a realization hit her. “The phoenix channel. Where is it?”

“Where do you think? Breenen and his goons took it when they fled. There were just a few of them left. That blast killed everyone else standing in front of the lighthouse. Every single dragoon.”

Thessa felt her knees grow even weaker, and when she tumbled she almost took both her companions down with her. She stared at the empty copper cables that had coupled to either side of the phoenix channel. Its absence felt like a dead spot in her heart. All that work. All that pain and suffering. She turned away, averting her eyes, only to look through what had once been the wall of the lighthouse.

The Forge was completely transformed. The untethered phoenix channel had ripped a valley through the center of it, starting from the door of the lighthouse and disappearing out of sight. It sizzled and cracked in the rain, belching steam that filled her nostrils with the scent of charred rock and burnt bodies. “You said the dragoons are gone?” she asked weakly.

“Yeah,” Pari said stiffly. “Along with most of Breenen’s enforcers, our carriages, and everything else we brought with us. Our own wounded were around the side and it’s the only reason they survived.”

“Glassdamn,” Thessa whispered. She had hoped for a distraction, not a disaster. “Why didn’t Breenen take me with him?” she asked.

“He didn’t have enough enforcers to carry both you and the channel,” Tirana grunted. “Now come on, we should move.”

Pulled along by the other two, Thessa began to limp forward, more and more of the unnatural valley coming into sight as she neared the edge of the Forge. It extended for more than a mile, cutting a jagged furrow across the scrubland below the Forge. Down below, a handful of their loyal enforcers picked at what remained, trying to find supplies. “Wait!” She tried to turn back to the lighthouse, nearly falling as she put all her weight back on Tirana. “Did it even work? The phoenix channel?”

Tirana and Pari exchanged a look. “What,” Pari said, “do you think I was trying to get you to put between your teeth?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a whole handful of godglass, holding it out in front of Thessa. Each piece resonated with sorcery, full of color and life. Thessa’s breath caught in her throat, and she pushed down her pain using only her rage.

It worked. It worked, and then it was stolen from her.

“We’re going to find those traitors,” she told Tirana, “and when we do I’ll help you skin them.”

Kizzie tore the forgeglass earring from her piercing and hurled it away. Her whole body ached, her head pounding, glassrot nausea sweeping through her so powerfully that she thought she’d empty her stomach at any moment. Both arms and hands were covered in yellow scales, skin crackling as she moved them. She lay sprawled on the ground, her head and shoulders propped up by the wall, tunic heavy with blood that was almost entirely not her own.

A single acolyte, the last man she’d come across before her strength finally failed her, lay on the ground just a few feet away, her sword buried to the hilt in his eye. His foot still twitched, though he was certainly dead. She didn’t know what had happened to her stiletto. She found her gaze resting on the razorglass blade tattooed on the acolyte’s hand.

Where was Aristanes? Where were the rest of these acolytes? The shouts of alarm no longer echoed through the long halls. Somewhere in the distance, as if from the bottom of a well, she could still hear the Tall Man’s snarls and inhuman screams, accompanied by the sound of walls and furniture being destroyed. She should get up, go find them, and do what she could to help. Could she even move? Every sinew felt utterly destroyed by the very sorcery that had gotten her this far.

She had often wondered why the very richest and most powerful guild-families didn’t employ high-resonance godglass more often. She’d always assumed it was because the costs were prohibitive, but now that she’d felt the firsthand effects of it, she knew it would take days, perhaps weeks to recover. If she’d fought for just a few seconds longer, it might have consumed her entirely.

She closed her eyes, listening to her own frantic, shallow breaths, waiting for more acolytes to appear and finish her off. It wasn’t like she could put up a fight.

Some time had passed, though she couldn’t be sure how much, when the distant sound of fighting suddenly ceased. She strained her senses, remembering that she still wore the skyglass and her braided earrings, trying to determine which of the two combatants had come out victorious.

