The Eighty-Year Fire

“You’re counting the wrong pieces,” he said.

I didn’t look up from the arm of the chair where I was bent over the workbench. The heat in the *bottega* was a physical weight, a heavy wool blanket soaked in sweat and woodsmoke that clung to my skin and stung my eyes. It was ten o’clock on a Friday night. The furnace behind us roared with a low, steady breath that had not faltered in eighty years, and neither had I let it.

Craig leaned against the stone pillar near the glory hole, his shadow stretching long and thin across the sawdust-strewn floor. He had been standing there for six hours, watching me coax molten sand into the shape of a thousand crystal tears for a chandelier that belonged to a king I had never met. He was an envoy, a man of courtly manners and sharp elbows, sent to ensure the Republic of Venice delivered its goods on time.