Any tradetown might take pride in the splendor of its mayoral manse. In a town of glassworkers, the appreciation, though no less heartfelt, was a bit more specific. To wit, the large household’s window glass was renowned the town over. Its size, evenness and clarity, though all remarkable, were by no means its sole virtue. No, for all of that lovely glass had then been subject to the slow masteretching of a Windscriber, rendering each pane a unique starbust masterpiece. The artisan-folk venerated the window glass as a sign of affluence and pre-eminence, yielding up near-spiritual appreciation of mastercraft put to practical use.

Consequently, when sprays of pebble started ricocheting off of Emlie’s window, she knew immediately who the perpetrator must be. Beidon! Her ‘prentice smith idolized another material entirely - one that, though a vital prerequisite to the glassblowing trade, partook not at all of its mindset or of its reverences. Or, more sourly, I bet he’d treat it more gingerly if it were made of steel! Sighing, she hopped from the bed in whose far corner she’d been huddled pouting and threw open her sash before the husky lad could threaten its pane with further injury.

Upon seeing it rise the smith’s boy below gave a hoot of triumph and sprang up the rose tree at the center of the darkened yard, coursing upwards nearly as swiftly as his pebbles had. He came level with the window and stared across at it, into it. He was, as it happened, terrified of heights, but it never even occurred to him to look down. Emlie, watching that utterly determined look take hold on his face, was flattered and impressed by his obvious devotion. Then, noting the object of his focus, she guessed his intent and was terrified for him. Then, drawing a mental line from Beidon… through the window… and straight into her solar plexus… she was suddenly terrified for herself!

“Beid, NO-“

Beidon leapt. Groaning in frustration, Emlie threw herself to one side. The boy’s bull-charge lunge carried him whooshing across the gulf between tree and house and straight through the window, carrying the curtains before him and ripping the rod from the wall. His onrush was finally halted with an almighty CRASH by the face of Emlie’s High Lathsaw dresser. The stout hardwood face visibly quivered with the impact, and a carven zebra head went flying off the dresser’s scrollwork and cracked Emlie on the knee. Beidon wound up on his back, red-faced, staring up into Emlie’s saucer-round eyes.

“Ow.” He complained. He flushed with effort just passed and embarrassment just beginning.

“Oaf!” returned Emlie, but she was grinning and giggling and reaching down to offer him a hand up even as she said it. She grabbed his arm, pulled, and teetered forward -- the smith’s boy was as solid as the dresser he’d impacted, and it as at least as likely that he’d inadvertently pull her down atop him as that she’d haul him to his feet. Grimacing theatrically, she offset his weight by digging both heels into his flank, locking her knees, and throwing back her rump. Giggling, she HEAVED, while Beidon smirked and tugged back, and—

“GIRL, WHAT LUNACY NOW?”

Both youths froze mid-struggle, balanced precariously. The stentorian voice from below wasn’t Grywald’s… upon coming home the Lord Mayor had retreated wordlessly to his study where, listening against the closed door, Emlie had heard the telltale clink of glassware as her honorable father drowned his woes in Stilltown spirits. No, the source of the floorboard-rattling growl was his Bailiff, Gordun, a taciturn slab of a man from whom Emlie could expect no indulgence and Beidon no kind treatment. A hulking, craggy Pothandler, Gordun was something of an inheritance: he had attached himself to Emlie’s father soon after Grywald had been invested, and rumors persisted about how the previous Lord Mayor had procured the brute via connections with the darkest corners of the Pan-Baronies’ underworld… rumors mooted both outside and inside the Hubbleton household.

Both Emlie and Beidon turned to stare at her open doorway. A large shadow had appeared in the splash of lamplight shining up the stairwell from the ground floor. Though the two were decidedly in a compromising position, the consequences of letting go were severe; Emlie was forced to remain braced against Beidon’s not-inconsiderable weight. She tried her best to keep the quavering strain out of her studiedly casual tone as she called out, “Oh, no lunacy at all Gordun, none! How silly! I was simply, umm, rearranging my dresser!”