Slowly, she grew aware of a scraping sound, like that of an armored body being dragged along marble floors. It was coming toward her, of that she was certain. Shuffle, shuffle, scrape. Shuffle, shuffle, scrape. Her nerves were dead, her body so wrung out that she didn’t think it possible to feel terror for her own death anymore. The sound continued to approach, until a shadow darkened the far end of the hall and a monstrous form appeared.

It was the Tall Man. The creature was much reduced, its massive, leathery body bleeding from dozens of wounds. It left a trail of black, tar-like blood. Yellow bile oozed from the one eye that remained open, and dripped from both ears. Several of the tentacles had been ripped off its face. It swung its head back and forth until it spotted Kizzie, then turned toward her, one leg dragging behind it as it limped toward her.

Shuffle, shuffle, scrape.

Kizzie tried to gather the strength to crawl over to that last corpse and extract her sword. She wanted to die with a weapon in her hand, at least, but found that it was too much. She took a few deep breaths and managed to get the blackjack out of her back pocket. It would do hilariously little to such a beast, even wounded as it was, but at least it was some kind of weapon. She held it out in front of her like a pistol, waiting for the Tall Man to fall upon her.

The creature came to within a few feet and stopped, hulking over her like a statue, brilliant blue eyes glistening as it stared down at her. It cleared its throat, and what came out next surprised her with its human sound.

“We were going to offer you a place among us,” it said softly.

Kizzie scoffed. “What, you can turn me into something like you?”

“No, no,” the Tall Man replied, its voice full of world-weary exhaustion. “You cannot change races. But you can serve us.” It looked down at the acolyte with Kizzie’s sword buried in his eye.

“Piss off,” Kizzie replied. She felt completely dead inside, all of her fear replaced by the pain and nausea of too much godglass sorcery. “I’m not made to be the acolyte of a monster.”

The Tall Man made a motion that seemed very much like a shrug, but Kizzie couldn’t be sure with its inhuman anatomy and drooping arms. “Then we have arrived at the same conclusion.” It reached toward her with one set of talons.

“Montego is dead?” Kizzie asked, letting the hand holding her blackjack fall. What was the point, anyway? Dying with a weapon? Without it? She would still be dead. Just like Baby. She tried to find anything within her but shock. Montego had been killed, and it was her fault.

The Tall Man paused, head tilting slightly, its talons curling inward in a surprisingly gentle gesture. “I didn’t know that a human could fight like that. I will craft a song for him, I think. It’s been hundreds of years since I did so, but he was worthy. The Yuglid will sing of him for long after humanity is dead.”

Yuglid. So this creature had a name for what it was. A race, even. “There’s more of you?” Kizzie asked in disbelief.

“You have no idea,” the Tall Man chuckled. It looked down at itself, and Kizzie could almost see annoyance in that inhuman face. “It will take me months to grow my human skin back. Oh well. You proved yourself, Kissandra Vorcien. I’ll make this quick.” It began to reach out once more, and Kizzie closed her eyes and waited for the sharp pain of death. A whisper reached her ears, and then a soft grunt, and she waited for several more seconds before opening her eyes again.

The Yuglid had fallen to its knees, eyes wide in panic, arms flailing. Montego stood over its shoulder, face a sheath of blood both crimson and black, teeth bared and one muscular arm braced across the Yuglid’s neck. The Yuglid thrashed, slapping backward with its hands, talons scraping deep grooves across Montego’s cherub-like cheeks. Montego flinched, hissing in pain, but did not let go. He raised his other arm, and Kizzie could see that he held her missing stiletto, which he buried in the Yuglid’s neck.

The Yuglid’s thrashing grew more desperate, but it did not die. It gurgled and spat, mouth hanging open, trying to breathe, eyes full of fury.

