“Sir?” Idrian asked.
“I resign.”
“You can’t resign!” someone said. “This is your moment of triumph!”
Demir looked for Capric, hoping for an ounce of reassurance. His friend was staring slack-jawed at the dozens of dead in the street, all civilians. A triumph. He still might be able to salvage this. His mother, political genius that she was, would certainly try. But if he marched back into Ossa at the front of a triumphal parade after this, he would never be able to live with himself.
He avoided Idrian’s gaze. “Apologize to Myria Forl for me. Tell my uncle that I’m sorry for not finishing the campaign. Capric, write up my resignation. Forge my signature.” His mother would be disappointed. So promising, she would say. Such a fool. We could have fixed this. Demir stumbled off the step, regained his balance, and began to walk. “Tell them not to come looking for me,” he said over his shoulder. “The Lightning Prince is dead.”
1
NINE YEARS AFTER THE SACK OF HOLIKAN
Demir Grappo stood in the back row of an amphitheater, a small cudgeling arena in the provincial city of Ereptia. Even by provincial standards Ereptia was a backwater; a little city in the heart of wine-making country with less than ten thousand people, most of them employed as laborers on the vast vineyards owned by distant wealthy Ossan guild-families. The only arena in Ereptia sat a few hundred people, and just a third of the seats were full for an afternoon exhibition match.
Cudgeling was the national sport of the Empire – bigger and more popular than horse racing, cockfighting, hunting, and boxing combined. The two contestants in the arena wore powerful forgeglass earrings to make them stronger and faster, and then beat the shit out of each other with weighted sticks until one of them forfeited.
Or died.
It was a visceral sport, and Demir felt that it defined the entire Ossan experience wonderfully – the way contestants broke their bodies for the chance at glory while everyone else cheered them on. Someday he would write a philosophical treatise on the subject.
He clutched a bookie’s receipt in one hand, watching the two fighters go back and forth across the arena as the sparse crowd shouted curses and encouragement. The woman was named Slatina. She had the milk-white complexion of a Purnian with short blond hair, and was six feet of solid muscle. The man’s name was Overin, and he was shorter but faster, with a bald head, bushy black beard, and the light olive skin of an eastern provincial.
They were well-matched – brawn versus speed – and the crowd was absolutely loving it as strikes fell, skin cracked, and blood spattered the sandy floor of the arena. Demir himself was paying close attention to how they fought, rather than who was actually winning. It needed to be a good match, with little doubt that the two fighters wanted nothing more than to kill each other.
By the time Overin fell to the ground beneath Slatina’s cudgel, weakly raising a hand to forfeit before she could administer a final blow, Demir knew that everyone had bought it: neither the judges, the audience, nor the bookies had any idea that the pair were well-paid for the inevitable conclusion.
Demir loitered until the last of the audience trickled out of the arena and the cudgelists themselves had long since been given cureglass and escorted away. He watched and listened, making sure that no one so much as suspected that the fight was fixed. When he was certain that their performance had been accepted, he sauntered down the steps, out the front of the arena, and across the street, where a slummy little cantina held one of Ereptia’s many bookies. Demir slid onto a stool at the bar, set down his betting receipt, and gave it a tap with one finger.
“I need a new piece of skyglass,” Demir said, adjusting the gloves that hid his dual silic sigils.
The bartender and bookie was a middle-aged man named Morlius. He had a harried look in his eyes but moved slowly as he rinsed out mugs in a barrel of water underneath the bar. Demir wouldn’t normally order godglass at a bar, but this far out in the provinces it was the only place a stranger could get their hands on a luxury commodity.
Morlius barely glanced at him. “Can’t get skyglass at all right now,” he said.
“Not even the cheap stuff?”
“Not even the cheap stuff. No idea why. Supply just isn’t coming in from Ossa and what little I could get last month was bought up by the vineyard managers.”
“Shit.” The calming sorcery of skyglass wasn’t going to save Demir’s life, but it certainly would make it easier. His last piece had run out of resonance three nights ago, and he’d had a hard time sleeping without it since Holikan. He rubbed at his temples. “Dazeglass?”
Morlius shook his head.
“Fine. Give me a half pint of Ereptia’s best, and put it on this tab.” He tapped the bookie’s receipt once more.
“You won, huh?” Morlius asked, gazing at him sullenly.
“Sure did.” Demir gave him his most charming smile. “Lucky afternoon.” He pushed the receipt across the bar. “Drink?”
Morlius did not reach for a wineglass. “You won yesterday, too. And the day before that.”
“And I lost the three days prior,” Demir replied, keeping that smile fixed on his face. “Good luck follows bad, I suppose.”
“I don’t think there’s any luck in it.”
Demir let his smile fade into faux confusion, cursing himself silently. He was very careful about losing almost as much as he won. Had he made a mistake? Or was Morlius tipped off? “I’m not sure what you’re implying,” Demir said, huffing loudly. Morlius did not have a pleasant reputation. Rumor had it he was in the business of drugging cudgelists before fights to get the result he wanted. He didn’t do it often – not enough to attract official attention – but the reputation was well-earned enough that cudgelists in the know avoided his cantina.
Demir didn’t begrudge the foul play. That would be hypocritical, after all. He did begrudge the treatment of the cudgelists. His fighters always got a cut. That was the rule.
One of Morlius’s goons appeared from the cellar carrying a new wine cask. Morlius not-so-subtly jerked his head at Demir. The goon set down the cask and closed the cantina door, then moved to stand behind Demir. Morlius reached under the bar and produced a cudgel of his own. “Heard a story about a man of your description over in Wallach. Got caught fixing fights and then skipped town before they could string him up. Ripped off my cousin for thousands.”
Demir sighed and glanced over his shoulder. The goon behind him was well over six feet tall, thick and powerful and with the oft-broken fingers and battered face of a retired cudgelist. The goon drew a long knife from his belt.
“You’re pulling a knife on a patron because of a vague description of a grifter from three towns over?” Demir scoffed. He wasn’t quite ready to move on from Ereptia yet. Slatina, other than being a talented cudgelist and quite a good actress, had invited him to meet her parents next weekend. Demir loved meeting people’s parents. It was like looking into the future to see what they’d be like in thirty years. “Don’t be dumb, Morlius. It’s not even a big bet. If you can’t pay out today, I’ll take it against my future tab.”
If Morlius were smart, he would pleasantly drug Demir, rob him blind, and leave him in an alley on the other side of town. But Morlius was not smart. He didn’t know when to rein in his greed. Demir turned on his stool so that one shoulder was pointed at Morlius and the bar, and the other at the goon. He glanced over the goon’s shoulder, out a window into the street, where he saw something that hadn’t been there before: a very nice carriage with sky-blue curtains, six bodyguards on the running boards, and the silic symbol of the Vorcien guild-family etched on the door.