by Melanie Rawn
“… and you get a brilliant, sparkling effect with every facet you cut, because the light is reflected all through the object, whether it’s a plate like this or—”
“Oy!” he said. The knock at the shop door sounded again.
“Could you do that with a window?” Jinsie wanted to know. “It’d look splendid in a window, wouldn’t it, Jez? West-facing, to catch the sunset.”
“But if you get the melt wrong the glass will crizzle—that means lots of little cracks—”
“Blye,” Mieka said loudly, “I think there’s somebody wanting into the shop.”
“That’s a fine word, that is, crizzle—I’m expecting Cade to steal it any day now—”
The knock became pounding. “Blye!”
At last Jinsie turned to him. “Will you stop yelling?”
“There’s somebody thumping the shop door down.”
“Probably Cade.” Blye shrugged. “Go let him in, won’t you, Mieka? Beholden. Anyway, as I was saying, once this cools I’ll let you hear how it rings. You can always tell lead crystal from plain glass by the ringing of it.”
“Master Glisker on the First Flight of the Winterly Circuit,” Mieka muttered as he opened the connecting door from the glassworks, “and now I’m playing footman. Keep yer hair on, I’m comin’!” he hollered as the pounding started up again. And then it occurred to him that Cade would call out—loudly and impatiently these days, his voice as well as his temper flayed raw with nerves about the Winterly. Slipping into the shop, he lifted the window’s heavy parchment shade a trifle and swallowed a yelp.
They all stared as he came running back into the works and snatched up all the illegal withies.
“Guildmasters!”
“Quick!” Jinsie opened and presented her sizable shoulder bag—whatever did girls keep in such things, that they required so much room? he wondered stupidly, shoving the withies inside.
“Anything else needs hiding?” Jezael asked.
Blye’s silver-blond hair came loose of its tie as she looked frantically round the works. “I don’t know—I don’t think so, just the withies—”
“Done,” said Jinsie. “Jez, go open the door to them. And then go find Cayden.” And, after rummaging about in the bag with a clink and clatter that made Mieka wince, she pulled out a comb and a clean scrap of silk, leaving him in charge of hiding the bag.
“What can they want?” Jedris asked.
Blye winced as Jinsie wielded the comb through her tangled hair. “I haven’t done anything!”
Mieka gave her a sardonic smile. “And that matters?”
By the time Jezael escorted the two Guildmasters into the glassworks—and then departed to fetch Cade—the smudges had been cleaned from Blye’s face and hands, and her hair was smooth. Mieka was all affability and charm, performing introductions, saying that he and his brothers and sister had just been watching the artist at work.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he finished, gesturing to the platter—two feet long and a foot wide, clear flint-glass and curved ever-so-slightly at the edges.
“Competent,” grunted one of the Guildmasters, a Goblin from his crooked yellowing teeth to his long, grasping fingers.
“Your pardon for the intrusion, Mistress,” said the other, whose height and heft and large thick hands would be more suited to a blacksmith than a glasscrafter, “but as you have recently been declared the inheritor of these works, it’s our responsibility to inspect the premises.”
“What for?” Jedris asked, a smile on his broad-boned Human face but the chill of Snowminder Elfenblood in his gray-green eyes.
“Violations,” said the Goblin, and, clasping his hands behind his back, began taking tiny, precise steps around every inch of the glassworks.
“Have any been reported?” Mieka asked innocently.
“No,” the tall Guildmaster admitted. With a glance at Blye, he added, “But she is, after all, a woman.”
Nothing could be more calculated to put sparks into Jinsie’s eyes. This was not the time for one of her lectures. Mieka scowled furiously at her behind the Guildmaster’s back, and stood aside to watch as the premises were scrutinized.
Blye had recovered the powers of speech, and answered whatever questions were put to her. Mieka listened absently; he was alert for the sound of the shop door opening again, glad that Jinsie had thought to send for Cayden. But long minutes went by, and longer minutes than that, and still Cade didn’t arrive.
