In the Shadow of Lightning

28

A major component of Thessa’s education under Kastora had been contracts. She’d been his chief contract revisionist since she was seventeen, and it was her single most important skill – above even glassmaking itself – that almost guaranteed that she would run her own glassworks someday. She knew how to read them, how to write them, how to understand them. She knew how to watch for underhanded language and how to insert her own. She could spot a bad contract at a glance.

It came as quite a shock to find that the original contract between Kastora and Adriana Grappo had none of that. The language was straightforward, the terms clear-cut. Adriana provided the design and the funding. Kastora provided the silic expertise. They were fifty-fifty partners in the phoenix channel endeavor. The shock did not come from the fact that Kastora had signed a good contract, but rather from the fact that he had not inserted anything to his own advantage over the Grappo. The only conclusion Thessa could reach was that he had respected Adriana too much to try.

Thessa stared at the contract, reading over it for the twentieth time in the last two hours. Demir offered to sign a version of this same contract with no revisions between the two of them. It was, to say the least, generous. A true partnership. She could find nothing to object to in the deal, not even a single piece of punctuation out of place. After reading thousands of contracts over the course of her training and work under Kastora, she’d never seen anything like it. A total anomaly that left Thessa feeling slightly unsettled. It was, Kastora had always told her, in the nature of business partners to jostle for position and advantage.

Could it really be this easy? Could she really trust Demir to hold to this? Then again, why couldn’t she? Ossan guild-families took contracts very seriously. It was practically a religion.

She finally tossed the contract to one side and rubbed her eyes, looking out the window into the afternoon sun. Three days ago she had been a prisoner with a false name trying to figure out a way to save her own life. Now she was sitting in a corner suite in the finest hotel in Ossa, looking at a contract that – if she succeeded with the phoenix channel – could make her one of the wealthiest siliceers in the world. She had appointments with tailors, cobblers, and a masseuse. Her change in fortunes seemed unreal to the point of fantasy. Where was the catch?

She scoffed, walking to the window to look down into the crowded street and across to the park kitty-corner from the hotel. She already knew the catch. She didn’t know if she could truly rebuild and improve upon Kastora’s design. Even undertaking such a project made her a player in a wider game that included spies and assassins. The Grappo were barely a guild-family, holding on to a mere fraction of the wealth and prestige of the Magna or Vorcien or Dorlani. She thought about that newspaper article from a couple of weeks ago, and the Ossan siliceers found brutally murdered in the Tien.

The catch was she might end up like that.

Thessa’s attention was drawn back to the street, where her narrow line of sight revealed that something beyond the usual traffic was happening on the other side of the park. She frowned, peering in that direction, noting that the pedestrians just below her window were clearing out quickly. She heard someone shout. Another shout followed it, then another. A woman screamed, and began running.

“What the piss…” she muttered to herself.

She was three floors up in a hotel and yet the animal instinct deep in her chest wanted her to flee to higher ground. She grabbed the windowsill, watching that movement on the next street over. A young woman dressed like a common laborer dashed into sight, paused to shout behind her, then turned and hurled a brick through the window of a fancy shop. Another laborer followed her, then another. Within moments the street was filled with them – winging stones at shops, chasing down well-dressed pedestrians and knocking them into the ditch.

Thessa ran to the door and out into the hallway, where she found a young woman in the uniform of a hotel porter. Like the other porters’, her pinkie finger was painted purple to show her allegiance to the Grappo, but unlike them she wore a belt with a sword and pistol. She must have been in her mid-twenties, with the dark olive skin of a native Ossan and short-cropped black hair. She had hard eyes and a pretty face, her delicate features marred by a scar that ran from her right cheekbone down to her jawline.

After so many days stuck in the prison, watching Magna guards prowl the wall, the mere sight of a guild-family enforcer caused a knot in Thessa’s stomach. She pushed through it. “Something is happening outside.”

The woman inhaled sharply and scowled. “I know.”

“Should I … do anything?” Thessa asked, taken off guard by the nonchalance with which the enforcer spoke.

The woman scratched between her eyes and shook her head. “Lady Foleer, I presume?”

“Right.”

“I’m Tirana Kirkovik, the Hyacinth’s master-at-arms.” She gestured for Thessa to follow and walked down to a door, where they stepped out onto a balcony. The shouts and screams were louder out here, and Thessa could hear the sound of shattering glass from down the street. Tirana remained back from the edge of the balcony and craned her head to see. “They’ve been rioting back and forth through the Assembly District since this morning.”

“Who are they?” Thessa asked. Tirana’s cool helped take the edge off Thessa’s worry, but she still had that urge to flee.

