Glasswrights' Master (18 page)

“Ye should put more strength in yer dreams, then, Rai.” Mair spoke as if she hadn't heard the cloth tear, as if she did not see Rani pour water over the makeshift bandage. “Ye should think o' th' power o' pain.”

“Power of pain,” Rani snorted as she sponged the wounds clean. She made herself ignore Mair's automatic twitch, the involuntary wince.

“Aye, Rai.
I
choose 'ow deep t' cut.
I
decide 'ow much t' pay. We Touched take our strength where we find it. Mind yer caste, ye know.”

Mind your caste. Rani had learned that lesson a lifetime ago, when she fought for survival in Morenia, fought for her life after her guildhall had been destroyed. The Fellowship had been her teachers then, her benefactors. Back when she had thought that they battled for good and justice and right.

“You're no longer a Touched urchin living in the City streets, Mair. You don't need to prove yourself with bloody knives.”

“I dinna need t' prove m'self t'
ye
, p'r'aps.” Dreamily, the Touched woman looked beyond Rani, casting a smile toward the square of black silk as if she were engaged in a private conversation with the cloth. “But fer me son, Rai.… I failed 'im once, but 'e's learnin' I mean t' be true fer th' rest o' time.”

“True? What do you mean?” If possible, Rani was more discomfitted by Mair's lack of response, by the fact that the bleeding woman did not flinch again as Rani cleaned her wound. Rani knew that she would have jumped, herself, that the touch of cloth on raw flesh could not have been gentle. She repeated, “What do you mean?”

“I swore t' remind m'self o' all I did wrong, o' all I fergot. I use th' knife t' force th' thoughts into me 'ead. I canna be as smart as I used t' be, when I was a girl, 'n' running i' th' city streets. I canna remember all I used t' know.”

“You don't need a reminder like this.” Rani clicked her tongue against her teeth as she pressed her cloth against the wound. She held it for a count of ten, then peeled it away slowly. “You'll never forget. None of us will ever forget.”

“Lar's afraid, Rai. 'E thinks we'll be a'runnin' fro' 'im. I'm 'is dam. I'm th' one t' let 'im know we're 'ere, 'n' always will be.”

Tears sparked at the back of Rani's eyes, and she swallowed viciously. “Nome watches over him, Mair.” Merely mentioning the god of children brought the sound of pipers skirling through the air. Rani nearly reeled at the volume of the music.

“What?”

“Nothing. Nothing important.” The pipes rose in volume, as if Nome would not be denied, but Rani knew that she could not spare the time to acknowledge him properly. She would never have the courage to reach for the gods purposely. She'd never have the strength.

Mair's eyes narrowed to slits, becoming the wise friend, the shrewd one, the one who had accompanied Rani on her many journeys. “I dinna believe ye.”

“I wouldn't lie.” Rani pressed once more at the deeper of the two wounds, then breathed a sigh of relief when she discovered that the blood had stopped seeping. “We don't have time to waste, though.”

“I've time,” Mair said, her voice flat. “I've all th' time i' th' world.”

“Mair! Crestman is in the forest!” Rani said it without thinking, without measuring out what the words would mean to Mair, to the mother who had lost her child to the soldier-madman. “He's here, and the Fellowship is here, and it isn't safe for us to be alone!”

Rani heard her shout echo off the trees around them, and she stopped. What was she saying? Her friend was mad enough to
cut
herself over what Crestman had done, and now Rani was saying that they were in danger. What would Mair do? How would she react?

The Touched woman laughed. She threw back her shaggy head and bellowed guffaws. Peals of amusement bounced off the trees. Mair leaned forward, reaching out to Rani as if she were trying to calm herself, as if she were trying to rein in her gales of laughter, but she could not stop.

“Mair!” Rani reached out for her friend, trying to get her arms around the grieving woman's shoulders. Desperation was thick in the laughter, notes that hovered on the jagged edge of despair. Rani tried to fit her fingers over Mair's mouth, tried to press in the noise, to cut it off, to save them, to save herself. “Mair! Stop it! Stop laughing! Stop it! You're going to make your leg open again! Mair!”

At last, Mair's hysteria quieted, or else she needed to breathe. She gulped in great lungfuls of air, shuddering and threatening to collapse into a fit again. Rani could not smother her anger, drown out her fear. “In the name of Fen, what was that?” Even the god of mercy's aroma of fresh baked bread was not enough to distract Rani. “Do you want to get us killed?”