“It sounds ‘sif you was rearrangin’ stone blocks up there, girl. Might be I could assist…” The offerer did not sound legitimately helpful. His shadow began to ascend the staircase wall; the two could hear his clomping tread on the risers. Beneath his flush, Beidon’s face blanched. Emlie’s eyes actually grew yet wider.

“NO! …Umm, that is, Gordun, I’ve got it quite under control, thank you! No assistance required!” The shadow paused in its ascent.

Beidon took the opportunity to attempt to sit up fully, but unfortunately in the process destabilized Emlie. Losing her grip on Beidon’s hand, she teetered and crashed down rump-first onto the windowsill whilst cracking her head against the pane. Her heels flew up in front of her as she sat down hard, one clocking the now-sitting Beidon square in the face and knocking his head back against the dresser. “Whuuf,” she groaned, woozy. Beidon kept silence, but rubbed ruefully at a newly split lip. Both snapped back to terrified attention as the tread on the stairs renewed.

“I dunno what mischief you’re about, but his’oner is fed up withal! Best your room be ‘maculate now, or I’ll have you down to’im ear-first.” The hulking shadow crept over the top of the flight and spilled out over the landing… Gordun would be upon them in seconds.

“No, really Gordun, it’s QUITE alright.,” lurching off the windowsill and YANKING Beidon abruptly to his feet, twice-her-weight be damned, “t-that is, I’ve got everything in hand and-” bustling the mutely protesting young man before her across the room, SHOVING him forward, a glance revealing the shiny top of Gordun’s huge bald head cresting the edge of the stairwell, “-it’s all going swimmingly and momentarily to be put to rights and-“ TEARING open the door of her armoire (another High Lathsaw original) and KICKING Beidon through the door and SLAMMING it shut just as Gordun’s boulder of a head swung to regard the action, “-all finished now! See?”

From his near floor-level vantage on the stairs, Gordun stared darkly at the panting girl. He quirked an (incongruously, everything else about him was thick) pencil-thin eyebrow at her. Then his gaze traveled fractionally down, to alight on an object on the hallway floor before him. He reached out a beefy arm and picked it up. He brought it in close, crossing his eyes to stare at it – the zebra’s head. It had ricocheted and rolled out to the stair head! He stared hard at the wooden fragment before shifting his stare to the vandalized dresser. Finally, he glowered again at the exertion-flushed girl – and at the armoire whose handle she was still holding. He paused. She held her breath.

Then, “Rearrange more quietly, you.” He turned back down the staircase, tossing the carving over his shoulder as he went. It bounced across the floor of Emlie’s room and rolled to a halt at her feet.

He’d left just in time. Surely she was on the very verge of exploding in barely-withheld panic… or was that actually the held breath she’d forgotten to release? Either way, she exhaled extravagantly and slumped limply against the armoire door… and a moment later remembered that she’d crammed her smith’s boy into the clothes-stuffed chamber behind it!

Hauling open the doors, she gasped. Had Beidon, somehow, disappeared? Then, somewhere in the wall of clothes before her, an upside-down pair of knickers sprouted a wide pair of eyes and stared around in panic before spotting her. Immediately thereafter, the pile of clothes that the undergarment topped off gave a massive top-down shake like a dog shedding water, garments cascading off in all directions to reveal Beidon underneath. For an instant hunched and heaving, visibly panicked, he straightened up and ran his hands over the armoire’s edges and hinges, unconsiciously attempting to reassure himself of his surroundings. He began to relax, and to look more normal, apparently unaware of the undergarment still shrouding the top half of his head.

“What was all that about? You were only in there for a minute!”

Beidon looked sheepish. He responded with as much dignity as he could muster, “I don’t think I like dark, shut-up spaces. Especially when they reek of lilac.”

“That fragrance is my Aromanton sweetwater, you clod! Are you saying that I reek??”

“No, I-“

“Because if you are, then you can just remove my knickers from your head and dive back out the way you came in! In fact, take them off anyway!”

