Raven's Ladder (38 page)

“Master!” Warney stepped out of the line and knelt down.

“Where have you been? Do you know that Krawg’s been chewing his nails off, worried that you fell off a dock?”

Warney blinked his eyes. Both of them. “Krawg said he was headin’ out to sea! So I went lookin’ for somethin’ to do.” Then the gawky old Gatherer stood up—a rather unnerving endeavor, as it looked like his legs were performing separate dances. “Old Frits, he found me. Told me he’d like to fashion me a replacement eye, just to see how it looks. It doesn’t work, but I’d rather wear this than that blasted old patch.”

“And now you’re a glassmaker?”

“Frits said that I’ve learned to use this one eye so good that it’s better than it would be if I had two. Seems I can see flaws and fractures others can’t. Today we’re crafting a new chalice for Queen Thesera’s birthday.”

He leaned in and whispered, “King Cal-raven, what do you think?” He pointed across the floor to where Obrey had somehow linked a chain of glass from the broken pieces.

“She’s a stonemaster,” Cal-raven gasped.

“Does she remind you of anyone?”

Cal-raven met—or tried to meet—Warney’s half-real gaze. Then he shook his head slowly. “It can’t be her, Warney. Auralia came into Abascar so young that she’d be seventeen or eighteen years old now. Obrey…she seems younger.”

Warney’s real eye seemed to glow with hope. “A sister, maybe? Could Auralia.”

He quieted as Frits approached from across the workshop floor, a glass disc resting precariously on his left cheekbone so that it seemed to enlarge his left eye. With a knowing smile, he said, “You’ve noticed my granddaughter.”

Cal-raven nodded. “She has a tremendous gift.”

“Your king, Warney—he has good eyes.” Frits winked at the Gatherer through his monocle.

“You’re descendants of Tammos Raak, like me.” Cal-raven shrugged. “I guess that makes us family.”

Frits crossed his arms. “I have it on good authority that I can trust you, King Cal-raven. And I’m not a trusting sort. Not unless there’s good pay involved.”

“The Seers must be paying you well for you to pack up and leave your mine.”

When Frits replied, his mirthful tone had faded. “Who said we chose to leave?”

Cal-raven cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Who’s fooled you into trusting me?”

The glassmaker pointed at the departing line of wagons. “Warney, I’d appreciate it if you got back to your work.”

Warney hobbled off sideways, glancing back at Cal-raven with a gleeful grin. “Tell Krawg,” he said. “Tell him I’ve found what I’m for.”

The glassmaker put his arm around Cal-raven and led him in the other direction, moving through the rivers of heat that poured from the ovens. “It’s best you see this when Obrey’s distracted. If she catches you in her playroom, you’ll never escape it, for she’ll feel compelled to show you her favorite things. And that includes everything. It’s a very crowded room.”

The glass burner who earlier had ignored or missed Cal-raven’s question suddenly appeared at Frits’s elbow, her message muffled through the scarf that wrapped all but the glass shields over her eyes. She raised one of her mittened hands to point to the entryway behind them.

Frits and Cal-raven turned to find Queen Thesera sweeping into the room, the train of her gown streaming along behind her. The sharp-eared whiskiro in her hand shuddered, eyes enormous at the sight of the roaring stoves.

“She’s here to see our progress on her ceremonial chalice. I’ll attend to her.” Frits looked to the anxious glassworker. “Milora, my love, rescue King Cal-raven, would you? Take him to see…you know. But go quickly and quietly. Let no one follow you.”

The woman, her eyes dark behind the murky glass lenses, would not meet Cal-raven’s gaze.

“Another one from your mountain home?” he asked.

“The Seers dragged three of us from the mine in the mountains. Milora was sick. They promised to heal her with their potion work. It’s how they managed to persuade me.” He put his fist before his mouth to block his voice and muttered. “Funny thing. She wasn’t sick before the Seers showed up.”

Cal-raven watched the woman begrudgingly stride away to lead him.

“I almost forgot.” Frits ungloved a hand and reached into his pocket. “You’ll need this. I call it the lightkey.”

He handed Cal-raven a piece of clear glass that seemed unremarkable—a teardrop cut down the middle. His hands, however, were remarkable indeed—brown and cracked as bread that’s been baked too long, with such a web of scars upon scars it was difficult to find an unmarked spot.

