Glasswrights' Apprentice (17 page)

“A merchant's daughter!” the old woman exclaimed. “Then you must sit with us - my husband and I are tinsmiths from Zarithia, and we have missed the comfort of our people on the long Pilgrim road.”

The woman's husband overheard their conversation and turned to Rani with a scrutinizing eye. “A merchant in the City, are you? You look a mite scrawny to be a
true
merchant's daughter.”

“Hardu, mind your manners,” the woman shushed before turning to mother her new charge. “You do look like you could use some meat on your bones. Come, sit beside me, and tell me what it's like to live in the City.”

“Begging your pardon, ma'am, but I must deliver this box to the priests.”

“Nonsense. No priest is going to transact business during a meal. Even the religious caste knows we must feed our bodies before we can feed our spirits. There, Hardu, move down so this little one can join us.”

The man shifted his weight on the bench, and Rani resignedly took the proffered place, declining to point out that far too many priests
were
conducting business during the meal - at least the businesses of corpse-wrapping and prayer-offering. The woman - Farna, she introduced herself - was solicitous of her new charge, offering the choicest tidbits from her own trencher. Even as Rani's stomach clenched at the rich aroma, Farna settled her warm woolen cloak about the girl's shoulders, clucking her tongue at children's insistence on running about the streets half-clothed, with no regard for a winter wind, or the threat of grippe, or any number of other looming disasters that only a mother could discern.

Resignation melted into relief as Rani tucked into the fine pilgrim food. Only occasionally did she have to swallow hard, catching a breath of myrrh on her hands.

“We've left our own daughter back in Zarithia,” Farna babbled on. “She's older than you, dear, old enough to run our market stall without us keeping an eye on things. We've given her her head before, to make sure she can manage for the six-month we'll be on the Pilgrim Road. Isn't that right, Hardu?”

Hardu grunted his assent, and Farna sailed on to her next conversational gambit. “We could hardly believe the misfortune of our timing, taking to the Pilgrim Road as bad luck falls on the City! Prince Tuvashanoran - did you ever see him?”

Rani swallowed an unfortunate piece of gristle and managed to choke out, “Aye, he was a great man. He came through the Merchants' Quarter frequently. He held all the City's castes near his heart, as Defender of the Faith.”

“Defender,” grunted Hardu. “He never quite became that, did he?” The man punctuated his question by reaching for a hefty length of bread, worrying at the crusty loaf with one of the cathedral's use-dulled knives.

“This City needs more Zarithian wares.” Rani managed to deflect the question, wincing as Hardu levered the dull blade through the bread and released a shower of crusty flakes. “I've got one myself,” she couldn't resist adding the boast, patting the satchel that now rested beside the merchants' carved box.

“A dagger, then? Do you hear that, Hardu? The child can recognize the value of our goods, even here in King Shanoranvilli's City.” Hardu snorted, as if certain his wares would be valued anywhere, and reached for a bowl of the thick stew that was the base of the Pilgrims' meal. He ladled the stuff onto his plate, carefully selecting slivers of meat and barely restraining a grimace as Farna plucked out the richest morsels to give to Rani. Rani, not wanting to disappoint the kind woman, swallowed the fine fare almost without chewing.

“So,” Farna babbled on, “what do you bear in that chest? Something as precious as Zarithian metal?”

Before Rani could answer, she noticed a priest hovering behind her, cocking his head with a suspicious glimmer in his eye. While Farna was oblivious to Rani's sudden discomfort, the woman could not fail to sense the religious' gaze, and she turned with a hearty laugh. “Father! This little one seems hungrier than we thought. Could we have more stew?”

The priest's hawk-visage registered annoyance for just an instant. While the pilgrims might follow in Jair's footsteps, he seemed to think, their demands could be annoying at times. As he came forward, he gave Rani an eagle glance. “Little pilgrim, you are not wearing your Star. Jair would frown on such a breach of pilgrim custom.”

“Oh no,” Farna interjected, before Rani could craft an excuse. “This little one isn't a pilgrim. She belongs to your City. She was just telling us she's a merchant's daughter. She has some sort of message for you.” Farna patted Rani on the head, soothing her as if she were a restless pup. “There, dear,
that's
how you get the priests' attention. Now you can deliver your box.” The motherly woman sat back, immensely pleased with herself.

