“It’s the Ossans who are attacking us!” Thessa protested.
“Not all Ossans are alike,” Kastora replied sharply. “Adriana helped me with the design. Tell her that the prototype was lost, but that these are the schematics.” He snatched her by the front of her shirt, pulling her close. “If something happens to me, I want you to rebuild the prototype.”
“But…”
“Don’t give these schematics to anyone else. No two-bit Ossan siliceer is going to finish my work. You will. Understand?”
Thessa was trembling all over now, but she tried to get ahold of herself, rallying her courage to meet the determination in Kastora’s eyes. “I do.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t think it’ll come to that. I’ll rally the garrison long enough for you to escape and then we’ll retreat into the city. If all goes well, I’ll meet you at Adriana’s hotel by the end of the week. Go!”
Before Thessa could protest further, Kastora was off, running along the base of the compound wall, his figure periodically outlined by the occasional gas lamp. Thessa waited for a few moments, part of her hoping that Kastora would return and come with her. When it became apparent he would not, she steeled herself with a series of deep breaths. She could do this. She’d been to Ossa many times. It wasn’t hard to blend in. All she had to do was escape Grent during a foreign invasion.
Right.
She rounded the back of the stables, pausing for another calming breath. She smoothed the stack of vellum on the ground and then rolled it into a tight scroll before stuffing it into her boot. Making sure it was hidden, she crept to the stable door.
“Axio,” she hissed into the darkness. “Axio, are the horses saddled?” No answer. She swore to herself, not sure of her ability to saddle a horse in the dark. The moment of indecision cost her as a sharp voice suddenly barked from her left.
“Stop there, missy! Show your hands and no sudden moves.”
A shiver of fear went up Thessa’s spine as she turned to see the middle-aged man in an ill-fitting Grent uniform. He held a musket across his chest, bayonet fixed, and looked like he’d use it without hesitation. His accent was most assuredly Ossan.
Thessa was still struggling for a reply when a shape suddenly swooped down from the morning darkness, hitting the soldier directly in the face. A flurry of screeches and swearing followed until the soldier managed to fend Ekhi off. Ekhi hopped twice across the ground and leapt into the air, disappearing from Thessa’s vision. The soldier raised his musket, aimed, and shot.
The crack of the musket was followed immediately by a single, agonizing screech. Thessa’s heart leapt into her throat, breath snatched away, terror for her own life giving way to immediate fury and grief. She would have thrown herself at the damned soldier if she hadn’t been grabbed from behind.
“Go!” Axio hissed in her ear. “I’ll buy you time, just run!” Without waiting for an answer, Axio hefted a heavy wood-splitting ax and squared off with the swearing soldier.
Thessa found herself fleeing at a sprint, tears streaming down her face. Cutting through the stables and out the back, she unlocked a small service door in the compound wall and slipped through. Within moments she was hurrying as fast as she dared along the paths that led into the woods outside of the glassworks, her way lit by the brightening glow of Kastora’s burning office.
Tired, shocked, her adrenaline still pumping, Thessa stifled her guilt over leaving Axio alone with that soldier. She had one mission in mind: she had to get out of Grent and then into Ossa, where she could wait for Master Kastora in the house of an enemy.
4
Kizzie Vorcien, enforcer for the Vorcien guild-family, stood on a stoop on the edge of the Castle District in Ossa and watched the passing revelers and street performers as they took part in the solstice celebration. It was just after nine in the morning, and distant cannon fire could be heard above the sounds of the street fair.
She wondered how many people actually knew that a war had broken out on their doorstep. It was in all the newspapers this morning, of course. The Foreign Legion had invaded Grent less than six hours ago to avenge the death of Adriana Grappo. But newspaper articles didn’t necessarily mean the residents of Ossa understood it. Bad things, after all, happened to other people. Holiday celebrations weren’t going to stop until cannonballs starting knocking over tenements, and even then maybe not.
One of the street performers had attracted Kizzie’s eye. It was an old woman wearing a brightly colored minstrel’s tunic and carrying a ratty violin case slung over one shoulder. She seemed to be known in these parts, for a small crowd had gathered, and the old woman was making the rounds, talking and laughing with the onlookers, shaking a can for people to give her coins and banknotes. When no more donations were forthcoming, she walked to the center of the street and set down her violin case. She opened it, removed the instrument, and struck a pose.
A frown spread across the old woman’s face as she began to tune the instrument. Her head was cocked to one side, her expression surpassing normal frustration until it became comical. She winked at one of the children. Kizzie snorted at the little display. Despite herself, she was intrigued, and she watched with growing bemusement as this went on for far too long.
A tingling sensation began at the base of Kizzie’s neck and traveled down her arms and into her fingertips; the sensation she felt when another glassdancer had begun to use their sorcery nearby. She looked at the old woman busker more closely just as something leapt from the violin case at her feet.
It was a bird. Or rather, the semblance of one made of multicolored glass. It hopped from the violin case to the cobbles, dancing about on two spindly feet as the old woman finished tuning her violin. She drew the bow across the strings to produce a single long note while the bird looked up at her. It flapped its wings experimentally, then shot into the sky as the busker began to play.
Children laughed. Adults oohed and aahed, clapping to themselves. Onlookers shoved each other aside to throw money into the busker’s violin case, and the bird moved perfectly with the ups and downs of the music.
“Oh, now that is good,” Kizzie found herself saying out loud. She considered herself a cynic on the best of days, but even she was impressed by this display. There were two types of glassdancers: major talents and minor talents. The latter were relatively common and included among their number Kizzie herself. She could sense glass and other glassdancers, and with great concentration she could manipulate small amounts of glass.
Major talents were much more rare, and they almost always joined the military, where they could distinguish themselves quickly on the field of battle and then get themselves adopted into a guild-family. Major talents were respected and feared, and they took themselves and their power very seriously. But this woman? Somehow she’d slipped through the norms and was entertaining people on the street – and she seemed to love it.
“If only we could all defy expectations,” Kizzie muttered under her breath. She watched the performance for several minutes before her joy disappeared, and she forced herself to look away from the busker and focus on the job at hand. The job was a small warehouse located across the street and half a block down from the glassdancer busker. It was a nondescript little place right next door to a major stable. Most people wouldn’t give it a second glance. Kizzie, on the other hand, had spent the last two weeks tracking a stolen shipment of cindersand to this very place.
There was a young woman lounging outside the warehouse, wearing a laborer’s heavy winter tunic, a blunderbuss slung casually over one shoulder. The woman’s head was craned to watch the glassdancer busker; she was yawning occasionally, her mind clearly elsewhere.