Amber Palace, Blackstone City.
Night of the winter's first hard frost.
The great hall reeked of roasted swan, Araby spices, and the nervous sweat of men who had come to watch a woman be sold by the pound.
Isolde stood alone at the head table. Black silk gown cut like a blade. No necklace, no rings except the rusted iron one she twisted when she wanted blood. On a cushion of midnight velvet rested the thing that had cost her every remaining coin and every remaining hour of sleep.
The goblet that was not there.
In the candlelight it simply refused to exist. Only a trembling halo of refracted flame proved something occupied the space above the cloth of gold.
The president of the Gilded Hand, a man whose belly entered rooms five seconds before the rest of him, opened at three hundred crowns. "Generous," he oozed. "Covers your interest for the month, girl."
Isolde answered by flicking the invisible rim with one gloved finger.
Ding.
The note floated through the hall like cold water poured down every spine. Conversation died mid-sentence.
She lifted the goblet high.
"In scripture," she said, voice carrying without effort, "the tears of angels are perfectly clear, for no sin stains heaven's sorrow. Mortal glass is always green, always flawed, always dirty. Because we are dirty."
She turned the goblet slowly. Rainbows crawled across marble walls like living things.
"This one is not."
A countess gasped, hand to her throat as if the sight hurt.
"Five hundred!" someone shouted.
"Eight hundred!"
The guild president's face went the color of raw liver. He understood markets. This was no longer a cup. This was the end of his monopoly.
"One thousand, and I want the maker's name tonight," he snarled.
Isolde ignored him. She looked straight at the purple-robed priest representing the Bishop.
"Father, would this not be the most fitting vessel for holy water ever placed on an altar?"
The priest stood. His eyes had the glazed shine of a man staring into paradise.
"Fifteen hundred crowns," he said quietly. "The Church will consecrate it in the capital."
The hall went still enough to hear wax dripping.
Fifteen hundred crowns could buy a walled town.
Isolde inclined her head, gracious as a queen.
"Sold."
Inside her ribcage her heart hammered so hard she tasted iron, but her face stayed marble.
As the priest's clerks counted out the sacks, the guild president leaned close enough that she could smell his garlic and fear.
"Congratulations," he whispered, breath hot and sour. "You bought yourself a week. But your little pet alchemist? Tonight he learns what happens to foreigners who break guild law."
His smile was all wet teeth.
"Sleep well, Isolde."
Same time.
Factory ruins outside the walls.
Rain again. Hard, needle-cold.
Li knelt beside a hand-cranked stone mill, reducing anthracite to powder finer than flour. The air already shimmered with suspended black dust. Every breath tasted of future explosions.
A stray dog tethered at the gate barked twice, then yelped once and went abruptly silent.
Li stopped grinding.
He lifted his left wrist. Watch lume glowed 23:17.
He picked up a rag, tied it over mouth and nose, then scooped the fresh coal dust into a coarse linen sack.
Bootsteps in the mud. Five sets, heavy, drunk on violence.
"The yellow-skinned bastard's inside!" a voice bragged. "Break his hands, smash the furnace, collect from the president."
The door exploded inward.
Five men in guild leathers, clubs, axes, torches.
The leader was a slab-faced brute with a knife scar from ear to chin. Torchlight painted hell on his grin.
"Evening, monkey. Heard you do tricks. Show us how you reattach fingers."
Li stood slowly in the red glow of the furnace mouth. Goggles down, eyes flat.
He studied the room the way he once studied blast radius charts.
Closed space.
Dust concentration rising.
Ignition sources: three torches.
Wind direction: in through the door, straight toward the furnace throat.
Perfect.
He took two casual steps forward.
The thugs hesitated; prey wasn't supposed to advance.
Li swung the sack in a lazy arc.
Black cloud blossomed, swallowing light, swallowing breath.
Coughing. Swearing. Torches waved wildly to clear the air.
Exactly what he needed.
Open flame + suspended combustible dust + oxygen = textbook dust explosion.
In safety handbooks it was a warning.
Here it was a weapon.
Li dropped flat behind a half-height brick wall.
BOOM.
Not loud like thunder; more intimate, a pressure slap that punched lungs and burst eardrums.
The confined space turned the dust cloud into a brief, perfect sun.
Orange fireball filled the shed, rolled, vanished.
When the smoke cleared, five men lay in the mud outside the kicked-out back wall, clothes smoldering, hair gone, skin blistered skin bubbling. Alive, unfortunately for them. Second- and third-degree flash burns hurt worse than dying.
Li rose, brushed soot off his forearms, and walked over to Scarface.
The man stared up, eyes cooked white, mouth working soundlessly.
"Witchcraft…" he croaked.
Li picked up the dropped, still-burning torch and tossed it into a rain puddle.
"Chemistry," he corrected.
Hooves on mud. A carriage slewed to a stop in the downpour.
Isolde leapt out, skirts hiked, short sword in hand, ready to fight ghosts.
She took in the smoking ruin, the five human-shaped lumps moaning in the mud, and Li standing untouched in the middle like the eye of a hurricane.
Her sword lowered.
"You… solved it."
Li held out one grimy hand.
"Money?"
Wordless, she tossed him the heavy purse. Gold clinked like judgment day.
He weighed it once, nodded.
"Buy sulfur. Buy charcoal. Buy saltpeter."
He stepped over Scarface's twitching body and walked back toward the furnace that still breathed hungry fire.
"Next time they come," he said over his shoulder, "we give them something louder."
Behind him Isolde looked at the broken men, then at the man who had broken them without raising a fist, and felt something between terror and worship stir in her gut.
The rain hissed on hot iron.
Somewhere in the city, church bells tolled midnight.
Out here, the only god answering prayers had soot on his face and a shopping list for hell.