In the Shadow of Lightning

48

Kizzie arrived at the Hyacinth after dark, pausing in the flickering shadows of the gas lamps, searching the streets behind her for any sign that the Tall Man had followed her here. She saw nothing, but couldn’t shake that itching sense between her shoulder blades that she was being watched from the darkness. It wasn’t just the Tall Man she had to worry about, she reminded herself. What other agents did the Glass Knife have? With so many powerful guild-family members in play, any enforcer or spy or even client was suspect.

To her surprise, there were Grappo enforcers standing watch just outside the hotel. The Grappo had always been circumspect about their use of enforcers, keeping them on hand but out of sight. The fact that six men and women now guarded the front entrance, wearing purple tunics with the cracked silic sigil of the Grappo on their chests, spoke much to how things had escalated in just the last few hours. They were all armed with swords and pistols, and Kizzie thrust her right hand into her pocket as she jogged up the stairs past them. She didn’t have to worry about them being with the Glass Knife, but no telling how little goodwill they had for the Vorcien at this moment, regardless of whatever Father Vorcien had done to smooth things over.

Despite the enforcers out front, the hotel lobby was bustling with the normal evening hubbub, guests checking in with the help of dozens of porters. The porters, she noted, were all wearing smallswords at their belts. This was damned serious, and she couldn’t help but feel as if she’d entered enemy territory. She swallowed her fear and edged around the side of the lobby, making for Breenen’s small office behind the concierge’s desk. Breenen, to her surprise, wasn’t at the concierge’s desk. It was one of the senior porters, someone that Kizzie didn’t recognize.

She waited until he was between guests. “Is Breenen here?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, he’s not.”

“Demir?”

“Not at the moment.”

Kizzie kept her hand in her pocket to hide her silic sigil. She still didn’t know if she had already been fired – maybe banned from the Hyacinth for life. She reminded herself she wasn’t actually here to see either Breenen or Demir and licked her lips. “Montego?”

“Master Montego is on the premises, but he doesn’t want to be disturbed. Can I leave a message?”

Kizzie wanted to punch that ingratiating public-facing smile. She wrestled with her nerves, still uncertain she was taking the right path. She’d feared this moment for years – feared Montego’s response. When they were children he was a kind soul, despite his reputation for physicality. He’d been loving and forgiving and gentle. But that Montego was still a boy. She didn’t know the famous cudgelist with insatiable appetites and unmatched violence.

Making a decision, she put her hand flat on the concierge’s desk to show her silic sigil. “You can tell him Kizzie is here to see him.”

“Ah.” The porter’s eyes tightened ever so slightly. “Miss Vorcien. Of course. Master Demir left word to accommodate you in any way.”

“He did?” Kizzie asked in surprise. So she hadn’t been fired? Father Vorcien really had smoothed things over?

“You can find Master Montego in the hotel gymnasium. I trust you know the way?”

Kizzie almost did punch him, though she didn’t think he meant it sarcastically. “Thanks.” She headed up the main stairs, feeling off-kilter. Demir attacked Capric in the street just two days ago. He had every reason for a blood feud, even a guild-family war, and yet all that bad blood was gone just like that? What the piss could possibly cause them to bury the hatchet so quickly? She tried to shake it off. She should be ecstatic! No one had died, no war had started. She didn’t have to feel guilty about sending that missive anymore.

Kizzie navigated to the top floor of the hotel. She paused briefly in the hallway, gazing at the sign in front of the gymnasium door that called it OCCUPIED. Her heart was hammering in her chest, her palms were sweaty; a moment she’d made every arrangement for and yet still avoided was about to come true.

“Whatever you do, Baby,” she whispered to herself, “don’t send me away.”

The Hyacinth gymnasium was a massive room taking up a full quarter of the floor, with high ceilings topped with massive windows to keep it well-lit during the day. At night, it was a dim room lit only by gas lanterns, casting long shadows across the padded floor and tapestries of men and women accomplishing feats of strength in various states of undress.

Kizzie closed the door to the gymnasium slowly behind her, peering around the room until her eyes landed upon the massive figure of Baby Montego. He was even bigger than she remembered, both fat and muscular, light glistening off the mixture of sweat and oil rubbed into his skin, wearing nothing but a cudgeling girdle. She was off to one side of him, though he did not seem to notice her presence as he was focused on something immediately in front of him. Kizzie was raising her hand, his name on her lips, when he suddenly ran forward.

