Glasswrights' Master

by Mindy L. Klasky

  She emerged on a narrow balcony overlooking the refectory. She could see the full room beneath her, the mingling crowd. She recognized masters and journeymen and apprentices.

  She barely managed to stop herself as the balustrade caught across her waist. She was so startled by the stonework that her hands opened. The grozing iron clattered on the ground below her, followed by the duller thud of the lead stripping.

  The sound drew the attention of all the guildsmen in the hall. Every face turned to look at the tools; every eye turned to the balcony, to Rani.

  Blood pounded in her ears. Her lungs burned in her chest, ached with her panicked flight. Her skin stank with sweat, rank with pungent terror.

  She tried to step away from the balcony, tried to escape, but she was pinned there, drawn forward by the haunted faces below.

  And then, as one, every glasswright lifted his hands. Every glasswright pointed toward the balcony, toward Rani, toward the traitor who had destroyed the guild.

  Rani choked in horror as she saw those hands, as she made out the bleeding stumps where skilled thumbs once had been attached. Blood dripped from every glasswright–thick, crimson rivers that flowed to the floor, that covered the tile.

  The room began to fill with blood, and the glasswrights’ robes were stained. Rani cried out for them to lower their hands, to stop their wounds.

  No one moved, though. No one spoke. They only stared at her in silent condemnation, watching as their lives drained from their hands, again, and again, and impossibly again.

  The smallest of the apprentices drowned in the blood, and still it flowed. The journeymen and masters gurgled wordless curses as they died. The tide rose, higher and higher, and Rani’s toes were stained. Her feet were soaked. Her legs, her knees, her waist, her chest.

  She turned her face upwards and closed her eyes. The blood washed across her lips. Her eyelids glowed with its warmth, its pulsing scarlet light. She took a last deep breath and held it, waiting for the end. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.…

  “Dammit, boy! I told you to lash her hands to the saddle!” A rough hand reached out and grabbed her, pulling her upright.

  “I didn’t think she could slip,” whined a young voice. Younger than the guild’s apprentices. Younger than the children who had drowned in her misdeeds.

  Rani took a deep breath, startled by the feel of cool air around her. Her eyes fluttered, but she squinted them closed almost immediately, blinded by brilliant sunlight. Sunlight, through her eyelids. That was what she had seen. Not blood. Not the retribution of hundreds of glasswrights.

  Swallowing, she found that her jaw ached. Pain spidered down her neck, radiated across the back of her skull. She tried to push it back, tried to tame it with the power of her thoughts, but she could not order herself to stand against its force.

  The Thousand. They should be there for her. They should help her.

  She struggled to think of the gods, to think a name that could help her. One single syllable. One single word.

  Mair.

  No. Mair was not a god. Mair was a Touched woman who hated her. Mair was an enemy who thought that Rani had killed her son. Mair would not help her now, would not assist Rani in any way.

  Rani could count on no one but herself. Herself and the gods who were too distant through her crimson haze of pain.

  She fought to raise her fingers to her jaw, to measure the extent of her injury. She could not lift her hands, though. They were so heavy, so awkward. She thought about the strangeness of the weight, tried to figure out what kept her from moving.

  Of course! she finally realized. Her wrists were bound together. The boy–whoever he was–might not have lashed her to her saddle, but she was still bound tight enough that escape was impossible.

  As the horse jogged on, she gradually remembered that she did not want to get away. She swallowed hard and tried to concentrate, tried to remember past the hideous ache in her face. She did not want to escape. She had wanted the Fellowship to come to Kella’s cottage. She had wanted to confront them one last time, wanted to attend one final meeting.

  Once more, she braced herself against the pain of swallowing, and she forced herself to take stock of her surroundings. She was on a horse, traveling at a bone-jarring trot. Her jaw pulsed with every step, and a tendril of queasiness explored her throat. She pushed back the nausea, not permitting herself to imagine the level of resulting pain if she failed to master her body.