Blye’s voice lost its nervous shakiness as she spoke. Yes, almost all her father’s pieces had already been sold. It was part of the Guild’s agreement allowing Blye to run the glassworks that everything bearing her father’s hallmark be got rid of, so that no one coming into the shop would think that any of the wares were anything but of her making. This meant that all the goblets, glasses, cups, bowls, and anything else hollow—including withies—were gone from the shop now. Those of her father’s things that remained were in the back room, waiting for Blye to sell them—and if she couldn’t, to give them away.
Yes, she now made plates, mirrors (Mieka hid a smirk on catching that word—after the Kiral Kellari show, Lord Fairwalk had negotiated the contract to replace the mirrors Touchstone had broken), windows (Jed attested to their quality), bases of goblets (it was allowed for an apprentice to make these, so Blye did, and sold them for hallmarked crafters to add the hollow glass on top), and coiled-glass flat-topped candleflats (unsuitable for narrow tapers because there was no socket, but perfect for wide pillar candles). Mieka noted the absence of the word withie, and with his heel nudged Jinsie’s bag a little farther under the workbench.
Yes, she adhered to the Guild’s specifics for the content of the glassware. Mieka heard words like flint and limestone and quartz and soda ash, and edged towards the connecting door to the shop. Where in all hells was Cade?
The Goblin Guildmaster had finished his investigations. He stood before the worktable where the new-made platter had cooled by now, scowling at it as if it had done him a personal injury. For a moment or two he fingered the embroidered badge of office on his plain brown jacket. Then he glared at Mieka.
“Door!”
Mieka jumped to open it, even more annoyed with himself for the obeying than with the Guildmaster for the ordering. Footman, for certes. The Goblin stirred not a step from the table.
“Boy!”
Unsure who was being addressed, and pricklying in spite of himself, Mieka nearly jumped again as a strange and scrawny shape darted past into the glassworks. No taller than Mieka’s elbow, there was Goblin in the boy’s long fingers and ragged teeth, Troll in his oversized nose, Light Elf in his white-blond hair and pointed ears, and his very white skin had a bizarre bluish cast that could only mean Westercountry Piksey somewhere in his lineage.
“Bottle,” growled the Goblin.
Cheap white wine was opened and poured onto the platter, enough to reach the slightly curving rim. Mieka looked his bewilderment at Blye; she seemed surprised but not worried. Then her eyes went wide, and as a familiar flowery scent touched his nostrils Mieka knew before he turned his head that the woman sweeping past him into the glassworks—almost certainly for the first time in her life—was Lady Jaspiela Silversun.
Cayden was right behind her: grim-faced, steel-jawed. He gave Mieka one imperious, silencing look before following his mother to the main workbench.
“Cayden,” said Lady Jaspiela, “you may make these persons known to me.”
“I would do so, if I had the least idea who they are.”
The arrogance was breathtaking. All Mieka could do was watch, dimly aware of his brother Jezael standing beside him, equally awestruck.
The Goblin Guildmaster met Her Ladyship’s look with a sneer that almost matched her own. Almost; not quite. His colleague made the sort of bow one gives to a societal equal, which earned him the eloquent arching of two pairs of aristocratic eyebrows.
Mieka didn’t catch the next exchange. Jez had poked him in the ribs and bent
down to whisper, “Did you stash the withies?”
Horror hollowed his chest. Lady Jaspiela was standing half a foot away from Jinsie’s shoulder bag, where Mieka had shoved it under the worktable. He kept his gaze strictly on the spread of her blue silk skirts until he could be reasonably confident that he could control his expression. Then he looked at the Goblin, who was still regarding Her Ladyship with resentful scorn.
“And so for some reason best understood by yourselves,” she was saying, “you considered it necessary to overrun these premises, disturbing everyone else at their homes and occupations in the meantime, and block Criddow Close with your rig. It is my wish that you conclude your business here as rapidly as possible and then be gone—within, I suggest, the next five minutes.”
Before his companion could speak, the Goblin snapped, “Impossible.”
“Indeed?” asked Cade in a silky tone Mieka had never heard him use before, and wouldn’t care to have used on him. “Why might that be?”
The other Guildmaster hastened to explain. “There are still questions to be answered, and an inspection of the shop and any back rooms, and the apprentice quarters—”
“What apprentices?” Blye asked, very nearly keeping the cynicism from her voice. “Who’d apprentice to a woman?”