He leapt into the air, snagging a thick rope suspended from one of the massive hooks overhead. He swung on the rope, rocking back and forth, using himself as a counterweight to move his arc higher and higher, until he was almost able to touch the ceiling. Suddenly his right hand darted out, snagging the end of another rope positioned for that purpose. He swung down, up to the top of the next arc, and grabbed another rope. Two more he did, all the way to the other end of the gymnasium, swinging like one of the monkeys in the Ossan zoo.

It was proper aerobatics, of the type one might see in a circus. It felt unreal to watch so much girth accomplish something that required so much agility. She couldn’t imagine the dexterity of those fingers to snatch a rope thirty feet up in low light, or the strength needed to hold so much weight aloft. At the bottom of the final swing, Montego threw himself into a roll, tumbling across the padded floor and coming up onto his feet, planting both palms on the opposite wall to stop himself. He heaved and trembled from the effort, stretching his arms out to either side of him.

Kizzie shook her head. She’d read the papers these last few weeks. She knew what they said about him letting himself go, and growing fat and lazy. She hadn’t believed them. Not Montego. Not her Montego. She now felt vindicated in that belief.

“Bravo,” she said, clapping quietly.

Montego leapt nearly a foot into the air, his whole body twisting in the maneuver, and landed with both fists held up in a ready position. Even from across the long room, she could see his eyes go wide. “Kizzie?” Her name echoed.

“Hi, Baby.”

Montego’s arms fell to his sides. Slowly, he walked in her direction, angling toward the wall, where he fetched a dressing gown big enough for a tent and threw it over his shoulders. The lighting made him appear even more massive – the world champion killer that had grown out of the hulking boy she once knew. Despite herself, Kizzie felt something long forgotten stir in her chest.

Montego pulled his long brown hair back, tying it into a bun behind his head in one smooth motion while he padded silently toward her. His head tilted to one side, his eyes growing small as his whole face seemed to wrinkle as he peered at her.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.

“I wasn’t sure I was ready to see you.”

“After all this time?” he asked.

She couldn’t tell if his furrowed brow was due to anger or confusion. “After all this time,” she confirmed. “It still hurts.”

“You’re not the one whose neck broke Sibrial’s cane.” Montego pulled away his dressing gown enough to show her a prominent scar just above where his shoulder met his neck. He grunted and hid it again, his eyes looking suddenly downcast as if he was ashamed of it. “I’m sorry for what I did to your brother.”

Kizzie stared back at Montego. Really stared, her thoughts suddenly fallen into a confused jumble and trying to work themselves out again. Did he think she was mad at him? “Baby,” she said, “that’s not what hurts. What hurts is the fact that I couldn’t look you in the eye. That I never came back for you, or said goodbye, or even sent you a letter. What hurts is that I was so scared of what my family would think if they found out, that I did everything Sibrial told me to do to cover it all up and then never saw you again. That’s what hurts.”

“Oh,” Montego responded, his mouth hanging open. The silence between them stretched on, his face rippling and contorting as he seemed to try to find the right words. Finally he said, “I never blamed you for any of that. I was just a glassdamned kid with a good amateur cudgeling record. You did what you had to do. Is that why you’ve never come to see me again? Once we were both adults, I mean. Because you thought I was angry?”

Kizzie’s guts were so tight she thought they were going to suck her whole body into them, twisting her into a little lump of intestine. She nodded.

He continued, “I was never angry. Heartbroken, yes. But not angry. You were my Kiz. I was your Baby. And then one day I broke your brother right in front of your eyes. That must have traumatized you something fierce.”

“A little,” Kizzie admitted.

“It’s me who should apologize. I should never have put you through that. You know, I’ve heard rumors. About the way Sibrial has treated you over the years. It’s taken all my self-control not to crush him into a pulp. I only didn’t because I knew you’d want to do it yourself.”

Kizzie couldn’t stop staring. This was not at all how she’d imagined this meeting. She’d shadowboxed with recriminations and swearing and Montego’s quiet but terrifying anger. She had not expected this. She wiped tears out of the corners of her eyes and took a steadying breath. Hesitantly, she ventured a small smile. “You never came to see me, either.”