  Back to measuring up her world.… There was earth underfoot, hard-packed earth. She could smell pine needles. A stiff wind rustled tree branches. The sun was warm on her face; the road must cut a wide swath through the forest.

  “Stop pretending. We know that you’re awake.”

  Crestman.

  Rani’s heart clenched in panic, even as she squelched her pity. She had created the twisted man inside Kella’s cottage. She had broken a fine soldier, changed him into a bitter, hateful killing engine.

  But he could not mean to kill her. Not now. If he had intended her death, he could have finished the job, left her to starve on Kella’s cottage floor, even stabbed her, let her life pour onto the witch’s hearth. She was safe here. At least for a while.

  She forced her eyes open.

  He seemed older than she remembered, older than he had appeared in the Briantan alley when he had offered her a soulless bargain. Then, she could still remember the tormented boy he had been, the child soldier who had been pushed beyond his reason by cruel circumstances.

  Now, lines of bitterness had etched his face into something entirely new. No child remained in his body, not even a memory of the boy he once had been. She tested his name in her mind before she said it, making sure that the two syllables would stay level. “Crestman.” She spoke despite the agony that shot across her jaw.

  “Rani.” He matched her, sound for sound. No warmth. No recognition of the past that they had shared. His ice was dangerous. A man could kill if his heart was frozen.

  She tried to make her voice sound young, like the sixteen-year-old girl he had met in the Amanthian forest. “Untie me.”

  His laughter was a harsh bark. He once had loved a puppy. He once had killed the pet.

  She steeled herself for the argument she needed to make. Again, she thought to reach out to the Thousand, to find comfort in their strength, but they muttered around her, undefined, indeterminate. Perhaps it was the blow to her jaw, perhaps it was the hunger that raged in her belly, the thirst that swelled her tongue. The gods were beyond her reach for now.

  She was alone, and making the most important bargain of her life. She must let Crestman believe that he was making the decisions, that he was directing the trade. He must believe that he was forcing her to yield, that she was giving in with only the greatest reluctance. He must never know that she had gone to Kella’s cottage willingly. He must never know that she had decided to end her game with the Fellowship, that she was orchestrating this final confrontation.

  “Crestman.” She forced herself to swallow and then to enunciate past the throbbing pain. “Crestman, where are you taking me?”

  He answered too quickly, as if he had long ago anticipated the question. She knew the tone of guilt, even if it was coated with snide superiority. “You can’t tell? You, the honored glasswright? You, the expert in all patterns?”

  She choked back an angry retort, settling for the easier course of a single word. “Where?”

  “When you were in the Little Army, you learned that much fieldcraft at least.”

  The Little Army were nothing more than slaves, she wanted to say. Children, who were sold into lives of desperate service. She swallowed her anger and glanced at the lowering sun to her left. Had she slept an entire day, jolted on this horse? No wonder she was so dazed. Dazed and hungry and thirsty. She made herself speak. “North, then.” Crestman said nothing. “Morenia?”

  Before he could answer, another horseman edged beside him. A thick-chested bay stallion tossed his head, as if to protest a
restrained pace. Rani glanced at the new rider, and the ache in her jaw grew sharper, even as she reminded herself of her plan. “Dartulamino.”

  “Ranita.” The priest’s eyes narrowed as he looked at her. She recognized the expression of a predator; she knew that he was merely calculating how best her death could serve him. She had never trusted the man, not when he served the old Holy Father, not when he first revealed himself to be a key player in the Fellowship. She had never trusted him, but she would use him now. Use him to redeem herself, to redeem her past.

  “What are you doing with me?” she forced herself to ask defiantly. Her jaw tolerated the angry question better than she had feared. “Where are you taking me?”

  “You’ll know soon enough. You never were one to resign yourself to those in power, Ranita.” The Holy Father laughed. “You should have learned your lesson by now. Mind your caste.”

  Mind your caste. She hated the words, hated the lesson that she had mastered as a frightened glasswrights’ apprentice. The phrase had served her well enough when her world was simple, when she could navigate right and wrong by remembering the teachings of her merchant youth, the core of her trading family.

