Glasswrights' Journeyman Page 28

“My words may anger you, Your Majesty, but the danger is real. Think, Sire! This is the Horned Hind – a spirit tied to blood. She is slain and born anew each year; she takes her power from her horns. That is unnatural, Your Majesty. That is perverse! Would you turn your back on all the Thousand Gods and embrace such filth?”

  “Father, it is not necessary to choose one faith or the other! Your house already has room for a thousand gods. Surely there is space for one more!” Before the priest could argue back, Hal went on. “Berylina’s people expect her to be wed before their goddess. Anything less would nullify the contract of our marriage – Midsummer Eve was a critical condition for Teheboth to agree at all. Certainly the princess understands.”

  “Perhaps more than you do!”

  “Father?” Hal chose to ignore the blatant disrespect, opting to discover Siritalanu’s meaning.

  The young priest raised his palms to his face, rubbing at his eyes as if he were emerging from deepest sleep. “Sire, your bride sees the Thousand Gods more clearly than anyone I have ever known. They speak to her the way they spoke to your forefathers of old. They visit her, both in her dreams and while she wakes. Princess Berylina understands their words, and she recognizes their power.”

  “Then she will do whatever is necessary to get to Morenia, where she may study more of them. Whatever is necessary, Siritalanu. Even naming an extraneous goddess in her wedding vows, if her father so requires.”

  Father Siritalanu stared at him, his dark eyes sober, like a spaniel’s. “You will do nothing, then, Your Majesty?”

  “I will do everything, Father. As soon as I am able. As soon as I am on my own soil, with my bride safely at my side and my own men at my back. As soon as Berylina’s dowry has gone to repay your church, so that poor Moren might rise up from her ashes. Then, I will denounce the Horned Hind. But not before. Not when I stand to lose everything.”

  For an instant, the priest seemed to collapse upon himself. Then, he knelt before his king, inclining his head in abject surrender. “Thank you, Sire. I should not have wasted your time.”

  “It was not a waste at all, Father,” Hal said, after only a moment’s hesitation. He mistrusted the man’s capitulation. “Our discussion has been … illuminating.”

  The priest rose to his feet. “By your leave,” he said tonelessly. Hal waved him toward the door.

  Siritalanu had scarcely passed over the threshold when there was a flurry of activity in the hallway. Hal looked up in exasperation, certain that this latest disturbance could only add to the ache that had begun to pound behind his eyes.

  His belly twisted as he recognized one of the voices. Mareka Octolaris.

  He thought that he would stay inside his apartments. He would cross to the window, and look out at the harbor in the rain. He would kneel at his prie-dieu and concentrate on prayers to Siritalanu’s Thousand Gods. He would re-read the latest letter from Rani, her announcement that she planned to travel to the spiderguild, to begin bidding for his Order of the Octolaris. Instead, he reached for the full goblet of greenwine that the priest had left upon the mantel, draining it in one swallow.

  The voices were louder now; two women, screaming curses. They sounded like fishwives, screeching, swearing. Hal gritted his teeth together and stormed across the room, throwing open the door and filling his lungs to shout down the chaos.

  Before he could speak, before he could do more than pick out his terrified page huddling at the doorpost, he was pushed aside by a flurry of spidersilk, forced back into the room. The door slammed, the latch clicked, the heavy oak bar locked into place.

  Mareka Octolaris leaned against the door, panting as if she had run through all the palace.

  Her gown was crumpled, and one sleeve had been shredded. He could glimpse her arm, bruised and bleeding through the silk remains. Her hair was tangled and matted, and she cradled an iron pot against her hip. Her fingers clutched the metal as if it held the secrets of all the Thousand Gods.

  “My lady,” Hal managed, glancing at the door behind her. The other woman – Princess Jerusha, Hal now realized – shouted through the wood, her voice angry as a wasp. The princess’s fists pummeled the oak, and she screeched speculations about Mareka’s parents and his own. For just an instant, he worried for the safety of his page, but then the princess swore a terrible oath and stormed away.

