Glasswrights' Test Read online

  The players. Of course. That was where Tovin must be.

  Rani nearly flew across the courtyard.

  The heat shimmered off the practice field as she entered the clutch of buildings that housed the players. In a series of darting glances, she noted that a pair of young acrobats were practicing their routines, falling onto hay-stuffed bolsters as they negotiated a series of handholds. Children sat in a semi-circle around one half-blind woman, watching as the old dame showed them how to stitch colorful costumes. Another woman paced back and forth on a wooden stage, gesturing with her hands toward absent fellows, muttering lines beneath her breath.

  Everyone looked up as Rani staggered into the courtyard, and a few of the players called out greetings. Those kind words were frozen on lips, though, as people glimpsed Rani’s face. She must look a fright. She knew that her eyes grew puffy when she sobbed, and enough people had told her that she looked a mess after whatever illness had struck her down in Brianta.

  Poison? Hal had seemed so confident of his diagnosis. It fit, she thought, swallowing a leaden taste. No. She would not think of that now. Would not dwell on the glasswrights, on Master Parion. She had completed her test, and now she must wait.

  The players. That was what she must handle now. Tovin.

  She realized that her shoulders were hunched close to her ears, and she forced herself to take a calming breath. Another. Another.

  There. She was ready to see him now.

  She crossed the courtyard to the storage hut, to the building that housed the costumes and glass panels and all the other riches of the troop. When she settled her hand on the iron latch, she heard a voice within. A low rumble, the certain tones that she knew were Tovin’s. Her throat tightened, and she had to remind herself to breathe once again.

  And then, there was a higher voice. A woman’s tones, flowing gently and firmly. Flarissa, Tovin’s mother. The woman who had welcomed Rani to the troop years before, who had Spoken with her first, long ago in Liantine. Offering up a quick prayer to Fell, the god of families, Rani opened the door and stepped into the hut. She ordered herself to ignore Fell’s sound, the plaintive cry of a cat.

  Tovin was standing in front of a trunk, folding a length of crimson spidersilk. He looked up when the door opened, and the sunlight fell directly on his copper curls, teasing out all the glints of red. It was Flarissa who spoke, though. “Ah, welcome home, Ranita. Perhaps you can talk some sense into this son of mine.”

  “Flarissa,” Rani said by way of greeting. “Tovin.”

  “Leave us, mother.” His voice was harsh; it sounded as if he had run too far in too short a time.

  “I think that that would not be wise,” Flarissa said mildly. Rani could feel the woman’s curious eyes on her face. She resisted the urge to push her hair back, to straighten her skirts.

  “Mother, do you fear that I would strike our generous patron? Surely you do not think so poorly of your only son.”

  “Hush, Tovin. I know that you would never hurt with weapons. I also know that you underestimate the power of your words. You might do injury where you least expect to.”

  Rani longed for Flarissa to stay, for the woman’s cool logic to prevail. Nevertheless, she knew that she needed to speak to Tovin alone; there were things that no other player should hear about the Fellowship, about Brianta. “Thank you for your concern, Flarissa. I think that you should leave us, though.”

  The woman glanced at her sharply. “You are certain, Ranita?”

  “Yes.” She tried to place confidence in the word, but it whispered into the dark corners of the hut.

  “Very well, then. Be careful, children.” As Flarissa crossed to the door of the hut, she raised her hand to Rani’s cheek. “Be very careful.” Rani turned her head so that she could absorb the full touch of Flarissa’s fingers, the blood-warmth that flowed from flesh to flesh. She closed her eyes against sudden tears that seemed to well up from the depth of her memories, and she drew a ragged breath. “Very careful,” Flarissa whispered again, and then she was gone.

  Rani turned to Tovin and drew a deep breath before she began. “What are you doing?”

  “You made your choice. And I’ve made mine.”

  “I needed to speak with my king. You know that he is my liege lord.”

  “I know that you were in danger. I know that you ordered me away. I know that you have manipulated me since the first day you decided to travel to Brianta. Since earlier than that.”

