Glasswrights' Apprentice (2 page)

Rani set the basket of food carefully on the scaffold platform, edging aside a coil of lead stripping.

Lead stripping.

Lead stripping had no place at the cathedral. The Defender's Window should have been fitted entirely in the workshop, colored glass laid into a sturdy lead frame on the surface of a white-washed table. Now Rani could place the acrid smell she thought she had imagined - Morada had lit a brazier to heat the lead and bend it to her needs. Such a menial task was far beneath an Instructor, especially an Instructor as famed as Morada. And Rani, having witnessed Morada humbling herself to an apprentice's job, was certain to be penalized.

“If you please, Instructor Morada,” Rani could hardly speak past the constriction in her throat as she tried desperately not to see the offending metal coil. “Would you like me to tend to the brazier while you finish your work?”

Morada's hand flew faster than Rani could follow, and then the girl's cheek stung; her eyes watered involuntarily against the slap. “I would like you to remember your place, Apprentice. Get your miserable carcass down the scaffold, and return to the guildhall. You have shown nothing but insolence since you were ordered to assist on this window. You merchant-rats are all the same - too stupid to follow directions and too stubborn to learn.”

Protest bubbled in Rani's chest, the words fueled by her stinging cheek. Still, Morada was the Instructor, and Rani only needed to swallow twice before managing the guild's formula. “Yes, Instructor, you speak the truth, imparting wisdom to this Apprentice.”

“A mynah could say as much. Go, wretch! I'll see you in the Hall of Discipline when I return to the guild.”

“Yes, Instructor.” Rani turned to the rope guide, ready to toss it down to steady her descent.

“Apprentice!” The word cracked out in the autumn air, brighter than the sunlight on the cathedral's new copper roof. “You climbed up here without the rope. You can certainly make your way down without it.”

This time Rani could not keep from gaping at Morada. Anger was one thing - Rani constantly set the Instructors' teeth on edge because she had not mastered the obsequious tones of her fellow apprentices. But to be forced to descend the scaffold without the rope, when one was perfectly available.… Rani might have been confident in her climbing skills, but it was a foolish risk to descend without a guide rope. “Or perhaps you'd like a faster way down?” Morada's eyes were furious, and Rani had no doubt that the woman would follow through on her threat - at the very least giving Rani a shove to help her down the wooden ladder.

“No, Instructor.” Rani scurried to the platform edge, catching her lower lip in her teeth as she steadied her feet against the suddenly too-smooth wooden rungs. She silently appealed to Roan, and despite one slip in the middle of the structure, the god of ladders guided her feet safely to the ground. Only when she had made her way to the bottom of the scaffold did she indulge the hatred that simmered beneath her heart, spitting onto the ground to get a nasty taste off her tongue. Merchant-rat! Rani's parents had paid good money to get her into the guild - better money than Morada would earn for the Defender's Window, whatever the Instructor's mastery of her craft.

Even now, the guild payment forced Rani's family to live like paupers. Her older brother, Bardo, who had hoped to make his Pilgrimage this year, had had no choice but to postpone his journey. Of course, he could walk the Path of the Gods here in the City, but that was not the same. Every night, as Rani fell asleep in her closet of a room, she tormented herself with the knowledge that she - she alone - was responsible for her family's failure to complete the Pilgrimage and gain immediate passage to the Heavenly Fields upon their deaths, long may those be in the future.

Such speculation drove her to the familiar verge of tears. After all, it wasn't as if she had asked for the privilege of coming to the guild. Certainly, she had shown skills in that direction - even as a toddler, she had enjoyed laying out the trinkets at her father's stall in the marketplace. Unlike Bardo and her other brothers and sisters, she was not interested by the mere glint of sunlight on silver. Unlike her mother, she did not care whether the goods were of the highest quality, imported from mysterious Zarithia. Unlike her father, she did not give a tinker's dam if the till were full at the end of the day.

Rather, she felt the way the goods should look on their table; she knew how the wares could best set off their own attractions. Her parents quickly learned that when she set out the boards, more trinkets were sold. After a brief training period - an apprenticeship, Rani grimaced - she had been assigned that duty on a regular basis. It was her accomplishments that let her merchant family sell more, her skill that permitted her folk to buy her way into the guild.

