Glasswrights' Master

by Mindy L. Klasky

  The nobleman bowed like the courtier he’d trained to be, and he whispered the door closed. Hal turned back to his wife and son. “I must leave, then.”

  “Aye.”

  “You’ll be safe enough. Once I can get Hamid alone, I’ll explain to him, tell him why we’re here, tell him about you.”

  “Say nothing about me for now. Marekanoran and I, we’re safer with no one knowing that we’re here.”

  “No one but the herb witches, you mean?” The question was more bitter than he intended, and anger sparked immediately in Mareka’s eyes. “No,” he said quickly. “No need to explain. No need to justify. I’ll see what Hamid knows. I’ll only tell him if I must.”

  “He might be a member of your Fellowship.”

  Hal’s jaw tightened involuntarily. “Aye, he might, at that.”

  “I won’t trust that lot with our son.”

  Hal thought of the grieving man who waited for him outside the door, of the child that Farso had lost to the Fellowship’s machinations. “Neither will I, my lady.”

  “Go safely, then. May Arn watch over you.”

  Courage, she bade him. She knew him well, for all that they had started as strangers to each other, four years before in Liantine. “Be well,” he said. “I’ll come to see you when I may. May Nome protect you.”

  He wanted to take his son again, wanted to hold that tiny body one last time. He knew the child would fuss, though, would start to wail again. If danger did walk the woods that night, silence was Marekanoran’s greatest ally. Hal settled for leaning toward his wife, for brushing a kiss in the air above her head. He forced himself to meet her eyes, to register the strange mixture of her pity and sorrow and raging frustrated helplessness. “Be well,” he repeated, and then he ducked outside.

  He waited until they were back to the twinned oaks before he spoke to Farso. “How did you know that I was here?”

  “I followed you.” The answer was stated simply, as if it were the most natural of replies in the world. “Tonight, and the other times that you’ve visited.”

  “I told the guard that I’d be back.”

  “And if you’d taken this long just to relieve yourself, the guard would do us all a favor by setting a knife in your back. Rid Morenia of a king well aged before his time.” Hal cast a quick glance at his former squire, who gave a toothy grin as if his words were jokes. There was a wildness about his expression, though, a gleam in his eyes that reminded Hal of a warhorse crazed on the edge of battle. The old Farso would never have jested about murdering a king, would never have imagined the words, much less spoken them aloud.

  “Who else knows that my lady is there?”

  “No one,” Farso said quickly. “No one knows of her or … her companion.” Even as the man swallowed the baby’s name, Hal saw rage tighten a muscle in his cheek. Farso had not forgiven the animals who had executed his son. His fury burned hotter now than when he first had learned the bitter news; the passing months had only served to teach him the full weight of his loss. The nobleman must have felt Hal’s eyes upon his face, for he stopped his crashing progress along the path and faced his liege lord full on. “No one knows of them, and they’ll not find out from me. I swear that on the memory of Laranifarso.”

  There were no more binding words in Farso’s vocabulary. Hal sighed. Time enough, after the immediate crisis, to learn when Farso had first followed him through the woods. First things first. “Tell me, then. How many of Hamid’s men have found us?”

  “Our outer guard reported in and said there were a dozen of them. They seem to be riding standard patrol through the woods. We don’t think they were looking for us in particular.”

  Hal’s heart sank, though. “They’ll have gathered up the others, by now. My men will be paying for my absence.”

  “Give them more credit than that, my lord.” Farso’s teeth flashed in the moonlight. “When we first learned that the soldiers approached, we scattered. Hamid’s men will have to track each of us separately through the woods; they might not even start until daylight. You and I will be brought in with the others, as if we’d been in the camp when the warning came.”

  “A good plan, Farso. Yours?”

  “No, my lord. Rani Trader’s.” Farso tossed his head to the side, his silvered hair glinting. “You know that I can make no plans. I am crazed by my grief, after all, scarcely able to serve my liege lord.”

