The conference stretched on for several minutes. Sweat began to trickle down the back of Thessa’s neck, and the soldiers on guard duty shifted nervously.
Finally, the sergeant returned looking irritable. “Tempting offer,” she said shortly, “but I’m turning it down.”
Thessa’s breath caught in her throat. Was she being literally shipped off into the Ossan navy? Was there any way to escape? “Why?” she demanded, putting every ounce of imperiousness into her voice that she could manage.
The sergeant seemed unimpressed. “Because we have strict instructions to deliver captured Grent siliceers to the Ivory Forest Glassworks. And” – she shrugged – “Adriana Grappo is dead. It’s the whole reason for the war. I doubt we’re going to get a good ransom out of her failure of a son.”
Thessa barely heard anything after the word “dead.” She stared back at the sergeant, her mouth hanging open, feeling numb. “I … What happened … I don’t…” She tried to form a coherent sentence.
“No more questions,” the sergeant sighed. Her demeanor had changed noticeably. Perhaps not respectful, but not as severe as she was behaving toward the other prisoners. Thessa tried to take solace in that and failed. She’d had one ally within Ossa, and a corpse wasn’t going to provide the protection Thessa needed to get through this war. How was she going to meet back up with Master Kastora? Where would she go?
Assuming, of course, she could get out of this mess.
6
Grent was a city-state built daringly across the length and breadth of a massive river delta. Countless channels and canals divided the city into hundreds of island districts of various sizes, and incredible levies and dikes controlled the flow of the delta in a feat of engineering that had never been matched. It was a city long used to battling the inevitable, which was one of the reasons it had survived so long mere miles from the capital of the aggressive Ossan Empire.
Ossan soldiers often joked about invading Grent. It was a joke because it was so outlandish: Grent was not a threat to the Empire, and there was far more to lose than gain when invading such a headache of a city.
That joke, Idrian Sepulki reflected, was funny right up until the moment the order came for the invasion.
Idrian returned from the front line bruised, sore, and exhausted after nearly fourteen hours of savage street fighting through the eastern suburbs of Grent. In that time he had killed eighteen people, watched three friends die, and taken one wound that would leave a nasty scar. Killing was part of the job of a soldier, and the wound was already mostly healed thanks to the powerful cureglass sorcery in his breacher armor, but losing friends had never grown easier over his decades in the Foreign Legion.
As was his habit, he would bury his feelings until the end of the conflict, at which time he could properly grieve.
He paused at the top of a hill, leaning on his massive breacher shield, looking across the suburbs where his battalion – the Ironhorn Rams – trudged behind him carrying their dead and wounded. The sun was starting to set, shining gold off the placid river and half blinding Idrian’s view of the delta. Smoke rose from several places along the front lines, where the Ossan Foreign Legion had pushed miles into the Grent suburbs, while the report of artillery duels had been going for almost as long as the Ironhorns had been fighting.
This sudden war was, Idrian didn’t mind admitting to himself, disconcerting and frightening. He was used to shipping overseas, where he’d have weeks or even months to prepare himself for a coming conflict against a distant enemy. This time was different. Just two days ago he was playing cards with Tadeas, enjoying their cushy ceremonial posting in the Ossan suburbs. Now they were on the offensive against their closest neighbor.
“Almost back to camp,” Idrian said encouragingly to a flagging engineer. “Keep your head up.”
“Thanks, Idrian,” came the weary reply.
Idrian was just about to continue on himself when the distant plume of cannon smoke drew his attention. It was followed mere moments later by the hair-raising whoosh of a cannonball flying overhead. He ducked behind his shield by pure instinct, though he knew a direct hit would cut him in half with or without his hammerglass armor. The street, which had been so peaceful moments before, was suddenly chaos. When Idrian raised his head it was to screams of alarm and panic accompanied by choking dust and a terrible rumbling series of crashes.
It did not take him long to realize what had happened – the building just at the top of the hill, a massive five-story tenement, had taken a direct hit and collapsed entirely. Idrian found himself sprinting toward the rubble. An officer wearing the silver braided collar of a major came stumbling out of the dust, eyes wide, mouth gaping like a fish out of water. “They’re shooting at us! They’re shooting at us!” he screamed.
“You idiot,” Idrian snapped, grabbing the officer by the jacket and giving him a shake. “We’ve invaded their glassdamned country. Of course they’re shooting at us.”
“But we’re supposed to be the ones who win!”
Idrian had to restrain himself from throwing the man to the ground. Another Ossan guild-family officer without combat experience, baffled that their enemies bothered to fight back. Damned fools. “Was there anyone in that tenement? Listen to me, man! Was there anyone in there?”
“Half my battalion,” the major finally managed.
Idrian’s stomach lurched. “Glassdamnit, those are your people! Get ahold of yourself and start digging! Every moment you waste is a life lost!”
“Me? Dig?”
Idrian finally did throw the idiot to the ground. He raised his sword in the air, the massive pink razorglass blade catching the light from the sunset. He bellowed, “We’ve got trapped soldiers! All hands to me! Move that rubble!”
He felt a tug on his shoulder and looked down to see Fenny, a soldier in his own battalion. She was a slight woman, little more than a waif whose black flatcap always looked too big on her. Her eyes were wide, her white skin especially pale. “Idrian,” she whispered loudly, “Squeaks was in there.”
Idrian’s head whipped back around to the rubble. “What? How? We just got back!”
“She ran in to buy a bottle of wine from one of the Forty-Second quartermasters. We were gonna share it tonight.”
“Piss and shit. Where was she?”
“Right there.” Fenny coughed, pointing to a no-longer-existing tenement. “I saw her in the first-floor window half a second before the ball hit. She waved at me.” Fenny began to tremble fiercely.
Idrian turned and grasped her gently by the side of the face. “Look at me. Look at me! Your woman is going to be fine. I’ll find her myself. You run back down the hill and find Mika. Tell her to bring all her engineers up here to take charge of the digging.” Idrian gave her a shove to propel her along, then tossed his sword aside and sprinted to the spot that Fenny had indicated. The tenement was little more than a massive pile of shattered bricks, with dust-covered limbs sticking out at odd angles. Screams and shocked moans issued from the pile, sending a shiver down his spine. Idrian shucked his own exhaustion and soaked in the forgeglass sorcery of his armor to give him strength and speed.
He used his shield as a shovel, piling bricks on it until he could barely lift it, then taking it out of the wreckage to dump off to the side. The first body he found belonged to a young man he vaguely recognized from the Forty-Second. The poor bastard was already dead. Idrian was soon surrounded by his own battalion, dozens of men and women bending their backs to move brick and timber, pulling people – both alive and dead – out of the wreckage. Sweat poured down Idrian’s brow and neck, soaking the uniform under his armor.