  “Tovin, you sound like a child! I did not ask to be alone with Hal as a way of manipulating you. There were words that he needed to hear. Words that he needed to hear alone, so that he could react to them as a man. Not as a king, not as a noble lord, but as a man.”

  “I see. And did your private audience with Halaravilli the man get you what you wished? Did you work your wiles upon him as you planned?”

  “Tovin Player, you have no reason to be jealous! I did not touch the king!”

  “A man can be jealous of thought. More harm can be done by a wandering mind than by any wandering fingers.”

  “So that’s what this is all about? You think that I still long for King Halaravilli ben-Jair?”

  He faced her squarely for the first time since she’d entered the hut. “Can you stand there, Ranita, and tell me you do not?”

  She wanted to tell him that he was being absurd, that he was manipulative himself. And yet, the words froze in her mouth. Any feelings that she might have for Hal were meaningless. He was a king and she a glasswright—not even a glasswright master yet, Clain be willing. Hal was the overlord of all Morenia, and he had a wife that he refused to set aside. What difference did it make, if Rani still recalled their past? What difference did it make, if Rani dreamed of how things might have been?

  “There,” Tovin said. “You’ve taken too long to answer.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “I won’t be. Not any longer.” He finished folding the crimson silk and set it into the trunk. Another length of cloth followed, and a tight roll of leather. His glassworking tools. He was truly leaving.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m not certain. Perhaps I’ll try my fortune on the southern road, in Sarmonia.”

  “What, as an herb-witch?”

  He frowned at her sarcasm. “I hear they have players’ troops there. Maybe one of them needs a glasswright.”

  “I’m your patron. You can’t leave without my permission.” She regretted the words as soon as she had said them, but there was no possible way to comb them out of the air.

  “Would you do that, Ranita? Would you chain me to you, like a dog in a stable?” The planes of his cheeks caught the light, sending the rest of his face into shadow. She remembered when she had first met him, high on the Liantine plain. He had frightened her then, terrified her with the secret power of glass. The secret power of his masculine strength. The secret power of him.

  “Please, Tovin! I need you here!”

  “So you think. You think that I will stay to help you out of yet another predicament. You can’t do that, Ranita. You’ve chosen to send me away once too often.”

  “I had no choice!”

  “Do not lie. You took your oath in Brianta, before a hall of glasswrights, before Mair, before the Thousand Gods. I had traveled all that way to stand beside you in your labors, to aid you in your quest, and you set me aside as if I were an inconvenient dog.”

  “I—”

  “And when we returned here, you ordered me away again, so that you could talk to the man you love, talk in privacy.”

  “Tovin—”

  “I know that you don’t mean to. I know that you think you had no choice. But I cannot live here, knowing that you will do the same again. Whenever I am not convenient, whenever you need others more. … A man can’t live with that.”

  He closed the trunk and fastened it with a heavy iron lock. Rani flinched as he snapped the hasp closed, and she took a step back as he tested it with two quick jer
ks. Searching for words, for any argument, she said, “Crestman is trying to manipulate Hal against me. He wants me dead.”

  “Oh, you’re too inconvenient to die.”

  “Tovin!”

  “You’ve been jousting with that solider boy as long as you have known him.”

  “He’s lying to Hal.”

  “All part of the drama, Ranita. You’re a better player than that, by now. You should recognize the pattern.”

  Recognize the pattern. That was what she had done since she was a child. Found the shapes. Found the lines. Found the connections between things. Things and places and people.

  She closed her eyes, and she could see a map laid out before her, a map of all that had transpired to bring her to this place. She could see Tovin Speaking with her, teaching her the ways to plumb the depths of her consciousness. She could see their first frantic fumblings in the spiderguild’s Great Well. She could see how he had stood beside her as she watched over the riberry trees, over the octolaris.

  She saw other patterns, though. She saw a son who rode from his mother, early and often, trading on behalf of the players. She saw a man whose pride was wafer thin, whose sense of self-worth was wrapped up in delicate glasswork and fragile lead chains. She saw a man whose eyes darkened whenever she mentioned her feudal obligations, her past life at court.

