When they finished, Thessa stood back with a happy sigh to examine her work. It was one thing to examine diagrams and have theories and draw up schematics. It was another entirely to have it all come out to her specifications.
“You really think it’s going to work?” Pari asked.
“Either we’re going to go down in history,” Thessa replied, “or we’ll have wasted quite a lot of Demir’s money.”
“Or both.”
“How so?”
“Well, we could end up being famous for getting a bunch of us killed by lightning.” Pari raised her eyebrows, and it took Thessa a few moments to realize it was meant to be a joke. Sort of.
“We’re not going to get killed by lightning,” she said, hoping she sounded confident. Tirana already thought she was a madwoman. Best if that idea not spread around the rest of the enforcers. “As long as these three lengths of cable are attached and the phoenix channel is grounded, there should be no danger.”
“What happens if it’s not grounded?” Pari asked.
Thessa shook her head. “Then the lightning will jump. That’s not going to happen, though. We’ve followed all of Professor Volos’s instructions. The worst that will happen is nothing.” That might, she silently admitted to herself, be a fate worse than death. Working so hard, creating so much, only to have to start over from scratch. If this failed, she would have let down herself and Demir, but also Kastora’s legacy.
“Funny,” Pari said, chuckling to herself, “but my dad has kept every piece of godglass he’s ever used over the years. It’s in a little hatbox underneath his bed, and my grandma has been begging him to throw it out since I was a little kid. He must have hundreds of pieces of low-resonance forgeglass. Maybe a few others. If this works, and we can actually recharge godglass, we’ll never hear the end of it from him.”
“My aunt used to do the same,” Thessa admitted. She felt her smile falter and worked to keep it in place. Best not to think of the people long gone, but how happy they would be to see her succeed. “Think of it: secondhand godglass will become a thing overnight. First thing I’ll do is tell Demir to buy this piece of land. We could have a permanent outpost up here with a dozen lightning rods and phoenix channels and…” She was getting ahead of herself now and she forced herself to stop. “It could be grand,” she finished.
Their conversation was arrested by a distant scream, followed by a series of shouts. Thessa and Pari exchanged a glance before rushing out into the open. Thessa shielded her eyes from the drizzling rain, peering toward the lanterns on the other end of the Forge. By the time she reached them she found most of the Grappo enforcers milling about near the ledge, Tirana and Breenen among them.
“Did someone fall?” Thessa asked.
Tirana swore, looking around at her enforcers. “Who was it? Who’s missing?”
“I think it was Justaci,” someone answered. Within a few moments the name was confirmed, and the party grew somber. This was a bad omen at best, to start the phoenix channel with a death, even an accidental one. Thessa briefly wondered whether she was cursed, or if the goddess Renn had finally turned on her for what she did at the Ivory Forest Glassworks, but she pushed the thoughts out of her head. Damned foolish.
“Are we going to try and get him?” someone asked.
Thessa pushed her way into the group, to where Tirana and Breenen were conferring underneath an umbrella. “We could lower a rope,” Breenen suggested.
“That’s a two-hundred-foot drop onto the rocky coast,” Tirana responded, her tone tense. “He didn’t survive that, and I’m not sending anyone down there in the dark in inclement weather.”
Thessa looked between the two, then around at the concerned faces. Almost all of the supplies and equipment had been brought up, and the enforcers looked exhausted from all the effort. “We should post someone down at the bottom of the trail with sightglass,” Thessa said. “It’s unlikely anyone survived that fall, but if he did we want to be sure we rescue him.”
“Agreed.” Both Tirana and Breenen nodded, and within a few minutes a small group of volunteers, including Pari, was heading back down the slippery trail. They would get as close to the bottom of the cliffs as they could, peering into the darkness with sightglass. The rest of the enforcers soon disbanded, heading to their tents, leaving Thessa shivering beside Tirana. The master-at-arms remained close to the ledge, her neck craned, wearing a look of consternation.
Thessa moved to return to the lighthouse, but Tirana took her by the arm. “Thessa, Demir forbade all of us from asking you what’s actually happening here. I get it – a secret silic project. He doesn’t want to risk a leak to the Dorlani or anyone else. But I have to ask you … is this worth people dying over?”
Thessa glanced involuntarily at the ledge. Was there a right answer to this? “Yes,” she said, “it is.”
“Would you die for it?”
“I’d rather not,” she said with a half smile. When Tirana remained serious, Thessa swallowed the lump in her throat. “Yes, I would.”
“Good. Because I don’t know if that was an accident.”
“Why would you say that?” Thessa asked, feeling her stomach tighten. “It’s slippery, it’s dark.”
“No one saw Justaci fall,” Tirana replied.
“That’s not enough for real suspicion, is it?” Thessa didn’t want to scoff at Tirana’s instincts, but this seemed to take it too far. “Anyone could have…”
Tirana raised a finger. “When we arrived here, Justaci took me aside at the first chance he could get me alone, and he told me that someone left the basement access to the Hyacinth unlocked. Those Dorlani enforcers didn’t get in by wile or accident. Someone let them in. I don’t know who it was. I don’t even have any suspicions. But keep your wits about you. We may have a traitor on our hands. One that’s willing to kill.”
Tirana strode off, calling to a pair of nearby enforcers to post a night guard, leaving Thessa wet, alone, and very frightened. She looked up into the pitch-black sky, raindrops hitting her face, and hugged herself.
So much for leaving the city for safety.
50
Demir returned to command of the Foreign Legion as if nothing had happened – as if rumors about his duel with Capric weren’t flying around the capital in every direction, and practically everyone he passed wasn’t burning with questions about how he dodged Father Vorcien’s fury. Demir ignored it all. He couldn’t afford further distractions, not now.
Careful to keep a steady line of communication with his scouts, in case the winds of this war shifted once more, Demir regrouped the Foreign Legion just a few miles northeast of Harbortown. It was not an ideal location – the ground was a little too soft for heavy cavalry, and sight lines were ruined by the windbreaks between the farms that stretched across this northern edge of the Copper Hills – but the location effectively prevented the enemy from trying to turn and encircle Ossa. They would have to either come through him, or retreat back to Grent and the river.
What’s more, he could see the Forge in the distance from here. Not close enough that Kerite suspected anything valuable was there, but enough that he could intervene if she made a move in that direction. It was a wildly inappropriate mismanagement of his priorities as commander of the Foreign Legion, and he didn’t give a shit.