  Hal tumbled over a half dozen responses, all the time thinking of his son’s weight in his arms, of the overwhelming emotion that had welled up in him as he looked inside the babe’s eyes. How had Farso borne it? How had he stood learning that his child had been sacrificed on the Fellowship’s unholy altar?

  “Let us join the pack, then, Farso. Let us face King Hamid and explain that we are worthy trespassers in his forest. And then we’ll start to build the road back to Moren.”

  “To Moren,” Farso repeated. “And to the bloody death of every one of her enemies.” The nobleman licked his lips in the moonlight, savoring his vow like a wolf lapping up a lamb’s fresh blood.

  Chapter 4

  Rani Trader shifted her weight from her right foot to her left, trying to shrug her shoulders into a more comfortable position. The soldiers who had lashed her hands behind her back had been grimly professional, and the ropes had had plenty of time to cut into the flesh at her wrists. That stinging was only compounded by the burning of over-stretched muscles at her shoulders.

  Nevertheless, she told herself to forget her discomfort and focus on the room around her. Located at the center of the city of Riadelle, King Hamid’s receiving hall was a vast cavern, long and low, with few windows to relieve the gloom. Rani had walked the length of it, trying to keep her face impassive. She refused to be impressed by the throne room of a southern monarch. She refused to be overwhelmed by a gathering of his retainers.

  Apparently, this was the day when King Hamid held court–there were numerous noblemen scattered about the hall, swathed in fine robes of satin and velvet. There were others present as well, a group of merchants by the look of them, a handful of farmers, and a clutch of guildsmen whispering heatedly in a knot at the edge of the room.

  At least the great hall was cool in the heat of the mid-day sun. That might have been what King Hamid’s ancestors had counted on when they constructed the cavernous chamber. The walls were obviously thick; the late summer heat was banished to the sunny outdoors. The weather would already be autumn cool back in Morenia. Rani shook her head, wishing that she could rub at the crust of sweat-salt on her brow.

  The motion let her get a good glimpse of her fellow prisoners. Mair stood beside her, also cruelly lashed. The woman had fought like a wild beast when the soldiers pulled her arms back; she had struck out with her fists and landed a few solid kicks. Rani knew that Mair’s desperation was centered on her square of black silk; if the cloth were taken from her line of sight she would go mad. Mercifully, one of the soldiers came to understand Mair’s obsession; he slipped the ragged square into her belt and was ribbed by his fellows for taming the northern she-beast.

  The other Morenians had submitted more gently; they knew that they had violated the law by prowling in the forest, and they trusted to their liege lord to make all right. Hal had been one of the last men rounded up. Rani wondered how he had managed to get so far from the camp, whether he had thought to elude the Sarmonians altogether, or if he had some other plan. He acted strangely once he was brought back to his men, and he refused to meet her eyes. Farso was no help; he had clearly been brought in with Hal, but he remained silent as he looked out at his captors, merely running his tongue over his lips like a great panting dog.

  Very well, Rani thought, glancing about King Hamid’s chamber. First things first. Tally up the resources. Like any good merchant, she set about calculating the goods she had at her disposal.

  First, Halaravilli was a king; he could argue that he was present as an ambassador from Morenia, and that he should be accorded all the perquisites
of that position.

  Second, the men with him were nobles, and they had not actually hunted stag or swan while they camped in the woods. They had not technically violated the Sarmonian laws.

  Third.… Rani stretched her mind around the facts, struggling to name a third advantage. There was nothing she could think of, nothing more that she could offer up to argue for mercy and kindness from the Sarmonian court.

  Rani swallowed a sigh. Well, perhaps Hal had a plan where she had none. Perhaps he had calculated some other escape. That might be the meaning of his strange silence, his apparent refusal to step forward and demand Hamid’s appearance, demand like a king to present his cause to a peer.

