Glasswrights' Apprentice (36 page)

“It is an evil thing, Marita.”

“Things aren't evil, Your Highness.” The response came to her as if Tole, the god of wisdom, were speaking in her ear. “People are evil.”

“And your Brotherhood? Do you call them good, Marita?”

“They're not
my
Brotherhood, Your Highness.” She held his gaze across the ugly twist of metal. “Don't you understand? I'm not one of them. I'm not one of anything. I have no caste, I have no family. The only person left to me in all the world is my brother, Bardo. Don't keep me from him.” She took a step closer, holding out her hand for the bracelet. “Please. You know what it's like to lose a brother. Don't force me to lose the last one I have in all the world.”

Slowly, as if he were enchanted by a power beyond his control, he handed back the entwined snakes. “Death is the sentence for all traitors.”

She met his eyes above the twisted copper. “I'm not a traitor.”

The snakes stung her flesh as she took the band. Despite her firmest intention, she could not bring herself to force it back on her arm. After a moment's hesitation, she tossed the bangle into the embers on the hearth. It fell, twisted and malignant, smothering the coals for just an instant before the flames leaped to new life, as if she had tossed fuel on the fire.

The metal had begun to glow when she turned to leave. Halaravilli avoided her eyes as she opened the door to the hut, and she did not look back as she made her way through the City streets, alone and unprotected.

 

The cathedral was cold, filled with clammy air and stale incense that made her think of the laying-out room in the cathedral close. She imagined she heard chanting mourners as she crept down the side aisle, and more than once, she paused in a niche, wishing she had her Zarithian dagger safe at her waist. A handful of candles flickered eerily on altars about the hulking stone building, and her hand trembled as she added her offering to Roat, the god of justice.

She had just sunk to her knees, when she heard footsteps approach behind her, and then soft words. “I thought you were not coming.”

“Bardo!” She launched herself at his unsuspecting frame, almost toppling him before his arms could close around her.

“What is it? What's the problem, Ranikaleka?”

She shuddered. “Don't call me that! I'm Rani! I'm Rani Trader!”

Bardo shushed her as he led her to the nearest low bench. “Of course you are. Who would say otherwise?” His voice was soft and soothing, a reminder of her mother's gentle touch when she was a baby and awakened with nightmares. “What's gotten into you tonight? Why are you so late?”

“I can't do this, Bardo. They're princes - they're the royal family. I'm just Rani Trader, I'm a
merchant
!”

“What happened, Rani?” His voice hardened, and she heard the tone of a commander behind his words. “What did they do to you?”

“Nothing!” She wailed, and the two syllables echoed off the high stone ceiling. Bardo reached out to shush her, to remind her of their precarious position here in the cathedral. When his fingers closed over her arm and he felt nothing but flesh and cloth, he grabbed at her tunic lacings, stripping the cords from her neck like a hunter butchering a deer.

“Where is the bracelet?” When she could only stare at him, terrified, he clamped his hands down on her biceps, shaking her until her teeth rattled. “What have you done with the bracelet?” The hard callouses on his thumbs bit into her skin, and she saw the Bardo who had nearly killed her once before, nearly murdered her because of the Brotherhood's snakes.

“I gave it to him!” Rani squeaked when she could manage to gather breath. “Stop it!”

Bardo let her go with a suddenness that sent her reeling toward the stone floor. Even as she crouched on hands and knees, gasping for breath, she saw her brother's boot move, draw back as if he would send his hardened-leather toe careening into her temple. “Gave it to whom?” he demanded, as she scrambled against the wooden bench, trying to huddle into the smallest possible target. “Who has the snakes?”

“Prince Halaravilli! Bardo, listen to me! He's the good one, the one we have to save. The Brotherhood has to protect him, we have to save him, Bardo, please believe me!”

Bardo's breath came roaring, like a pack of wolves in the night-time hills, and Rani crouched against the bench, sending up prayers to all the Thousand Gods, begging her brother to come to reason. Bardo reached down and captured her arm, hauling her out from beneath the pew and forcing her to sit on the hard wooden bench. “Tell me what you know.”