“Because,” Montego said, as if answering an unspoken question through gritted teeth, “you turned your back on the greatest killer in the world without making sure he was dead.” He began to saw with the stiletto, ripping a jagged line across the front of the Yuglid’s neck, just above the sternum. “I will not be some glassdamned song for your pissing race. I am Baby Montego and I will sing my own song.” The Yuglid shook and stirred, nearly bucking Montego from its back, but Montego’s braced arm did not release. He paused with the stiletto long enough to drive an elbow down against the Yuglid’s neck, the force of which seemed to break the creature’s will. The thrashing stopped, and Montego tossed aside the stiletto and grasped the Tall Man’s bestial head between his palms.

Twisting and pulling, he ripped its head off.

Black blood fountained from the severed neck. The creature slumped and fell, leaving Montego standing behind it, holding the head, which slowly slipped from his fingers. It was now, without the Yuglid blocking her view, that Kizzie understood why the Tall Man had thought Montego was dead. The big fighter was torn up, torso sliced to absolute ribbons, pieces of fat hanging from his stomach like he’d been worked over by a blind butcher. His pants were so heavy with blood that they were sliding down, and his mighty body heaved and trembled with every breath.

The eerie silence of death fell across the empty mansion. Montego looked down at himself, then up at Kizzie. “I know I look terrible,” he said, “but Kizzie Vorcien, would you like to get tea with me sometime?” His eyes went suddenly glassy, and he collapsed on top of the Yuglid’s corpse.

Kizzie summoned every ounce of strength she could muster, crawling across the marble floor until she reached him. He was completely still, no sign of life left in his body until she managed to get her cheek right up against his mouth and could still feel the heat of his breath. She raised her head, looking around at the carnage, wondering how she could possibly get them both out of here.

“I’d like that,” she said softly, and began to pull herself up onto her feet.

Idrian reached the medical tents with Braileer slung across his shield like on a stretcher, balanced on his shoulder. He’d covered miles at a dead run, listening to Braileer’s gasping breaths and panicked crying the entire way. Crying was good, he told himself. It meant the young armorer was still alive.

Idrian shoved his way past the Foreign Legion reserves guarding the medical camp and into the biggest of the tents, where a constant stream of wounded soldiers flooded in carried by National Guardsmen recruited for the dirty but necessary work of dealing with casualties. He set Braileer carefully down on one of the hundreds of bloody wooden slabs. “Glory!” he bellowed for the Ironhorns’ own surgeon. “Glory, get over here!”

“One moment,” came the answer from the other side of the tent. A dozen heads turned, surgeons and medics staring at Idrian briefly before returning to their work. Some of them did nothing more than distribute cureglass and then move their patients back out of the tent, while others worked with needles, knives, and bone saws to try and save those that needed more than sorcery to stabilize them.

Idrian was soon joined by a hatchet-faced man with dark Marnish skin, wearing a pair of armless spectacles balanced on the tip of his nose. Glory got his nickname from always giving a little more attention to soldiers who were wounded doing something “interesting,” no matter how stupid. He had his work cut out for him in a battalion of combat engineers.

“This is the kid with the fiddle, isn’t it?” Glory asked, scowling down at Braileer. He leaned over. “I’m going to need you to stop making that stupid sound,” he said in Braileer’s face. “It’s annoying, and it’s making it harder for you to breathe.”

“It’s called crying, Glory,” Idrian said. “And you hear it all the time.”

“It’s still annoying.”

“Take it easy on him,” Idrian snapped. His chest felt tight. He knew the poor kid was going to die, ever since their conversation about death. He was too soft for the army. Too good-hearted. Idrian should never have let him come on that mission. A dozen other recriminations bounced around inside his head, all while the phantoms of his madness laughed in his ears.

Glory moved up and down Braileer’s body with clinical precision, first checking his neck and then listening to his breath at the mouth and chest. “What happened?”

“You know that rumor about the thing I fought on top of Fort Alameda?” Idrian asked. He saw Braileer flail weakly with one hand and reached out to take it.

“Yeah.”