  Any further speculation was cut short by a flurry of activity at the far end of the hall. A pair of young pages entered the room, resplendent in royal blue tunics trimmed in gold. Behind them came an honor guard of a dozen soldiers, men clearly chosen for their size and strength. In fact, the guards looked as if they might all be brothers, so similar was their coloring, their stance, their grim pomp.

  A clutch of noblemen followed the guards, five men wearing robes encrusted with jewels. Rani saw that two of them wore their coats of arms quartered with the king’s stag; they were married into the royal house then. All of the arms were charged with a strange device, a scroll overlaid with a swan’s plume.

  Another page entered the audience hall before Rani could parse the meaning, a child carrying a pillow larger than his head. On the cushion rested a crown, an ornate circlet of gilded leaves and entwined golden branches that glinted balefully across the room. A second page carried a similar pillow, but his burden was a lead-framed glass orb.

  Under other circumstances, Rani might have wondered about the globe. She might have questioned its provenance and the workmanship that had gone into its construction. She might have studied the lines of lead, learned from their placement, calculated how to better them. Now, though, the blatant statement of worldly power merely annoyed Rani. She wanted to see the man who possessed such a treasure, the man who had kept the Morenians waiting like common prisoners.

  And she was not disappointed. King Hamid of Sarmonia ended the procession, sweeping into the room with the confidence of a man who knows he owns a kingdom. He was younger than she expected–perhaps only ten years older than Hal. Tall and lean, he was so slender that Rani sensed a master seamstress’s hand at work in his robes, garments that conspired to make him appear majestic. His short hair was jet black with only a whisper of grey at his temples, and he had groomed his sable beard into a cruel point. His mustache was perfectly trimmed to accent his lips; his stark cheekbones were sharp as a hawk’s wings. His eyes squinted at the assembled crowd as if he were taking the measure of all those present.

  Rani nodded to herself. She knew men like King Hamid, men who were accustomed to bargaining for what they wanted, negotiating for all that they desired. She had bested such men in the past, in the Morenian marketplace, in the world of royal politics. She could do so again.

  The youngest page stepped forward and announced to the crowd: “All bow before King Hamid, elected ruler of Sarmonia! Let those who have business before him seek His Majesty’s counsel, and may all the Thousand Gods watch over the happenings here today.”

  Elected ruler of Sarmonia… Rani had heard rumors of this kingdom’s strange customs, of how the nobles all gathered together and selected a man to rule over them for the duration of his life, unless the nobility demanded another vote. How could a kingdom function with such instability? How could it survive the passage from one king to another without knowing who the heir might be?

  Even as she questioned the strange Sarmonian custom, a niggling thought tickled Rani’s mind. Hal might have been a stronger king if he had not needed to secure his dynasty with a son. He could have devoted his attention to his kingdom, to its needs, rather than struggling to quiet the outcries against Mareka, to the voices that demanded he set his childless queen aside. Perhaps the Sarmonians were not as odd as Rani had first imagined.…

  She had no further chance to speculate, for King Hamid ascended to the platform at the end of the room. He took his throne with a flourish, spreading his robes so that they framed him, adding to the impression of his bulk. Once again, Rani was struck by a man who understood how to work with the resources that he had, how to structure positive results from apparent shortcomings.

  “At ease, electors, honored lords, my guests,” King Hamid said. His voice was higher than Rani had expected, a sweet tenor that floated across the room with a musical lilt. He did not back up his cushioned command with any physical threat, and yet Rani could imagine his tone turning razor sharp, leveling against his assembled nobles, against those who sued in his court. “We understand that there is a matter to be dealt with before our petty court today, a matter of intruders in the northern forest.”

  “Aye, Your Majesty.” The leader of the guards who had surrounded the Morenians stepped forward and bowed to his king, touching his forehead to his knee in his apparent eagerness to flatter.

  “And you are?”

  “Baliman, Your Majesty. Baliman of the northern watch, and a landed man.”

  Rani watched King Hamid acknowledge the name; he seemed to sit a little straighter at the final claim. A landed man? What difference could that make?

