Glasswrights' Apprentice

by Mindy L. Klasky

  Rani clutched at her pouch, her meager hoard of treasures. “What do you want from me?”

  “I’m just a poor soldier, girl. I can’t be paying bribes for you. What have you got in the sack?”

  Reluctantly, Rani had to admit his claim was reasonable - he was only a soldier. Sighing, she dug into the pouch, pulling out first one indigo glove, then the other.

  “These’ll fetch a fair price. They were worked for a noble family.”

  Garadolo inspected the gloves in the glimmer of the lamp Rani had trimmed so carefully, and he seemed pleased with what he saw. “They should do the trick. What do you say we eat now?”

  “How can you eat, when you need to steal from me for a messenger?”

  “Your messenger is out of the ordinary, girl. Eating is what soldiers do, every day and every night. Come along.”

  Rani was hungry enough that she dropped the fight. Reflexively, she set herself to remembering the twists and turns as he dragged her along, and she managed to snare at least one of the passwords as they passed a bristling checkpoint. Soon, she found herself in the soldiers’ mess hall, eating stew out of a hollowed loaf of bread. She washed down the chunks of meat with ale, doing her best to ignore the fact that she had to share her tankard with her keeper.

  Garadolo was intent on letting everyone know that Rani was his companion for the evening. He settled a heavy paw on her shoulder as often as he thought he could get away with it, and more than once, he decried the appetite of his little tiger. The grizzled men leered at their companion, and Rani wished that she could sit on the far side of the room, where the men were quieter, more sedate, even though many of them also sported female companions.

  When one of Garadolo’s peers indulged in a particularly graphic speculation, Rani was spared the need to respond by the wholly unexpected arrival of Dalarati and Shar. The handsome young soldier looked about the room and seemed about to join his quiet, orderly brethren at the far side of the chamber. His eyes caught on Rani, though, and he darted a quick look of ill-disguised disgust toward Garadolo.

  Dalarati grimaced and leaned down to whisper something in Shar’s ear. The Touched girl started to protest, but Dalarati set the palm of one hand against her cheek in a soothing, fleeting caress. Nevertheless, Shar dragged her feet as Dalarati crossed the room to Rani’s side. Obviously, Dalarati and Shar were accustomed to sitting on the far side of the room.

  “Evening, Rai,” was all the soldier said as he straddled a bench. Shar took her place beside him, apparently forgetting her momentary displeasure as her young man fed her snippets of meat from his trencher. Dalarati held his tankard to her lips for her to sip delicately at his ale. Rani felt a rat of jealousy burrow into the hollow space behind her heart, even as she was grateful for their companionship.

  The meal began to break up as the soldiers with consorts headed toward the door. Rani delayed as long as she could, engaging a thoroughly uninterested Shar in a discussion of raids in the Nobles’ Quarter. Shar humored her new friend, even pretending not to notice the occasional lapses in Rani’s adopted accent. Nevertheless, the other girl leaned against Dalarati, steadying herself by looping suggestive fingers through his belt.

  Dalarati could not ignore such attention for long, and he turned an open grin on Shar. “Ready to return home, are we? Fine enough - we’ve an hour before the night watch calls.” Amid the chorus of good-natured suggestions of pastimes, Dalarati managed to gain his feet, conducting his clinging companion to the door. The sharp night air, though, apparently reminded him that Shar’s shawl remained at the soldiers’ table.

  Rani handed the garment to the handsome guard, contriving to let her fingers brush against his. “Thank you for joining us,” she managed, swallowing hard against the pounding of her heart.

  “The pleasure was mine, my lady.” He delivered a mock bow, using the motion to dig into the small pouch at his waist. “Buy an almond bun in the morning and think of Shar and me.” Rani caught the coin and stifled a gasp, and then the dashing soldier was gone.

  Garadolo decided to leave shortly thereafter, and when they entered his quarters, Rani immediately took her belongings to her corner. Garadolo began to laugh harshly, and Rani had to raise her voice to be heard. “You’ll be seeing Bardo tomorrow, won’t you?”

