“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.”
49
There were few things worse than waiting for the next battle but not knowing when it would happen.
The socket of Idrian’s false eye itched horribly, making him want to claw out the eye and scratch back there with a dinner fork. It was almost two days since anyone had seen Demir. Tadeas’s messages back to Ossa had gone unanswered, aside from a single missive from the Hyacinth Hotel saying that Demir was imprisoned in the Maerhorn and they were trying to get him out. Only Tadeas and Idrian knew the truth, but the entire camp, from the Ironhorns to the regular infantry to the fort garrison, was wondering whether they still had a commanding officer.
That glassdancer – that thing – that attacked the other night had not returned. The rumors about it were spreading too. Only about a dozen people had seen it, but that was far too many to keep a secret. Whispers crisscrossed the camp that the Grappo Torrent was the last gasp to defend Ossa; that they’d all been abandoned, and that Kerite would return with fresh troops and monsters to boot, grinding them into a pulp.
Through all of these doubts and questions, Idrian grappled with his madness. Sometime during the last day or so he’d decided that this was not an aberration manifest from his grief for Kastora. The child’s laughter happened so often that he barely noticed it now, but worse specters haunted his waking moments. Shadows flitted in the corners of his vision. Most were nothing more than that – dark splotches, moving about on their own – but on occasion he thought he saw people he knew were long dead.
One of two things was happening: either the eye was degrading faster than it was supposed to, or something had changed within his own mind that made the eye no longer adequate. The former could be solved by Demir’s phoenix channel. The latter could not, and the prospect terrified him. If the madness continued to worsen, and he could no longer tell the difference between what was real and what was imaginary, how could he possibly defend the Ironhorns? What happened when that flying glassdancer returned? Could Idrian even trust himself to tell whether it really existed?
Idrian stood on the bastion wall of Fort Alameda, looking out over the fires of the camp. Roughly a third of the Foreign Legion was gathered here. The rest were back up at Fort Bryce, and he wished they were all together. They would need every soldier on hand the next time Grent and their mercenaries came knocking. If that itch in his eye socket was anything to judge by, it would happen soon.
His sword lay before him on the bastion merlons, ready to be snatched up the moment he saw something strange in the sky. He knew it was unnecessary – Tadeas and the garrison commander had agreed to quadruple the watch – but he stood his vigil anyway, remaining on the wall until he was too tired to keep his head up.
Perhaps he was a fool, and all this extra worry and effort only made his madness worse. But what else could he do? Stand down and risk people dying?
“Good evening, sir.”
“Good evening, Braileer.” Idrian glanced sidelong at the young armorer as he mounted the bastion wall and came to stand beside him. “Dinner was fantastic tonight. Thank you for that.”
And it was. Braileer was better than the garrison cook, bringing Idrian half a duck and a loaf of rosemary bread soaked in duck fat, all done over a soldier’s cookfire instead of in a proper kitchen. Idrian did not admit that he’d barely tasted any of it.