  Nothing was so simple any more, though. Nothing was simple when the Fellowship perverted all castes, when the secret organization twisted the meaning of nobility and soldierly service, of trade and craft.

  Mind your caste.

  Rani had tried that, and she had lost friends, lost those she loved. She’d be cursed a thousand times before she lost herself in the Fellowship’s simple platitudes again.

  For now, though, she must remember the tricky game she played. She must make Dartulamino think that she dreaded a return to Moren, that she feared being taken before the Fellowship more than anything else she had faced. “Please, Holy Father. Whatever you do, don’t take me to the Fellowship. I know their power. I know what they can do. Hal and I, we came to Sarmonia to escape the Fellowship. We yield. We concede the Fellowship’s power.”

  The priest cast a quick glance at Crestman. “I’ve always thought this one had more fight in her.”

  Rani let some of the ache from her jaw siphon tears into her words. “I did, once. That was before Laranifarso died. Before I failed my guild test.”

  The words were acid on her tongue, sharper even than Plad’s vinegar had been. She sensed the gods grow nearer, stirred by her recollection of betrayal in holy Brianta. She could reach for them now. She could stretch out to the Thousand and draw in all their power.… She could–

  “Failed your test.” The priest threw back his head, his thin lips pressed into a mirthless smile. “I must say that I took personal pleasure in that, Ranita Glasswright.” He sneered her guildish name. “Time and time again you thought to thwart the Fellowship, but you’ve never truly understood the extent of our power. You’ve never truly believed all that we can do.”

  She tried to still her hatred, tried to keep from spitting out her reply. She failed. “What? What can you do? Your Fellowship is rotten to the core, Dartulamino!”

  The priest’s sallow cheeks shook as he pulled up on his stallion’s reins. “Enough!” Dartulamino’s voice snapped louder than any whip, and his horse hopped forward a few steps. “Silence her, Crestman. Dose her, or I’ll see that she does not speak again.” Dartulamino spurred his horse and pounded down the road before them.

  Rani’s heart was thundering. She should have curbed her anger. She should have held her tongue. After all that she had suffered, all that she had done, to come so close to losing, so close to speaking out her plan.…

  As Crestman watched the priest ride off, Rani could see a spark of resentment in his eyes, a flicker of loathing across his scarred face. It was there for only a moment, and then Crestman raised his good hand, signaling two of the other riders. “Take her down.”

  Before Rani was prepared, the men had lifted her from her horse. She could not quite figure how they cleared her feet from her stirrups, how they caught her horse’s reins. She was cowed between them, breathlessly aware of their grim height, their stolid bodies. Each took hold of an arm, forcing her to look directly at Crestman as he limped to stand before her.

  The glass vial in his hand was familiar. Rani had held its twin months ago; she had taken it from Crestman in the alleys of Brianta. Then, the vial had held poison.

  Panic surged inside her. How closely was Crestman leashed to Dartulamino? Would his own quest for revenge be tamed by the priest for now? Her entire body longed to fight for freedom. Her mind screamed that she should twist away from her captors, struggle to reach the shadowy margins of the forest.

  No. This was the only way that she could get to her enemy’s heart. This was the only way that she could strike a deadly blow.

  Crestman used his good hand on her clenched teeth, but she gave way almost immediately, desperate to save her bruised jaw from further abuse. Still, he was harsher than he needed to be. He poured the liquid quickly, nearly drowning her with the burning stuff.

  Kella might have known what she drank. The herb witch might have been able to identify the compounds that made up the stinging liquid. She might have explained the brewing process, the stirring, the fermenting.

  But Rani did not care. She only knew that Crestman’s drink scalded. It singed her lungs, enflamed her heart. It ate away at her belly, kindling her torso, her arms, her legs, her fingers, her toes. She tried to speak past the fire, tried to speak past the flame, but she could do nothing.

  The smallest corner of her mind remained aware that she was lifted back onto her horse. It knew that they rode late into the night, that she finally slept upon the ground, staked out like a beast of burden beneath the night sky.

