face. “How dare you address me like that? Get out!”
Little Bear didn’t like the thing that zipped so dangerously around the workshop, but even less did he like the glassblower. He thrust himself between Tris and the man, hackles up, lips peeled away from his teeth, a low growl rumbling through his large chest.
“Now look,” Tris said with a sigh. “You upset my dog.”
The glassblower backed away. “I am a journeyman of the Glassmakers’ Guild,” he said, forcing the words past clumsy lips. “I have no magic. I am no liar. I want you and your dog gone. And that thing you made, too!”
“I made?” Tris demanded, aghast. “As if I didn’t see the power flow from you into the glass! Look, Master Jumped-Up Journeyman, that dragon is your creation—”
The glassblower yelled and grabbed a long pair of metal tongs. The dragon had landed on a worktable and was trying to climb into a jar on top of it. “Get out of there!” he cried, smacking the tongs on the table a centimetre from the dragon’s tail. “Colouring — agents cost — money!” His sluggish speech was in sharp contrast to his quick strike at the dragon.
The glass creature leaped clear before the glassblower could shatter it with a second blow. It flew to a shelf on the wall, its front half covered with powder. Clinging to the shelf, it spat blue fire at its attacker. Once clear of its muzzle, the flames solidified and fell to shatter on the floor.
“Don’t you dare hit that creature!” cried Tris. “It’s alive — you might break it!”
“I’ll smash it to bits,” the man growled. He poked the dragon with his tongs as it scrabbled a new jar with its claws. For a moment it teetered, then righted itself. The man advanced on it, tongs raised in his hand.
“It’s a living thing,” Tris called. “You may have made it, but that doesn’t give you the right to break it.” She yanked one of her thin braids free of its tie and combed it out with her fingers. Sparks formed in the crimped red locks, sticking to her palms.
The glassblower ignored her. The dragon glided to another shelf, one that supported an uncorked jar. Curious, it stuck its head inside. “That’s it,” the man said grimly. “You’re dead.” With tongs raised high, he went after it like a man in urgent pursuit of a mouse.
“I’m warning you,” Tris said clearly. She had to tell people when she was about to use particular magics: in her hands magic was a deadly weapon and had to be treated as such. “You can’t kill that.”
“Watch me.” The man struck at the dragon, missing by a centimetre. When he raised his weapon again, a hair-thin lightning-bolt slammed into the tongs. The man shrieked and dropped them, nursing a hand and arm that twitched in the aftermath of a moderate shock. He whirled to stare at Tris, white showing all the way around his irises.
She waited, her loosened braid hanging beside her face, sparks glinting along its strands. In her open right hand a circle of lightning played, leaping from finger to finger. “Try to break that poor creature again and what you just got will seem like a love-tap,” she said, crimson with fury. “You can’t kill it — didn’t your teachers make you learn anything? Once you make a working that lives, you have to treat it like you would a human child. You’re not allowed to destroy a living creation.”
The dragon knew a champion when it saw one. Voicing a cry like the sound of a knife striking a glass, it flew to Tris and perched on her shoulder, wrapping itself around her neck.
“Yes, that’s fine,” she reassured it, stroking the creature where it crossed her neck. “Calm down.” She kept her eyes on the glassblower, who now huddled in the corner furthest from her, clutching the hand she’d shocked. His face was ash-grey; his hair stood on end. “Who’s your teacher?” Tris demanded.
“I don’t have one,” he replied, his speech agonizingly slow.
“Nonsense. You may as well tell me. I’ll find out,” she said. “I’ll have your master’s name before the week’s done.”
The man shook his head.
“And if your teacher said you were fit to practise magic and turned you loose on the world, I’m reporting you both to the Mages’ Guild,” Tris snapped. Was something wrong with him? she wondered, puzzled. Was he slow of mind? He spoke as if he were, though his eyes