  “My lord,” Mareka said, and she staggered forward, collapsing into a shuddering curtsey.

  “Please, my lady!” he protested, raising her up. A bruise was spreading across her cheek, and he could see the clear imprint of someone’s hand upon her flesh. Her nose was bleeding, and she had bitten through her lower lip.

  Could this be the woman he had been avoiding for a month? Could this be the temptress who had stolen into his dreams, sabotaged his prayers? “What happened, Mareka?”

  “It – it is nothing, my lord.” Her voice was hoarse and raw, broken.

  “Nothing!”

  “It is a matter of the spiderguild, between Jerusha and myself.”

  “You’ve made it more than that by coming here.”

  “I did not choose to come this way! She chased me down this hallway! She chased me like a madwoman!”

  “Why did she do that?”

  Mareka looked down at the pot that she cradled, but she refused to answer.

  He sighed and turned to the low table that sat beside his hearth, to a wash basin and pitcher of water. Farso had left them after helping Hal with his morning ablutions, and Teheboth’s servants had not yet taken them away. Silently, Hal gathered up a scrap of linen, dipping it in the water and offering it to the spiderguild apprentice.

  She gazed at him without comprehension until he gestured toward her face. She took the cloth then, touching it to her lip. She gasped at the pain and pulled her hand away, almost dropping her pot.

  He reached forward to help by taking the container. “No!” she cried.

  “I’m sorry.” He did not know what to do, where to look, where to place his hands.

  She dabbed at her face again and grimaced when the cloth came away stained with crimson. He saw her steel herself, though, watched her set her shoulders and her jaw, and then she returned the linen for further ministrations, persevering until the bleeding stopped. Rather than hand him the soiled cloth, she passed in front of him, crossing to the table.

  Hal inhaled as she passed, breathing in a storm of memories. He recalled the heat of her body in his arms, the smooth strength of her fingers wrapping about his flesh. He remembered the scent of her hair, the cloud of power that seemed to enfold her. He remembered the hunger that had blossomed from her lips, a hunger that had threatened to consume her, consume him. …

  But all of it was memory. The heady, mindless desire was gone. She was no longer a temptress, a vixen, the secret love he longed for in the night. She was an ordinary woman. A bruised and breathless, frightened, shaking, ordinary woman.

  “I have done something very wrong, my lord.” At last. Words. “I have stolen from my people, from my guild.”

  “Stolen?” He kept the one word neutral. Of course apprentices stole. They took tools, supplies. They wrangled extra garments from the quartermaster, extra food from the larder.

  “It’s the spiders.”

  “Aye.” He waited for her to explain what she had taken.

  “The octolaris.”

  “Aye.”

  She glared at him, her eyes sparking like lightning beneath the storm cloud of her hair. “I stole spiders from the guildhall! I took the octolaris, and I have them here in Liantine!”

  Her words hit him like a wave. Octolaris. The base of the spiderguild’s monopoly. Here. In Liantine.

  “That’s impossible.”

  “It’s perfectly possible,” she snapped. “I brought them with me when I came to witness Jerusha’s marriage.”

  “But how? Why? Your guild will destroy you if they find out what you have!”

  “Precisely,” she said, letting the one word speak more th
an the bruise purpling her cheek, more than the thread of blood that had begun to trickle from her nose once again.

  Hal fought against unworthy thoughts. There were octolaris here, in Teheboth’s court. He could take those beasts. He could spirit them to Moren and sell them to his lords. He could stock the Order of the Octolaris, fully fund his payment to the Fellowship.

  He forced himself to speak, to acknowledge Mareka’s confession. “And now Jerusha knows,” he said. “And she’ll inform the spiderguild as soon as she is able.”

  “Aye,” she whispered. “She must be sending a message even now. She’ll use the king’s own riders, cajole them from her husband. And then she’ll dose herself. Take nectar and remove my spiders.”

  Nectar? What was she babbling about? “So what do you intend to do, then? Ransom the beasts back to the guild?”

  “No!” The strength of her protest seemed to hurt her, the one word scraped across a throat already screamed raw. She lowered her voice to almost a whisper and repeated, “No. I cannot return them to the guild. They would be destroyed immediately.”

