Glasswrights' Progress (32 page)

Each time the old man exploded in anger, a ripple ran through the assembled Little Army. Shea picked out a few of the boys that she knew, soldiers who had been stationed at the Swancastle. They eyed Davin with an excited eagerness; they knew the old man's ways, and they understood that they were about to see some novel invention.

As Shea watched, Crestman walked around from the far side of the moth-machine, leaning over the figure strapped into the willow-wrapped harness. It took Shea a moment to recognize Monny. The child's flame-red braid was pushed under a leather cap. His freckled features were animated as he spoke to Crestman, gesturing over his shoulder at the folded parchment wings. Crestman shook his head and tugged at one of the wooden knobs, moving the entire engine forward a pace. Monny gripped a leather hand-hold above his head and responded vehemently.

Glancing at the bemused guards, Shea moved closer to the arguing boys. The back of her neck itched as she felt the grown soldiers' arrows train upon her, but she forced herself to stand straight, to walk as if she had no care in the world. She was the closest thing either of those boys had to a mother, and it was her job to smooth over their dispute.

Crestman was scowling as he picked at one of the rope lashings. “I'm telling you, soldier, it's not safe. I won't have one of my men risking his life on some unproven flying machine.”

“Aw, Crestman, you don't know what you're talking about. Davin says it's safe, and that's good enough for me. He added glue to the cross-braces, so you can't complain about that anymore.”

The captain looked as if he were going to rebuke his rebellious soldier, but he settled for saying, “Davin's opinion is a little tainted, don't you agree? He has something of an interest in this.”

“Davin's interest is in serving King Sin Hazar.” Monny turned his freckled face toward Amanth's walls, as if offering up his fealty. A look of surprise and amazement spread across his features. “Cor! Look, Crestman! It's the king himself!”

Shea followed the boy's excited finger. Gazing across the plain, she could make out a dozen horsemen wrapped in heavy winter cloaks, accompanied by a standard bearer. The dragon of Amanthia billowed on the breeze of their fast ride.

“On your knees!” cried one of the adult soldiers behind Shea, and the Little Army dropped in fealty as the king and his company rode up in a flurry of hoofbeats. Shea eased her tired bones to the ground, halfway between the flying machine and the girls from the south. She took a moment to be grateful that the frozen earth was covered with only a dusting of snow; it had not yet been churned to freezing slush by passing feet.

King Sin Hazar drew up in front of the company, curbing his stallion with an iron hand on the animal's bit. The horse pranced in front of the Little Army, mincing sideways and snorting at a sudden gust of wind. Shea glanced up through her eyelashes to view the king.

He wore a cloak lined with ermine. The white fur framed the king's blue-dyed riding leathers, making the man seem larger than any possible life. The king of all Amanthia wore supple leather boots that reached to his thighs, and his spurs were washed with gold. As Shea caught her breath in astonishment at her sovereign's power and force, she realized that the Amanthian dragon was painted on his chest, glittering black lines tracing across his broad metal breastplate.

Shea could barely bring herself to gaze upon her liege's face. His dark hair was loose, flying on the wind in stark contrast to the clouted boys in the Little Army. A golden crown was on his head, and a handful of flat-cut diamonds and rubies glinted dully from the metal. The king's beard was even darker than the hair on his head, and his lips were as bright as cherries in the cold winter air. But it was the king's
eyes
that made Shea's heart beat fast – those eagle eyes that took in more than any mere man could see. King Sin Hazar's gaze flashed across the Little Army like a furrier measuring a sable.

Shea saw the king count up the neat lines of boys, and she noted the precise instant that he registered the girls. For just one heartbeat, the royal gaze lingered in its sweeping perusal, and Shea feared that
she
had attracted royal scrutiny. Then she realized that the king was looking behind her, at the two southern girls, Mair and Rani Trader. The king maneuvered his stallion to stand before the outlanders, and for just an instant, Shea thought that he would speak to the maidens.

They must have thought so as well. Both girls raised their eyes to the king, acting as if they were swanchildren. Shea caught her breath as Rani Trader took a half-step forward. The girl actually drew breath to speak, made as if she would reach up for the royal stallion's bridle. Before she could act so inappropriately, though, Mair caught at her arm. Rani tugged herself free and lashed an angry glance at her friend, but by the time she turned back to the king, he had edged his horse farther down the line.

When King Sin Hazar spoke to the Little Army, he did not single out the two forlorn southern girls with purloined sun tattoos on their cheeks. Instead, he cheered his royal forces, his dedicated soldiers. “Well met, Little Army!” the king proclaimed. “You bring honor to all Amanthia!”

There was a moment's hesitation, but then the captains led their boys in a round of cheers. A few of the girls joined in, hesitantly adding their treble voices to the rollicking greeting.

“As many of you know, our campaign is moving forward!” Again, cheers. “You will be the first in a new wave of battles against Liantine, against the upstart eastern kingdom that refuses to bow its neck to our mighty Amanthia.” Pandemonium surged on the field.

The king gestured his standard bearer forward. The young squire who held the banner dipped it toward the king, taking care to let the long pennant catch the wind. The dragon's tail streamed out over Sin Hazar's head. “We are pleased to see your loyal arms raised to fight for us, Little Army. But even more importantly, we are pleased to see that our greatest advisor, our wisest councillor has created a new weapon to use against Liantine.”

The king turned in his saddle and inclined his head toward Davin. The old man managed to look up from his scrolls long enough to accept the royal salute. He even remembered to hide his scowl as a gust of wind tugged at the winged machine behind him. Monny swallowed a yelp as the moth-engine started to lift from the ground, and Crestman grabbed rapidly at one of the ropes that tethered the strange construction.