Beidon’s mouth dropped open. His eyes rolled up and crossed in an effort to spot the indicated underthing. Those portions of his face visible under his makeshift hood turned beet-red. His hands shot up to remove the garment and then, as their owner realized just what he’d been about to touch, jerked back from his head and hung quivering in paroxysms of indecisiveness somewhere in the general vicinity of his hidden ears. He looked like he might faint.

That potential conclusion to the whole impromptu show amused Emlie mightilty, for all that she realized that the noise involved might well bring her father’s thug back down on them again. “Oh, in the name of all the Sixteen Baronies-” she swore as she swiped the fit-causing cloth off of her beau’s head.

Beidon immediately let out the breath he’d been holding, appearing almost to deflate. His relief was palpable, and Emlie, gazing at her guileless smith’s boy, felt deepest fondness for him as she considered the utter ridiculousness of his predicament just past. Then she glanced down at the intimates clutched in her hand and, as an extention of that very same feeling, succumbed to a sudden and irresistible impulse to the perverse. She brought the knickers up to her nose and, in full view of Beidon, inhaled lustily.

“Heavens, you’re right – lilac-y!”

The THUMP as Beidon fainted against the back wall of the armoire filled Emlie simultaneously with surprise, concern and smug satisfaction.

One bracing vase-full of water to Beidon’s face later, the two settled onto Emlie’s bed to converse: “....it’s a darn good think the Lath-wrights build in tempered hardwoods, Beid. As it is, it looked like that door and your skull were playing a competition game of devil-blinks-first, loser imitates a Sunday morning eggshell!”

Beidon rubbed his head ruefully. “Master Brimmel says my noggin must be cast of pig iron…” He nodded delicately at the dresser, trying manfully not to wince. “...guess I’ll have to stop resenting the implication!”

“So, Beid… you know you’ll always be my favorite caller-of-an-evening, but you’re usually content with a few sweet professions of adoration whispered from down on the lawn! To what do I owe the…” she glanced at the downed curtains… “…direct approach?”

Beidon threw a hooked thumb towards the armoire. “What, did I not already demonstrate my intentions? I’m here to pillage your underthings!”

“Beidon Forge-boy, how dare you…! Show proper respect for your betters!”

Sudden seriousness. “As you will, Mistress Emliana… “ …dissolving into cackling mockery. “Ooh, I do like the sound of that. Mistress…”

Emlie smacked him with a pillow.

“Mmmph. Why, I’m here ‘cos I figured you’d need me after what happened today, ‘f course. Figured it couldn’t wait ‘til morning. Silly question, Em…” He looked determined, and also vaguely annoyed that there could be any question as to his motivations.

She sighed poutily. “You heard about that, then?”

Beidon put on a paternal face. “Em, I think half the Glasslands heard about that directly, Clear Crucible and a deal of Little Retort besides.”

“THAT’S why you’re so infuriatingly smug tonight, is it?”

Beidon refused to be drawn in. “That’s how I knew that you’d need me.” He stared into Emlie’s eyes, determinedly earnest. Emlie responded by puffing up in a show of defiant ire... which lasted all of a two-breath before the facade shattered, the girl sagging miserably. Beidon, braced to receive another sassy salvo, actually had his hands out defensively and the first syllables of a loud protest uttered before he ceased, realizing in wonderment the word that a shockingly vulnerable Emlie had just whispered: “...yes.”

“No, I-- err, wos?”

“Yes, Beid. I guess I do need you. Poppa….” She took a deep breath. “…my father said awful things today.” She sobbed and dropped her head in shame.

Beidon awkwardly reached out to stroke her (lovely golden silky nodon’tthinkaboutthat) hair. If Emlie noticed the momentary trembling of his hand, she gave no outward sign. He took a deep breath, focused, and put on his best conciliatory tone.