  “The spiderguild makes its profit on the sale of silk. Why would it destroy its assets?”

  “These … assets … are too dangerous for the guild. My octolaris’ poison is much stronger than the average spider’s.”

  “They’re too dangerous for the guild, and yet you have tended them here? In secret? Alone?”

  “We have our ways, my lord. The spiderguild brews a potion to keep from the spiders’ own poison, to keep the octolaris in check. Nectar, we call it. Octolaris nectar.” Her face flushed, and her fingers curled about her belly, as if she were hiding something shameful. “It is made from octolaris poison, but it is diluted. It calls to the spiders, soothes them. When we have drunk it, they can sense it on our hands, on our clothes.”

  Something about her tone made him understand. “You drank the nectar that day. When you came to me before.”

  Her fingers twined before her, weaving, weaving. She did not meet his eyes. “Yes.”

  His body seized as he remembered his mystifying passion, the all-consuming heat that had blazed across his flesh. He had not been able to pull his eyes from her, had not been able to step away. Every breath had brought him closer to her, filled his mouth with the scent of her, the taste. … “You drugged me.”

  “Yes.”

  “But why? What could you hope to gain? I’m hardly a venomous spider that had to be subdued.”

  She swallowed hard and started to speak, but stopped before she could voice a single, husky word. She closed her eyes, filled her lungs, and then she exhaled slowly. Carefully, bravely, she caught his gaze, looking into his eyes as if there were nothing more important in all the world. She said, “There was no reason, lord. I drank the nectar so that I could tend my spiders. It was a strong brew, stronger than I ever tried as an apprentice at the spiderguild. I finished with the octolaris, but the nectar still burned hot within my veins. I left my chamber and walked through all the hallways, waiting for the drink to exhaust itself. It was only happenstance that I was here when Rani Trader left your rooms. It was only coincidence that brought me to your chamber.”

  He stared at her, remembering his conversation with Rani, remembering his desolation when the merchant girl announced that she was leaving. He had wanted to reach out for her, to forbid her to leave Liantine. And yet, he had known that she was right. He had known that she must go.

  And then Mareka had appeared. Without a plan. Without a mission. By the pure happenstance of all the Thousand Gods. Warm and willing with the bewitching aura of her octolaris nectar.

  He shook his head and forced away the memories. “So, you brought the spiders to Liantine.”

  “Yes, my lord. And they have thrived! The brooding females have tended to their egg sacs, and the spiderlings are set to hatch.”

  Brooding females. Spiderlings. The Order of the Octolaris hovered even closer.

  “But then?” he prompted. “Jerusha?”

  “Jerusha found me in my chamber. I was counting out my markin grubs, seeing how many remain to feed the spiders.” Mareka gestured toward the pot. “She found me. She learned about the spiders. And now she’ll tell the spiderguild, and they will order all the octolaris destroyed. I won’t be able to save them this time. None of them. The brooding females, the egg sacs. All those spiderlings, dead. Because I let Jerusha find me.”

  “Unless. …” Hal trailed off, hoping that Mareka would complete his thought.

  “Unless what? The guild will never let them live. Not when it condemned them once before.”

  “Unless the guild cannot reach them.”

  “They’ll get them soon enough. Jerusha is a princess now, in the house of Thunderspear. King Teheboth can enter my chamber at any time. The guild will send a master, and the king will give him access to my spiderboxes.”

  “Teheboth Thunderspear cannot enter every chamber in this house.”

  “Are you mad? He’s the king!”

  “He’s the king of Liantine. But I am the king of Morenia, and Amanthia, too. I can claim the right of embassy, and no one from the house of Thunderspear can set foot inside these chambers.”

  The right of embassy was longstanding, honored for generations. Hal had been assigned these apartments by the king of Liantine when he journeyed east of his own free will. Now, the space within these walls functioned as an outpost of Morenia. Whatever transpired here was separate, apart from Liantine.