Frits turned, drawing in a deep breath.

To avoid the queen’s gaze, Cal-raven followed Milora, running to catch up as she rounded the far end of the ovens.

She led him out of the workshop and through a maze of passages lined with wonder after wonder that could only have been crafted by a child’s imagination. Playful bursts of abstract shapes, like collisions of colored hoops pinned together in rising circles, bigger and more exuberant as they ascended. Some were outrageous animals, dangling from the wires of mobiles that spun in the wind of their passage—winged dragons chasing each other in circles.

“How old is Obrey?” Cal-raven asked.

Milora shrugged.

She led him up a stair into a room no larger than his own chamber back in the tower. Dark curtains encircled the high-ceilinged space. Resting on a workbench, she planted her heels beside a row of multicolored seaweed sandals. Cal-raven stood against the wall opposite her, awestruck. All about him
on the floor were thin filaments of glass; spools of transparent, tinted threads; bottles of glue; sticks of waxy dye. “This is where she plays?”

Milora gestured to a pile of blankets in the corner. He remembered the cushion where Hagah had slept in King Cal-marcus’s library.

“Is this what you wanted to show me? Your daughter’s window?”

Milora laughed behind her scarf, then leaned forward and gripped the bench tightly as if the question were a test of her patience.

“Frits told me that you’ve been sick. Is that why you cannot speak?”

“Oh, I can speak,” she growled through the fabric, and at last she raised the lenses from her eyes to reveal a bruised and frightened expression. He felt an urge to unwind the strips of cloth that encased her, for she seemed so stifled. But she gestured to the long golden cord of the curtain hanging down the wall beside him. “Look. But don’t linger.”

The curtains drew back from the far end of the room, sliding around the curvature to unveil a tall, arched window. But the window’s glass was not a solid pane—it was lace, filaments like a spider web of ice. Each line gleamed, each strand a different color. That it all held together was astonishing. Morning fog, moving out to sea from the mainland, teased the window, drifting into the chamber, so that the sunlight illuminating the glass infused the cloud with pulsing, shifting hues. It was as though the window were a sieve, straining colors from cloud.

He turned to her, amazed. “How did she—”

Milora was gone.

Obrey stood astonished in the doorway. The tiny “oh” of her mouth then burst into a glorious smile. “King Cal-raven! In my room!” She skipped across and took his hand, then danced about him in a circle. “Don’t you love my window? It’s my favorite thing in all of Bel Amica. It’s like a map.”

He looked at it again. “A map?”

Explanations exploded into the room as Obrey excitedly traced a river of blue lace down through green patches she found to be forests. She pointed out gleaming tips like mountains and golden patches of open plain. A dark swath near the top she believed to be the Forbidding Wall.

Cal-raven gestured to a spot just above that crescent of purple near the window’s apex—an open space like an eye half closed. “And what, then, is that?” White hot with sunlight, whistling as cool air blew through, the space seemed strangely familiar.

“Didn’t Grandfather give you the lightkey?”

Cal-raven drew the crystal shard from his pocket. “This?” He felt a prickly sensation across his skin.

Rummaging in a small closet, Obrey began to grunt and growl. “Here. You. Go!” she announced, dragging a heavy stepladder into the chamber. “You’ll. Need. This!” It was heavy, for it was made of glass bricks. “I got in trouble…for using…the lightkey,” she panted once the ladder stood in front of the window. “I couldn’t reach. From the top step. So I had to stack things on top of it.”

Cal-raven took a step up on the ladder, then reached out to touch the delicate lace with his fingertips. He was surprised by its warmth and strength. “Why does House Bel Amica hide this window? It’s the most exquisite thing I’ve seen here.”

“The people don’t know about it.” Obrey shrugged, spinning a glass top and watching it zigzag across the floor. “Frits and Milora decide who gets to see it. They know who they can trust.”

“The colors remind me of something.” He sat down on the stepladder, regarding the girl suspiciously. “But that was far away and long ago.”

She blinked at him, tilting her head like a curious bird.

“Obrey, how old are you?”

“Not sure,” she answered and started counting on her fingers. “Frits thinks I’m fourteen.”

“Why did you end up here?”

