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  Siritalanu was oblivious, though. He heard no god, saw no god, tasted no god. He held his faith through tradition, through the repeated mechanics of worship. He had feared Berylina’s strange rapport, and he would be entirely undone if he knew that Rani had inherited that communion.

  “We will leave you, Father, to finish your worship in peace.” Hal’s words were a mercy; he managed to sound as if he had not seen the tears welling up in the priest’s eyes.

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” Siritalanu said, bobbing his head. For once, his boyish face looked aged; weariness stretched his flesh, and it seemed that his skin was dusted with some grey powder. He moved his fingers in a holy sign, first in front of the king and then in front of Rani.

  Hal nodded his appreciation, and then he turned away from the still burning pyre. Lacking a specific command to the contrary, Rani followed him back to the palace. They walked through the gates, through the corridors, up the winding staircase to the tower room where they had been reunited only a fortnight before.

  Hal sent away his attendants, declining offers of food and drink and a new-built fire. He insisted that he had accounts that he must review; there were matters that he needed to discuss with Ranita Glasswright.

  As the door closed behind the last of the servants, Rani said, “That is not my name.”

  “Glasswright? And what else would you call yourself?”

  “The matter is not what I would say. It is the title that they would grant to me. Or not.”

  “And who are they? The glasswrights of a distant kingdom.”

  “My lord, they were your glasswrights once. They once lived in Morenia.”

  “Some of them, aye. But I do not recognize them now. And I wonder that you do.”

  Rani blinked, and she saw Larinda’s masterpiece behind her eyes, the old guildhall in all its glory. “They were a mighty power once, the glasswrights’ guild.”

  “Aye.”

  “They work to be a force once again. They labor to honor every one of the gods with their glasswork, to decorate every shrine dedicated to one of the Thousand.”

  “And there is a chance that they might succeed. If they free themselves from outside forces. If they learn to act on their own, without undue influence from the Fellowship.”

  Rani wanted to believe that. She wanted to believe that she had failed her test only because the Fellowship had decreed it so. She wanted to believe that Master Parion had found mastery in her glasswork, that he himself had recognized her creation as a worthy offering to Clain.

  She shook her head. “It is not as easy as that. If the guild had wanted to raise me to master, it would have defied the Fellowship.”

  “Would it? Knowing the price that it once paid for getting caught in politics beyond its walls?”

  Hal had not been in Brianta. He had not seen the open anger, the yearning, the loss on Larinda’s face. He had not seen Master Parion’s single nod, his silent acceptance of the players’ tools that Rani had employed.

  Still, she had fought with Hal enough. She offered up a token of agreement: “It is impossible for me to say, my lord. Impossible for any of us to know.”

  Hal sighed, as if he had not wanted her concession after all. “I’m sorry, Rani. I know how hard you worked. I know what you sacrificed in traveling to Brianta.”

  “I did not lose as much as some.” There. Someone needed to speak of the deaths, of Berylina and Laranifarso.

  “Rani, you did not cause their deaths.”

  “That is not what you said when I arrived home, my lord. You blamed me for Berylina”

  “I spoke in anger then.” He looked directly in her eyes. “I was afraid. I feared what Liantine will do, what Berylina’s death will mean for me and my people and all of Morenia in the months to come.” She knew that he could admit his fear to her. He could admit anything to her. “I did not mean those words, and I should not have said them.”

  She offered up her own apology. “I did not intend to add to your troubles. I did not want to make you afraid for Queen Mareka’s life.”

  He nodded, and she wondered if he was remembering the feel of that glass vial beneath his fingertips. She swallowed away the taste of metal as he said, “And so.”

  “And so,” she repeated, and then she found the courage to go on. “You know that the queen remains in danger.” He nodded. “If the Fellowship does not find her, Crestman might.”

  “I know. If not for him, I would send her back to her spiderguild. They might have the power to protect her from the Fellowship.”

  “Not from Crestman, though. Not from a man who served as their slave.” She pictured Crestman’s wasted leg, his twisted arm. “She would not last a month there.”

