Glasswrights' Test (35 page)

“I—”

“Finish!” Mair's shout was so loud that Rani took a step back. “Finish wha' ye came fer! Finish!” The door slammed behind her so hard that the floor shook.

Rani started to follow her friend down the stairs and out into the city streets, but Tovin's voice pulled her back. “She's right. The world doesn't stop because the child is taken.”

But Mair does not know why, Rani wanted to say. Mair could not understand. A note had been left in the hired nurse's chamber, a single line saying that Laranifarso was joining the Fellowship. Mair did not know that her infant was being held hostage for Rani's behavior, that Laranifarso was being kept safe until Rani murdered Queen Mareka.

Tovin did, though. In a mad fit, Rani had told the player when she and Father Siritalanu had returned to their rooming house, shaken and desperate. She had found Tovin in the tavern room, already deep in his cups, and she had dragged him abovestairs, trying to ignore the sharp smell of the ale, the pungent aroma of the grilled meats and the savory pies and the fresh-baked bread.

If she had wanted the player to spring to her defense, she was disappointed. If she had expected him to strap on his sword and stride through the Briantan streets, demanding mercy and justice, she was crushed. Instead, he had nodded slowly, folding himself into the chair by the cold hearth, placing his boots on the stone edge. He'd narrowed his eyes as Rani continued to speak, as if he were counting out her words. When she paused for breath, he said, “The Hapless Assassin.”

“What?”

“A player's piece. We haven't performed it in years, but you've seen the glass for it. A farmer is recruited by a prince to murder the king. The farmer's scythes are held captive—the man can kill, or he can starve.”

“Laranifarso is not a tool!”

Tovin had only looked at her, his copper eyes dark. Rani knew better. She swallowed hard and asked, “What happens to the farmer?”

“He is slain trying to kill the king.”

Even now, as Rani remembered Tovin's offhand summary, a chill crept down her spine, sliding between the rivulets of sweat. Two weeks since she had learned the player's story. Two weeks that she had spent trying to comfort Mair helping her friend comb the marketplace, the shrines, any place she could think that might hide a child. Two weeks that she had avoided writing to Hal, avoided dragging in the house of ben-Jair. Avoided violating her oath to Master Parion.

“This is all my fault,” she said.

“It will be as much your fault when you're a glasswright master as it is right now.”

“You expect me to walk into that guildhall and pretend that nothing has changed? You expect me to act as if Berylina isn't dead? As if Laranifarso is not held hostage?”

“What else do you intend to do, Ranita? Do you really believe that you can find one small child in an entire city—if the Fellowship has even
kept
him here? Do you truly think that you can bring back Berylina?”

You weren't there, she wanted to say again. You did not see the princess die. You did not watch her face contort across the room, begging, pleading. You did not promise something, anything, scream out a vow to try to ease her passing.

And now Rani was haunted by her failure. Had her promise done any good? Berylina would never know that Rani did not understand the commitment she had undertaken, that Rani had merely agreed to try to ease the princess's death. Berylina would never breathe again. The princess lay in a dirt-bound grave, an unmarked horror on the edges of Brianta.

Tovin reacted as if she had protested aloud. “Ranita, for two full months you have made your life a misery here in Brianta, yours and the lives of those around you. You've kept your foolish oaths, eating and drinking only with your guild, forbearing letters to your king, avoiding me as if I bore the plague. End it now. Complete your test. Stop acting like a spoiled child and finish your commitments in this cursed land.”

“I'm not acting like a spoiled child!”

He merely stared at her, one eyebrow quirked in a silent challenge. It irritated her that he could cast his face in such a perfect expression. He was using his players' tricks against her, trying to manipulate her as easily as he worked a crowd in the king's feasting hall. “Mair needs me.” There. Let him argue with that.

Tovin slid his boots from the stone hearth and planted them firmly on the floor. “I'll go find her. We'll try Nome's shrine again. We'll try to find the meeting place where the Fellowship does its business in this cursed town. Now go to the guildhall, before you lose any more time.”

