Glasswrights' Apprentice (13 page)

And that had been all.

Bardo had covered his arm, and then he had offered her a dirty kerchief to wipe her tear-streaked face. He had instructed her to blow her nose before leading her to the baker's, and he let her choose the largest pastry she could find. The leather ball was gone when they returned home.

Rani marveled that she could have forgotten the incident. Her beloved Bardo had slapped her like … like a child.
Bardo had beaten her.…
And all because she had discovered a tattoo that matched the design Morada sported on her arm.

Now, the Instructor panted at Larindolian, capturing the raw fury Rani remembered in her brother's voice. “You blasted idiot! I don't have anything else to wear, and even
you
can't want me to answer questions about what this means.”

Larindolian's fingers strayed to his chest, as if he felt crawling snakes across his own flesh. Before he could react further, a tumult thundered from the far end of the narrowed street. The cadence of marching boots echoed off building walls. “Soldiers!” Morada exclaimed, interpreting the sound faster than Rani did. The apprentice ducked into the shadows of a neighboring hovel as a troop of Shanoranvilli's armed guards swung into view.

The helmed captain stopped on the doorstep of Morada's ruined hut and announced his
royal warrant with a snarl: “Open in the name of King Shanoranvilli, that justice be done in the
name of all the Thousand Gods.” Before any human could have responded, soldierly boots crashed
against the door, and the splinter of wood was lost in the clatter of armed men passing through too
small a space.

“Here's the murderess you're searching for!” Larindolian's voice rose above the tumult.

“Traitor!” Morada cried. “You summoned the king's men!” Then, even before the soldiers could react, dark velvet flashed by Rani, and the apprentice just made out the shape of a man in the alley's gloom. Head bent low and face obscured against his shoulder, Larindolian was escaping.

“Hold, witch!” cried one of the men inside the hut, and Morada howled her rage, shrieking epithets that brought grim responses from the assembled soldiers. Even without seeing the confrontation in the filthy room, Rani recognized the sound of fists on flesh, and the duller impact of boots. Morada's flaring anger turned to raw-voiced pain as she pleaded with her attackers to look to Larindolian.

The desperate words merely heated the soldiers' blood, and the men sprinkled
imprecations amid their brutal punishment. “Murdering witch!” Rani heard, and “Blasted whore!”

Suddenly aware of her own danger if the guards' rage were not sated by attacking the Instructor, Rani glanced up and down the vile street. She did not know her way in this quarter; she could not hope to escape trained military men who were well-heated by vengeance. Before she could choose to brave the streets or wait out the horror inside the little house behind her, however, the decision was taken from her.

The soldiers emerged from the hut, man-handling their sobbing, twisting prey from the ramshackle room. One of the guards chanced to look over his shoulder as Rani gaped from the shadows. “Aye, brat,” he spat toward her feet, “let this be a lesson to you. Mind your caste, and you won't have to worry about a visit from the King's Guard.” The man hitched at his belt and hustled to catch up with his fellows, taking the opportunity to land a solid punch in the small of Morada's back. In seconds, bitter silence filtered over the street.

Mind your caste.

As if Rani belonged in these abandoned city streets. This was a zone fit for no decent person - only the Touched would live in these filthy shadows.

Rani glanced around, half expecting to see Mair and her spirited troops lurking in the ruined doorway across the street. Instead, a toothless bundle of rags stirred on the rotting threshold, turning a bandaged head to look at her from a single crazed eye. Rani jumped, astonished that she had not noticed the creature before. “Aye, little one!” cackled the ancient Touched. “Mind yer caste!” The voice was high and reedy and Rani could not tell if the speaker was male or female. “Oh, yes. If ye want t' be safe, little one, mind yer caste!”

The bundle of rags dissolved into an ancient creatures' diseased limbs, a skull bobbing on the end of a spine grown twisted and deformed with age, rickety legs shambling toward the terrified girl. Before Rani could shrink away, a bony finger poked at her throat, burrowing into the V of flesh and cutting off her breath. Rani tried to back away, but she was trapped by the rough daub and wattle behind her, rooted to the spot and transfixed by the horrific smile that stretched the skeleton's thin lips.

