Glasswrights' Master (17 page)

“Who then?” Dartulamino asked, and Kella blinked, for she had almost forgotten the threat that he represented. Almost forgotten, but not quite.

“This one calls herself Rani Trader.”

“Rani?” Crestman's entire body froze as he whispered her name, as if the words were dusted with crimson-kissed mordana petals.

“Aye,” she said, almost sorry to have mentioned the girl who came to guide the forlorn priest home.

“She is here? In the forest?”

“She is.”

“Is she alone?” Dartulamino interrupted, edging in his question before the soldier could react.

“I have seen her with one other. With a priest.”

Dartulamino nodded, as if all the petals of a coneflower suddenly aligned within his mind. “Of course. Mareka is hidden away here, and so Halaravilli fled south. He brought that merchant brat with him, and Siritalanu as well. They must have come straight from the cathedral, directly from the Rites.…”

“Where?” Crestman's question was louder than necessary in the lonely cottage, and Kella jumped at the jagged edge of his tone. “Where is she?”

“I cannot say for certain,” Kella hedged. “I have not actually seen her camp.”

“But you suspect! You know these woods!” Kella would not have bargained with the merchant's name, if she had known Crestman would become so enraged. The herb witch in her wanted to ease him over to the deserted hearth, wanted to soothe him while she brewed a posset of comfortleaf.

“She has come to me, that is all. She came to my cottage.”

“When?”

She thought quickly. “Most recently, yesterday.” That was true, even if it led him down the wrong trail. Kella could see him calculating, measuring, determining just how far away the girl might be.

“Will she return?”

“I cannot know. If she needs me, she knows where to find me.”

Crestman began to pace, a hideous action that only drew attention to his crippled leg. One firm stride, one dragging step, another stride, another drag.… Kella wanted to ask him to stop, to stand still, to let her think, but she dared not say a word.

“When you return,” he said at last, “you will find her. Get her to your cottage, and bind her fast. Leave a white cloth wrapped around the triple oak at the bend in the stream, you know the one that I mean?”

Kella nodded. She could get the merchant girl. Tovin would help with that. In fact, Rani Trader was almost definitely staying in the Great Clearing, with the players and the other northerners who plagued the forest.

Crestman continued. “Leave the white cloth, and I will come. I will collect Rani Trader and settle my long-kept debts.” The light in the soldier's eyes kept Kella from responding aloud. There was no good reason for a man to speak of a woman in that tone. There was no good reason for him to long for her, to pine for her.

Kella was no fool. She could read people's faces. She knew when a man wanted a woman's love, when he offered up his own heart hopelessly, desperate for a soft bed to rest it on. She knew when a man hated an enemy, when he wanted poison to execute a rival. She read both in this man, in this angry, bitter soldier.

Dartulamino nodded as Crestman paced. The sallow man captured Kella with his shrewd gaze. “You'll do that. You'll catch Rani Trader for us. Only then will we know that you are a true friend of the Fellowship. Only then will we be certain that you need not pay for what you've seen tonight.”

Kella did permit herself to swallow hard at those words. She could not prevent herself, could not hide her fear of the northern man.

Why should she worry, though? After all, the merchant girl was not a handsel. Kella violated no oaths by speaking of her. Rani Trader had no way to bind Kella, no way to harm the herb witch. Kella had greater concerns than one transplanted northern girl in all the forest. Kella was trying to save all the Sisters, trying to keep the Briantans at bay.

She looked at the still-pacing Crestman, saw the rage that measured out his twisted steps. She turned her gaze to Dartulamino and confirmed, “Aye. I'll bring you Rani Trader. You have nothing to fear from me. Not you. And not the Fellowship.”

“So be it,” Dartulamino said, and Kella fought the chill that walked along her spine. “So be it in the name of Jair.”

 

 

 

 

Chapter 7

 

Rani muttered to herself as she walked along the forest path. She was tired of life in Sarmonia, tired of wandering through the woods. She wanted to feel a real mattress beneath her, rather than a pallet stuffed with grass. She wanted to eat bread baked in an oven, instead of the charred stuff that Father Siritalanu managed beside a campfire. She wanted to bathe with heated, scented water, rather than splashing her face clean in a stream.

