Glasswrights' Apprentice Read online

  The old man nodded proudly. “Now, my son, prostrate yourself in the house of the Gods, before the Pilgrim’s Table, and offer up any thoughts that would make you impure to carry out your mission in the world.”

  Rani heard the congregants’ collective sigh as Tuvashanoran followed the Priest’s orders. The prince moved like a cat, fully composed, aware that every eye in the cavernous nave was tied to him. Touching his brow to the base of the altar, Tuvashanoran unconsciously flicked the edges of his undertunic, causing the snowy linen to billow into angelic wings. Then, before the image could be lost and the Prince could become just an ordinary man kneeling before an ordinary block of marble, Tuvashanoran prostrated himself before the altar of the Gods.

  A lump of pride grew in Rani’s throat as she watched. She might only be an apprentice. She might only be the youngest child of a merchant family, a family that had scrimped and saved to buy her way into a guild. Still, she was a part of the force that had painted the portrait before her, part of the brotherhood that crafted the regal image of a Prince shedding his temporal crown to take up his spiritual one. Rani could not keep from casting her eyes up toward her small contribution to this pageant, to the window that Instructor Morada had scarcely finished in time for the Presentation. Whatever panic had been in the guildhall, whatever rage Morada had expressed on the scaffold, it had been worthwhile, for that rush and fury had created this perfection.

  As Rani glanced up at the window, something caught her eye. A year ago, she would not have seen anything out of place in the careful leaded design. A month ago, she would not have recognized the outline of a bow against the glass. A week ago, she would not have realized that the bow was not part of the intricate armature. But only yesterday, she had white-washed the table that had borne the drawings for this window. She had scrubbed for hours, wiping out Instructor Morada’s charcoal lines; she had studied the precise pattern of lead and glass that created the masterpiece. Rani knew that there was no need for lead in that precise arc.

  An archer’s bow leaned against the window.

  Even as Rani recognized the danger, the bow was pulled away from the glass. She could imagine an assassin stepping back on the scaffold, moving the tip of a carefully fletched arrow to a single missing pane of glass. Rani thought she could hear the arrow nocked to the string; she could feel the tension of calloused fingers pulling the string to the archer’s ear.

  And all the while, Prince Tuvashanoran lay before the altar, unknowing. Rani struggled for breath in the suddenly close cathedral, clambering to her feet. In the silence of the praying congregation, her voice rang out, piercing and shrill. “Your Highness! To arms!”

  Guards leaped forward before she had completed the four words. Tuvashanoran jumped into a fighter’s crouch, all holy ritual forgotten as he grasped the ceremonial sword from the altar. The motion tore him around in a half-arc, already searching for the threat carried on a child’s voice.

  For one instant, there was nothing. Utter stillness gripped the congregation, the priest, the prince. Then, with the impossible momentum of a swooping hawk, a flash of light cut through the cobalt pool. The silence was cloven by a man’s outraged bellow, and Prince Tuvashanoran whirled around to face his people. Even as the crowd surged toward the altar, Rani could see the black-fletched arrow blooming from the socket of the prince’s right eye.

  Chapter 2

  Rani threw herself against the guildhall’s majestic gates, hitting the wrought iron with enough force to make the posts screech in their stone moorings. “Brother Gatekeeper!” she panted, trying to force a scream behind her ragged breath. “Brother Gatekeeper, let me in!”

  She looked behind her with a wild eye, desperately trying to fill her lungs. She had been running for nearly two hours. In the stunned silence following her shout in the cathedral, Rani had not even tried to make her way down the endless nave. Instead, she had ducked out the transept portal, using all her strength to push open the heavy oaken doors.

  Even with adrenaline pumping in her veins, she had nearly been unable to get by, for the wooden mass of Morada’s scaffold blocked the door’s full swing. As it was, she needed to scrape sideways to edge through, and she did not spare a thought for the short black cloak that she left snagged on the doorframe.

