“A geographic phenomenon is a–” Thessa began to explain.
Pari cut her off gently. “I understood the words you used, but we have that. The Forge. It’s exactly what you just described. The sound of distant thunder has lulled me to sleep my whole life. You too, I bet.”
Thessa felt her eyes widen. “Glassdamn,” she breathed, “you’re right. Consistent lightning; a remote location to mitigate the danger; and someplace so out-of-the-way that Dorlani enforcers won’t come looking for us.” She leapt to her feet, putting her tea aside and snatching Pari up in a hug. They had it now – their first location to test the phoenix channel, and it was less than twenty miles away.
41
Demir made his headquarters at Fort Alameda and watched with bated breath as hundreds of scouting reports poured in over the next day and a half. From the vantage of the fort he could see some of the washed-out remains of Kerite’s camp. It looked like a shoreline after a storm, muddy and covered in trash. Thousands of figures picked over the area, removing bodies and recovering equipment.
“What’s Kerite going to do next?” Tadeas asked. Uncle Tad sat in the fort commander’s chair, feet up on the commander’s desk while she was out overseeing the fresh overhaul of her fort. Demir’s maps, messages, and reports lay across every available surface, even covered much of the floor, laid out so he could see them as a whole in one glance.
Demir was not glancing at them now. He was watching the desolate floodplain from the fort commander’s office window. “It seems,” he said cautiously, “that she and the Grent are on the back foot. Over half their forces were washed down the river. Most of the soldiers seem to have survived, but it’ll take her a couple of weeks to bring them back up to fighting strength – they lost so much gear that she can probably only field a fully armed brigade at this moment.”
“The Inner Assembly will want you to press the attack,” Tadeas said, tapping his boot on the desk to whatever tune was playing in his head. It sounded like a funeral march.
“And I’d be a fool if I listened to them,” Demir snorted. “The Foreign Legion has had a couple days’ rest after that loss in the Copper Hills, but we’re still short on cureglass, and morale is low. Our enemy still has more glassdancers, better troops, and they’ve pulled way back to the coast where they can sit in the Grent suburbs and resupply easily. Any attack on them at this moment would be a fool’s errand.”
It wasn’t just cureglass they were short on. Demir was having a hard time finding enough forgeglass for the soldiers or witglass for the officers. Milkglass, and the blessed pain relief it offered, was also growing scarce. He didn’t tell Tadeas any of this, as it might lead to a more painful conversation. He simply wasn’t ready to mention the scarcity of cindersand to anyone yet.
“Is that why you’ve been ignoring Father Vorcien’s demands for an update?” Tad gestured at a neat little stack of messages marked with the Vorcien silic sigil.
“I’ve been ignoring them because I plan on telling him myself,” Demir replied, finally pulling himself away from the window and crossing to the desk, where he pushed his uncle’s feet to the floor. He picked up the stack of messages and put them in his uniform jacket pocket. “I’ve given orders to redouble our scouting efforts, secure lines of communication to Harbortown, and speed up citadel maintenance across every one of our star forts.”
“You’re going into Ossa?” Tadeas asked with a scowl. “Is that wise?”
“I won’t be gone for more than twelve hours,” Demir promised. “If Kerite or the Grent so much as twitch from their positions, I’ll be back here fast as lightning.” He tilted his head at his uncle, whose scowl only deepened. “You don’t think I should say a word to the Assembly until I win another victory, do you?”
“It would cement your advantage. That maneuver with the flood was a damned good one, and the cuirassiers did give Kerite a genuine fight, but there’s not a lot of glory in either of those things. Ossa responds to glory.”
“I seem to remember that you don’t care much for glory.”
“I don’t. But my responsibility is to keep a single battalion of combat engineers alive. You’ve got to juggle the military, politics, and public perception all at once.” Tadeas grinned at him. “There’s a reason I gave you my spot on the Assembly all those years ago.”
Demir looked back across the stacks of messages, the spy reports, and the maps. He was plagued by a thousand little doubts, bouncing around inside his skull like bullet ricochets, all of them overshadowed by his greatest failure. He didn’t want to go back to Ossa. He didn’t want to face the Assembly, or see Thessa again, or have the safety of the Empire on his shoulders. He wanted to run away.
But despite everything, glimmers of his old self seemed to have returned. He could see a path to victory. It was a knife’s edge, depending on factors outside of his control, but it was still a path. He could defeat Kerite, and in doing so redeem his name in the history books. The cost, however, would be great.
Too great.
“I’m not going to fight another battle,” he told Tadeas quietly. “I’m going back to Ossa to try and convince Father Vorcien to sue for peace before the Grent can recover.”
Demir should have gone directly to the Assembly, where word had already been sent ahead for Father Vorcien and his Inner Assembly cronies to await Demir’s report. But his trip into Ossa was more than just a victory run. As Tadeas so succinctly put it, Demir’s position as both a general and guild-family patriarch meant he had to juggle military, political, and public perception all at once. He couldn’t afford to let anyone else shape his juggling act.
“I’ll be just a moment,” he told his carriage driver, then sprinted up the stairs into the Hyacinth. He paused briefly, taking in the quiet lobby and the small lunch rush in the hotel restaurant, before hurrying behind the desk and into Breenen’s office. He closed the door behind him, and the hotel concierge looked up in surprise.
“Master Demir! I didn’t know you were back.”
“Only to make my report,” Demir replied quickly. “I have special instructions.” He produced several papers from his pocket and handed them to Breenen. “I won a great victory the other day and have been holding back reports from the Assembly. I want this press release in every newspaper for the evening edition, and this press release to go out first thing in the morning.”
Breenen glanced at both press releases, a half smile forming on his face. “Ah! Staying one step ahead of the Assembly. Just like your mother.”
“Shaping reality is a skill just like any other,” Demir responded, “and the advantage always goes to the first person to give the public what they want. The Assembly wants to control information. The public wants that warm fuzzy feeling that everything will be okay.”
“Surely the Assembly won’t try to suppress a victory?” Breenen said.
“From me? I won’t risk it. I have at least two enemies on the Inner Assembly. I have to move quicker than they. I…” Demir trailed off, truly looking at Breenen for the first time. Despite that half smile, his brows were knit in worry, his body language that of someone holding uncomfortably to bad news. “What’s happened?” Demir asked. “Is it Thessa? Did something go wrong with her project?”
Breenen moved a few piles of papers around on his desk, not meeting Demir’s eye. “A couple of things, sir.”
“Go on!” Demir checked his pocket watch. He was going to be late for his meeting with the Inner Assembly. “Make it quick.”
“Perhaps it should wait, sir.”