Glasswrights' Apprentice Page 9

“Ye’ve done a fine job o’ that yerself. What sort o’ rot ’ave they been feedin’ ye about my sort?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Did they tell ye we skin cats in the night alleys? Did they tell ye we kidnap babes ’n’ drink their blood?” Mair’s laugh was deep in her throat, and her fingers closed tight on Rani’s wrists as she pried loose the glinting Zarithian blade. “Those’re pretty bangles ye’re wearin’, Rai.”

  “Please.…” Rani swallowed her fear - these were the same children she had faced down last night, the rag-tag band who had gladly eaten her carrots. They could not mean her harm. Rani repeated that irrational mantra as she held up her manacled wrists. “Can you help me out of them?”

  Mair set the knife on the table with a curious glance at Rani. “That we canna do. We ’ave our own peace with th’ Council. We don’t brook their justice, ’n’ they let us creep th’ market.”

  Rani thought of the shadowy figure she’d seen at noon, and she pounced on the opportunity. “You can really go through the marketplace as you will?” Mair nodded. “Then we can work a bargain.” Rubbing her arms against the gathering night-chill, Rani described the Instructor she sought, stressing Morada’s ragged cloak, and the distinctive white stripe in her jet hair.

  “’N’ if we find ’er for ye, what’ll ye give us?”

  “If you look for her, I’ll share my food. Today Narda brought me a full loaf of good bread, and Tarin gave me a melon for my labor. If you find her, all you need to do is follow her, tell me where she’s hiding.” Rani proffered the half-melon that she had been saving to break her fast in the morning. She hesitated only an instant before adding Narda’s cake to the bait. Mair snatched at the food like a starved animal, sniffing at the cake before handing it to her lieutenant.

  The Touched leader kept her eyes on Rani as she spat into her palm, and then offered her hand to her new partner. “Deal.”

  Rani spat onto her own hand, clattering her chains as she clasped Mair’s palm. “Deal.”

  Mair did not ask why Rani sought Morada, and Rani volunteered no information. The Touched leader forced Rabe to hand back Rani’s dagger before the children melted into the market shadows.

  After that, Rani’s days settled into a pattern. Narda appeared each dawn, trundling her barrow through the waking streets, eggs teetering dangerously. Rani rose from her chilly bed, helping to steady the load and lay out the wares, alternating smooth white eggs with brown ones. Narda shared a breakfast of fried dough, or boiled eggs, or fat bacon, and then the woman disappeared into the growing crowds. Rani sold eggs all morning, adjusting prices to match the buyers, scrupulously collecting pennies into the leather pouch Narda had provided. The egg-woman returned whenever she needed more coins to finance her tavern visits, bringing food and praising Rani for her labor. Tarin came at noon and at dusk to claim her services - she minded his stand for an hour when the sun was directly overhead, and she scrubbed down the vegetable debris at the end of the day. She offered up at least half her food to the horde of Touched children every night, and Mair reported on the ever-disappointing status of the hunt.

  Rani never faltered in her submission to the Council’s verdict. She never failed in her responsibility to Narda, never shirked her work for Tarin. She never received shelter at night, even when a steady drizzle dampened the entire marketplace. She never saw Morada.

  Until the last day of Rani’s two-week sentence.

  That morning began like all the others, with Rani groggily waking in her rough bed beneath the trestle table. She stretched in the early morning dawn, rubbing her arms against the chill that shivered through the autumn sunrise. Soon, merchants trundled in their wares, narrow handcarts jostling in the tight marketplace aisles.

  Narda was late, and Rani was getting impatient as she peered down the ranks. She had followed Borin’s edict to the letter, and her chains chafed more this morning than they had at any time since she left the guildhall. The destruction of her guild still haunted her nightmares, and Cook’s order echoed louder in Rani’s skull. Cook had charged her in the name of Lan, in the name of the god who had watched out for Rani so far. Rani could no longer duck her responsibilities. But the apprentice knew that she needed her freedom if she were ever to find Morada.