“If 'e wanted t' kill us, 'e can. 'E's been movin' closer since we came t' th' forest, Rai. We werena certain, though, Lar 'n' me. Not till yesterday.”

“Yesterday? What happened yesterday?”

Rani thought that Mair would not answer. The Touched woman stared into the forest, her gaze distracted, and Rani felt a prickle of apprehension march down her spine. Was Crestman watching them even now? Did he have an arrow pointed at her heart? Was he waiting for her to take a step forward, to turn her face toward that deepest pocket of shadow?

Or maybe he was moving closer to where she now stood. Maybe she placed herself in greater danger by
not
moving. Maybe all he needed was for her to stand still another heartbeat, another, another.…

Rani slicked her palms against her skirt, forcing her tone to remain even as she repeated to Mair, “What happened yesterday?”

“Lar ran off, ye know. I told 'im t' be a good boy, but 'e couldna keep back fro' th' shadows a' th' edge o' th' forest. I 'ad t' look for 'im, I did, 'n' i' was trickier than I thought, gettin' past the king's guard.”

Well, Rani thought, thank the gods for that small favor. If Hal's men could keep people
in
the camp, there was a shadow of a chance that they could keep others out. At least that was how she tried to reassure herself, how she tried to argue reasonably. She did not let herself think that her relief was based on the story of a madwoman, on the tale of a mother who believed her son was embodied in a scrap of silk. “But you got past them, did you?” she prompted, when it seemed that Mair had forgotten to continue her story.

“Aye. I' th' end, I walked past Farso. 'E tries not t' see me most o' th' time, 'n' 'e looked t' th' clearin', as I thought 'e would.” Rani heard the hurt behind the words, raw as the seeping cut on Mair's leg. She longed for words to salve that pain, but she could think of nothing, nothing that she had not already said a hundred hundred times.

“Tell me that you won't do that again, Mair. It isn't safe to go wandering about the woods alone. Even if Cr– Even if enemies weren't out here, there are animals. You might spook a boar, find yourself slashed by a tusk before you knew it.”

“Aye, Rai. 'N' then I might bleed.” Mair managed to make the admonition serious, as if she weren't mocking her friend. She waited to see what sort of reaction she might get, but Rani muttered a quick prayer to Plad, and was properly distracted by the god of patience's vinegar tang across the back of her tongue. “I left th' camp, Rai. I left, 'n' I followed Lar, fer I could 'ear 'im callin' fer me i' th' woods. 'E led me t' th' man 'oo murdered 'im. 'E took me t' Crestman.”

So, that was the way her mind worked now, Rani thought, with all the dispassion of a battle chirurgeon. Mair must have seen things that guided her along the way. She must have applied her woodcraft.

Who was Rani fooling? Mair did not have any woodcraft. She was a Touched woman, born in the City streets, raised in the shadow of stony palace walls. She could not have tracked a man through the Sarmonian woods, not a soldier who wished to stay hidden.

But what was the alternative? Was Rani turning mad herself? Was she ready to believe that a scrap of cloth spoke secrets? Was she ready to believe that Lar lived on?

“You met with Crestman,” she said, her voice full of misgivings.

“Do ye think I've turned fool, Rai?” Rani bit back the obvious answer and settled for shaking her head. “I found th' man's camp. 'E wasna there.”

“How do you know it was Crestman's? How do you know it wasn't some Sarmonian holding?”

“Would a Sarmonian 'ave that among 'is things?”

Mair pointed at the blade that Rani had taken from her, the short knife that she had used to mutilate her leg. Rani's belly twisted as she pulled it from her own leather belt, as she studied it closely.

The pommel was fashioned like a spider's body, attached to the blade with eight legs of iron, legs that twisted about the hilt. Rani had seen work like it before, in Queen Mareka's personal belongings, in her remnant possessions from Liantine. The knife was a product of the spiderguild, of the ruthless silk merchants who had held Crestman enslaved.

No wonder Mair had cut herself with the blade. Her anger and shock at finding evidence of the man who had slain her own son must have driven her into a frenzy. She must have sliced at her own flesh without thinking, trying to exact revenge, trying to balance the hurt in her heart with hurt in her flesh. Nevertheless, Rani protested, more for herself than for Mair. “It could have come from elsewhere.”

