But Santi's face was damp with sweat, and there was a smell in the room that raised the hackles on the back of his neck. Sweetly rotten-the lingering stench of burned flesh and infection.
Wolfe sat in a chair next to Santi's bedside, holding his lover's uninjured hand with his left, and an open book in his right. As Jess stepped in, Wolfe let go of Santi to remove small, square glasses from his nose and stow them in a pocket, then put the book aside after slipping a feather in for a bookmark. The doctor had found new clothes for him, sized well, but he looked disconcertingly small in them. Jess was used to seeing him in the smothering, swirling cloud of a Scholar's robe.
"Close the door," he said, and Dario, the last one in, did so. "Guards?"
"Outside the house," Jess said. "We're alone, for the moment."
Wolfe nodded. He looked weary. "Then we'd best use the time well."
"Sir," Dario said, "is he all right?"
"He's drugged," Wolfe said. "If he wasn't in an opium haze, he'd be screaming. Try not to ask the stupidly obvious, Santiago."
Glain said, "Is he going to lose the arm?"
It was a blunt question, and very like her to say the thing they were all wondering. She put no inflection on it. It was just a request for information.
"It's hard to know yet," Wolfe said. "The next day will be critical. The burns were . . . significant." He cleared his throat. "Any problems?"
"No, sir," Khalila said. As always, she was the opposite of Glain; even that simple response had a wealth of gentleness in it. "No need to worry about us. We're fine. All proceeds well enough."
"And no one has harassed you again about-" He gestured vaguely to his head. She touched her own fingers to her hijab and shook her head. "Good. Not that I worry. I trained you to be sturdier than that." He blinked and looked away. Looked at anything, it seemed, but Captain Santi's still, too-pale face.
///
"Sir-" Jess tried to think of something to say that was useful, but his mind was as empty as a snowfield. "Have you eaten?"
Wolfe shook his head. "Not hungry," he said. "Thomas. Jess. Update."
"We have most of the parts for the press designed, and we'll start casting tomorrow," Thomas said. "The first mirror will be ready to grind and polish in the morning. That will take most of the day. Jess will be tending to it."
"Oh, will I?" Jess asked.
"Yes," Thomas said, with a flash of a grin. "You will. They watch me, because I'm large and sweaty and working with heavy tools. You'll quietly do the important work."
"The boring, hard, repetitive work of polishing glass?"
"Well, yes."
Wolfe gave them a quelling look. "And the tunnels?"
"Maybe," Jess said. "I'm of the mind that the one they're trying to point us toward is far too obvious. Even Dario noticed the entrance, and no smuggler worth a damn would build a tunnel so exposed." Jess had been turning it over in his mind, and now he looked at Khalila and Dario. "Any chance you can slip away to explore city hall at all?"
"They can't," Morgan said. "But I might, if I claim to be able to build them a new Translation Chamber. He'd let me explore. He'd keep me guarded, of course, but that doesn't matter. Obscurists can see more than the obvious."
"No," Jess said, but at the same time, Wolfe said, "Yes," and when Jess paused, Wolfe kept on speaking. "You're the only one who can make a good search of it besides Jess, and he's otherwise needed. And can you make the Translation Chamber work?"
"Not a chance in the world," she said. "Too long idle. But I did make headway on the other matter."
Jess knew what that meant, but he could see the others didn't; Khalila whispered something to Dario, who shook his head. Wolfe was trying to keep that quiet, then. And if Wolfe wanted it quiet, it was because it was dangerous to Morgan, who was far too willing to risk it.
"Then Morgan will look for any sign of tunnels leading into the city hall building-and I think Brightwell is right: it would be the most secure place for smugglers to bring goods, and for any communications to take place between Beck and those from outside."
"I should be the one to do it," Jess said.
"Mirror," Thomas reminded him. "And Beck will be receiving reports of where each of us is, what we are doing. Just let her do the job."