Glasswrights' Journeyman (4 page)

“My lady,” Dartulamino began, and Rani could see quite clearly that he did not intend to give her what she asked. The church would not help unless Hal paid dearly – paid with money, paid with loyalty, paid with prayer. … She drew a breath to cut off the priest before he could make an argument that she could not answer.

“Dartulamino,” the Holy Father said, and Rani was shocked to realize that she had forgotten the old man. “Help me, son.” The ancient priest fought to push back his chair, to stagger to his feet. “Where. …”

Dartulamino hastened to assist the elderly cleric, settling a familiar hand under the Holy Father's elbow. The younger priest smothered a flash of annoyance as he said to his king, “Excuse us for a moment, Defender. The Holy Father inquires about the location of your nearest garderobe.”

If Hal were surprised by the request, he managed not to reveal his emotion. Instead, he rose to his feet, gesturing toward the outer door of the chamber. “You'll have to help the Holy Father down the hall. There is a curtained alcove, around the corner to the right.” The old man began to shake his way to the door, leaning on both his oaken walking stick and Dartulamino's arm.

The younger priest looked over his shoulder as they reached the threshold. “We'll finish this discussion when I return. If you cannot agree to the church's terms, Defender, I trust that Jair will provide.”

Rani heard the hidden message from the Fellowship, and she caught her breath before she could ask if Dartulamino's words were a promise or a threat. Even Hal was spared the need to find civil words when the Holy Father clutched his aide's arm more tightly. Dartulamino leaned forward to help the elderly prelate through the doorway. Rani was vaguely aware of Farsobalinti jumping to attention in the outer room, and she saw a dark flutter that she suspected was Mair, ducking into a shadowed corner of the antechamber. Before Rani could be certain, Hal slammed the door closed.

“What in the name of the Thousand Gods do you think you're doing?”

“What did you think you were gaining by making that poor old man walk all the way down the hall? You could have let the Holy Father use the garderobe in the inner room.” Rani gestured toward the door that led to Hal's private apartments.

“I wanted them down the hall so that they didn't hear me order you back to your chamber like the manipulative child you're acting tonight.”

“You're not ordering me anywhere! You don't know what you're doing here. You
need
me!”

“For what? To exaggerate and lie? To lead them to the conclusion that I don't need their help at all? To let them decide that all of Moren can die of firelung?”

“My lord, they
know
you're desperate. Anyone who's walked through the city knows that you've lost more than half of Moren. Your people are dying. They're starving and they're sick. Your borders are bracing for an attack like peasants fearing wolves. You need the church's help.”

“And you think I'm going to get it by boasting of my supposed wealth?”

“We have to boast of something!” Rani's voice broke as she shouted out the last word, and she forced herself to lower her volume. “We have to come to them from a position of strength. You
know
that. You're just afraid, because of the fire, because of all that we have lost. My lord, the fire was not a judgment upon you. It was not some vengeance of all the gods. It was an
accident
, and now we have to make things right.”

“I'm not sure I believe it
was
an accident. I heard a new rumor today, Ranita Glasswright, one that I chose not to share with our religious leaders.”

Her blood was chilled by his using her guild name. He never called her that. “And what was that?”

“I heard that the fire started on the grounds of the old glasswrights' guild. I heard that it was set to teach all future glasswrights a lesson. To teach the crown a lesson, for consorting with the guild that cost Morenia her rightful king.”

The accusation stole Rani's breath away, and she could do nothing but gape for several heartbeats. She had fought that battle. She had paid dearly to clear her name, to salvage the reputation of her guild, to identify the true killers of Prince Tuvashanoran. “My lord, you cannot believe –”

“I'm telling you what I hear, Rani. And if I'm hearing it, you can be certain that the church is, too. Just think of how they could use that tale, if they decide that you hold too much power in my court. Even
you
should understand enough statesmanship to understand the danger.”

“Even –” she started to repeat, shocked by the scorn in Hal's voice.