Rani managed not to frown her displeasure. Instead, she invested all her thoughts into devising an escape from the suddenly too-solicitous priest. All her calculations came to naught as the religious reached forward, mistrust wrinkling his brow. “What have you got in that box?” Rani had no choice but to offer up the casket, hoping the brother would value the gift and forgive the bearer.

She never learned if absolution was to be hers.

As the priest set his hands on the box, a tremendous force pounded open the refectory doors. Cold night air burst into the hall, blowing reeds and clothing with reckless abandon. Startled pilgrims cried out, and more than one journeying soldier reached for a sword that was absent in this holy place.

Rani, already jumpy for fear of being unveiled as an imposter, scrambled underneath the long refectory table. She pushed her way between Hardu's feet, clutching at Farna's cloak and covering her terrified shoulders with the woman's dark wool. Quivering, she could make out the scene in the refectory from her sheltered vantage point.

Fearsome warriors swept the hall like a tempest, overturning benches and tables as if the furniture belonged to dolls. The marauders grabbed at jabbering pilgrims with vicious hands, and many voices wailed for Jair's intervention. Rani heard her erstwhile questioner's priestly voice, shrill with reciting the Mercy Prayer.

In the tumult, the merchants' casket tumbled from the bench, carved top shattering on the stone floor. The wooden remnants rolled about, spewing forth their curling papers. The receipts swirled like golden snow, and Rani fought the urge to sweep up the offerings, to preserve them from trampling, heretical feet. Even knowing the danger she faced, Rani might have darted out to gather up her caste's offerings, but she was frozen by a sudden realization. The tissue of the merchants' receipts was the
only
metallic glimmer in the chaotic hall.

There was not a bared weapon among the marauders.

If the invaders had been a band of soldiers, each would have been armed. Instead, the only sign uniting the invaders was the scrap of black mask bound across each brow, hiding eyes and nose from pilgrims and priests too terrified to examine their harriers.

Certainly, the refectory was filled with a fearsome amount of noise. The invaders hollered as if they would awaken Prince Tuvashanoran from his untimely sleep, and several women's voices shrilled in the bone-shivering ululation of graveside mourning. Pilgrims cried out to be delivered from the ravagers, some screaming in terror, others fervently commending their souls to the Thousand Gods for safe-keeping.

Nevertheless, despite all the tumult, the sharpest knife Rani could spy was the dull blade for the bread, and that was brandished by a pale-faced Hardu.

Unbidden, Rani's memory flitted to her games in the City streets - joyful rounds of Free the Princess, played with her then-friend Varna. In their carefree games, Rani had often crafted a show of noise and strength, just like the marauders'. She had always had one specific purpose - to distract the Princess' appointed guard.

But where - and what - was the article that represented the Princess in
this
tumult?

Rani spared a passing thought that her cedar box of merchants' receipts was the
figurative Princess. Certainly,
she
had never seen such riches assembled in one place - all
the merchants' tithes for an entire year. Rani had never been charged with as much responsibility as
now swirled about on the refectory floor in the form of flimsy golden papers. One slip chose that
moment to flit across the flagstones, and Rani reflexively grabbed it, making out the torn and
soiled letters - “one dozen cloaks of fine grade wool, with emblems to be determined by the
bearer.”

Before Rani could complete her thought, a half-dozen of the marauders discovered her hiding place, heaving back the massive wooden table with a roar of rage. Even as Rani's shelter crashed against the flagstones, she scampered across the floor, sending up a flurry of gilded treasure as she huddled beneath the illusory shelter of Farna's borrowed cloak. Who knew that Rani had borne such riches to the cathedral? Borin, of course, and some of his fellow merchant councilors. And Mair. Could the Touched girl have acted so rapidly, pulling together members of her casteless hordes to raid the pilgrims' compound? Rani shivered, remembering Mair's apparently coincidental appearances, first in Borin's shadowy market stronghold and then, again, as Rani had approached the cathedral close.

