My mouth goes dry. I glance around the studio, searching for a way out, but there’s no graceful way to sidestep the conversation. Clamming up now will look suspicious and ungrateful, but I’m supposed to keep my head down and stay quiet, not shout out my past to the world. From the side, I watch as Baryl buries his face in his palm, shaking his curly head at my awkwardness.

I open my mouth, hoping I can stumble through a satisfactory story, but my words falter in my throat, cut off by my nervous indecision. Explanations die on my lips even as I form them. I stare at Lady Evershed, stricken silent like a lamb led to the slaughter.

My host crosses her arms. “Don’t spit it out all at once, Zebulun. Slow down before you choke on your own words.”

Her sarcasm cuts through my growing panic, instantly putting me at ease. She’s been exceptionally kind, which has me off balance, but sharp speech is more familiar territory. I crack a wan smile, and my heart stops sinking in my chest. I can do this. I can tell a safe version of my story. I owe her something; I'm just not sure how much to reveal.

“I don't think Zebulun is the sharing type,” Baryl says with an exaggerated wink, further breaking the tension.

“I’m not a [Bard] or a [Storyteller],” I mutter, hoping they’ll take my panicked silence for embarrassment and not an attempt to obfuscate the truth.

Lady Evershed waves over with a tray piled high with desserts in a graceful display of mana manipulation, and gestures for us to eat. Baryl squeals and snatches up a sweet roll, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

“I don’t know that there’s much to tell, to be honest,” I say slowly, sorting out my words as I try to ignore the inelegant chewing noises from my young friend. “I’m just a [Glass Smith] who’s run into an unfortunate situation, and I’m trying to rebuild from the ground up.”

Lady Evershed takes her time pouring me a steaming cup of tea. The little cups are on brand for Grand Ile—bone white with gold enamel that matches the motif of the walls. She sinks back into her chair, sipping on her own tea and staring at me over the rim of her cup.

I groan internally. She’s not buying my act, and now I’ve made things worse by acting so evasive. Entangling myself in her affairs without arranging payment first is not the smartest thing I've ever done. A bit late now for drawing up a contract. I try to cover my nervousness by eating a sweet roll, following Baryl’s example. It’s good, but not as good as Maire’s baked goods.

The longer Lady Evershed fixes me with her stare, the more I squirm. The silence hangs over my head like an [Executioner]’s blade. I find myself fidgeting, consumed with the need to unburden myself before it’s too late. Too late for what? The intrusive thought makes me suspicious that there’s a Skill at work to make me talk. It’s more delicate than the brute force approach the [Inquisitors] take, and harder to resist since I can’t quite identify the vector of attack. It feels like a gentler sort of compulsion: the soft, smothering weight of expectations; silk and lace and pretty things; complex social rules, rather than a hammer to the face.

“Take it one step at a time,” Lady Evershed says. “Where did you train?”

“Ryndl,” I answer, all my hours of practice with the backstory of my false identity finally paying off. My breathing calms, and the words come mechanically now. “It’s a little village outside of Metolius. Not much to do there, as you can probably imagine. Anyway, my master is more of a generalist crafter, but he encouraged me to pursue glass since I seem to have a modicum of talent for it.”

“Such modesty,” she says flatly, draining her cup of tea and refilling it from the pot. “But Metolius is a long way off. How’d you end up here?”

“It’s certainly been an eventful trip!” I chuckle softly, as though reliving strange memories. “My master suggested that I ought to see the world of glass and gain some exposure to a variety of different techniques,” I supply, pleased at how smoothly I’m filling in the details. This sort of thing doesn’t come naturally to me, but I’m getting better at deception with practice. Not sure if that’s something to be proud of, in the end.

“Try the vanilla wafers. They’re the best you’ve ever had, I promise,” Lady Evershed says, nudging the tray laden with sweets closer to me. She takes her own advice, nibbling at one with a look of sheer contentment on her face.

Her non-sequitur steals away what little, halting momentum I’m building up. I fumble over my words, trying to regain the line of thought I’d begun. To cover my discomfort, I bite into one of the wafers, my eyes widening at the rush of flavor and mana. It’s gently restorative, not burning in my channels as badly as harvesting ambient energy.

Lady Evershed smiles at me in a grandmotherly way. “Good, aren’t they?”

I nod and stuff another wafer into my mouth, only now realizing how much I’ve craved the feeling of handling mana without fear again. I’ll buy out the entire shop’s worth of wafers if I have to in order to get my fix. The sensation soon seeps away, however, since my channels can’t contain the mana. The energy disperses through my body, wafting into the ether after a tantalizing taste of normalcy, and I let out a soft groan of despair.

