Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal

snorted and shoved the blowpipe back into the oven. “I can make a perfect sphere without one. A perfect sphere.”
    Jane wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of one hand. “I do not doubt it, but for our purposes, the steadiness of the pole is as important as the shape of the sphere.”
    He glowered at her for a moment before rolling his eyes. “Biasio! The Y-stand from the corner next to the tempering oven.”
    “Yes, sir.” The apprentice ran across the room, grabbed a Y-stand, and hurried back with it. He placed it in front of the furnace at Querini’s direction. His motions suddenly seemed familiar, but Jane could not think of where she had seen him before. She supposed that it was only the similarity of circumstance: He looked nothing like Mathieu La Pierre, but perhaps he reminded her of him simply by virtue of being a glassmaker’s apprentice.
    Querini settled the blowpipe on the stand with a muttered grumble. The contrast between working with him and with Mathieu was sharp. The Belgian apprentice’s enthusiasm and the way he joined in an attempt to better the work had made the discovery a delight. Even when the heat from the furnace had made Jane increasingly ill—
    No … No, it had not been the heat. She had thought that at the time, but that was only because she had not yet realized that she was with child.
    Vincent lay in the thread for the Sphère before Jane was prepared. Her memory had distracted her, and when she tried to follow his movements, her alignment was poor. Again Querini thrust the blowpipe into the furnace and again pulled it out.
    Jane bit her lip and tried to focus, but her thoughts kept turning back to Binché and how ill she had become. She should not have been working glamour at all back then, let alone something that required so much energy. Lord help her, she had thought it was only an excess of glamour making her so ill. It was laughable that a child had not occurred to her until the doctor had arrived.
    She lost the thread again. “Sorry.” Her heart raced under her shirt. The heat made it so hard to catch her breath. “Again, please.” In the interval, Jane pushed her hair back from her face. Her hair had been long when they were working in Binché. She had not cut it until Vincent had been taken. She should be cooler here with the short hair, but she could not breathe. But surely that was only her fancy. It was no hotter here than it had been in Binché.
    Jane’s hands shook as she reached for the glamour. She should not be tired yet, but the threads seemed to slip through her fingers. Vincent growled as yet another attempt dissolved. It was the past. She tried to push her struggling sensibilities aside. She had not known what would happen, and if she had—if she had, she would have made the same choices again. Still. That keen sense of relief when she had miscarried, and the self-loathing that came with it—
    She almost lost the thread of cold again and bore down too hard on it. The sudden change in temperature caused the sphere to crack.
    Vincent shouted and ducked. Querini jumped, dropping the blowpipe.
    Jane stood where she was as pieces of crystal flew across the room. It was just like in Binché.
    In an instant, Vincent had her by the shoulders, turning her from the furnace. “Jane? Are you all right?”
    She nodded, but could not form words on the first try. “Apologies.” Her breath hitched, and she forced it down. Was she so fragile as to be undone by a memory? This was not Binché. She was not with child. “I misjudged. It will not happen again.”
    Vincent ran his thumb along the line of her jaw. “Jane…” He wet his lips and glanced to Querini. “I think we should take a short break.”
    “No, no … I am fine now.”
    Querini snorted. “You’ll kill someone—”
    “Sir.” Vincent’s voice snapped through the room, like glass, and Querini fell silent. Jane felt as though she had a bonnet and could only see directly in front of her. He