“I’ll send it over first thing in the morning.”
“Perfect.”
“Good night, sir.”
Demir raised a hand in answer as he headed past the stairs, down the hall, and out into the dark, silent garden. Three weeks since his mother’s death, and a few candles had still been left in front of the family mausoleum. It was a testament to how much the hotel staff loved her. Demir paused to watch the candles flicker, searching his memories for the last time they’d been together in this very garden. It was probably during a quiet memorial on the anniversary of his father’s death thirteen or fourteen years ago. Half his lifetime. It seemed strange that it could be so long.
Lamps were still lit in the small workshop on the far end of the garden, but when Demir reached it he found Thessa missing. She’d been here recently – the workbenches were covered in pages upon pages of notes, and a fire still burned in the furnace. He sat down in her chair and looked over those notes. One page described every single aspect of the workshop itself, from the furnace walls to the tools. Recent repairs, it said in quick, flowing handwriting, keep an eye on crack at the back of furnace. There was a shopping list beside it. Better bit iron. Eight ounces of omnisand. Larger water bucket.
The notes quickly moved beyond the mundane, and he could see that she’d made a thorough examination of both the destroyed phoenix channel prototype and the original schematics. There were a dozen drawings of possible alterations, and extensive ruminations on alternative power sources.
How long was it since the riot? Nine hours? And she’d made this much progress already. Demir flipped through the pages, understanding only half of it, growing more and more impressed. She wasn’t just a siliceer with an ear for resonance. She was a proper engineer – someone who understood theory and science at the highest levels. He found a page that contained a small treatise on insulation and how it could be applied to the phoenix channel to increase the energy-to-sorcery return.
He sat back, pushing the papers away from him, lost in thought.
“Demir?”
He craned his neck to see Montego standing in the doorway. “How did it go?” Demir asked.
Montego looked tired, his wide brow creased by a scowl. He’d been gone since sunup, rushing around to make sure that there’d be no further action after the Ivory Forest Glassworks. “I think things are quiet,” he rumbled. “The Magna want to question both of us but have been distracted all day by the riots. No one followed us to Wagonside, so the Prosotsi are in the clear. Not a single mention of Thessa’s name or her pseudonym. They likely think she died in the fire, but that might change once they get a better count of prisoners and the corpses.” Montego paused. “I heard you stood up to the Cinders on behalf of rioting teamsters.”
Demir grimaced, bracing himself for a lecture. “I didn’t want to see people die,” he said.
“Good.”
Demir raised an eyebrow at Montego. “Good?”
“Yes. That is the Demir I know. The old Demir.”
“The old Demir would have never been so stupid.”
“Bollocks. The old Demir didn’t take shit from anyone. He used his power to help people.”
“Did I?” Demir asked faintly, trying to look into his own past. “I don’t even remember anymore. My whole past is a foggy tableau of sex, power, and arrogance.”
“You were still a child,” Montego pointed out gently. “Perhaps you had excesses, but I’ve always known you to have your heart in the right place. Remember that orphanage out past Bravectia? You seduced a woman three times your age to get those kids indefinite funding.”
Demir felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward at the memory. “Did I do it for the kids, or did I do it for the challenge?”
“I met that woman, Demir. You definitely did it for the kids.” Montego clapped his hands together. “Bah! I’m exhausted from pretending to care about the Magna all day. I’m going to bed.”
Demir turned back to watch the fire in the furnace. Was it the old Demir? Had that shadow of himself escaped the prison in the back of his mind? It didn’t feel like it. He still had no confidence. He still feared reprisal from the Cinders, or censure from the other guild-families. Taking the side of a mob so blatantly would surely have consequences.
Sick of his own thoughts, Demir went looking for Thessa. It was with some surprise that he found her on the roof, sitting beside the mews, one hand reaching through the bars to gently stroke the injured falcon inside. He shut the door behind him, sure to make just enough noise that his presence didn’t go undetected. The roof was lit only by a sliver of moonlight, and he found a piece of sightglass in his pocket to enhance his vision.
“Is he yours?” he asked.
To his surprise, Thessa sniffed and dabbed at her face with a sleeve before turning toward him. Her eyes were red, her cheeks damp. “You didn’t know?”
Demir came over to sit beside her, looking at the falcon through the caging of the mews. Its left wing was bandaged but it seemed to have calmed down since first arriving at the hotel. It bore Thessa’s stroking with remarkable patience, huddled close to her. He said, “I couldn’t be sure. Kastora told me you were an accomplished falconer, so when I saw an injured falcon outside an empty mews, I made a leap.”
“You brought him all the way back from a war zone?”
Demir chuckled. “It was a pain in the ass, really. I had to use a glove as an impromptu hood until I could borrow one from an officer. Your guy was not happy.” He paused, tapping the ground with one finger to get the falcon’s attention. “I inherited a falcon from my dad when I was a kid. He died right around the time my political career started to pick up, and I just never had the chance to go back to it. I suppose it left me with a soft spot.”
“His name is Ekhi,” Thessa told him. “He’s the last thing I have from my parents. I thought I’d lost him. It twisted my gut into knots, and here he is.”
Demir examined the side of Thessa’s face, surprised at how raw and vulnerable she looked over a single falcon. “I was going to mention him earlier today, but the riots took my attention.”
Thessa lowered her hand from the bird, pulling it back through the narrow bars. She gave a little shudder, and that vulnerability seemed to melt away. “About that … look, I’m sorry about the forgeglass. I acted on instinct, and it was completely out of my rights. You had things in hand. I shouldn’t have intervened.”
“I’m not so sure I did.” Every instinct told Demir to give Thessa a dressing-down. That was what a guild-family patriarch did when someone overstepped themselves. It wasn’t just his right, it was his duty. He could hear his mother’s teachings in the back of his head. He needed to maintain his authority, or no one would respect him. Instead, he just shook his head. “There’s no telling what a mob will do. Maybe my dumb speech was enough. Maybe this was enough.” He touched his glassdancer sigil. “The mob might have even turned on us in the effort to get free forgeglass. But the fact is they didn’t. The Grappo earned a lot of goodwill today, and I have you to thank for it.”
“Me?” Thessa scoffed. “You stood up to the Cinders for commoners. When’s the last time that happened?”
“And I’ll probably lose some alliances for it,” Demir said thoughtfully. “I suppose I did gain some friends. One of the union bosses came to me this evening asking to become my client. Just him and his family – not the whole union – but it’s a powerful message. He’s abandoning the Stavri for us.”
“May he be the first of many.” Thessa wiped her eyes again and smiled at him. It was a sad smile, but pretty, and it caught Demir off guard. The moment suddenly reminded him of his first sweetheart; sitting under the stars on the hotel roof, sharing a bottle of pilfered wine while her father searched the hotel for her. He tried to remember her name and found he could not. What happened to her, he wondered. Her father was a traveling merchant, and Demir had never seen her again after that night.