40
Sweat poured down Thessa’s brow as she carefully pushed and turned on a massive hand drill as it bored directly down through the center of the cinderite. The cinderite was clamped in place perfectly perpendicular to the ground, and she stood on a ladder above it for leverage. The drill was from a quarry outside the city, made specially for stone and masonry, and it had been a day-long slog to effectively turn the long piece of cinderite into a pipe that she could run copper cable through.
She dabbed her brow with the corner of her heavy apron, checking all of her clamps before giving the drill another half turn. Behind her, the furnace roared, making the whole workshop uncomfortably hot.
“So that’s cinderite?” Pari appeared in the door to the little glassworks, looking distinctly uncomfortable in the purple livery of a Grappo porter. She was framed by a darkened doorway, and Thessa realized that she’d once again lost all track of time. She didn’t even remember the sun setting or porters lighting the lamps in and around the glassworks.
“Quickly,” Thessa instructed her, “come over and tighten that clamp right there. Just a smidgen, mind you!”
Pari followed her instructions, and Thessa turned her drill just a little bit more. “You’ve never seen cinderite before?” Thessa asked.
“In the museum once, when I was a child. It was much smaller than that.”
“Put your hands here and here. Hold steady, and tell me if you see any sand coming out the bottom of the cinderite.” Slowly, carefully, Thessa turned the drill a full rotation.
“Sand!” Pari said. “Definitely sand.”
“Good. Almost through.” Thessa took the weight of the drill, her arms trembling, so that it wouldn’t fall on the cinderite once it was through the bottom. She finished another turn and felt it give. At that moment she carefully pulled upward, bringing the whole drill back up through the center of the cinderite, and handed it to Pari. Looking down from the top, she could see the floor through the tube. “Perfect,” she sighed, and climbed down from her ladder. “Did you finish with Breenen?”
Pari shifted uncomfortably and pulled at her purple tunic. “I’ve never been sworn to secrecy on shackleglass before. He didn’t seem to like me very much.”
“Breenen is very protective of the hotel, and of Demir’s projects. Remember, you’re not working for him. You’re working for me.”
“I thought this was your project.”
“It’s our project.” Thessa sat down in a chair beside the cinderite, rubbing the back of her neck. Everything felt stiff and uncomfortable from trying to hold the weight of that drill, and she was grateful that Pari was finally approved to work with her. The extra pair of hands would be invaluable.
Pari fidgeted, looking at the cinderite, then at the big omniglass rings that Thessa had made the day before. “This doesn’t look like any godglass work that I’ve ever seen before.”
“That’s because it’s not.” Thessa had thought long and hard about what to tell Pari. To her knowledge, only Demir and Montego actually knew what she was working on. The rest of the staff, including Breenen and Tirana, had been told her work was important and nothing more. But Thessa needed an assistant if she was going to complete the phoenix channel as quickly as she liked, and an assistant couldn’t be kept in the dark. “It’s a device that will turn energy into sorcery, effectively allowing us to recharge godglass.”
It took a moment, but Pari’s expression slowly changed from one of dubiousness to one of surprise. “Oh. Oh! That’s why I was sworn to secrecy.”
Thessa chuckled, and turned to look out the window at where a porter was crossing the garden. The young man paused at the door just behind Pari. “Lady Foleer, a shipment has arrived for you from…” He paused to consult a card he held. “The Ossan Distributor of Volos Incorporated.”
“Ah! My lightning rod. Have it taken to the roof. I’ll be up to examine it soon.” Thessa hurried around the little glassworks, addressing her notes and thinking out loud. She gave Pari the same quick explanation about the lightning rod that the clerk at the bookstore had given her, then showed off the sketches for her design. “Lightning from the roof will hit this crown here, travel down the copper cable, through the insulated phoenix channel, and then harmlessly into the ground.”
Pari stared at her in horror. “You’re going to try to get hit by lightning? That’s madness!”
“It’s quite safe if done correctly. It’s all explained in that book over there. In fact, you should read that when I don’t need your help.”
“Um…” Pari looked down at the floor. “I can’t read.”
Thessa paused in her work, a stack of papers in one hand. It had never even occurred to her that Pari might not be able to read. It made sense, though. If you grew up in the Slag, you probably didn’t have an education. Thessa had a pang of regret for bringing Pari into her confidence. She pushed through it. Pari had earned some patience and goodwill.
“We’ll have to change that. Remind me to hire you a tutor. But not right now. We have too much to do. Now … what is it?”
Pari blinked rapidly at her. “You’d teach me to read? Me?”
“Why wouldn’t I? You’re my assistant. An assistant needs to be able to answer correspondence and do sums. Can you do sums?”
“A little. Nothing too complicated.”
“We’ll hire you a tutor for that as well.”
“Oh.”
“Is that okay? Will you be all right with a tutor?”
Pari seemed particularly subdued, perhaps even overwhelmed, but she nodded. “I think so.”
“Good. Now go help the porters take the lightning rod to the roof. Don’t unpack it until I know where I’m going to put it.”
“Of course.”
Thessa clicked her tongue thoughtfully at her notes, thinking over everything, wondering if she truly was mad. A week ago she would have laughed at the very idea of harnessing lightning – of even trying something so foolish – but Professor Volos’s book had convinced her it could be done. It was free energy, without having to rely on gas, wood, or coal supply or a dirty, belching furnace.
If it worked.
Thessa finally checked her pocket watch as she headed up the stairs to the hotel roof, squeezing past Pari and the porters as they tried to angle a couple of large crates up the service stairwell. It was almost midnight, a fact that made her laugh at herself. No sense of time indeed. No wonder her back hurt so much, if she’d spent almost the entire day drilling out the cinderite.
She went over to Ekhi’s mews first, checking the grub bucket to make sure someone had fed him. She stroked his uninjured wing gently, taking a deep breath, using the moment to decompress from all of her ambitions. She should go to bed. She’d been working since early this morning, and she would need rest to finish the phoenix channel without a mistake. But her mind buzzed, her body full of energy. How could she sleep when she was so close?
“I’m going to have to move you somewhere safe,” Thessa told Ekhi. “I don’t want you up here if I’m going to encourage a lightning strike.” The thought gave her some pause and she looked around the roof of the hotel. There were several decent places she could put the rod itself – up on one of the chimneys seemed the most likely, where she could run the cable down her own furnace chimney and then ground it in the garden. But a sense of unease struck her.
What if something went wrong? What if she attracted a lightning strike to the roof of the hotel only to destroy part of it? People could get hurt or killed. Millions of ozzo’s worth of property could be damaged.