Glasswrights' Apprentice Page 23

  Rani’s cry of greeting was swallowed by the assembled pilgrims’ response to Shanoranvilli’s proclamation. A thousand voices cried out, “Hail, First Pilgrim!”

  No one heard Rani answer with two simple syllables. “Bardo!”

  Silhouetted against the noon-time sun, broad-shouldered and still, her brother had appeared at last.

  Chapter 12

  As Rani moved down the cathedral aisle, pilgrims reached past Jair’s Watchers to touch her black cape. She cringed from the first grasping hands, but she sensed Shanoranvilli’s strong presence behind her, and the king settled his withered fingers on her shoulders. Rani raised her chin and continued through the crowd.

  “Pray for me, in the name of Mune!” croaked one man, and then the cry was taken up by others, variations rippling through as people substituted their own special gods.

  “Pray for me, in the name of Zake!”

  “Pray for me, in the name of Doan!”

  Rani nodded at each request, uncertain of the proper response. She touched all of the hands that scrambled toward her, watching as pilgrim after pilgrim fell to his knees, muttering prayers of thanksgiving that the First Pilgrim had taken notice of a mere sojourner on the road of the Thousand Gods.

  All the time, Rani craned her neck, trying to make out Bardo in the brilliant frame of the doorway. His presence drew her like an eagle to a snake.

  She almost screeched in disappointment when the procession reached the carved cathedral doors and he was not there. Anger rose from her belly like a scream, and she planted her feet on the portal, determined not to give up the chance to locate her brother. As she took her stand, there was a flash of movement outside the cathedral, and a dark, tanned hand reached forward, offering her assistance over the raised wooden doorframe.

  “Most honored First Pilgrim, pray for me.”

  Rani knew the voice from her dreams. She remembered the tone from her games as a carefree child, from the time when she was merely a merchant’s daughter, doing her part to bring in custom to her parents’ shop. Unexpected tears flooded her eyes as she looked up into her brother’s face.

  “Bardo -” she whispered, and swallowed her remaining words in surprise. Her brother looked far older than he had the last time she had seen him, when he guided her through the streets to the ill-fated glasswrights’ guild. Wrinkles fanned out from his eyes, as if he had spent long nights squinting into a candle flame. Deep gulleys carved the flesh around his lips. As sunlight streamed down on him, Rani glimpsed silver threads in his hair - glints that surely had not been there a few months before.

  Bardo fell to his knees like any supplicant pilgrim. “Pray for me, First Pilgrim. In the name of the great god Roat, pray for me.”

  The request unsettled Rani. Her own brother should not kneel before her - he was Bardo! He was the one sibling she had left. How could she let him kneel like one of the common Touched? She reached out a childish hand, thinking to help him to his feet.

  Before she could act, Shanoranvilli interposed himself between Rani and Bardo. The king moved as if he thought that Bardo was a threat, as if he were protecting Rani from the unwelcome attentions of this persistent Pilgrim. Under any other circumstance, Rani would have been awed that the king acted to preserve her well-being, but now, she almost howled in rage.

  Almost, but not quite. Before Rani could slip around the king, she heard Bardo’s voice, muffled by Shanoranvilli’s rich robes. “Pray for me tonight, First Pilgrim. Remember, in the name of Roat, god of justice, pray for me!”

  “I will!” Rani squeaked, but before she could imagine their reunion before Roat’s altar, she was swirled down the cathedral steps, rushed along into the crowd and surrounded by the royal household guard.

  The rest of the day blurred by. Rani was ushered into the royal family’s private apartments. She was given a glass of watered wine, and a silver platter of buttered bread, sweet with glistening honey. She was told that she would meet the royal princes shortly. She was taken to the royal nursery.

  The nursery would be Rani’s home for the coming year. The First Pilgrim was welcomed into the royal family as if she had been born to it, and King Shanoranvilli seemed only mildly bemused by the tender age of his newest family member. Of course, Rani now knew that she would not be staying out her term in the Palace. Bardo was going to take her away. He would come to her as she prayed to Roat, spirit her away to wherever he now lived in the City.

