Ezra set his elbows onto the table as he sipped from his cup, barely touching the food on his plate. He was quiet as usual, giving one-word answers to Henrik’s inquiries, and the set of his brow made him look indignant. But this morning, his gaze drifted to me more than usual.
Henrik went over the day’s agenda, checking things from his book as he went from Casimir to Murrow to Ezra. Not a word was spoken about the night before and I was glad. It had been humiliating enough to stand there in the study with blood on my frock, and Henrik had made it clear that it was the least of his concerns.
When they were finished, they dismissed themselves one by one, setting out to the day’s tasks, and finally Henrik turned to me. “You’re with me today, Bryn.”
I folded my napkin without question and followed him out of the breakfast room, happy to be released from my unfinished food. The hot tea hurt my lip and chewing woke the furious ache in my jaw. I’d lost my appetite anyway.
I followed him past the kitchens to the black door at the end of the hallway that I had yet to see open. He pulled a key from inside his vest pocket and fit it into the lock, turning it with a click. The damp scent of wet stone came from inside and my eyes trailed over the long rectangular room. Three worktables were set into even rows before a forge that glowed in one corner and a furnace in the other. Dim blue light cast down from the grimy glass ceiling, the corner of the slanted panes darkened with moss and soot. A few of the panes were propped open to let the heat of the forge and furnace escape.
At the end of the table to the right, Ezra was slipping an apron over his head and tying it around his waist.
So, this was where he disappeared to during the day.
Henrik took another apron from a hook on the wall and put it on unceremoniously as I studied the details of the room. It was a workshop. There was only one other door that looked as if it led outside and the wall beside the forge was covered in hammers of all shapes and sizes, hung by their heads on rusted nails. They were one of the only things in the room that shined brightly, the iron polished and gleaming. Beneath them, a long shelf was filled with other tools—picks and files and hand saws.
“We all have a job, Bryn,” Henrik began, weaving through the tables to the opposite corner.
I followed, watching Ezra from the corner of my eye. He kept his back to us as he stoked the coals in the forge, giving no indication that he’d even heard us come in.
“You’ll earn your keep, like everyone else.” Henrik pulled up a stool in front of a set of scales and motioned for me to sit.
The table was filled with gems. Obsidian, sapphires, tiger’s-eyes, and emeralds glittered in small wooden trays. Another pile that looked like raw-cut rubies was sitting in one end of the scales.
I picked up one of the tiger’s-eyes. It was tumbled smooth, revealing the black veins within the stone.
“Every day, after breakfast, you’ll check the weights and mark them down,” Henrik continued, dropping a small book beside me. He opened it to the last recorded page, showing me where the date and labels should go.
“They’re all fakes?” I asked.
“Not all of them. We use the real ones to create uniformity and to pass inspections. Some will be used in commissioned pieces, others will be sold to merchants. But all will fetch coin.”
“How do you tell the difference?”
Henrik smirked. “You can’t. That’s the point. The only eyes that can spot these fakes are those of a gem sage. Luckily for us, there are few out there anymore.” He took the tiger’s-eye from my fingers, setting it down. “I trust Sariah taught you your gems?”
I nodded. She’d painstakingly taught me from the time I was little. I could tell you their names, the ways they were cleaned and cut, and I could identify the impurities and patterns of every single one. I wondered now if that had been part of her deal with Henrik, too.
“Good.”
He set himself up beside me, taking me step-by-step through the process with a surprising amount of patience when I asked questions, or requested he show me something a second time. There was an ease to Henrik within the walls of the workshop that I hadn’t seen before. He worked with steady, thoughtful movements, talking me through every aspect with care. It was evident that the work was important to him. He hadn’t shown even half of that concern to me the night before, and that told me more about him than I’d been able to put together in the few days I’d spent in Bastian.
“Three times,” he said. “Always three.” His finger tapped the page, where each weight had been written in triplicate down the columns. “If a single stone goes missing, I will know. And if the weights are off, I will know that, too.” His brows lifted, waiting for me to acknowledge what he’d said.
When I did, he got up, going to the opposite side of the table, where he had long, flat trays of glass sorted by color. Muted blues, dusty greens, and pale ambers were broken into pieces of every size and shape.
He set his focus on the glass and I watched him as I placed the tiger’s-eye onto the scale. There was a delicate balance between Henrik’s warmth and the brittle cold in him. They shifted so fast that I couldn’t tell the difference between the two until I felt the pointed edge of his displeasure. He was like a knife that appeared deceivingly dull but was sharp enough to cut through bone.
I set another stone into the tray, getting to work. I didn’t want to find myself beneath that blade.
NINE
By the time I finished the weights, Henrik had another tray waiting for me. They were a couple dozen red beryl fakes that were cut into various sizes and more than convincing.
I understood the basic process after watching him for only a couple of hours. He carefully chose the glass remnants from his extensive collection, mixing the colors with precision to recast the shattered pieces. They went into the furnace, where they were reheated, and when they first came out, they appeared to be no more than large, glowing droplets of liquid. But once they began to cool, he meticulously formed them and worked at their shapes with fine-edged tools to create convincing rough cuts. It looked as if they were straight from a gem merchant’s turnover.
It was incredible, really, a series of very specific steps that produced very specific results. It was the kind of process that took generations to perfect and I guessed that he’d spent his childhood in this very workshop at my grandfather Felix’s side, learning it.
What I couldn’t figure out was how he managed to get the weights right. Each fake looked like it was made with the same few ingredients, but the weights were all different. Each tray he handed me was right where it should be for whichever stone the glass was impersonating. It was a mind-boggling feat, and one I hadn’t been able to decode in my quick glances between recording the numbers.
I picked up one of the red beryls and held it up to the light coming from the furnace, turning it slightly. There was no apparent distinction between the glass and the real thing and some poor bastard in Ceros would pay a purse full of coppers for it.
I set it into the tray, my eyes drifting to Henrik, who was taking a large jar from the shelf. It was filled with what looked like a black powder. I squinted, watching him remove the lid until my eyes refocused on what lay beyond the table. Across the room, Ezra was polishing the head of a pointed hammer with a clean rag. But his gaze was on me.