The Glass Swallow

by Julia Golding

  ‘I need help go home, not job.’

  The clerk turned to the white-haired senior official, an incredulous smile on his lips. ‘Sir, she doesn’t think she needs a job. She thinks we hand out free tickets to return people to their homes.’

  The man did not crack a smile. ‘Everyone works in Rolvint,’ he said, not even bothering to look up at her. ‘There are no free rides: you earn them. Sit down, girl, or I’ll have you thrown out of the city.’

  Rain quickly returned to her seat, scared of finding herself back on the bandit-infested roads again. More people joined the queue below Rain and by nightfall she was near the front. Afraid she would lose her place if she went in search of a privy or a drink of water, she tried to ignore her body’s needs.

  The cook exited with a blue stick, a smile back on her drawn face.

  ‘Next!’ called the senior official. He looked up. ‘Oh yes, the foreigner who doesn’t want to work. Do you speak Magharnan?’

  ‘A little,’ admitted Rain standing before the desk.

  He tutted. ‘Not enough I warrant to hold down a proper job. What is your profession?’

  ‘I came with my betrothed. We are glassmakers. We came here with Ambassador Lintir but Jettan killed. On road.’

  The official was not interested in her story. He had rules to apply and was not going to budge from following them even by a foreign presence in the system. ‘Where is your man?’

  ‘I think … I think he is dead too. With ambassador.’ She wanted to say so much more—about the commission, the contract, her need to return home, but could not find the words.

  He tutted again, making it sound as if this were her fault. ‘He was a glassmaker; so what are you? You look very young. How old?’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘Ah, that’s better. You do not break the law by not having a profession then. Until you reach eighteen, it is thought reasonable to be unassigned.’ He scanned a list. ‘We have a space in the retraining facility for servants.’

  ‘I want to be with glassmakers. My betrothed had a contract—’

  He cut her off. ‘But that died with him. Ambassador Lintir’s grieving family will not want to be disturbed at this time and our glassmakers will doubtless be pleased to find the commission will now come to them.’

  The third clerk snorted. ‘Jobs for Magharnans, not outsiders, as it should be. You won’t find a welcome there, lass.’

  ‘We do not need another glassmaker—too many of them,’ said the senior official coldly. ‘Yellow, do you think, gentlemen?’ He looked to his colleagues. ‘Strictly speaking, seeing that she is foreign, we have no reason to assist her, but the Master would want us to show charity.’

  The junior clerk reached for a pile of sticks in front of him. ‘Yes, she’s too young to be made an outlaw and not skilled enough for a blue employment permit: it’ll have to be yellow.’

  He held out the stick for Rain to take.

  ‘What do I do with this?’ she asked, realizing with a hollow feeling that this was all the help they were going to give her.

  ‘Take it to the matron at the House of the Indigent on Harrow Street. Move along.’

  Rain found herself on the pavement outside the office. Stupid men, stupid system: why would no one listen to her? All she needed was help to get home. She’d pay them back eventually. But it appeared that the Magharnans were just not interested in solutions outside their normal methods. She looked down at the yellow stick: she was left with only one option if she wanted shelter.

  After a bewildering time asking directions from curious bystanders, Rain found the right door on Harrow Street and knocked. It opened a crack.

  ‘Too late: we don’t take anyone after sunset.’ A hand pointed to a large sign on the wall that listed the rules of the house.

  Rain held out the yellow stick to the unseen gatekeeper. ‘I was told to come here. They gave me this.’

  ‘Come back tomorrow.’ The door snapped shut.

  Rain couldn’t believe it: after waiting for hours, she wasn’t going to be let in and it was already dark. Rolvint had to be the most unfriendly city ever! She wondered briefly if she should try and find the falcon man. He’d mentioned that he lived somewhere called the graveyard district—but she did not relish the idea of going to a cemetery now. It sounded scary. But then, sleeping rough in a strange city was frightening too.

  She had no choice. Not being able to speak the language was a handicap: she couldn’t explain herself, didn’t know whom to trust, had no understanding of how the city worked. All she could do was find a safe corner and bed down, hoping that the House of the Indigent would let her in at dawn.

