Glasswrights' Journeyman (6 page)

The slave-girl proffered up a silk-wrapped bundle, her hands trembling. Mareka took the cloth and unwound it, once, twice, three times. She swallowed her irritation at the odd number of wrappings. Any spiderguild slave should have known to turn the silk four times at least. Eight would have been better. Still, the slave had managed not to lose the cake.

And what ho! The girl had taken more than cake. Nestled on top of the golden yellow seedcake was a fistful of strawberries – plump, crimson fruit that glistened in the morning heat. Mareka glanced at the girl, reappraising her skills. “So, what have we here?”

“My mistress in the city liked berries with her morning meal. I thought you'd like the same.”

Mareka placed a piece of fruit in her mouth, biting down on the sweet flesh, feeling her mouth flood with juice. She could not remember the last time that such a delicacy had been permitted a mere apprentice – had she truly not enjoyed a strawberry since leaving her parents' home? She placed another berry in her mouth, closing her eyes against the pure, sweet taste.

“What are you doing, stupid girl!”

Mareka jerked back to the riberry grove, even as a flurry of white announced the arrival of another apprentice. She rapidly secreted her seedcake at the top of her collection basket, determined to preserve her forbidden morning meal. It took her only an instant to realize that the interloper was Jerusha, and the other apprentice was furious with the slave girl.

“I told you to
watch
her! Are you too stupid to understand that?”

“I did, spidermistress!” The slave girl yelped.

“Watching means that you see her. Not that she sees you! What are you doing standing here in front of her, you idiot!”

“She saw me by the apprentices' quarters, spidermistress. She ordered me to get her cake.”

“Cake!” Jerusha whirled on Mareka. “Cake! You know we are supposed to fast until the masters consider us for advancement.”

Of course Mareka knew. And she had no doubt that Jerusha would use the irregularity against her, cite her before all the masters. Feigning contempt, Mareka sneered at the slave girl. “And now you're going to believe a child? An Amanthian slave?”

The slave looked at Mareka indignantly, pulling herself up to her full height. “You
did
ask for cake! And I brought it to you! With strawberries!”

Mareka shrugged and looked at Jerusha. “Strawberries! Are you going to believe that? You made a mistake, choosing this slave for your spy-work. She's too green to know the first thing about the spiderguild.”

“She'll learn,” Jerusha hissed. “She'll learn how we treat slaves who disobey simple direct orders. Come with me, slave.”

“Wh – where?” The foolish girl twisted her hands in her short tunic, clearly reluctant to follow any additional commands from a spiderguild apprentice. Well, she should have thought of that before she let herself be sold into slavery, Mareka thought, squelching a moment of pity. After all, the stupid child had been swayed to Mareka's side easily enough. And she
had
brought the berries, when she could have eaten them herself. Any slave worth her purchase price would have had the presence of mind to steal the berries. A simpleton, that's what this child was.

Besides, what sort of girl would be placed on the auction block? Her own family must have found her to stupid to keep. Or evil. Maybe she had been incorrigible in her own home, terrorizing an infant sibling. All the more reason for Mareka to help enforce the rules.

She managed to slip the last berry into her mouth without Jerusha noticing.

“Come along, slave,” Jerusha was saying menacingly. “We're going to the octolaris.”

“The spiders?” Mareka had seen that look of fear before – on older faces than the slave girl's. The child's face paled, making her shimmery tattooed wing stand out like scales.

“Slaves do not ask questions,” Jerusha said. “I don't know what your master taught you in Liantine, but here you'll learn the real rules. You'll learn what it truly means to serve the spiderguild.”

Mareka was so intent on watching the slave girl that she forgot to rebel against Jerusha's high-handed leadership. She let the other apprentice guide them out of the canals, past the riberry grove and across the expansive guildhall courtyard.

Other guildsmen were about now. Journeymen supervised a trio of young apprentices who were learning how to balance bolts of spidersilk on a dray. Mareka could make out the ornate embroidery on the journeymen's arm-straps, the stitchery glinting beneath the slashed sleeves of their robes. Her work would be even better, even finer, fashioned in brighter thread, in greater detail.

