Demir knew he couldn’t stand up to questions under shackleglass – but the good news was Supi had just handed him a perfect screen for Thessa’s disappearance in the form of those escaped prisoners. He also knew about the blackmail material Filur Magna had kept. He didn’t have it, but knowing about it still gave him a card to play. He took a half step closer to Supi and thrust his finger up under the taller man’s chin.
“Look here,” he snapped quietly, “I know exactly what you were doing at the Ivory Forest Glassworks – the fearglass, the skimming. I asked questions the moment your granddaughter lost those shares to me. When I confronted Filur, he attacked me and I was forced to defend myself. It was his pissing guards who set the fire. By accident, for sure, but it wasn’t me who spread the flames. If you’d like me to repeat all of that under shackleglass, I am more than willing.”
There was a glint of something in Supi’s eyes – fear, perhaps – and he stiffened noticeably. If the other members of the Inner Assembly found out how baldly he had corrupted a government contract, they would take all the government contracts away from the Magna. Demir went on before Supi could answer, knowing that he had to press the advantage to secure this half bluff. “However, if you’d like to keep Filur’s secret ledgers a secret, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. I want nothing to do with fearglass, so I’ll sell you back Ulina’s shares.”
“You’re very generous,” Supi grated.
“At two hundred percent,” Demir finished.
Supi’s eyes bugged, his fists clenching and unclenching. Finally, he nodded. “And not a word will be said of the subject?”
“Not a word,” Demir promised. “Friends?” He let a small smile play out across his face, but immediately wondered if he’d pushed it too far. Supi ignored his outstretched hand and stormed back to the other guild-family heads. Demir watched him do so, then headed for the door. “You’ll have more communication from me within the hour,” he promised.
In the hallway, the Cinders had faded away as if they were ghosts. He was grateful for that moment alone and ran a hand across his face, trying to come to terms with his own mortality as he contemplated leading troops into battle once more. It couldn’t end the same as last time. He wouldn’t allow it. He needed to gather all his mental strength and hold it close until after this thing was finished. If he didn’t, both soldiers and civilians would die by the thousands.
“I’m going to go stress-shit my brains out,” he said to the empty hall. “Then I’m going to take command of the Foreign Legion and pit myself against the world’s greatest strategist. This’ll be fun.”
34
Thessa stared at the dark ceiling of her hotel suite, trying to come to terms with the events of the last week and all the ways her life had changed. The whole thing felt dizzying, from the attack on Grent to becoming partners with the patriarch of an Ossan guild-family. Grief swirling with elation. One moment her stomach would clench up as she replayed Axio’s death in her mind, or tried to come to grips with Kastora’s sudden absence from her life, and the next she’d quietly laugh to herself at the feel of silk sheets rubbing against her legs.
She tried her best to focus on the latter. She could get used to this: the hotel suite, the fine restaurant downstairs, the tiny but well-equipped glassworks in the garden. Just after Demir left, she’d gone looking for a cup of tea in the kitchen only to be gently turned away by a porter who said he’d have it up to her in fifteen minutes. And he’d done exactly that, setting the table in her sitting room with a porcelain tea set, including sandwiches and cookies, despite the fact that it was past one in the morning.
It was a level of luxury that made her vaguely uncomfortable, but she knew from seeing the way Master Kastora had lived at home that she would quickly get used to it – perhaps even rely on it. Another vaguely unsettling thought. What had Kastora said to her once? Luxury softens us all, true, but why should I make my own tea when ten minutes of my hands at the furnace could buy a whole shipment of tea leaves?
Thinking of Kastora brought the tears back to her eyes. She dabbed them away with her sheets and took a deep, unsteady breath. How long would it take the grief to go away? She still had nightmares of her parents’ deaths, though she hadn’t even been there when it happened. She’d seen Axio die violently. Would that haunt her every time she closed her eyes for the rest of her life? Not to mention Demir’s execution of the two Magna enforcers, or Craftsman Magna falling into the furnace.
She tried to push it all away, rolling this way and that in bed. What time was it? Two? Three? The hotel was quiet, the city outside peaceful. For a moment she thought to go for a walk, but the lurking specter of the Magna caused her some pause. What if they found out where she’d gone? What if enforcers were lying in wait outside the hotel for the first time she stepped out alone?
Thessa finally sat up and crossed the room, fetching her notes on the schematics from her desk. She turned up the gas lamp above her bed and began to flip through the pages slowly, processing them for the dozenth time.
This project was going to be a tricky one, and not just because of the added pressure of the cindersand running out. She had only one piece of cinderite, which meant one solid try. And not only did she have to remake the prototype, but she had to remake it better – to improve upon Kastora and Adriana’s design so that it didn’t take several cartloads of firewood just to recharge a single spent piece of godglass.
She found a pencil she’d brought up from the glassworks and wrote on a piece of hotel stationery the word “energy,” then followed it with “coal,” “gas,” “wood,” “oil.” She tapped the end of the pencil against her cheek, flushing her brain of all the chaos and focusing entirely on the task at hand. The source of the energy didn’t matter nearly as much as the phoenix channel itself, but it was still a consideration. She stared at those five words for a little longer before setting the paper aside and putting a clean sheet against her knee.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a gentle knock on the door to her suite. Thessa waited for a moment, wondering if she’d imagined it, until another knock followed. She put on a dressing gown and went out, looking through the peephole. To her surprise, it was Demir, still dressed the same as when he’d left with the Cinders a couple of hours ago. He looked sharp-eyed but exhausted.
“Come in, come in,” she said, opening the door for him.
He stepped only to the threshold, his thoughts clearly far away, and said, “The contract is signed. Breenen will give you your copy in the morning.”
“Oh! Thank you.”
They stood in silence for several moments, until Demir said, “This is … awkward.”
Thessa adjusted her dressing gown so it wasn’t showing off too much. “Did I overstep by asking you to share a bottle of wine?” She grimaced. “It didn’t mean we were going to sleep together, it just meant … I mean…” She realized she was babbling and swallowed hard, reminding herself how little sleep she’d gotten in the past week. By the vaguely surprised look on his face, it clearly wasn’t that.
“Um,” he said, his expression turning bemused for just a moment before slipping back to serious and distant. “That’s not what I meant. Sex is only awkward if we make it awkward. I was about to tell you what was awkward.”