  The soldier swallowed a curse, but his ardor was clearly quenched. “Aye, little tiger. I’ll see you delivered tomorrow. You have my word on that.”

  Garadolo’s word was worth as little as his soldierly oath to defend the poor and the weak.

  Rani waited eagerly through the next day, too excited to think about eating, about cleaning, about any details of daily life. She reminded herself that her indigo gloves had been well-spent if they brought her brother to her. She tried to order her thoughts, to think of the questions she would ask Bardo. She wanted to know why she had seen the snakes in so many places, how the mark was connected to Tuvashanoran’s murder. She wanted to ask Bardo why he had not sought her out, how he could have let their merchant shop be burned to the ground, let their family meet with unspeakable horrors in the king’s dungeons. She wanted to know how he could be mixed up with the Brotherhood when she heard such terrible tales about them, when she had witnessed the destruction that they had created in the cathedral yard.

  Bardo had always had answers before, and Rani longed to hear his deep voice, serious and slow as he explained it all to her. She longed for the comfort of his wisdom, even as she consciously set aside memories of his rage. After all, it was her brother she sought, not some crazed, tattooed rebel, not some murderous vigilante who had enforced justice among Touched thieves. There must have been some mistake. Bardo would set all right. He would explain away the horror. He had to.

  Despite Rani’s hopes and prayers, Garadolo showed up alone at the end of the next day. He told Rani that he had sold her gloves and used the money to bribe the first of the Brotherhood’s petty officials. That bribe had secured him an interview with another protector tomorrow, but he must be prepared with another bribe. The soldier paused eloquently, clearly waiting for Rani to pay her way.

  She hesitated for a long minute before extracting Dalarati’s coin from her pouch. The silver meant more than breakfast - it had been a gift from the handsome soldier. Garadolo tested the metal between his rotten teeth and nodded his approval before squirreling it away in the filthy folds of his clothing.

  And so each day took on a pattern. Every morning, Rani waited restlessly, straightening the tiny room, cleaning surfaces that were long-since shining. Every afternoon, she sat on the doorstep, certain that Bardo was going to round the corner at any instant. Every evening, Garadolo returned home with a new excuse, a new explanation of how he had progressed in his attempts to reach the Brotherhood. Every night, they returned to the mess hall, and Rani ate her fill of the soldiers’ food, despairing that she would ever see her brother.

  She became creative in finding bribe money for Garadolo. Often, she cleaned other soldiers’ quarters, earning a few coppers from the fighting men’s kept women. Once, she slipped past the checkpoints, back into the City streets. Too proud to consider begging, she managed to pick a stranger’s pockets, earning a handful of silver for her trouble. A handful of silver, balanced by the weight of her soul - she considered the trade a fair one when she thought of Bardo. Another day, she ducked into a soldier’s unattended doss, digging in his possessions for anything of value. Garadolo did not ask her where the silver belt buckle came from when she handed it over, and she dared not volunteer the information.

  As the days dragged on and Rani became more skilled at theft, the thought crossed her mind that Garadolo might be lying. She went so far as to threaten to leave one night, gathering up her meager belongings and opening the door to their tiny room. The soldier bellowed in rage and dragged her back inside, and when he forced her down beside the lantern, she could see his skin was pasty, and sweat poured off him in the cool night. “You can’t leave! Not after you’ve had me approach the Br
otherhood.”

  “You’re not holding up your end of the bargain,” Rani shot back at him. “I’ve given you more trinkets in a week than I’ve traded in the rest of my life, and you’ve returned the favor with nothing!”

  “I’m working up the ladder,” he muttered for the thousandth time. “I don’t know how to prove to you.…”

  “What sort of Brotherhood closes its doors against one of its own?”

  “You don’t know this Brotherhood, girl. You only think you know your Bardo. He’s high and mighty in his tower, protected by the longest field, lying behind the deepest moat, surrounded by the highest wall, with more arrow loops than stars in the sky.”

  “Have you told them who I am? Does he know his sister is the one who seeks him?”

  “I’ve told everyone who’ll listen to me. Don’t you think I want you gone?”

