“Ishkur, is it your men who work atop Threshold, preparing the peak for the capstone?”
Ishkur nodded.
Yaqob’s face and eyes were very cold. “I hear some of the glass up there is very unstable, Ishkur. It could cause a dreadful accident were it to fall.”
11
BOAZ was unpredictable in many ways, but he never forwent his early afternoon stroll about Threshold. He would walk its perimeter once, then move to the ramp where he talked to various of the Magi supervising the site. Then he would just stand, looking, completely still, his eyes focused on Gesholme and then further to the Lhyl River and the reed banks.
No-one knew what he looked for, and no-one cared. It was enough that we had this one moment of predictability, and it would be enough to kill him. He even stood in the same spot, day after day, the spot where Gaio had died, and that would be enough to ensure a neat, clean kill.
Which was more than he deserved.
I wondered if he would scream, as had screamed the glass he’d deliberately dropped. Well, today, glass would wreak its revenge.
We were all there. Yaqob, Isphet and myself pretending concern about a delicate pane that was being transported into Threshold and which required our undivided attention lest the labourers trip and break it. Ishkur, standing to one side of the ramp, directing his gang of labourers. Raguel, taking some tools – unfortunately left behind – to glassworkers inside Threshold. Others, scattered about, pretending interests and problems where there was only one interest and only one problem.
Boaz.
He arrived as expected, Ta’uz with him today, and the Magi hurried the inspection about the perimeter of Threshold. Neither wanted to spend too long in the other’s company. Then Ta’uz stalked away, leaving Boaz to mount the ramp.
Boaz did not waste much time in conversation with the two Magi awaiting him, and within minutes had turned to stand motionless, gazing back across Gesholme towards the river. He was so focused on whatever it was he saw, that I doubt he noticed anyone about him.
The two Magi stood slightly to one side of Boaz, discussing some calculation.
“Good,” whispered Yaqob. “Three of them. Perfect.”
I glanced about us. Guards were dotted through the crowd of labourers scurrying here and there around Threshold’s skirts, but they saw nothing out of the normal. Ta’uz was still here, but deep in conversation with one of the captains of the guard; perhaps trying to find out whether the man was loyal to him or to Boaz.
Well, in a minute or two the captain wouldn’t have a choice.
I frowned. Raguel was close by Ta’uz, and I wondered what she was doing there. Had he called her over?
Yaqob caught Ishkur’s eye, and the man nodded slightly.
Then he dropped the hammer he was holding and bent down to pick it up.
It was the signal the men atop Threshold had been waiting for. I tensed, and felt Isphet do the same by my side. Yaqob muttered under his breath, his shoulders tight.
None of us dared look upward…until…until…
“The glass!” a guard screamed. “Excellencies, the glass!”
Our heads whipped skyward, relief that it was finally done rushing through our bodies.
“By the Soulenai,” Isphet whispered, “let it fall true.”
A great plate of blue-green glass, carefully chosen for its position, had been dislodged. The southern face, above the ramp where Boaz still stood utterly motionless, was protected from the wind, and the plate should fall straight and true.
Spear-like.
And so it did.
Slowly at first, twinkling cheerfully in the blazing sun, it slid free of its moorings, then picked up speed as it rushed down the centre of the southern face. Its passage made a peculiar whistling noise, and I wondered that Boaz did not look up, or move, even though the two Magi with him had ducked for cover inside Threshold’s mouth and several guards were rushing up the ramp to push Boaz to one side.
But the glass did its killing long before they reached Boaz.
Some twenty paces above the ramp, as the plate glass was whistling down so fast it was only a blur, it screamed.
Every Elemental within two hundred paces heard that scream, for it tore through our souls, ripping and shredding. I cried out, as did Isphet and Yaqob, but our cries were lost among the screams of the crowd as the glass…
…as the glass jerked, then twisted and flipped, as if flicked by a gigantic hand. It somersaulted through the air, hit the lintel above Threshold’s mouth…
Boaz smiled. I saw it, and I could not believe it.
…and broke into two murderous spears. One swept over Boaz, the wind of its passing ruffling his robes, and struck Ishkur directly on the top of his head, spearing down through his body. It clove him in two. The glass bisected his entire body, and the two sorry halves fell limply, bloodily, to either side of the now silent splinter protruding from the ground.
I had my eyes on Boaz and then Ishkur, and for a heartbeat I did not realise what had happened to the other spear of glass. I turned my head just in time to see the jagged piece impale both Ta’uz and Raguel.
She had been standing close to him, so close that she shared his fate – or perhaps Threshold had always meant them to die in that manner. Die together.
Utter, utter silence.
Then…
“Take those three slaves,” Boaz said calmly to the captain Ta’uz had been talking to, “and kill them.”
I thought he meant Yaqob, Isphet and me, and my stomach curdled so violently I was sure I would vomit, but then I saw Boaz wave vaguely at Ishkur’s three men at Threshold’s peak.
The captain of the guard, his loyalties decided, hurried to do the Magus’ bidding.
“Three,” Yaqob said emotionlessly beside me. “Three. Dead. Threshold has fed. As Ta’uz said it would.”