  Hal waited for Mareka to trace through his plan. She could bring the spiders at once, before Jerusha thought to post a guard outside Mareka’s chamber. Save them from certain destruction.

  And, Hal told himself, once he had physical possession of the octolaris, he could take them for himself. It would not be theft, he quickly thought. It would be salvation. The guild did not want them; it wanted to destroy them. He could save the spiders. He could spirit them away to Morenia. He could sell them to his nobles, found the Order of the Octolaris. He would have his gold.

  The first octolaris outside the spiderguild enclave in generations, and they would be his in a matter of minutes. …

  “That is impossible, my lord.”

  “What?” He was astonished.

  Her face was lined with pain, but she made her voice firm. “I cannot breach the spiderguild’s monopoly. I must obey them.” Her voice quivered. “I am their apprentice.”

  “How long will you keep that rank, once they learn that you have stolen octolaris?”

  “If I return the spiders. If I keep the guild’s monopoly safe.” She spoke the words like a prayer, like a child’s chant against ghosts. He realized that she did not fully believe what she said. She was not certain that her guild would keep her. She was afraid. “Even if I let you have the spiders, they would starve. My grubs won’t last forever.”

  “I’ll get them food.”

  “Impossible. You need to feed them markin grubs. From riberry trees. Those only grow at the enclave.”

  The enclave. Hal’s heart beat faster. Rani was heading to the enclave even now. She was mounting her attack, plotting on his behalf, working for his nascent Order. “I will get you riberry trees.”

  Her laugh was bitter. Hopeless. “Never. I must return the spiders, my lord. I must humble myself before my guildmasters and hope that they show mercy.”

  Her resignation infuriated him. She was going to throw away his kingdom’s hopes for her baseless dreams. “How will you kill the spiders, Mareka Octolaris? How will you execute them, back at your guild?” She flinched, and he stepped closer. “Will you poison them, give them a dose of their own venom? No? By fire, then.”

  “By fire,” she whispered.

  “Are you prepared to do that? Are you prepared to stand by the flames and offer up each spider?”

  “I’ll do what must be done.” Her voice shook.

  “You will take them, one by one. You’ll have to dose yourself with nectar, no? Your flesh will burn with theirs. Your eyes
will see with theirs as you bring them closer, closer –”

  “I have no choice!”

  “You do!” He caught her arm, gripped her hard, even though he knew the pain that it surely caused her. He must have the octolaris. He could not let them slip away, not now. Not when they were so close. “Don’t fool yourself, Mareka. The guild will use you until you bring them back their spiders, and then they’ll cast you out forever.”

  “They won’t! They are my people!”

  “You have no people. Not any longer. You betrayed your guild.” He shook her arm, looming over her and letting his desperate need scorch his words. “You will be alone. You will have no home. You will have no name. All you will possess is a memory, a thought of how you killed the spiders. How you followed their commands and burned your octolaris.”

  Her eyes brimmed with tears, the first that he had ever seen from her. He tightened his grasp upon her arm.

  “They can live, Mareka. Give them to me.”

  Tears glistened down her cheeks, silent, silver.

  Slowly, she nodded her head.

  “Say it.” Her lips trembled, and he shook her, as if she were a wayward child. “Say that you will give me the octolaris.”

  “I will, my lord.” She caught a sob at the back of her throat. “I will give you all my octolaris. To save them. To keep them from the fire.”

  He sighed and let her go. Was he a madman? Was he a brutal, raving fiend?

  No. He was a king who fought to save his kingdom. A man who fought for power in the Fellowship, for leadership in that strong, secret cabal. He was a man who had just broken the strongest monopoly his world had ever seen. “We have no time to waste. We must get them from your chambers before Jerusha thinks to lock us out.”

  He was not completely heartless, though. He took his time collecting his cloak. He gave Mareka a chance to wipe her tears away, to draw herself up, to find her buried pride. He did not stare as she crossed his chamber, as she unlatched the door.

  But when she stood on the threshold, framed within the doorway, he looked at her, and he remembered how she had first come to him. He remembered the power of the octolaris nectar, the stunning yearning it had raised within him.