Now that she lived in the chapter-house, her family was reduced to setting out its own displays, to its unaided attempts to seduce passing customers. So, when Instructor Morada berated Rani for buying her way into the guild, the woman did not know the true edge of her cutting words. Rani had cost her family their spiritual blessings, their savings, and - most importantly - their future, since their stall would not generate equal profits without Rani's gift.

By the time Rani worked her way around to the front of the cathedral, she was completely convinced that her suffering at the guild's unsympathetic hands was unwarranted. She, the poor glasswright's apprentice.… She had done nothing to warrant scorn from her Instructors. She had done nothing to garner the beating that she would certainly get at the hands of the disciplinarian - a beating that would hurt all the more since it would fall on top of the bruises still painted across her back from last week's exploits.

No, there was nothing to be gained by speeding back to the guildhall. And, looking around at the crowd, Rani realized that there was everything to be gained by watching the Presentation. After all, it was not every day that religious ceremonies flooded the City's streets. If the disciplinarian were going to beat her, Rani might as well give him good cause. She might as well enjoy this Presentation Day. And if Larinda had to work harder back at the guildhall, then so much the better. After all, Larinda had let the fire burn down, and turn about was fair play.

Brushing a hand against her still-stinging cheek, Rani began the steady process of worming her way to the front of the crowd. She had a distinct advantage over the other people in the cathedral square - because she was dressed in an apprentice's somber uniform, her short tunic of black wool and her simple cape left her free to dart into places that appeared smaller than a toddler. For once, she was grateful that she was short for her age. At one point, though, she pushed too hard, and a velvet-clad woman - the wife of a Soldier by her complicated hairpiece - reached out a jeweled hand to grab at Rani's shoulders. The glasswrights' apprentice actually laughed out loud as she evaded the woman's grip, darting forward in the ranks as the woman's absurdly stiffened gown forbade her from following.

It wouldn't do to have a Soldier after her in all this chaos, Rani chastised herself. That would warrant special attention from the disciplinarian - if a Soldier broke caste to come to the guildhall and complain about her behavior. Still, he could only complain if he caught her outright, and that was not likely. As Rani ducked in front of a line of Noble children, all dressed in identical regalia, she barely resisted the urge to make a face at their wailing protests. Heraldry was one of the many studies that Rani would master as an apprentice, but for now, she contented herself with memorizing the emblem on their coat of arms. She would check later to see which family she had offended.

Rani's heart beat faster, and she realized that for the first time since she had joined the guild she was actually enjoying herself. And why not? Guildmistress Salina could not know how long it would take to deliver Instructor Morada's lunch. She could not guess how long it would take for Rani to work her way through the crowds, to return to the tedious job of scrubbing down the glaziers' white-washed tables. If Rani planned properly, she could be gone for the better part of the afternoon, and her absence never missed. Larinda might even be required to scrub clean the tables, all by herself. And the pots from the morning's porridge.

Ducking past a heavily-perfumed woman who sported several chins, Rani suddenly found herself on the lowest step of the cathedral entrance. She was surrounded by Nobility; each extravagantly-robed person around her was related in some distant way to the prince who would be Presented that morning. Conditioned since birth to yield to the strict lines of rank and privilege, Rani was assailed with doubts for the first time since leaving the scaffold. It was one thing to frolic for an afternoon, free of the guild's over-watchful guardians. It was another to flout social tradition and set foot inside the cathedral during a Noble feast day. Before she could finish measuring her desire against her wisdom, the crowd carried her forward, depositing her on the cathedral's doorstep, in front of the chief royal herald.

