Glasswrights' Progress (28 page)

“Leave her alone!”

Sin Hazar barely swallowed his surprise as the Touched girl stepped forward. “Lady Mair?”

“She danced with you because she had no choice. She was a guest at your table. She was required to eat and drink, if she did not want to provoke a battle.”

“
You
could not be bothered to attend our feast, Lady Mair. We hardly think that you are qualified to instruct us on what happened there.”

“There's no one who'll dare to instruct you, is there?”

Incredible! This casteless southern brat had the nerve to insult her elders, her betters, the one person who held complete power of life and death over her! Sin Hazar raised a hand to summon Al-Marai, but he caught the words in his throat as Ranita stepped forward.

“Please, Your Majesty.” She twisted into the most elegant curtsey that her chains would allow. “My lord, Lady Mair is merely angered because she wants to return home. She and I both. Please, Your Majesty. Just let us assure King Halaravilli that we are safe. Let us send him a letter, so that you and he can begin your negotiations.”

“Well,
that
has been done in your absence.”

“Your Majesty?”

“We have assured Halaravilli that you are alive and well. Our negotiations should conclude in short order. Assuming, of course, that the king places the same value on your life that you apparently think he will.”

The Touched wench snapped out a question before Lady Ranita could fashion a polite reply. “How did you manage that? How did you offer an assurance, when we were not available?”

“Perhaps we should clarify our statement, my lady. Halaravilli never asked about
you
. Your safety seemed of little concern to the king of Morenia.” Sin Hazar could not keep from smiling as the girl blanched. He let one jeweled finger trace the outer edge of his swan-tattoo. Let her think about that for a moment. Let her ponder Al-Marai's sword and the weight of her chains.…

Ranita cleared her throat, and asked tentatively, “What
did
you say on my behalf, Your Majesty?”

“Halaravilli asked a question, and Bashanorandi gave me the answer.” Sin Hazar spared a fond glance for his nephew. The boy basked in the royal approval, even as both girls registered disgust. “Bashanorandi was confident of the reply, so a scribe wrote it up as a letter from you.”

“And will you share the question with me, Your Majesty?”

Sin Hazar shrugged. No reason not to. No reason not to let the little fool see how easily he had penetrated the southerners' game. “He only wanted to know which Trader first slew a member of the ... mmm, what was it, Al-Marai?”

“The Fellowship, Your Majesty.” The lion bowed as he supplied the response.

“Ah, yes, the Fellowship. How could I have forgotten? My sister would never forgive me. If, of course, she were in a position to forgive anyone.” He permitted himself a feral grin as he made a holy sign across his chest, in honor of Felicianda. “Bashanorandi here clarified that Trader was your family name.” He glanced at the prince, scowling as he realized the boy was fingering his tattoo again.

“How did you know the answer?” Ranita turned a shocked gaze on Bashanorandi. “Bashi, how did you know what Hal wanted to hear?”

“Do you think your Fellowship can't be penetrated?” the prince spat. “You think you keep yourselves so well hidden! You and Mair and Hal and all the rest. I've had a man on the inside of your precious Fellowship, reporting every one of your meetings.”

“E – Every meeting?” Rani stammered. “Your man must be highly placed. He must have been with us for quite some time. Most of the Fellowship hardly remembers Treen.”

“What!” Sin Hazar bellowed, even as his pathetic nephew repeated the name. “What did you just say?”

“Treen. She was the first Fellow slain by –” Ranita obviously realized the
import of her words, and she swallowed heavily.

“You're bluffing!” Bashanorandi screamed. “Your Majesty, she's making this up! She wants you to believe that I made a mistake!”

“Silence, fool!” Sin Hazar barely resisted the urge to slap his whining nephew. “Lady Rani, I warn you. You have only just begun to experience the hospitality of the Amanthian army. I can place you in a stone chamber so far beneath the earth that the rats won't hear your cries for mercy. I can have you tortured in a hundred ways before spring comes.”