“It got him. It broke Squeaks’s arm and killed two of Valient’s soldiers, too. Jorfax won’t be that far behind me either. She had a horse fall on her.”

“Squeaks just broke an arm,” Glory sighed. In Idrian’s experience, the surgeon had just two emotions: mildly irritated and very irritated. “Glassdamnit, probably the same one.”

Idrian rocked back and forth on his heels as Glory continued his examination, biting his tongue so he didn’t yell at the surgeon to hurry up. It would only get on his nerves. Idrian looked around the tent and then toward the constant stream of wounded coming around a nearby hill. “How close are we to the battle?”

“Half a mile behind it,” Glory said without looking up. “Some of the Drakes’ dragoons brushed past us not long ago but they respected the medical sigils we’re flying. Thank the glass for that.”

“Any idea how the battle is going?” Idrian asked. By all rights he shouldn’t linger. He should get to the front line immediately and see what he could do to help.

Glory shook his head and then produced a piece of pain-deadening milkglass, slipping it into one of the piercings in Braileer’s ear. He jerked his head for Idrian to follow. Idrian squeezed Braileer’s hand once, then followed the surgeon a few feet away. He could feel his heart fall at the look on Glory’s face. Glory said, “He has a crushed windpipe and no small amount of internal bleeding, not to mention two broken fingers. Probably cracked ribs as well.”

“Can he be saved?” Idrian demanded.

“Can he, or will he? The answer to the second question is no.”

Idrian inhaled sharply. “What the piss is that supposed to mean? He’s a corporal and my armorer. Whatever needs to be done you better get to it now!”

Glory took Idrian’s arm, his expression hardening. “Look, we have a massive deficit of cureglass right now. I’ve got a single piece of high-resonance, and orders from both the Ministry of the Legion and the Inner Assembly say I can’t give it to anyone but glassdancers, high-ranking officers, and breachers.”

“Then pretend it’s for me.”

“I can’t. Those provosts over there are watching for exactly that. My hands are tied. Not even General Grappo can overrule those orders.”

Idrian’s stomach hurt from worry and anger. Another damned kid dead in another damned war thanks to the orders of rich assholes well away from the fighting. “Who can authorize it?” he demanded.

“Lieutenant Prosotsi is just over there. She has the tiniest amount of discretion but she’s terrified to use it. She’s turned down dozens of requests to use high-resonance cureglass on regular soldiers.”

Idrian knew the reality of war, and he sympathized with both the officers and the surgeons. Those decisions – especially when they didn’t have enough cureglass – had to be made, and it was unpleasant for everyone involved. “What’s going to be done?”

“I’m gonna leave that piece of milkglass in his ear and have him carried out back to the Dying Club.” Glory grimaced. “It’ll take him a couple hours to die, but he’s not going to feel much pain while he does it.”

The Dying Club was what the soldiers darkly called the spot designated for those who couldn’t be saved. “And how,” Idrian asked slowly, “would we keep him from dying?”

“Immediate surgery. Puncture his throat to get him air, open him up to drain excess blood and stitch up whatever is torn, then put him back together again. High-resonance cureglass might keep him alive during all that, but there’s no guarantee.”

Idrian looked over at Braileer, then clutched at the little chain he wore around his own neck. What had Jorfax told him? That he was too soft, willing to raise his shield to protect people he didn’t even know? Perhaps it made him a less efficient killer, but it did let him sleep at night. Idrian could feel the madness clawing at the back of his godglass eye, auditory and visual hallucinations threatening to overwhelm him. He pressed on the godglass eye until they grew quiet, then strode over to Lieutenant Prosotsi. She was a middle-aged woman with short black hair, looking slightly queasy as she gazed across the surgery slabs.

“Ma’am,” Idrian said, “I want you to approve the use of high-resonance cureglass for that kid over there.” He pointed toward Braileer. “He’s my armorer and he can still be saved.”

Lieutenant Prosotsi shook her head regretfully. “I can’t do it, I’m sorry. Orders from the top.”