  The crowds near the cathedral had still been thick with disappointed citizens hoping for a glimpse of the Presentation, and the hordes became even more resistant to passage as rumors began to fly. When Rani finally cleared the Cathedral sector, she sprinted in panic in the opposite direction from the guild, winding through the Soldier’s Quarter for a solid hour before she could untangle the streets.

  By the time she worked her way to the familiar byways of her childhood home in the Merchants’ Quarter, a dust of panic had sifted over the City. Twice, she saw platoons of soldiers jogging down the narrow cobbled roads, grim rage scarcely suppressed as lieutenants called out the marching cadence. Merchants pulled in their trestles while the sun still shone, and frantic mothers summoned children into the safety of dark doorways.

  Rani had been tempted to run to her own family, but she realized reluctantly that she needed to warn her guild. She was an apprentice now, not a merchant, and she needed to tell her brothers and sisters of Morada’s evil, even if that meant revealing her own unplanned complicity in Prince Tuvashanoran’s death. Although half the City sprawled between her and the stricken prince, Rani could still see the streaks of crimson across Tuvashanoran’s pale, pale flesh. There was no chance that he still lived.

  “Brother Gatekeeper!” she cried again, desperation ripping her throat as she wracked her brain to remember which of the guildsmen was assigned gate duty. Her cries remained unanswered, and she abandoned the gate to duck down the alley that lined the guild’s garden, all the while imagining a ravening crowd sweeping around the bend in the street, bent on bloody vengeance against Morada Glasswright.

  The deserted mews gave Rani some feeling of safety, and she dashed one hand against her cheek, leaving dirty streaks in the tracks of her tears. Stone walls towered over her as she fought back sobs, letting her fingers trail against the rough rock as she stumbled down the alley.

  This was all a nightmare. Tuvashanoran was the greatest warrior who had ever lived. He could not be felled by a single arrow. He could not be murdered in the house of the Thousand Gods. And Morada could not have committed the murder. Still, Rani could see the lead stripping coiled on Morada’s scaffold, and she could hear the wicked anger in the Instructor’s voice. Morada had removed at least one pane of glass from the Defender’s Window, and she’d been prepared to cover up her action with hastily applied lead. Morada had been furious when Rani discovered her. If the Instructor had not murdered Tuvashanoran, she had certainly been directly involved in the attack.

  Now, standing in the alley, Rani was startled by a crow’s harsh cry. Reflexively, she reached for a large stone amid the broken cobbles. Years of working before a board of shining pretties had taught her excellent aim - she could frighten off the largest crows that were intent on stealing from her hard-working family.

  The bird was perched on a low branch of a straggling apple tree - possibly even the tree that had borne the apples that Rani had carried to Morada that morning. Remembering the fruit made the girl’s stomach clench in hunger. For a moment, she was ashamed - how could she even think of eating when the greatest hero of her people lay dead in the cathedral, cut down by an arrow because she had called him from his prostration before the altar? Perhaps, without Rani’s unintended assistance, the archer-assassin would have missed the prince. Perhaps Tuvashanoran would have lived. Rani might not have plucked the bow, but she had surely summoned Prince Tuvashanoran to his bitter, untimely death.

  Thrusting aside her guilt, Rani studied the immediate problem of gaining entry to the guildhall gardens. The apple tree was at least fifteen feet above her, the wall itself the height of two men. Casting about the alley, Rani discovered a quartet of broken barrels. Some of the staves w
ere cast in on each of the casks; the coopers had deemed them past repair. Still, Rani made short work of rolling the barrels to the wall and balancing them to create a rickety tower.

  She was still far from the top of the wall when her stomach clenched with hunger, bile painting the back of her tongue. There was no help for it. Dusting her hands against her grimy doublet, she set her jaw and pawed for a handhold amid the stones.

  She may have only worked in the guildhall for a few months, but in that time, she had been forced to stir innumerable pots of paint. She had scrubbed endless acres of whitewashed tables. She had trickled cornmeal into countless cauldrons, and then stirred the resulting mush until it thickened to Cook’s revolting expectations. Her arms trembled with her new strength, and she found hand-holds where none were visible, tiny gaps where she could force her fingers. Like a horsefly loose in the pantry, she made her way up the stone wall.

