Glasswrights' Progress (26 page)

The boys watched, enraptured, but Rani could trace the stone without difficulty. This sleight of hand was a standard trick of the Touched, a game that Mair had encouraged her troop to play often. Mair's children had used the game both to master their skills at theft and to resolve petty disputes, such as who would get to sleep under the warmest blanket or who would get to drink first from a new-found keg of ale.

“All right,” Mair exclaimed, closing both hands and offering them to the boys. “Where's the stone?”

Monny bit his lip and darted a glance at each of Mair's fists. Rani saw that the Touched girl was trying to lead him toward her left hand; she had let her thumb bulge forward a little, as if it were driven out of place by the rock. Monny caught the position as well, and Rani watched him measure his options for several heartbeats before he made his decision, pointing at Mair's right hand.

“Are you certain?” Mair teased. The boy nodded solemnly, his clouted hair bobbing. His eyes stayed glued to her fists as if she might somehow cheat him. “The lives of your company could be riding on this, Mon.”

“I'm sure,” the boy said tensely. Mair shook her head and opened her right hand, showing only empty air. “That's impossible!” Monny exclaimed. “Show me the other one!”

Mair started to shake her head as Rani came up behind the children. “It's not in her other hand,” Rani declared. “It's up her sleeve.”

“It can't be,” Monny argued. “I watched her pass it over her fingers, and under her thumb!”

“Mair?” Rani prompted, and the Touched girl lowered both hands, letting the stone fall out of her sleeve.

“Show me again!” Monny demanded, pushing his fellow soldiers out of the way and moving so close to Mair that his nose almost touched her hands. The Touched girl laughed and shook the pebble between her palms, starting the game anew.

“You know her well.” Rani started at Crestman's voice, swallowing hard before she turned to face the boys' captain.

“Well enough not to be fooled by a few simple tricks.”

“Then you know her well enough to understand why she calls him Mon, instead of by his name.”

Rani considered her answer for a moment, measuring how much she was willing to tell this enemy soldier. “She calls him by a Touched name.”

“Touched?”

“Like she is. One of the casteless, from our home. They have short names. Monny reminds her of the children in her troop, so she calls him Mon.”

“Like she calls you Rai?”

“Aye.”

“Then you're also ... Touched?”

“I've lived in all the castes. I've gone by many names.”

“But that isn't possible, not in the south.”

“Just as it isn't possible for one of you northerners to be spared the fate of your birth?” Rani looked pointedly at the scar on his face, at the place where a tattoo should have marked his own caste. He acknowledged her question with a taut shrug, and she decided to reward him by answering at least part of his question. “I was born Rani Trader, a merchant-girl. That's the name I use now.”

“A merchant name.”

“Aye. Like your own. ‘Crestman' would be a merchant's name in Morenia.”

“And Sin Hazar?”

Rani paused, unsure of her response. “Sin is the name of a Touched. Hazar is a merchant name. The two together name a guildsman.”

“But not a king?”

“Sin Hazar is not the king in Morenia! Not now or ever.” Rani's words spilled out like lead pouring from a crucible, and she whirled away from Crestman. How dare he insinuate that Morenia would fall? How dare he imply that Sin Hazar would conquer all that she knew and held dear?

Crestman caught up to her as she limped across the burnt grass where the bonfire had burned. “Lady Rani! I meant no disrespect! I only asked a question.”

“Your question could only
mean
disrespect! You know nothing of my land! You know nothing of loyalty to a crown, nothing of the price one pays to save a kingdom!”

“Nothing, my lady?” Crestman's question was soft, so soft that Rani had to look at his face. His eyes, though, were not on her. Instead, he stared at a place just outside the burnt fire-ring, the place where Monny had lain the night the Swancastle fell.

“So you torture boys and make their fellows chant a king's name. That doesn't mean you've paid a price.”

“I'm a captain in the Little Army, my lady. I've paid for the privilege of rank.”

The words were so fragile, the memories so raw, that Rani could only ask, “What?”

