Glasswrights' Test Page 32

  Sleep. Rani would have that after she completed her mission. Long hours of sleep, with no more cares.

  For now, though, she must begin. She must complete her task. Otherwise, the Fellowship would never be content. Laranifarso would never be free.

  The torches in the corridor outside her apartments seemed too bright. Rani shielded her eyes, slitting her fingers so that her vision could adjust. The skin beyond her eyelashes felt tight, stretched, as if it had been turned to leather by her sobbing that afternoon.

  She glided through the corridors without a challenge from a single guard. She crept down to the kitchen, confident that Cook would be asleep. These were the few dark hours, after scraps from the evening’s dinner had been fed to the dogs, before it was time to mix yeast and flour, to knead the next day’s dough.

  Rani knew these passages well. She had discovered them with Hal when she was little more than a child, when she first came to the palace. In the dark days after she realized that her family was gone, after she knew that Bardo had truly betrayed her to his own secret band. … If only she had known then that there was lightness in those days, that there was quiet and

  comfort. … Those were the times before Hal was called to wear the crown, before they had the weight of a kingdom between them.

  Hal had led her from the nursery to the kitchens, taking midnight passages to liberate secret hoards of sweetcakes. Now, with the wisdom of an adult, Rani knew that Cook must have expected their visits. The plates were always filled, always covered with a single linen kerchief, always kept close to the warm stove.

  Rani swallowed, trying to ignore the taste of metal. Secret palace passages. … She had long thought them a thing of the past.

  Taking a deep breath, she stopped outside the kitchen’s double doors. She hesitated in the darkness, resting her fingers in her pocket, against the glass vial. It was there. Returned to its normal size. Its normal weight. Its normal cool, glassy feel.

  Rani’s fingers found the low door beside the entrance to the pantry. Her fingers worked the latch from memory, remembering to press down completely before pulling the door toward her. She needed to double over to stoop beneath the lintel; she had needed to duck even before, when she was still a child.

  The hidden passageway was tall enough, though. Hal had speculated years before that the secret stairs had been built for the convenience of the palace servants, so that they could carry trays of food and drink to the royal apartments.

  Rani surprised herself on the climb. She remembered where the staircase twisted. She remembered where she needed to stretch over a crumbled step. She remembered where leaking rainwater had slicked the outside edge of four consecutive stairs.

  And then, before she had a chance to recall more of her childhood, more of her carefree days, she had reached the top of the secret passage. One sniff confirmed that she was at her destination; the upper entrance to the steps was hidden in a garderobe.

  As a child, she had been terrified of that closet. It was secreted in the queen’s apartments, in the nest of rooms that had been corrupted by Queen Felicianda. Rani’s imagination had always run rampant; she had imagined that the royal conspirator’s wraith still haunted the chambers where she had lived in life. Hal had teased her once, pointing out that even if the Amanthian queen’s spirit persisted, it was not likely to linger in a garderobe.

  Rani shook her head. She had greater fears now than any imagined spirits. She was haunted by more frightening images, by more dangerous threats. She was plagued by the living.

  As if she suffered from a nervous spasm, she reached again into her pocket. The vial was there, mocking her with its barely perceptible weight.

  Rani had to catch her breath before she could hear the Pilgrims’ Bell here. She was deeper in the palace, more sheltered behind stone walls that were intended to keep out the most determined intruder. But the men who had designed the fortress had not counted on betrayal in their own ranks. They had not worked to keep the queen safe from someone already free to roam the keep.

  Standing with her hand on the door that led to Mareka’s bed-chamber, Rani hesitated. There would be guards in the outer corridor. If the queen heard her moving about, she could summon help with a single cry.

  Rani had called those guards to herself, a lifetime ago. When she was thirteen years old, when she arrived at the palace as the First Pilgrim. She had chafed under the watchful eye of a guardsman, a stolid soldier who had dogged her every step, keeping her from making contact with her brother. What was the man’s name? Mercu—? Mardo—?