“I need hardly tell you that the Holy Father is not my vassal. I cannot control the church. I cannot rein it in. You've heard Dartulamino – he has not called me by my royal title this entire evening. He addresses me as ‘Defender', as a subordinate of the church. If the priests want command over all of Morenia, I'll have no choice but to give it to them.”

Still reeling from the angry accusation behind Hal's words, Rani made her voice stiffly formal. “Your Majesty, you will always have choices.”

“Like what?” Hal hissed. “Borrowing from the Fellowship? You
know
that I have worked toward a position of power there, but I have not gained their complete confidence yet. Can you possibly be so poor a merchant that you think they should hold my note?”

“Why are you so angry with me? My lord, you summoned me here! I came to help you!”

“You embarrassed me! You made me look like an impotent fool. Morenia has no place for a so-called guildmistress who doesn't even understand how to work with her king.”

Guildmistress. Rani began to understand the true threat behind the gossip that Hal had heard. He was linking all of this to the glasswrights' guild – the fire, the disease, his fears for his kingdom. He was going to take out all of his frustration, all of his hopelessness, on her one dream, on a dream that was so distant that she had yet to complete her first step, achieving the rank of journeyman. Anger stiffened her spine like steel bracing a stained-glass window.

“It was not my intention to embarrass you, Your Majesty.”

“Intention or no, that's what you've done. That's what I get for thinking a caste-jumping merchant would help me negotiate.”

Hot tears threatened to scald Rani's cheeks. “You've no right to call me names, Your Majesty. You've no right to question the choices I've made in the past – choices that benefitted the crown. I've helped you, and I will again, once the glasswrights' guild is reformed.”

“
If
the glasswrights' guild is reformed! How do you think I'm going to pay for that, Rani? How do you think I'm going to finance a guildhall and masters and the finest Zarithian glass? Or were you planning on charming
that
 out of the church as well? Or maybe you were planning on undercutting me with the Fellowship and asking
them
to pay for your guild! Is that what this is all about?”

The accusation shocked Rani, slicing through her rage like the sharpest sliver of glass. “You're mad! Is that truly what you think of me, Halaravilli? Do you honestly believe that I would whore the glasswrights' guild to the first party wealthy enough to build me a hall?”

Hal's eyes blazed at her, fiery above the smudged hollows of his exhaustion. “I really don't know what to think any longer, Ranita Glasswright.”

She was across the room before she consciously heard his words; her hands were on the
iron latch. She registered the sneer in his last word, the disdain he held for her name, for her.
She started to turn back, started to ask one more question, but she was stopped by the king's bitter
voice: “Perhaps my father was right, after all. Perhaps he needed to destroy the glasswrights'
guild. Perhaps he needed to see it torn stone from stone, to protect Morenia itself.”

Rani's fury was a physical thing, shaking through to the pit of her stomach. She pulled on the door latch with all of her strength, sending the oak planks crashing against the wall. Then she ran through the antechamber, past the astonished embrace of Farsobalinti and Mair, past the shocked pair of returning priests. She lifted her skirts as if she were a child, and she fled through the palace corridors, taking the steps to her tower room two at a time, until she was safe, secure behind another oaken door.

How dare he?

How dare Hal drag her into that dinner, force her into negotiations, only to betray her? How dare he imply that she would sell herself, sell her
guild
to the Fellowship? How dare he think that she would turn from him, turn toward the church, abandon him?

How dare he?

Only when she had torn the ruby necklace from her neck, only when she had ripped the band of mourning from her sleeve, did she force herself to sit at the table that was spread with fiery glasswork. She sat on her stool, and she rested her hands on the book she'd been studying. She tried to concentrate on the words, tried to measure her skill, tried to convince herself that she had learned enough to call herself a journeyman.

As the Pilgrims' Bell tolled its mournful count long into the night, Rani found that she could not think past the tears that slicked her cheeks, could not reason past the sobs that tore her throat. Without a guild, without merchants' wealth, without the trust of her king, she was very, very alone in the center of a dying Morenia.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2

 

Mareka Octolaris woke before sunrise on her last day as an apprentice in the spiderguild. She lay in her bed and listened to the other apprentices sleeping around her. Early spring rain had fallen during the night. Mareka could still hear the raindrops dripping off the eaves of the apprentices' quarters, through the needles of the spindly cypress trees that ringed the guildhall. Someone moved outside the apprentices' hall, heavy footsteps splashing through a puddle.

