Glasswrights' Progress (29 page)

As the wind picked up, Rani and Mair turned back to the tiny tent they had commandeered. The shelter was small, but it was precious because it nestled against the stockade wall, cutting down on the wind's prying fingers. Only the night before, Rani had had to fight off another girl who had thought that she would bring one of the boys into the tent. The other girl had not given up until Mair had awakened. Together, Rani and Mair had pulled the intruder's hair and administered some well-placed kicks, making the little slattern realize that there were easier dosses to be found.

There were nearly four score girls who roamed about the stockade. Most were eager to share their blankets with the boys of the Little Army – eager because they believed that they might escape the stockade, or because they hoped that the boys actually cared for them, or because the girls no longer remembered any other life.

Rani grimaced as she shook out her blanket, settling its scratchy wool about her shoulders. “It just gets colder and colder. Yesterday, I spoke with one girl from north of here. She said that it can get too cold to snow.”

Mair shrugged. “That might be a blessing. It'll be worse on the ocean.”

“Is it certain then? Are we definitely going?”

“They say we ship out next week. After Kel's feast day.”

“We'll all be calling on Kel, feast day or no.” Rani paused to think a brief prayer to the god of the sea. No reason to rile him, to make him think that she did not take his power seriously.

“There'll be a few more voices raised in prayer, once we're on the boats. A new group of girls is supposed to arrive this afternoon. That will make more than five score of us.”

“How do you know these things?”

“A Touched girl has her ways,” Mair answered mysteriously. Rani shrugged. She didn't care enough to learn the truth. Mair pouted in mock disappointment and then said, “There's something else. We're supposed to test Davin's new engine before we leave.”

“And what is that?”

“A flying machine.”

Rani sighed with exasperation. “Fine, Mair. I don't care if you don't answer. Couldn't you just say that you don't know?”

“I'm not telling tales, Rai. He's made a flying machine.”

“So we'll all offer up prayers to Fairn and fly across the ocean?” Rani snorted.

“I don't know that the god of birds has anything to do with it. I've heard the boys talking, though. Mon says he's been in the harness.”

Mon. Of course.
That
was how Mair got her information. The entire division from the Swancastle was now encamped in the stockade. They had marched up during the time that Rani and Mair were held in the dungeons; they'd been summoned by Bashanorandi on his fateful mission.

Mair had found Mon the first morning that she and Rani had been freed from the dungeons. Mon said that Davin had accompanied them north, carting along all sorts of equipment and tools. The Swancastle had been abandoned entirely; the old wizard had even dragged his macaw with him.

Before Rani could comment on Mon being harnessed to the flying machine, a furious clatter rose outside the tent. Neither girl jumped; they'd already become accustomed to life in a military camp. The sound of a sword beating against a leather-bound shield was as ordinary as birdsong. “Bread line! Bread line!”

Rani shivered and considered staying in the tent, huddling under her blanket
and
Mair's. The bread was always dry, anyway, and it tasted more of acorns than of wheat. “Go ahead, Mair. I'm going to sleep.”

“You'll come with me, Rai. I'm not going to let you get weak from hunger.”

“As if the bread would help with that,” Rani grumbled, but she allowed the older girl to pull her to her feet. They took a moment to wrap rags about their fingers, to pull their itchy cloaks closer around their shoulders.

By the time they crossed to the middle of the camp, a long line had formed. As usual, the biggest boys had pushed their way to the front, joking – when they bothered to make any excuses – that they needed their strength to serve the king, to serve him on the battlefield and in their beds. As if bearing testimony to the boys' crude words, a handful of girls was scattered among the soldiers, clinging to their protectors with fingers that seemed too thin, gazing upon them with faces that were too pinched.

As usual, Mair provided a rallying point for other girls, for the ones who had not yet pledged themselves as bedwarmers for the Little Army. With an occasional snarl and a grim voice, Mair led her troop through the ranks. Rani watched her redouble her efforts when she realized that there was soup as well as bread. Lan, the kitchen god, must be smiling on them today.