  While Rani did not trust Garadolo as far as she could kick him, she did believe he would rather have a cooperative bed-warmer than her own constant argument. Nevertheless, as she fell asleep that night, listening to the Pilgrims’ Bell measuring its doleful welcome across the City, she vowed she would follow the soldier in the morning. She would trail him to his contact with the Brotherhood, and she would see Bardo before the bell tolled the next night.

  Chapter 10

  “Halt and speak the password!”

  The voice hissed from the shadows, and Rani jumped, barely remembering to pull Farna’s cloak close about her. She almost missed Garadolo’s response as she craned her neck, tilting her head to catch the soldier’s words above her pounding heart.

  “Tarn keep me from the Heavenly Gates,” muttered the soldier, and his invocation of the god of death sent shivers down Rani’s spine. The words proved acceptable to the watchman, and Rani squinted as Garadolo slip past the checkpoint.

  The night was cold here near the City walls, and Rani needed to snatch breaths through her cloak, trying not to betray her presence with a fog on the midnight air. She had spent an uneventful day tracking Garadolo, but he had cut short their dinner with the announcement that he was going to meet with Bardo that night, come Cot or the midnight watch. Rani had promised to wait in the soldiers’ quarters as she handed over part of her most recently stolen bribe - a hoard of silver coins that she had … borrowed … only the day before. Hopefully, she would be long gone before the captain of the guard realized that someone had found his treasure trove.

  The theft made Rani nervous - she had been hired to clean the captain’s quarters, and she would be the most likely suspect when the soldier discovered his loss. She had become enough of a fixture in the Soldiers Quarter that any of the girls who consorted with the guards would know to find her in Garadolo’s lair. Her sense of exposure was only heightened by her knowledge that she had not given Garadolo all of the coins; she had kept the lion’s share of the incriminating evidence herself, the better to plead her case with Bardo’s protectors when she succeeded in meeting them.

  Whatever the cost, she reminded herself, she must see Bardo. She must learn the truth behind the snake tattoo. She must solve the mystery of Tuvashanoran’s murderer, who still stalked the City by day and by night. She’d been running long enough, cold and scared and hungry and homeless. Rani longed to be through with her charade, to return to the simple days before she had ever heard of the Brotherhood.

  Even now, she looked back to her life as an apprentice with blinding fondness. She’d been so lucky then, so privileged that her most difficult task had been scrubbing a white-washed table. Her life had been good before Tuvashanoran’s murder, and her heart pounded at the thought that she might now find her way back to that simpler time.

  And so, Rani found herself crouching in a doorway in the City’s darkest sector. Garadolo had unwittingly led her through the City’s meanest streets, tracing a path through slumbering quarters that scarcely cared whether a soldier passed, or an apprentice, or a Touched child. By contrast, there had been murderous caution in the voice that demanded a password, and Rani trembled as she debated how she could best maneuver her way past the sentry, to the Brotherhood and Bardo.

  “Step smart, little rat, or I’ll carve you to the bone here and now.” The voice hissed out of the darkness, and Rani could not entirely smother her yelp of surprise. Focusing on the sentry ahead in the mist, she had not heard anyone glide up behind her. A sharp blade pricked the nape of her neck, and she dared not move as she struggled to formulate a response.

  “Tarn keep me from the Heavenly Gates,” she squeaked, even as she thought a more comforting prayer in her own mind.

  “So, the rat has sharp ears. The better for paring, eh?” The knife-point edged her forward, and she took three reluctant steps, trying to ignore the scarcely-mastered trembling that made her knees ache. Before she could reach the checkpoint where Garadolo had passed the guard, a heavy black cloth fell over her eyes, and a blindfold was pulled tight none too gently. One stray fold cut across the bridge of her nose, and the dusty bond urged her to sneeze. The cold metal kissing her neck convinced her to stifle the impulse. “Go ahead, you spying rat. Walk forward.”

  The hissed command left her no choice, and Rani moved as steadily as she could. The darkness was disorienting, and she tried to test each step before planting her foot. Her captor did not give her time for exploration, though, and Rani feared that she would find her way into a deep earthen grave at any second. The knife brooked no dissent, and she commanded herself to focus on her surroundings, to learn what she could above her lungs’ panting and the itch about her eyes.