For a moment, she thought that Crestman would not answer. Then, he pulled words from somewhere deep inside him. “They took me from my village. I was eight years old. It was springtime, and the river ran high, above my village. We lions were playing, trying to get bark boats to shoot the rapids. The suns were all busy planting. I don't know where the owls were – probably off with the priests. But we lions were all alone.”

Rani watched Crestman's eyes take him back to the riverbank, to the village. He'd been eight – scarcely as old as Monny, then.

“When the Little Army surrounded us, we thought that they were other lions, maybe from another village. We'd heard that there were soldiers on the road, of course. We knew that Sin Hazar was planning a war, that he needed all his loyal lions to join together. That's why we were playing with the boats, so that we could learn how to fight the Liantines on the open ocean.

“They rounded us up before we knew what was happening. They had swords, real iron swords. And bows. Not the wrist-braces that Davin has made – full bows, with long arrows. One of us lions ... resisted, and they shot him, straight through his heart. He fell into the river, face down.”

Crestman's cheeks had paled as he spoke; his scar stood out like a frozen pond. “They made us march, all day and night, with only short breaks for sleep. After a few weeks, we did not know where we were or how to return home, even if we could have escaped. They called us cowards, called us bed-boys and whores. We ran into other groups, and we learned that they weren't just taking lions. There were suns on the road, and owls. Even a swan or two, boys who were too young to have gone off with the other swans for training.”

“All taken from your parents,” Rani breathed, the horror blending with her own loss.

“Actually, that part wasn't terrible. We Amanthians all leave our homes when we reach the right age, all but the suns. That's what it means to be born under a night-sign. You leave your parents, your brothers and sisters. You go live with other lions, or owls, or swans.”

“But this –”

“This was worse. This was going before we were ready, before we'd learned what we needed to do. And we weren't going to learn from other lions. We were learning from animals.” Crestman shook his head and raised his finger to the scar on his cheek. “The first thing they did was remove our tattoos, so that we wouldn't bond with our fellow skychildren. They used a knife, and four boys held us flat. They burned us to stop the bleeding.”

Rani's hand moved of its own volition, rising from her side to touch Crestman's face. He flinched as if she held a live coal, but he did not draw away. She ran a finger along the smooth flesh, her belly twisting as she thought of a child's pain, a child's terror. “But Sin Hazar!” she protested. “He still wears his swan tattoo. He and all his men are still marked.”

“Aye,” Crestman agreed. “The king has different plans for his grown supporters. He does not need to tear
them
from their roots. There is strength in the sky-castes. Strength that the Little Army fears.”

“Is it truly an army, then? An entire army made of boys?”

“After its own fashion. We're divided into platoons. Ten boys, serving under one lieutenant. Four platoons in a division, led by a captain. Back in the camp, there are no grown soldiers at all, not even someone like Davin to lead the forces. Older boys taught us to march, to count cadence, to fight. Nothing very different from what a lion would have learned.”

“Except?” Rani picked up on the words he had not spoken.

“Except that they bound us in ways a lion is never bound. They taught us to fear and to love, and to love most the ones we feared most. Whenever we found something to cherish, they took it from us.”

“Cherish? What is there to cherish in a military camp?”

“You'd be surprised.” Crestman's voice was thick with bitterness. “The captains, boys of fourteen or fifteen, kept hounds to go hunting. In the spring, the bitches whelped. There were dozens of pups. The captains gave them to us boys, to the newest recruits. We were fools – we thought that we had finally found favor. We lived for those pups, dragged them into our tents, carted them around the camp. We named the dogs, we fed them from our plates. We turned them into the families we'd left behind, treasuring them all the more when the older boys mocked us.

“But one night the officers woke us, well after midnight. They'd painted their faces black, so that only their eyes glinted in the torchlight. They pulled us from our beds, naked and shivering, and they made each of us wrestle a captain, a boy nearly twice our age. As each of us lost, we had to hand over our dog. We had to forfeit our most valuable possession. And then, the victors gave us each a knife, pressed the weapons into our hands, even when we would have dropped them by the fire.”

