Glasswrights' Apprentice (40 page)

By the time Rani was finished, there was nothing but silence in the audience chamber.

“And so,” she said at last, inclining her head toward Prince Halaravilli, “I stand before you today. I have failed in everything I tried - I left my father's home never to return, I destroyed the glasswrights' guild, I murdered a soldier, and I defiled the good office of the First Pilgrim. I have no choice but to throw myself upon the mercy of this court and the good graces of the king.”

In the silence that followed, Rani spread her fingers across the surface of the crimson orb. Where it had beat hot as blood before, now it was cool to the touch, soothing, like the whisper of a mother's hand across her fevered brow. Rani drank in that comforting chill, remembering to breathe, trying not to think.

And Halaravilli himself seemed captured by the same awe that commanded her. The prince looked out at the assembled witnesses, but he appeared unable to speak, unable to command the convened court.

Unable that was, until Larindolian recovered his voice. “Lies!” the chamberlain hissed. “All lies!”

“And what reason would I have to lie!” Rani cried, stung back to life by the desperate denial.

“Who knows what reason a gutter rat has to do anything! You are an ungrateful beast! This royal family has taken you under its wings, nursed you at its breast, while all the time you were the stinging serpent. You place the blame on Instructor Morada, a woman who is dead and cannot speak for herself. Why should we believe you?”

“I have shouldered blame for myself, my lord,” Rani answered, the chill from the orb seeping into her words. “I confessed to murdering Dalarati, although even then I acted on your command.”

Larindolian spluttered, but Hal interrupted before the chamberlain could fling more accusations about the room. “Ranita's story is easily tested. Let us see who bears the mark of the snake.”

“What!” bullied Larindolian. “Would you have us strip here in the audience hall?” The chamberlain tried a haughty laugh.

As Hal raised a commanding hand, the soldiers stepped forward from the columns, bristling with drawn swords. A quick shake of the prince's head froze the traditional fighting men in their stance of readiness, and then a hand signal freed Jair's Watchers to step forward from their marble columns.

Rani could not make out their faces inside their black cowls; rather, she could only watch as two black-robed figures approached each of the accused. A pair flanked the queen, ready to lay hands on royal flesh, but King Shanoranvilli finally broke his silence. “No, son. You go too far.”

Hal stared at his father solemnly, pity deep in his eyes, and he gave a tight nod to Felicianda's Watchers. “Don't let her move,” he instructed, and the two figures drew closer, even as the queen raised her imperious chin. Before she could speak, Hal glanced at his pale younger brother. “Him, too.” Bashi started to protest his innocence, but Hal ignored the prince, gesturing tightly with his hand.

No one dared to breathe in the chamber, in the instant after the command. Then, the audience hall was filled with the sound of ripping fabric. Rani whirled about, staggering in her iron chains, as first Bardo's arm was bared, then Salina's snake-encircled calf. Even as the assembly gaped at the writhing snakes on the naked traitors' flesh, Larindolian fought for freedom, twisting beneath his captors' hands as if he were a fish on a line. The black-robed figures moved in an intricate ballet, though, and in a few heartbeats the chamberlain had been bared to his smallclothes. The snakes that twined about his chest were all the more fierce for his flushed skin, for the rage that made him pant, made the serpents writhe like living beings.

Even Halaravilli was unnerved by the spectacle, by the nest of serpents that seemed to engulf the lord chamberlain. When the prince could find his voice, he turned to his father. “My lord,” Hal's voice was respectful, even as it was filled with awe, “As Chief Inquisitor, I present to you five traitors, members of the so-called Brotherhood of Justice.”

King Shanoranvilli seemed almost not to hear his son. The old man stared in amazement at his chamberlain, steadfastly avoiding any other sight in the room - Bardo or Salina or Bashanorandi, or, especially, Queen Felicianda. When he finally spoke, his voice was old and tired. “And Lord Chief Inquisitor, what sentence would you have me pass?”

Hal did not hesitate; he knew the rules. “Death is the sentence for all traitors. Let these mongrel dogs hang by their necks on a slow rope, until they are dead, and then let their bodies be cast into an earthen grave, denied forever the purification of the pyre.”

