Glasswrights' Apprentice (44 page)

Bashi drew back, trembling with rage. Rani stared at the prince in amazement, unable to comprehend what he had done. Mair's eyes blazed in the twilight, and she rushed to the master falconer, tugging at her cloak in a futile attempt to rip it into bandages.

“Stand back!” Bashi ordered. He snatched at Mair's arms, dragging her away from Gry. “Don't get near that Touched dog!” Even as Mair fought against the prince's grip, Farantili stepped forward. “Soldier! Don't even think about helping him!”

“He's a finer man than you'll ever be,” Farantili grunted, falling to one knee beside the stricken falconer. Gry's hands and feet twitched, and his body began to spasm.

“Leave him!” Bashi's throat tore on the shout, and he fumbled for his curved blade. “That's an order, man!”

For just an instant, Farantili stared up at his liege, his eyes dark with unspoken emotion. Then, the soldier turned back to the falconer, and he began to mutter soothing words, trying gently to view the wounded man's gaping throat. Bashi gasped in disbelief, and then he raised his curved blade. “To me!” he cried, flashing a glance over his shoulder at the other guards.

There was a moment's hesitation, while loyalties fought among themselves, and then a tempest broke over the hillside. Metal clanged against metal. Horses whinnied in panic, the sound high and chilling on the twilight breeze. Maradalian bated from her perch, fighting her hood and jesses. One of the soldiers crashed into the cadge, splintering the birch supports.

As Rani watched, Farantili was shoved to the ground amid the shambles of the cadge. Another soldier stepped up, menacing the fallen fighter with a short sword. Rani cried out, desperate to stop the bloodshed, but before she could make herself heard, another guard was cut down, bellowing as his hamstring was sliced by one of Bashi's loyal men.

Across the now-trampled grass, Rani could make out the sound of bones crunching. Two soldiers pinned Farantili to the ground, pressing his spine against the shattered birch uprights from the cadge. One of the pair straddled Farantili's chest and began to pummel the man's head, starting with closed-fist blows and ending with a simple rhythmic pounding. Farantili's limp neck hit the earth again and again and again.

Even in her shock, Rani realized that she was in danger. She knew that she needed to escape from these rebellious soldiers, from men who would attack their own sworn brothers, who would sanction the murder of a defenseless master falconer. She was not safe among men who would beat one of King Halaravilli's soldiers to a pulp and butcher another like so much meat.

Rani whirled toward her stallion, desperate to remount and escape.

“Stop!” Bashanorandi's order flamed across the twilight chill. In a flash, Rani saw that he held Mair close to his chest; she could make out a steel dagger leveled against the Touched girl's throat. As if to emphasize the command, Mair dropped her own blade. The prince kicked it into the high grass.

“Let her go, Bashi!”

“She's not going anywhere, and neither are you.”

Even in these dire circumstances, the words rang falsely. “Are you going to keep us on the plain all night then? Like children lost in the countryside?”

“You may pretend this is a joke, Rani, but I assure you it is not.” Bashi twisted Mair's arm behind her back, and the girl's lips tightened over her teeth. She refused to cry out, but her look spoke volumes to Rani. “You will not go running to Hal with stories of what happened here. I don't want my men to hurt you, Ranita, but I'll let them if they must.”

“
Your
men? Those are King Halaravilli's soldiers.” Rani tried to force certainty past the image of Farantili's bloody head, past the moans of the hamstrung guard.

“These soldiers are loyal to
me
, Ranita.” Even as Bashi made his pronouncement, one of his guards grabbed for Rani's arm. Without thinking, she spat in the man's face. He bellowed in rage, snatching for his sword, but his fellow grabbed Rani and pulled her, hard, against his chest. Through the Morenian livery, she could feel a hardened leather breastplate, a foreign design that poked against her spine. The full armor was stranger still because there was no reason for the soldier to be wearing it, not for an afternoon ride within sight of the City. The man she had spat at swore and wiped at the mess on his face.

For just an instant, Rani thought that her eyes deceived her in the twilight gloom. When the man pawed at his face, he left behind a tracery around his eyes. Only when Rani blinked did she realize that the man had not
covered
his face with the strange design. Rather, his wiping motion had removed a layer of color, a coating of flesh-colored paint like the cosmetics that Nurse was always thrusting at Rani. Beneath that false color, Rani could now make out a distinct tattoo, the careful outline of a lion beneath the man's left eye.

She caught her breath. She'd heard enough in Hal's court for the past two years to know that the northern soldiers tattooed themselves at birth, dedicating their lives to their warrior existence. A northern soldier, then, from Amanthia. From the executed Queen Felicianda's homeland.

“What have you done, Bashi?”

“That's Prince Bashanorandi to you!” Bashi nearly screamed his rebuff, pulling hard on Mair's arm. The Touched girl tried to bite back her cry of pain, but a little of the sound leaked into the clearing.

“My lord Bashanorandi,” Rani forced herself to say.

Bashi nodded, apparently placated. With a curt gesture, he passed Mair to one of his soldiers. “Kill her, if that one takes a single step amiss.”

“Yes, my prince.” The soldier locked his arm across Mair's windpipe, settling a long, curved dagger against her side. A curved dagger, Rani finally registered. Curved like the knives of the northern troops.

“What are you doing, Bash –, Prince Bashanorandi?”

