Glasswrights' Journeyman (36 page)

She waited until Jerusha had leaned back, until she was gasping to fill her lungs. Then, when all was unbalanced, when Jerusha was unprepared with hands and feet and teeth, Mareka sprang up from the floor. She snatched the iron pot from beneath the bed and raced out the door. Jerusha took only a moment to recover, and then she, too, was running through the hallways, screaming taunts and curses. Mareka ducked into the visitors' wing of the palace with the princess close behind, and she was forced to abandon any thought of preserving her privacy, preserving her dignity, preserving the lives of all her octolaris.

 

* * *

 

Hal grimaced and poured a goblet of greenwine, offering it to Father Siritalanu with a nod. “Drink, man.”

“Sire, I do not think that I could swallow his wine.”

“If by ‘his' you mean Teheboth Thunderspear, I must remind you that the man is our host for as long as we stay in Liantine. He is the father of the woman I will marry and a legitimate king set upon his throne by all the Thousand Gods.”

“That is the problem, Your Majesty!” And Siritalanu was pacing again. The priest had been crossing back and forth since he had arrived in Hal's chamber, since he had exploded into the room with scarcely a knock to ask permission. “King Teheboth was set upon his throne by all the Thousand Gods, but now he refuses to acknowledge them. He acts as if they have no power over his life!”

“You exaggerate, Father.” Hal pressed the cup into the passing priest's hand and watched, pointedly, until the religious swallowed. After one sip, though, Siritalanu returned the goblet to the mantel.

“Exaggerate? You've heard this constant talk about the Horned Hind!”

“She is tradition here, nothing more.”

“How can you say that, Your Majesty?” The young priest was shaking with vehemence, anger and shock firming up his words. “You told me yourself that he punished one of his lords for professing belief in the Thousand Gods. He threatened the man with slavery!”

“Hestaron was sentenced because he cut his neighbor's trees.”

“And that sentence was increased when he invoked the gods!”

“Hestaron is not our concern, Siritalanu. I will not endanger my wedding to the princess because of some minor court proceeding.”

“You have an obligation, Your Majesty! You are the Defender of the Faith.”

“What would you have me do, Father? Should I declare holy war against the man who is destined to become my father, because I disapprove of how he handled one case brought before him? Or perhaps you would have me refuse to wed the princess altogether?”

Siritalanu wrung his hands. “At least agree to move your wedding day. It is not seemly for the Defender of the Faith to be joined with his bride on a day sacred to the Horned Hind.”

“Her father will not permit the ceremony on any other day.” Hal sighed. “You are a man of the cloister, Father Siritalanu. Things may appear simpler to you than they are in fact.”

“How complex can they be? A faithful man is penalized for calling on the Thousand Gods! A child is terrorized, told that she is evil, because she hears true gods and not the tricksy voice of a false goddess. Is that complicated, Your Majesty?”

Hal made every effort not to take offense at the young priest's exercised tone. He purposely pitched his voice low, hoping to connect with Siritalanu's innate reason. “Moreso than you imagine. In brokering this marriage, I did not have the luxury of considering some minor Liantine thief. I did not have the luxury of measuring a child's hurt feelings – even the child who will be my bride. I have a kingdom to protect, Father. I have a city to rebuild. I have thousands upon thousands of my own people, looking to me to redeem them.”

“But at what cost, Your Majesty? You will ruin yourself, body and soul, if you take to your marriage bed in the name of the Horned Hind.”

“Father, the ceremony you loathe is only a symbol, one that will be revisited well before I see any true marriage bed. I hardly need remind you that Berylina is only thirteen years old.”

“But you will go to her eventually! You will get your heir on her after having begun your life together beneath the Horned Hind. What hope can you have for a child conceived in an unholy bed? The Thousand Gods will frown upon him!”

“You overstep your bounds, Siritalanu!” Hal's voice shook with anger. “I have let you speak your mind, but you must not forget that I am still your king! Princess Berylina will be my queen. You will not curse my heir.”