  The streets were nearly deserted when she turned to seek a place for the night. The district looked poor, home to the lowest workers in the city with one-roomed houses and badly maintained streets. The smell was foul: rubbish lay in piles on any patch of unclaimed land. Rats flitted among the scraps, discouraging her from lingering. She walked on into an area of larger houses, their richer inhabitants signalled by the ornamentation around the doors and windows. She found a darkened house that had a deep porch with a pillar to hide behind. She crammed herself into the small space and wrapped her arms around her knees. Nervous, she could not sleep, but spent the hours listening to every sound: the voices in a neighbouring house, a drunken man singing on his way home, the wind in the tree that shaded the street corner. She was freezing: Rolvint had a harsher climate than Tigral; summers hotter, winters colder. The night felt damp and chill. Unable to stop her shivers, she hunched miserably in her haven, praying that no one would spot her and turf her out. In the small hours, sleep finally claimed her.

  She awoke next morning when a bucket of water was upended over her head.

  ‘Get off my doorstep!’ screeched a servant, shaking her fist at the vagrant. ‘Now I’ll have to scrub it clean before my master can go outside.’

  Gulping with shock, Rain scrambled to her feet, the yellow stick still clutched in her fist.

  ‘Get lost! Scat!’ yelled the woman, prodding her with a broom as if she was a dangerous beast she feared to touch.

  Rain wiped the water from her eyes, still disorientated by this rude awakening. The servant took a step back.

  ‘You’re a fey?’ the woman asked, clutching at her throat in fright.

  Rain did not understand the question but knew it was well past time to leave.

  ‘Sorry, fey lady,’ the servant whispered, circling her breast. ‘Please, do not make the milk go sour because I threw water at you. I always leave a dish out for your folk and follow the old customs.’

  Rain shook her head, annoyed by her inability to follow what people were saying to her.

  The woman dashed inside, muttering to herself. With a sigh, Rain started off back towards the House of the Indigent only to hear a voice calling behind her.

  ‘A moment, fey lady.’

  She turned. The servant thrust a round of bread in her hand. ‘Here, take this. It’s fresh. Don’t punish my house for my thoughtless actions, please!’

  Rain’s stomach grumbled: she’d not eaten since before the bandit attack. ‘Thank you.’

  The servant’s generosity lifted her spirits a little. Rain still felt tired, but with a drink from a street corner fountain, she was ready to meet the new day. Until she had sorted out a way home, she would see what the Magharnan system could do for her. At least it didn’t appear that she would starve. And there had to be a way for her to earn enough for the passage to Tigral; she just had to find it.

  The door to the House of the Indigent stood open this morning. Rain passed over her yellow stick and was admitted with no more delays. It was a stern-looking building, stone whitewashed, grass clipped, even the shrubs were teased into regimented geometric shapes. A grumpy girl in a grey dress and apron showed her the way to the office where yet another queue waited. Resigned now to Rolvint bureaucracy, Rain joined the end of the line.

  ‘Name?’ asked the matron behind the desk, loo
king over a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles at Rain.

  Rain gave her replies as she had the day before.

  ‘In my house, you must always say “thank the Master” every time you answer a question as from now on you owe everything to him.’

  Rain resisted a comment on the absurdity of such a practice, guessing it would get her expelled from the room quicker than a slippery eel through a fisherman’s fingers.

  ‘I will try to remember, mistress.’

  The woman sat back for a moment, considering her latest charge. ‘Your appearance is odd. What did you do to your hair?’

  ‘It is not strange where I come from,’ Rain explained patiently, then remembered to add ‘thank the Master’.

  The woman was singularly unimpressed to hear Rain was a foreigner, seeing that fact only as a problem for her institution.

  ‘You’ll have to keep your hair covered. Your employers won’t like it. What with your eyes, the superstitious will be afraid of you and that won’t do. Keep them lowered at all times.’ The matron ran her finger down a list in front of her. ‘I have a training position available in the kitchens that feed the builders working on the summer palace. Basic duties: cleaning, carrying water. You’ll report to the cook each morning at seven and return here for curfew at seven in the evening.’