  That night, she would be back with her brother, back in the comfort of family. For just an instant, she remembered the anger that had blazed in Bardo’s face when she had discovered his snake tattoo, the pure rage that she had awakened all unknowing. She consciously set aside that dark recollection, though. Bardo was her brother. Whatever secrets he had protected in the past no longer mattered. Rani had sworn her faith to the Brotherhood; she had bled before the snakes so that Bardo would come to her. He could no longer be angry that she had learned of his secret life.

  Repeating her reassurances over and over, Rani squelched the tremor of sorrow as she realized just how limited Bardo’s comfort had become, how brutally their family had been culled. She took another moment to thrust away her lingering anger at the king who had ordered their family killed. Their deaths were not Shanoranvilli’s fault, she remonstrated with herself. That burden fell on Dalarati. That burden fell on the man who had slain Tuvashanoran, the man she had killed.

  Tonight she would see Bardo and they would mourn their lost siblings, their lost parents. For now, Rani explored the royal nursery as soon as the king left her to her own devices. Only as she completed her review of the room did she realize that she was not alone. One of the princes was in the nursery. Halaravilli, Crown Prince of all Morenia, last surviving heir of King Shanoranvilli’s first marriage, was playing with tin soldiers in the corner of the vast chamber.

  Rani recognized him immediately. She had seen royal processions all her life, and she had recently watched horror spread across his face when his brother was cut down before his eyes on the cathedral dais. Halaravilli was two years older than Rani - old enough that his nurses had been replaced by private tutors. Still, the prince was expected to take his meals with his younger half-brother and his litter of half-sisters. And, apparently, he was permitted to play with his childhood playthings in a quiet window embrasure.

  Tin soldiers, Rani thought. The Crown Prince of Morenia, now that Tuvashanoran was slain, and the boy was marching knights and footmen across a wooden board like a little child. She almost sniffed, remembering the stories about Halaravilli’s simple mind. In fact, most people ignored Halaravilli’s noble name entirely, referring to him only as “that poor motherless child.”

  Rani knew, as all the people of the City did, that Halaravilli had been the death of his mother. She had succumbed to childbed fever before the prince was one week old. The birth had been difficult for both mother and son. Halaravilli was widely rumored to be slow, and more than a little odd. According to loudly whispered tales, he had not spoken until his fifth birthday. Everyone in the City knew that the prince had never crawled - he went directly from sitting to staggering about the nursery on toddling legs, despite his nurses’ best efforts to force him to his knees, to make him progress like a normal child.

  The poor boy had never been meant for the throne - there had always been Tuvashanoran for that honor. Tuvashanoran, and a trio of other brothers who had all met with disaster. One prince had suffered a tragic riding accident, falling beneath his horse’s hooves on his first ride beyond the City walls. One prince had fallen prey to the venom of a ruby mamba, a rare snake that had somehow slithered its way onto the training ground, dying in the dust of the Palace courtyard after delivering one fateful bite. One prince had taken ill of a fever on a bitter winter night, raving for a fortnight before surrendering to the sickness.

  So, Halaravilli had never been meant for the crown. The prince was a slender reed to serve as a last defense for the family line, no matter how admirable his eldes
t brother, Prince Tuvashanoran, had been. King Shanoranvilli had recognized his dynastic obligations; after Halaravilli killed his mother with childbed fever, the king had wasted no time taking a second wife.

  Queen Felicianda had come from lands far to the north, forging a powerful bond between her father’s distant kingdom and the well-governed Morenia. She had served well as queen, breeding a passel of children who were nearly twenty years younger than their oldest sibling, than Tuvashanoran who had borne all the hopes of the kingdom. Queen Felicianda had dutifully presented the king with five surviving children - a son and four healthy daughters.

  Now, as Rani looked at Prince Halaravilli in the nursery, the herd of the king’s younger children came trampling into the room. Prince Bashanorandi - the only son of the king’s second union - immediately planted himself in front of Rani. He was thirteen years old - the same age as Rani herself - and he wasted no time with polite greetings. “You don’t belong here!”

