In the Shadow of Lightning

4

Kizzie Vorcien, enforcer for the Vorcien guild-family, stood on a stoop on the edge of the Castle District in Ossa and watched the passing revelers and street performers as they took part in the solstice celebration. It was just after nine in the morning, and distant cannon fire could be heard above the sounds of the street fair.

She wondered how many people actually knew that a war had broken out on their doorstep. It was in all the newspapers this morning, of course. The Foreign Legion had invaded Grent less than six hours ago to avenge the death of Adriana Grappo. But newspaper articles didn’t necessarily mean the residents of Ossa understood it. Bad things, after all, happened to other people. Holiday celebrations weren’t going to stop until cannonballs starting knocking over tenements, and even then maybe not.

One of the street performers had attracted Kizzie’s eye. It was an old woman wearing a brightly colored minstrel’s tunic and carrying a ratty violin case slung over one shoulder. She seemed to be known in these parts, for a small crowd had gathered, and the old woman was making the rounds, talking and laughing with the onlookers, shaking a can for people to give her coins and banknotes. When no more donations were forthcoming, she walked to the center of the street and set down her violin case. She opened it, removed the instrument, and struck a pose.

A frown spread across the old woman’s face as she began to tune the instrument. Her head was cocked to one side, her expression surpassing normal frustration until it became comical. She winked at one of the children. Kizzie snorted at the little display. Despite herself, she was intrigued, and she watched with growing bemusement as this went on for far too long.

A tingling sensation began at the base of Kizzie’s neck and traveled down her arms and into her fingertips; the sensation she felt when another glassdancer had begun to use their sorcery nearby. She looked at the old woman busker more closely just as something leapt from the violin case at her feet.

It was a bird. Or rather, the semblance of one made of multicolored glass. It hopped from the violin case to the cobbles, dancing about on two spindly feet as the old woman finished tuning her violin. She drew the bow across the strings to produce a single long note while the bird looked up at her. It flapped its wings experimentally, then shot into the sky as the busker began to play.

Children laughed. Adults oohed and aahed, clapping to themselves. Onlookers shoved each other aside to throw money into the busker’s violin case, and the bird moved perfectly with the ups and downs of the music.

“Oh, now that is good,” Kizzie found herself saying out loud. She considered herself a cynic on the best of days, but even she was impressed by this display. There were two types of glassdancers: major talents and minor talents. The latter were relatively common and included among their number Kizzie herself. She could sense glass and other glassdancers, and with great concentration she could manipulate small amounts of glass.

Major talents were much more rare, and they almost always joined the military, where they could distinguish themselves quickly on the field of battle and then get themselves adopted into a guild-family. Major talents were respected and feared, and they took themselves and their power very seriously. But this woman? Somehow she’d slipped through the norms and was entertaining people on the street – and she seemed to love it.

“If only we could all defy expectations,” Kizzie muttered under her breath. She watched the performance for several minutes before her joy disappeared, and she forced herself to look away from the busker and focus on the job at hand. The job was a small warehouse located across the street and half a block down from the glassdancer busker. It was a nondescript little place right next door to a major stable. Most people wouldn’t give it a second glance. Kizzie, on the other hand, had spent the last two weeks tracking a stolen shipment of cindersand to this very place.

There was a young woman lounging outside the warehouse, wearing a laborer’s heavy winter tunic, a blunderbuss slung casually over one shoulder. The woman’s head was craned to watch the glassdancer busker; she was yawning occasionally, her mind clearly elsewhere.

The problem with gangs, Kizzie had long ago decided, was that they attracted the stupid, the talentless, and the lazy. If someone wasn’t skilled enough to make it as a guild-family enforcer or to join the National Guard, what business did they have as a lookout for ill-gotten goods?

Kizzie pushed away from her stoop and wandered slowly down the street, passing the warehouse and its lookout before stepping inside the stable next door to find a pair of middle-aged men loitering near the door, both with their pinkies marked by light blue client paint that showed that they served – and were protected by – the Vorcien.

“You the teamsters I asked for?” Kizzie showed them her silic sigil: the Vorcien inverted triangle with the setting sun over the desert. Her sigil was much smaller than a proper guild-family member’s – she was only a bastard, after all – but it tended to elicit the proper amount of respect.