She wanted to return to Moren.

And yet, she had only herself to blame. Nearly a year ago, when she had stood in Morenia holding a vial of poison meant for her queen, she had thought that she made all the correct decisions. Discarding the poison, replacing it with water.… She had warned off Mareka, informed Hal of the danger that he faced.

But she had not done enough. She had not managed to save her city, to protect Moren against the combined forces of Brianta and Liantine. A dull rumble of thunder rolled across the back of her mind–Shad whispering that there was nothing she could have done differently. She grimaced at the god of truth. She might have become more accustomed to the Thousand prowling through her mind, but she would never
like
the prickling sensations that they brought.

She turned her mind back to her mission: finding Mair. The Touched woman had wandered off from camp. Again. Hal had been truly angry this time; he had been as restless as a molting octolaris ever since he discovered the Fellowship in the forest. Rani's heart beat faster as she thought of her sworn enemies, here, beneath the peaceful canopy of trees.

Why was she surprised that Hal had observed them in Sarmonia? They were everywhere, after all, melting into cracks of power and authority throughout all the known lands. The Fellowship was determined to find its way into her life, into whatever peace and prosperity she attempted to build.

No, Rani was not truly concerned about the cabal. Oh, she had pledged to fight them to the death, to destroy them for the evil that they had wrought upon her and those she loved. But her greatest worry now was Hal's announcement that Crestman was loose in the forest.

A chill walked down her spine, despite her flushed face. She had first encountered Crestman in a forest. That was in the north, though, in the kingdom of Amanthia. She had watched the young soldier managing his troops, and she had been taken with the power of him, with his certainty, with his commanding charm.

Here, in Sarmonia, she knew the rest of the story. She knew that Crestman was dangerous. Deadly.

And she suspected that he was looking for Mair, to finish the job that he had begun
in Brianta. If he had killed a child to get at Rani, would he hesitate at murdering a grown woman?
“Mair!” Rani cried out again, letting some of her desperation spill into her voice. Without fully
realizing her actions, she found herself counting massive tree trunks as she walked along the path.
Even in her distress, she could not help but smile as she heard the numbers grow in her mind. This
was what Mair had taught her so long ago, back in Moren, back in the days when Rani was a lost and
frightened child, abandoned by her guildhall, orphaned and alone.

Count the buildings in the Nobles' Quarter. Count the houses as you creep the alleys. That was how you found the back gates of the richest houses. That was how you measured out the treasures. Find the house that presented the finest face to all the City.

Despite her exhaustion and anger, Rani grinned at the memory. The City. That was how she had thought of her home for the first thirteen years of her life. As if there could be no
other
city at all, no other lands. As if there could be no other home.

Well,
that
had all changed. At least she had learned something in the course of all her travels. There were other lands, to be sure. Northern Amanthia, where she had met Crestman, where she had been sold into slavery. Eastern Liantine, where she had bargained for the riches of a lifetime, breaking the spiderguild's monopoly and bringing home a fortune in octolaris and riberry trees. Western Brianta, where she had journeyed on pilgrimage, struggling to find her way back into the guild that had betrayed her.

And now, Sarmonia. The southern kingdom must have something more than trees, something more than endless forest that confounded her best efforts to find her way in the clear afternoon. Something more than the sorrow and the madness that Rani stalked.

Shad's thunder rumbled again, a note of warning deep inside the hidden message.

“Mair!” she cried again, and then she stopped walking, drawing a deeper breath to force aside the god's voice. Was this what Berylina had done? Was this how she had communed with the Thousand? What had kept the princess sane, then? How had she managed not to be driven mad by their constant voices, their constant touches and sights and sounds creeping across her mind?

Rani edged to the side of the path instinctively, wanting to crouch in the trees' dark shadows as she opened up her mind to the god of truth, completing her communion with the god and silencing him for long enough that she could continue on her quest. Before she could address the thunderous rumble, though, her eyes were drawn to a shaft of sunlight knifing through the forest, falling to the loamy earth a dozen strides off the forest path.