Isphet grabbed our arms. “Out of here, now! Before he sees us!”
I was unable to move, but Yaqob responded quickly to Isphet’s urging and helped pull me down a side alley. Shocked and bewildered, we stumbled back to the workshop. As we waited for the others to return Yaqob held me tight, and tried to comfort me, but no comfort would help after what we’d witnessed.
It was that day we all realised just how malevolent Threshold truly was.
Boaz took over as Master of the Site quickly, efficiently, completely. Ta’uz was buried with the honours accorded to any Magus, but Raguel’s and Ishkur’s bodies were thrown to the great water lizards that lurked in the Lhyl.
I believe the three slaves taken from the peak were thrown in the water alive once the lizards had started their feeding frenzy on the corpses.
Ta’uz was dead. Ishkur was dead. Raguel was dead. Two of them mourned, one regretted.
And Yaqob’s plans for a revolt lay as shattered across the dust of Gesholme as that glass had shattered three lives.
He needed the weight of numbers that the labourers would bring him, yet they had trusted only Ishkur completely. It would take Yaqob months, if months he had, to find someone of comparable standing and trust-worthiness who could persuade the labourers to his side.
Raguel. Raguel had been loved by many of us, and had been badly treated by the Magi for years. To lose her like this…and her body. Isphet had raged for hours that night, striding about our apartment, tearing gouges in the mud walls with her nails, screaming her grief. Raguel could not be farewelled into the Place Beyond without the remains of a body. She and her daughter would be denied each other for eternity.
But Raguel had also been a source of information and, regrettably, Yaqob mourned her death for the loss it caused his plans.
In the end, ironically the greatest loss was Ta’uz. Now Boaz had free rein, and within only hours we felt the touch of his power.
That night every tenement building in Gesholme was searched.
The guards came just as I had managed to get Isphet onto a sleeping pallet, my arms about her, rocking her, crooning wordlessly to her. I
was appalled at the extent of her grief, yet my soft crooning was meant as much to comfort me as it was Isphet.
There was a pounding at the door. Saboa went to open it, but was thrown back as the door was kicked in. Five men shouldered their way past her, a mixture of imperial soldiers and old guards – but old guards with new resolve strengthening their eyes and hands.
They tore the room apart, breaking many of the urns, tearing others from the ground, ripping our sleeping pallets, tipping oil from lamps, thumping the walls to sound out hiding places. They searched us too, their hands rough and humiliating, then shoved us aside as thoughtlessly as they had the urns and lamps.
I sent a silent prayer of thanks to the Soulenai that at least we no longer had Raguel’s baby stored in one of the floor-cooled urns; I wondered numbly what Boaz would have made of that had they thrown it triumphantly before him.
They were searching for weapons, and for other evidence of the plot to escape. The plot…I had no doubt that Boaz had somehow managed to scry out its existence; that he somehow knew a plot must exist.
Cold fear gripped me. Yaqob! But surely he would have the sense not to keep anything in his quarters that might incriminate him. Surely.
In the morning when we crept to work we saw guards posted on rooftops.
People nodded to each other as they arrived at the workshop, but few spoke. I looked frantically until I saw Yaqob’s form in a darkened corner, lifting glass down from a rack. Unheedful of the eyes, I rushed across and wrapped my arms about him.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” He managed to put the glass to one side. “And you?”
I nodded, unable to speak, and buried my face in his chest.
I felt his hands through my hair, and then one hand caught my chin and tipped my head back.
“They found the blades that we’d managed to make,” he said, his voice dead. “And they’re dismantling the guards’ weapon caches, storing the weapons elsewhere. We’ve lost.”
I buried my face in his chest again, fiercely glad that he was safe and that, if his plans for an uprising were in tatters, then at least that meant he would continue to be safe for a while longer.
“We’ve lost,” he said again. “For the moment.” Then he put me to one side and went back to work.
Our lives continued to be disrupted by irregular patrols, unpredictable searches. Sometimes a guard was posted in the workshop, sometimes not. But if a guard was not there, then we never knew when one would be back.
Magi appeared in greater numbers, and a week after Ta’uz’s death river boats deposited another two thousand soldiers with which Boaz could work his will.
Yaqob’s face grew lined and his manner abrupt, even with me. Life became even greyer in this the most dismal of places, and the shadow of Threshold stretched ever longer.
Sometimes it winked.
12
THREE weeks after the disastrous attempt to assassinate Boaz, he came to visit.
I was in the main work area that morning, sitting with my father as he selected sifted metal powders for a mixing he would do in the afternoon.
Everyone, in fact, was in the workshop, no-one at Threshold, no-one out collecting supplies or helping in another workshop.
Boaz must have known this. How? There was no obvious guard or watch kept. How?
I was chatting to my father. He looked tired and drawn – all of us were, but Druse more than others – and I regretted that most of the time I’d spent with Yaqob had been stolen from time I would otherwise have spent with Druse. He was my father, and he loved me and had raised me. I did not want him to think I avoided him because I blamed him.
But Druse smiled, and said that he liked and respected Yaqob, and that he did not mind.
That day I loved my father very much.