Idrian rubbed gently at the temple behind his godglass eye, his stomach falling. Suddenly, as if a candle had been smothered, all the noise in his head went quiet. He knew what he needed to do. He reached beneath his uniform collar and unclasped the little silver tag hanging there. “This is my debt marker. It expires in a few days.”

The lieutenant’s eyes widened. “You get to walk before this war is over.”

“Correct. I’ll take another year on this debt marker if you authorize the cureglass.”

“Are you sure about that?” She shifted her weight, and he could see the decision rolling around inside her head. A good Ossan would accept in a heartbeat. A good officer would turn him down, not letting him put off his retirement for something so stupid. Lieutenant Prosotsi clearly couldn’t decide which she was.

“I’m absolutely certain,” Idrian said firmly. “Make it happen.”

She walked away, briefly consulting with a nearby provost. The conversation lasted just a few seconds, and when she returned she made an affirmative gesture toward Glory. “Done. The Empire now owns another year of your life, Captain Sepulki.”

Idrian turned to fetch his sword and shield. They might need him at the battle, and there was nothing more he could do here with Braileer in Glory’s capable hands. He considered what he’d done, already missing the little silver debt marker from where it usually lay against his skin. They’d give him another, with the new dates of his service written on it. What would Jorfax say? That he was a disgrace to killers everywhere?

Let her say it. If Braileer lived, then Idrian would have nothing to regret.

Braileer lay on the slab, delirious from a new piece of dazeglass Glory had thrust into his ear. Idrian paused briefly beside him, squeezing his shoulder, then met Glory’s eyes. “Horns ready, hooves steady,” he said.

Glory nodded back. “Horns ready, hooves steady,” he replied as he lifted his scalpel.

Demir watched as the last of Kerite’s mercenaries fled the battle, his pursuing cuirassiers destroying all pretense of an organized retreat. He gritted his teeth at the slaughter, his eyes unconsciously avoiding the grisly sight of thousands of dead and wounded splayed out across the field. It was a clear victory, no less bold and dramatic than the one he’d won nine years ago outside the suburbs of Holikan, and a little part of him wondered if he had a military artist to capture the moment.

Why, though? There was no need to picture all the gore and the suffering. People would remember his victory – they’d remember when the invincible mercenary general was rebuffed from the gates of Ossa. That was all that mattered.

“Signal our cavalry to pull back,” Demir said.

“Are you sure?” Tadeas asked. Demir’s uncle was badly wounded, a saber slash cutting a bloody swath across his chest, though he proudly wore cureglass and milkglass and kept his position at Demir’s side. “We have them on the run. It’s best to press our advantage.”

“We’ve practically destroyed that mercenary company,” Demir said. “No more slaughter. If they regroup, we’ll crush them. Otherwise let them flee to the coast. They’ve served their contract and this is no longer their war.”

“I’ll send the order.”

To the northwest, the Forge still glowed and smoldered as the storm finally moved past it. He made a mental note to send his own dragoons to search for Thessa as soon as the battlefield was completely clear.

Demir caught sight of a small group on a distant hill, and searched for a looking glass to point in that direction. It was a dozen or so cuirassiers in shining breastplates, flying the three blue drakes on a green field. In their midst was a middle-aged woman with light skin and long brown hair, a helmet held under one arm. She stared directly at him, and though she had no looking glass of her own, Demir imagined she could see him just as easily as he her.

Devia Kerite. The hero of his youth. The greatest general in the world, brought low by the disgraced patriarch of a small guild-family. Demir paused that thought and amended it. No. That was not how this had gone. History was written today but not by a minor, disgraced patriarch.

“After you’ve sent that order,” Demir said, watching through the looking glass as Kerite and her bodyguards turned to leave the field, “prepare a missive for the Inner Assembly. Tell them that the Lightning Prince met the Purnian Dragon on the field of battle and was victorious.”