  “And last she must,” Hal said with a sardonic twist to his lips. “For she remains my lawful wife. And in seven months, she’ll be the mother of my lawful heir.”

  Rani’s heart clutched inside her chest, and even in the secret spaces of her own mind, she could not say if she reacted from fear or loss. If Mareka succeeded in carrying this child, Hal’s life would be in danger from the Fellowship. And if she failed, Hal would need to answer to his people. Nevertheles, she said, “I offer my congratulations, Sire.”

  Hal looked at her steadily, and she knew that she must hold his gaze, must keep her face from expressing her doubt, from unfolding her private pain. He would know, of course. He would know precisely what she thought and how she felt, because he was her king. Because he had fought beside her for eight long years. Because they had shared in the birth and the rebuilding of his monarchy.

  “I accept them,” he said at last. “On behalf of my lady wife and myself, I accept them.”

  “And the queen is in good health in these early days?”

  “As good as she has been at any other time. She called an herb-witch to her this time, when my own chirurgeon refused to aid her in her quest.”

  “An herb-witch?” Rani could not keep from twitching as she thought of the accusations against Berylina.

  “Aye.”

  “Your priests must have been furious.”

  “Mareka gave them no cause for that. She went to the cathedral every morning and called the herb-witch every night.”

  Rani nodded. “She was successful, at least.”

  “So far.” Hal shook his head, as if he disagreed with someone. “So far, she succeeds. But she will not stay safe in Riverhead. She must travel somewhere else. Somewhere secret. Somewhere where Crestman cannot reach. I think that I will send her—”

  “Do not tell me!” Rani could not keep panic from her voice.

  “You know that I value your counsel, Rani.”

  “Do not tell me where you send the queen!” She stumbled over the words in her haste to get them out. “The Fellowship and Crestman have tested me, and twice I have failed. I paid with my trial for the glasswrights’ guild, and I paid with Laranifarso. Do not tell me where you send Queen Mareka, so that the Fellowship cannot use me again.”

  She saw the battle on his face. For all his faults, for all his uncertainties, Hal was a good man. He wanted her to stand beside him; he wanted to include her in his kingdom.

  Or maybe, Rani thought, he did not want to be alone. He did not want to stand on the tip of the arrow.

  He said, “You know that I must declare myself against the Fellowship now. It is not enough that I fight Crestman, who was only their instrument. I must take them down, or die in the trying.”

  She knew. She must do the same. She had known when she heard that Laranifarso was murdered. She had known in the long pause between her heartbeats when she read that she had failed the glasswrights’ test.

  But she had known for longer than that. She had known when she saw Crestman in the dim-lit street outside the Gods’ Midden. She had known when he had pressed poison into her hand, when he had bid her kill a queen.

  As a child, she had acted blindly, taking a life when she was bidden to do so. She had watched innocent blood pool beside her, watch
ed shock and horror spread over a good man’s face.

  But she was not a child any longer. She made her choices now. She took on her own missions, accepted her own burdens, assumed her own responsibilities. She chose to act for justice, for right. So she had spared Mareka’s innocent life.

  “I know that you must declare war on the Fellowship, my lord. And I will be there by your side. I will fight them, as long as I am able, and I will aid you in your quest in any way that I might. That, at least, I can swear. That, at least, I can promise today.”

  Hal looked at her. She wondered if he saw the dark circles beneath her eyes, the lank strands of her hair, the tired lines around her mouth. She hoped that he did not. She hoped that he remembered the glasswright who had journeyed out from his court to escort a princess, the woman who had taken up her burden, who had promised to nurture and support a lost pilgrim, a hopeless cause.

  He nodded, and she knew that it did not matter which vision of her he saw that day. He knew her then, and he trusted her now, no matter her appearance, no matter the changes that had come over her.

  She broke the connection between them first, looking away with eyes that suddenly stung with unshed tears. She glanced down at the brooch upon her breast, at the tangle of metal that had come to seem like an extension of her own heart.