“The price of low-resonance forgeglass tripled last night,” Tirana said, “and three of the major teamsters unions went on strike the moment word got around.”

“It tripled?” Thessa asked, her eyes widening. “That doesn’t happen. It’s not possible. There are mechanisms in place – laws – to keep the prices consistent.”

“You’re a siliceer, right? I don’t know the particulars, but a few large shipments of cindersand went missing. Combine that with the Ivory Forest Glassworks burning to the ground a few days ago, and speculation has gone through the roof. You’d understand it better than I would.”

“It burned to the ground?” Thessa echoed. She felt a pang of guilt. Beyond being grateful for being out of there, she’d done her best not to think of that damned place since escaping. “I didn’t know. Did they … did the siliceers get out?”

“Only a few casualties,” Tirana said. If she had any idea that it was Montego who set the fire, she gave no indication.

Thessa stifled a sigh of relief. She didn’t need more death on her conscience. A sound cut through the afternoon – a falcon’s distinct cry – and she felt her ears prick up. She turned to the sky for half a moment, searching for the bird, part of her wishing it were Ekhi but knowing that wasn’t possible. She brought herself back down to the streets below. “What do we do? Is the hotel protected?” The rioters were getting closer now. A carriage was pushed over half a block away, the occupants dragged out and beaten by the angry mob.

“Master Demir is dealing with it.”

Realization was slow to dawn, but when it did Thessa’s breath was snatched from her. “Is he going to kill them?” she choked. No answer was forthcoming. Thessa swallowed her bile and left the master-at-arms on the balcony, hurrying through the hotel halls and down into the foyer. Guests and porters alike crowded in the lobby, milling anxiously, and Thessa had to push through a cordon of enforcers that stood between the guests and the front door.

Just outside, lounging on the purple carpet that went down the steps to the street, was Demir. He was alone, a bottle of wine sitting on the step next to him. His jacket was unbuttoned, his tunic unlaced at the neck and both sleeves rolled up. He wasn’t wearing his gloves, and the silic sigils on both his hands were hard to miss, as was the assortment of glassdancer eggs sitting on the steps below.

“It’s probably best if you stay inside,” he said, his gaze on the approaching rioters.

“I don’t want you to kill anyone,” Thessa told him. Her heart flipped in her chest, and she wondered if it was the first time anyone had ever been brazen enough to say that to a glassdancer.

Demir looked up in surprise. “I don’t intend to.”

“Then what is this?” Thessa looked pointedly at the glassdancer eggs.

“A warning.” As he spoke, the closest of the rioters finally reached the street below them. There were six or seven, carrying massive chisels that they used to tear up cobbles. Three of them ran to a nearby coach and cut the horses loose, then upended the vehicle. When they finished, they turned toward Demir and Thessa and began to approach. They’d halved the distance when one grabbed the other two by the sleeves and said something. They all three stared at Demir for several moments before turning away.

“There is,” Demir said, raising his left hand so that the glassdancer sigil pointed toward her, “some advantage to being branded a killer.”

The same thing happened again and again. Rioters poured into the street by the dozens, some of them coming as close as the carriage drop-off at the bottom of the hotel stairs before leaving well enough alone. All around the hotel, shop windows were being smashed, guild-family enforcers clashing with the rioters with cudgels and swords, but the violence seemed to stay away from Demir as if he exuded a bubble of calm around him.

“Would you kill them if they ignored the warning?” Thessa asked, sinking to sit on the stair next to Demir. He took a swig of wine, his eyes not leaving the scene. Despite his casual demeanor, up close Thessa could see that his pupils were dilated, his muscles tense.

“I hope we don’t have to find out.” He sniffed at the air. “Someone has set a fire. Piss and shit, the damned fools. They’ll bring out the Cinders that way.”

“Tirana said that they’re rioting because the price of forgeglass tripled overnight.”

Demir gave her a long, significant glance. “That’s what I heard too. So glassdamned sudden. Is there any precedent?”

Thessa scowled. “Severe speculation has happened before, of course, but not in the modern world. Not in a city the size of Ossa. Cindersand is too well regulated.”

“Glassdamn,” Demir breathed.

“This kind of thing is going to keep happening, isn’t it?” Thessa asked, though she already knew the answer. “It’s going to get worse if we don’t finish the phoenix channel.”

The street was packed shoulder to shoulder now, with men and women wearing the drab tunics of common laborers. Some of them had the crest of a teamsters union stitched to their jackets, while others seemed like they were just there for the violence and looting. The crowd suddenly parted, and a middle-aged woman strode brazenly to the bottom step of the Hyacinth. Her tunic was a little nicer than those around her, the embroidery fine but demure, the emblem of an ox stitched boldly on the center of her chest. Thessa recognized the shirt – a union boss. The woman pointed a cudgel at Demir.

