“Thank you again for coming after me.”
“It wasn’t entirely selfless,” Demir replied, a smile touching the corners of his mouth. “I need your help.”
Thessa nodded. As expected, and yet it was best not to tip her hand. “With?”
Demir picked a bit of fluff off his tunic. “I understand that you were entrusted with the schematics for a working phoenix channel designed by Kastora and my late mother. Kastora’s prototype was destroyed when his glassworks was attacked. I’ve retrieved it, but I have no confidence that anyone less than a master-level siliceer is capable of building a new one.” He paused for a long moment, frowning at the space above her head. “A working phoenix channel will change the world, and it will change the future of the guild-family that makes one. With the cindersand running out so quickly…”
Thessa felt her eyes widen, her pulse quicken. “What?” she demanded, the word ripping itself from her throat before she could stop it.
“Oh.” Demir looked immediately unhappy, like he’d spilled a family secret inadvertently. “He didn’t tell you.”
She stared at him, her mouth hanging open slightly. “Did he tell you that the cindersand was running out?”
“With his dying breath. I arrived the evening after the invasion and took a breacher in to try to extract him safely. Much to my horror, he was on his deathbed. That’s how I know all of this, since my own mother died before I returned to Ossa.”
Thessa’s mind raced through the implications, first for siliceers and then for all of civilization. She found herself pacing from one end of the omnichapel to the other, no thought left for the candles under her feet. Bits and pieces began to come together in her head that had never corresponded before: Kastora’s renewed vigor in bookkeeping the last few years; snippets of conversations with other masters that had stopped when she entered the room; letters that he insisted on posting himself.
A flurry of emotions ran through her, starting with jealousy that Demir had been told this secret before she had. She forced herself to slow down, to think. It was a deathbed confession – Kastora’s bid to provide Thessa with a protector before he died. He’d kept her interests at heart to the last moment, and that thought alone made the grief throb in her breast.
It was a testament to his trust in her that he’d told her about the phoenix channel at all. And to send her away with the only schematics? She shuddered just remembering how close she’d come to losing them. She looked around for a place to sit, couldn’t find one, and thrust her hands in her tunic pockets to keep them from trembling.
All of this had rushed through her head in mere moments. Demir, she noticed, was watching her carefully. “As I was saying,” he went on slowly, “the first guild-family that makes a working phoenix channel will find themselves the most powerful in Ossa. The others are all fighting amongst themselves, conducting a secret sorcery war. Under normal circumstances, my guild-family couldn’t possibly compete.”
“But,” Thessa finished, “with me and the schematics, the Grappo could complete a phoenix channel before anyone knew you were involved.” She knew enough of the politics of Ossa to take what he was saying at face value, and to extrapolate from there. It was beautiful in its simplicity, and clearly what Kastora and Adriana had been preparing to do. “It seems the two of us have inherited a scheme from our predecessors.”
“It does seem that way, doesn’t it?” Demir replied. “I think – if you’re willing – that we should continue where they left off.”
“What kind of a deal do you propose?” she asked. This was a business discussion now, and she adjusted her thoughts accordingly.
Demir shrugged. “The same exact deal my mother had with Kastora. We take on the roles of our respective predecessors, except this time you will be under my direct protection. I have their contract. It is light on details, likely to keep spies from finding out what they were up to, but all the wording is there. You can see it the moment we return to my hotel.”
The protection of a glassdancer was nothing to scoff at, no matter how small a guild-family the Grappo were. “And the terms?”
“Fifty-fifty. Equal partners.”
Thessa found her breath caught in her throat. The standard contract between guild-families and siliceers was patronage: the lion’s share of decision making and profits went to the guild-family. True partnerships were rare, and even if Demir let her walk out of here with the schematics and a “no” there was no great guild-family that would give her such an offer.
As if he’d read her line of thought, Demir tugged on the fingers of his glove and removed it from his left hand. He showed her the glassdancer sigil. “I want to clear something up right now: this is not who I am. I’m not going to threaten or cajole you. I want your help. I have given you an offer to get it. It is your choice whether you take that offer, and I guarantee your safety regardless of what you say next.”
There was something in the back of Thessa’s mind that wanted to disbelieve him. She knew all about guild-families and the tricks of their trade. Besides, she’d seen him back at the prison. She knew what he was capable of. Still … she did believe him. Was it the naïveté of her youth? Or was he really exactly how he presented himself? Masks wearing masks. What could she trust?
He had saved her life, and risked his own to do so. That seemed worthy of a leap of faith.
Thessa looked more closely at Demir. He was handsome, if a little short. Well-mannered. Probably around six or seven years her senior, but that hardly mattered for a partnership. She walked from one end of the omnichapel to the other, stopping to look at the two burnt-out candles in front of Kloor’s shrine. Her eyes traveled over to the third candle, and the pyramid-shaped shrine to Renn. The goddess of commerce. What a fitting place to have burned a candle. Thessa turned back to Demir. She realized her mind was attempting to address every possible detail and was getting overwhelmed. These sorts of deals normally took months to hammer out, even years. They didn’t have years. If things were so desperate that Kastora had told Demir the cindersand was running out quickly, the phoenix channel had to be made as soon as possible. She needed to decide.
Once again, she looked at him keenly. “Why do you want to do this?” she asked. “I’d like to know your real mind: your exact motivations.”
Demir seemed to chew on the question for some time before answering. “I have money. I could disappear into the provinces right now and live a luxurious lifestyle until the end of my days. But that’s selfish, and I’ve already lived a life like that. I’m the patriarch of a guild-family now, and I have hundreds of clients who depend on me, from the lowest of the porters in my hotel, all the way up to businessmen and close friends. The phoenix channel will change their world more than it will mine: it will secure their future. But it will also secure the future of sorcery. It’ll prevent the world from descending into complete chaos that will claim millions of lives. I thought I’d missed my chance to change the world, and fate has given me another.”
Thessa was very tempted to call him a liar, but managed to stop herself. Not only would it be rude, but his tone had been so incredibly earnest; as if he was begging her to help him. She was, as he’d already noted, not talking to Demir the glassdancer right now. Was this earnestness the real him? This wasn’t going to be simple.
He suddenly said, “I’ll give you some time to think on it,” and stepped outside, leaving Thessa alone in the omnichapel. She paced again, her thoughts scattered, wishing Master Kastora were here to help her navigate this. There were nuances present, both in the circumstances and in Demir himself, that she was not prepared for. Another one of Master Kastora’s sayings: Know your shortcomings just as thoroughly as you know your strengths.