For a moment Tris thought all was well. Then she realized that despite the glassblower’s twirling of the pipe and the steady stream of air he forced into it, the orange blob wriggled, bulged, then sank like a burlap sack with a cat inside. She had never seen glass do that before. Magic flooded into the man, sliding under his leather apron, squirming into short blond hair cropped close to his blocky head, tugging at his sleeves, then merging where his lips met the pipe. Down its length the magic streamed, disappearing into the molten glass.
The man thrust the glass back into the open furnace, waited a moment, then brought the pipe back to his lips. He cupped the base of the glass with his mould and blew into the pipe. The material at its end bulged, twisted, and thrust about even harder, plainly fighting him. It grew longer and snake-like, with big lumps on top and underneath. Magic gleamed, as if the glass were shot through with silver threads as it stretched away from the pipe. As it pulled free, its connection to the blowpipe stretched thinner and thinner. Only a thread connected it to the pipe.
Tris shook her head. The man had obviously lost control of his magical working. “You’d better let it go,” she informed him. “And what possessed you, that you didn’t draw a protective circle?”
The man jerked and yanked the pipe from his lips. The glass wriggled, spiralled, and broke free, tumbling in the air as it flew madly around the room. Little Bear yelped and fled into the yard.
“Why didn’t you undo it?” Tris demanded. She ducked as writhing glass zoomed over her head.
“Didn’t they teach you, the more power you throw into magic gone awry, the more it will fight your control? Forget reusing the glass. It’s so full of magic now you’ll have real trouble if you try to make it into anything else.”
The glass thing — she couldn’t tell what it was — landed on the man’s skull. Smoke and the stench of burning hair rolled away from its feet. The man swore and slapped at it. Terrified, his creation fled. As it flew, its features became sharper, more identifiable. The big lumps became very large, bat-like wings. Smaller lumps stretched out to become powerful hind legs and short forelegs. Lesser points shaped themselves as ears; an upright ribbed fin rose on its neck; another point fixed the end of the glass as a tail. When the thing lit on a worktable, Tris saw the form it had fought to gain. It was a glass dragon, silver-veined with magic, clear through and through. It was thirty centimetres long from nose to rump, with fifteen more centimetres of tail.
The man had dumped a pail of water on his head as soon as the dragon left him. Now he flung his blowpipe across the room, shattering three vases.
“Tantrums don’t do the least bit of good,” Tris informed him, hands on hips. “Old as you are, surely you know that much.” She noted distantly that there was a circle of dead white hair atop the man’s head, almost invisible against the bright, closely cropped blond hair that surrounded it.
He wheezed, coughed, gasped, and glared at her with very blue eyes. “Who in Eilig’s name are you? And what did you do to me?” He spoke slowly and carefully, which didn’t match his scarlet face and trembling hands.
Tris scowled. “You did it yourself, dolt. You threw good magic after bad, including power you drained from all around this neighbourhood because you didn’t protect the workshop. Now look. You’ll have to feed it and care for it, you know: And what it eats is beyond me. Living metal feeds on metal ores in the ground, but living glass?” She tugged one of the thin braids that framed her face, picking the problem apart. “Sand, I’d suspect. And natron, and seashells, since that’s what you make glass with in the first place. And antimony and magnesium to make it clear.”
“Will you be quiet?,” the man cried, his voice still slow. “I have — no magic! Just — a seed, barely enough to, to make the glass easier.”
Tris glared at him. “I may only be fourteen, but I’m not stupid, and you’re a terrible liar.”
The glassblower doubled his big hands into fists. “I — am — not — a — liar!” he cried, his slow words a sharp contrast to his enraged