  Now, she saw the pattern. She saw the pattern, and she knew that she could not change it. Not now. Not with the tools she had at hand. Not with the mission that still lay ahead of her, the goals she must accomplish.

  “Goodbye, Tovin.” She was surprised that her voice did not shake.

  “Goodbye.”

  For a moment, she thought that he would kiss her. She thought that he would close the distance between them, that he would fold his arms around her, that he would bring her near enough that she could hear his heartbeat.

  But then, she saw the shutters fall across his eyes. His fingers tightened on the iron clasp of his trunk. He was already moving on, already saddling his horse, already fleeing Moren. He was already gone.

  She turned on her heel and left the hut, ignoring the laughter of the children, ignoring the good-natured curses of the acrobats, ignoring the joyful bustling life of the players.

  * * *

  When Rani woke, the last fingers of sunset pried through her window. She lay on her bed, catching her breath from the nightmare that she’d dreamed: Messengers had arrived from the glasswrights’ guild—endless messengers, streaming into the center of the players’ enclave. Each of them carried a crumpled parchment message. Each of them bowed before her, proffering up the guild’s verdict. Rani had taken every scrap of parchment, unfolded it, smoothed it with trembling hands.

  “Upon most sad reflection, I, Parion Guildmaster, determine that the journeyman once known as Ranita Glasswright has not yet mastered the means of creating glasswork. Until such time as said Ranita shall perfect her skills, she shall not be known by her guildname, here in Brianta or anywhere in the wide world that honors the name of the glasswrights’ guild.”

  Failure. Scrap after scrap, messenger after messenger, reporting on her absolute failure.

  Rani had sobbed in the dream. She had sobbed like a fiend, like a madwoman, like she had sobbed in Hal’s study earlier that day. Was it only that day? Had she lost so much since dawn? Her king? Her lover? Her respect for herself?

  She managed to sit on the edge of the bed. Her room was hot, and the air was still, but her skin was cold and clammy. She dragged herself to the small table in the corner, fumbling for an ivory comb. As she worked through the tangles in her hair, she tried to calm herself, tried to push away the bitter memories of her dream.

  She did not know that Master Parion would fail her. Not yet.

  Her hair was damp, and it hung limp against the back of her neck. When she looked at the ivory comb, she saw several fine strands glinting in the last of the evening light. It seemed that she’d been losing her hair since she’d been in Brianta. If she ran her fingers along her scalp, they came away twisted with strands.

  Perhaps she had been poisoned. Perhaps the gods had a cruel sense of irony. Crestman had set her on a path, given her a vial to kill a woman, even as someone had worked to kill her with poison. Maybe the gods were laughing, enjoying her plight from their seats in the Heavenly Fields.

  Rani poured a glass of water, but she could only choke down a single swallow before the metallic taste closed her throat. She glanced at the window again. It was still too early to do what she must do. She needed darkness. Total darkness.

  She crossed to the prie-dieu that was set beneath the window, strategically placed to capture any errant breeze. Tovin had moved the prayer bench for her before they left for Brianta, before the summer reached its fever pitch.

  He’d be gone by now. Gone, and sleeping in some inn. Would he really take ship for Sarmonia? She would have thought him too tied to his troop. But it was hardly his troop any longer. It had become hers, in the years that the players had spent in Morenia.

  There would be time enough, tomorrow, to think on Tovin. For now, she had best pray to the Thousand Gods. She would need their assistance in the work that she must complete that night.

  As she knelt on the wooden prayer bench, her hands found their way back into her pockets. There was Crestman’s note. Now, she could finger it without feeling the gaping hole in her chest. She could picture the proud soldier, twisted and maimed. She could remember him as he had been, as he wanted to be once again.

  And beside it was the vial of poison. Her belly clenched as she thought of the smell of it, sharp, acrid. That afternoon, it had taken her a long time to work the stopper loose. A small amount had splashed on her hand, and she had recoiled. Crestman had been quite clear, though. Mareka must drink the poison for it to do any harm. Rani was not likely to be damaged by a drop on her flesh.