“Ye're wastin' time, little one. Yer Instruct'r won't last th' night i' th' king's Black 'Ole.”

“I -” Rani cleared her throat to force words past her revulsion. “I don't know what
you're talking about.”

“Step smart, little one. Th' Instruct'r'll 'ave more 'n th' king's good 'ealth on 'er mind, after that last fight with th' noble 'un. Ye talk to th' Instruct'r 'n' ye'll learn th' answer to all yer questions.”

“How do
you
know?” Rani struggled to keep her voice respectful, fighting fear and revulsion.

“I mind me caste, little one!” The ancient Touched cackled, chanting a holy mantra. “Mind yer caste. Mind yer caste.”

“I don't understand!”

“Mind yer caste.…” The skeleton tumbled the words over its sere lips, jostling them about like knuckle bones in a cup.

Rani recoiled and started to turn away from the mad speaker. Old habits died hard, though - she could hardly leave her elder, and a victim of madness besides, without some token of respect. Rani fished deep in her pocket for Narda's coppers. She was already in for an ell with the egg-woman; she might as well plunge for a mile.

“Here you go,” Rani proffered the coins from a safe distance. “Buy yourself some food.”

Before the apprentice could spring back, steel fingers closed about her wrist, a tighter grip than Rani could have imagined. Now, face to face with the Touched creature, the apprentice could see the fire burning deep within those ancient eyes. “Don' ferget yer lesson 'ere today. Ye can learn things when ye least expect t' learn.”

The skeleton leaned closer, and Rani's stomach turned at the stench of rotten food and decaying teeth. For one terrifying instant, she thought the Touched was going to kiss her, and she lunged backwards, bruising her shoulder blades against the house. “Aye, Rai, Rani, Ranita. Don't ferget t' seek out all yer Teachers.”

The creature's tongue moved in its mouth like a slug on bruised apples, and Rani twisted away in horror. As the Touched's laughter echoed off the decaying buildings, Rani fled the deserted quarter.

She got lost following the street that she thought Larindolian had taken. She wandered through more twining lanes, past more shadowed doorways, and finally she squeezed past a pile of rubble where some ancient ruin had collapsed, emerging in the cathedral close. The holy building loomed over her, and she could not help but glance at the glasswrights' scaffold, still standing beneath the Defender's Window. Morada's rope continued to hang from the smooth wooden uprights, and Rani imagined an assassin scaling the rickety structure, bow in hand.

An assassin who was an archer.… Of course, soldiers learned to handle a bow, but so did others. Every noble learned archery in childhood - it was one of the skills befitting the Court, showing the culture and grace of the noble caste.

Tuvashanoran himself had been a fine archer. Rani dashed away unbidden tears, recalling how the noble prince had hunted for venison when he was little more than a child himself. A famine had plagued Morenia as drought seared crops for the third consecutive year. Tuvashanoran had led a hunting expedition with his noble brethren. Two days from the City, the Prince had found and shot a magnificent buck, slaying the beast with a single glass-tipped arrow. Tuvashanoran, ever-mindful of his obligation to his people, had shared out the venison on his way back to the City. Wherever a family ate of the rich flesh, rain fell. The Thousand Gods smiled on the Prince.

Making a holy sign, Rani muttered a prayer for Tuvashanoran's soul, directing her holy words to Bern, the god of rain. Halfway through the invocation, though, she changed her appeal, speaking instead to Doan, the god of hunters. Doan seemed more appropriate, after all, since Rani had become a hunter herself. Or the hunted.

Either way, she was likely to become a shackled prisoner if she did not return to the marketplace and excuse her absence in some satisfactory manner. Even now, her heart pounded at the thought of Narda's wrath and the Council's judgment. As Rani wound her way back to the marketplace, she practiced her excuses.

She had found a small child, separated from its mother in the terrifying market. She had discovered another merchant, selling eggs that looked at first to be of a higher quality than Narda's. She had heard rumors of a merchant selling ale at half the normal price, in dire need of unloading his wares that morning.

Each of the stories rang false in her own skull, and she came to the edge of the marketplace without a plan for deliverance.