“You had your Skills when you left home.” Lady Evershed’s words are a statement of fact, not a question, and I nod again. She tilts her head toward my left arm, cradled in my lap. “You still had your hand, as well?”

I swallow the last bite of wafer and brush the crumbs off my lips. “Yes. I was whole and hale, Ma’am.”

She scowls at me. “Feh! Don’t call me that! It makes me feel even older than I am. Lady Evershed will do.”

“I was just a normal boy when I left home,” I say, and that part rings true within my soul. If I’d never met Tem, never dared to plumb the depths of mana and mystery with Ezio, I’d still be a simple, boring man.

“And now?” Lady Evershed prompts me when I grow quiet.

“Now I’m a cautious, broken man. Wiser, too, I’d like to think,” I say, still afraid to say much more. I feel like a child standing in front of a sluice gate of damning information. Opening the gate is irrevocable; I can’t very well make water flow backward once released. Words won’t fly back into my mouth once said.

“Cautious? Because of mistakes, or because you’re in trouble?” Lady Evershed asks me as calmly as if she’s commenting on the weather.

I hesitate for a split second before replying, but it’s enough that she frowns and nods at me. “I see. How likely is this trouble to reflect on my shop?”

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“Mistakes,” I squeak out, but she’s clearly not convinced. After a moment’s wavering, my shoulders slump. “Fine, I’ve gotten into some trouble. The less you know, the better. I don’t think you’ll have any problems by proximity, though, if I’m paying for studio time.”

“And this trouble, it’s related to how you, ah, lost all your Skills?” Lady Evershed asks, balancing her teacup on the edge of the seat and leaning forward to look me in the eye.

“No, not at all,” I hasten to assure her. “Please trust me on that front.”

“Very well. Let’s say I believe you when you say that you won’t implicate me if trouble catches up to you. It seems naive, but I’ll entertain the notion. I still want to hear how you managed to make such a colossal mistake as this without killing yourself,” she says, pointing toward my left arm.

“I only recently lost my hand and scarred my channels. My skills are broken from trying to handle too much mana,” I exclaim in a rush. “I’m trying to relearn how to work with glass, but it’s slow and awkward. I'm clunky now without the use of two hands.”

Lady Evershed raises a single eyebrow. “If this is clunky, then you could probably open your own glass shop if you manage to restore the use of your Skills. You’re young but talented, no doubt about it.”

“My thanks for the compliment,” I say, inclining my head. “I’m flattered.”

She taps her cane on the ground, frowning. “The loss of your hand is relatively simple to overcome, but if you can’t even sustain [Heat Manipulation] long enough to anneal your work, then you’re in trouble. How will you maintain temperature instead of running back to the furnace every few minutes? What if you’re low on supplies? You won’t be able to substitute your [Heat Manipulation] for a torch or power through a crafting session. At your current pace, you’ll never be able to take more than one or two big commissions per day. That’s hardly a sustainable business model, whether in tiny Ryndl or the sprawling metropolis of Grand Ile.”

“I certainly can’t argue with your assessment,” I admit. I sip my tea to wet my lips before I continue. “I can't manipulate or infuse my glass with mana anymore, either, which means that I can’t invest any of my glass creations with higher order concepts.”

“Oh? You’re dabbling with preliminary mana-imbuing concepts already? Impressive at your age,” Lady Evershed murmurs, looking at me as though seeing me with new eyes. Her gaze sharpens. “With or without a dedicated Skill?”

“Without. I didn’t have anyone to guide me, so I was trying to figure it out on my own. It’s not as easy as it sounds,” I say defensively.

“No, it’s certainly not,” she agrees with a wistful sigh.

“I, uh, I do have a plan to fix things,” I venture, but stop short when she snorts at me.

“Details are not your forte, are they? I’ll allow you to skip over the interesting parts of your tale for now, but don't think we won't return to this discussion after you tell me about your plan. If I'm going to allow you to use my studio, then I need to know more about when, where, and how you lost your Skills. That rates among the rarest of afflictions, and in my experience, attempts to fix the body and soul almost never have a happy ending.”

I cover up the stump of my left arm with my right hand, reflexively feeling defensive. “No, no, I can tell you about the details first, such as they are. Ah, well, there’s really not much to it. I got ambitious. Overly confident. As I said, I tried to rank up some of my glass-related Skills by forcibly feeding mana into them. I drew far too deeply for too long. The energy burned my hand off.” I force out a strained chuckle. “I’m just grateful that all I lost are my fingers, not my head or my heart. Those are harder to live without, or so I hear.”

