She resumed her search but found only one of the four suspects she’d originally come to research. Her name was Fioda Jaque, and she’d been walking toward the stairs when a wineglass had decapitated her. Kizzie searched her pockets as well but came up with nothing more than a watch and billfold. She left both.
The search had left Kizzie nauseous and shaky, her nerves a complete mess despite the skyglass. No amount of willpower could force her up the stairs to the next floor, no matter what kind of clues she might find. She took one last glance around and decided she’d stumbled on something military in nature. It couldn’t be anything else: the Grent must have sent glassdancer assassins after the losing Ossan officers.
Common sense finally made its way through her shock and the skyglass, and Kizzie realized she was the only living person inside a building full of important corpses. She needed to raise an alarm, and she needed to do it without being recognized.
She was almost to the front hall when a sound caught her ear. She paused, glancing back, wondering if she’d missed a survivor. She was caught in the sudden dilemma of trying to save them or getting out of here quickly. The sound repeated. Thump. Thump. Thump. Kizzie’s stomach tied itself in knots. Those were footsteps coming down the stairs on the far side of the room.
Kizzie tore her rooted feet from the floor and raced toward the exit, no longer caring to do so silently. As she ran around the corner to the narrow hallway she caught a single glance of someone stepping into the boxing halclass="underline" an impossibly tall man with white skin and a bald head. Their gazes met briefly.
Kizzie was not sure if he pursued her. She was practically flying now, summoning every ounce of sorcery that she could get from the forgeglass in her braided earrings. As she raced past the coatroom she snatched up a scarf still sitting on the counter, throwing it around her neck and pulling it up to hide her face. She emerged into the street at a sprint, screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Murder! Call the National Guard! Sound the alarms!” Before she’d even reached the end of the street she could see curious faces poking out the windows of nearby tenements. She found a watchhouse on the next street and banged on the doors until the National Guardsmen emerged, pointing them in the direction of the Bingham Brawlers Club.
As the National Guardsmen rushed past her with their weapons, she caught sight of the Tall Man. He was standing just across the street, a dark splash across the front of his gray tunic. He held no weapons.
He was staring directly at her.
Kizzie stared back, her heart in her throat, a feeling of absolute dread twisting her guts like the knots of a blackwood vine. No one else seemed to note or care about his presence, and she could not bring herself to call the National Guardsmen’s attention to the Tall Man. She tried to probe with her sorcerous senses, looking out for any sign of his sorcery, but she came back with nothing. Glassdancers could not hide their presence, and she could feel no imminent attack.
The Tall Man took a step toward her. She steeled herself against the dread. He wasn’t the glassdancer. What had Gorian said? Someone of his description might be connected with the serial murder of siliceers? Perhaps he was a Stavri agent, here to report to his master, and had arrived just moments before her to find the grisly scene. But then, why did he have blood on his tunic? Kizzie had no interest in a confrontation. She forced herself to relax, letting the growing crowd sweep her away. She was pulled along back toward the club, past the screaming and wailing, and then escaped against the growing torrent of onlookers in the opposite direction.
She hired a hackney cab and did not allow herself a sigh of relief until she was back in Ossa, sitting under the bright lights of a late-night café at nearly midnight. It was the second time in three days that she had witnessed that Tall Man near an important body. That couldn’t be a coincidence. But the club back there was full of officers, not lone siliceers or a blackmailed Magna. Shaken and exhausted, she ordered coffee and produced the bundle of bloodstained letters from her pocket, hiding them from the waiter with her menu. She did her best to put the Tall Man out of her thoughts.
The first letter was from one of Agrippo’s mistresses and it was very saucy. Kizzie kept that one. The second was barely legible, perhaps some correspondence with a banker. The third and fourth were too soaked in blood for her to read more than a few words. The fifth, however, was something else. It was a plain white envelope, spattered with Agrippo’s blood, and inside was a simple note. It said,
The deed is done. I will tolerate no more blackmail. Deliver your end of the bargain or face my wrath, the newspapers be damned.
Kizzie stared at it for several moments before lifting the envelope. It was postmarked the day of Adriana Grappo’s murder.
For half a moment, Kizzie forgot all about the Tall Man and his room filled with corpses. This had to be something. Agrippo might not have been Adriana’s fourth killer, but had he blackmailed that someone into it?
Something about that letter was bothering her, though. She recognized that handwriting. But from where? A calling card? A letter? She hid the bundle of letters once more under her menu as the waiter brought her coffee, thanking him and then gathering her wits once more.
The Grent war, Adriana’s death, the secret sorcery war, the Glass Knife. This was all connected. But how and why? Agrippo might have been able to tell her, but he was dead. The blackmailed party probably couldn’t tell her, but at least she would be able to mete out some justice. She just had to find out who it was.
32
Demir remained on his vigil on the front step of the Hyacinth for the rest of the day, though it was clear that the worst of things had passed. Enforcers cleared the streets, the Cinders and National Guard patrolled regularly, and by the late night the district was at peace once more. It was, he decided as he stood out front, looking across at the Hyacinth’s stables where the doors had been torn from their hinges, a fragile peace. Godglass prices would continue to increase, and these riots would only get worse.
Would he even be on hand for the next one? Or would Tirana be forced to deploy her enforcers to protect the hotel, escalating the violence until people ended up dead?
The questions haunted him as he went back inside, walking through the empty lobby where only a few gas lamps remained lit and a single porter was on duty at the concierge’s office. Demir paused at the desk. “It’s Mahren, right?” he asked the porter.
“Yes, sir,” Mahren responded with a smile. “What can I do for you, sir?”
“Find out the name of the captain of the Cinders who I defied this afternoon. I want you to send him a case of Ereptian wine.”
“Sir?”
“Best not to stay on the bad side of the Cinders,” Demir explained. He’d already drawn up an apology in his head, explaining with all earnestness that he’d only been looking out for the safety of the Cinders themselves and he might have overstepped his bounds. It was bullshit, but Cinders weren’t known for their grasp of subtlety. A case of wine and some contrition would go a long way.