Perhaps the canals would remain filled between the riberry trees. Maybe Mareka would not have to drive the donkeys down the spiral steps to the heart of the Great Well. Maybe she could find time to work on her armstraps, on the delicate embroidery that she could wear after she was made a journeyman.

A journeyman. … Mareka had waited so long, and now the test was before her. One long morning was all that remained, one morning with no requirements, no plans, no obligations. Then, after the sun had peaked at noon, she would be called before the guildmasters, quizzed on all the knowledge that she had gathered in the eight years she had served as apprentice.

Eight years.

She knew that she should spend her morning studying. She should review the ancient texts, make certain that there was not a single detail about the octolaris spider that she could not recite from memory. She did not want to study, though. She wanted to perfect the embroidery stitch that Master Tanida had shown her only the day before – the riberry seed, the master had called it. The knots needed to be precise, tight, but not so small that they popped through the fine-woven spidersilk.

Mareka closed her eyes and rolled over on her hard cot, taking care to make no noise that might disturb her sister apprentices. She would work the riberry seed into her journeyman arm-bands, scatter the knots across her stitchery using brilliant, shimmering thread. Her arm-bands would be the most beautiful that any journeyman had ever worn. They would glimmer in the light of the guildhall, reflected in a thousand mirrors. All the other journeymen would look at them, and they would be jealous of her handiwork, awed by her imagination. They would wish that they had hoarded spidersilk thread, that they had taken the time to learn how to craft the intricate patterns, the smooth stitches and the knots, the. …

“Mareka Octolaris, if you don't get out of that bed this instant, you'll be sweeping stables for a month!”

“What!” Mareka jerked awake, scrambling from her bed even as she realized that she must have fallen back to sleep. By the Hind's eight horns, how could she? On this, the last day that she was ever to spend as an apprentice?

The sun was already beginning to bake the roof of the apprentices' hall, hot despite the early season. All the other spiderguild sisters had left. All but Jerusha.

“If you'd rather sleep all day, I'm sure there's someone else who will stand in your place at the journeymen's Inquiry this afternoon.” Jerusha's hair was pulled tight in two apprentice braids, stretching the skin beside her eyes. She looked pinched and uncomfortable, and she transferred all of her nasty temper into her words.

“I was up before dawn, Jerusha.”

“I can see that.”

“I was –” Mareka swallowed the rest of her explanation. By the eight horns, there was no trying to talk sense to Jerusha. The other apprentice was not going to listen. Jerusha never listened. She was the daughter of two of the strongest masters of the guild, two weavers who had perfected new techniques for creating the strongest spidersilk. Jerusha never hesitated to remind her fellow apprentices that she came from the oldest line of guildmasters. She anticipated being first in the Inquiry, succeeding to all the power of First Journeyman within the entire guild.

Well, Mareka would see about that. Turning her back on Jerusha deliberately, she reached down to twitch her sheet into place on her pallet, automatically smoothing the spidersilk so that it flowed across the straw stuffing and glimmered like milk in the morning light.

Still ignoring her guildsister, Mareka moved to the center of the room and ran through the graceful gestures of the morning prayer, turning to each of the compass's cardinal points, and to every halfway marker as she paused in the sacred posture for each portion of the day.

She spoke the words to herself, forming the syllables clearly in her mind: On my first leg, let my morning begin, with hope and promise. On my second leg, let my morning progress, with food and drink. On my third leg, let my morning continue, with work and service. On my fourth leg, let my morning end, with learning and instruction. On my fifth leg, let my afternoon begin with work and service. On my sixth leg, let my afternoon continue with worship and reverence. On my seventh leg, let my afternoon end, with food and drink. On my eighth leg, let my night begin, with rest and solitude, that I may serve the octolaris once again.