One of them nodded, glancing into the street nervously. “I hope this job is going to be fast. I heard the Castle Hill Garroters are dangerous.” His companion nodded eagerly.

“The Castle Hill Garroters are a wannabe guild-family that can’t figure out how to safely sell the cindersand they stole from a Vorcien riverboat,” Kizzie replied. She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice. It didn’t used to be like this. She used to have status and regard. She used to be in charge of an entire National Guard watchhouse, wining and dining powerful Vorcien clients. Now she was relegated to tracking down thieves.

“Shouldn’t we come back when things aren’t as crowded?” the other asked.

“It’s Castle Hill. It’s always crowded. Besides, they’d expect us to hit them at night. Now bring your cart and horse around.”

Without waiting for an answer, Kizzie emerged from the stable. She hugged the wall, walking slowly and casually, approaching the lookout from the left. The poor woman didn’t even know she was there until Kizzie had a stiletto pressed against her side. The lookout inhaled sharply.

“You have a choice,” Kizzie said pleasantly. “Scream, and I will perforate your lungs. Or you can answer my questions and continue to breathe. Nod if you choose the second one.”

The lookout swallowed hard and nodded. “Who are you?”

Kizzie lifted her right hand to show the silic sigil, while keeping her left, along with the stiletto, firmly pressed against the lookout.

“Glassdamn,” the woman swore. “Iasmos said the Vorcien couldn’t track us.”

Iasmos was a petty crook, the self-styled head of the Castle Hill Garroters. “Iasmos is an idiot,” Kizzie said. “How many are inside?”

“Just Iasmos and the girls.”

“Define ‘girls’?” When the lookout didn’t respond quickly enough, Kizzie gave her a little poke with the stiletto.

“Ah! His sisters, Dorry and Figgis.”

“And that’s it?”

“Yes!”

“What kind of godglass do they have?”

“All three have forgeglass. Iasmos wears witglass, but I think it’s been spent for months.”

“All right. Slide that blunderbuss off your shoulder. Good, now tell me what you learned from this little lesson?”

The lookout gave an “eep” sound as Kizzie poked with the stiletto again. “Not to steal from the Vorcien!”

“Wow. I’m surprised you actually picked up on that. Now get the piss out of here. I’m going to pretend like I never saw your face.”

The lookout did as instructed, hurrying down the street without looking back. Kizzie waited long enough to be sure she hadn’t doubled back before heading around to the narrow alley next to the warehouse. She tossed the blunderbuss in the mud and removed a pair of godglass earrings from her pocket. The earrings were expertly braided, three wire-thin godglasses – witglass, forgeglass, and sightglass – wound together into one powerful piece. They were by far the most expensive items she owned, and she held them up to the light to see just how much sorcery they had left in them. The color had leaked out of perhaps half of the intertwined glass, like a partially filled cup of wine. If she rationed herself, she would get another five months of use out of them. She slid the hooked ends into a piercing on either ear, listening to the hum of the sorcery and feeling more alive from it.

Kizzie was not, by nature, a violent person. Even discounting her minor talent as a glassdancer, she could be dangerous. That was a prerequisite to being a guild-family enforcer, after all. But violence always seemed like the first resort of morons. A bit of careful planning, some bribery and blackmail, maybe some good old-fashioned investigation. Those were her usual tools.

Unfortunately for her, cleaning out an upstart gang did not require a lot of subtlety.

She walked down to the warehouse’s side door at the end of the alley and pounded on it hard. Putting her back to the wall, she shifted her stiletto to her right hand and drew the blackjack from her pocket. The door opened and a woman’s voice asked, “Who’s there?”

Kizzie brought her blackjack down hard across the woman’s thigh, eliciting a pained yell and giving her enough time to check the woman’s face. Yup, it was one of Iasmos’s sisters, Figgis. Kizzie slit her throat and kicked her backward into the warehouse, following her falling body in at a run. The forgeglass pushed Kizzie beyond normal limits, giving her supernatural strength and speed while the witglass allowed her to process her surroundings as if the world were standing still.