She began with a whisper, fighting back tears, struggling to remember that she was speaking to her brother, to her own kin. Bardo would protect her. Bardo would make it right. Bardo would keep her safe from harm. She told her brother about all that had happened during that long, long day, as she suspected first Bashanorandi, then Halaravilli, then Bashi again.

Bardo listened, initially in anger, then in disbelief. His fingers closed about her arm as she spoke, pinching tighter and tighter as she told him all that she had learned, living among the royal family. She concluded, “And so, when I was drawing my portraits tonight, when I saw the bones behind their faces, that's when I knew that Bashi was not a true prince.” She braved her brother's eyes. “And I think I know who his father is. I know why he wants the throne.”

Bardo's voice was dead. “Why? What is it you think you know?”

“Lord Larindolian,” Rani whispered. “He has too much power in the palace. He was in the queen's chambers, and if you look at the lines of Bashi's face.…”

For just an instant, she thought her words would rekindle Bardo's rage, but then he sighed deeply, shrugging as he sank to the ground. She cringed away from him, but he settled an easy hand on her shoulder, confident, controlling, silencing.

“I told Larindolian he played a dangerous game. I told him you were no fool.” Rani held her tongue, and Bardo drew out the silence, like wire pulled through a mold. When he spoke again, his voice was weary. “You will not understand all of this, Ranikaleka. It's the stuff of kingdoms, the stuff of nightmares. I'll try to explain, as I understand it, and then you'll know why I've done all the things I've done.”

Bardo sighed and ran his hands through his hair, scrubbing at his scalp in a familiar gesture of contemplation. “It started years ago, when Father first ran for office, for the Merchant's Council. You won't remember that, you were hardly more than a babe at the time.…”

But Rani did remember. She remembered her mother baking a sweet pudding for good luck, and she remembered the entire family sitting down to a roast goose, even though it wasn't the Feast of Pilgrim Jair. She remembered the pride in her father's eyes as he hoped for the recognition of his fellows. She recalled the way he held himself as he walked through the streets. That had been a good time, and Rani had found the patterns easily when she laid out their wares in the family stall. There had been much silver to place among the pewter, even an occasional glint of gold, or the cool, smooth flow of ivory.

“The good times, though, only lasted for a few months,” Bardo continued. “After that, the Council made its decision. Father was denied. He was shamed before his fellows in the marketplace; he could not even go on buying trips. Instead, we needed to trade with other merchants, with the sort who make their deals in the shadows of the City walls. Our costs went up, and we could not pass that on to our customers.” Bardo shook his head in remembered frustration, his fingers curling into fists.

“We had no funds in reserve, when one of those shadow-merchants cheated us. Father had gone to close the deal at night, when even a soldier would have hesitated to walk in the dark passages beside the City walls, but he had no choice. There was no other way to get goods. If I had gone with him, things might have turned out differently.…”

As Bardo's voice trailed off, Rani realized that she remembered the night he spoke of. Her father had come back to the house, pounding on the door, his voice hoarse and his face bleeding. Rani's sisters had almost refused to open the door to him, thinking he was some madman roaming the streets. When he stumbled into the kitchen where Rani was playing with her rag doll, he tossed a cloth sack onto the floor, hardly noticing when it fell too close to the fire. Rani started to reach for it, to save it from the flames, but her father roared at her, knocking her aside with an open hand that sent her reeling.

Nursing her own injuries and wounded pride, Rani had watched as her mother sponged blood from her father's brow. Even now, Rani could hear her mother's soft crooning, her warning that he must calm down, he must relax, he must sip the willow tea that would dull the ache behind his eyes. Jotham Trader would not be solaced - he had lost six month's profit when the thieves set upon him, and he still had no goods for the spring season. They would be ruined.

Her father's rage that night, though, was nothing compared to his anger when he went to the Council for aid. They told him they had no funds to spare, no goods to make up for those he'd lost. The winter had been rough for every merchant. The Council could not spare anything for a man who sold from his own shop, from outside the marketplace. Rani remembered night after night of thin cabbage soup, of her father speaking in angry whispers with Bardo, with Rani's mother, with anyone who would listen to his tales of woe.