She knew that he was right. She must act, she must move forward. Nevertheless, she wanted to reach out for him, draw him to her bed, apologize for all the grief that she had caused him, caused both of them, in the past two months. She hung her head and whispered, so softly that she thought he would not hear, “I'm afraid.”

“Go.”

She heard his implacable tone, and she knew that he would offer her no more comfort. His anger ran deep, a crystalline fury that had taken two months to turn to stone. Two months of living by promises, by oaths, by words that had been forced from her. As if to emphasize the matter of her vows, her belly clenched, demanding food and drink.

She ran a hand down the front of her gown, barely touching the pocket where she had hidden Crestman's bottle of poison. It was still there, hard as a tumor. She would not think about it yet, though. She would not think about Mareka, about Moren, about what Hal would say and do. She would face her glasswrights' test first.

“Come with me,” she pleaded to Tovin. “Walk with me through the streets.”

“Go, Ranita. You've wasted enough time.”

She forced her trembling fingers to adjust her Thousand Pointed Star, and then she remembered to brush her palm across the prayer bell. She resisted the urge to slam the door even harder than Mair had.

An old woman guarded the guildhall gates. Rani greeted her with as much respect as she could muster, even though she realized that the woman glanced at the sun to gauge the time, smiling broadly as she calculated that Rani was late enough to endanger her test. Hurrying through the hallways, Rani wished that they were more familiar, more comfortable, more like the guildhall of her youth.

That was the whole point, of course. The Briantan guildhall was nothing like the Morenian structure. The dark corridors, once sacred to the god of bread, had nothing to do with the soaring spaces Rani associated with Clain.

Cobalt blue flashed behind Rani's eyes, and she froze in the hallway. No. She was not going to think of Berylina. She was not going to think of the princess, of the dead girl's special relationship to all the gods.

Whatever had passed between herself and Berylina, whatever silent communication had poured from the princess during their Speaking, it must be imaginary. Rani must have wished it into being, convincing herself that something more powerful had transpired. After all, she had been conducting her first Speaking. She had been violating the rules of the man she loved. Surely, she would imagine things under such circumstances. Surely, she would concoct stories to justify her actions, to make her risks worthwhile.

She set aside her vision of the cobalt light, but then she felt guilty, vulnerable. “Clain watch over me,” she muttered as she reached the door to the journeyman's hall. She coupled the prayer with a holy sign.

As soon as she stepped over the threshold, she became the center of attention. Even the other journeymen, intent on their work, looked up from their benches. The other glasswrights— masters and apprentices and instructors—stared at her as if she had shouted out in the middle of a prayer service.

“Ranita, we are grateful that you chose to honor us with your presence,” Parion said drily, stepping out from behind a table where he had been studying a journeyman's design. “Perhaps you misunderstood, though. The master's test began at sunrise.”

“I'm sorry, guildmaster. An urgent matter kept me from arriving earlier.”

“Urgent? Something more important than your master's test?”

A stolen child, she wanted to say. A dead princess. A fight with the man I love, the man who no longer loves me. A Fellowship intent on spinning me about like a child's plaything. She swallowed hard. “I am sorry, Master. I have no satisfactory excuse.”

The technique was an old one, a method that she had not applied for years. She had perfected it when she was a child, when she was charged with displaying her family's goods in their market stall back in Moren. Occasionally, she would forget that it was her turn to set out the silver pieces, or she would purposely wander away from her obligations, taking her poppet to play with Varna Tinker.

And when Rani's mother called her to task or—worse—her father demanded to know what she had been thinking, she would confess. Openly. Without guile. Admitting fully to her failings and submitting herself to their mercy.

The trick worked this time, as it had so often in her childhood. Certainly Parion narrowed his eyes—he knew that he was being taken, being manipulated. And yet, he chose to submit to that manipulation, rather than to call her out. After all, what more could he hope to get from her than a confession? What better response could he desire than an abject admission?

Parion nodded slowly, and then he pointed toward the empty table beside Larinda. “Very well. Get to work. You have until sunset, like all the other journeymen. You will receive no extra time.”