Rani had scarcely passed beneath Tuvashanoran's outstretched marble arm when she was shadowed by two of the Council's Watchers. If she recalled correctly, the pair of cheese-merchants were husband and wife, although they looked enough alike to be brother and sister. Each wore the symbol of Council rank fastened to a pungent tunic, the hempen knots bobbing like wise men's heads. Rani held her chin high and walked through the market as if she were wholly in the right. She forced herself to think of the cheese-sellers as a royal escort.

As Rani stepped up to Narda's trestle, a customer bustled off into the crowd, nestling her new-bought eggs in a carefully woven basket. Narda blinked foggy eyes at her erstwhile assistant, and Rani heard disappointment in the old woman's words. “I had hoped not to resort to the Council.”

“You don't need to, Mistress!” Rani responded automatically.

“I don't see my ale. I suppose you've managed to lose my coins, somewhere in the marketplace?”

“You need not add ‘thief' to my name, Mistress,” Rani cast a nervous glance at the Council Watchers, afraid that they would cut short her response.

“‘Thief.' ‘Vandal.' I name the names that fit. I gave you coins and you return without ale - what else am I to say?” At Narda's angry gesture, the Council guard dogs stepped closer.

Rani had not spent her life as a merchant's daughter without learning one basic principle: all people could be bought. Plunging her hand into the sack at her waist, she finally hatched a plan. Even as her fingers fumbled past the Zarithian knife - a tool she dared not use now - she felt the cool kiss of an incised metal coin. Her hand emerged from the sack, and she stared down at the square metal in her hand.

Rani could still remember her excitement at finding the foreign coin, caught upright between two cobblestones outside her family's house. She could hear Bardo's voice -
Bardo had beaten her
 
as he drilled a hole in the foreign coin, carefully hoarding the spirals of sheared silver. “Here you go, little one. A rare find this is - someone'll be sorry to have lost it in the City.”

Rani had worn the coin on a leather thong around her neck, treasuring it not only as money from a foreign land, but as a thing of beauty her brother had crafted for her. Even now, she remembered Bardo's easy grin as he slipped the coin over her head. “Fine jewels for the Lady Ranikaleka,” he had joked, turning her name into a noble one, and she had laughed at the silly sounds, even as she thrust out a proud chest to better display her wealth. Because Bardo had drilled it for her, because Bardo had made it for her, Rani valued the silver coin far more than she would have valued the handful of boiled sweets it might have bought.

In fact, she had worn the coin until she began her life in the guild hall, often dreaming of the wealth and good luck the exotic token would bring her.

Now, she could scarcely bring herself to touch the metal square, remembering that Bardo had worked it. What had her brother done? How had he charmed her? How had she forgotten his raw fury when she discovered the tattoo inscribed on his arm?

Thinking back on the punishment she had received so long ago, Rani felt rebellion sprout in her belly. Even if she had forgotten Bardo's rough treatment, she now knew he was not merely the loving brother he had seemed. The tattoo was a secret sign, and Rani knew its entwined circles lay at the heart of Tuvashanoran's murder. There was more to her brother than met the eye.

“What have you got there? More goods that you've stolen from some unsuspecting merchant?” Narda's harsh words jarred Rani back to her present dilemma.

In one tragic morning, the coin that Bardo had strung for her had lost its power as an amulet against all things that frighten young girls. Now, it could serve one final purpose - freeing her from the Council's punishment - if only she could spin out a game of marketplace bidding. To that end, she thrust out her lower lip into a credible, childish pout. “Your words hurt me, Mistress Narda. I had thought to surprise you with all the ale this coin can buy.” She paused for effect before twisting the four-sided treasure in front of Narda's calculating eyes.

Whatever excuses the egg-woman had expected, she was clearly startled by the sight of foreign silver. She dropped the egg she was holding, ignoring the resulting saffron splash down the front of her stand. Rani stifled a sigh at the egg-stain - she remembered too well the pain of scrubbing the old table clean. Mentally, she nudged her price upwards.

“Pish,” Narda sniffed. “The money changers would have no idea how much to give you for this.”

“They may not know the coin, but they can weigh silver.”