  Offering up an exasperated prayer to the kitchen god, Rani pivoted about, staring toward the heart of the market in case she had somehow missed Narda’s initial approach. During the preceding fortnight, Rani had learned the secrets of the marketplace; she knew its shadows and nooks as well as she knew her former guildhall, as well as she knew the streets of the Merchant Quarter where her own family had sold their wares. Glancing toward Tarin’s stall, Rani saw immediately that that particular patch of black did not belong.

  She started to cry out, to warn Tarin of a thief, but the lurker chose that moment to move into a patch of foggy sunlight. Rani’s shout died in her throat as she recognized Morada’s profile.

  The Instructor’s hair straggled about her pinched face like drowned snakes, and the glasswright’s skin was a pasty grey. If Rani had come across her under other circumstances, she would have worried for the woman’s health; she might even have summoned one of the priest-leeches who served as chirurgeon for the lower castes.

  At that moment, though, Rani’s heart secretly soared at Morada’s haggard appearance. She recognized the tang at the back of her throat, the sharp craving for revenge. Rani wanted vengeance for Tuvashanoran’s death, for the havoc at the guildhall, for the ashes of her family’s home and the personal indignity of chains in the marketplace.

  As Rani strained at her metal bonds, Morada flicked a nervous glance about the market. The apprentice watched as wiry glasswright fingers danced over new-dug potatoes, and suddenly the woman’s ragged pockets bulged with pilfered riches. Rani swore softly under her breath, breathing the most hideous words she’d ever heard her brothers use. She yanked on her fast-held chain. Where was Mair? Where were the Touched who could go about the marketplace with ease? How could Lan’s gift of Morada go unused?

  Rani was almost whimpering with frustration when a heavy, dirt-encrusted hand fell on her shoulder.

  “There you are, my pretty!” Rani started like a rabbit caught outside its burrow. Narda cackled, rummaging in her pocket for the key to Rani’s chains. “A cart was upset at the Merchants Gate - fresh melons all over the road. Sorry to delay you, and this your last day in my service.” Rani rubbed at her wrists, trying to smooth away the angry red welt where she had strained against her bonds, the better to keep Morada in sight. “I wouldn’t have it said I starved you, girl. Here’s a penny - find yourself breakfast and come back within the hour.”

  Rani was so astonished she scarcely felt the coin fall into her outstretched palm. She almost missed Narda’s remonstration: “And there’s another penny for you, if you come back with a flask of ale! Might as well have a drink before we receive Borin’s final judgment!”

  Rani scarcely thought of the Chief Councillor as she darted through the crowd, intent on keeping Morada’s black cloak in sight.

  Chapter 5

  For one desperate minute, Rani thought that she had delayed too long, and the Instructor would be lost in the crowds. Then she took a deep breath and plunged into the heart of the marketplace. In the past fortnight, she’d polished her merchant skills, learned to measure the crowds of meandering buyers. Rani knew there was enough room to glide between the stands there; she knew she could duck beneath that trestle and emerge in the proper aisle to keep the Instructor in sight.

  By now, the merchants were familiar with the sight of this serious child on her errands, and more than one seller raised a hand in greeting. Rani nodded to acknowledge the attention, but she did not stop to gather up the proffered treats - an apple here, a wedge of cheese there.

  When Morada reached the market’s edge, Rani hovered on the fringe of tables, hesitant to move beyond the clear boundary. Narda had given her coins to buy breakfast and ale; the egg woma
n had assigned her a very specific mission. If Rani stepped beyond the merchants’ range, she was likely to negate the fortnight of service she had almost completed. Nevertheless, if Rani lost Morada now, there would be no redeeming her family, no explaining Tuvashanoran’s death.

  Glancing about frantically, wondering if she were being observed by Borin’s Council Watchers, Rani found herself face to face with the statue of the Defender of the Faith that guarded the market’s northern edge. Although the marble face was well-worn with age, Rani could easily imagine Tuvashanoran’s features graven in the stone. This was the role the Prince would have assumed in the Cathedral; this was the title he would have claimed if he had been spared the assassin’s arrow.

  With the mechanical obedience of a well-trained child, Rani bobbed a curtsey before the commanding statue, inclining her head beneath the outstretched arm. Mourning citizens had left offerings to the murdered prince at the marble feet. When Rani glanced at the sad carved eyes, she could see Tuvashanoran as he had last stood during life - tall and rigid with pain, an arrow blooming out of his eye, out of the stone socket. Rani’s mind supplied the cobalt light of the cathedral windows, and she almost cried out at the vision, cried out as she had during Tuvashanoran’s ceremony.

