The Glass Swallow

by Julia Golding

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  © Julia Golding 2010

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  First published 2010

  First published in this eBook edition 2011.

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  ISBN: 978-0-19-275754-8

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  For Lucy

  Shard 1

  Iron Grey

  Caught out in the storm, Rain ran for home, fleeing the barrage of droplets hammering rings in the dirty puddles. Her normal route down Smith Alley had become a quagmire.

  ‘Blast all weather-sayers,’ she muttered, hovering on the edge of the muddy walkway, wondering if she could make it across. If she did, it would be at the expense of her new stockings and leather boots. She should have taken no notice of the local weather-woman who had promised a fine day.

  Thunder crackled, urging caution. Deciding to wait out the worst under an overhanging roof, Rain retreated to huddle against the wall, sheltering her basket from the downpour. Shivering a little in the chill breeze, she pulled her shawl around her head and closed her eyes, listening to the raindrops hitting the roof above.

  A cart rumbled past, the owner huddled under an improvised cloak of canvas, his grizzled face staring determinedly out from under the peak of his hood.

  ‘Want a lift, little mistress?’ the old man called.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Rain answered, giving him a smile. ‘I’ll wait it out here in the dry.’

  ‘Suit yourself. Spearthrower weather this,’ he grumbled as he clicked the horse into movement again.

  ‘Yes, it’s cruel enough.’

  ‘Good day to you.’

  ‘Good day.’

  The cart jolted away, dousing the walls of the alley with dirty water, the backwash slopping on Rain’s skirt, wetting the navy-blue swallows she had embroidered on the hem. She grimaced, cursing herself softly for not jumping out of the way in time. The wagon turned the corner and she was alone again. From the look of the skies, it seemed likely she might be trapped here for a while yet. Rain seized the chance to dream, letting her thoughts trickle back to the past like the water running away down the gutter.

  According to her father, she had begun life in such a storm. Born on the first day of March in the third year of the reign of King Ramil and Queen Taoshira, she emerged into the grey morning of the world. As the midwife cut the cord, the heavens opened, rain pouring from the eaves over the bedroom window like a waterfall. The flowering vine that clambered up the brickwork and peeked into the room stirred and twitched under the onslaught, orange trumpet petals bobbing a fanfare. Flushed red with outrage, the newborn mewed and protested as she took her first unwilling breath, fists waving blindly. Her mother, roused by the cry, lifted her head from the pillow and reached out to take the child.

  ‘Little Rain,’ Sunbeam murmured, snuggling the baby to her breast, choosing a name suiting the moment of birth, as was the custom in the families belonging to the glassmakers’ guild.

  Torrent took his wife’s hand in his scarred fist, smoothing his fingers over her palm. He caressed her with the same light touch he used for his finished masterpieces as they cooled after exposure to the furnace. Torrent and Sunbeam had waited so long for their family and he could hardly believe it had finally happened.

  ‘She’s a miracle, Sunbeam,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Perfect. And she’ll be the first of many, you’ll see. She’ll have brothers and sisters to play with. She’ll never be alone.’

  But he was wrong. There were to be no more children. Before the year was out, fever swept the land and Sunbeam Glassmaker was among those who died, leaving Torrent with a baby to tend and a business to manage.

  ‘You must marry again, for the child’s sake,’ his neighbours advised the silent man as he toiled over his workbench, rolling, spinning, and blowing the molten gather, twisting it with pincers into anguished shapes.

  Rain’s father merely shook his head and returned to creating droplet-shaped bubbles, the only tears he allowed himself to shed. As he finished each one, he suspended it over his daughter’s cradle. He carried on until the ceiling in her bedroom was covered with them. When the setting sun shone obliquely through the window, the teardrops caught the light, scattering rainbows across her room. Finally, his grieving at the furnace done, he sat beside Rain’s cot and admired the effect.

  ‘I’ll fetch you the moon and stars, Rain,’ he crooned to the baby. ‘But for now, here’s your mother’s sunbeams. You and I must carry on.’

  As she had grown, the teardrop bedroom had stayed with Rain, a sanctuary in her busy home. It had become the place where she dreamed and made her plans. Now she had reached fifteen, and her father had risen to the head of his craft, his workshop on the outskirts of Tigral a place of pilgrimage for those who wished to collect the finest glassware. There was rarely a quiet moment. Young men fought to become his apprentices; he could have filled his house three times over with pupils had the guild rules allowed. Rain thought the five who lodged there at the moment were more than enough, their voices loud in the kitchen, boots clattering on the stairs at all hours.

  And feeding them required many trips to and fro from the market, even when the weather was like this. Rain wriggled her toes in her damp boots, amused by her ability to blame the apprentices for everything.

