Demir was a little disappointed. Not enough creativity to come up with a good excuse. Restricted, even within a restricted compound? Those furnaces were almost certainly being used to produce illegal godglass. But which ones? Rageglass? Fearglass? Ailingglass? He strolled to the next furnace room and opened the door to stick his head inside. It looked exactly like the last workshop, all the way down to the dejected, tired expressions on the faces of the siliceer prisoners. No one matched Thessa’s description.
“Are they overworked?” he asked, whirling on Filur, who seemed to have finally resigned himself to showing Demir around.
The overseer gave him a wan smile. “Well, they would certainly say so. It’s part of how we maintain order: we give them big enough quotas that they’re always on the edge of dropping from exhaustion.”
“Can’t get good-quality godglass out of siliceers like that.” Demir frowned.
“It’s a trade-off for sure, but one we’re very happy with. We’ve refined the process over decades, you see.”
“Hmm.” Demir continued walking down the main road through the center of the compound. He opened doors, looked in closets, showed himself around two dormitories and a mess hall, all while Filur tagged at his heels like an unwilling hound. Demir was certain to keep up a barrage of questions, punctuated by nonsense anecdotes. As intended, the overseer seemed completely overwhelmed by it all, rocking back frequently on his heels and managing to successfully deflect only a handful of questions.
Demir simply reworded them and asked them a few minutes later.
It was in the fifth workshop that he spotted someone who matched Thessa’s description. It was a young woman, dirty-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, leaning over her workbench with one ear just inches from a piece of godglass. Demir looked up the line until he found another siliceer – probably in her mid-twenties, with dark skin and a shaved head. She was quite attractive.
Demir fixed a leer on her and bent in toward Filur. “Tell me,” he said quietly, “do you ever … you know?”
“Excuse me?”
“The young women.”
“Oh. Oh! Of course not. No, the government oversight of this compound is much too strict to afford a scandal like that.”
“Just thought I’d ask,” Demir said, feigning disappointment. He kept his eyes on the Marnish siliceer, then looked toward Thessa. It was far better to be thought a degenerate than to give up his real purpose here. He strolled around the circular furnace, examining each workstation. When he reached the blond young woman he suspected was Thessa, he turned toward her. “What’s your name, girl?”
“Ah, ah!” Filur interjected. “I really don’t think you should talk to the prisoners, sir.”
Demir folded his hands across his stomach, careful that his silic sigil was pointed toward her. “Come now, I have a new ownership stake in this place. I’m not going to completely ignore the gears of industry! Girl, tell me your name.” He adopted the tone he’d heard so often throughout the Empire: that of a man who believes his underlings are little better than animals.
The woman barely seemed able to keep a look of disgust off her face. “Teala, sir.”
Demir’s heart soared. Found her – the exact woman Duala had told him was being held, and she definitely matched the description. Glassdamn. Now he just needed to get her out of here. That would probably take a lot longer. “Teala, what are you working on?”
“Forgeglass earrings, sir.”
Demir drummed his thumbs against his stomach, trying to draw her attention to his hands. It worked. She looked up at his face sharply, then back at his silic sigil. Once he was certain she’d gotten the message, he reached into his pocket and palmed a small piece of razorglass, then dropped it into the tray that held her finished products. He picked one up, put it to his ear, then did another. When he finished, he ran his fingers along the earrings so they covered the razorglass.
“Adequate work,” he said with a yawn. “Filur, I do hope some of the other prisoners have more talent.”
Thessa didn’t hide her glare. When he was certain no one else could see, Demir winked, then looked pointedly at the tray. She stared at him suspiciously until he whirled away from her, leading Filur back to the street.
“Of course,” Filur said, “she’s just a senior apprentice from Grent. No one special.”
“I certainly hope not!”
Demir finished his tour, making sure not to alter his behavior in any way. He talked to a few more of the prisoners, checked the godglass, split a bottle of wine with the overseer, and then retired to his carriage, with Filur and the captain standing nearby to see him off. “It’s a good operation,” he told Filur through the window. The overseer nodded eagerly. Demir had him on the hook. “See that you keep up this good work, and I’ll make sure you’re well-rewarded. And of course, feel free to check back with Ossa about my credentials so there is no confusion on my next visit. If you need anything from me, I’ll be at the Hyacinth Hotel. Baby, let us be off!”
They were moments out of the compound when Demir turned to Montego. “Found her,” he said. “She seems unhurt. As long as she can remain that way for a couple of weeks, we’ll just have to make frequent visits and watch for our chance to slip her out. I’ve already got the hotel carpenter refitting one of our carriages with a hidden compartment.”
“Did you make contact?” Montego asked.
“Not in so many words, but I think she knows who I am. I left her a piece of razorglass just in case she needs to defend herself. I don’t think the guards are allowed to get handsy, but she’ll not be unarmed on my watch.”
“What excuse will we use to return?”
Demir grimaced. “Anything we can think of. If I have to pretend to be friends with that rat of an overseer, I’ll do it. Let’s come back first thing in the morning. The quicker the guards, laborers, and overseer get used to my presence, the less suspicious I’ll seem. I might even get the chance to talk to Thessa alone.”
19
Thessa stared after the man as he left the workshop, his arm thrown around Craftsman Magna’s shoulders like they had been friends for years. A part of her was offended and deeply confused. “Girl”? “Adequate”? Thessa was a glassdamned woman and the work in her tray was stellar even with the corners she was cutting to get it done so fast.
But that wink and the silic sigil. Her heart hammered away at the inside of her chest with optimistic excitement. That was the Grappo silic sigil, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a common sigil, what with them being a small guild-family, but she’d seen it on several occasions. That man must have been a Grappo. A relative of Adriana’s? A brother? A cousin? The soldiers who’d captured her at the border had mentioned Adriana’s “failure” of a son. If he’d managed to track Thessa down in just a couple of days, he didn’t seem so much like a failure to her.
“Thessa, are you okay?” Axio whispered.
Thessa pulled her gaze away from the closed door to the furnace room. A couple of the other prisoners glanced in her direction but no one said anything. Behind her, Axio leaned over her workbench.
“He’s a piece of shit,” Axio said. “Don’t let it get to you.”
“I’m fine, thanks,” she replied, turning back to her work. She put her bit iron back in the furnace to reheat the glass for a few moments, then brought it to the metal plate on her workbench and began work on a new piece. She moved slowly, trying to think.
There were other possibilities, of course. Perhaps he was just an asshole? Maybe she misremembered the silic sigil and that man was simply one of the overseer’s friends and was flirting with her. If that was the case she would have to be careful around him. She did not know for certain and it drove her mad as she worked through the rest of the morning.