  “Your Highness!” exclaimed a young nurse, scarcely old enough to have a babe of her own, much less to tend this willful youth.

  “I’m only speaking the truth,” Bashanorandi sneered. “She’s not royal, and she doesn’t know how we live.”

  “I know how to treat a guest in my house!” Rani answered hotly, and then added a reluctant, “Your Highness.”

  The princesses tittered behind their hands, obviously delighted to see how their hot-tempered brother would react to this newest challenge. Bashanorandi lost no time in sighing exasperatedly, then he turned to his half-brother. “Hal, what are you doing? How could you let her come into our nursery?” Halaravilli ignored his brother, reaching instead for one of his toy soldiers and moving it into a precise position. “Hal!” exclaimed Bashanorandi. When the younger boy got no response, he swiped at the game board, scattering pieces across the room. “Don’t ignore me when I’m speaking to you!”

  Halaravilli looked up quizzically. “Speaking to me? Speaking to me?” The prince descanted his words in a chant. “Only a Touched would be named Hal. Only a Touched or a god. Speaking to me, speaking to me, a Touched or a god.”

  Bashanorandi flushed crimson and spluttered, grabbing at the inlaid game board his brother had used. His fingers slipped about for a grip, and he clearly intended to shatter the thing over his knee. “Splinters for the prince, splinters for the prince,” the older boy remonstrated. “Play with the board, and you’ll get splinters, o prince.”

  Rani could not restrain a laugh at Bashanorandi’s frustrated grimace, and the youth turned his wrath on her. “You! What’s your name?”

  “Marita Pilgrim,” she answered promptly, dropping into a pretty curtsey.

  Bashanorandi started to sneer a response, but Halaravilli pinned her with a suddenly sharp look. “Welcome, Marita. You’re an apprentice, then?”

  “Yes,” Rani nodded, sailing into her new identity. “With the bards.”

  “Ah, then,” Halaravilli looked pleased. “A bard to tell us stories, a bard to tell us tales. You’ll tell us stories of the kings, stories of the princes. A bard to tell us truths.”

  Rani squirmed uncomfortably. “I’m only a very new apprentice, Your Highness.”

  “Call me Hal, call me Hal.” Rani glanced up in surprise, unable to keep her gaze from wandering to the younger prince Bashanorandi, who looked as if he would gladly strangle his brother. “I name myself, I don’t let others name me. Others name me, others name me. He thinks that I am Touched, I am Touched, I am Touched. I name myself Hal.” The prince smiled conspiratorially, and Rani caught the ghost of Tuvashanoran along his jaw.

  “Very well … Hal. In any case, I am only a new apprentice, but I’ll do my best to please you.” Bashanorandi snorted his disgust and stalked off to the far side of the nursery, dragging the young princesses in his wake.

  Hal shook his head as his half-brother settled by the hearth and began to tell his sisters a loud story about his exploits in the royal stables that morning. “I’m sorry for Bashi, sorry for Bashi. He wants to be king, wants to be king. Don’t think less of him.”

  “Bashi?” Rani almost guffawed at the merchant’s name for the spoiled prince.

  “Don’t let him hear you use that name. He’ll knock you down, knock you down. He’s knocked me down.”

  “But that’s -”

  “That’s normal, normal, normal. We’re brothers.” Hal shrugged easily, although a shadow flirted with his brow. “Tell me about brothers, brothers and sisters, sisters and brothers. Do you have any, Marita Pilgrim? Brothers and sisters in.…” He trailed off, as if unable to remember the next line of the song he was composing.

  “Zarithia,” Rani supplied helpfully.

  “Ah, my soldiers come from Zarithia, my men are from your city!”

  “I thought as much.” Rani racked her brains, desperate to steer the conversation away from her supposed home. Despite Prince Hal’s disconcerting speech, he might well have some concrete knowledge of Zarithia - knowledge more extensive than her own cobbled-together tales. “Um… please don’t think me forward, Your Highness, but should you be playing with tin soldiers at your age?”

  “I told you, call me Hal, call me Hal. And I’m not ‘playing with tin soldiers’, not playing at all, at all. I am winning the Battle of Morenia, winning the Battle, and using half the men my great-grandfather used. Half the men, half the men.”