“Aye. But would it lie next t' these?” Mair thrust her hand into a deep pocket hidden in her skirts. As she closed her fingers around her stolen treasure, a look of revulsion crossed her face, but she managed to extract whatever she had taken.

Rani took it from her friend slowly, turning it about twice before she realized which end was up and which was down. Her fingers smoothed the midnight silk without her conscious thought, moving the garment so that eye-holes emerged out of the tangle, so that a mouth could breathe through the bottom. A mask and a hood. Simple garments, not threatening in some other time and place.

But here, in Sarmonia, in the woods where Hal had witnessed the Fellowship's
meeting.… “Mair! Why did you take Crestman's mask? He'll know we've found him! He'll know that
we've figured out that he's about!”

“Will 'e, now?” Mair eyed her steadily. “Will 'e, Rai. 'N' that would be so terrible because?”

“Because we aren't ready to face him! Because we have not yet met and decided how to handle this new threat?”

“New threat? Th' threat is th' same one its always been, Rai. Th' same one that killed me bairn.”

Rani wanted to argue. She wanted to tell Mair that the Touched woman was all wrong, that her rash theft had brought about a new danger. And yet, Rani was not certain. Was she going to spend the rest of her life running from Crestman? Was she going to spend all of her remaining days hiding from the Fellowship?

Perhaps Mair was right. Maybe it
was
best to take a stand, to confront the evil that was known. After all, Rani had confronted the old Brotherhood of Justice, back in Moren. She had stood against the agents who had killed Hal's brother, who had assassinated the lawful Defender of the Faith. She had placed her hands upon the Inquisitor's Orb and had faced its burning questions. She had felt the flesh of her palms burn, but she had stood fast, and she had emerged unscathed.

“Where is he, Mair?”

“P'raps I shouldna tell ye. Ye dinna seem t' think we can do nawt wi' 'im.”

“You have to tell me, Mair. We have to know. We have to keep ourselves safe, if nothing else.”

Mair turned her head to the side, eyeing her friend like a suspicious hawk. Rani thought back to the birds that she had hunted with in Morenia, to a disastrous outing with a kestrel that had escaped her hold. Rani had been responsible for the bird but had failed to tame it properly, had failed to protect it against the attack of a larger hawk, a crueler beast. In the encroaching forest gloom, Rani shuddered. She had failed to protect Mair as well. Failed to protect her friend, and her friend's son.

“Come along, Mair,” she forced herself to say. “Let's get back to camp. We'll talk to Hal, tell him what you've learned. We'll figure out what to do from here. Besides, you'll want a bandage on that leg, to keep a fever from settling in it.”

“There willna be fever, Rai, dinna ye care.”

“Mair, it's a deep cut. You've done yourself some real harm here.”

“I've cut meself deeper, Rai. Th' bleedin' takes th' fever out o' it. None o' me cuts 'ave turned.”

“None of your cuts.” Rai's heart clenched in her chest. “What do you mean, Mair?”

Mair looked past Rani again, tossing a smile toward the black silk square. She turned a rising laugh into a humming sound, and then she began to croon a lullaby. “Hush, sweet son, and rest you well, beside the river, deep the dell. Rest my boy, and don't you cry, sleep you well, come by and by.” The sweet notes were soft in the air, gentle in the afternoon light. Rani shuddered at the melody, knowing that it was one sung by royal nurses, by noble women comforting their sons. No Touched woman would sing so. No Touched child would be soothed by those words. The song was as much a lie as the life that Mair had eked out in the palace.

“Mair,” Rani insisted. “What do you mean by ‘none of your cuts?'”

Still humming to herself, Mair turned a beatific smile on Rani. She shook her head and shifted her weight on the stone outcropping. The motion pulled her rough skirts to one side, and Rani saw a line of angry scabs marching up her friend's leg.

“Mair!”

“Rai.” The Touched woman turned the single syllable into a note of warning.

“What have you done to yourself?” Rani's belly twisted as she looked at the wounds. The oldest ones had healed to pale pink lines, narrow scars that started just above the knee. The damage progressed though, from pink to angry red, and then to irritated scabs that looked as if they had bled only recently. “Mair, what have you done?”