Felicianda gasped, drawing all eyes in the chamber as she fell to her knees, ignoring the black-robed figures around her. “My lord, I beg of you! Prince Bashanorandi is not one of us! He does not bear our mark of the snakes! He is innocent in all that has happened.”

The queen's plea crumpled Shanoranvilli's face, and Rani realized that until then, the king had held out hopes that he could save Felicianda, that he could spare the woman he loved. Her cry, though, amounted to a confession, and the king merely shook his head in wordless sorrow. With difficulty, he whispered to his loyal son, “Your words are harsh, Lord Chief Inquisitor.”

“My words are fair, Your Majesty. Death has always been the sentence for traitors. These folk knew that when they first nestled the snake to their breasts. They knew it when they plotted against the crown. They knew it when they murdered my brother, your son, when they planned to murder me and set my brother Bashanorandi on your throne, perhaps even before you were ready to leave it.”

“My lord,” Felicianda began, ignoring the cold-eyed prince. She spoke only to her husband, to the king she had wed fifteen years before. “You cannot listen to this child -”

“Silence!” Shanoranvilli's voice echoed in the hall. Rani's ears rang, and she wondered how the king's ancient lungs had produced such volume. It seemed as if another man spoke when the king said to his son, “But what about the Brotherhood? What about the members we do not know?”

“Your Majesty,” Hal responded, and Rani could hear that he had already planned his words. “If you cut off a snake's head, it dies. The Brotherhood will be powerless without its brain, without its eyes, without its fangs.”

For a long minute, Shanoranvilli looked at the traitors. At his wife, who had brought him love and children late in his life, and no small amount of riches with her dowry from the North. At his chamberlain, who had stood beside him through the years of ruling a kingdom. At the strangers who had brought such sorrow to his court - the guildmistress and the merchant, now trembling before his royal might. Rani watched the king, and she knew his decision before he did. She saw the pattern, knew there was only one way for order to be restored.

“So be it,” the king said at last, and his words were almost lost in his beard. Sighing, he repeated, “So be it. In the name of all the Thousand Gods, and in the name of Jair himself, I declare that the lives of these four traitors shall be forfeit.”

“My lord -” Felicianda exclaimed, and she would have fallen to the stone floor if
Jair's Watchers had not held her upright.

“The Lord Chief Inquisitor is right, for time out of mind, there has been no other sentence.”

“Have mercy, my lord!” Felicianda's voice clogged with tears. “In honor of our son, Prince Bashanorandi, have mercy!”

“Mercy you shall have,” replied the king, after a long, painful silence. “On two counts, mercy. First, you will all meet the headman's axe, and not the gallows-rope. Second, your son … our son … will be spared, for he knew not what you did for him. That is one soul's blood you need not explain to all the Thousand Gods.”

“Your Majesty,” began Larindolian, who had paled to a sickly shade of white at the king's pronouncement. Now, the serpents on his chest stood out like great bruises on his flesh, cast into death spasms by the nobleman's panting.

“No word from you, Traitor,” snapped the king. “You have cost me two who were most dear to my heart - my firstborn son, and my queen.”

“But my lord -”

“Silence!” At a quick hand gesture, the nearest black-robed Watcher leveled steel against Larindolian's throat, and the chamberlain gave up his plea. Shanoranvilli waited one interminable moment and then nodded to the captain of the palace guard. “Let it be done now, before they can work more evil. Let the sentence be carried out in the central courtyard, before the sun reaches noon.”

Rani watched in shock as the prisoners were escorted into the courtyard. She was horrified at the machine Hal had created, at the engine she had set in motion with her testimony. Hal spoke quiet words to the captain of the guard, and the soldier freed Rani from her iron bonds, leaving chains and locks in an ugly pile on the flagstones. Rubbing her wrists, Rani followed the royal party to the courtyard, surrounded by black-robed Watchers.

She should not have spoken. She should not have given Hal the fuel to feed his fire. She should have found another way to save the king, to tell the truth, to protect the crown from the Brotherhood.