  The cobblestones under her boots gave way to smooth flagstones, lessening the likelihood that she would turn an ankle in her blind exploration. Even as she sighed with relief, she realized that she had passed through an entryway. The door was low and narrow, and the lintel brushed against her hood, so close that Rani wondered if her captor would have warned her before she dashed her brains out. She scarcely had time for further indignant speculation as rough hands forced her to turn sideways, to inch forward one half-step at a time as she tried to preserve her balance in the narrowest of corridors. Stone walls snagged at her cloak, and the loose ends of her blindfold caught once, leaving her a tiny slit to view her surroundings.

  She could make out the torchlit walls to either side - crumbling brick that leaned close above her. The passage wound about itself, writhing like a serpent. The soft bricks were broken by many jagged cracks, and crusty stains remained where water had seeped into the structure. No building could contain a passage so long - Rani realized she must be moving inside the City walls. Unbidden, Rani remembered Mair talking about the Brotherhood, recalled the Touched girl’s statement that the Brotherhood kept out of the City streets, clear of the City’s four quarters.

  Rani continued through a passage impossibly narrower than the tight corridors she had worked through so far, emerging at last into a broad chamber. Without warning, her captor hit the back of her legs with some stout object, and she plummeted to her knees. The brick floor was hard, and her teeth rattled in her skull, but she scarcely had time to protest as the man ripped away her blindfold.

  Torches flickered in the low room, and Rani could just make out the warren of hallways that scurried away to her right and left. Mosaics tiled the walls, eerie patterns that made her cringe. Only after she saw the same shapes reproduced on the floor did she realize what the lines represented: four serpents twined about themselves. Eight eyes glared at her from the cardinal points of the room, bloody patches on the writhing wall mirrored by crimson pools on the floor.

  Rani squirmed beneath the malevolent gaze, jumping as Garadolo spluttered from across the room, “I didn’t know that she followed me here! How could I know she would track me? I told her to stay in the barracks - I ordered her to stay away!”

  “You fool!”

  Rani squinted, trying to make out the owner of the slurred voice that hissed from the shadows on the opposite side of the snake chamber. Garadolo appeared to know the speaker; the s
oldier fell to his knees, bobbing his head in submission. “Begging your pardon, lord. I didn’t mean to expose the Brotherhood to harm. I didn’t mean to endanger you, lord.”

  “Idiot!” There was something familiar about the hissed rage, and a fading memory leaped in Rani’s mind. She craned her neck to get a better look at the speaker, but was curbed by the prick of metal at the base of her skull. She settled for listening to the nightmare anger. “You cursed soldier - you don’t even know what the Brotherhood stands for! I’m not your lord, you miserable excuse for a doorstop. I’m your brother.”

  “Aye,” Garadolo bobbed, even as he visibly fought the urge to tug at a forelock. “I know that, l- , brother. You’re my brother, but wiser and shrewder than I -”

  “Quit your babbling!” The interrogator moved into the light, and Rani saw why his voice was familiar. Larindolian, the nobleman who had met Instructor Morada in the decaying hut, nudged her with his toe. “And you! How did you find your way here?”

  “Begging your pardon,” Rani bobbed her head, but purposely neglected to add a title to her salute. If the man did not want to be called a lord, who was she to gainsay him? Rani gestured toward Garadolo, who cast daggers with his eyes. “I understood that this soldier was coming to meet with you this evening, and I worried that he might forget the gift I gave him to carry on my behalf. I thought it best to bring my full offering directly.”

  Rani produced a knotted rag from the pouch at her waist, trying to ignore the pressure of the suspicious captor’s knife at her neck, trying to forget that the man before her had betrayed Instructor Morada to her death. Rani focused instead on moving her hands smoothly, steadily, doing nothing to threaten the knife-wielding sentry. She had tied the rag tightly about her treasure, and she could not pluck loose the knots; she was forced to raise the cloth to her teeth. She tasted salt on her tongue, and tried to forget that her own blood would flow with a similar tang if Larindolian chose not to accept her offering.