Even with Mair's assistance, though, the soup was gone by the time Rani got to the front of the line. Her disappointment was bitter across the back of her throat, and she started to turn away. Before she could back up from the rough boards, however, she was startled to find an entire loaf of bread placed in her cloth-bound hands. She looked up at the server, as if to ask if there were a mistake, and she found herself staring into Shea's eyes. The old sun managed to twist a smile across her lips. She spoke with the weary fortitude of a woman who cannot recognize defeat, who cannot distinguish loss from the brutal beating of daily life. “There you go, Rani Trader. Bread to tide you over until the night.”

The old woman had come north from the Swancastle with the boys; she had journeyed with Davin and Mon and Crestman and the others. She seemed to have made it her mission to watch over the children in the stockade, serving every meal with the grim kitchen wenches from the mercenaries' camp. Shea seemed oblivious to her stark surroundings. More than once, Rani had watched her gather up one of the smaller children, comforting a frightened girl or cajoling a boy who had turned an ankle on the ice. Shea was the only serving woman who spoke to the children, the only one who seemed to realize that the Little Army needed any form of care and attention beyond basic feeding.

Rani muttered her thanks and took the bread, moving out of the line so that she could chew in peace. Mair was occupied with resolving a dispute between two of the new girls, dividing up their bread in something approaching fairness.

As Rani watched Shea smile at the smallest children, at the weakest ones who had followed in Rani and Mair's wake, she realized that the old woman might be able to help her. The sun might help Rani and Mair escape. After all, she didn't spend her nights in the stockade. She could raise an alarm among the Amanthians, let them know what was really happening behind the log wall. She could smuggle in bows and arrows, weapons that had been forbidden to the confined Little Army. What would it take to convince the sun to try?

“She won't do it.” Crestman! By all the Thousand Gods, the captain seemed to appear out of nowhere all the time. Rani started guiltily and palmed the remains of her bread before she looked up into Crestman's face. He was studying her intently, and he shook his head as he sighed, “If you ask her, you'll just frighten her and give yourself away.”

“Ask who?” Rani demanded belligerently. “What do I have to give away?”

“You want out of here as much as the rest of us do.”

“You don't sound much like a loyal captain of the Little Army.” Rani softened her sneer by remembering to look around, remembering to make sure that no one overheard her. She had spoken with Crestman several times since she'd been thrown into the camp, and all their conversations ended this way: she wanted to argue with him, wanted to make him understand the folly of his acquiescence. Standing beside him, she could not help but envision his horrific confessions, his tortured tale of recruitment for the Little Army. She remembered his words, and then the frantic heat of his lips on hers, the flaming touch of his fingers through her sleeve when Bashi had discovered them.

Now, she shivered in the shadow of the stockade, and Crestman looked down at her, concern painted across his face. He hesitated only a moment and then offered her his leather cup. There was still soup in it, broth that tantalized with both heat and aroma. Rani wanted to decline, she wanted to push it back toward the boy, but her fingers closed around the leather as if they had a mind of their own. As she swallowed the warm, salty liquid, she tried not to think that Crestman's lips had touched the cup before hers.

Crestman nodded toward the sunwoman. “All I'm saying is not to rely on Shea. It's all she can do to save you a crust of bread. She thinks of all of us as her children. She's a good sun, but she isn't meant for this. This is too much for her.”

“A good sun would help restore some order to the world.”

“Order, for her, is following the swans. It always has been. Sin Hazar bears a swan tattoo, and he has commanded the Little Army into this camp, and so she acts on that command.”

“But the
girls
, Crestman. Surely we aren't part of that master military plan.”

“Of course you are. Oh, perhaps not you and Mair. You've become trapped in larger games. But the king has a purpose for the Little Army, and for the girls who serve us.”

“Us? Then you've forgotten your attempt to flee?”

“I've forgotten things that are dangerous to remember.”

“Sin Hazar has an army of grown men. What does he need with children?”

“The Little Army has skills those fat old men have forgotten. You saw us take down the Swancastle. Just wait until you see the next machine that Davin has built.”