Even as Rani scrambled for some new lee, she came face to face with one of the plunderers. For just an instant, she was startled into immobility, frozen by the banshee screams that echoed in the dining hall. Then, rough hands reached toward her, fingers curved with a murderous tension, palms latticed with scores of tiny scars. Rani knew hands like that; she had hoped and prayed to be admitted to a brotherhood that would grant her the same cicatrices.

The marauder was a glasswright.

Rani was so startled, she almost missed the invader's strangled intake of breath, the gasped, “You!”

Even as Rani's gaze was drawn to the pursed mouth, she caught the flaring eyes behind the black mask - eyes that had glared at her every day that she worked in the guild. “Guildmistress Salina!”

Rani bobbed into her accustomed curtsey without thinking, forcing down the swirling questions of how the guildmistress had escaped the king's dungeons, how she had come to stand in the cathedral close like a free woman.

Amazed and tangled in Farna's too-long cloak, Rani almost missed the most important aspect of the woman before her. Stitched into Salina's mask was a delicate tracery of black on black with eight scarlet pin-pricks - four intertwined serpents, with evil teeth glinting across the bridge of the guildmistress' nose.

As Rani made out the now-familiar sigil, the meaning of this strange attack suddenly became clear. One glance toward the still-open refectory door confirmed the apprentice's suspicions - shapes moved across the courtyard, midnight shadows against darkest night on the far end of the cathedral close. If the invaders had been more familiar with their territory, they would not have needed their faint glimmer of lantern-light; they might have escaped all unnoted.

But the marauders had never expected to need to invade the cathedral close. The invaders were stealing back the evidence that linked them to Tuvashanoran's murder. They might be taking Morada's brutalized body, doing away with the snake tattoo that would connect the Instructor to the dead Tuvashanoran in any way more obvious than her treacherous act. Or - and Rani trembled at the thought - they might be stealing Tuvashanoran himself. What lengths would the mysterious Brotherhood go to to keep the City from learning that both Morada and the prince bore the sign of intertwined snakes?

Rani knew she should summon help. She should identify Salina as one of the vicious glasswrights sought by the king's men. She should let people in power know the true danger behind this attack.

But there was nothing she could do.

No one was prepared to help a terrified child in the midst of the cathedral chaos. If she unmasked Salina - literally or figuratively - she would need to answer sticky questions about how she knew the Guildmistress. Even if the old woman were revealed, there was no guarantee that the shocked and weaponless pilgrims would rally to attack; Rani realized how preposterous it sounded to blame a shriveled old woman for Tuvashanoran's death. Almost as preposterous, she sighed, as to claim that she herself was innocent as an accomplice. There was no way to implicate Guildmistress Salina without throwing herself beneath justice's rough-shod feet.

Trapped like a baited lion in King Shanoranvilli's Amphitheater, Rani did the only thing she could think of. Muttering to her newfound patron, Lan, she lowered her head and ran directly at Guildmistress Salina. Her tough skull took the old woman just below the breastbone. The apprentice scarcely had time to gloat over Salina's tremendous
ooommmph
of expelled air before the masked woman fell back, crashing onto the flags and sending up a new flurry of gilded paper and bruised rushes.

Rani took advantage of the chaos to scurry for the refectory door.

The cold night air slapped her as she gulped great breaths, trying to slow her pounding heart. As much as she longed to hide in the cathedral outbuildings, to seek refuge in one of the prayer chapels scattered about the courtyard, she only permitted herself to disappear inside Farna's midnight cloak, to clothe herself in the deepest courtyard shadows as she crept to the hut where Father Aldaniosin had prepared Morada and the prince for their final rest.

One quick glance confirmed the marauders' success. Rani began to tremble as she recognized the priest's formal robes, as she made out the distortion of blackest iron protruding from his dark-stained belly. The invaders had not withheld their steel here, at the site of their true mission. The rampage in the refectory had been staged to cover the sound of murder.

Rani stepped over the steaming pool of Father Aldaniosin's blood. She was obscenely drawn to the bleeding and tangled ruins that had been the three worshipers. “Hail Tarn, God of Death…” Rani heard in her memory, and she tried to rub out the prickle of terror against the nape of her neck.