“My words may anger you, Your Majesty, but the danger is real. Think, Sire! This is the Horned Hind – a spirit tied to blood. She is slain and born anew each year; she takes her power from her
horns
. That is unnatural, Your Majesty. That is perverse! Would you turn your back on all the Thousand Gods and embrace such filth?”

“Father, it is not necessary to choose one faith or the other! Your house already has room for a thousand gods. Surely there is space for one more!” Before the priest could argue back, Hal went on. “Berylina's people expect her to be wed before their goddess. Anything less would nullify the contract of our marriage – Midsummer Eve was a critical condition for Teheboth to agree at all. Certainly the princess understands.”

“Perhaps more than you do!”

“Father?” Hal chose to ignore the blatant disrespect, opting to discover Siritalanu's meaning.

The young priest raised his palms to his face, rubbing at his eyes as if he were emerging from deepest sleep. “Sire, your bride sees the Thousand Gods more clearly than anyone I have ever known. They speak to her the way they spoke to your forefathers of old. They visit her, both in her dreams and while she wakes. Princess Berylina understands their words, and she recognizes their power.”

“Then she will do whatever is necessary to get to Morenia, where she may study more of them.
Whatever
is necessary, Siritalanu. Even naming an extraneous goddess in her wedding vows, if her father so requires.”

Father Siritalanu stared at him, his dark eyes sober, like a spaniel's. “You will do nothing, then, Your Majesty?”

“I will do everything, Father. As soon as I am able. As soon as I am on my own soil, with my bride safely at my side and my own men at my back. As soon as Berylina's dowry has gone to repay your church, so that poor Moren might rise up from her ashes. Then, I will denounce the Horned Hind. But not before. Not when I stand to lose everything.”

For an instant, the priest seemed to collapse upon himself. Then, he knelt before his king, inclining his head in abject surrender. “Thank you, Sire. I should not have wasted your time.”

“It was not a waste at all, Father,” Hal said, after only a moment's hesitation. He mistrusted the man's capitulation. “Our discussion has been … illuminating.”

The priest rose to his feet. “By your leave,” he said tonelessly. Hal waved him toward the door.

Siritalanu had scarcely passed over the threshold when there was a flurry of activity in the hallway. Hal looked up in exasperation, certain that this latest disturbance could only add to the ache that had begun to pound behind his eyes.

His belly twisted as he recognized one of the voices. Mareka Octolaris.

He thought that he would stay inside his apartments. He would cross to the window, and look out at the harbor in the rain. He would kneel at his prie-dieu and concentrate on prayers to Siritalanu's Thousand Gods. He would re-read the latest letter from Rani, her announcement that she planned to travel to the spiderguild, to begin bidding for his Order of the Octolaris. Instead, he reached for the full goblet of greenwine that the priest had left upon the mantel, draining it in one swallow.

The voices were louder now; two women, screaming curses. They sounded like fishwives, screeching, swearing. Hal gritted his teeth together and stormed across the room, throwing open the door and filling his lungs to shout down the chaos.

Before he could speak, before he could do more than pick out his terrified page huddling at the doorpost, he was pushed aside by a flurry of spidersilk, forced back into the room. The door slammed, the latch clicked, the heavy oak bar locked into place.

Mareka Octolaris leaned against the door, panting as if she had run through all the palace.

Her gown was crumpled, and one sleeve had been shredded. He could glimpse her arm, bruised and bleeding through the silk remains. Her hair was tangled and matted, and she cradled an iron pot against her hip. Her fingers clutched the metal as if it held the secrets of all the Thousand Gods.

“My lady,” Hal managed, glancing at the door behind her. The other woman – Princess Jerusha, Hal now realized – shouted through the wood, her voice angry as a wasp. The princess's fists pummeled the oak, and she screeched speculations about Mareka's parents and his own. For just an instant, he worried for the safety of his page, but then the princess swore a terrible oath and stormed away.

“My lord,” Mareka said, and she staggered forward, collapsing into a shuddering curtsey.

“Please, my lady!” he protested, raising her up. A bruise was spreading across her cheek, and he could see the clear imprint of someone's hand upon her flesh. Her nose was bleeding, and she had bitten through her lower lip.

