She just snorted. “I envy you, you know?”
“Don’t patronize me,” Idrian retorted. His blood was up now, and he just wanted to go to bed. He pressed a palm against his godglass eye, listening to the distant sound of child’s laughter. Was it laughter? Or was that child actually saying words now? He tried to ignore both the hallucinated sound and the rising panic that came with it.
Jorfax stopped walking, forcing Idrian to turn around and face her. She shook her head. “I have never been able to separate caring about people from killing. If I care, I can’t kill. If I kill, I can’t care. You’re a superb killer, and yet you have hundreds of friends. You care about your battalion like a father. I respect my people – my glassdancers – and I do my best to keep them alive, but I don’t care about them. I will spend them like soggy banknotes if need be. But you’ll put up that mighty shield of yours, your own life on the line, for people you’ve never even met.”
“And you respect that?” Idrian asked doubtfully.
“I do. I find it weak and demeaning to your entire role as a killer, but I respect it all the same.”
“I feel like this conversation isn’t reflecting well on either of us.”
“I want to know how you do it. How do you look at all these” – she gestured at the camp around them – “insignificant ants and care about them? They aren’t strong, not like us. They have no sorcery, no armor, no resistance to glassrot. Just those little godglass baubles that they cling to like it makes them better.”
Idrian thought about that for a moment. “Because I don’t look for their weaknesses. If that’s all you want to find, of course you think of them as ants. But if you find the strength in your friends, and you nurture it, then you will always be surrounded by giants.”
Jorfax walked past Idrian, slapping him on his shoulder as she went. “You’re an optimistic idiot, Idrian. It’s going to get you killed someday. Strangely enough, you’ll still die content, which is more than I can say for myself. I’ll see you before first light.”
“Wait,” he turned to call after her. “Does that mean you’ll send someone?”
“That means I’m coming myself. Don’t worry, you’re still in command of the mission. But nobody, not even a monster, spends the lives of my people. That’s my job.”
Idrian pressed hard on his godglass eye as he watched her go. For the first time in days he thought of the debt marker hanging around his neck. How long did he have left on it? Just a couple of weeks? The time was ticking down in the back of his head, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. Was it a blessing or a curse? Would he ever even know?
53
Thessa was silently cursing the sky, telling it to send her a proper thunderstorm instead of these damned depressing drizzles, when the messenger arrived. Thessa and Pari sat around the little fire in the lighthouse. They were both still wet and somber from the brief memorial Tirana gave for her fallen enforcer, and Thessa had spent the entire memorial studying each of the enforcers, wondering if one of them was a traitor.
The messenger was a young woman in a black Foreign Legion uniform, a yellow ram stitched on her breast and little ram’s-horn forgeglass earrings dangling from her earlobes.
“Private Fenny, ma’am!” the woman said, snapping a salute. “Message for Lady Foleer from General Grappo.”
Thessa glanced sidelong at Pari. General Grappo. Lady Foleer. It seemed so formal for a pair who’d escaped a labor camp not long ago. “Go on, Private.”
“General Grappo wishes to inform you that there will be a battle in the vicinity of the Forge sometime in the next few days, and asks that you move your operation behind Ossan lines where you’ll be safe until after the battle.”
Thessa’s stomach fell. “Here? Really? I thought all the fighting was farther south.”
“The Grent have encircled Harbortown. General Grappo is trying to lure them back to Grent, but he’s still worried about active combat.”
Pari spoke up. “Damn. I thought I saw strange lights north of Harbortown last night. Didn’t think much of it.”
“That would be Kerite’s Drakes, the mercenary company,” Fenny explained. “Those are the ones General Grappo is worried about.”
Thessa leaned close to the fire, still trying to get the cuffs of her jacket dry. The wind howled outside, rain pattering constantly on the tarpaulin secured over holes in the lighthouse roof. “Does that mean Demir is camped nearby?”
“He is, ma’am. We’re about three miles from here.”
Thessa turned to look at the phoenix channel. It didn’t look like much – just a copper cable coming down from the roof and into one side of an insulated box, then out the other and into the ground. She doubted that Fenny had even taken note of it. Did it matter? Demir would send a message only with someone he trusted. Besides, Thessa knew that crest. It belonged to the Ironhorn Rams, the most famous member of which was a longtime client of the Grent Royal Glassworks.
“Is Idrian Sepulki there?” she asked.
“The Ram? Yes ma’am, of course. He’s our breacher. Horns ready, hooves steady.” Fenny pounded a fist against the ramshead sigil on her uniform.
Thessa considered the flames of the little fire for a few moments, tilting her head to listen to that patter of rain. Still no sound of thunder. “That’s not far,” she said, considering. “Take me to Demir.”
The walk to the Ossan camp was dark and miserable, but blessedly not too long. Thessa refused a piece of sightglass – it wouldn’t help her anyway – and stumbled along close behind, a hand on Fenny’s belt. By the time they reached their destination it was no longer raining, and Thessa was grateful to leave her jacket hanging by the fire outside Demir’s tent before heading inside.
Demir sat cross-legged in the middle of a bare floor, hardly any furniture filling his massive tent. Every surface was covered in papers, with crates of more shoved off to one side. Demir looked up from his studies in surprise. “Thessa? I’m glad you got my message.”
Thessa remained just inside the flap. “What,” she asked, “is the actual danger to us at the Forge?”
“I can’t be entirely sure,” Demir said, setting aside some report. He stood up, stretching out his legs and pacing around for a moment before offering her the only little stool in the tent. “If the Grent notice you, they may send someone to investigate. Otherwise you’re only in danger if we lose the battle and have to flee.”
“But you’re not going to lose the battle, are you?” Thessa asked, raising her eyebrows.
A small smile flickered across Demir’s face. “I’m not one for bravado. There’s a very distinct chance that I will lose. I have a good plan, but Kerite is a sharp one. I wouldn’t put it past her to turn my plan against me in some way. I’d rather you and your team at the Forge be safe.”
Thessa almost told him about the death of Tirana’s enforcer. She should. Demir had a right to know. But she could also see the redness in his eyes and the slump of his shoulders. He was exhausted. Giving him another problem to deal with at this moment would be cruel. “Are you ordering me to withdraw from the Forge?” she asked.
Demir frowned. “I’m not going to order you to do anything. You’re my partner, not my client. We made that very explicit.”