“Your Majesty, you can do those things, but that won't change the truth. My brother, Bardo Trader, murdered a member of the Fellowship when I was scarcely a babe. He executed Treen. Hal knows this. He knows the answer to his own question.”

“But Dalarati!” Bashanorandi squeaked, his face deadly white beneath the irritated red and silver of his new tattoo. “You murdered him with your own hand.”

What difference does it make, Sin Hazar wanted to bellow. What difference does it make who killed whom in the warrens of your filthy southern city! What did it matter that Ranita Glasswright had dispatched a soldier, when her brother had killed someone else
first
? Sin Hazar snatched Bashanorandi's arm, yanked the boy so hard that his thighs came to rest against the king's carved chair.

“You told me. You said that you knew the answer to the question.”

“I – I thought I did!”

“I asked if you were certain.”

“I was!”

“I told you that an entire kingdom rode on your answer!”

“I knew that! I knew that Ranita murdered Dalarati! I knew that they were both in their cursed Fellowship! I knew that – Please, Sire, you're hurting me!”

Sin Hazar swore and threw the boy away from him. “Leave me! All of you! Out of here!” The guards swept forward to conduct Ranita and Mair back to their cell, gathering up their clanking iron chains with clumsy hands. Bashanorandi fidgeted like a nervous cat. “Out of here, boy, or I'll have you thrown over the castle wall!”

Bashanorandi scuttled away, scarcely bothering to look behind him as he cleared the doorway. The other soldiers filed from the room, but Sin Hazar held up a rage-shaken hand as his brother started to close the heavy stone door. “Al-Marai, you may stay.”

“Your Majesty.” The lion bowed formally and remained by the door, watching warily as Sin Hazar climbed to his feet. The king paced beside the map-table, not seeing the complicated swirl of mercenaries and ships, the bright gold markers for the Little Army.

He had asked for a simple fact. He had told the boy to be certain. He had said that they could make a diversion. He had checked for the truth. He had asked a second time and a third.

And the boy had lied.

No, not lied. Lying required thought, required a calculating mind. The bastard was too stupid for that.

The boy had launched a war, as surely as if he'd shot an arrow across a field. Launched a war that Sin Hazar would not be prepared to fight for at least six months.

“I want to kill him.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I want to flay him, inch by inch.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I want to feed him his own flesh, salted on the bone. I want to carve that cursed swan tattoo from his face with a spoon and mark the flesh beneath with a hundred-rayed sun. I want.…”

Sin Hazar let himself run down, and then he crossed to the table at the side of the room. His hand shook as he poured a cup of wine, and the clatter of the flask against the goblet almost made him throw the drink across the room. He didn't though. Instead, he drank deeply.

“Al-Marai, we're going to be at war in less than a month. And this one will be real – against Morenia.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“This won't be the silly squabble we've been noising about in Liantine. Not some shadow victory of the Little Army.”

“No, Your Majesty.”

“These battles are going to be real. Fought on Amanthian soil. Fought against true warriors. Fought before we've bought our full army of Yrathi mercenaries. Fought before we
know
we can crush that southern idiot.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Enough of that, fool! I'm not asking for you to squawk agreement like some macaw! I'm looking for your guidance! I'm looking for your advice!”

“Certainly, Your Majesty. My first advice is that you drink another cup of wine.”

“You sun-born, pox-ridden, mangy excuse for a lion –”

“My second advice is that you finish cataloging my failings, so that I can decide if I'm honor-bound to fight my brother to my death on the eve of war, when he most needs my counsel.”

Sin Hazar actually managed a grim smile. He crossed to the map, picking up a handful of blood-red markers that had not yet been deployed. “Six months. That's all I needed. Now, it doesn't matter if that royal upstart comes by land or by sea – we're going to need more Yrathis.”

“We can buy more men, Your Majesty.”

“You're talking about Teleos?”

“Aye. The slave trader will pay enough for us to purchase more mercenaries. He'll definitely buy the girls.”

“How many? And how soon?”