“We didn’t want to. But the Seers kept offering fortunes and fame. Milora got angry. She shouted at them. She was worried about what would happen to the stuff we were making.”

“What happened?”

“Milora didn’t wake up in the morning. Grandfather Frits got mad and yelled at the Seers. He said they’d poisoned her. It was bad. And noisy. Then the Seers promised they could wake her up if we brought her to Bel Amica.

They put her in the ’firmary.” Obrey’s face twitched and quivered with worry. “We work here ’til she’s better.”

“That’s horrible,” he said. “I’m sorry. What’s wrong with her?”

“It’s…” She knocked her knuckles against her head. “It’s messy up here. That’s what she says. Like somebody mixed up everything. Can’t find what she needs. Makes it hurt to think.” Obrey’s play became more urgent. She mashed the pieces of glass together into a strange, alarming, jagged shape.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t bring up painful things here in your playroom.”

Absently, she pulled the scarf from her head and began to sweep broken glass into it. He was surprised to find that she was completely bald.

Was your hair ever silverbrown?
he wondered.
Were you ever older?
The Seers had made Queen Thesera seem young again. Could they have drawn years out of Auralia?

She noticed his stare and patted her head. “It’s the glassworks,” she said. “They cut our hair so glass won’t get caught in it. Folks get hurt when glass falls in their food or collects on their pillows.”

He turned to ascend the stepladder, the lightkey in his hand. To reach the open space at the top of the window, he’d have to stand on the top step, with nothing to hold. A mistake could send him plunging through the intricate window. He spread both arms for balance, then reached up to the open space.

Ever so carefully, so as not to press it through to the other side, he fitted the lightkey into place.

“Get down!” Obrey laughed. “Quickly!”

As he descended, a force of heat and pressure struck him. But he saw nothing unusual, not until he looked back up at the lightkey.

That splinter of glass filled with sunlight. As it did, it became a whirling eye, a furnace of color. Reds, blues, and golds rushed through the strands of glassy lace as if they were veins. They spread and separated until the web was intricate with ever-changing hues. The mist enshrouding the window became infused with colors.

Cal-raven caught and trapped the name so he would not say it aloud.
Auralia
.

“This…” His robe glittering with slivers of glass, Frits had stepped into the room with Milora as close as his shadow. The glassmaker spread his arms as if to embrace the light streaming through the window. Colors trickled through his fingers. “This is our consolation until we can leave this place again.”

“My friends.” Cal-raven approached them, speaking in a surge of resolve. “Milora, I want you to visit Abascar’s healer, Say-ressa. She may be able to help you. And I want to take all three of you with me when I lead House Abascar away. With this window you’ve already given Bel Amica more than it deserves. I’ll take you back to your mine. And I will make sure the Seers do not bother you again.”

He bowed, thanking all three of them—although Milora looked less than grateful—and then he excused himself, invigorated.

As he did, he overheard quiet laughter from the old glassmaker. “He wants to save everyone, doesn’t he?”

T
hree days?”

That was the first question Tabor Jan asked, but others followed so hard and fast that he stumbled on the path. His sleeplessness was beginning to scare him. He had begged for slumberseed oil, but Bel Amican watchmen were not allowed to use the stuff in case its lingering influence might interfere with their watchfulness.

He struggled to arrange words into coherent responses. How would they assemble the people? Would they get back the supplies that had been taken from them? Would the Bel Amicans offer them any protection? Were their vawns and horses in traveling condition?

As he pummeled Cal-raven with questions, the two men arrived at a rail-train platform deep inside Bel Amica. Here the train concluded its circuitous trip through the house. It would be rigged with a harness of hooks and chains and hauled up to a distant piece of sky through a shaft crowded with pulleys, gears, and ropes. At the top it would be set upon the rails again and begin its descent through courtyards and market squares.

“Tomorrow morning,” Cal-raven was saying, “I’ll address Abascar. I’ll need your help to draw everyone together. They’ll have three days to pack only what they can carry and to repair whatever needs patching. Partayn’s convinced the queen to give us wagons, vawns, and packs for the journey, so long as we repay them, within three years’ time, double what we take.”

Others crowding the platform stared at them and gossiped. “So many people,” Tabor Jan mumbled.