The light in the warehouse was dim, and it might have hampered Kizzie’s abilities if not for the sightglass in her earrings. She spotted Iasmos to her left; a man in his mid-twenties, wearing a soiled but expensive jacket he probably took off someone he murdered. Dorry, the other sister, was just behind him. Both stared at Figgis with mouths agape.

Kizzie threw her blackjack overhand, striking Iasmos right between the eyes. He stumbled back, distracted long enough for Kizzie to close the distance. Her stiletto found the space between his ribs. Kizzie caught a glimpse of Dorry raising a pistol. She jerked up on her stiletto, lifting Iasmos slightly, using him as a shield as the pistol went off.

The sound, amplified by her sightglass, deafened Kizzie in the enclosed space. She ignored the ringing in her ears, tossed aside Iasmos, and buried her stiletto in Dorry’s eye.

Kizzie checked the small warehouse for any other gang members before returning to make sure all three of her targets were dead. She wiped her stiletto on Iasmos’s jacket. Her heart was pounding, there was blood on the sleeves of her tunic, and she couldn’t hear damned much of anything. Otherwise the operation had been a success.

She paused that thought and did another sweep of the warehouse. It was a typical thieves’ hideout, with stolen goods scattered on the floor and stacked haphazardly on shelves. Mostly stuff that had “fallen off” a riverboat or been pickpocketed. Kizzie still didn’t know who their connection down at the riverboat docks was, but that wasn’t part of her job. What mattered was the crate of cindersand, just a couple of feet square, tucked into a corner, stamped with the Vorcien silic symbol. It was still full of the fine grayish-colored sand, and for that she breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t need any other perceived failures in her life right now.

She switched out her braided earrings for a piece of cureglass, and the ringing in her ears went away within moments. She poked her head out the side door of the warehouse. Revelers must have heard the gunshot, but no one seemed to care, so she walked back to the front door and slid it open.

Her teamsters were just outside with their horse and cart.

“You bring the canvas I asked for?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Put the cindersand in the cart, then wrap up those three bodies and toss them on top.”

The teamsters looked at the blood on Kizzie’s jacket but didn’t comment. They knew better than to question a Vorcien enforcer. As they got to work, Kizzie helped herself to some of the stolen goods: three gold watches, six pocketbooks, a couple of pieces of low-quality godglass, and a bottle of twelve-year Ereptian wine.

“Deliver the cindersand first, then take the bodies to Cannery Six on Butcher Street,” she instructed. She waved at the hideout. “Any godglass you find goes to the guild-family. The rest of this shit is yours.”

“Really?” one of them asked in surprise.

“Kizzie Vorcien takes care of her people,” she told them.

“Much obliged, Kizzie!” the teamsters replied in unison.

She returned to the street, where she tossed one of the gold watches in the glassdancer busker’s violin case and made her way across town to the Assembly District. By eleven she’d reached her favorite café, where she rolled up her sleeves to hide the blood on them. She sank into a wrought iron chair in the outdoor seating area, putting her head in her hands, still burning off the fumes of her adrenaline.

She knew plenty of enforcers who liked killing people. They considered it a perk of the job. Not her. It wasn’t going to ruin her life, but it would take her a few weeks until she slept properly again. Tracking down stolen shipments, wiping out petty thieves who’d made a misstep: that was all low-ranking enforcer work. She hadn’t had to do this kind of shit for over a decade. Yet here she was, biting her tongue, doing the dirty jobs. The price of failure, she supposed.

“Kissandra Vorcien.”

Kizzie looked up sharply at the person who pulled out the chair across from her and dropped into it. There was a word of rebuke on her tongue, but she let it die as her sorcerous senses picked up something that told her that this man was a major talent. In front of her was someone whom she vaguely recognized. He was an inch or two shorter than her, with swept-back black hair, a fine scarlet jacket over a gray tunic, and the dark olive skin of an Ossan native. She could see a piece of high-quality skyglass threaded through a piercing on his right ear.

“Glassdamnit,” she found herself saying aloud. Her frustration was instantly forgotten, her fatigue evaporating. “Demir Grappo!”

Demir grinned at her. “You recognize me?”