  The clouds were beginning to break up, the intensity of the storm fading. Despite the damp, cold conditions, Rain felt strangely content, set apart by the weather which was keeping others indoors. She so rarely got any peace at home. Orders for her father’s products had flooded in ever since Torrent developed an expertise in the making of stained-glass windows; all acknowledged him as the leading exponent of the art. To walk into a room lit by a Torrent window was to step inside a miracle, they said, and Rain agreed. Little wonder that the Queen herself had chosen him to make the stained glass for the temple being built in the palace complex.

  Rain shaded her eyes to look over the rooftops of Tigral to the throne roo
m at the summit of the hill, the new temple just beyond. The tempest had tarnished the gold pavilions and stripped the fruit trees of their leaves—yet another gloomy day after weeks of rain. It had truly been a dismal harvest and without the wise government of Prime Minister Melletin the land would have been facing a winter of starvation. As it was, though the city would avoid real suffering, everyone would be expected to tighten their belts and obey the rationing laws. Commissions such as the Queen’s were hard to come by in these difficult days. Hopefully, the job should see the forge through the bad times until conditions improved. Rain knew they would do better than many others and was grateful for the Queen’s generosity, as the monarch funded public works out of her private purse.

  Slowly, the rain eased off and weak sunshine filtered through the iron-grey clouds. Seizing her chance, Rain edged her way down the alley, jumping from doorstep to doorstep to avoid the worst of the filthy water. Raising her woollen skirt and cotton petticoat above her shins out of the wet earned her a whistle from Mil Blackfire, one of the smith’s boys.

  ‘Want to come and dry off by our fire, Mistress Rain?’ he called. ‘I’ve a nice spot for you just here.’ He patted his knee as he lounged against the anvil.

  ‘Save it for Cora!’ Rain replied, rolling her eyes at his antics. Mil was courting her friend—and half the girls in the district if rumours were to be believed. ‘She won’t be pleased to hear you’ve been inviting me in.’

  Mil gave her a cocky smile. ‘We could keep it just between us two. Come on, Rain, you’re half drowned.’

  Rain leapt to the next step with a flounce. ‘Give over, Mil. Not now, not ever. Anyway, I don’t believe in having that kind of secret from my friend.’

  As his attempts at flirtation were pure habit rather than seriously meant, Mil gave up with a good-humoured laugh. Soon the regular chink of hammer on metal broadcast that he’d returned to his work.

  But the exchange reminded Rain that she did have one secret—one that risked her whole world if it came out.

  ‘Rain, my love! Are you soaked?’ Her father had been anxiously waiting for her return. He strode out of the workshop, a big man with capable hands and a curly thatch of grey-streaked hair, face craggy with lines. Whisking the basket from her grip, he smoothly steered her to the furnace. Work paused as the apprentices stopped to watch the pair.

  Her father tutted. ‘Look at you: you’re like a cat that’s taken a tumble down the well.’ He brushed her straggling locks off her forehead and kissed her brow. He smiled into her blue eyes. He often told her that he counted himself fortunate to be able to look into a patch of summer sky each time he saw them.

  Used to his fussing over her, Rain submitted to him peeling off her wet shawl to hang in a warm spot so it could return from muddy pink to its normal rose colour.

  ‘I took shelter for a while,’ she told him, dragging her fingers through her wet hair in the absence of a comb. She twisted it up out of the way and fastened it in place with a pearl-headed pin. ‘Smith Alley has turned into a swamp.’

  ‘Aye, the blacksmiths’ guild said they were going to see to the drainage but they never do what they promise. Sit down, sit down. Nettle, fetch Mistress Rain some tea.’

  The youngest apprentice, a lean youth, all bony knees and elbows, hurried off to the kitchen.

  ‘I’m not that wet.’

  ‘Love, you’re dripping on the floor.’

  She scuffed at the puddle she was making with the toe of her grimy boot, making her swallow hem dance. ‘But I got the beef. Last bit to be had in Tigral.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll all be grateful for that come suppertime, but for now I just want to get my girl dry.’

  Nettle came back with a steaming cup. ‘Here you are, Mistress Rain: you get that down you and you’ll feel better.’

  She smiled up at the young man, who was only a year or two older than her and the sweetest of the current crop of apprentices. ‘Thank you, Master Nettle.’

  He blushed and stammered something incomprehensible as he backed away.

  Torrent nudged his daughter. ‘Stop it,’ he whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Smiling at him. The poor boy’s in love with you—half of them are, you know. He’s quite handy until you come along and then he’s all fingers and thumbs. I can’t do anything with them when you’re in the workshop. I’m thinking of banning you from being in here, least when the fires are lit.’

  Rain laughed. But was it true? She glanced round at the apprentices, trying not to make it too obvious that she was studying them. They had returned to their tasks but every so often they would sneak a look at their master and his daughter. A number of tools clattered to the floor as a plague of clumsiness swept over them.

  ‘They don’t fancy me—they just fancy the idea of marrying the master’s only child,’ she hissed back, well aware of the realities of life in a guild craft.