Could this be the woman he had been avoiding for a month? Could this be the temptress
who had stolen into his dreams, sabotaged his prayers? “What happened, Mareka?”

“It – it is nothing, my lord.” Her voice was hoarse and raw, broken.

“Nothing!”

“It is a matter of the spiderguild, between Jerusha and myself.”

“You've made it more than that by coming here.”

“I did not choose to come this way! She chased me down this hallway! She chased me like a madwoman!”

“Why did she do that?”

Mareka looked down at the pot that she cradled, but she refused to answer.

He sighed and turned to the low table that sat beside his hearth, to a wash basin and pitcher of water. Farso had left them after helping Hal with his morning ablutions, and Teheboth's servants had not yet taken them away. Silently, Hal gathered up a scrap of linen, dipping it in the water and offering it to the spiderguild apprentice.

She gazed at him without comprehension until he gestured toward her face. She took the cloth then, touching it to her lip. She gasped at the pain and pulled her hand away, almost dropping her pot.

He reached forward to help by taking the container. “No!” she cried.

“I'm sorry.” He did not know what to do, where to look, where to place his hands.

She dabbed at her face again and grimaced when the cloth came away stained with crimson. He saw her steel herself, though, watched her set her shoulders and her jaw, and then she returned the linen for further ministrations, persevering until the bleeding stopped. Rather than hand him the soiled cloth, she passed in front of him, crossing to the table.

Hal inhaled as she passed, breathing in a storm of memories. He recalled the heat of her body in his arms, the smooth strength of her fingers wrapping about his flesh. He remembered the scent of her hair, the cloud of power that seemed to enfold her. He remembered the hunger that had blossomed from her lips, a hunger that had threatened to consume her, consume him. …

But all of it was memory. The heady, mindless desire was gone. She was no longer a temptress, a vixen, the secret love he longed for in the night. She was an ordinary woman. A bruised and breathless, frightened, shaking, ordinary woman.

“I have done something very wrong, my lord.” At last. Words. “I have stolen from my people, from my guild.”

“Stolen?” He kept the one word neutral. Of course apprentices stole. They took tools, supplies. They wrangled extra garments from the quartermaster, extra food from the larder.

“It's the spiders.”

“Aye.” He waited for her to explain what she had taken.

“The octolaris.”

“Aye.”

She glared at him, her eyes sparking like lightning beneath the storm cloud of her hair. “I stole spiders from the guildhall! I took the octolaris, and I have them here in Liantine!”

Her words hit him like a wave. Octolaris. The base of the spiderguild's monopoly. Here. In Liantine.

“That's impossible.”

“It's perfectly possible,” she snapped. “I brought them with me when I came to witness Jerusha's marriage.”

“But how? Why? Your guild will destroy you if they find out what you have!”

“Precisely,” she said, letting the one word speak more than the bruise purpling her cheek, more than the thread of blood that had begun to trickle from her nose once again.

Hal fought against unworthy thoughts. There were octolaris here, in Teheboth's court.
He could take those beasts.
He could spirit them to Moren and sell them to his lords. He could stock the Order of the Octolaris, fully fund his payment to the Fellowship.

He forced himself to speak, to acknowledge Mareka's confession. “And now Jerusha knows,” he said. “And she'll inform the spiderguild as soon as she is able.”

“Aye,” she whispered. “She must be sending a message even now. She'll use the king's own riders, cajole them from her husband. And then she'll dose herself. Take nectar and remove my spiders.”

Nectar? What was she babbling about? “So what do you intend to do, then? Ransom the
beasts back to the guild?”

“No!” The strength of her protest seemed to hurt her, the one word scraped across a throat already screamed raw. She lowered her voice to almost a whisper and repeated, “No. I cannot return them to the guild. They would be destroyed immediately.”

“The spiderguild makes its profit on the sale of silk. Why would it destroy its assets?”

“These … assets … are too dangerous for the guild. My octolaris' poison is much stronger than the average spider's.”

“They're too dangerous for the guild, and yet you have tended them here? In secret? Alone?”