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raised my eyes to Boaz.
    By this stage he must have realised that I could work glass with the best craftsman, but it was still not enough. If the design now stood out from the glass, then I had to free it – create the cage.
    Caging was traditionally reserved for round vessels. An outer design, called the lacework, was carved from a thick wall of glass, and then all but freed from the remaining smooth inner wall. Only a few, almost invisible struts would support the outer design – which then became, in effect, a cage of lace about the inner, plain wall of the vessel.
    This was a free-standing block of flat glass, and faulted and sad. It would not cage well, if it would tolerate it at all. But I could do my best. I turned the glass in Boaz’s hands, so that it faced me almost sideways, then I picked up the drill again.
    Use of the drill now was more than dangerous. Normally I would have worked at the glass patiently with chisel and pliers, forceps and soft words, but that process would take days if not weeks, and those I did not have.
    Closing my eyes briefly I winged a prayer to the gods and a gentle lullaby to the glass, then I set to work.
    The glass cried almost instantly, and I winced, but I soothed as best I could, and murmured to it, and pleaded with it, and finally it acquiesced. It was a brave glass, and tears came to my eyes at its courage.
    These drill holes moved horizontally behind the outline of the reeds and the frogs, and, despite my best efforts, one or two cut directly through fault lines.
    Laying the drill and oil bag to one side, I again picked up a pair of pliers, using one of the handles to tap at the glass.
    Sections cracked, crumbled, and then slid to the table.
    I took the glass completely into my hands now, cradling it against my breast, tapping, tapping, tapping, using both drill holes and fault lines to my advantage, murmuring wordlessly, soothing, reassuring.
    There was utter silence about me, and I could feel the eyes of slaves and Magi alike riveted to my face or to my hands, but I did not care. There was only me and my glass and the growing mound of fragments and dust in my lap and on the table.
    The cage was emerging now, and with it emerged the true hidden colour of the glass. Once grey and cloudy as an unwanted and discarded lump, the glass now shone a deep, vivid blue. Most of the air bubbles and the fracture lines had been chiselled out and, despite what I’d originally thought, the cage had been almost entirely freed from the inner wall.
    “Let me see,” Boaz said, his voice peculiarly tight, but I shook my head, my eyes still on the glass wrapped in my arms and hands.
    “No. Wait. Let me just…” Using the inner teeth of the finest of the pliers, I smoothed the rough edges as best I could. The glass should have been patiently sanded over many hours to hone it to its best, but in less than anafternoon I knew I had created something wonderful from a glass that had thought itself fit only for grinding into spare chips.
    Finally I took a deep breath, and inspected it. The intertwining reeds stood completely free from the inner wall of the glass. Two frogs leaped playfully among them, their back legs serving as struts to anchor the cage lacework to the supporting inner wall.
    It was beautiful.
    My hands shaking, I held it up for all to see.
    The failing sunlight – how many hours had I been working? – caught and twinkled in the blue glass, and the reeds and frogs danced back and forth in the shimmering light.
    Boaz stood up slowly, his stool scraping behind him, and lifted the glass from my hands.
    “She has astounding talent,” Gayomar said in the language of Ashdod. “Astounding.”
    Boaz’s face hardened. “Perhaps the glass…speaks…to her, Gayomar. Perhaps she is…Elemental.” His eyes slid over me, their power seeking, searching, and I dropped my gaze quickly, guiltily. Elemental? What was this?
    “Well,” Boaz continued to Gayomar, “I can warn Ta’uz about her,