  Torrent didn’t laugh as she expected. Indeed, her comment made him a little glum—a strange mood for her usually cheerful father. Something must have happened to upset him. He knelt at her feet to ease off her boots, his tough leather apron reluctantly folding in the middle.

  ‘That might be so, love, but it doesn’t stop you being the prettiest glassmaker’s daughter in Tigral.’

  She prodded him in the stomach with her foot. ‘I’m almost the only glassmaker’s daughter, Papa, in case you’ve forgotten. You wouldn’t count Master Blizzard’s Ember because she’s only three.’

  ‘I’d forgotten that little mite. Well then, you’re the second prettiest—’

  He didn’t finish because Rain had jabbed him harder as punishment for his teasing.

  ‘Where’s your respect for an old man?’ he gasped, threatening to tickle the sole of her foot.

  ‘Show me an old man, and I’ll respect him,’ she replied smartly. ‘You’re still in your prime, Papa.’

  He shook his head sadly, releasing her foot and standing up. ‘Not so, love.’ He tousled her damp hair. ‘When you’ve finished your tea, I’ve left something in your room for you to see.’

  He didn’t say any more—didn’t need to.

  She took a sip and nodded. ‘All right, Papa. I’ll go up immediately.’

  The glass teardrops tinkled gently in the breeze through the open window. Rain rubbed her hair dry and quickly changed into a gown, a fine woollen weave the colour of a red sunset. She laced it up at the sides as she took a seat at the desk to unroll the scroll her father had left there. This was their secret. While her father, the master glassblower, provided the skill to colour the glass to the exact shade required and solder them in their lead frame, it was his daughter who had the vision to create the designs that had proved so successful. It was fortunate that the guild had never got wind of this fact. As a bastion of old-fashioned ideas, withstanding as many of the reforms introduced by King Ramil as they could, the guild-masters did not allow women to practise the art of glassmaking. Despite his recognized gifts, her father would be thrown out of the guild, forbidden to work in Tigral, if anyone outside the family discovered their secret. But to work together was important to both of them; they made a perfect team, the creativity of one prompting the other to new heights of achievement, something the guild failed even to consider possible.

  Yet, thought Rain, taking note of the suggested alterations to her original design, she had allowed herself a little rebellious gesture against the guild rules. Inspired by Queen Taoshira’s custom of taking a creature to represent an individual’s personality, Rain included her own sign, that of the swallow, in every window. A raindrop would have been too clear a statement, so she had chosen the bird that returned each year to Tigral around her birthday as her signature. If you looked carefully, the forked tail and curved wings wove their way into each Torrent creation, either as the bird itself, or more commonly, in the repeated shapes in foliage and sky. The guild-masters were praising her work without knowing it.

  The parchment crackled as she weighted it fla
t with some smooth stones. In this design for the temple, the swallow sailed above the child-goddess’s head, her playmate in a spring field. Happily, the Queen had found no fault with it, but had requested a dragonfly to be added, hovering over the pool at the child’s feet. Rain picked up her charcoal and began to sketch the new element, already seeing the colours in her mind, turquoise blue and black, a fine web for the wings in specially blown glass that would trap the bubbles to represent the mesh.

  An hour later, her father knocked discreetly on her door.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Of course.’ Rain sat back from her work, pleased with herself. ‘What do you think?’ Absent-mindedly, she toyed with her necklace of silver-glass teardrops her father had crafted for her.

  Torrent bent over, his hand resting on the curls that scattered down his daughter’s back. Now dry, her hair had returned to its mahogany colour, a deep reddish brown that shone like polished wood.

  ‘Magnificent.’

  ‘Yes, I’m pleased with it. Can you make the glass for the dragonfly wings as I’ve suggested?’

  He scratched his chin. ‘With a little experimentation.’

  ‘You’ll enjoy the challenge.’

  ‘You know me well, love.’ He let his hand linger on her shoulder. ‘You’re my world, you know that, Raindrop, don’t you?’

  Alerted by his sombre tone, Rain turned her head to look up at him. He was staring out of the window, the setting sun bronzing his face with golden light.

  ‘What’s the matter, Papa? You’ve been acting strangely ever since I came home.’

  ‘I’ve asked your cousins to come to supper tonight.’

  Rain wrinkled her nose. ‘Shadow and Timber? I can see why you’re feeling gloomy.’ Neither of them relished the company of the two young relatives, both aggressive businessmen making a name for themselves in the guild as glass traders. Torrent had only used their services because they were family. All they talked about was the price of raw materials, the strength of the market in Kandar and Gerfal, or the evil of import duties; they had no creative soul or appreciation of the beauty of the goods they handled. If you made a joke in Shadow’s presence, it was five minutes before he got the punchline and his laughter was creaky and dutiful. Timber was quicker-witted, but he only laughed when someone else was the target of the jest.