all other emotions and I clawed at his leg.
“Enough,” Sir said.
The pressure lifted and I gulped in lungfuls of air.
“What are the percentages?”
When I regained my composure enough to sit up, I said, “One hundred percent sand.”
“Magic this time, Tricky. Be creative.”
A half smile quirked before the amusement in his eyes died, replaced by an icy gleam.
I scooted away from him; hoping distance would lessen the magical attack. A black beetle, the size of a thumbprint crawled over my knuckles. I yanked my hand from the floor when I spotted a couple more beetles scurrying toward me.
A light tread ran down my pants. Four more of the bugs crisscrossed my legs. Pricks of movement climbed my back. In no time, beetles coated my body.
I yelped and swatted, but they clung with tenacious determination. They started to bite. Tearing holes in my clothes, they soon reached skin. A fiery pain burned with each bite. Blood welled and a beetle would drink, while his partner chewed hunks of my flesh. Two gnawed into my stomach, disappearing from my sight.
They were eating me alive. Horrified, I writhed on the floor trying to dislodge them, my motions frantic. I didn’t want to die.
One of the beetles ate through my cheek; I felt its hard body on my teeth before it clamped down on my tongue. The hot tang of blood filled my mouth.
“Do you want it to stop?” Sir’s voice asked.
Choking on beetles and blood, I tried to say yes, but a gurgle was all I could manage.
The attack stopped. No bugs. No pain besides my aching ribs and burning throat. My clothes were intact. I rubbed my hands over my skin just to make sure it wasn’t pockmarked with gaping wounds. My fingers slid over smooth skin.
Sir helped me to stand on trembling legs. “The percentages?”
I hesitated.
“If your sand mixture doesn’t match the sample Tal brought from the Stormdancers, Tricky’ll make sure you do better with your second try.”
The threat pulsed in my heart with a familiar ache. The controlling fear. To do as instructed because the alternative was unbearable.
“Tricky—”
“No. Give me a minute. I can’t think.” Was keeping silent about the Stormdance recipe worth the anguish? The beetle attack replayed in my mind as a shudder of revulsion ripped through my body. I wasn’t strong enough before; what made me believe I could endure this time?
I pushed the horror of the beetles from my mind. I needed to concentrate, to become a glassmaker.
Wrong numbers would cause my sand to look different. Even though they had a sample, they still needed me. A small portion wasn’t an accurate representation of the entire batch. During the Glass Wars, competing glassmakers tried to steal buckets of their rival’s sand to deduce the ingredients. It hadn’t worked. The coarser, heavier components tend to settle to the bottom of the pile.
Sir yanked on my arm, twisting my elbow. “We’re waiting.”
He released my wrist. I rubbed my left shoulder while I examined the contents of the barrels.
The lava flakes and red Bloodgood sand were easy to identify. I dipped my hand into one of the remaining barrels. White Krystal sand flowed through my fingers, powdery and light.
The second barrel contained sand from the Stormdancer’s beach. The coarse yellow and brown grains rasped when they poured from my palm. This, along with the Krystal sand made up eighty percent of the recipe. I would have to keep the red sand and lava flake numbers the same, but I could fudge the others.
In fact, the heavier granules would settle to the bottom of a stockpile over time, leaving the lighter particulates near the top. If Tal had been in a hurry when he stole the sample, he would have scooped from the top.
I pointed to the Krystal barrel. “Fifty percent.”
Ash filled one of his bigger bowls with the contents and handed it to Sir. He carried it over to another table.
“Thirty percent from this one.”
Ash used a smaller bowl this time.
“Fifteen percent for the red sand and five percent lava flakes.”
The glassmaker filled his two remaining bowls. Sir and Tal helped him carry them over to the mixing table. Using a scale, Ash weighed each bowl and adjusted the contents to meet a certain weight.
Again a sense of disorientation swept over me. The effect of seeing a scene from my childhood acted out by people who wanted to harm me. My father had taught me how to use the scale to calculate the right weight of sand for a certain mixture before I learned how to read.
Once satisfied with the weights, Ash dumped all the bowls into a drum mixer. Inside the drum were metal fins. He secured the hatch and spun the drum using a handle, mixing the ingredients with a quick efficiency.
After he emptied the contents into another container, Ash compared the mix with Tal’s sample. A new surge of terror swept over me. I willed myself to stay calm and suppressed the desire to swallow the hard knot in my throat.
“Looks the same,” Ash said.
The tight band around my neck eased. I drew in a quiet breath as the tension in the room dissipated.
“Can I go now?” I asked.
Sir snorted as if I had made a joke. “You’re our guest. We would be remiss in our duties if we didn’t feed you and let you rest. Besides we need to make certain the sand melts overnight and the orbs are made properly. And I’m sure Ash will appreciate your expert help tomorrow.”
With an arm around my shoulder, he guided me toward the kitchen. Crafty served me a meal of beef jerky and a glass of water before Sir escorted me to my room.
When the lock snapped shut, I almost laughed out loud. I promised myself this would never happen again. But here I was. Again.
I lied.
And the knowledge that I would give them the right percentages if my duplicity was discovered ate through my heart as efficiently as one of Tricky’s beetles.
Not only a liar, but a coward, as well.
I used my cloak as a blanket and managed to get a few hours of sleep before my door was unlocked. Bright morning sunlight spilled into the narrow room.
“Time to work,” Tricky said.
He followed me and kept watch as I helped Ash arrange the tools near his bench. The glassmaker had tied his hair back. The smoky color of his eyes matched his hair and could be the reason for his nickname. Powerful muscles sculpted his arms from a lifetime of working with molten glass.
“Empty the annealing oven,” Ash instructed. “The