“Barely!” Kizzie was a seasoned enforcer, someone used to surprises, but seeing Demir Grappo was a damned shock. Gone was the rotund, soft-skinned political genius who’d managed to charm himself into the beds of half the guild-family daughters in Ossa. He’d lost at least three stone, and his face and hands were covered in old scars. Demir looked hard, like he’d worked two lifetimes as an enforcer. She found her mouth hanging open. “Glassdamnit,” she said again.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” he said with a cheeky grin. “I mean, you didn’t have blood all over you last time we saw each other, but I have to say, you look good.”

“Is that a come-on or a genuine compliment?” Kizzie asked dubiously.

Demir placed his hand on his heart, feigning shock. “I have never flirted with you even once.”

“Yeah, and we both know why.” Kizzie’s snort cracked into a laugh and she found herself grinning. She’d been short on friends as of late. Seeing Demir was a genuine, if unexpected, pleasure. “What happened to you? I mean, I know the rumors, but … you…” She found herself trailing off, her pleasure turning to awkwardness as she tried to figure out what to say to someone who’d sacked a city and then disappeared after a mental breakdown. She mentally checked herself, remembering that she was just an enforcer and he was high above her station in several ways. Would he forgive the impropriety of a childhood friend?

To her relief, his grin remained. “Moved to Marn,” Demir said. “Married a princess, fought pirates on the high seas, and founded a new religion. Now I’m back in Ossa looking for followers.”

Kizzie squinted at Demir, wondering how much of that was actually true. With him, it damn well might be. “Glassdamn, your mother! I’m so sorry. You know how much I looked up to her.”

Demir’s smile wavered, but did not disappear. “Thank you. Tea? Coffee?”

“Coffee.”

Demir gestured over a waiter and ordered. “I’m going to apologize in advance and skip any more pleasantries. I’ve got a very busy day ahead of me. I want to offer you a job.”

“I … have a job,” Kizzie said, blinking at Demir in confusion. She had a thousand questions she wanted to ask. Last time they spoke, Demir was still the very popular governor of an Ossan province. So much had changed.

“You’re out of favor, Kizzie.”

Kizzie felt herself suddenly on the back foot, surprised that he was talking about her instead of himself. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

“And I have asked your brother to lend me your services. He agreed.”

“Which brother?”

“Capric.”

Kizzie rolled her eyes. Capric wasn’t the worst of her half siblings, but he wasn’t the best, either. Their relationship had always been pure business. Lending out one of their enforcers to a family friend – without actually asking the enforcer in question – was typical of his behavior. “So this is one of those things where I don’t have a choice?”

Demir shrugged. “I’m not like that. I’ll tell you the job. If you don’t want it, I’ll tell Capric that I changed my mind. If you do want it … I pay well and I’m a good friend to have.”

Kizzie chewed on the inside of her cheek as the waiter set their coffees in front of them. Was he a good friend to have? Adriana dead, Demir gone for these past nine years. Being lent out to the Grappo wasn’t exactly high-society stuff. On the other hand, he was a guild-family patriarch now, and even if he weren’t he still commanded the respect that any major-talent glassdancer did. Of course she would hear him out.

“I didn’t even know you were back in town.”

“I’ve been home for less than twenty-four hours.” He tapped his fingers on the table impatiently. “Well?”

“Lay it out,” she said.

“What do you know about my mother’s death?”

Kizzie shook her head. “Only what I read in the papers. There have been rumors for the last two weeks, but the news only broke this morning. Assassinated on the steps of the Assembly by Grent agents.”

“Six people killed my mother. Only one was caught. I want you to find the other five.”

“Oh.” Kizzie leaned back in her seat, setting down the coffee she’d been about to sip. “I thought all six were from Grent.” Though, now that she thought about it, the newspapers hadn’t actually made that claim.

“I don’t know. The apprehended killer seemed to think so, but that’s the thing about shackleglass: it only provides the truth as the wearer knows it. Public murders are messages, Kizzie. I want to know what message was being sent. Who killed my mother is not as important as why they killed her.”

“You’re not going to deal with this yourself?” Glassdancers were not known to shy away from blood. Demir had never been a violent man, but Kizzie would have thought the murder of his mother would bring that violence out.

