Demir continued to ride, searching for officers, trying to find someone to help him get this under control. He was half blinded by smoke, confused and disoriented, when his horse stumbled over a tipped cart. He barely threw himself free of the animal, landing on his left hand, pain lancing up his arm. His horse rolled over, making a murderous racket, then got upright and galloped off into the night.
Clutching his wrist, unable to think through the pain and the cacophony, Demir rushed from building to building, ordering his soldiers to stop. He berated them, lambasted them, and finally begged them. A few of them frowned at his mud-covered uniform. No one recognized him. Why would they? Few had ever seen his face up close, and he couldn’t get the glove off his broken left hand to show them his glassdancer sigil.
“Who is this?” one would ask.
“Some madman,” another would say.
“He has an officer’s uniform and an expensive cloak.”
“The officers are all getting drunk in Grappo’s tent. We have orders to follow. If we don’t do it quick, someone else will get the good loot. Three cheers for the Lightning Prince!”
They would laugh, and ignore him. Someone finally grabbed him by his victory cloak and threw him into a ditch, where he barely caught himself before going facedown in the filth.
He lay partially submerged in the muddy, shit-filled water, staring into the street. His whole body shook with fury and terror. Not a half hour ago he had pledged that Holikan was under his protection, and now there were orders under his seal to sack the city. With trembling fingers he reached into his pocket, searching for skyglass to help him calm his nerves. He pulled out a handful of baubles that immediately slipped from his fingers, falling into the mud. He plunged in after them desperately, but came up with nothing.
Across the street, the cry of a child caught his attention. He looked up to see a little girl – probably no more than four or five, screaming into the air. Demir pushed himself to his feet and struggled out of the ditch. If he could not save the many, he would save the one.
The sound of galloping hooves filled his ears, and his path was suddenly blocked by several dozen of his dragoons. He’d never been so close to them before, and the thunder of their passing would have made him piss his pants if he hadn’t already done it in the ditch. He searched his pocket for godglass, remembered that he’d dropped it all, and then gathered his courage. The dragoons were soon gone, and he took several more steps before his eyes fell on the spot where the child had been.
The child had been trampled. Her little body was silent and still, broken and bloody. He staggered toward her, tearing off his victor’s cloak and using it to scoop her up before sprinting to the other side of the road just ahead of another group of dragoons. He clutched the body to his chest, every fiber of him shaking, and dropped onto the front step of an abandoned shop.
The nightmare had only just begun.
By the time his staff found him, Demir had not moved. He had not slept, or eaten, or had a coherent thought in more than twelve hours. He sat on the step, cradling the corpse of the child in his victor’s cloak, having spent a night watching every atrocity that a victorious army could inflict upon a city. His head lay against the cool stone of the shop’s threshold, his eyes burning from the acrid smoke of a hundred fires, his tongue parched and his wrist swollen.
It was Idrian who discovered him and called for the others. The breacher had discarded his armor, wearing an officer’s uniform stitched with the ram’s horns that gave him his moniker. He came and knelt before Demir, examining his face. Demir flinched away from that purple godglass eye.
“Sir, are you all right?”
Demir could not find the words to reply. He felt hollow, stripped. He knew that his legs still worked, but the very idea of standing felt impossible. He licked his cracked lips, tried to summon words, and failed. He felt tears in his eyes and tried to look away; to hide them from the breacher.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” he finally managed. “I didn’t give those orders.”
“I know, sir,” Idrian replied gently. “Communication went awry. We’ll find out what happened, I promise.”
Slowly, the rest of Demir’s staff gathered behind Idrian, staring down at Demir. In the place of those victorious grins of yesterday were looks of horror and disgust. Capric came close enough to pry into what Demir had wrapped in his cloak, only to stumble away and retch in the ditch. Idrian’s one eye darted toward the dead child, but he did not flinch from it. Demir could feel the stares of his staff – he could see the calculation in their eyes, each one wondering how this development would affect their career or their guild-family. He could see that each of them was trying to figure out how to detach their name from this disaster.
It was one thing to punish a rebelling city with defeat and decimation. It was another entirely to put it to the torch.
Demir tried to think. He attempted to gather all his faculties, to calculate the possibilities of the future. He had given his word, before more than a dozen people, that Holikan was under his protection – and then his army had sacked it. They’d murdered and burned and plundered on his apparent orders. He needed to start an investigation; to pin this disaster on someone else, either real or invented.
“Witglass,” he croaked.
Capric returned to his side, pressing a piece into his hand. Demir fixed it to a piercing, trying to think. His mind was blank, and the witglass caused a sharp pain behind his eyes until he removed it and gave it back. He could no longer calculate. The future was dark and silent.
His mind had broken.
“Myria Forl?” he asked, raising his head to look for the mayor.
“She is safe,” Idrian assured him. “Your uncle arrived in the middle of the night and I left her with our battalion. No one will harm her.”
Demir’s gaze went to the black column of smoke that rose above them. “I wish she were not safe. I wish she could not see what I have done.”
“You didn’t do this,” Idrian said firmly. “It was an accident. A crossing of orders.”
Demir looked across the faces of his staff. They all avoided his gaze. Not from fear this time, but from shame. He had not done this, certainly, but it was his responsibility.
Slowly, every muscle hurting, Demir managed to climb to his feet without dropping the body of the child. He found the door to the shop open, and the inside ransacked, though he had no memory of soldiers forcing themselves past him. He deposited the body, still wrapped in his victory cloak, on the shop counter.
He touched the child’s hair briefly, searching for a prayer from his childhood, wishing he believed in a god to pray to. He tried to gather his thoughts. How could he face another person after this? How could he return to his guild-family, or his lovers, or the people of his province? How could he ever look another soul in the eye? He returned to the front step. For the first time in years he felt his youth; helpless, inexperienced, and wondering when a real adult would come along and fix all of this.
Idrian produced a milkglass bauble and pressed it into Demir’s hand. The godglass was not as high quality as his own, but the sorcerous effect was immediate – the ache began to bleed from his bones. “We should see to that wrist,” Idrian said. “It looks like it might be broken.”
Even with Idrian’s milkglass, Demir’s wrist hurt so bad that he no longer felt it. Like his soul, it was numb. “Who is my second-in-command?” No one answered. He peered at the faces of his staff. “I don’t even know.” A mad-sounding laugh slipped through his lips. “In my arrogance, I never thought I’d need them. Well. Whoever they are, congratulate them on their promotion.”