“You there, Grappo! You’re a guild-family patriarch, the only one brave enough to stay in the streets. Why has the price of forgeglass tripled?”

Thessa and Demir exchanged a glance, and Demir answered, “I don’t know. I only heard myself when your people started smashing windows.”

“How can you not know?” the union boss demanded. “You’re on the Assembly!”

“I haven’t attended an Assembly meeting in nine years,” Demir called back, spreading his hands to indicate the black mourning flags still hanging from the windows above him. “Ask the Magna or the Vorcien. Does it look like I own a glassworks?”

The woman made a disgusted gesture. “We want answers! Your kind expect us to work ourselves like oxen yet you won’t provide the forgeglass we need to do it? We can’t afford those prices! What good are the guild-family guarantees if prices can leap so readily?”

Thessa looked sharply at Demir. His demeanor had not changed, but she could see he was breathing harder now, sweat rolling down the back of his neck. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

“I’ve blanked,” Demir whispered back. “I used to know what to say; what to do. I used to be able to wrap these kinds of people around my fingers with a few words. They loved me then, and now I can only threaten with my sigil.” To Thessa’s surprise, his hands trembled. She reached down and took him by the hand, squeezing it hard.

“You don’t need to be out here,” she told him.

“If it’s not me, it’ll be my enforcers. People will get hurt. Maybe killed.” He cleared his throat and waved dismissively at the union boss. He called, “Take your complaints to the Assembly. You’ll get nothing here.”

“Bah!” the union boss snapped back with a rude gesture. She withdrew back into the crowd.

Demir let out a long sigh, and Thessa found herself wondering if he could actually resort to violence. He ran his hands across his face. “I’ve seen riots out in the provinces – bread riots, pay riots – I’ve even been in them. But I’ve never seen a godglass riot in the Assembly District. If I … Shit.”

Thessa turned to follow the sharp turn of his head. There, less than a block away, soldiers had emerged out into the street. They looked almost quaint in white, red, and green flowing uniforms, armed with halberds with hammerglass heads and razorglass blades, pistols at their belts, their conical hats looking like something out of an old-timey play. Thessa’s breath caught in her throat.

Cinders. The Assembly’s trained killers. Even in Grent they had a reputation for being half a step below the arrogance and bloodthirstiness of a glassdancer. There were dozens of them, and many of their halberds were already slick with blood. They rolled out into a line between the rioters and the Assembly Square farther down the street, lowering their weapons. The rioters wavered, but they did not scatter.

“Disperse immediately!” one of the Cinders ordered.

The rioters roared back as one, cudgels and stones raised.

“Get inside,” Demir said. He sprang to his feet, running down the steps, his glassdancer eggs shooting from the ground and following him as if they were possessed. “No!” he shouted. “No, no, no!”

Thessa was rooted to the spot, watching as the eggs suddenly cracked and shattered into dozens of pieces that soared over the heads of the crowd and then spread out just in front of the Cinders, driving both soldiers and rioters back in different directions. Demir leapt onto the base of a lamppost and showed his twin silic sigils to both sides.

“He’s going to get himself killed.” Thessa turned to see that half a dozen enforcers had emerged from the hotel, and with them were Tirana and the hotel concierge, Breenen. “Glassdamnit,” Breenen continued, “not even a glassdancer is going to stop this. Tirana, get in there and pull him out.”

“Wait!” Thessa knew she had no authority here – these were not her people – but she threw out an arm to stop Tirana just as Demir began to shout.

“Teamsters!” Demir called above the angry shouts. “Builders, haulers, diggers, skinners! Citizens! Look to me and take heed! This” – he pointed at the Cinders – “is only death and despair. You will suffer and they will call you animals and use it against you.”

Thessa swallowed hard. The shouting tapered off immediately, hundreds of eyes turning toward Demir. “Breenen,” she hissed, “do you have a stockpile of forgeglass? For your porters?”

“Of course,” the concierge replied.

“How much?”

“A few hundred pieces, perhaps.”

“Go get it. All of it.”

The concierge drew himself up. “Young lady, you may be our guest but you do not–”

She turned and grabbed him by the lapels of his tunic. “I’ll make more,” she whispered desperately. “I can replenish that in a few long days. Go. Get. The forgeglass.” At that moment she realized just how close the Grappo enforcers were to forcibly removing her hands from the concierge. She let go, showing him her palms. “Do it.”

Finally, he nodded, and two of the enforcers raced inside.

Demir continued, shouting to a now-quiet crowd. His voice wavered at times, but he plowed on, his tone hypnotic. “Let it go! You’ve shown them your displeasure. Nothing more can be gained.”