  “Very well, good Baliman. Tell me what you have found.”

  “These intruders were encamped in the northern forest, in an unnamed clearing just east of the Oaken Trail. They cleared a fire circle in the center of the grass, and they built shelters. We found evidence that they were fishing in your streams, Your Majesty, and that they scavenged in the forest.”

  “And did you find that they hunted?”

  “Not for stag, Your Majesty.”

  “And did they disturb the lakes?”

  “Not that we could tell, Your Majesty. We found no evidence of swans in their midst–not feather nor egg nor bone of any sort.”

  King Hamid nodded slowly. Surely he was not surprised by the accusations; his advisors must have given him the main facts before he ever entered the audience chamber. Rani’s impatience began to boil inside her; she wanted to set things straight, to finish with this play-acting. Nevertheless, she saw the pointed look that Hal flashed to Puladarati, the clear instruction for the lesser noble to step forward and speak. Very well, then. The duke was to serve as Morenian ambassador. Rani fought back to silence, reminding herself that Puladarati had served Hal for decades, served as a nobleman should.

  King Hamid addressed his comments to the group at large. “What do you have to say for yourselves? Were you roaming in the northern forest?”

  Puladarati stepped forward, inclining his head in a salute that stayed a mere hairs-breadth on the side of politeness. His words were frosty, as if he resented being challenged before Hamid’s court. “We entered the forest, and we camped there, my lord. But we were not roaming, not if you mean wreaking havoc along the woodland paths. Not if you mean causing any harm to your people or your kingdom.”

  If King Hamid were surprised by the leonine councillor’s tone, he managed to disguise that emotion. “Nevertheless, you did light a fire in the woods.”

  “A carefully tended cooking fire, only so large as we needed to prepare our food.”

  “A fire,” King Hamid repeated, leaning forward slightly.

  “A fire,” Puladarati conceded.

  “And you made shelters from the trees in the woods.”

  “Only from deadfall, my lord. We did not cut down a single branch.”

  “You used the wood in our forest?”

  “Yes, my lord.” Puladarati appeared disconcerted to make a second admission. King Hamid’s soldiers were unsettled as well; they moved closer to the prisoners, and they placed their hands ostentatiously on their weapons. As if the Morenians needed further warnings, Rani thought. Their own weapons had been taken from them when they were rounded up in the forest. Besides, every northern man present was bound as tigh
tly as Rani, tighter for those who had offered resistance to their captors.

  How could Hal fail to make a statement? How could he submit to whatever King Hamid was going to say?

  The southern king continued. “I see little reason to continue this charade. You have violated the King’s Peace in the northern forest. You have strayed from the path. You have built fires in the forest. You have used wood to build shelters. The penalty is clear. From this day forward–”

  “If I might be permitted to speak, Your Majesty.”

  King Hamid seemed surprised by the interruption. Rani realized, though, that he was not as astonished as a northern king would be; he somehow expected his retainers to have the right to stop him in mid-sentence.

  Some of his retainers, at least. The man who stepped forward was not one of the Sarmonian electors, not one of the jewel-encrusted men who had entered before the king. He was not one of the noblemen, honoring his lord’s court day, not one of the suitors, intent on bringing his own case before his king.

  He was Tovin Player.

  Rani thought that her heart had forgotten how to beat. It froze within her chest, stopped its mundane pulse as if a hand had clenched around it. Then, it remembered its mission with all the vigor of a soldier awakened on the day of battle, squeezing so painfully that she thought she would cry out.

  Tovin Player, who had fled Morenia nearly ten months before.… Tovin Player, who had nearly refused to speak with her before his departure. Tovin Player, who had blamed her for his own decision, who had insisted that she was the one who had driven him away, who had forced him to abandon peace and prosperity in Moren.…

  Tovin Player, who had loved her once, and whom she had loved.

  King Hamid turned to the player with a practiced look of patience. “Player, you have no standing in this court. You are neither an elector nor a landed man.”