Crestman stared at the burnt out circle of the bonfire, as if he were watching the scene he described, as if he could see it acted out before him. “They had their long bows trained on us, and they shot one boy who refused to hold his knife. I picked up my blade. I knew what I was supposed to do. My captain must have told me. He must have given me an order. I pulled back my dog's head, and I slashed its throat. One quick cut, and that animal was meat.”

As Rani caught her breath, Crestman opened his hand, as if he were letting a knife fall to the ground. “He was meat, and we were soldiers. Good soldiers who followed orders. The captains ordered us to bring the dogs to the cook-tent, and they made us butcher them. They made us put the meat into a kettle, and they made us take turns stirring the stew. They made us eat, every bite, until the kettle was empty.”

Tears were streaming down Rani's face, tears of loss and remembrance. She, too, had killed upon command. She, too, had murdered to belong.

But Crestman did not weep. He stared at the circle in the grass, and he finished his tale. “We saluted the king after that meal. After every meal, and when we rose and when we slept, before every maneuver on the battlefield. We offered up thanks to the Little Army, to our officers and our brethren. And when the next recruits arrived, we held the bows and trained our arrows on their hearts.”

“But why? How could you?”

“How could we not? For the Little Army, there is no other world. We have no caste, our sky-signs are gone. Our parents could never take us back, not after the things we've done. The only one who values us is King Sin Hazar. He's the one who sought us out, after all. He's the one who trained us and fed us. He's the one who lets the captains go on raids, to bring us food and clothes and women.”

“Women?” Rani breathed.

“Girls,” Crestman corrected himself. “For the victors, of course. All the riches go to the victors. But the finest job of all – the best mission in all the Little Army – was left to only a few.”

“And what was that?” Rani asked, hating herself for asking the question, hating herself for wanting to know.

He smiled crookedly. “We led the raids on other villages. We brought in the newest recruits to the Little Army, always killing one to set an example, two if the boys were particularly dense.”

“How could you do it? Why didn't you flee?”

Crestman's laugh was so harsh that it raised gooseflesh on Rani's arms. “Flee? It took me months to gain the courage to do just that. I plotted and planned and waited until we were on a raid at the farthest edge of the Little Army's territory. I crept off in the darkest hours of the night and I ran, hiding my trail in every way that the Little Army had taught me.

“I needed food, though. And it was my fate to try to steal it from an old woman, from a woman who looked at me like my own dam would. If I could find my own mother. If she's even still alive.”

“Shea.”

“Aye. That old sun made me believe that I could be free. She made me believe that I could escape the Little Army
and
the rest of Amanthia. But she lied. I'm here. And I'm surrounded by boys who believe, who will kill to preserve the Little Army.

“Davin gave me shoes. He spared my life, even though he knew I was a traitor; he knew my stories were lies. He put me in charge of the Little Army, and I could do nothing to save myself. And since I didn't have pups to build boys' loyalties, I used the next best thing. A child.” Crestman's voice broke at last, and he spat out the last word like a bitter seed.

Rani's injured leg was trembling, stressed by her standing for so long. Her words shook as well. “They
made
you do it!” she exclaimed. “They gave you no choice!”

“We all have choices. They put the knife in my hands, but I had a choice. I still do.” Crestman lifted his hand, holding it as if he cradled a long, curved blade. He raised the invisible weapon to his throat, slashed across with a force that would have left him headless if the blade had been real. He stared at his fingers, and a bitter laugh tore from his lips.

“No!” Rani cried, and she fumbled for his hands, covered them with her own. “No! You can make other choices!”

“I don't know any other choices! I've forgotten them! They were carved away, like my sky-sign was carved from my face!” Crestman's fury broke into a wordless howl. He reached for the scar on his cheek, raking his flesh with his own short-bitten nails. Rani grabbed at his wrists, trying to pull his hands down. It took all her strength to lower them to her waist, and the motion pulled him closer to her. She forced her words into the narrow space between them with all the precision of a prayer.