  She sighed. She was making excuses. She was delaying the inevitable. The soldier was gone, along with the thirteen-year-old girl who had summoned all the household guards by wailing in frustration. The conspirator Larindolian, the old king, the old queen . . . all were gone.

  Now Mareka was the queen. Now Mareka slept on the other side of the door. Now Mareka must meet her fate, meet a future delivered by Rani’s hands. Touching her fingertips against the vial once again, Rani lifted the latch.

  Mareka’s sleeping chamber was as warm as the rest of the palace, as stultified by the heavy summer air. The queen had flung her windows wide in an obvious attempt to harvest whatever remnant breeze came her way. A shaft of moonlight illuminated the steps to the window, to the narrow balcony. Rani shivered as she thought of the queen falling, of the pregnant woman fetching up against the sharp-legged table. She shuddered as she thought of two more heirs lost to Morenia.

  The floorboards were swept clean. The heavy oaken planks lay smoothly. Not a joist creaked as Rani moved, not a board complained as she glided to the curtained bed.

  There. On the small table. A single goblet glimmered in the moonlight, pale as the belly of a fish. A flagon sat beside it.

  Rani had worried about the effectiveness of her plan. What if someone else drank from the goblet? What if someone else sampled the contents of the flagon? What if someone else found the stoppered vial?

  She had convinced herself, though, that none of those thoughts mattered. The nights were hot. The morning came early. The queen would be thirsty. Mareka was a guildswoman at heart, not a pampered noblewoman. She would pour herself a drink and drain her goblet. Otherwise, why would she keep the accouterments beside her bed? If she expected to be served, she would have left them with her maidservants.

  Enough. It was time for Rani to move. Time to push the last piece of her plan into place.

  She reached into her pocket. She gathered up the vial. She held it in her left hand, turning it so that she could catch the silvery moonlight. She levered one fingernail under the edge of the cork, working it toward her, working it away. She caught her tongue between her teeth, held her breath.

  And she took one step closer to the bed, closer to the table, closer to the flagon and the goblet and her destiny.

  The curtained bed exploded in a flurry of linens and bolsters. Rani’s ears were filled with a wordless roar, and then a lantern was unshuttered. Her night-primed eyes were blinded as she tried to look away, but strong fingers closed around her throat, forcing her head forward, forcing her toward the bed.

  She raised her fingers to scratch at the hands that held her. The vial slipped from her grasp as she tried to free herself, as she tried to pry loose the stranglehold. She twisted her back, arching as if she were a cat, and she added her own frantic keen to the wordless bellow of the creature who held her.

  Her attacker shifted, and Rani was suddenly held from behind, secured by a silk-clad arm across her throat. It was easier for her to breathe at least, easier for her to squirm about. Her eyes had adjusted to the lantern as well, and she could see the thick hairs on the forearm that secured her. She bucked and twisted and broke her way free, and then she was panting, gasping, and staring into a pair of too-familiar chestnut eyes.

  “Halaravilli.” She could barely shape his name.

  “Rani.” He spat hers, and she saw the jagged sorrow that etched his face, the impotent rage that even now mad
e him tense his fingers.

  “You have to understand,” she started to say.

  “Drink it.”

  “What?”

  “Drink the poison.”

  She stared at him as if he were mad. “I—”

  “Don’t talk to me!” His words lashed out at her, sharper than a whip. “Drink the god-cursed poison.”

  She shook her head, trying to find the words to explain to him, to let him know that she had worked out the pattern, that she had recognized the truth. She had analyzed the Fellowship’s command, their order, their extortion. She had found a way to save Laranifarso, to bring the child back home.

  Hal bellowed in the face of her silence, bending to scoop up the vial from the floor. The cork still clung to the glass lip, and he tore it off like a madman. He hurled the stopper at her, aiming for her face, but it bounced harmlessly off her shoulder. “My lord,” she said, but she stammered over the familiar phrase.

