Beside him, Molin’s chief architect had turned a ferocious shade of red, and then began shifting from foot to foot as his gout started to trouble him. Molin looked at the gray-eyed woman and said, in the deadly soft voice he had been using on the engineers, “Can you do better?”
The woman flicked eyebrows at him in the most scornful expression he had ever seen. “Of course.”
“If you don’t,” he had said, “you know what will happen.”
She gave him a look that made it plain that his threats amused her. “Parchment, please,” she said, knocked the plans aside into the mud, and sat down on the block like a queen, waiting for the writing materials to be brought her. “And you’d better do something about that cement right now, before the ground dries.
That much of your wall I’ll keep. You-” She pointed at one of the engineers.
“Send someone to the biggest glassmaker in town and ask for all the cull they’ve got.”
“Cull?”
“Broken glass. Pound it up fine. It goes in the cement…. What’s it for?! You want rats and coneys tunneling under and undermining the wall? Leaving holes for people to pour acid in, or something worse? Well, then!”
The engineer in question glanced at Molin for permission, then hurried away. He turned to her to say something, but the parchment and silverpoint had already been brought, and the woman was sketching with astonishing swiftness on the smooth side of the skin-drawing perfectly straight lines without rulers, perfect curves without tools. He had to fight to keep the scorn in his voice. “And who might you be?” he had said.