  Only once did she get stuck, and that was when the crow realized that his territory was being invaded. The giant bird cawed harshly and swooped upon her. His beak clashed against the flashing gold thread of Rani’s guild emblem; the thieving bird was after the apprentice’s wealth just as its brothers had tried to steal from the merchants’ boards. Rani, thrusting away the image of bloody talons and beak, fended off the crow’s attack with a stiff-fingered hand. That instinctive maneuver made her slide down the face of the wall; she only caught herself by flattening her belly against the stone and skinning both knees.

  The crow, not to be deterred, beat at her with its wings, and Rani cried out as she imagined the sharp beak ripping her flesh. The bird cawed again, flapping its huge wings in excitement over Rani’s glittering guild-patch. Rani could picture her skin being ripped as she heard the fabric tear, but then the crow stroked away on his broad wings, trailing the golden threads that had secured Rani’s multi-colored badge of office.

  Anger gave way to relief, and Rani clung to the wall for a moment, panting out a prayer to Fairn, the god of birds, who had seen fit to send away that particularly nasty minion. Without the looming crow, Rani made short work of the rest of her climb. Arms quivering, she pulled herself atop the wall, and it only took a minute to summon the nerve to leap to the apple tree.

  Once she was secure in the tree’s gnarled branches, she began to shake uncontrollably. Suddenly, she was chilled - her arm was bare where the crow had ripped the fabric, and she missed the cloak she had been forced to leave at the cathedral. A steady breeze stiffened against the tear-tracks on her face, and Rani realized that her hands were still trembling when she reached for a rosy apple.

  For just an instant, the ripe fruit melted into the blood streaking Tuvashanoran’s fine face, but she shuddered past the image, squeezing her eyes shut and bringing the fragrant fruit to her lips. She chewed mechanically, then grabbed at another and another.

  Only when the worst pangs in her belly were quelled did Rani descend from her perch. She paused at the base of the tree to gather several windfalls and stuff them into her doublet’s hidden pockets. The orchard was eerie in the late fall afternoon; autumn-bare branches straggled across a darkening sky. A breeze skirled through the trees, rattling dry leaves like prayers for the dead.

  Rani ducked into the guildhall unseen and made her way through strangely silent corridors. Usually, late afternoon was the time of greatest activity - instructors finishing their classes for the day, apprentices scurrying to complete their tasks before scrubbing up after their brothers and sisters.

  Today, though, no one roamed the halls. Rani passed by the great chamber where the whitewashed tables squatted, awaiting a glasswright’s hand to sketch complex charcoal designs. Not a glazier was in sight. Certainly, the ragged tail of a fire twitched on the grate, but even that was faded almost to embers. Rani almost stopped to bank the coals, in an effort to limit her work later in the day.

  Afterwards, Rani could never be sure what drove her to the Hall of Discipline. Maybe, it was Instructor Morada’s angry words, delivered on the scaffold, ordering Rani to report for punishment. Maybe, at the back of her mind, she heard the ghosts of voices in the guildhall’s deadly still, and she decided to seek them out. Maybe her steps were guided by one of the Thousand Gods.

  Whatever the reason, Rani made her way to the dimly lit Apprentice’s Corridor, a narrow passage that skulked behind the Hall of Discipline. She had spent more time in this darkened space than she cared to admit. The stone walls curved above her, hulking to barrel vaulting without even the narrowest of windows. Indeed, the only light in the oppressive passage came from the candles that burned on altars spaced down the corridor. Each altar was dedicated to a different god - Lene, the god of humility, Plad, the god of patience, Dain, the god of contemplation.

  Altogether, there were a half dozen altars, each littered with trinkets offered up by straying apprentices. Rani had studied her fellows’ offerings on many occasions; the most censured apprentice each week was charged with replacing the massive tallow candles that smoked on each altar. The candles were as long as Rani’s arm, and as thick around as her neck, and she needed to stretch on her tiptoes to light them.