  “Drink the poison! Drink the poison and die!”

  He grabbed her then. He knotted his fingers in her hair and pulled her head back against his chest, moving his fingers around her face so that he covered her nose, cut off her ability to breathe through her flaring nostrils.

  He ground the vial against her mouth and pressed her lower lip against her teeth. She tried to break free, tried to step back, tried to explain, but he was a man possessed. He slid the glass against her mouth, pushing until she thought that her jaw would shatter. He tilted his wrist, farther, farther.

  She needed air. She needed to breathe. She needed to expand her lungs, to fill her chest.

  She felt liquid touch her teeth, roll against her lips. She tried to toss her head but he only clamped his fingers tighter across her nose. Against her will, beyond any conscious thought, she opened her mouth, gasping for air, frantic to fill her lungs.

  And then, she was coughing, choking, fighting to keep the contents of the vial from flowing into her lungs with the air she needed so desperately. She felt the liquid in her mouth, knew that some of it dribbled past her lips, onto her chin. She could taste the metal remnant, feel her entire body clench in rebellion.

  She swallowed.

  The water burned all the way down to her belly.

  She swallowed again, trying to smooth away the leaden flavor. Fleetingly, absurdly, she wondered if water would ever taste the same again, if she would ever be grateful for the sweet kiss from an unsullied well.

  And then, she was drawn back into the queen’s apartments, to the man who stood before her, breathing like a horse that had run a thousand leagues. He stared at the vial in his hands, gaping at the glass as if it was a living thing.

  “Rani,” he said, and her name sounded like a sob.

  “Sire.” She swallowed again, and then she extended her hand for the container.

  “It is a slow poison, then? One that will not take you straight away?”

  “It is no poison, my lord. I washed out the Fellowship’s foul brew. I filled the glass with water from your own well.”

  She saw the questions fly across his face. “The Fellowship? What hand do they have in this? Why would you work for them? Why would you lose the poison, yet still come to my lady’s chambers?”

  She answered his last question first. “I hoped to leave a warning, Sire. I hoped that my lady the queen would see the vial beside her morning cup. She would see what might have happened in the night, and she would know how easily she might be targeted the next time. She would recognize her vulnerability, and she would leave.”

  Hal shook his head in amazement. “You hate your queen so much, then? You are so jealous that you would kill her, or frighten her from her place at my side?”

  “I harbor no such enmity for Queen Mareka,” Rani said, and she was able to force the words into a semblance of truth. “The Fellowship, though. … They feel differently.”

  “The Fellowship?”

  “Aye. The same who hold Laranifarso. They keep the child as a safeguard against my conduct. They took him so that I would kill the queen.”

  “Kill the queen,” he said, repeating her words as if he were awakening from a dream. “And yet you chose to defy them?”

  “They want Mareka gone. They want to control your heirs, my lord. They want a child on your throne, a king who is more biddable than you have proven to be.” She saw him complete the pattern, saw him measure out the lines that she had left undrawn. If Hal’s child were on the throne, then Hal himself would be gone. She continued before he had to voice that certainty himself. “I thought that if I could make the queen leave without killing her, the Fellowship would be content. They do not care if Mareka lives or dies, they merely want her out of your life, out of your bed. They merely want her gone.”

  “And so you asked me for a boon this afternoon. You hoped that I would send her away and free Laranifarso in the process.”

  “Aye.”

  “And when I fouled that, you thought to frighten her off yourself.”

  “Aye.”

  “But the message I received? The warning that you were going to kill Mareka?”

  Rani did not pretend that she had not found the parchment, that she had not read the hateful words. “Crestman wrote that. He wanted to manipulate you.”

  “For the Fellowship?”

  “I do not think so. That does not fit the pattern. I think that Crestman acted on his own in that. He uses the Fellowship so long as their motives run even with his own, but his ultimate goal is different from theirs. He does not care if they remove you from Morenia. He is after me. He wants to punish me.”