  Her Thousand-Pointed Star. Sacred to her still. Despite everything that had happened in Brianta, everything that she had witnessed, everything that she had done. Everything that she had not done.

  She unfastened the clasp on the Star, and she held it out to Hal. He hesitated only a moment, and then he folded his fingers over hers, over the gold, over the ancient symbol. “By Jair,” she said. “By Jair, I’ll work with you to bring the Fellowship to its knees. We’ll destroy that twisted body so that it can never work its secret evil again.”

  His fingers tightened around hers for only a moment, and he repeated, “By Jair!”

  And then, he was gone. She knew that he went to speak to soldiers, to guards, to arrange for the transport of his wife and queen to some safe place.

  Rani crossed to the window of the tower. As she looked out over Moren, a breeze sprang up, lifting her hair from her face. Heavy clouds now filled the sky, great lowering banks of grey that seemed ready to fold over the top of the cathedral. A growl of thunder rolled across the city.

  Thunder. The voice of Shad, the god of truth.

  A brilliant fork of lightning split the sky, and rain suddenly broke, sheets of water pouring down from the Heavenly Fields like the blessings of all the gods. For just a moment, Rani could smell the dust of the streets, the hot breath of summer. Then, that dry scent was lost, drowned, washed away in the torrent.

  Rani leaned out of the window, cupping her hands in the downpour. Her palms filled almost immediately, and she laughed as she brought the water close to her lips. As her tongue touched the rain, she knew that it had a power, a sweetness, a force. She let it flow over her lips, across her teeth, down her parched and aching throat.

  No metallic taste.

  Nothing but water. Warm, clear water.

  Automatically, Rani offered up a prayer to Mip. The god answered her before she had completed her thought—his nightingale song filled her ears, painfully sweet, gloriously perfect.

  Berylina had brought her this. Berylina had taught her how to reach out to the gods, how to feel them stir within her. Somehow, through the power of Speaking, Berylina had opened Rani’s eyes and ears, her nose and mouth, her flesh. Berylina had awakened her to the power of all the Thousand Gods.

  “Thank you,” Rani whispered to the princess. “By Jair, I thank you for this gift.”

  And then the Pilgrims’ Bell began its tolling, calling to the frightened and the brave, the faithful and the lost, summoning all of them home to Moren.

  A SNEAK PEAK AT THE GLASSWRIGHTS’ MASTER

  Volume 5 of the Glasswrights Series

  * * * * *

  As the battering ram pounded against the city gates, Rani Trader prayed that the Thousand Gods would permit her to live until sunset. Hundreds of soldiers shuffled around her, repeating the holy sign with their own mailed fists. A breeze swirled down the cathedral’s marble aisle, harbinger of autumn’s chill, and Rani automatically looked at Mair, making sure that her Touched friend had settled a cloak around her too-thin shoulders.

  Mair glared back at Rani, as if the cold breeze were a personal affront. Rani started to let herself believe that the Touched woman’s old spirits had revived, that she had finally returned to her habit of ordering the world about. Before joy could boil around Rani’s heart, though, Mair glanced at the silken square tied about her wrist. She whispered to the cloth in a voice almost too soft to make out in the echoing cathedral. “All’ll be well, Lar. Fear not, son. Ye’ll not grow too cold.”

  Rani shuddered against the chill that walked down her spine, a prickling that had nothing to do with the temperature in the House of the Thousand Gods. Mair had spent the better part of the past year speaking to her dead son, Laranifarso. She had convinced herself that he still rested in her arms, that she carried him wherever she went with the square of black cloth, cloth that had been ripped from the mask Mair wore when she attended clandestine meetings of the Fellowship of Jair.

  Rani could still remember the sound of the fabric rending, Mair’s rage against the Fellowship that had murdered her son. That day, Mair first crossed to the distant land of madness. That day, Mair first left sanity and stability and all the familiar world.