Two masters spoke on the steps of the guildhall, their heads close together as they conferred on some obscure point. Of course, they also wore arm-straps, but they wore the collars of their profession as well – brilliant necklaces of woven and embroidered spidersilk, covering their throats from chin to chest. Mareka's fingers twitched as she scratched the hollow of her own throat. One day. … One day, she too would have a master's neckpiece.

Mareka followed Jerusha and the slave girl past a clutch of journeymen, who called out good-natured taunts. The journeymen would soon be Mareka's peers, would soon permit her in their own hall, with its private rooms and common hearth, its studious camaraderie. Mareka skipped a few steps to catch up with Jerusha.

The other apprentice led her little procession past rows and rows of spiderboxes. Each of the containers was the same – a wooden enclosure surrounding a flat rock that baked in the morning sun, a dead riberry branch that propped up the rock and created a carefully anchored cave to shelter the octolaris within, a woven floor of delicate reeds, fashioned to support the spiders' heavy silken webs.

Jerusha took them past a team of eight apprentices who were harvesting the webs from the day before, apprentices who were hard at work because they were not going to be tested that afternoon. The octolaris were spinning heavily now – many of the mothers carried egg sacs on their backs, and they instinctively cushioned their boxes with extra silk, providing a lush carpet for new-hatched spiderlings to hide in.

Mareka knew that some wild octolaris spun their webs in unsightly clumps, leaving balls of sticky silk attached to riberry trees, to stones, even to the bare ground. The guild's spiders, though, had been bred for centuries for their spinning habits – they made clean silken sheets, covering the floors of their wooden boxes as if they still needed the webs to capture their markin grub meals.

Without consciously noticing, Mareka passed the brooding females, and then the males. She followed Jerusha beyond the unbred females' boxes, and past the yearlings, who would be differentiated by sex when they molted for the final time, in the fall. She passed the spiderboxes that were set aside for the afternoon's testing – all of the apprentices who hoped to pass to journeyman would have to transfer three octolaris from box to box. Three spiders – a yearling, a male, and – most dangerous of all – a brooding mother.

Mareka realized that her head was buzzing with suppressed excitement. She was ready for her test. She was ready to prove herself a journeyman. Proximity to the spiders only heightened her confidence.

She forced herself to take a deep breath, to run through the eight rules of handling spiders. One, bind your sleeves, gathering up the extra silk that might frighten the spiders. Two, cover your wrists with spidersilk strips, wrapping the bands to protect against bites from leaping octolaris. Three, block the direct sunlight, approaching the box without glare and with full view of the spider's every movement. Four, sing the hymn, the soothing song that lulled most octolaris into complacence. Five, bow four times, giving the spider a chance to recognize you. Six, rattle the riberry branch, forcing the spider from its rocky cave. Seven, complete the Homing, weaving your fingers in the complicated pattern that signaled dominance, not prey. Eight, for brooding females, consume the nectar.

Mareka had only tasted octolaris nectar twice before, both times under the strict supervision of a master guildsman. Even now, she could remember the powerful draught, feel it tingle against the back of her throat, sweeter than the berries she had eaten. She could remember how the nectar made her aware of every breath she took, of every sound around her. Under the influence of the nectar, she could smell the very octolaris, she knew where the spider was even with her eyes closed. The whisper of silk against her flesh was temptation itself, and she had used all her willpower to focus her attention on the octolaris before her, to sate the brooding female with a wriggling markin grub, to lift the poisonous spider from her box.

Mareka was jolted from her memories when Jerusha came to a halt in front of a cluster of twenty-four spiderboxes. This was the section of the nursery where the masters bred new lines, where the guild experimented with greater wealth and power. Mareka did not know these particular spiders. Looking into the nearest box, she saw a thick carpet of silk spread across the reed platform.

“Jerusha!” she said. “You should harvest the silk every day! You don't want your spiders to stop spinning.”

The other apprentice turned to her with a gloating grin. “I
do
collect the silk daily. These are the new spiders that Master Amrida and I have bred. They spin more than twice the silk of other beasts.”