“Em, I’m sure that Mayor Grywald-” Emlie’s head shot up, knocking Beidon’s hand aside, with murder-glint suddenly shining in her tear-filled eyes. Beidon hastily changed tone and amended, “-is of course an utter villainfordoingthattoyou, right?” Emlie smiled wanly and again hung her head, confident that they were back on the right footing. No longer transfixed by her bale-filled gaze, Beidon heaved a sigh of relief. So much for being diplomatic. He braced himself and tried again.

“Master Brimmel sometimes calls me awful things too, Em. ‘Pig-Iron-Head’ is the least of it. But I know he doesn’t really think the less of me for it.” (Beidon didn’t, exactly, but it seemed the right and reassuring thing to say.) “Whatever he said, he couldn’t have meant it.”

He winced in anticipation of her anger. Instead the reply came as a whisper. “He meant it, Beid. Sure as sand smelts, he meant it.”

“Yos, well, umm… look: it’ll blow over.” She again looked up, incredulous. “No, really. You’re soon away to Iytscrombe Priory for summer finishing, right?” He scowled as he said this, hating the very thought of it, yet determinedly presenting it as a comfort for Emlie despite. “A few weeks away for your lady-schooling will put the whole thing in perspective, for both of you. Why, once you’re away-“

“Away! Beid, that’s it!” Emlie sprang up with such sudden animation that she knocked Beidon back, forcing him to catch himself on his hands. “We’ll leave! Once father realizes that he’s driven me away, he’ll SURELY understand not just how thoroughly he’s wounded me, but also how frightfully wrong-headed this whole policy of ‘science, logic and other frightful BORES alone can show us the way’ is! When he sees how determined I am he’ll be FORCED to come around!” She noted Beidon’s smirk – “What??”

He smiled patronizingly. “Emlie, I don’t think I’d be much welcome at the Priory. ‘Wrong equipment for the workshop’ and all that!”

“No, lummox!” she cried, backhanding the side of his head. “We’re not going on some stupid Poppa-approved sojourn to some frusty old sister-cloister! We’re running away! Together! Tonight.”

Emlie stared, expectant. Beidon paused, flabbergasted. A silent beat.

Then he barked out laughter. “Right, Em. So…. what will we do? How will we live?”

Emlie bravely chose to take the question in all seriousness. She ‘d fantasized about this possibility often enough – she simply recast her imaginings as a proposal: “We could be wandering troubadours!”

The boy grinned gamely. “But Emlie, you don’t sing or play anything! Neither do I!”

“You….” She gestured at his right arm, envisioning the smith’s hammer it customarily held. “…you could drum!”

He smirked. “Couldn’t I just play tin whistle?” He simulated the instrument by whistling a keening off-key tone that Emlie feared would reach Gordun through the floorboards. She threw a pillow at Beidon’s face to shut him up, which had the unintended effect of sending him into a fit of cackling.

“Beid, I’m serious.”

Busy recovering from his laughing bout, Beidon failed to note the stricken look on Emlie’s face. “So am I, so am I! It’s just that, with you, one can never tell the difference between a flight of fancy and a fancy plan for flight! Or maybe they’re the same thing!” He chuckled, proud at what he considered rare wit on his part. Sobering, he tried for reasonability: “Em, we’re not eight, we’re nearly sixteen! We’re too old to play at running away.”

Emlie’s tone was cold. “I am not PLAYING, Beidon… I am purposing to LEAVE Clear Crucible FOREVER, and I am offering to allow YOU to come with me. Now what could you possibly find risible in that?? What leg could you possibly stand on in arguing against?”

“Only our WHOLE LIVES, Em, and the fact that they happen to be ALL ABOUT this town, the one right here. We can’t just skibble off and leave it!” He appealed in his most stubborn, commonsense tones, “Look… I am THIS close to attaining full Apprenticeship! I’ll have the Freedom of the Forge, leave to craft anything, someday I’ll have the Mastership! I’ll have stature, name, maybe even a seat on the town council one day! We’ll be well set!” Because I’ll be worthy of you then. “And you? Your obligations beggar mine… your responsibility is your birthright! You’re the slagging Lord Mayor’s daughter!”

