Idrian was still reeling from Demir’s presence. This was the Lightning Prince; the provincial governor who squashed a major rebellion and made it look easy while doing it. Even though Holikan was ultimately remembered as a disaster, soldiers still whispered about just how good a commander Demir was on that campaign. The heights he’d fallen from were truly dizzying. “Escorting you behind enemy lines is stretching that a bit, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. But I understand you have some interest in my mission.”
“Which is?”
“I need to extract Master Kastora from the Grent Royal Glassworks.”
Idrian had to resist the urge to reach up and touch his godglass eye. “Is he in danger?”
“I believe he is. I’ve been meeting up with my mother’s old spies all afternoon. The Grent Glassworks was hit early this morning in an attempt to capture their designs, stockpiles, and siliceers. They repelled one of our regiments, but Kastora was wounded badly. Fighting in the area has tapered off and soldiers from both sides have moved east. The two of us should be able to slip in and slip out without being noticed.”
Idrian’s mouth was dry. If something had happened to Kastora, he didn’t know what he’d do with himself. This time, he did touch his eye, thinking of the master siliceer who made it. “You’re absolutely sure about that intelligence?”
“There shouldn’t be any obstacle that a breacher and a glassdancer can’t handle,” Demir assured him.
Idrian warred with himself briefly. He was still reeling from Demir’s sudden appearance and would be well within his rights to rebuff the demand. Demir had been gone for nine years, after all. Could he even be trusted? But this was Tadeas’s nephew, and if Master Kastora was in danger … “I’ll get my armor,” he said.
7
Demir was surprised that Idrian came along so readily, especially looking as worn-out as he did, but he wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth. The big breacher returned in his armor ten minutes later, sword and shield slung over his shoulders, a massive cloak draped over his armor to keep the moonlight from glinting off the steel.
No one questioned him as he moved past his sleeping companions, and he simply nodded to Demir to lead the way.
Demir remained for a few moments, watching Mika and Valient sitting quietly by the fire. He desperately wanted to say hello. Back during the Holikan campaign he’d spent only a few days with the Ironhorns but they’d all treated him more like family than a commanding officer. He’d loved it then, and he craved it now. At a grunt from Idrian he shook off the thought. The Ironhorns were not his family – none of them but Tadeas, anyway – and he had his own responsibilities now.
It was the same with Idrian. The big breacher had aged in the last nine years; a little gray at the temples of his short black hair, a little more weathered and scarred; but he was the same man whose company Demir had enjoyed on the Holikan campaign. It was so damn good to see him that it hurt, and Demir wanted nothing more than to give him a hug. That would be wildly inappropriate, of course, and he doubted that Idrian felt the same. Once they were out in the darkness, Demir matched his stride with Idrian’s, glancing sidelong at the breacher. “I did the best I could to find us a safe route, but you know better than I do that things change quickly in a war zone. Stay close, keep your eyes open.”
“Horns ready, hooves steady,” Idrian replied, lowering an eye patch down to conceal his purple godglass eye.
Demir felt a flicker of a smile cross his face. His uncle had been saying that since he was just a kid. Anyone who’d ever served in the Foreign Legion, officer or soldier, knew that motto and who it belonged to. Demir nodded his thanks, and the two set off into the night.
Demir navigated the city partly from memory – he’d spent plenty of time in Grent in his youth – and partly from a memorized map provided by one of his mother’s spies inside the Ministry of the Legion. They crossed a dozen bridges, went through six checkpoints manned by Ossan soldiers where Idrian was waved through by recognition alone. They finally crossed into the northwestern districts of Grent, where the combat lines were hazy and whole communities seemed untouched by the war going on less than a mile away. They were behind enemy lines for sure, but Grent military presence was light, focused as it was on Ossa’s primary attack.
Demir removed a glass egg from his pocket, holding it up in front of him and grasping it with his sorcery. He cracked it into half a dozen bullet-sized shards, letting them float just over his shoulder. If this action unnerved Idrian, the breacher didn’t show it. Why would he? Demir had some idea how many glassdancers Idrian had fought and killed over the years, and it was not a single-digit number.
The night was relatively silent, broken only by the artillery duels going on to their south. The normal evening traffic was practically nonexistent, and the few Grent civilians they passed stared at Idrian’s sword warily before hurrying on, no doubt mistaking Idrian for one of their own breachers.
“We’re getting close,” Idrian told him, gesturing toward a wooded hill looming less than half a mile from them. Smoke rose in the moonlit night, and the hillside flickered with building fires. It did not bode well for their journey. Demir swallowed bile, wishing he’d arrived in Ossa just two days earlier. He could have gone in and gotten back out, questioning Kastora without having to travel into a war zone.
It was, Demir realized, the first time Idrian had spoken in over an hour. The silence was comfortable, between two men with a job to do, but it still made the small of Demir’s back clammy. What was going on in Idrian’s head? No doubt he’d come along because of his own ties to Kastora, rather than as a favor to Demir. But what was he thinking about? Nine years since they last saw each other, and it was at the lowest point in Demir’s life.
Idrian was not the kind of man Demir could catch up with, not like Kizzie. It made him very difficult to read. Were his commanding officers just as infuriated by his quiet dependability? Or did they take it for granted? If there was one thing a guild-family member hated, it was not knowing how to get inside the heads of their underlings.
Demir discarded his musings as they began to ascend the hill to the wrecked glassworks. The area was deathly silent and appeared to be abandoned. He stretched out his senses, looking for glassdancers. No one. He turned to meet Idrian’s eye and gave a shake of his head as they hurried up to take position just outside the wall of the compound. “No glassdancers,” he told Idrian. “In fact I don’t hear anyone.” He tried to keep the frustration out of his voice. If Kastora was dead, or had withdrawn farther into the city, he was equally out of Demir’s grasp, and his mother’s mystery would remain unsolved.
“Two soldiers in that doorway there,” Idrian said, nodding around a corner, “a young man and a middle-aged woman. They’re both half asleep.” He put up his sword, sliding it into the strap across his back and hanging his shield from the hook on his left pauldron. “Looks like you didn’t need me after all.”
Demir glanced around the compound, his stomach falling. Not just for Kastora, but for the place itself. The main office had gone up in flames, possibly taking decades of silic knowledge with it. Furnaces had been destroyed by the flames, and one of the two dormitories. The destruction made him sick. He rounded the corner, keeping his senses taut, and approached the pair of Grent soldiers in their orange-and-white uniforms sleeping in the doorway to the only remaining furnace room.
Neither noticed him until he was practically on top of them. The young man started awake, leaping to his feet and leveling his musket at Demir while hissing at his companion. “Show us your hands, stranger! Looters will be shot on sight!”