  Almost, but not quite. Rani had a mission, and she would not let guilt sway her from pursuing the Instructor who bore the truth. Consciously choosing to read the Defender’s marble arm as a benediction rather than a curse, Rani realized what she must do, regardless of the Councilors who patrolled the market with their knotted hemp badges.

  She stepped outside the market.

  Morada’s filthy cloak was just flitting around a distant corner. At first, Rani followed the Instructor through well-known streets. Although Morada slunk in the shadows, Rani had no problem keeping the older woman in sight. Even as Rani racked her brain to figure out where the Instructor was heading, Morada took a series of obscure turns, leaving the Merchants’ Quarter altogether. Rani had a vague notion they were worming toward the cathedral close. The buildings were close together on the narrow streets, and in many places, the upper stories had toppled toward each other. Evil smells seeped from the gutter, and Rani tried to breathe through her mouth.

  Morada seemed oblivious to the raucous laughter tumbling from behind warped doors, and she did not even start when a piteous wail drifted through a decrepit shutter. Rani had begun to doubt she would ever find her way out of these dark streets when Morada ducked into a hovel on the corner of two refuse-ridden alleys. Stepping over a slimy pile best left unexamined, Rani huddled against the daub and wattle, taking only an instant to pull her clothes closer, to protect her skin from the filthy building.

  The wall was as unwholesome as the rest of these streets but, for once, the decay worked to Rani’s advantage. She could put her ear to a crack beneath the cracked window frame and listen to the movement inside the hut. Even as Rani crouched by the foul building, a man’s voice hissed, slurred with drink and perpetual ill-will. “What have you got under that cloak, woman? You were gone long enough.”

  If Rani had not been listening for Morada’s reply, she never would have recognized the Instructor’s voice, miserable and whining. “You know bloody well I couldn’t get back any sooner. That damned Council runs the market like a military camp. I almost wasn’t able to get these.” Rani imagined Morada presenting her meager hoard of potatoes.

  The man snorted. “It’s the height of harvest, and this is all you manage?”

  “By all the Thousand Gods, Larindolian, you try my patience.” Rani was so startled to hear Morada pronounce a noble name, she almost gasped aloud. “You know as well as I that it would mean instant death if my face were recognized. You could have sent any servant to the market with money to buy the finest sweetmeats, or you could have gone back to the Palace to eat. I brought you food. I stole when you told me to. I’ve proven my loyalty to you and your cause - let’s get on with our plans.”

  The silence that greeted Morada’s irritated outburst was long and when Larindolian spoke, his voice was a dangerous cross between a purr and a growl. “My cause, eh? I thought you had sworn loyalty to our common leader, Instructor. I thought you had embraced our mission. I would have expected your guild to teach you the meaning of dedication.”

  “My guild taught me all the lessons I need. I understood dedication long before you came along, Larindolian - you and your keeper.”

  “Watch your tongue, Instructor! When you joined our cause, you swore loyalty to one far stronger than I.”

  “When I joined your cause, I believed we would bring justice to the City! Tuvashanoran was a better instrument for that justice than any I’ve seen among your colleagues.”

  Rani recognized the sound of an open hand on flesh, and the scrape of furniture testified to the force behind the blow. “Tuvashanoran was a rutting dog, and don’t you forget it, you lily-livered cow. Defender of the Faith! That man was not fit to lick the shoes of the one we serve!”

  Rani could not help but thrill to hear Morada chastised, even if the mysterious Larindolian insulted the sacred memory of the Prince, even if he hit a woman. Certainly, the Instructor deserved her comeuppance, given her complicity in Tuvashanoran’s death and her long history of lording over the guildhall apprentices. Gambling that Larindolian’s anger would make the nobleman incautious, Rani rose beside the rotting window sill, peering inside the dilapidated house. To Rani’s right, Morada sat in a chair, shaking her head as if trying to clear out cobwebs of confusion. A handprint whitened her cheek, rapidly flushing to angry red. When the Instructor spoke, her words fell into the still room like pellets of ice.