That man, dressed in the crimson and gold raiment of the king's household, looked down his impossibly long nose at her. Rani itched to pick up a piece of charcoal, to sketch out the scene on the cathedral steps. She would capture the pointed arch of the doorway, the carved ranks of the gods who waited to escort Pilgrims to the Heavenly Fields. Against it, she would sketch the herald's flowing cape, his austere dignity reinforced by the waves of glass. His hair, coiffed in the accepted style of a king's servant, would also be frozen in her drawing, and then she would apply all of her skill to record the man's disdainful sniff. Rani would have laughed aloud at the pompous man preserved forever in the windows of her mind, but the herald chose that moment to notice her.

“You!” he barked. “You have no purpose here for the Presentation!” His staff of office crashed down on the top step.

“Begging your pardon,” Rani bobbed into the deep curtsey appropriate to offer a Noble, for the herald assumed his master's rank when he dealt with a lowly Guildsman. “I have been sent to the cathedral on guild business, good sir. My Instructor is finishing the Presentation Window even now.” Well, that much was true, Rani assured herself, trying to smile against the thunderhead that clouded the herald's face.

“Go around to the transept door, then, Apprentice Glasswright. There are good people waiting to honor their lord this Presentation day.” The man sniffed at her costume before turning his attention to the next Noble party that craved admission to the spectacle.

“Begging your pardon,” Rani began again, scarcely bridling her impatience. “I need to get inside the cathedral.”

There. She did not precisely lie. She did not say that she needed to enter the cathedral on guild business - if she had done that, the disciplinarian could not find a punishment brutal enough. No, Rani merely told the truth - she did need to see the Presentation if she was ever going to capture the momentous event in glass of her own.

She could see that the herald did not believe her. Before the man could speak, though, the crowd surged forward, grumbling its impatience with a hundred hundred voices. For one instant, the herald glared at her, furious that she dared to challenge his authority. Then, a Noble woman was shoved by the crowd and kept her balance by planting one long-nailed hand in the middle of Rani's back. Startled, Rani coughed as the breath was forced out of her, and she, too, caught herself on the nearest available object - the herald's staff of office. The herald, predictably, squawked his outrage and directed a well-aimed kick toward Rani.

The crowd's fury raised in pitch - fury that a Noble woman should be left sprawling before a herald, even if that herald sought a petty revenge. Reading the reaction with the skill of his office, the herald immediately stepped forward to assist her ladyship, steadying the woman in her voluminous skirts. His solicitousness was eloquent testimony to his fear of losing his appointment. The woman would have none of it, and she brushed away his impertinent fingers with her handkerchief, keening as if his touch burned her. The crowd's hum turned into a distinctly hostile murmur.

Rani took advantage of the confusion to duck inside the cathedral.

The massive nave was the greatest in the world, stretching seventy paces to the crossing tower. Rani had already studied the windows that lined the aisles on either side, mammoth planes of glass depicting, on the left, the story of the World's creation from the breath of First God Ait, Man's creation from the breath of the World, Good and Evil's creation from the breath of Man. The right aisle told the story of Jair, of his humble birth among the casteless Touched and his unparalleled rise into the castes, first as a Merchant of trinkets from a blanket in the square, then as a Guildsman-weaver, fashioning similar blankets. The windows displayed the battles that Jair had fought as a Soldier, his miraculous saving of the City, which was even then old beyond memory. The last row of windows approaching the transept contained Jair's final transformation, from Soldier to Noble-Priest.

The cathedral windows, surmounted by roundels showing dozens of the Thousand Gods, were stunning because they formed the Final Route for pilgrims. Five windows were singled out to reflect the specific stations of Jair's Pilgrimage, the four castes. Huge altars nestled beneath each of the pilgrimage windows, and banks of candles flickered in the shadowy cathedral. Rani was drawn to the Guildsman's altar as surely as if a tether tugged her.

Glancing around to make sure that she did not attract undue attention from the mostly Noble crowd, Rani dug into the small pouch at her belt, reluctant fingers excavating a copper that she had saved for boiled sweets. She could hardly attend such a momentous event as Prince Tuvashanoran's Presentation without lighting her own candle, sweets or no. Her family would never live down the shame - as if they had not taught their Merchant-daughter how to worship in the cathedral. She hesitated only an instant before depositing her coin in the convenient cask, then she selected the longest candle in the nearby basket, to make up for her sacrifice.