Baryl snorts in undignified laughter, and I decide that I like having him around. It’s about time someone laughs at my desperate jokes.

“By the ivory walls, Zebulun, where exactly did you find that much mana?” Lady Evershed breathes out. “I don't think I could leech that much power from a manaship if I drained its entire mana crystal. The more you try to evade my questions, the more certain I am that you are hiding something.”

I swallow hard, but meet her gaze defiantly. “I’d really rather not say. It's something of a delicate matter.”

“So much for details. Young man, I assure you that I have no use for your secrets,” Lady Evershed says with a smirk. “I’m only looking to verify that you won't compromise my shop if I let you work here.”

“I . . . I can pay you for studio time. I have raw mana crystals,” I blurt out.

“Hey!” Baryl shouts, sitting straight up. “Don’t try to cheat Rizzi out of his cut. He’s not the type to forget.” His gaze slides away, not meeting me eye to eye as his voice grows quieter and more fragile. “And neither am I.”

“I’m not going to cheat you, Baryl. I’ll pay Rizzi—and you—for your time and efforts on my behalf. I appreciate all you’ve done. I’ll just let him know that I’ve found a buyer.”

“I haven’t agreed to buy anything,” Lady Evershed points out mildly.

“You sold me studio time. That means I owe you. I don’t have much coin, particularly not in the official Grand Ile currency, so I’ll pay you with raw mana crystals that I condensed from the core of a Rift a few weeks ago. Channeling its power is how I lost my hand, since you insist on details. You can ask Captain Ash for verification. He’s a [Bargemaster] who helped me fight off Crimson Crabs and gave me passage to Grand Ile,” I explain, rattling off my points as fast as I can in hopes that she won’t be able to gain anything.

Baryl stares at me, open-mouthed, a spattering of crumbs on his lips. He blinks a few times at my story, then whoops. “That’s amazing!”

Lady Evershed regards me more coolly. “Your fingers disintegrated while channeling the raw power of a Rift? Remarkable tale. You are doing quite well to work with glass already after that mishap.”

“Thank you. I worked hard to rehab on the boat ride down,” I say.

To her credit, Lady Evershed’s voice never wavers, although we’re discussing something so preposterous that if someone else told me the story, I’d suggest they need to be committed to a mental asylum. Yet her face remains calm and composed. She pauses only to take a sip of her tea, not to deride me or react to my outrageous account. Still, it doesn’t take a genius to sense the undercurrent of disbelief in the room.

“You do realize that your yarn raises more questions than it answers,” she says at length.

I nod. “I get it. I do. But I promise that I’m telling the truth. I’ll pay you for studio time and do my best not to make trouble.”

“I’ll have to review the crystals with my [Appraiser] before I agree to such a trade. Luckily for you, I have a good one on retainer,” Lady Evershed says.

“Must be nice to be rich,” Baryl mutters, shooting Lady Evershed a dirty look.

“That’s acceptable. Here, take this sliver of one to begin analysis. I have the rest back at my inn, locked away in the safe for, uh, safekeeping.”

Baryl snickers again at my unintentional attempt at a pun. I glance at him, and he shuts his mouth, then snatches another sweet roll and drifts away from the conversation.

“I’ll make arrangements,” Lady Evershed promises after taking the finger-long shard of mana crystal from me. “But I think we have more to discuss. What brings you to Grand Ile, of all places? Surely you could have learned about the craft closer to home.”

I shrug. “I’m just wandering. I came to Grand Ile looking to practice glass and prepare for the upcoming glass-making competition.”

“You’re here for the competition? Of course you are,” Lady Evershed says sharply. She puts her teacup down with a clatter, her friendly demeanor evaporating like morning mist.

“Uh, yes? I traveled here in hopes of competing in the glass competition. That’s the whole reason why I headed to Grand Ile in the first place,” I say, which is mostly truthful. I scratch at the back of my head awkwardly as her gaze grows ever stormier, and finally clear my throat. “Have I upset you somehow? My apologies, I feel like I’m lacking context.”

“You will swear on your life, before a [Notary] and [Investigator] that you didn’t know who I am before charming your way into my shop and compromising the integrity of our competition,” Lady Evershed replies, her words clipped and forcible. She’s simmering like a pot on the stove, on the verge of boiling over. “Otherwise, you’ll never set foot in my studio again. You’ll spend the rest of your days rotting in prison for fraud. I swear it by the ivory walls.”