Mareka swallowed hard against her jealousy. Master Amrida had always favored Jerusha. He was friendly with Jerusha's parents, had served as an apprentice with them decades before. He always let Jerusha work on special projects. It wasn't fair. Masters were supposed to treat all apprentices equally.

“There's only one problem,” Jerusha was saying, and Mareka forced herself to pay attention. “These spiders need markin grubs four times a day.”

“Four!” No other spider ate more than twice a day.

“Aye, four. And
I
am going to be too busy to feed them, after I'm made journeyman this afternoon.” Jerusha seized the slave girl's arm. “And that's why
you
are going to learn how to feed octolaris.”

“Jerusha, you can't!” Mareka protested. “You can't have some stupid slave feed spiders. You know the octolaris require careful attention.”

“Master Amrida will never know, unless you tell him. As far as he's concerned, I'll go on doing an apprentice's duties, at least with regard to this line of spiders.”

Mareka glared at her fellow apprentice. Mareka might dislike Jerusha. She might compete with her. But apprentices were apprentices, after all. There was a code. Mareka would tell no tales. Jerusha nodded after a moment, and said, “Here. Give me your markin basket.”

“Collect your own grubs!”

“Four times a day,” Jerusha said. “And if they don't eat, they'll die. You would not want to be responsible for an octolaris's death, would you?”

What sort of question was that? By the Hind's eight horns, Mareka could not be responsible for a spider's death! Even the thought made her belly twist. She handed over her basket.

Jerusha reached inside, then pulled out her hand as if she'd been bitten. “What's this!”

Blushing, Mareka remembered the seedcake that she had stashed inside the container. Before she could come up with an excuse, Jerusha whirled on the slave girl. “So you did carry cake to Mareka Octolaris, when I told you to spy on her? You're stupider than I thought!”

“She ordered me to, spidermistress. I had no choice!” The swangirl seemed to shrink beneath the beating sun. Her face twisted as if she were going to cry.

“Who commanded you first, slave?” Jerusha reached out and pulled the girl's hair, yanking hard enough that the slave's neck cracked with the force. “If you're going to serve the spiderguild, you're going to learn obedience.”

“Y – yes, spidermistress.”

“And you can start showing that obedience by feeding these spiders. Now. One grub in each box. There are twenty-four of them. Take the basket, girl.”

The slave lifted the basket with both hands, her sobs shaking her arms enough that the grubs would be bruised.

“Jerusha, at least let her bind her sleeves.”

Jerusha sighed and snatched back the basket of grubs, setting it on the ground. She grabbed at the slave girl's sleeves, wrapping them close about her pitiful wrists and securing them with the apprentice silk wraps that she produced from the pouch at her own waist. “There,” she snapped at the slave girl. “Step up to the box. Directly in front of me, so that you block the sunlight.”

The girl's entire body was trembling now, as if she had already been bitten by the octolaris. “P – Please,” she said. “I can't! I don't know how to handle the spiders! My master said I must not touch them!”

“Well, I'm your mistress for the moment. Apprentice Mareka and me. You're bound to all the spiderguild, and you'll do as we say. Listen, now, so that you can learn the hymn.”

Jerusha sang the sacred words hurriedly, brushing over the long descant. Mareka watched with a sickened fascination, wanting to tell her fellow apprentice to slow down, to take her time, to make sure that the octolaris were comforted by the hymn, by the words. Jerusha, though, completed the traditional song and then bowed toward the spiders – one, two, three, four.

The slave only repeated the action when Jerusha pinched her arm, hard. The child bobbed three times, raising her head at each motion to look at her tormentor. Three times, not four. Jerusha muttered an oath under her breath, and said, “Now, reach out and shake the riberry branch. Let them know you're here, with their prey.”

The child glanced in the box, then turned to Mareka with a pitiful stare. “Please, my lady! You mustn't make me feed the spiders!”

Mareka stepped forward. “Jerusha –”

The other apprentice would hear no arguments, though. She addressed her scornful words to the slave. “Don't be stupid. There's nothing to fear. I have fed these spiders every day for months. I would not even bother to show you how, if I were not going to be so busy with my new duties. Now. Shake the branch.”