  ‘What is the pay?’ asked Rain, thinking of the cost of her journey home.

  The woman snorted. ‘Pay? You are being given food and shelter by the Master’s generosity—that is your pay.’

  ‘Is there any way of earning money?’ Rain persisted.

  ‘Not till you are qualified.’

  Rain didn’t know that word. ‘Qualified?’

  ‘It takes three years for a cook. By the time you are eighteen, you can hope for a small salary. Until then, you are reliant on us.’

  There was clearly no point in arguing; she would have to look for another solution to her dilemma of getting home. Rain thanked the woman. ‘When do I start?’

  ‘Today. We have no idle hands in the House of Indigent. I will send someone with you to show you the way. First, you should change into our uniform. You cannot go around Rolvint dressed like a jettana. You are one of the lowest classes—not as low as a scavenger, of course, but still, you should not insult your betters by aping their ways.’

  ‘I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you just said.’

  The woman rolled her eyes, having no patience with a foreigner and assuming Rain was slow-witted. ‘Change your clothes then work: is that clear enough?’

  Rain nodded. ‘Yes, as clear as plain glass.’

  The matron raised an imperious brow.

  ‘Thank the Master,’ added Rain reluctantly.

  Shard 6

  Crow Black

  Over the cold months that followed, Peri often wondered what had happened to the little foreigner he had prematurely abandoned at the bath house. His enquiries via his father came to nothing. None of the glassmaker families knew of a girl from Holt; there was no discussion among the jettan class of the visitor. Peri had assumed that, as Rain was the first person from her country to visit the capital since the Holtish embassy the previous year, she would be treated as special. She should have been made a guest of one of the ambassador’s relatives, seeing that it had been Lintir who had brought her to Rolvint, but no one had heard anything. It was as if she had dropped off the face of the earth.

  ‘Perhaps she was a fey like you first thought,’ suggested Helgis one day when he caught his brother scanning the crowds outside the city gate waiting for market day to begin. Carters queued, arriving in heavily armed convoys to bring goods from the countryside. A huddle of fishmen stood to one side, baskets of fresh catch adding a tang to the air. Spring had just arrived in Magharna, and the roadsides were lush with new growth. Sunshine glinted on the distant rooftops of the palaces by the river, highlighting their delicate artistry, melting the last of the icicles dripping from the eaves. ‘I think she clicked her fingers and disappeared in a puff of smoke, back to join her folk.’

  People gave the two scavengers plenty of space as they walked with their birds on their arm through the archway. They were off to deal with the return of the crow problem up at the summer palace.

  ‘If she could have done that, she’d have used her power on Krital, believe me,’ said Peri drily. ‘No, she’s flesh and blood—just a little different.’

  ‘Why do you keep on worrying about her?’

  ‘I suppose I feel responsible. I can’t let it go until I know she’s all right.’

  Helgis scratched his nose. ‘I bet she’s spent the winter dining off gold plates and sleeping between silk sheets somewhere up in the jettan district.’

  ‘I hope so, but why then is there no word of her?’

  Helgis shrugged. ‘Perhaps Pa doesn’t know the right people to ask? Maybe she’d gone home already. I would if I were her. There’s nothing here for her now.’

  They reached the building site to find the bondsman, Mikel, on the gates.

  ‘Blooming waste of time,’ he grumbled, opening the doors for them. ‘Unless you can get rid of every crow in Magharna, what’s the point?’

  ‘A very philosophical question, Mikel. And good morning to you too,’ smiled Peri.

  ‘Who’s the sprout?’

  ‘My brother, Helgis.’

  ‘You as stubborn as him, sprout?’

  ‘Worse,’ replied Helgis cheerfully.

  ‘Master save us,’ exclaimed Mikel with mock-horror. ‘All right, the pair of you, get to it. If you can spare an old man a moment or two, come have breakfast with me when your birdies need resting.’

  ‘Birdies! You hear that, Goldie?’ Helgis stroked her feathers lovingly.

  ‘They’re no more scavengers than blinking chickens, if you ask me.’ Mikel eyed the sparrowhawk with respect. ‘Hens eat grubs, don’t they?’

