There was another problem as well, one that she’d been avoiding for the last couple of days. She had absolutely no idea when lightning would next strike. It could be next week. It could be months from now. Would she really be satisfied with setting up her entire project and then simply waiting until something happened? She scowled across the roof, wondering if she should prepare the lightning rod in such a way that she could attach it to the phoenix channel only in the event of a storm. That would let her experiment with other energy methods in the meantime.
Across the roof, the porters finally emerged from the service stairwell with the crates, and Pari directed them to a clear, flat space. Thessa watched them lay out the crates and turn up the gas lamps, then head back into the hotel. Only Pari remained, hovering around the lightning rod, clearly waiting for Thessa to come over and examine it.
Thessa turned up a nearby lamp to examine Ekhi’s injured wing, then headed over to join Pari. Something had stalled her – the excitement she felt moments ago had vanished, leaving behind a feeling of uncertainty. What if she was wrong? What if it didn’t even work? Could she endanger the entire hotel like this? She ran a hand over her face. Her initial instincts were right. She needed to get some more rest, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to think through this.
Pari hefted a crowbar. “Do you want me to open these?”
Thessa made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. “I’m not sure.”
“Second thoughts?”
“Of a sort.” Was she moving too quickly? Jumping to too many conclusions, from ordering the lightning rod to hiring Pari? The pressure in Thessa’s chest, of knowing that the world would continue to grow more chaotic the closer it came to running out of cindersand, spurred her into a frenzy. But would it be her undoing? Even master siliceers took things slowly, with a lot of careful trial and error. She didn’t have room for trial and error. She had only one piece of cinderite and a limited amount of refined cindersand for the omniglass. She had one go at this. Maybe she should stop and step back.
Could she afford to?
Looking out from the top of the roof, Thessa took a moment to admire the view of the city. Gaslights glittered for miles around, lining the street and lighting up the wealthiest tenements and houses. In the distance some dogs barked, and she could hear very faint artillery reports from the north. “They’ve started back up again,” she said to Pari.
“They?”
“The soldiers. Grent and Ossa, shooting at each other.”
Pari tilted her head for a few moments. “That’s not artillery. That’s the Forge.”
“It is?” Thessa listened. “So it is. Hah! When the war first started I mistook artillery for the Forge. Now I’ve done the opposite. I can tell the difference between the resonance of every type of godglass but I can’t tell thunder from artillery.” Thessa sat down by a chimney stack, unlacing her boots and kicking them off, wiggling her toes to get out some of the ache. “I need,” she said out loud, half to herself and half to Pari, “massive amounts of energy to turn into sorcery. I have an original design that funneled heat from a standard glassworking furnace through the phoenix channel and into spent godglass, but the process was imperfect. It took three loads of firewood to charge a single piece.”
Pari came to sit next to her. “That’s unsustainable, even for a guild-family.”
“You see my problem, then? All my thoughts the last week or so, even when I was imprisoned at the Ivory Forest, have been directed toward improving that conversion. I’ve already incorporated more omniglass to increase the resonance and heavier insulation to reduce heat loss. I latched on to this” – she pointed at the lightning rod – “because it seemed like an elegant solution. This new design needs to charge whole basketfuls of spent godglass. Lightning certainly has that power. But I am having doubts now. It’s dangerous, but it’s also unreliable. How long until the hotel gets struck by lightning? Months? Years?”
“What do you do when you have a problem you can’t solve?” Pari asked.
Thessa glanced sidelong at her. “What do you mean?”
“How do you get your brain to start over? My granddad was a philosopher – at least as much as a retired cattle driver living in the Slag can get into philosophy. He used to say that the human mind worked on cycles, and sometimes you need to wait until the next cycle before a solution presents itself.”
“Huh. My old master used to say similar things. Back in Grent, I got into the habit of taking Ekhi out to the countryside every two weeks. It kept my creative mind fresh.”
“Then do that,” Pari suggested with a shrug.
Thessa felt her doubt about Pari waver, dissipating like morning fog. She might not be able to read, but she was damned insightful. “You’re sure you never had a formal education?”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
“Then we’ll get you one. Come on, let’s retire. I need to sleep on this.”
The hotel was silent as they made their way back to the main floor; the halls empty, all the lamps turned down. The two of them returned to the workshop and cleaned everything up – sorting the notes and schematics, sweeping the floor, and stoking the furnace so it would still be hot in the morning. It was almost one when Thessa finally returned to her suite. Her feet dragged, her head drooping, and she hoped she didn’t spend all night lying in bed thinking about a new solution to her energy problem.
Pari was right. She needed to clear her head so she could approach the whole thing with more confidence.
All those thoughts were snuffed away as she opened the door to her suite. The main room was practically destroyed; the table and chairs were overturned, the sofa sliced to pieces. She ran into the bedroom and washroom to find the same. All of her new clothes were strewn about the floor, and the mattress lay against the wall, slashed in several places. Thessa’s stomach felt like it had crawled up her throat, and she practically ran down the hall to the night porter’s cubby.
The porter inside – the kind young man who’d made her tea on her first night in the hotel – lay slumped over a book, a knife buried in the base of his neck.
Thessa was sick all over the floor, her vision growing cloudy. She stumbled down the hall and pounded on Montego’s door. “Montego!” she shouted. “Montego!” When she tried the knob she found it unlocked, and burst inside. What she saw almost made her vomit again.
Montego lay on the floor in his nightclothes, the table and a whole set of tea tipped over on top of him. He didn’t move when Thessa threw herself on her knees beside him. It took all her strength to roll him over onto his side and slap at his face. “Come on, wake up! Glassdamnit, you can’t be dead.” Her hands trembled as a new thought leapt into her brain, and she left Montego to run to his window, which looked down on the hotel garden.
All the lights she and Pari had just extinguished were back on, and Thessa could see several figures in Grappo livery moving about inside her workshop. She didn’t recognize any of them, but they were almost certainly packing up her notes and the cinderite.
She had to raise the alarm, and quickly. She tried Montego one more time, slapping his thick cheeks, and was just about to sprint for the door when his hand suddenly twitched, shooting out to grab her by the wrist. The grip was impossibly strong, yanking her down to the floor beside him, where she found herself staring into his foggy gaze. “Montego, you’re hurting me.”
Moments passed, his grip only growing tighter, before his eyes shot fully open and he gave a great gasp. He let go and rolled over into a sitting position. “Shit and piss,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry, I don’t know…” His words trailed off as he took in the upturned table. “Someone drugged my tea,” he said.