“Of course not.”
“Kizzie was a good choice. I’m glad you brought her in.”
“Will that be awkward for you?”
“Your mother is dead,” Montego replied seriously. “She funded my first fight. She adopted me. I want Kizzie to continue the hunt for her killers. Awkwardness has no place in whatever happens next.”
“Well said.”
Montego made a few thoughtful sounds. “We shall let her work that angle. You do believe Kastora about the cindersand?”
“No reason not to.”
“I haven’t worn godglass for years,” Montego snorted. “Makes the glassrot scales on my legs itch. I suppose I would miss it, at least for those around me.” He grimaced. “The consequences of its absence would be … drastic.”
Demir chuckled. “Your talent for understatement will never cease to amaze me.”
“And your talent for despair will never cease to amaze me. Don’t try to hide it, I can see it in your face. You’re wearing the same expression you wore that month you’d convinced yourself you were in love with that Nasuud princess.”
“You don’t think I should despair? Kastora was clear on one thing: we need this Thessa woman if we’re going to remake his phoenix channel, and she’s disappeared.” Demir finally did cross the room and pour them each a finger of whiskey. He brought one glass to Montego, then lifted his own, noting that it was the glass he’d destroyed the other day when he thought he saw someone outside his window. A glassdancer could force glass back together again, but he’d done a sloppy job of it, leaving the cup warped and ruined.
Montego sipped his whiskey and shook his head. “No, I don’t think you should despair. Clearly there are enemies to be rooted out. Clearly there is an economic disaster on the horizon. Clearly … Look at me. Demir, look at me!”
Demir forced himself to meet Montego’s beady eyes.
“Clearly,” Montego continued, “this will be a difficult road. But you are Demir Grappo. I am Baby Montego. I have returned and I will not leave again until the world is set right. I swear it.”
Demir swallowed hard, only to realize that the lump in the back of his throat was gone. He felt lighter, almost giddy, the darkness that had covered him retreating before Montego’s unflinching gaze. “Your optimism,” he said, his voice cracking, “is foolhardy.”
“And your despair is pointless. We have work to do, Demir. You are a glassdancer and the finest mind of our generation. You were a provincial governor at fourteen! You negotiated a massive trade agreement between the Nasuud and the Balkani, ending centuries of enmity, and your province got rich on the deal!”
Demir felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward at the memory. “I was the finest mind of our generation.”
“I believe you still are. You’re just out of practice.”
Demir wanted to fight him. Every fiber of his being protested against his own abilities, convinced that he could not possibly accomplish this task in front of him. His whole psyche felt on wobbly ground, waiting to crack and crumble like it had at Holikan. But Montego hadn’t been with him that horrible day. The cudgelist was a firm foundation upon which to get his mental footing, his confident optimism battering down Demir’s most powerful doubts.
He took a shaky breath, pulling himself together, restoring his public masks so that the hotel staff wouldn’t see how he truly felt. “Fine. We’ll do it your way, you big, dumb optimist. But when I fail, I’m going to blame it on you.”
Montego slapped his thigh and bellowed out a laugh. “Hah! I knew I’d bring you around. Remember, Demir, you can’t conquer your enemies until you conquer yourself.”
“One of Mother’s sayings,” Demir said, cocking an eyebrow. That specter he felt last night – the niggling, hesitant memory of his old self – seemed to pace around in the back of his head, coaxed out by Montego’s presence. Perhaps he really could do this. He closed his eyes, forcing out all the chaos until he could focus on what was immediately before him. “Fine. We can do this. Breenen is taking care of the hotel. Capric is helping me set up a number of business deals to buoy the Grappo coffers. I still have the responsibilities of the patriarch, but you and I must cast our net wide if we’re to find Thessa.”
“Where do we look first?”
Demir had been asking himself the same question all night. “She would have gone either north or south from Grent, giving the fighting a wide berth to enter the city.”
“I’ll go looking in person,” Montego offered.
“You’re not tired from your journey?”
“Bah! My friend needs me. What is sleep before such an obligation? I shall leave immediately to begin my search for Thessa.”
“And I’ll find out if one of the guild-families snatched her up.” Demir could feel his confidence growing, the strength returning to his mind and body. “Thank you for coming, Montego.”
Montego cracked a smile at Demir’s use of his given name. “I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t. But you’re hesitating again. Do not hesitate, Demir. Act!” He leapt to his feet and threw open the office door. “Breenen!” he bellowed. “I need new horses for my carriage. I must fly!” With that, he disappeared.
Demir did not allow himself the time for doubt – he began to write letters immediately, preparing queries for his mother’s spies, his own contacts, and old acquaintances that might be able to help. He was careful in his wording, never inquiring directly after Thessa, making sure not to tip his hand to anyone who might prove untrustworthy.
He’d been at it for some time when a porter appeared in the doorway. “Sir, you have a delivery from Idrian Sepulki. The soldiers guarding it said you wanted to receive the delivery yourself.”
Demir sealed several of his letters and gave them to a bellhop. He followed the porter down to one of the rear delivery doors of the hotel, where he shooed everyone out of the room before prying open what looked like a standard military musket crate. Inside were the burnt-out remains of Kastora’s phoenix channel.
It was Demir’s first good look at the prototype, and he circled it for several minutes as he tried to work out what it had looked like before the fire. The outer shell – a chamber with thin tin walls, stuffed with cork insulation – was mostly burned away. Inside that, cracked and broken, was a two-foot-long piece of cinderite decorated with omniglass rings.
Demir had rarely seen a piece of cinderite this big, and the clear omniglass with which it was encircled was almost as uncommon. Omniglass was an expensive, finicky sorcerous material that enhanced other godglasses, probably used in this case to accentuate the energy-conversion process Kastora hoped to capture.
To re-create the prototype, Demir would need both the materials and someone skilled enough to put them all together without ruining it. His and Montego’s energy would go toward the latter, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t acquire the former while they worked. He found a porter waiting for him outside. “Have this taken up to my rooms,” he told the young man, “and then take Breenen a message. I want him to locate every large piece of cinderite – in both private and public collections – within fifty miles.”
10
Idrian sat in one corner of his temporary tenement room with the palm of one hand pressed against his godglass eye. Sunlight streamed in through the narrow window, slashing rays through the dusty air, and he could hear the organized chaos of his battalion preparing themselves for the day just outside. Sleep had not come easy for him, not after watching Kastora die and then making sure that the phoenix channel was delivered to the Hyacinth. He felt beaten down, imagining mud on his knees and welts across the back of his neck, though it had been decades since his father had dared to raise a hand to him.