There was a darkening in the doorway and, mildly curious, I looked up.
Boaz.
He looked no different from any other Magus, but there was something so infinitely dangerous, so cruel about him that I’m sure he would have intimidated a collection of Magi, let alone us.
Everyone stilled.
Some guards followed him, but Boaz waved them back into the street, and stepped down onto the workshop floor alone.
“Yes?” Isphet asked.
I envied her that single word. I remembered she had greeted Ta’uz thus, too, the night he had delivered me to her door.
Now she was just as cool and calm as she had been that night, even though here she had far more secrets to hide, and many more lives to protect. She stood in the very centre of the workshop, her head slightly tilted back, her eyes challenging, questioning.
About us the glass chattered in an undertone, and the jars of metals hummed quietly in their racks.
I felt like screaming at them to shut up.
Boaz walked straight past Isphet, not acknowledging her presence. He walked to the furnaces, considered them a long moment, then strolled casually about the workshop. Every so often he would flick the hem of his blue robe to one side to avoid a patch of oil, or a drift of dust.
“It seems fortuitous that I arrived here when I did,” he said without preamble. “Threshold is of vital importance to Ashdod, to all its people, and yet when I arrived I found a site wallowing in inexactitude, its measurements imprecise, its practices unpredictable.”
He stopped by Yassar’s work table, trailing a finger through some of the containers of glass that had been ground down for enamels.
“Such pretty colours,” he remarked, then lifted his head and stared at Isphet.
“What do you want?” she asked, and now there was a brittleness to her that had not been there before.
“Respect, Isphet, is very important,” Boaz said mildly, and Isphet suddenly whimpered with pain and doubled over, clutching at her belly.
To one side Yaqob shifted indecisively.
“What can I do for you, Excellency?” Isphet ground out, and then relaxed, slowly straightening up. But her eyes were frightened, as were mine, and every other pair I could see save Boaz’s.
“I have come to restore order, predictability, preciseness.”
“Nothing here is predictable any more,” Yaqob said, and stepped into the light. “Since you have taken over as Master of the Site, all is chaos. Excellency.”
Boaz looked Yaqob up and down, measuring his potential for trouble. “You are but a glassworker, uneducated in the ways of the mind. I shall forgive your interruption.”
Oh Yaqob, I prayed, and screwed my eyes shut for a heartbeat, keep your temper!
“You do not know that in apparent randomness there is pattern and predictability,” Boaz continued. “That in chaos there is law rigidly applied. You cannot see it, thus for you it does not exist. Now,” he dismissed Yaqob and turned away, “I have heard certain rumours during my time here. Rumours I first laughed at, but which now have come to irritate me.”
He walked further around the shop, inspecting some of the racks of glass. “That is why I am here. I wish to lay these rumours, if rumours they be, to rest.”
He turned back to stare at us all, his eyes searching out each of ours, all bantering and lightness gone from his manner. I trembled as his gaze passed over me, hesitated, then passed on.
“Some say that there are those on this site who still practise the Elemental arts. I would call this silliness, except that, perhaps, it is true. I had thought that we had managed to educate the lower castes away from their Elemental foolishness generations ago. And yet…”
He moved closer to me. I tensed, but he casually perched on the edge of the table at which my father and I sat, his back to us.
“I remember,” he said very softly into the complete silence, “that glassworkers were ever more susceptible to the lure of the Elemental arts than others. I remember hearing that they lost themselves in the swirling colours of the molten glass, and opened themselves to the evil voices of spirits that should have been long dead and forgotten. I remember hearing how som
e glassworkers claimed they could hear glass speak, and spoke back to it. Silliness, of course.”
The glass continued to chat to and fro about us, and I was glad that Boaz could no longer see my face.
“But I will have none of this on my site!” His voice now cut into each and every one of us. “None! If I find anyone, anyone, practising Elemental magic, I will have them killed as they stand. Do you understand me?”
“We understand, Excellency!” we muttered, almost as one.
“See that you do,” Boaz said, then stood up. He walked across to the outer door and I dared let out my breath in relief.
“Oh,” Boaz said as he reached the door. He turned about. “Tirzah, stand up, if you please.”
My heart thudded so painfully I thought it would tear itself from my breast.
“Stand up!”
I stood.
“Tirzah. You will come to my quarters tonight. A guard will escort you from your tenement building. See that you wash first.”
And he turned to go.
“No,” I said.
I couldn’t believe I’d said that.
“Did you understand me?” His voice was very soft, his face completely expressionless as he faced me again.
“I do not want to –”
I screamed, wrapped in such pain that I could not believe I could live through it.
There was a noise to one side – later I would find out it was Zeldon wrapping his arms about Yaqob to prevent him attacking Boaz.
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes!” I sobbed. “Yes! I understand you!”
The pain vanished, and I slumped into my father’s arms.
I knew that night would be the worst of my life.
13
YAQOB seized me in his arms and carried me up the stairs. “Isphet, Zeldon, Orteas, Yassar. Upstairs.”
I sat in his lap and sobbed, not caring what I’d just promised Boaz. “I can’t go! Yaqob, I won’t!”
“Shush, love, shush. I –”
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