  “So much for the Brotherhood of Justice, eh, Larindolian? So much for equality before the Thousand Gods.”

  “Justice and equality,” the man sneered, and his handsome features contorted into a mask of contempt. Even in the gloom of the dilapidated shack, Rani could see that the nobleman’s eyes were eerily light, a frightening blue so pale it was like ice. “Justice and equality are merely words that the weak use to keep us strong folk enchained. Things are changing in the City and I, for one, will not be tied to weaklings who snivel about ‘justice.’”

  Morada snorted. “Those ‘weaklings’ are your sworn brethren. Are you fool enough to challenge the Brotherhood here and now, with Tuvashanoran’s body not yet set on its pyre?”

  “You should not try to guess what I intend to do with the Brotherhood, little sister.”

  The Instructor stared at the man in shock, a look of horrified realization flushing her features. “You are going to challenge them, aren’t you? Even with the oaths you’ve sworn, you believe you’re better than the rest of us!”

  “You cannot know what I believe, woman!”

  Morada jutted her chin defiantly. “Is this the drink speaking, or have you decided that Shanoranvilli is the next to die? Have you selected your coronation robe yet?”

  The man’s fury seemed all the greater because no emotion flicked across his face. He gathered his tremendous strength in his forearms, lashing out at the Instructor with fists like flour-sacks. Rani cringed at the window, and Morada twisted to keep the raging nobleman from breaking her jaw. The woman’s escape was hindered by her chair, and wood splintered beneath her as Larindolian landed a glancing blow on her collar bone. Morada yelped - in fear or pain - and the sound enraged the nobleman further. The sound of ripping fabric was loud in the squalid chamber as another glancing blow caught the Instructor’s gown.

  Before Larindolian could move to complete his discipline, Rani glimpsed bare flesh. Drawn around the Instructor’s bicep, in blue tracery more delicate than any leaded window, was a tattoo. Four strands were woven into one, a quartet of ravenous snakes feeding on each other.

  The tattoo would have been surprising under any circumstances - proper women simply did not have drawings drilled into their flesh. The image on Morada’s arm was even more striking to Rani, though, because she knew the design. She had seen those four snakes
twined about another arm.

  Suddenly, Rani was no longer a thirteen-year-old apprentice huddling in a sordid alley, spying for her life. Instead, she was five years old and playing on her parents’ doorstep, lunging after a leather ball Bardo had brought from the marketplace. The toy had been all the more magical because there was no reason for her brother’s generosity. Bardo was laughing his hearty laugh, playing with her, keeping the ball from her grasp.

  Rani, never one to yield to supposed authority, leveled a hard kick against her brother’s shins. When he stooped down to gather up her flashing legs, to still his annoying gnat of a sister, Rani grabbed onto his arm, pulling his sleeve with all her might. Even now, crouching in the filthy streets of a strange quarter of the city, Rani could remember the shadow that had passed across her parents’ doorstep.

  Bardo’s fury was immediate as she bared his arm. She glimpsed the bulge of muscle beneath his tattoo - four angry snakes turning red pin-prick eyes on the suddenly cowering girl.

  Bardo had bellowed his rage and shaken her off his arm to crash on the stone doorstep. He backhanded her before she even realized she’d been knocked breathless. His fingers closed around her own arms, and he shook her with such violence that her teeth rattled inside her skull. She heard her eyes slosh in their jelly, and she could not blink away the sapphire, ruby, and citron lights that flooded her vision.

  “You cursed fool!” Even now, Bardo’s words seared Rani, and she swallowed remembered tears. “Don’t you ever tell anyone what you’ve seen! Do you understand me? Don’t you mention one word of this to anyone!”

  As if for good measure, Bardo had settled his thick fingers against her throat, and the ominous pressure had made her gag. She had managed to choke out an apology, a promise that she would never mention the curious design.

  And that had been all.

  Bardo had covered his arm, and then he had offered her a dirty kerchief to wipe her tear-streaked face. He had instructed her to blow her nose before leading her to the baker’s, and he let her choose the largest pastry she could find. The leather ball was gone when they returned home.