  The battering ram continued to pound the gates in the city below the cathedral, and Rani tried to remember that entire days went by without the Touched woman speaking to the silk. But each time Rani’s hopes climbed that Mair had been healed, the other woman would raise her wrist and mutter to the cloth as if it were a living, thinking creature, as if it could answer her more completely than Mair’s infant son had ever managed in his too-short life. Rani forced herself to remain silent, to pretend that she did not see the imaginary child. And then Mair would go about her day as if there were nothing strange, nothing odd, nothing hideously, horribly wrong.

  The ram increased its urgent tattoo as Mair rubbed her hand across the silk, as if she were smoothing a real boy’s hair, as if she were gentling a fussy child. “Pay attention!” Rani whispered, unable to restrain herself.

  “Mind yer own prayers, Rai,” Mair growled, and Rani almost believed that the Touched woman was upset about nothing more than participating in a service that was designed to glorify the soldier caste. The old Mair would certainly chafe about wasting time in the House of the Thousand Gods while enemy Briantans camped outside the city walls, while Liantine ships blockaded the harbor. She would concentrate on keeping her fingers from roaming into the purses of the nobles who stood closest to her. She would focus on sparing the kneeling soldiers from her sharp tongue. She would glare at the priest who stood at the altar, blithely offering up prayers to gods that seemed always to ignore the Touched.

  No, the new Mair acted nothing like the Touched woman that Rani had befriended more than nine years before. The new Mair ignored all the assembled worshipers around her—all of them but Rani. And Farsobalinti.

  Rani caught one look flashed between the pair. Mair still wore the golden armband that Baron Farsobalinti had given her during their wedding ceremony. The nobleman, though, had set his aside, unable to bear the remembrance of easier times, of brighter days when his wife and his son had prospered. When Laranifarso had died, Mair was forced to disclose her secret loyalties, her involvement with the shadowy Fellowship. Farso had made it clear that Mair’s silent betrayal hurt him even more than the murder of their son. Nevertheless, Rani could tell that he remained perfectly aware of Mair; the troubled nobleman darted frequent glances from the dais where he stood beside his king.

  If only Mair and Farso could speak to each other in the easy way they had shared before Laranifarso was lost! If only they would say what they were thinking, how they ached, how they longed
for vengeance against the secret forces that had killed their son!

  But there would be no speaking, not today. Not with the War Rites only partially completed. Not with the steady pounding of a battering ram against Moren’s gates. Not with a fleet of Liantine ships blockading the harbor, with all of King Halaravilli’s enemies arrayed against him, ready to strike, ready to bring him down once and for all.

  A Briantan army of priests had crested the hills near Moren on the same morning that Liantine ships blockaded the harbor. Hastily organized messengers had carried demands from the besieging army. The Briantans had come to Moren to burn out the corruption in the city’s soul, a corruption that had led Halaravilli ben-Jair to offer sanctuary to Princess Berylina. The princess had been the strongest witch that the Briantans had executed in over a century of meting out religious death sentences.

  Ironically, the Liantines were attacking Moren for the same princess. Berylina’s father demanded compensation for the loss of his only daughter, for the strange child that he had only too willingly resigned to Moren nearly four years before. As a princess, Berylina had no value to the house of Thunderspear. As a martyr, she inspired dreams of revenge, dreams of recapturing the Liantines’ longtime profits from monopolistic trade in spidersilk.

  Religion and money–what better reasons for a war? What better reasons for Morenia to be caught in the vice of its neighbors to the east and to the west?

  With aggravating deliberation, Father Siritalanu spread his green-clad arms and intoned, “And so we ask you Arn, god of courage, to watch over Morenia. We ask you to guide our poor kingdom in these dark days. Arn, give us strength against all our enemies, from those known and unknown, from those seen and unseen.”

  Some of the soldiers were little more than boys; they had spent their entire lives practicing their caste’s warrish obligations, but they had never marched to battle for their king. Nevertheless, they understood the War Rites; they knew what was expected of them in the ceremony. Taking their cue from the robed priest, the assembled soldiers bellowed their response from one united throat: “Arn, give us strength against all our enemies!”