Rani nodded. The punishment was fair. She had expected nothing better.

The glasswrights worked their test differently from other guildsmen. Other masters tested the accumulation of their journeymen's skills. They permitted their members to labor for days, for weeks, for months—all with the goal of creating one perfect work.

The glasswrights, though, understood that much could happen over time. Masters could assist journeymen beyond accepted limits. Finished works could be purchased from distant lands and disguised to look like test pieces. Journeymen could conspire among themselves to help with projects, help beyond the ordinary support of fellow guildsmen.

And so the glasswrights tested their journeymen in one day. From one sunrise to a single sunset. The guildsmen were watched, studied, scrutinized. No mistakes could be made. No lies could be told.

Rani felt every eye upon her as she crossed to her table. She took off her pilgrim's robe and folded it carefully, raising the Thousand Pointed Star to her lips before she placed the garment on the floor. Around her, the other journeymen returned to their work, frantic to accomplish as much as they could before the test ended. Only Belita took a moment to flash her a smile, but even the Zarithian journeyman did not waste time on any further gesture of support.

Rani bowed her head and forced herself to take a deep breath. She must approach this test with a clear mind. No Berylina. No Laranifarso or Mair. No Tovin. Just Rani, her design, and her glass.

“May all the gods look upon my craft with favor, and may they take pleasure in the humble art created by my hands. May Jair Himself be pleased with the humble offering I make, and may the least of my works bring glory to the world. May my works guide me to the Heavenly Fields in my proper time, as the gods do favor. All glory to the Thousand Gods.”

The words came easily to her lips, for she had spoken them every morning in the old guildhall. Upon rising, upon beginning any project, upon sitting down to any meal or sleeping, Rani had said the prayer so often that she scarcely heard the individual phrases. Hoping that Clain had heard her, fearful to reach out and see if the cobalt god was in the chamber, Rani lifted the linen shroud that covered her whitewashed table.

White. Blinding new-washed wood.

Rani thought that the table was like Berylina's vision of Jair, like the princess's image of the First Pilgrim himself. No, Rani chided. No Berylina. She must concentrate on the table in front of her. She must ignore her pounding heart, ignore her chilled, dry flesh. She must forget about the prickles in her palms, the ache behind her brow. She must act like a glasswright master. She must complete her test.

Catching the tip of her tongue between her teeth, Rani picked up her charcoal crayon and began to draw.

At first, she was aware of every sound in the chamber. She knew when Parion took a breath, and when he exhaled. She knew when one of her fellow journeymen broke his charcoal crayon. She knew when an apprentice shifted from foot to foot, when a master padded out of the dim room.

Next to her, Larinda worked. Rani resisted the temptation to watch her fellow journeyman. Every day that Rani had labored in the old glasswrights' guild, she had compared herself to Larinda. She had measured out the sticks of wood that each carried to the kitchen; she had counted the pots of gruel that each stirred. She had calculated who received precisely which compliments, who was allowed to grind which colors. Now, in Brianta, Rani had watched Parion's support of Larinda with jealousy.

She wanted to know the design of Larinda's piece. However, when Rani took a step back to view her opponent's table, the flickering torchlight caught on Larinda's Hands. Rani could make out the dull glint of metal, the soft swirl of leather and silk.

Ashamed, Rani returned her attention to her own work. She reminded herself to focus on her own drawings, on the studies that she had completed of Lor. She thought about how she had made the god too fat the first time that she drew him. She remembered to leave adequate space for the leading, a narrow margin for the diamond knife.

She worked without making any errors. A part of her mind remarked that she was moving as if she were deep in a Speaking—her fingers had a confidence, a sureness, a certainty that she had never known before. The charcoal was smooth beneath her fingertips, but she knew its hidden shape, its structure. She knew there was a weak point in the side, just beneath her index finger. If she applied too much pressure, the stick would snap and she would lose her concentration, lose control. She relaxed her fingers slightly, shaking her hand, avoiding the problem.