12
THREE weeks after the disastrous attempt to assassinate Boaz, he came to visit.
I was in the main work area that morning, sitting with my father as he selected sifted metal powders for a mixing he would do in the afternoon.
Everyone, in fact, was in the workshop, no-one at Threshold, no-one out collecting supplies or helping in another workshop.
Boaz must have known this. How? There was no obvious guard or watch kept. How?
I was chatting to my father. He looked tired and drawn – all of us were, but Druse more than others – and I regretted that most of the time I’d spent with Yaqob had been stolen from time I would otherwise have spent with Druse. He was my father, and he loved me and had raised me. I did not want him to think I avoided him because I blamed him.
But Druse smiled, and said that he liked and respected Yaqob, and that he did not mind.
That day I loved my father very much.
There was a darkening in the doorway and, mildly curious, I looked up.
Boaz.
He looked no different from any other Magus, but there was something so infinitely dangerous, so cruel about him that I’m sure he would have intimidated a collection of Magi, let alone us.
Everyone stilled.
Some guards followed him, but Boaz waved them back into the street, and stepped down onto the workshop floor alone.
“Yes?” Isphet asked.
I envied her that single word. I remembered she had greeted Ta’uz thus, too, the night he had delivered me to her door.
Now she was just as cool and calm as she had been that night, even though here she had far more secrets to hide, and many more lives to protect. She stood in the very centre of the workshop, her head slightly tilted back, her eyes challenging, questioning.
About us the glass chattered in an undertone, and the jars of metals hummed quietly in their racks.
I felt like screaming at them to shut up.
Boaz walked straight past Isphet, not acknowledging her presence. He walked to the furnaces, considered them a long moment, then strolled casually about the workshop. Every so often he would flick the hem of his blue robe to one side to avoid a patch of oil, or a drift of dust.
“It seems fortuitous that I arrived here when I did,” he said without preamble. “Threshold is of vital importance to Ashdod, to all its people, and yet when I arrived I found a site wallowing in inexactitude, its measurements imprecise, its practices unpredictable.”
He stopped by Yassar’s work table, trailing a finger through some of the containers of glass that had been ground down for enamels.
“Such pretty colours,” he remarked, then lifted his head and stared at Isphet.
“What do you want?” she asked, and now there was a brittleness to her that had not been there before.
“Respect, Isphet, is very important,” Boaz said mildly, and Isphet suddenly whimpered with pain and doubled over, clutching at her belly.
To one side Yaqob shifted indecisively.
“What can I do for you, Excellency?” Isphet ground out, and then relaxed, slowly straightening up. But her eyes were frightened, as were mine, and every other pair I could see save Boaz’s.
“I have come to restore order, predictability, preciseness.”
“Nothing here is predictable any more,” Yaqob said, and stepped into the light. “Since you have taken over as Master of the Site, all is chaos. Excellency.”
Boaz looked Yaqob up and down, measuring his potential for trouble. “You are but a glassworker, uneducated in the ways of the mind. I shall forgive your interruption.”
Oh Yaqob, I prayed, and screwed my eyes shut for a heartbeat, keep your temper!
“You do not know that in apparent randomness there is pattern and predictability,” Boaz continued. “That in chaos there is law rigidly applied. You cannot see it, thus for you it does not exist. Now,” he dismissed Yaqob and turned away, “I have heard certain rumours during my time here. Rumours I first laughed at, but which now have come to irritate me.”
He walked further around the shop, inspecting some of the racks of glass. “That is why I am here. I wish to lay these rumours, if rumours they be, to rest.”
He turned back to stare at us all, his eyes searching out each of ours, all bantering and lightness gone from his manner. I trembled as his gaze passed over me, hesitated, then passed on.
“Some say that there are those on this site who still practise the Elemental arts. I would call this silliness, except that, perhaps, it is true. I had thought that we had managed to educate the lower castes away from their Elemental foolishness generations ago. And yet…”
He moved closer to me. I tensed, but he casually perched on the edge of the table at which my father and I sat, his back to us.
“I remember,” he said very softly into the complete silence, “that glassworkers were ever more susceptible to the lure of the Elemental arts than others. I remember hearing that they lost themselves in the swirling colours of the molten glass, and opened themselves to the evil voices of spirits that should have been long dead and forgotten. I remember hearing how some glassworkers claimed they could hear glass speak, and spoke back to it. Silliness, of course.”
The glass continued to chat to and fro about us, and I was glad that Boaz could no longer see my face.
“But I will have none of this on my site!” His voice now cut into each and every one of us. “None! If I find anyone, anyone, practising Elemental magic, I will have them killed as they stand. Do you understand me?”
“We understand, Excellency!” we muttered, almost as one.
“See that you do,” Boaz said, then stood up. He walked across to the outer door and I dared let out my breath in relief.
“Oh,” Boaz said as he reached the door. He turned about. “Tirzah, stand up, if you please.”
My heart thudded so painfully I thought it would tear itself from my breast.
“Stand up!”
I stood.
“Tirzah. You will come to my quarters tonight. A guard will escort you from your tenement building. See that you wash first.”
And he turned to go.
“No,” I said.
I couldn’t believe I’d said that.
“Did you understand me?” His voice was very soft, his face completely expressionless as he faced me again.
“I do not want to –”
I screamed, wrapped in such pain that I could not believe I could live through it.
There was a noise to one side – later I would find out it was Zeldon wrapping his arms about Yaqob to prevent him attacking Boaz.
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes!” I sobbed. “Yes! I understand you!”
The pain vanished, and I slumped into my father’s arms.
I knew that night would be the worst of my life.