“You think he’s connected to the plot somehow?”
“Perhaps? I checked back in the morning and he wasn’t a regular around the Lampshade Boardwalk. He might be a hired specialist making sure the participants don’t talk? I’ve heard of such people before. He had light skin – probably a Purnian – and was glassdamned near seven feet tall.”
“But if he’s a specialist, who hired him?”
Kizzie shook her head.
Demir said, “Someone that tall shouldn’t be hard to find.”
“I’ve been trying to locate him for two days. No one has so much as seen him before.”
“I’ll have Breenen do some asking as well,” Demir said.
Kizzie nodded. She’d be glad for the help. Her contacts were quite good, but the concierge of the Hyacinth would be able to ask questions more freely and of a higher echelon of society. Demir continued to drum his fingers against his chin. He finally said, “The Magna, the Dorlani, and the Grent. Those are strange bedfellows for a conspiracy against a single politician.”
“It might have to do with her tax and property reforms?” Kizzie said with a shrug. She’d spent a lot of time thinking about this and still couldn’t make sense of things. “There’s precedent for the public killing of reformers.”
“It’s happened a few times,” Demir admitted, “but not for a hundred years. I would have liked to think Ossa has grown beyond that. Maybe I’m being too optimistic. It just seems so … risky. Why not an assassin in the dark? They could have killed her with poison or a knife to the back or any number of ways. I can’t get over why they would do it in public.”
“You and me both,” Kizzie said.
“Perhaps the Assembly was working together against her,” Demir said. “If you’re right, and it’s because of her reforms…”
“But then why the Grent agent?”
“To give them an excuse for war?”
“The duke wouldn’t have lent them an agent to start a war against him,” Kizzie countered. “There is a chance that Capric lied to you, or was lied to, and the entire Grent agent angle was fabricated.”
Demir frowned. “I made contact with my mother’s people among the Assembly and the Cinders. The Grent killer wasn’t faked.”
“Then something else is going on,” Kizzie said, wondering if Demir had meant to reveal that little bit of information. It was notoriously hard to get spies among the Cinders unless you belonged to the Inner Assembly. The fact that his mother had contacts there spoke to her skills. Kizzie pushed it out of her mind. “I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to put the pieces together, drawing every line I could between the three conspirators, and I’ve only been able to find a single common thread.”
“Which is?”
She hesitated. Her information was sketchy – hearsay, rumors, and a tip from Veterixi at the High Vorcien. “Aelia Dorlani, Glissandi Magna, and Favian Grent – the duke’s brother – all belong to the same Fulgurist Society.”
“Oh,” Demir said quietly, “that is interesting. Which one?”
“They call themselves the Glass Knife. They’re an exclusive dueling club, but beyond that I can’t find out damn well anything about them. They don’t publish their membership or their meeting times. They have no pamphlets. I know some Societies like keeping an air of secrecy about them, but the Glass Knife seems particularly closed off to outsiders.”
Demir swore quietly. “All right. If that’s the only common thread, go ahead and tug on it.”
“Of course,” Kizzie responded. Among the many things she’d wrestled with over the couple of days since Glissandi killed herself was whether she wanted to keep going on this job. She’d talked herself around several times and ultimately decided to stick with it. She was just too damned curious, and if she was being honest with herself, seeing Demir again had pricked something deep within her – a feeling of childhood kinship that she hadn’t felt in years. Demir needed her right now. Not just an enforcer or a hired investigator, but a friend he could trust.
It felt good to be that person.
But only to a degree. “If this does lead back to other guild-family matriarchs or patriarchs…”
“Then I will take over and you will never have been involved,” Demir assured her. “This is dangerous and I know you can handle yourself, but if this looks like it’s going to get you killed I want you to back off.”
Kizzie pursed her lips, wondering if she’d ever had someone care about her personal safety before. Enforcers were expendable, even the valued and experienced ones. Being expendable was a part of their job. She wondered how her life would be different if she’d been born a Grappo. Not even as part of the main family, but as a bastard or a distant cousin.
It was something she’d fantasized about a lot as a child, when she played with Demir and Montego in the park. She sighed. There was no changing who her father was. All she could do was continue being that friend Demir needed. “I’ll keep you informed,” she told Demir. “By the way, Glissandi Magna tried to bribe me with forty thousand ozzo. I’m keeping it, but I consider it payment against our agreed fee.”
“That is more than generous,” Demir replied.
Kizzie got to her feet and headed for the door, pausing to look over her shoulder. “How is Montego?” she asked quietly.
“He’s well.”
“Does he know what I’m working on?”
“He does, and he approves.”
That sentence brought up a lot of complicated feelings. If Kizzie had been the blushing type, she might have blushed then. “I’m glad he came back.”
“You could say hi,” Demir suggested. “I expect him to return in an hour or so. He’s meeting with your brother Capric to make sure some recent nastiness with a third party is … smoothed over.”
Kizzie looked at the floor for a few moments, considering the invitation. Just the thought of seeing Montego again made her both excited and afraid. “Maybe some other time,” she said. Before he could try to convince her, she went on, “I hope you’ll put a few things on the shelves. I haven’t been here for twenty years, but I remember your mom giving me candy from a jar on the shelf there.”
To her surprise, Demir crossed the room and opened the left desk drawer. He tossed something to her, which she caught in one hand. It was a piece of toffee wrapped in wax paper, of the very same kind Adriana used to give Demir’s friends when they were children. “Keep digging,” he told her.
Kizzie rolled the toffee across her fingers as she left the hotel, keeping half an eye out to make sure she didn’t run into Montego unawares. Outside the hotel she popped the toffee into her mouth, a thousand tiny memories coming back to her from the taste, and enjoyed it as she walked down the street looking for a hackney cab.
She’d gone less than a block before she became aware of a presence following her.
“Hey Kizzie,” a man said as he moved up to walk beside her. He was a short, frog-faced fellow of about forty wearing a tight gray uniform with the pink auraglass buttons of a National Guardsman. His left pinkie was painted sky blue to show his allegiance to the Vorcien. He had a lit cigarette in one hand and touched it to the narrow brim of his bearskin hat in a sort of salute.
“Gorian,” Kizzie answered. Gorian was one of her favorite National Guardsmen – a corrupt little bastard with a wonderful sense of humor and a kind family. Unlike most of the guardsmen on a guild-family payroll, he was actually useful and could get her all sorts of gossip, information, or even supplies for the right price. “What are you doing in the Assembly District?”