“Pray,” the overseer ordered. His body language screamed of impatience, his expression both long-suffering and fearful. This was not a man who would test his god by rejecting a fellow worshiper.
“Oh, thank you, sir!” Thessa fell on her knees in front of the shrine. “Sir, may I light the incense?”
He made a get on with it gesture. Thessa found a match and lit the incense, then bowed to the shrine. She wondered, however briefly, if Renn was real. Was the goddess blessing her right now? Or would this come back later, when a vengeful goddess decided not to countenance a false worshiper? Just in case, Thessa whispered as she bowed.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, thank you.” Out of the corner of her eye she could see Craftsman Magna making magnanimous gestures, as if the words were directed at him.
She pretended to pray for as long as the incense burned – about ten minutes, she guessed. Long enough to look convincing, but not so long as to test the overseer’s patience. In the back of her head she took in the room and analyzed the overseer. Where would he keep the schematics? His desk? His safe? Hidden in some cubby under the rug?
She finished and dusted off her knees. On a whim of daring, she grasped the overseer, kissing him on the hand. His eyes widened momentarily. “You are too kind,” she babbled quickly. “I can feel Renn’s spirit strongly in this room.”
Craftsman Magna pulled his hand out of her grasp and wiped it on his tunic. “Yes, well. Do not think this will happen again.”
“Of course. Thank you so much.” Thessa waited while the overseer locked his office and let him escort her down and out of the administration building, where the same guards gave her a bemused look. “I’ll return to my dormitory now, sir,” she said.
“Wait!”
Thessa froze. “Sir?”
Craftsman Magna took on the expression of someone who thought they were being incredibly generous. “If you meet your quotas and keep out of trouble, I may consider allowing you to worship. On the weekends only.”
Thessa thanked him profusely and returned to her dormitory, pausing in the darkness of the doorway to watch as he got into his carriage and left through the front gate. Just inside the dormitory she could hear muted voices. It was, she realized, Three – the woman who’d warned her to take more breaks. Thessa waited for a few minutes, listening. Three seemed to have gotten her hands on a newspaper and was reading it out loud to the dormitory. The story detailed a series of gruesome murders in Glasstown; of siliceers found cut groin to chin and left dead in the Tien River. Thessa found herself engrossed in a moment of déjà vu until she realized she’d read the exact same article the night before the Ossan attack.
She wasn’t waiting for the end of the story, however. She was waiting to see how the guards reacted once Craftsman Magna was out of the compound. As she predicted, things changed almost immediately. It was not unlike when Kastora went off on one of his trips. The few remaining laborers stopped to have a smoke. Guards congregated on the walls to gossip. Security wasn’t exactly lax – the gates were still locked and enforcers posted to exits – but the general air of the place grew significantly less watchful.
Thessa joined the rest of the prisoners, lying in her bunk, listening to Three finish reading from the newspaper. Soon the dormitory was filled with snoring, punctuated only occasionally by someone leaving to use the outhouses in the far corner of the compound. It was a long, exhausting vigil. Thessa stared at the ceiling, trying not to think of all the ways her plan could go wrong.
It was, she decided around midnight, time to act.
Thessa retrieved Demir’s razorglass and used it to cut the lock on the administration building. She passed the guard post where, true to her informant’s word, the enforcers meant to be on watch were occupied quite graphically with each other. She hurried up to the overseer’s office, where she did not waste time. This was meant to look like, as she’d heard a less-savory assistant once describe a robbery, a “smash and grab.” She used the razorglass blade to cut carefully into Craftsman Magna’s safe, then his desk. She found the schematics in a false bottom of the latter, along with what appeared to be a number of illegitimate ledgers.
She gathered everything she could easily carry and took it with her.
The trip back to her furnace was a harrowing one, and she hid both inside another dormitory and in the compound outhouses to avoid patrols. No sound of alarm went up. No one stopped or questioned her. Thessa slipped in through the service hatch of her own furnace room. She read the ledgers by the light of the furnace flames, scoffing to herself. Illegal godglass shipments. Under-the-table sales. Illegitimate trading. There was enough information here to destroy Craftsman Magna’s career, but only if she could actually get it out of the compound.
Wishing she had another choice, she burned everything in her possession but the phoenix channel schematics. It was vitally important that Craftsman Magna believe that the whole lot had been stolen by a rival guild-family spy. If he even suspected that they’d never left the compound, she’d be done.
A sound brought her attention back to the present, and she quickly made sure all the evidence was destroyed before shoving the schematics up the back of her tunic and securing them in place with her belt. Someone had entered the workshop. She kept her head low, peering through from inside the furnace itself to see one of the hired assistants roll himself a cigarette on one of the workbenches. Much to Thessa’s chagrin, he turned up a lantern, pulled a book from his pocket, and began to read.
Piss and shit. With him there, Thessa could not reach her new hiding spot.
She waited as long as she dared, but the assistant was going nowhere. Thessa finally snuck out through the service entrance. She still had both the schematics and the razorglass on her person. The discovery of either would damn her, but she had no choice. She would have to wake up early and hope she reached the workshop before anyone else.
Slipping back into the dormitory, Thessa returned to bed. No point in holding her breath any longer. What was done was done. Exhausted, her body hurting from the tension, she let herself get some rest.
She woke from a restless sleep. The compound was quiet save for the early-morning sound of laborers hauling firewood. The faintest tinge of light touched the sky outside the dormitory windows. It was perhaps six o’clock in the morning, and she didn’t have much time until the whistle was blown and everyone rolled out of their beds. Some of the other prisoners already stirred.
Thessa quietly sat up and pulled on her tunic and siliceer’s apron, then laced up her boots. She had only minutes to spare to go hide her ill-gotten goods, and … The thought trailed off. Three beds down, Axio was not in his bunk. The blanket was thrown back, his boots missing but not his apron. Gone to take a shit? Or maybe up to try and practice what she’d been teaching him? She hoped it was the latter.
Thessa tilted her head, listening for the call of an alarm. The overseer would be here soon, no doubt, and when he discovered the robbery heads would roll. She had to move.
She was halfway to the dormitory door when it opened. A word of greeting for Axio died on her tongue at the sight of two Magna enforcers. They were both armed with cudgels, and they looked directly at her.
“Oh good,” one said pleasantly, lifting his cudgel, “you’re already up. The overseer wants to see you.”
Demir and Montego arrived at the Ivory Forest Glassworks right at dawn, their carriage laden with more gifts – silver pocket watches for the overseer and captain, heavy winter tunics for the enforcers, tin flasks for the hired help. Their arrival was greeted far more enthusiastically this morning, and Demir was pleased to see them waved through the front gate and directed to the little compound square just inside, where they were mobbed by enforcers.