  It knew that someone came to her while she slept, a woman, lithe and silent. It recognized the danger of a knife against her throat, the flash of yet another weapon. It heard the whispered oath, and then the soft brogue. “Not yet. It inna yet yer time.”

  That spark of awareness knew when Crestman came to her in the morning, when he poured more poison down her throat. It felt him lean close to her, felt him brush back a sweat-darkened lock of hair from her face. It heard the whisper of his voice as he leaned closer, as he formed words so soft that she might have dreamed them.

  “I would have had it otherwise, Ranita. I would have saved you from the Fellowship. I only ever wanted to serve you, but you would not have me. You sold me out in Liantine. I wanted once to save you, but now I know that you will die.”

  And Rani could only listen and hope and try to remember that she had fought for this. She had fought for one last chance to see the Fellowship.

  Chapter 13

  Hal rolled over on the feather mattress, flinging an arm across his face to shelter his eyes from a piercing beam of light. His head pounded as if it were a military drum, and he tried to raise enough spit in his mouth to rid himself of the foul taste that coated his tongue. “Leave me alone,” he groaned, and the words sliced through his skull.

  For several blessed heartbeats, that was all that he could remember, that he had ordered everyone to leave, to let him rest in peace. Forcing one eye open, he looked across the strange room. Had he thrown that flagon at the door? A waste of fine wine, that.

  Hamid’s Electors, Hal remembered fuzzily. They had shown him to this room. But how had he gotten to Riadelle?

  Hal took a deep breath to still the pounding in his head. He could recall standing in his tent, in the center of the Great Clearing. He had been talking with Farso, trying as ever to cheer the man, to restore him to the carefree youth he once had been. He had wished that he could find a way to remind Farso that an entire kingdom needed the knight, that Hal needed him.

  And then, all in a blink, Hal remembered what had happened. The full force rushed in on him, punching his belly and forcing the breath from his lungs. He was blind; he was deaf; he was struck mute by what he remembered.

  And somehow, he managed to groan. Old Thait must have laughed himself silly, beyond the Heaven
ly Gates. The god of irony had always enjoyed a vicious sense of humor, but had he ever been so cruel? Had he ever worked such ruin on a man?

  Pushing through the fog that filled his skull where his brain should be, Hal could recall the soldiers who had stormed into his tent, the captain who had fallen before him, prostrate even before he delivered his report. Hal could see the bound and gagged herb witch, the old woman shoved to her knees in front of him. There had been a single endless moment when he had known what his man was going to say, when all of the blood had drained from his face.

  And then the words. The terrible words.

  Mareka. Dead. Marekanoran. Dead.

  Hal had forgotten himself entirely. He had thrown himself at the herb witch. He pummeled her bruised face, kicked her, scrambled for a weapon, anything to inflict one thousandth of the pain that split his heart. Only Farso had dared to stop him, had dared to restrain him and order the woman taken away.

  Farso had held him as he bellowed out his rage, as he tore at his clothes, his face, at anything that would yield to his blind, desperate fury.

  He had been so cursed foolish! He had thought that he protected his wife, that he protected his only son and heir! He had thought that he kept them safe, hidden in the forest. He had believed that they would be more secure in their hiding place than with him in the Great Clearing, that they might yet avoid the Fellowship that surely knew where to find him.

  What a fool he had been. Tarn could seek out people anywhere. The Heavenly Gates groaned open when people least expected. There was nothing Hal could do to stave off death, nothing he could do to protect his innocent family. The Fellowship had targeted him, and he was cursed, cursed, cursed.

  At last, Farso had said that he must compose himself. He must ride into Riadelle, demand an audience with the king. Hal must extract his due immediately, before anyone had a chance to whisper rumors, lies. Kella Herb Witch, a vassal of King Hamid, had murdered Morenia’s queen and only heir, and Hal must demand compensation. He must demand an army, so that he could fight the Fellowship, once and for all.