In the sunlight, centered as if it was a stage in one of the players' pieces, was a stony outcropping. The giant boulder was smooth across the top, as if some ancient peoples had used it as an altar. But Rani was not struck by the rock. She was not startled by the sunlight. She stopped because she had found Mair.

Rani watched her friend, and the glasswright was frozen by the scene that she had interrupted. Mair's head was thrown back, her neck arched as if she were a hind whose blood was being drained after the hunt. One hand stretched toward the heavens, clenched into a fist as tight as stone. The other hand pushed down, fingers jagged.

Rani blinked, and she could make out steel in that rigid hand, a blade that glinted in the sunlight like new-polished glass. The reflection was all the brighter because it lay against flesh, against the pale, unflinching stretch of Mair's thigh.

As Rani watched, the Touched woman drew the knife across her leg. There was a heartbeat's pause, and then a thin line of red began to weep from the cut, a delicate tracery that flowed behind the knife like rainwater down a pane. Rani caught her breath, but she did not have a chance to exclaim before Mair lifted the knife, saluting the streaming sun, then lowering it to her leg and cutting again.

“Mair!”

The touched woman looked at her, unsurprised, as if she had known that Rani would find her here in the woods. “Rai.” Her tone was matter-of-fact as though it were the most natural thing in the world for her to be sitting on a rock in the forest sunlight, watching blood seep from two long wounds on her leg.

“What are you doing?” Rani dove through the underbrush, frightening off some ground-nesting creature in her rush to her friend's side.

“Makin' it right. Feelin' the pain o' me puir lost bairn.” Mair's voice was far away, her Touched brogue thick on her tongue. “'E'd love th' woods 'ere. 'E'd chase th' squirrels 'n' listen t' th' chatter. Much better than th' rats o' Moren, ye ken.”

Rani's hands shook as she reached out for Mair's. She was surprised that the Touched woman yielded her blade easily, but then Rani did not know what to do with the implement. She settled for wiping it clean on a patch of moss, then thrusting it into her own belt.

“Aye, you were thinking on your son.” Rani tried to make her voice gentle, tried to remember not to shout out the anger in her chest. Anger at Mair. At herself. At Crestman, may all the Thousand curse his shriveled limbs. “You were thinking of Laranifarso. But what were you doing to yourself?”

Even as she kept her voice calm, Rani glanced about, frantic for a cloth to wipe away the seeping blood. Mair's square of black silk rested on the ground in front of her, deep as a midnight shadow against the emerald moss. Rani knew, though, that she could not use it, that she could not bring herself to touch the emblem of the lost child. The frustration made her voice harsh. “Mair, you could kill yourself! If your hand slipped, you could cut a vein!”

“I 'avena cut no veins yet, Rai.” Mair's smile was sad.

Rani scrambled for her flask of water, pouring some onto the edge of her skirt. Thank Lote she was dressed for the woods and not for court, she thought grimly. Her quick prayer was greeted with the forest god's sweet scent of apples. She bit back a curse as she knelt beside Mair, ministering to the cut with a trembling touch. She caught her tongue between her teeth as she saw how deep the wound was at the center. “Mair, how could you have done this?”

“I gi' meself t' th' power, Rai.”

“Power?” Rani could barely say the word without shouting. She heard the raw emotion in her voice, fought to muster her calm. She must get Mair back to camp. It was not safe for them here, not in the open forest. When they had fled from Morenia, they had imagined Sarmonia a reprieve, but now that Crestman stalked the woods.… Rani glanced into the shadows, chewing on her lip as she realized the sun was sinking lower in the sky. Night came quickly beneath the trees. “Sit still, Mair,” she said, letting fear make her voice harsh. “Let me wash this. I can't believe you'd do this to yourself.”

“I did, Rai. Me. No one else. Not you, 'r yer king, 'r th' noble Farsobalinti.” Mair's eyes were haunted as she made her brave declaration.

“I'd never dream.…” Rani let her words trail off as the cut continued to bleed.
She contemplated grabbing for the silk square anyway, even though the knew the battle such a move
would precipitate. No, Mair should not move her leg, not like that. Rani settled for raising her own
hem to her teeth. She bit through the thread that held the garment neatly tucked, and then she
strained her jaws until she'd started a long tear. She ripped away a wide strip.