  Helgis nodded at this undeniable fact.

  ‘So why are these birdies of yours shunned just because they eat bigger prey? I never understood that. And don’t get me started on cats. We need more than the ones licensed to the cat men. The whole blooming city is overrun with mice and rats thanks to that stupid rule.’

  ‘I thought you said not to get you started,’ commented Peri.

  ‘None of your cheek, falcon man.’ Mikel waved them on. ‘Get to work, you pair of lazy so-and-sos.’

  The crow hunt went well with both Fletch and Goldie working the site. They bagged three and scared away the rest before an hour had passed. Job done for the moment, Peri and Helgis sought Mikel out in his cabin by the gate. He had tea already brewing and a batch of fresh buns waiting. He poured them each a mug and then lifted the lid on the kettle.

  ‘Need some more water if we’re going to have a refill.’ He picked up an old pan and stood at the door beating it with a wooden spoon.

  Helgis raised his eyebrows at Peri. ‘What’s he doing?’

  Peri smiled. ‘No idea. Mikel is a law unto himself.’

  ‘Must be if he eats with scavengers.’

  Mikel threw the pan on the floor with a clank. ‘Here she comes,’ he said with satisfaction.

  ‘Who?’ asked Helgis.

  ‘My little water-carrier. One of the scullery maids from the kitchen.’

  Peri glanced out of the door to see a girl in a grey uniform and white scarf staggering over the uneven ground with a yoke over her shoulders. She didn’t look big enough to carry the two large buckets but she managed somehow, head bent to the ground.

  ‘How’s my lovely today?’ called Mikel cheerfully, using a much kinder tone than was his custom. He went halfway to meet her and plucked the yoke from her back.

  Peri couldn’t hear any more of the exchange so returned his attention to his breakfast.

  Mikel entered, hauling one of the buckets. ‘Mind if I ask her in for a bite to eat? They don’t give them much where she’s from.’

  ‘As long as she doesn’t object to us.’

  ‘Oh no, my little fri
end isn’t bothered by all that.’ Mikel waved his gnarled hand in a gesture that took in the whole of Rolvint. ‘She’s not from round here.’

  Dipping back outside, Mikel returned, followed by a reluctant water-carrier. She kept behind him shyly.

  ‘You mustn’t mind my guests,’ Mikel said gruffly, propelling her forward. ‘They won’t bite. Can’t say the same for their birds but they’re all hooded and shut up tight in them baskets.’

  At the mention of birds, the girl’s eyes flew to Peri’s face.

  ‘You!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Rain!’ Peri got up from his seat and took a step back, feeling as if her gaze had punched him.

  ‘This her then?’ asked Helgis, both intrigued and delighted to meet the girl he had heard so much about. He approached the stranger and flicked his hand in front of her face, making Rain flinch. ‘You’re right: she can see with those blue peepers of hers.’

  ‘Leave her alone, sprout.’ Mikel dragged him back by the jacket. ‘She gets easily spooked, don’t you, lovey?’

  Rain was still staring at Peri.

  Mikel assessed the pair of them. ‘Met before have you?’

  ‘Yes, on the day I arrived,’ Rain replied softly, adding, ‘thank the Master.’

  Mikel clicked his tongue dismissively. ‘You know better than that: none of that House of Indigent claptrap round me. You’ve little to thank the Master for if you ask me, working you to an early grave, he is.’

  ‘But I get punished if I forget.’

  ‘We won’t tell, will we, lads?’

  Helgis shook his head.

  ‘No. Thought is free as far as I’m concerned,’ said Peri. He was pleased to hear that her Magharnan was much more fluent now, her words coming easily.

  Mikel scratched his head as he looked from Peri to Rain, running in his mind the conversations they had had previously. ‘Don’t tell me, Rain, that he was the idiot who dumped you at the gates?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I thought I liked you, falcon man,’ Mikel said stiffly, ‘but I can’t believe you left her high and dry. What were you thinking, pig-brain?’

  ‘That the city would look after her?’ Peri offered, though he knew it made for a lame excuse.