  “And he thought to make me the instrument of that punishment.”

  “Aye.” Rani worked to keep her voice even on the single word.

  “He thought to have me kill you.” Hal’s voice was tinged with wonder, as if he only now realized how close he had come to just that action.

  “Or throw me in your dungeons. Or take me before a tribunal on a charge of treason.”

  “His hatred runs deep.”

  Rani thought of the boy-soldier she had met so many years ago, the child who had sacrificed puppies and soldiers and bonds of love. “Aye, Sire. Very deep.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “That all depends. Where is Queen Mareka?”

  He hesitated. She saw the uncertainty tighten his throat, the debate flash across his eyes. He lowered his gaze to the vial, and then he made a decision. “I’ve sent her to the castle at Riverhead. I convinced her that she would be cooler there, while this summer heat persists.”

  “And who knows that she has gone?”

  “No one. I fitted out her horse myself. The castle there has all the supplies that she will need. She traveled with two of her ladies, and six of my household guards.”

  Rani nodded. Eight people to account for, then. She could easily weave a story to cover them. She could craft a tale of devoted servants, carrying word back to the Liantine spiderguild, letting the distant masters know that their sometime journeyman had perished in a foreign land.

  “Listen to me, my lord. We can make this work to our advantage.” But first, before she spun out her stories, before she hatched her plans, she needed something. She needed Hal to trust her. She needed him to believe that she was loyal to him, that she worked to save him, to do what was best for him, and him alone. She offered up her greatest proof of trustworthiness. “Please, Sire. It’s been a long day. I saw Tovin Player leave me at noon, and that seems like a lifetime ago.”

  “Tovin is gone?”

  “Aye. He said that he would not stay with a woman whose loyalties lay with another.” She watched Hal measure her words, watched him weigh her devotion. She saw the moment that he recognized her truth, that he accepted her renewed pledge of fealty. She nodded once, and then she said, “Come, Sire. Bring the lantern closer to the hearth. Let us sit and work out the best response to the Fellowship, and Crestman, and all the forces that stand against us.”

  Hal did not hesitate as he
followed her to the low, wooden chairs.

  Chapter 15

  Rani stared at the iron crossbar of the pyre, and she wondered if her lungs would ever be free of the stench of funeral wood-smoke. The sharp aroma of ladanum laced the air.

  Rani had sprinkled the herbs herself, wrapping winding cloths about Berylina Thunderspear’s most sacred possessions. Typically, priests would have performed the duty. But typically, the ladanum would have been sprinkled on a body. They did not have Berylina’s body.

  Instead, Rani and Hal had decided that they would use the princess’s worldly goods to honor her and send her to the Heavenly Fields. They had gathered up her green caloya gowns and her inspired drawings of the gods. They had collected her prayer book and her scrolls of religious texts. They had bound all of the treasures to the Princess’s small prie-dieu, wrapping the ensemble with lengths of undyed spidersilk. Rani herself had fastened a Thousand-Pointed Star onto the collection, binding together a life of faith and fanaticism.

  Holy Father Dartulamino had been asked to bless the funeral bread and wine before lighting the pyre, but he had refused. Rani and Hal were left wondering if the highest priest in all the land had declined the honor because of its unorthodox nature, or because he stood by the actions of the Briantan curia, or—the darkest possibility—because the Fellowship somehow wanted Berylina to be dishonored. Neither Rani nor Hal could forget for long that the Holy Father was the second highest member of the Fellowship in Morenia.

  Even though Dartulamino had not agreed to participate, Father Siritalanu would not be put off. As he stepped toward the pyre, tears streamed down his face. His voice broke when he began the traditional prayers. “Greetings to all in the name of the Thousand Gods.”

  Rani’s voice was fervent as she proclaimed, “May all the gods bless you.” She might have had her differences with the priest, might have believed that he did not act strongly enough to save Berylina, act soon enough. Nevertheless, she mourned with him on this funeral day. She understood his sorrow, his guilt.