  Now, she fought the compulsion to lug out replacements for the low-burning candles on the cluttered altars. Such attention to detail would have been absurd - Tuvashanoran was dead. The prince had died because she had called him; she had cried out. Rani did not need to be a soldier to know that the deadly arrow would have passed harmlessly over Tuvashanoran’s head, without her interference. If she had just kept silent, Tuvashanoran would have been spared. No burning wax in a darkened corridor was going to absolve Rani this time.

  She might ignore the candles, but she could not dismiss the final altar, at the end of the shadowy passage. This was the single place within the guildhall where Rani had spent the most time since her tumultuous arrival. The altar itself was fashioned out of a massive block of stone, and its front was inlaid with dark tiles of smoky glass. The altar was sacred to a deity almost entirely foreign to Rani - Sorn, the god of obedience. It was customary for an apprentice who was summoned to the Hall of Discipline to kneel before Sorn, to ask forgiveness before punishment could be meted out by the guild disciplinarian.

  Sorn was a harsh master, as Rani had learned too often. A kneeler was fashioned at the foot of his altar, ostensibly to provide greater comfort to petitioners who sought divine guidance. Rani knew, though, that the kneeler was just another element of the disciplinarian’s craft, for its wooden surface was embossed with the tools of the glasswright’s trade - grozing irons and coils of lead stripping, pincers and rectangular glass tiles. It was impossible to kneel upon that narrow bench without transferring those sharp-edged images to tender knees.

  Nevertheless, Rani could not approach the Hall of Discipline without at least a token obeisance. Traditionally, the disciplinarian’s first move was to check a petitioner’s knees. If Rani showed up without a visible symbol of her worship, she would merely be sent back until she was marked. Sighing, Rani lowered herself to the familiar kneeler.

  She should not have been surprised to overhear the conversation in the Hall of Discipline. After all, the altar was especially situated so that one apprentice could make out the … instruction of another, thereby fostering greater discipline through the imagined penalty. Many a time, Rani had emerged from her own instruction at the hands of the disciplinarian, only to face the whey countenance of another apprentice, looking up anxiously from Sorn’s altar.

  Still, when Rani realized that the voice was Guildmistress Salina’s, she caught her breath, the better to make out the hissed words.

  “Of course it did not go as we wished!”

  Rani could not make out the other person’s response, but it rumbled around the corner, a man’s timbre.

  “We knew there was risk in using our scaffold,” Salina insisted, “but we never intended to call attention to a glasswright in the middle of the plot. Since that brat cried out, there’s no way the guard will see us as innocent victims. The glass
wrights are certain to be the first suspects. The only reason they’ve delayed so far is to muster troops.”

  Rumble.

  “No, we must accept the cards the gods have dealt us. It was ill luck and blatant disobedience that led that merchant-rat to be in the Cathedral. She’s been a thorn in my side since I took her family’s money - I never should have kept her around. She’s too strong to bend to the good of the guild; she’s stubborn enough to break first, just to show who she thinks is mistress.”

  Rani’s indignation was so sharp that she almost stormed into the Hall. Only the rumble of the unheard speaker stilled her, his rumble and the icy fingers that closed around her heart at Salina’s dismissive tone.

  “Contract be damned. She may have shown some promise with patterns, but she’s more trouble than she’s worth. Those merchant-brats almost always are. Now, the soldiers are certain to come looking for her - her guild insignia was perfectly clear, even if no one knows her by name. I saw it myself, on the cloak she left hanging on the cathedral’s side door. I instructed Brother Gatekeeper not to let her in - at least we’ll be able to claim that we don’t know where she is.”

  Rani’s skinned knees smarted, and tears stung her eyes. Guildmistress Salina was supposed to act as her mother; the woman had sworn she would love Rani as her own daughter. Even the chronic annoyance in the guildmistress’ voice would hurt less than her current dismissive tone.