“All the same—”
Lady Jaspiela interrupted, “It is not ‘all the same’ to me.”
“Or,” Cayden put in, “to the people on this street who look to my lady mother for their welfare.”
This told Mieka how he’d got his mother into this. Oh, he was cunning, was Cayden Silversun. Lady of the manor was a part she’d adore to play, even if the manor was naught but a block of shops and homes in back of her mansion.
The Guildmaster was stubborn. “And there is the matter of the flint glass.”
Before anyone could ask, the Goblin snapped his fingers and the boy handed him a thin strip of what looked like heavy rag paper tincted dark green. “Lead,” he announced, and slid the paper into the wine on the platter.
Everybody was drawn towards the table, everybody but Blye, whose cheeks had drained of all color. So had the slip of paper.
“I’m most dreadfully sorry,” the tall Guildmaster said, looking it but not sounding it. “But until every other piece of flint glass here can be similarly tested, we must order this shop closed.”
“Nonsense!” snapped Lady Jaspiela. “What can you mean?”
“It’s the lead content,” Blye managed in a faltering voice. “What makes flint glass sparkle can leach into acidic liquids.”
“Causing all manner of insalubrious results,” finished the Guildmaster.
“But—but it takes hours to happen, and the caution is for storage, not for goblets and things—and anyway the melt I used for this platter—it’s the same as my father used, and there was never any problem—”
“Perhaps my predecessor in this position was not as diligent as he ought to have been,” was the smooth reply.
“Twenty-four parts out of a hundred,” Blye was insisting, with more vigor now, “and the Guild allows up to forty in drinking vessels—”
“The policy has come under review. Were you a member of the Guild, you would know that.”
“She’s a woman, remember?” snarled Jinsie.
“Uh, just a thought,” Mieka said, holding up a hand. “But was anyone really contemplating taking a drink off that platter? Looks a rather awkward gulp to me.”
“That’s not the issue.”
Cade addressed Blye. “When was this platter made?”
“Just now,” Jedris reported. “We watched the whole process.”
“And the materials were taken from where?” When Blye pointed, Cade asked the Guildmaster, “Is there a test for the lead content of that sand?”
“Irrelevant,” said the Goblin.
Cade looked down on him. “Perform it.”
This involved weighing and measuring and other things Mieka found uninteresting compared to watching Cade. For it had occurred to him that it must be something exceptional, to know that a brain and a heart like that were always there to defend you.
Jinsie’s voice caught his attention, something about moving out of the Guildmasters’ way, and she paused to sketch a brief curtsy to Lady Jaspiela while on her way past. At the main workbench, she casually crouched down to retrieve her bag, rising with no indication that it was much heavier than it ought to have been. Settling the bag at her hip, she joined Mieka.
“Nice curtsy,” he whispered.
“She’s a one, isn’t she?”
“You’ve no idea.”
“Twenty-four,” the Goblin announced suddenly.
“We’ve no guarantee,” the other Guildmaster stated, “that the melt used for the platter is the same as—”
Jezael took a step towards him. “Are you calling my brother a liar?”
Lady Jaspiela held up a manicured hand. “Surely not—isn’t that right?” she inquired of the Guildmaster, who pursed his lips but said nothing else. Her voice was a dousing of pure venom as she went on, “Then there must be something amiss with your little papers, mustn’t there? Perhaps you’re not as diligent as you ought to be.” With a magnificent sweep of silken skirts, she turned to the door. “Your five minutes are now two. Cayden, see them to their conveyance.” With a nod to Mieka and a definitive clicking of her heels, she left the glassworks.
Her elder son drew himself to his full height. “You’re finished here. Next time, bring a smaller carriage—and don’t park in the middle of the road.” Something resembling a smile stretched his lips. “My lady mother dislikes it when anyone inconveniences the neighborhood.”
Mieka waited until both doors had shut behind Cade and the Guildmasters and the boy. Then he demanded of Blye, “How close was that?”