If Beidon had known of the secret glass ball now lying unattended in Emlie’s discarded pouch, had he taken it for a soothsayer’s globe and gazed into its depths scrying determinedly for The Absolute Worst Thing To Say At This Time, he could scarcely have hoped to find better. His sweetheart suddenly REARED up, seemingly towering over the smith’s boy for all his objectively larger size. He foundered in her shadow, knew he’d stepped in mule mud, and gulped audibly.

“If you’re so impressed with my father, Beidon Smith, then you’re welcome TO him. Believe you me, he has only the strongest of feeling towards you! Aye, two flint-hearted goods-grubbers like you, you’re pease in a pod! You DESERVE each other!” She glared acidly. “Just mind your tongue and hands!”

The smile sickened, shivered and died on Beidon’s face. He suddenly harbored the odd impression that the room had begun to tilt. “Em, you know I’d never-”

“-Yes, apparently you’d never! ‘Never’ anything… and what do I ‘know’? I know nothing, Beidon. That IS what you were just trying to tell me, is it not?”

Beidon raised his hands in denial, placation, supplication… “Come on Em, I-”

“-and I did just hear a refusal, did I not? Of me, and of my ‘fanciful, flighty dream of skibbling’, yes?”

Beidon felt a pang compounded of panic and heartsickness and incomprehension. This was snowballing beyond anything he had intended or could understand. “Em, please. I –”

But Emlie was a creature of impulse…. not to mention the daughter of a Lord, however comically he might often present as and however she might feel towards him tonight. She had just this morning extolled and embraced this boy, in the face of sternest disapproval, and now that same boy was belittling her efforts and appealing to the ‘mature reason’ of the very father she’d defended him to! And he’d call me a fool? For all her sweetness and all of her blithe stargazing, Emlie brooked no setbacks and suffered no fools gladly. If her supposed sweetheart didn’t see her need, couldn’t appreciate her pain, wouldn’t endorse and expedite her plan… if he longs not for magick as I do…then how could his possibly be the sweet heart for hers?

He couldn’t be.

“Get out, Beidon.”

“Em-”

“Out. Now. They way you came.” She glanced through the doorway, towards the stairwell and first floor beyond, “Or must I summon Gordun to remove you from my nighten bedroom, smith-boy? One more word out of you and that’s just what I’ll do.”

Beidon stared at his beloved, utterly stricken. He glanced at the doorway, then back at Emlie, following the unyielding line of her outstretched arm (white, lovely, quivering with anger) and pointing finger to the window and the darkness beyond. A bleat quavered down deep in his throat, small, low and stifled. He reached for the window-frame, his every move an agony….

Moments later, Gordun came clomping towards the second floor to investigate the renewed thumps and scrapings heard through the floor. Above, Emlie heard his heavy tread on the stair and shouted without turning away from the wall.

“Go away, Gordun.”

“Girl, this is gone far and enuff. You-”

“The dressers again. Rearranging. Clothing. Goodbye.”

“Master Grywald will want to know wha’choo-”

“But Gordun, I’m NAKED!”

Gordun halted as if struck. No, not even – blows never phased Gordun, the great bruiser laughed them off. Nor was he at all squeamish… at least when it came to violence. But… Did hulking hired muscle, typically sanguine by nature, blush more furiously than other samples of mankind? The top of this one’s head surely reddened prodigiously. Although judging by the way it then proceeded to wither down out of sight in response to Emlie’s insinuation, an obvserver might reasonably call said bruiser status into question. “You… I….” he groaned.

“Go AWAY, before my father hears of what a vile peeping fiend you are.”

Emlie’s father’s manservant quivered in place on the stairs. His head spun with thwarted purpose and utterly contrary indications. Finally he groaned, pivoted and stumbled down the stairs, poleaxed. And Emlie, tear-streaked face pressed to the wall in the darkness of her bedroom, smiled at that one smallest of victories.

Next Chapter: 4. A Morning of Breakthroughs