“The flying machine?”

“I'm not at liberty to say more.”

“Crestman! Mair's already heard about it from – from some of the boys.”

Crestman's voice hardened, and he looked away, over Rani's head. “I'm a captain in the Little Army. I have loyalties.”

“Loyalties, like when you fled to Shea? Like when you lied to Davin's boys?” Rani managed to keep her voice low, but her words shook with bitterness.

“You don't know what you're saying!” Crestman complained. “I told you those things because I thought that I could trust you.”

“You
can
trust me, Crestman! You can trust me to help you, to help
us
break out of this camp. If we make it to Morenia, you'll never need to fear the Little Army again!”

“I fear no army, Ranita Glasswright.”

“Don't call me that.”

“That's what King Sin Hazar calls you, isn't it? That's your name.”

“No, lionboy.” He flinched at the appellation, and she swallowed a cruel, victorious smile. “That isn't my name. I'm Rani Trader. I'm Rani Trader until I keep the oaths that I swore, until I rebuild the glasswrights' guild.”

“You'll be Rani Trader for a long time, then. There's not much chance that you'll rebuild any guild while you're on a ship to Liantine.” His words were etched in acid, and she realized how deeply she had cut him by naming his caste. Before she could apologize, before she could make things right, Mair loped up.

“We're wanted at the gates, Rai.”

“Us?” For just an instant, Rani imagined that she and Mair were to be set free, that they were going back to Morenia, to Hal.

Mair crushed that hope by spitting into the slushy mud. “Aye. There's a new group arriving. All girls, apparently. We've got to help them settle in before the Little Army gets involved.”

Crestman shifted uncomfortably, but he did not contradict Mair. Rani sighed as she followed Mair to the gates.

The entire camp had gathered for the diversion. Sin Hazar's guards were particularly nervous, glancing out at the plain, and then inside the corral at the milling youth. More than one man had trained his bow on the children, and Rani could breathe in the tension like the stench of the latrines. “Mair,” she whispered uneasily, but Crestman was already taking action.

“All right, men!” he called, and the boys in the Little Army immediately turned toward his steady voice. “Into formation! We'll greet our newest recruits like soldiers; we'll show them what we're made of!”

“But Crestman,” a gangly lieutenant complained, “they're only
girls
. There's not a soldier in the lot.”

“Times have changed, man,” Crestman answered evenly. “The girls are a part of the Little Army, and we'll treat them with the respect that they deserve.”

“A lot that means,” the lieutenant sneered.

“What was that?” Crestman snapped.

“Nothing,” the boy answered, nodding reluctantly at his own soldiers, who fell into a ragged line. Crestman let the infraction go, turning his attention to the gate.

Rani stepped up with Mair, swallowing hard as she felt the guards' bows swing toward her. Slowly, she brought her hands out from under her patched cloak, displaying her rag-wrapped fingers as if to convince the soldiers that she was benign. The fighting men cranked open the stockade gate, leaving a gap scarcely wide enough for one girl to sidle through.

Mair stepped forward as that first child entered, and she raised her arms in a manner that Rani knew was intended to placate the soldiers, even as it welcomed the newcomer. “Hail, sister,” Mair called out. “Welcome to the camp of the Lit –”

“Tain!” Rani heard the cry like the twang of a bow-string. From the corner of her eye, she saw Crestman tense, watched him take a single, helpless step toward the gate. Before he could reach the entrance, though, a body hurtled past him, shoving him out of the way as if he were nothing more than a pile of kindling. “Tain!”

Shea fell upon the startled girl. The old sun threw her arms around the newcomer's neck, dragging her forward, pulling her past the stockade gate. Shea was sobbing and shouting, brushing back the girl's hair, asking questions and not waiting for answers. The girl, tall and proud, had crumpled at the sight of the old sun, and now tears streamed down her cold-pinched face. More girls edged into the enclosure, stopping dead at the spectacle that greeted them, the sunwoman and the sungirl clinging to each other in the sea of mud.