He locks it.
Slowly, I stand, holding the glass out like an offering, like a trade, like I’ll give him his glass back and he’ll unlock the door and let me go without hurting me. He takes it from my hand, and I wish then that I’d kept it, broken it to use as a weapon.
He looks into the glass. “Who did you see when the ghuls came?”
The question is so unexpected that I’m startled into the truth. “I saw my brother.”
The smith scrutinizes my face, his brow furrowed as if he’s considering something, making a decision. “You’re his sister then,” he says. “Laia. Darin spoke of you often.”
“He—he spoke—” Why would Darin speak to this man about me? Why would he speak to this man at all?
“Strangest thing.” Teluman leans back against the counter. “The Empire tried forcing apprentices on me for years, but I didn’t find one until I caught Darin spying on me from up there.” The shutters on the high bank of windows are open, revealing the crate-littered balcony of the building next door.
“Dragged him down. Thought I’d haul him to the auxes. Then I saw his sketchbook.” He shakes his head, not needing to explain. Darin put so much life into his drawings that it seemed if you just reached out, you could pull them from the page.
“He wasn’t just drawing the inside of my forge. He was designing the weapons themselves. Such things I’d only seen in dreams. I offered him the apprentice spot there and then, thinking he’d run, that I’d never see him again.”
“But he didn’t run,” I whisper. He wouldn’t run—not Darin.
“No. He came into the forge, looked around. Cautious, yes. Not afraid.
I never saw your brother afraid. He felt fear—I’m sure he did. But he never seemed to focus on what could turn out wrong. He only ever thought about how things could turn out right.”
“The Empire thought he was Resistance,” I say. “All this time, he was working for the Martials? If that’s true, why is he still in jail? Why haven’t you gotten him out?”
“Do you think the Empire would allow a Scholar to learn their secrets?
He wasn’t working for the Empire. He was working for me. And I parted ways with the Empire a long time ago. I do enough for them to keep them off my back. Armor, mostly. Until Darin came, I hadn’t made a true Teluman scim for seven years.”
“But...his sketchbook had pictures of swords—”
“That damn sketchbook.” Spiro snorts. “I told him to keep it here, but he wouldn’t listen. Now the Empire has it, and there’s no getting it back.”
“He wrote down formulas in it,” I say. “Instructions. Things—things he shouldn’t have known—”
“He was my apprentice. I taught him to make weapons. Fine weapons. Teluman weapons. But not for the Empire.”
I swallow nervously as the implications of his words sink in. No matter how clever Scholar uprisings have been, in the end it comes down to steel against steel, and in that battle, the Martials always win.
“You wanted him to make weapons for the Scholars?” That would be treason. When Spiro nods, I can’t believe him. This is a trick, like with Veturius this morning. It’s something Teluman’s planned with the Commandant to test my loyalty.
“If you’d really been working with my brother, someone would have seen. Other people must work here. Slaves, assistants—”