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does not even pack the power of a decent crossbow and is slower still. But this?”
    The mayor was nodding. “You’re right. This is worth our effort. Those silly weapons are nothing to this.”
    Scacz took another sip of his wine, running his hand over the balanthast. A slow caress. “The potential here… is astonishing.” He looked up at me, inquiring. “I think I would like to test it for a little while. See what it does.”
    “Majister?”
    Scacz patted me on the back. “Don’t worry. We’ll be very careful with it. But I must examine it a while. Ensure that it truly uses no magic that will come back to haunt us.” He looked at me significantly. “Too many solutions to bramble have simply sought to use magic in some glancing way. To build a fire, for example, and then when the bramble is burned, it turns out that so much magic was used in the making of the fire that the bramble returns twice as strong.”
    “But the balanthast doesn’t use magic,” I protested.
    Scacz looked at me. “You are a majister to know this, then? In some cases, a man will think he is not using magical principles, because he is ignorant. You yourself acknowledge that something unique is afoot with this device.” He picked up the balanthast. “It’s just for a little while, alchemist. Just to be sure.”
    The Mayor was watching me closely. “Don’t worry, alchemist. We will not slight your due reward. But for us, the stakes are very high. If we invest our office in something which brings the doom of Takaz instead of the salvation of Mara… I’m sure you understand.”
    I wracked my mind, trying to find a reason to deny them, but my voice failed me, and at that moment, Jiala started to cough again. I glanced over at her, worried. It had the deep sound of cutting knives.
    Scacz began to gather up the device. “Go on,” he said. “See to your daughter’s health. She is obviously tired. We will send for you quite soon.”
    Jiala’s coughing worsened. The two most powerful men in the city looked down at her. “Poor thing,” the Mayor murmured. “She seems to have the wasting cough.”
    I rushed to contradict. “No. It’s something else. The cold is all. It starts the cough and makes it difficult to stop.”
    Scacz pried the balanthast away from me. “Go then. Take your daughter home and warm her. We will send for you, soon.”

    All the way home, Jiala coughed. Deep wracking seizures that folded her small body in half. By the time we arrived at our doorstep, her coughing was incessant. Pila took one look at Jiala and glared at me with astonished anger.
    “The poor girl’s exhausted. What took you so long?”
    I shook my head. “They liked the device. And then they wanted to talk. And then to toast. And then to talk some more.”
    “And you couldn’t bring the poor girl back?”
    “What was I supposed to do?” I asked. “‘Thank you so much, Mayor and Majister, I must leave, and no, the lost wines of Jhandpara are of no interest to me. Name a price and I will sell you the plans for my balanthast, good day?’”
    Jiala’s coughing worsened. Pila shot me a dark look and ushered her down the hall. “Come into the workshop, child. I’ve already lit the fire.”
    I watched the two of them go, feeling helpless and frustrated. What should have been a triumph had become something else. I didn’t like the way Scacz behaved at the end. Everything he said had been perfectly reasonable, and yet his manner somehow disturbed me. And the way the Mayor spoke. All his words were correct. More than correct. And yet they filled me with unease.
    I made my way up the stairs to my rooms, empty now except for piles of blankets and a chest of my clothes.
    Was I turning paranoid? Into some sort of madman who looked beneath everyone’s meaning to some darker intention? I had known a woman, once, when I was younger, who had gone mad like that. A glassblower who made wondrous jewel pendants that glittered with their own inner fire,