Someone – the union boss who’d spoken earlier – shouted out from the crowd. “We won’t go home until they hear our demands.”

“They won’t hear your demands at the end of a cudgel!” Demir shouted back. “They’ll only answer with blood!”

“That we will!” Several of the Cinders, shoving with the stocks of their hammerglass halberds, had pushed their way within a dozen paces of Demir, and their officer now raised a hand toward him.

Thessa felt something shoved into her arms, and she looked down to find a small box brimming with forgeglass. “Now he’s got the Cinders on him!” Breenen growled angrily. “I hope you’ve got some kind of an idea.”

Thessa didn’t. “Take this,” she said, “and form a cordon at the base of the steps.” With that, against all instincts of self-preservation, she shoved her way through the crowd. She reached Demir just as he turned on the Cinders.

“Stand down,” he barked at them.

“You don’t give orders,” the officer replied.

Demir drew himself up. “I am a Grappo patriarch and a glassdancer. I have a seat on the Assembly. Stand down or the blood spilled today will not be theirs!” His voice rose to a roar and Thessa looked up at his back, rethinking her earlier assessment. He was, she decided, quite capable of violence. Glass darted nervously around in the air, hovering dozens of feet above the Cinders, tiny shards that caught the sunlight and glittered like poised knives.

The crowd was completely silent now, not a word spoken, a ripple of tense fear working its way back and forth like the tiny waves on a pond.

“I’ll take this to the Assembly myself!” he declared. “We cannot treat people like cattle and then balk when they stampede. These are our friends. Our fellows. They deserve to be heard without the threat of a razorglass blade.”

Thessa was right behind Demir now, and though she could not see above the heads of the crowd she could feel a sudden change in the wind. Someone shouted, “The Cinders are backing off!”

“Huzzah! Huzzah!”

Thessa could feel the crowd begin to move again in a rush of adrenaline. She grabbed the lamppost and pulled herself up next to Demir. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Helping you end this,” she replied. Raising her voice, she said, “The Grappo will share what we have, though it is not much! A single piece to everyone who can hear my voice, and then withdraw and let Demir fulfill his promise!” She tugged on Demir’s sleeve. “Quickly, before they can work themselves up again.” She half pulled him back to the stairs of the Hyacinth, the rioters parting before her like a wave. The attention of the crowd was now on them, but something had dampened it – within minutes lines had formed, several of the union bosses working their way up to the front and shaking Demir’s hand enthusiastically before getting their people in order.

Thessa found herself swept up in the entire thing, kissed on the cheek, showered with blessings as she handed out pieces of forgeglass. She was dizzy and euphoric, and when she felt friendly hands gently pulling her back inside, she did not fight them. She found herself in the lobby, dazed, facing an angry Breenen.

“You could have gotten us all killed,” the concierge scolded. “That crowd might have turned on you in an instant.”

“Breenen!” a sharp voice rebuked. “Let her be.” They were joined by Demir, who removed his jacket and tossed it to one of the porters. Underneath it he was absolutely soaked with sweat. Breenen pulled back, scowling, and Thessa watched him go. “Forgive him,” Demir said quietly. “That was brilliant. Risky, but brilliant.” His face was flushed, and Thessa knew her own matched it.

“They needed something else,” she said. “You halted their momentum, and they needed a victory. Forgeglass is a victory. And it’s cheap.”

“Not anymore it’s not.”

“If you have the cindersand, I’ll replenish what we’ve given away,” Thessa promised.

“I’ll hold you to that.” Demir looked uncertain for a moment, eyes traveling around the foyer as if he were seeing it for the first time. He finally focused back on Thessa. “I’ll take care of this. Best you not be seen much more in public, or the Magna will come around asking questions.”

Thessa nodded her agreement. That was quite enough excitement for a month, let alone ten minutes. Quietly she said, “This is only going to get worse. I have to move quickly. I’ll start my work right now.” She watched Demir go, then returned to her rooms, where it took some time for the adrenaline to wear off. She watched from the window as slowly, surely, the crowd dispersed. National Guardsmen and enforcers from a dozen different guild-families swept through the streets, driving off stragglers and assessing the damage. The riot was over.

For the moment.

Gathering the schematics, Thessa headed down to the hotel garden, where Demir had already shown her the little workshop where she could rebuild the phoenix channel. The prototype – destroyed by the fires of the Grent Glassworks – was waiting for her. Thessa paced around it, preparing her thoughts, getting ready to bend her neck to the work. She had to do this. For herself. For Kastora. For the stability of the world.

Somewhere above, she heard the cry of a falcon as she got to work.