Demir flinched and shook his head. “I’m going to approach it from a different angle,” he said thoughtfully. “My mother…” He trailed off, then repeated, “A different angle.”

“Am I just finding and questioning them? Or am I supposed to mete out justice?”

Demir drummed his fingers on the table, looking off into the street. This was clearly not something he’d actually decided on himself. Finally he said, “As you see fit.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. As I said, the who is not important. I want to know the why.”

“That makes it a lot harder.”

Demir removed his coffee cup from the saucer and dropped something on the dish, pushing it across the table to her. It was a piece of horseshoe-shaped light green godglass about the size of Kizzie’s pinkie finger, with one end of the horseshoe tapered and hooked to go in a piercing.

“Shackleglass?” she said in surprise. Shackleglass was illegal for use by civilians, but you could get it if you were rich or connected enough. She hadn’t seen a piece in person for years.

“I want confessions.”

Kizzie looked carefully into Demir’s eyes. There was an edge to him that hadn’t been there in his youth, a hardness that mirrored the changes to his appearance. Perhaps he had already become a violent man. He was a glassdancer, after all. Was he going after something bigger than the killers themselves? Perhaps the hands that swung the cudgels were merely a loose end. “Does Capric know what you’re ‘borrowing’ me for?”

“He does not.” Demir sipped his coffee, studying her right back over the lip of the cup. “I told him I needed some extra security around the hotel.”

“Why me?”

Demir raised an eyebrow as if the answer should be obvious. “Because you have a hard-earned reputation for being the only honest enforcer in Ossa. You put personal integrity above your loyalty to the Vorcien.”

“I’m out of favor for exactly that reason,” Kizzie snorted.

“And I like that. We were also childhood friends. I could use a friend right now. So? Will you take the job?”

That phrase echoed something that had gone through Kizzie’s head just minutes ago, lowering her guard. She should say no. A murdered Assemblywoman was something for the Cinders to deal with, not a lone enforcer. But it sounded like the Cinders had already moved on. The Grent were the fall guys, and Demir didn’t accept that explanation.

“You might not like the answers I dig up,” she offered.

“I’m prepared for that eventuality.”

“One last question.”

“Ask anything.”

“Is Montego going to be involved in this?”

Demir hesitated just a moment too long. “He has been summoned. I have no idea when he will arrive. Are the two of you still … estranged?”

“Interesting choice of words,” Kizzie replied with a tired chuckle. “We also haven’t spoken in fifteen years.” Just thinking about Montego was vaguely unpleasant, for a number of reasons. Their personal past was one. Another was the reason that Montego made everyone nervous: he killed for sport.

“I won’t ask you to work with him, but you might see him around,” Demir said.

In a self-abusive way, Kizzie realized that this sealed the deal. The chance to see Montego again, with Demir acting as a buffer between them, was too good to pass up. Fifteen years without so much as a letter passed between them, after the way it ended last time; the sudden yearning for closure was a powerful motivator.

She snatched up the piece of shackleglass and stuffed it into her cork-lined pocket, the momentary contact causing her to feel a little tired and giddy.

“Fine,” she said, “I’ll do it.”

Something seemed to pass across Demir’s expression. Relief, perhaps? “The Assembly won’t tell you any more details. They covered things up pretty well, and they’ll probably be irritated if they find out that you’re meddling around their investigation.”

“I have circumvented official investigations before,” Kizzie replied. Most experienced enforcers had. It was, after all, their job to maneuver the space between the National Guard, the guild-families, and the law.

Demir suddenly downed his coffee in one go and stood up, tossing enough coins onto the table to pay for them both. “Find me at my hotel if you need me. Breenen will arrange for expenses and payment. Thank you, Kizzie. This takes a weight off my shoulders.”

Kizzie raised her cup to Demir, then watched as he walked away. “And,” she said quietly, “puts that weight onto mine.” Despite her misgivings, Kizzie was intrigued. She had never been given permission to stick her nose into a proper conspiracy before. It might be simple. She might track five killers to the Grent border and then tell Demir that it was exactly as it seemed.

She had a feeling, however, that this job would be anything but simple.