When they reached the courtyard, Shanoranvilli's soldiers moved with great efficiency. Loops of rough hemp were cast around each of the prisoners, binding their arms to their sides. Rani imagined the rope against her own flesh, felt the fibers burrowing into her skin. She was snared by the expressions on the traitors' faces.

Felicianda, gazing at the king in utter disbelief.

Larindolian, false confidence returning, looking out at the growing crowd with vulpine superiority, as if he still scented escape.

Salina, glaring at Rani as if she had broken yet another piece of cobalt glass, as if she had upset a crucible of solder and was confirming yet again that she was a failure, a mistake, a miscreant who never should have been admitted to the glasswrights' guild.

And Bardo. “Rani,” he whispered, and she imagined she could hear her name across the
cobblestones. She heard the confession behind the two syllables: “I never meant for you to be caught
up in all of this. I never meant to harm you, to harm the king, to harm Tuvashanoran. I never meant
to destroy our family. I never meant for Salina's men to take you in the cathedral.” All that he
told her, and more, in the silence of his gaze across the courtyard. “Ranikaleka …”

The end was fast. The executioner appeared from nowhere, his chest bare in the freezing winter air. He carried the largest axe that Rani had ever seen. Shanoranvilli gave the commands, his voice bleak and hopeless. First, Felicianda, in recognition of her status. “Hail, Jair, and all the Thousand Gods, take this traitor from our midst.” The actual command was a wordless cry, answered by the wet crash of axe on wooden block.

Then Salina, in deference to her gender. Then Larindolian, in honor of his caste. Then, last of all, Bardo.

Rani watched as her brother looked out on the assemblage, his eyes empty, his chest heaving in terror. He caught her gaze as he knelt, managed to hold her in his sight as the axe was raised. Shanoranvilli proclaimed the formula, and Rani cried out, almost as if she were giving the executioner his command.

She lurched forward, and Jair's Watchers swarmed around her, catching her as she plummeted to the cobblestones. As Rani collapsed under the stagnant waters of consciousness she thought that she saw the old Touched crone wreathed in a Watcher's black cowl. And Mair.… And Borin, the aged tradesman who controlled the Merchant's Council, who had sat in judgment of her so long before.… All so long ago, all in another life.… The Fellowship of Jair that Bardo had warned her about, had tried to save her from. The Fellowship of Jair in new robes, a dozen blackest garments. Absurdly, Rani remembered crouching in the marketplace, giving Mair a golden slip of paper, giving the Fellowship of Jair the power they now held over her, over Bardo.

Then, Rani was reeling, spinning, sinking under the tide as the headman's axe bit one last time into the block.

 

 

Chapter 16

 

 

Rani stood in the windowed embrasure of the royal nursery, looking out at the snow-blown landscape through her scavenged piece of cobalt glass. Yet another winter blizzard had whistled through the City the night before, and the central courtyard was knee-deep in snow. Icy paths had been tromped across the cobble-stones.

“You won't change anything by catching cold there.”

“Your Majesty,” Rani managed dully, not bothering to drop a curtsey as she turned from the unglazed window. Hal was clad from head to toe in black, the mourning attire he had worn for the past month, since Shanoranvilli slipped into the Heavenly Fields, giving in to the depthless sorrow of betrayal.

“Must I command you to call me by my name?” Hal kept his voice light, but his hands were firm on Rani's shoulders as he guided her away from the window. He closed the wooden shutters, pointedly not noticing the pool of blue glass in her palm.

“I'm sorry, Hal,” she mumbled. “I'm tired this morning - the Pilgrims' Bell rang all night, through the storm, and it kept me awake.”

He eyed her thoughtfully, obviously making a conscious decision not to challenge her truthfulness. Instead, he leaned back on one of the two facing stone benches, stretching out his legs to rest against the opposing bench. Rani could not help but notice that he had grown inches in the few months since her trial. Small surprise - she had grown as well. The nurses were constantly clucking about the need to find her new clothes,
mature
clothes. She sighed. Hal's motion, more than showing off his new-found height, had effectively cut off any escape from the alcove.

“Sit, Rani.” He nodded, as if he read the realization in her mind. In this past month, he had taken to calling her by her birth name. “The nurses tell me that you cry out in your sleep. You're disturbing the princesses.”