“Once, I thought I'd wait to show my strength, but you've made that impossible. Get on your horse.”

“What?”

“I know you're not stupid, Ranita. Get on your horse.”

“I'm not riding anywhere with you.”

“I'll kill you here and now, if I have to.” Watching the pulse beat fast in his throat, Rani understood that Bashi was not making an idle threat. “I'm not going back to Moren, back to Hal. But if I sent you back to Moren directly, I'd never have time to get to Amanthia, before you'd have Hal's soldiers after us. I just might convince my brother to ransom you two sorry excuses for courtiers, though. Parkman, get the creances.”

The lion-tattooed soldier strode over to the toppled cadge, swearing as the frantic Maradalian flapped her grey and white wings. The man extracted two long leather leashes from the collapsed structure. He snapped the creances between his fists, testing their strength as he turned back to his liege.

Bashi's eyes glinted in the last of the sunlight. “I don't want to do it, Ranita. I don't want to order you killed, but I will if I have to.” The girl had no doubt that he
would
follow through on his threat. “Mount up now. We have a long ride ahead of us.”

With a warning glance toward Mair, Rani turned back to her stallion. She grunted as she pulled herself onto her high saddle, trying to ignore the slash of crimson that painted the leather as her wounded hand opened again. Somewhere in the struggle of the last few minutes, she had lost her rough bandage.

Bashi jutted his chin toward Rani, and the soldier snapped the creances once again. “Lash her to the stirrups.”

Rani immediately set her heels, ready to kick the horse and flee back to Moren. Before she could act, though, Bashi barked a command to the soldier who held Mair. The man tightened his grip on Mair's arm, twisting hard and pulling the limb high behind the Touched girl's back. The crack of splintering bone was audible above the rustle of the high grass, and Mair cried out through her clenched teeth. “Don't even think about riding off, Ranita. I'll kill her before you're out of earshot.”

Certainly Bashi would use more violence to gain his way. The prince's face was coated with a sheen of sweat, and his hands clenched and unclenched repeatedly in the twilight. Mair began to moan softly, although she tried to swallow her pain. Rani sat still as Parkman tightened the falcon's leash about her, lashing first one foot to her stirrup then passing the leather beneath her stallion's belly and binding the other. “Get her hands, too,” Bashi barked, and the soldier complied, using another length of leather.

Staring at Bashi with bitterness, Rani only just remembered to hold her tongue as the prince nodded and ordered Mair released. It was a simple matter for Bashi to have the Touched girl bound, to have her tied to her own mount. Then Bashi's soldiers seated themselves on their own horses. The prince glanced around the plain nervously, his eyes lingering on the dead falcon-master, the murdered soldier, the maimed one. The falcons' cadge was crumpled on the ground like a skeleton. Maradalian stood amid the ruins, blinded by her hood, uncertain of the disaster around her.

Bashi nodded to Parkman and pointed his chin toward the hamstrung soldier. “Get rid of that one, and let's get out of here. We can get to the coast by sunset tomorrow and find a ship to sail north, to Amanthia. With any luck Hal won't find this till then. We can demand ransom for the girls when we arrive in my mother's homeland.”

Before Rani could protest, the soldier dispatched his one-time brother, slashing the man's throat with one even motion. Then the guards fell into formation, one riding at Rani's left side, one riding at Mair's right. Two of the armed men followed behind, flanking their prince. When Rani hesitated to spur her stallion, the soldier beside her drew his sword. Before she could decide whether she would take a stand, Mair swayed in her own saddle, moaning as the movement jarred her injured arm.

“You've got to help her!” Rani cried to Bashi. “At least let me put her arm in a sling.”

“After we've ridden. You can help her after we cross the Yman.”

“The river is two hours from here!”

“Then it will be two hours before her arm is set.”

Rani heard the determination in his voice. In a flash, she remembered the Bashi she had first met when she arrived in the palace. That prince had been a spoiled boy, a noble who accepted his royalty with an unseemly arrogance. He had manipulated nurses and guards, played upon his supposed father's heartstrings. Now, he had these four soldiers bound to him, and nothing would convince him to take pity on two low-caste girls.

Sighing, Rani touched her spurs to her stallion's flanks. Mair moaned through lips that were grey in the twilight, but she jigged her own horse forward. As the riders moved east into the unfolding night, a breeze picked up, blowing from the distant city walls. Rani could just make out the rhythmic clang of the Pilgrims' Bell, summoning the faithful to Moren's safety, to the haven of King Halaravilli, to the lost comfort of home and hearth.

 

 

About the Author

 

 

Mindy L. Klasky learned to read when her parents shoved a book in her hands and told her that she could travel anywhere in the world through stories. She never forgot that advice.

Mindy's “travels” took her through multiple careers. After graduating from Princeton University, Mindy considered becoming a professional stage manager or a rabbi. Ultimately, though, she settled on being a lawyer, working as a litigator at a large Washington firm. When she realized that lawyering kept her from writing (and dating and sleeping and otherwise living a normal life), Mindy became a librarian, managing large law firm libraries. Mindy now writes full time.

In her spare time, Mindy quilts, cooks, and tries to tame the endless to-be-read shelf in her home library. Her husband and cats do their best to fill the left-over minutes. Connect with Mindy online: http://www.mindyklasky.com