“Close enough,” she answered grimly. “They can inspect anybody anytime they like, of course. But I didn’t expect the bit about the flint glass. You’re not supposed to sell decanters without a caution label against storing wine in them.”
“But plates and platters are all right, aren’t they?” Jedris asked. “And goblets?”
“Food or liquid doesn’t stay in contact long enough to absorb any lead. Even so, Da always used the least possible to get the shine. But that paper—it turned as if that platter were made from forty-of-a-hundred melt.”
“So Lady Jaspiela was right,” Mieka mused. “There was something dodgy about—”
The crash of an opening door announced Cayden’s return—and in full voice, too. “Bastards! Cullions! Do you know what I saw when they got into their rig? You know who was in there waiting for them?”
“Somebody wearing the Archduke’s livery?” Blye’s tone was mild, but her dark eyes blazed brighter than her kiln. “C’mon, Cade, it’s obvious, innit? He couldn’t buy the glassworks, so he’s punishing us by trying to shut it down.”
“Nice bit of fakery on those testing papers, then,” Jinsie remarked. “Or the wine.”
Mieka shook his head. “It was corked and waxed, and opened right in front of us.”
“Trust you to notice everything about the alcohol and nothing about anything else!”
“You wait till Kearney learns of this,” Cade said. “You just wait till I tell him!”
Jinsie approached him, put a hand on his arm. “Do you really want to pit him and the Archduke against each other so soon?” she asked quietly. “Out in the open before anybody’s even sure what’s really going on?”
“Don’t do it, Cade,” Blye said. “A blunt challenge wouldn’t be at all wise.”
“Why not? Why not expose him for a liar and a cheat and—”
“And what?” Mieka asked pointedly. “It’s just mischief. He’s the fuckin’ Archduke—your pardon, ladies—who could possibly pin anything onto his splendid silk coat? If he likes, he could have us kicked off the Winterly, Quill, you know he could. We don’t know what he wants,” he insisted as Cade looked mutinous. “A glassworks, a theat
er group of his very own—from the things Chat was saying, it’s not for the prestige, or even the money, once the tours of the Continent are put through. It’s something else he’s after and we don’t know what, and until we do…” He finished with a shrug.
After one stinging glare, Cade turned on his heel and swept out of the glassworks in a manner that reminded everyone whose son he was.
“Such an affable young man,” Jinsie remarked. “Polite, personable, and all the winsome charm of a nest of angry wasps.”
“Oh, shut it,” Mieka told her. “There’s a lot on his mind.”
There were things on Mieka’s mind, as well, and about a week later he decided he’d had enough of Cade’s tantrums, and went once more to see Blye.
He brought along Chattim Czillag. This was in advance of the appointment with all the Shadowshapers. Reasoning that Blye wouldn’t have the chance to get nervous (fluttery, to use Cade’s word), would appreciate having a friend there with her (once she stopped being furious at the surprise, of course), and would like Chat anyway, he’d chosen a day when the wind off the river blew some freshness through the summer heat. Persuading Chat to a little excursion was easy; getting Blye to open the door was much harder. But he prevailed, as he always did, and they sat in the cool, glittering dimness of the shop, drinking the iced fruit juice Mieka had brought along and talking of anything but glass for at least an hour.
At length, Chat helped wash up the goblets and said, “So I’m told that withies can be made that actually allow this pillock here to be mistook for a real glisker.”
Before Mieka could do more than pull a face at him, Blye laughed. “I can’t wait to find out what they’d be like in the hands of somebody who knows how to use them.”
Aim, draw, and clap i’ the clout o’ the target, Mieka told himself, perfectly happy to be maligned to his face if it got him what he wanted, and left them to it. He’d scented delicious things cooking in the Silversun kitchen on his way past earlier, and intended to whine his way into an ample share of them.
Cade and Dery had escorted their mother to the horse races on the grounds of the Palace, and wouldn’t be back until nightfall. Thus the two footmen and the maid were taking their ease in the kitchen while Mistress Mirdley worked her own magic on sausage pies and a salad that took superb advantage of the farm carts that glutted the city with ripe fruit. It was with the greatest reluctance that Mieka declined a third helping of everything and went to see how Blye and Chattim were getting along.