He finally swallowed his pride and went beyond the Merchant's Council, beyond the caste he had honored and served all his life. He appealed to the soldiers, to seek out the thieves and - when he got no satisfactory response - he asked for justice in the King's Court.

Bardo's voice was bitter as he gave Rani the pieces of the story she had never had before. “There was no one in the City to help him, no one at all. His own caste turned against him, and the other castes looked down on him, like he was chaff in a mill. I knew, then, that I would never serve a system that was so broken, so corrupt. And I haven't.”

Rani recognized the proud jut of Bardo's chin as his calloused fingers rose unconsciously to the tattoo about his left bicep. It was the look of the brother she had worshiped all her life. It was the look of a man who would not be beaten.

“I spoke out before the Merchants' Council. That was where the Brotherhood first learned about me. I was invited to their secret meetings, in the chambers inside the City walls, where you've been. The Brotherhood believes in true Justice, in a Justice separate and apart from the castes that have always plagued the City. Do you see?” Even as Bardo spoke, he spread his hands before her disbelieving eyes. “The Brotherhood believes in the equality of all men. They taught me to fight with the weapons of a soldier, a nobleman, whatever I needed to survive.” Rani stared at his calloused flesh and thought of their father's smooth merchant hands, punished by nothing more violent than the rub of coins. Bardo nodded as she touched the horny skin. “The Brotherhood trained me, made me all I am today.”

“But who are they?” Rani finally asked, drawn into the story despite her fear.

“We come from all the castes. There are nobles, like Larindolian, and soldiers like Garadolo. We have members in the guilds - your Salina, of course. Merchants and Touched - we all work together to build a City that is strong, like Jair meant us to be, like Jair was himself, because he moved from caste to caste. That's why we use the symbol of a snake - because the serpent grows and grows, shedding its skin, like we will all shed our caste, becoming a new beast, ever more powerful.”

Rani's voice was shuttered by the fanatical light she saw in her brother's eyes; even if she had wanted to ask more, she would not have been able to force words past her awe, her fear. Bardo continued his lesson, explaining the Brotherhood as if he were chanting a prayer, here in the cathedral. “The serpent has fed well, grown long through the years. We are almost at our full strength, almost ready to make our last move, to shed our skin for the final time and unveil our true shape.”

“When?” Rani forced out the word, dreading the answer.

“Before the new year.” Bardo replied with a devotion normally saved for a prayer to all the Thousand Gods. “We have all our players in place. Our strongest ally is ready to shed her skin, ready to take up her place in the Brotherhood and lead us to a new age.”

“Who is that?”

“Haven't you guessed?” Bardo looked at Rani with a patient smile, and she caught a glimmer of the loving brother who had been her idol. She shook her head, a little ashamed at her slow grasp. “Larindolian's lady. Queen Felicianda.”

“The queen!” Rani gasped, but even as the words escaped her, she remembered the
message that Mair had brought her, a lifetime ago, in the marketplace - “The doe runs faster than
the buck, and she doesn't tangle her antlers in the brush.”

Was it only a month ago that Rani had thought those words applied to Guildmistress Salina? Even now, she had trouble remembering the certainty she had felt in the crowded square in front of the cathedral, the absolute faith that the guildmistress was the one prophesied by the Core. Of course, she realized now. The
queen
was the doe; she was the fleetest, the fastest, the best. Queen Felicianda had set the wheels in motion to place her own son upon the throne, and she had manipulated the world around her so that there was no risk that her own name or reputation would be sullied by the struggle.

Even as Rani recognized the truth, she realized that Bardo was still talking, still confessing the history of the dark circle he had joined. “Queen Felicianda was our founder.
She
was the one who brought us the Brotherhood, who showed us the error in our ways, here in Morenia. In
her
land, in distant Amanthia, there are no castes to bind people. They do not even have a hereditary king; the strongest men in all the land fight for the title when it is time.”