“Because I was a coward. Even after I got famous, even after the rest of the world knew me by Baby, I couldn’t bear the thought of you rejecting me. Not as a lover, mind, but as a friend. If you’d turned your back on me it would have broken me as surely as Holikan broke Demir.” Montego’s head was up, his stance tall and powerful as if he was owning his own admission of cowardice. Why wouldn’t he? He’d conquered everything else in the world. Why not shame as well?

“Glassdamn, Baby,” Kizzie managed. “All these years, scared of each other, like idiot children.”

Baby’s round face suddenly split into a massive grin, and he lurched forward, pulling her into a hug. She found herself squeezing him back, breathing in that scent of sweat mixed with jasmine oil that brought a thousand memories to the front of her mind. “You even still smell the same.”

“Yes, but I can buy jasmine oil by the bargeful now, instead of stealing it from Adriana.” They separated, and Kizzie felt some of the fear, shame, anger, and helplessness of the day seem to just melt out of her. She had a thousand questions to ask, sixteen years to catch up on. “You didn’t just come to apologize, did you?” Montego asked.

“I need help,” she admitted. “Not from Demir, not from my own guild-family. Help from you.”

Montego frowned. “Explain.”

So she did, running through the entire story from when Demir hired her to the present moment. She left out only the missive and the blackmail, certain that her involvement in those things should never pass her lips again. They moved over to benches in the corner as Kizzie talked. Montego listened through the whole thing without interrupting her, all the way to the end, when she threw her hands up. “And so I’m here, and I’m ashamed it took me the deaths of my friends to come and see you finally.”

“You should be a little ashamed,” Montego said, his tone teasing. “But you did the right thing. This Tall Man, you say he killed eleven armed National Guardsmen in under a minute?”

“Yes.”

Montego rubbed his chin. “You’ve gotten faster. I’m impressed you were able to cut him at all. I would be hard-pressed to kill so many bare-handed in that little time.”

“I haven’t gotten fast enough. He must have punched Gorian hard enough to stop his heart. I’m only still alive because he wanted me to deliver that message to Father Vorcien. I need help, Baby. This Fulgurist Society – this Glass Knife – I think they killed Adriana and I still don’t know why. I want to trust it to Father Vorcien, but I’m one of the best fighters the Vorcien have and I could barely nick the Tall Man. He’ll murder his way through every one of my fellow enforcers, and he probably won’t break a sweat. I need a breacher to deal with him, or…”

“Or me,” Montego said.

“I don’t want you to think I’m trying to manipulate you. I didn’t apologize to get your help. I apologized because I’ve wanted to for sixteen years.” Kizzie tried to smile, but it felt forced. “I will absolutely understand if you’re unwilling.”

“Why would I be unwilling?” Montego made a fist between them, leaning close. “I came back to Ossa because my adopted mother was murdered. Demir may have a thousand other things on his mind but I do not. I’ve only been waiting for him to give me the word, but I’ll take it from you just as readily. Say the word, Kizzie.”

“Please?” Kizzie said. “Is that the right word?”

Montego’s grin returned. “You know that Aelia Dorlani is definitely involved?”

“Without a doubt,” Kizzie said. She felt a flutter in her belly at the gleam in Montego’s eyes. That gleam happened for only two reasons, and one of them was when he was itching for a fight.

“Tell me,” he said, “what plans have you made to isolate and question her?”

“I’ve thought through a few scenarios, but she’s on the Inner Assembly. I can’t touch her. Not even Father Vorcien would be able to protect me if I did.”

Montego’s nostrils flared. “I have the corpses of six Dorlani enforcers on ice in the cellar. I don’t give a shit who she is, I will not allow her to go unpunished for her involvement in Adriana’s murder or the invasion the other night.”

“Invasion?”

“Dorlani enforcers killed a porter and a cook in an attempt to burglarize the hotel. They were after a project of Demir’s. They even managed to poison my tea, but they didn’t use enough.”

Kizzie stiffened. What was Father Vorcien looking for? A phoenix channel? The Dorlani must be after it as well. “That’s awfully bold, even for Aelia.”

Montego nodded.

Kizzie thought back through a half dozen half-cocked ideas she’d considered for trying to reach Aelia. They all still felt like suicide, but if Montego was willing to take the Dorlani’s ire … perhaps not so much. “All right,” she said. “I think I have something that might work for the two of us.”