Thessa scowled. “Severe speculation has happened before, of course, but not in the modern world. Not in a city the size of Ossa. Cindersand is too well regulated.”
“Glassdamn,” Demir breathed.
“This kind of thing is going to keep happening, isn’t it?” Thessa asked, though she already knew the answer. “It’s going to get worse if we don’t finish the phoenix channel.”
The street was packed shoulder to shoulder now, with men and women wearing the drab tunics of common laborers. Some of them had the crest of a teamsters union stitched to their jackets, while others seemed like they were just there for the violence and looting. The crowd suddenly parted, and a middle-aged woman strode brazenly to the bottom step of the Hyacinth. Her tunic was a little nicer than those around her, the embroidery fine but demure, the emblem of an ox stitched boldly on the center of her chest. Thessa recognized the shirt – a union boss. The woman pointed a cudgel at Demir.
“You there, Grappo! You’re a guild-family patriarch, the only one brave enough to stay in the streets. Why has the price of forgeglass tripled?”
Thessa and Demir exchanged a glance, and Demir answered, “I don’t know. I only heard myself when your people started smashing windows.”
“How can you not know?” the union boss demanded. “You’re on the Assembly!”
“I haven’t attended an Assembly meeting in nine years,” Demir called back, spreading his hands to indicate the black mourning flags still hanging from the windows above him. “Ask the Magna or the Vorcien. Does it look like I own a glassworks?”
The woman made a disgusted gesture. “We want answers! Your kind expect us to work ourselves like oxen yet you won’t provide the forgeglass we need to do it? We can’t afford those prices! What good are the guild-family guarantees if prices can leap so readily?”
Thessa looked sharply at Demir. His demeanor had not changed, but she could see he was breathing harder now, sweat rolling down the back of his neck. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“I’ve blanked,” Demir whispered back. “I used to know what to say; what to do. I used to be able to wrap these kinds of people around my fingers with a few words. They loved me then, and now I can only threaten with my sigil.” To Thessa’s surprise, his hands trembled. She reached down and took him by the hand, squeezing it hard.
“You don’t need to be out here,” she told him.
“If it’s not me, it’ll be my enforcers. People will get hurt. Maybe killed.” He cleared his throat and waved dismissively at the union boss. He called, “Take your complaints to the Assembly. You’ll get nothing here.”
“Bah!” the union boss snapped back with a rude gesture. She withdrew back into the crowd.
Demir let out a long sigh, and Thessa found herself wondering if he could actually resort to violence. He ran his hands across his face. “I’ve seen riots out in the provinces – bread riots, pay riots – I’ve even been in them. But I’ve never seen a godglass riot in the Assembly District. If I … Shit.”
Thessa turned to follow the sharp turn of his head. There, less than a block away, soldiers had emerged out into the street. They looked almost quaint in white, red, and green flowing uniforms, armed with halberds with hammerglass heads and razorglass blades, pistols at their belts, their conical hats looking like something out of an old-timey play. Thessa’s breath caught in her throat.
Cinders. The Assembly’s trained killers. Even in Grent they had a reputation for being half a step below the arrogance and bloodthirstiness of a glassdancer. There were dozens of them, and many of their halberds were already slick with blood. They rolled out into a line between the rioters and the Assembly Square farther down the street, lowering their weapons. The rioters wavered, but they did not scatter.
“Disperse immediately!” one of the Cinders ordered.
The rioters roared back as one, cudgels and stones raised.
“Get inside,” Demir said. He sprang to his feet, running down the steps, his glassdancer eggs shooting from the ground and following him as if they were possessed. “No!” he shouted. “No, no, no!”
Thessa was rooted to the spot, watching as the eggs suddenly cracked and shattered into dozens of pieces that soared over the heads of the crowd and then spread out just in front of the Cinders, driving both soldiers and rioters back in different directions. Demir leapt onto the base of a lamppost and showed his twin silic sigils to both sides.
“He’s going to get himself killed.” Thessa turned to see that half a dozen enforcers had emerged from the hotel, and with them were Tirana and the hotel concierge, Breenen. “Glassdamnit,” Breenen continued, “not even a glassdancer is going to stop this. Tirana, get in there and pull him out.”
“Wait!” Thessa knew she had no authority here – these were not her people – but she threw out an arm to stop Tirana just as Demir began to shout.
“Teamsters!” Demir called above the angry shouts. “Builders, haulers, diggers, skinners! Citizens! Look to me and take heed! This” – he pointed at the Cinders – “is only death and despair. You will suffer and they will call you animals and use it against you.”
Thessa swallowed hard. The shouting tapered off immediately, hundreds of eyes turning toward Demir. “Breenen,” she hissed, “do you have a stockpile of forgeglass? For your porters?”
“Of course,” the concierge replied.
“How much?”
“A few hundred pieces, perhaps.”
“Go get it. All of it.”
The concierge drew himself up. “Young lady, you may be our guest but you do not–”
She turned and grabbed him by the lapels of his tunic. “I’ll make more,” she whispered desperately. “I can replenish that in a few long days. Go. Get. The forgeglass.” At that moment she realized just how close the Grappo enforcers were to forcibly removing her hands from the concierge. She let go, showing him her palms. “Do it.”
Finally, he nodded, and two of the enforcers raced inside.
Demir continued, shouting to a now-quiet crowd. His voice wavered at times, but he plowed on, his tone hypnotic. “Let it go! You’ve shown them your displeasure. Nothing more can be gained.”
Someone – the union boss who’d spoken earlier – shouted out from the crowd. “We won’t go home until they hear our demands.”
“They won’t hear your demands at the end of a cudgel!” Demir shouted back. “They’ll only answer with blood!”
“That we will!” Several of the Cinders, shoving with the stocks of their hammerglass halberds, had pushed their way within a dozen paces of Demir, and their officer now raised a hand toward him.
Thessa felt something shoved into her arms, and she looked down to find a small box brimming with forgeglass. “Now he’s got the Cinders on him!” Breenen growled angrily. “I hope you’ve got some kind of an idea.”
Thessa didn’t. “Take this,” she said, “and form a cordon at the base of the steps.” With that, against all instincts of self-preservation, she shoved her way through the crowd. She reached Demir just as he turned on the Cinders.
“Stand down,” he barked at them.
“You don’t give orders,” the officer replied.
Demir drew himself up. “I am a Grappo patriarch and a glassdancer. I have a seat on the Assembly. Stand down or the blood spilled today will not be theirs!” His voice rose to a roar and Thessa looked up at his back, rethinking her earlier assessment. He was, she decided, quite capable of violence. Glass darted nervously around in the air, hovering dozens of feet above the Cinders, tiny shards that caught the sunlight and glittered like poised knives.
The crowd was completely silent now, not a word spoken, a ripple of tense fear working its way back and forth like the tiny waves on a pond.