  Now, she set the vial on the prie-dieu’s crossbar, folding her hands over it in a careful attitude of prayer. Which of the gods would note her appeal tonight? Which of the gods was assigned to listen to a reluctant assassin?

  Tarn seemed too easy a choice, but Rani reached out for him nonetheless. “Hail Tarn. Listen to this poor pilgrim and grant her petition. Watch over her, and keep her in your grace. Hail, great Tarn.”

  The rush of black-green wings was immediate, even though her words were stilted. The small vial seemed to grow beneath her fingers, to expand until she could feel each bump, each whorl in its imperfect construction. Dusty bits of cork still flecked the container’s mouth, and she brushed them off hesitantly, mindful of the liquid within.

  “Hail, Tarn,” she started again, only to stop when the green-black shimmer threatened to overwhelm her.

  What had happened in that curia chamber? Rani remembered the ecstacy that had spread on the princess’s face, her certainty as she spoke of the gods. Berylina had clearly known that they were in the room with her, that they surrounded her. The princess had seen them; she wasn’t crafting tales for the curia priests. She had not exaggerated for the religious body.

  And in the middle of the trial, Rani had thought that she, too, might actually be aware of the gods around her. She could remember the power that she had felt during her Speaking with Berylina, her certainty that the gods were present in her ears, in her mouth, in her nose and her flesh. She had sensed the gods precisely as Berylina had.

  But was Rani only imagining those presences? Were they part of the illness that had dogged her since her arrival in Brianta? Were they an expression of hope, of desire, of desperate longing to share poor Berylina’s faith?

  Or—even more frightening—were they real? Had the gods come to Rani with the strange emanations that Berylina had known?

  Rani bowed her head, reminding herself to concentrate on the prayer at hand. She tried to speak to Roat, and Arn, and Fen. But none of the gods seemed near to her, none appeared to listen. Justice, courage, and mercy were distant ideals. Rani’s fingers grew slick upon the glass vial; the
container seemed to send out its own rays of heat.

  Under other circumstances, Rani would have been grateful. It had been so long since her bones had felt warm, so long since she had taken a breath without stilling the urge to shiver. So long since she had been well.

  After tonight, she would have time to heal. After tonight, she would be removed from the Fellowship’s threats. Laranifarso would be delivered, and she could return to the serious work of supporting Moren, of supporting Hal. He would need her, of course. He would rely on her more, once Mareka was gone.

  Life in Moren might return to the old patterns, to the customs and traditions from before the fire. From before Berylina and Mareka. Life might be simple again.

  Rani gave up on prayer. She used the prie-dieu to pull herself to her feet. Her knees ached as she straightened, and her thoughts flashed on memories eight years old. As a young glasswright, she had spent a great deal of time praying to Sorn, the god of obedience, to Plad, the god of patience. The glasswrights’ prayer benches had been embossed with the symbols of their crafts; Rani’s knees had been gouged more times than she cared to remember.

  Those prie-dieus had perished in the old guildhall. Perhaps Parion had ordered more constructed for the hall in Brianta. Odd, that Rani had not seen one while she was in Jair’s homeland. Odd, that the guild seemed all out of keeping with the gods. Odd, that the glasswrights held themselves so far apart, even in their new home.

  More mysteries. More thoughts. More riddles to be solved.

  After tonight. She was letting her mind wander so that she could avoid the serious business at hand.

  Rani leaned out of her window, noting that the guards had taken up their night-time positions by the palace gates. Their torches burned high, and she knew that the men’s faces would shine with sweat in the summer night. She craned her neck and tried to look up at the royal apartments, at the window where Mareka slept. The angle was too steep, though. She could not see the queen’s balcony from her room. She could not see her destination.

  The Pilgrims’ Bell began to toll across the night, summoning the faithful from the surrounding countryside. The deep tones had saved lives in the middle of winter, gathering in pilgrims who would otherwise have succumbed to snow or wolves or worse. Now, in the summer, the bell sounded weary, exhausted, as if it longed only for one single night of sleep.