“I had my men look into it, after we last discussed the slaver's bargain. We can easily gather up three score, to send with the next shipment of the Little Army. Maybe five, if we send an urgent message to our recruiters in the field.”

“One hundred girls.”

“To start with, Your Majesty. There are enough little whores hanging about the camp now to make up more than half the shipment. Those girls already believe the Little Army are heroes. They shouldn't give us much trouble if we tell them they're going along to help Your Majesty's troops win the war.”

“Three score whores, gathered here already! I had no idea we treated the Little Army so well.”

“Only the best for Your Majesty's forces.”

Sin Hazar swallowed a tight smile as he stared at the map, beginning to place crimson markers to represent Halaravilli's likely troops. “That won't be enough, you know. We'll need an entire division of Yrathi mercenaries, if we need to defend by sea
and
by land.”

“We can buy the Yrathi, Your Majesty. We'll have them in time. We'll start by having the recruiters bring in two score girls. The impressment squads are fairly far-flung right now, at the edges of your holdings. That's probably just as well – we might encounter some resistance from folk who don't understand the demands of this war.”

“Don't understand.…” Sin Hazar rubbed a hand across his face and sighed. “Can we do it, Al-Marai? Can we gather enough in time?”

“I have no doubt, Your Majesty. The girls will be easier to break than the boys. We can ... encourage them more forcefully. Their ultimate loyalty once they're sent to Liantine is less important.”

“When do we send Teleos the first shipment?”

“In three weeks, Your Majesty.”

“Very well. I expect one hundred girls by then.”

“One hundred and two, Your Majesty.”

“Two?”

“Certainly. Lady Ranita and Lady Mair can no longer serve a purpose in your court. Halaravilli believes them dead. We might as well make them dead to the world. And turn a little profit besides.”

 

Rani blinked in the bright sunlight, looking around at the walls of the stockade. They stood almost twice as high as a man, and the inside surfaces had been planed smooth. The Little Army was as neatly imprisoned as if they were the pitiful cattle that had originally occupied the pen.

Mair came to stand beside Rani, swearing softly under her breath. “Well, we wanted out of the dungeons.”

“Aye. But not for this.”

Following the confrontation in the map-room, Rani and Mair had spent the better part of a fortnight huddled in one of Sin Hazar's cells. They'd been restricted to bread and water, starvation rations, as if they were the ones responsible for Sin Hazar sending his fateful letter. They'd been forced to huddle together at night, shivering against the chill that seeped through the stone. They'd demanded ink and parchment and a messenger to ride to Halaravilli, but they stopped their requests when they tired of hearing their guards laugh. They'd asked for an audience with the king, only to be told that Sin Hazar did not bother himself with the refuse in his dungeons.

That royal neglect proved benign, compared to the scene that stretched before them now.

A village of tents crowded the stockade, weathered canvas flapping in the wind that stole over the log walls. True winter had gripped Amanthia, and snow had fallen three times in the past week. While a good part of that snow had drifted against the tents, the pathways underfoot had been churned to icy mud. Only the day before, Rani had slipped as she made her way past the one gate in the stockade. She had fallen hard, slamming her knee against the frozen ground, and she'd sprawled on her belly, trying to catch her breath. For one terrible moment, she'd thought that her wounded leg had been torn open.

One of the guards had looked down from his post, and his laughter was harsher than the whining wind. “On your feet, girl! I'm not off my shift until moonrise! I can't accept your favors till then!” When Rani had glared at him, the man had laughed again and called down, “At least turn on your back, then. Make it easy for the Little Army.”

Rani had cursed Cot, scrambling to her feet and limping to the interior of the tent camp. Not that the god of soldiers appeared to pay much attention to anything happening inside the stockade, she had muttered to herself as she nursed her aching leg. The guards were ostensibly posted to protect the Little Army from spies and raiders, to keep the fighting children safe in the final days before they shipped out for Liantine. It had not taken Rani long to realize, though, that the men kept watch with their backs to the plain outside the stockade. The king's lions guarded with their swords turned against the Little Army. The soldiers were posted to protect the children from freedom, nothing more.