“Which is why you are both going to be spending all of your free time working for the Master of the Glassworker’s Guild until he finishes the new mirror,” Arissa said flatly. “We intend for you to see why, at first-hand, such things cost so dearly. We intend for you to have a very proprietary interest in the replacement. When the mirror is finished, I trust you will have an entirely new understanding of your folly.”

“And a new set of muscles,” Elcarth added enigmatically. “Now you may go, and reflect on the fact that you will not have any time to get up to any more clever ideas for the duration. This will be your last evening with any leisure in it, because you’ll be spending your mornings, your afternoons, and half of your evenings down at the glassworks for a while. Enjoy it.”

As if they could, with a sentence like that one hanging over their heads. The two rose, heads hanging, and shuffled out of the room, the very image of dejection.

Elcarth sighed once they were gone, and ruffled a hand through his hair. “I wouldn’t mind so much if they’d gone about their little project sensibly,” he said. He motioned to Alberich to sit; Alberich did so. “Consulting with their instructors, for instance. Not that all of that gymkhana nonsense would have worked, mind you. I wonder where they got such a notion?”

“Out of their imaginations, I suppose,” growled Arissa, sitting on the other chair. “Which are entirely too active if you ask me. Or perhaps out of some idiot play or other; the two of them are always running down into Haven to see some fool drama whenever there’s one to be seen. I presume they’re going to be put to working the bellows at the glassworks for the next moon or so? It could be worse; this could be summer.”

“It will be summer before they see the end of their labor,” Elcarth said. “I intend to leave them down there for more than a moon. Master Cuelin tells me his apprentice is ready to go on to more complicated work, and he doesn’t have a junior apprentice to start on the bellows or do any of the other simple labor in and around the place. So our lads can serve until he gets one. It could have been worse. At least it was only one mirror panel, not two or more.”

“How often does this occur?” Alberich asked curiously. “Assume, I must, that accidents do happen. Stupidity probably rather more often than accident.”