  “Half the men!” Rani exclaimed, unaware that she was parroting the prince.

  “Yes. Last week, I worked it out with three-quarters of the knights, but I still needed all of the footmen, all the footmen, all the poor footmen.”

  “What did you do?”

  Hal looked at her appraisingly for a moment, as if she might be teasing him, or as if she might steal his secrets. “Aye,” he said after a long glance. “I suppose you might be interested. It makes a good tale, doesn’t it - and any bard should add to her store of tales, right?”

  “Of course,” Rani agreed, so pleased that he seemed inclined to forget about Zarithia that she did not notice the end of his sing-song speech.

  Her conversation with Hal lasted for the better part of the afternoon. The prince told her about the original plan for the ancient battle, moving his tin soldiers into place. Then he showed her the innovations he had introduced. Twice, Bashi tried to interrupt, but both times he was driven away by Hal’s chanted comments, by dancing words that concealed angry barbs. The princesses floated in and out of the discussion, and Hal took time to answer their flowery questions, but his attention remained fixed on Rani.

  “And so,” Rani said at last, as he showed her his final configuration for the battle, “your goal is to get your horsemen on that ridge before the foot soldiers can be cut off.”

  “Precisely! The bard reads the signs, reads the signs.” Hal grinned, clearly excited that someone shared his interests.

  “Well, what if you tried.…” Rani chewed her lip, trying to envision the necessary pattern. This game of the battlefield was really nothing more than the work she had done back in her father’s stall a lifetime ago, when she had set forth trinkets of tin and pewter and silver, arranging them to best suit the needs of potential buyers.

  Before she could suit action to thought, though, the door to the nursery flew back on its hinges. All of the children and their attendant nurses sprang to attention. For just an instant, Rani had a flash of premonition, a hint of cold danger flowing into the room.

  A man swept over the threshold, surrounded by an icy azure robe, paradoxically sharpened by its glistening ermine lining. The rich garment set off the man’s fox-red hair and his long, twisted mustache. Rani wasted little time studying his raiment; her glance was immediately drawn to his frozen gaze. Larindolian stared down at her, his face as impassive as if he had never seen her before.

  “Your Highness,” the courtier made a stiff little bow toward Hal, then turned to the opposite side of the room, where Bashi had regrouped with the princesses. The nobleman spared a tight smile for the younge
r prince, and Rani thought it was the sort of look a fox might give a chicken. “My lord Bashanorandi. My ladies.”

  The princesses squealed their greeting, but Hal’s voice was deadly serious as he inclined his head. “My lord chamberlain, lord of the chamber, chamberlain.”

  Larindolian permitted himself another dangerous smile. “So serious, Your Highness?”

  Hal did not bend. “What duty brings you to the royal nursery, the nursery, Lord Larindolian, what duty to us?”

  A flicker of annoyance pulsed along the noble’s jaw, but his voice remained smooth as silk. “May I not check on my wards’ safety? For you children are, of course, part of my responsibility here in the Palace.” Afterward, Rani could not have explained how that simple declarative sentence sounded like a threat. Her arm set to throbbing beneath her tunic, and she imagined that her bandage was soaked through with blood from her wound. “But we should not forget our manners, Your Highness. I have not made the acquaintance of your guest.”

  Hal flushed at being caught in his rudeness, and he turned to Rani with a furious expression on his face, as if she were responsible for Larindolian’s chiding tone. Rani curtseyed before the lord, ignoring her throbbing arm, telling herself to act as if she had never seen the man’s narrow face, never seen the feral glint in his eyes. Larindolian performed his own role, nodding shrewdly as Rani regained her feet. “Welcome to the Palace, First Pilgrim. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to make your stay more … rewarding. You will, of course, need frequent access to the cathedral, beginning tonight, I suspect. Such is the lot of the First Pilgrim.”

  Ah! So that was the plan! That was how Rani was supposed to reach Roat, the god of justice. “Thank you, Your Grace.” Rani wished that she could leave now, run to Roat’s altar, and Bardo.