I returned to Tweet, who shrugged as if to say it was worth a shot.
Not about to give up, I crouched down and described the glass hothouse to Tweet. “In order to build it, they would have needed large sheets of glass. Maybe you or one of your friends saw a glassmaker delivering them?”
He met my gaze and nodded. Lyle and I followed him off the roof and joined Fisk. I shook my head at his questioning expression.
“Back to HQ?” he asked.
Tweet piped up with a series of hoots.
Fisk groaned. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“There’s a glassmaker with a factory in the fourth ring of the Citadel who has been specializing in sheet glass for windows.”
“Great. Let’s go talk to him,” I said.
“I don’t know,” Fisk hedged. “The bounty hunters have been watching the market. And you said Valek only approved a short trip.”
“We’ll avoid the market. Besides, with these snazzy disguises, no one will suspect a thing.”
“You’re killing me, and not with your humor,” Fisk muttered. But he led the way, once again taking up his fatherly role.
We stayed away from the popular routes and avoided the deserted streets. Half the time I didn’t know where we were, but I trusted my guides. I smelled the sweet odor of burning white coal before I spotted the small factory tucked between two warehouses. The sign above the door read Keegan Glass.
A chime announced our arrival. Glass wine goblets, vases and pitchers decorated the display shelves. I gathered the “kids” close and told them not to touch anything.
A middle-aged man glided from a back room. He gave the kids a stern glare, as if daring them to misbehave, before asking if he could help us.
“I hope so,” Fisk said. “We are building onto our house, and my wife wanted to put in big windows in the new kitchen. She loves her plants and would really love just a wall of glass, but that’s impossible. What’s the biggest size you can make?”
Well done. Fisk was flawless.
“Actually, sir, I can make you a wall of glass, if you’d like.”
Fisk and I acted shocked. “But Crystal Glass said—”
“It’s impossible?”
Fisk nodded.
“It is. For them. Not for Keegan Glass. I’ve made an entire house out of glass.”
Yes! Keeping up the act, I furrowed my brow in suspicion. “Surely you jest.”
“It’s quite simple, actually.” Keegan then proceeded to explain how he made sheets of special glass that were used to build a structure. “Mind you, it wasn’t very big, but with enough support, it could have been bigger.”
“Was it part of a house?” I asked.
“No. It was the size of a large shed, but I can make yours to attach to an existing structure.”
Excited, I turned to Fisk. “With all that sunlight, I could grow all my own herbs!”
“You could,” the glassmaker assured me. “In fact, the guy who ordered it mentioned something about vines.”
Fisk pressed his lips together. “I’d like to see it first. Is it in the Citadel?”
“No. We delivered it to a farm south of the Citadel.”
Fisk glanced at me. “Doesn’t your cousin own a farm? She’s also a plant nut. Maybe...”
But Keegan didn’t fall for it. “Not likely. My client prefers that I don’t discuss the specifics of his order.”
Backing off, Fisk inquired about prices. Keegan wrote down the estimated measurements of the wall and returned to his back room. Fisk waited a few minutes before signaling the kids, who immediately started to bicker and then mock-fight. He gestured for me to intervene. I played the aggrieved mother trying to get her kids to stop. When they knocked over a couple vases, Keegan flew from the back room to admonish us.
I apologized and tried to clean up the mess while the kids continued their argument. As if on cue, the kids settled down, and we paid Keegan for the broken pieces. He was probably so glad to see us go that it would take him a while to realize that in addition to losing a sale, he’d lost an invoice as well. During the chaos, Fisk had slipped into Keegan’s back room. Keegan would have used the invoice for the other job to estimate the price of our project. At least, that was the hope.
“Did you get it?” I asked Fisk when we turned the corner.
“Yep.”
“And?”
He pulled a folded piece of parchment from his pocket and studied it. “No client name.”
I cursed.
“Language, Mother,” Lyle scolded.
“Be quiet, or I’ll pinch those adorable cheeks of yours.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he muttered sourly.
“There is an address for delivery and a date,” Fisk said.
Better. “Where was it sent?”
“A farm right along the border of the Avibian Plains.”
Of course. The plains would be the perfect place to hide a glass hothouse. Only the Sandseed Clan and Zaltana Clan could travel across the plains without getting lost, and there were only a couple dozen Sandseeds left. But that meant if Bavol had been working with Owen’s Master Gardener, then the mystery person had to be a member of the Zaltana Clan. My clan. My elation died.
“When was it delivered?” I asked Fisk.
“A little over three years ago. Do you think it’s still there?”
I told him about my theory.