King Sin Hazar continued as if there had been no disturbance. “Lord Davin has crafted many a novel invention. Some of you have seen the mining equipment that he created, the engines that will eat the very earth from beneath Liantine's walls. Today, all of you will bear witness to another device, a most magnificent engine that will bring the Little Army supremacy over
all
our enemies. My lord Davin!” King Sin Hazar bowed slightly in his saddle, making the gesture extravagant by letting his ermine cloak billow behind him.

“Your Majesty,” Davin muttered distractedly, and then he stepped over to the moth-like machine. “Boy! Don't waste your king's time!”

Monny shrugged his shoulders elaborately, forcing Crestman to step back. The freckled boy grinned at the Little Army, and Shea remembered when her own Pom had smiled with that much pride, when he had known that much confidence. Her own lionboy had looked at her just like that, with his eyeteeth too long, his grown, adult teeth in a child's mouth.

Davin grabbed Monny's shoulder and pushed him back in the willow-covered harness. The child adjusted a pair of straps that cut over his shoulders, but the old man was not satisfied with the lay of the restraints. Davin pushed the boy to the very back of the harness and cinched the shoulder straps tightly, pulling twice more until Shea could see that the leather cut into Monny's shoulders. Then Davin wrapped two more lengths about the child, securing his wrists to the moth-machine. Again, he pulled sharply at the restraints, tightening them enough that Monny tensed with the pain.

The process went on, with Davin tying Monny to the shorter, back wings of the machine, linking the parchment membranes to the boy's feet by cinching tight knots about Monny's ankles. The left rope refused to fall to the old man's satisfaction, and he retied it three times, each time sawing deeper into Monny's flesh. On the last attempt, the child actually caught his tongue between his teeth, stifling his cry.

“Leave him be!” Shea wanted to scream. “Leave him alone!” She held her tongue, though, remembering that she was not the one who could speak against the old man. She was only a sun, a sun far away from her own orderly home. Who was she to speak out against the king's own councillor? Who was she to question a swan's desires?

As if to reward Shea's sudden realization, Davin stepped back from the flying machine. He threw his arms up over his head, and he cried, “Go, boy! Fly her to the clouds!”

Monny waggled his arms and legs, moving his limbs as much as his constricting bonds would permit. Each motion caught the ropes, stretching them tighter against the boy's flesh. Monny's face pulled into a mask of concentration; his eyes squinted closed with the strain of coordinating his limbs. His jaw tightened as if he were carved of wood, and beads of sweat popped out among his freckles, even though his breath plumed in the freezing air.

“Come on, boy!” Davin bellowed. “We've been over this before. Ach! Stop it, you fool! You'll tangle the lines! No! No! Let your arms down!”

Monny collapsed against the willow-wrapped harness, and the parchment wings of the flying machine rattled down around him. Davin stormed over to the boy, swearing fluently as he cuffed the child. “We've practiced this, boy! You know you have to move both arms at the same pace. Both arms, and both legs, but not at the same time. You'll never keep her stable if you try to open all four wings at once!”

Monny started to gasp some protest, but the old man continued his invective. “I don't know what you could have been before the Little Army stooped to take you in! You don't have the strength of a lion, and you lack the common sense of a sun. In the name of all the Thousand Gods, you're too stupid to be an owl, and I won't even insult His Majesty by implying that you might have been a swan!” The entire time he ranted, Davin relashed the ropes, tightening the bonds between Monny and the machine. The boy accepted his punishment in silence, his dark eyes glinting with suspicious moisture as the old man worked.

“There!” Davin exclaimed at last. “Let's see if you can follow simple directions this time.”

It took only an instant for Monny to foul the lines again. Davin's face was nearly purple as he stepped forward. This time, he reached up to the king's standard bearer, snatching the squire's riding crop from his boot. He stormed over to Monny with murder in his face, laying about the boy's arms and legs with the crop, as if he would flay away the snagged ropes. Monny tried to protect his face, but his futile gestures only tangled the lines further, pulling one entirely off its pulley.

Shea took a half-step forward, a cry rising in her throat. “He's only a boy!” she started to yelp. Those four words resonated through her entire body, shaking down her hands. Shea threw a wild glance at Crestman, remembering how she had hoped to protect him from her orphans with the same invocation. She had wanted to save Crestman, but she had lost him to the Little Army, just as she had lost Hartley, had lost her own Pom. Monny might be only a boy, but childhood was no safeguard against brutal, bloody death.

As if to underscore Shea's realization, Davin slashed the riding crop across Monny's face, laying open a stripe beneath the boy's eye. Only when the blood had begun to seep over the child's freckles did the old man step back, panting as if he had rowed a boat all the way to Liantine. As Monny hung in his ropes, trussed like a chicken, the old man began to reset the lines, tying them one more time, adjusting them over the tricky pulley.

When the moth was restrung, the old man turned to the Little Army. “You!” He pointed a bony finger at Crestman. “Yes, you! Stop your gaping and step up here.” Crestman swallowed a grimace of distaste and walked to the point that Davin indicated. The boy darted a quick look at his king, but seemed cowed by the stony gaze he found there. Davin pushed on Crestman's shoulders. “Kneel down. Get where he can see you. There! Now, I want you to count the arm-strokes. Like this. Stroke! Stroke!”

Crestman waited a moment to get the proper rhythm, and then he took up the chant. The first time he barked the command, his voice quavered, but then he fell into the pattern. Shea remembered standing beside the Swancastle, listening to the boy count for the mining machine. Crestman had led the Little Army to victory then. She only hoped that he could do as much here.

Davin nodded as Crestman settled into the cadence, and then he looked out over the assembled children, his gaze darting like a snake's tongue. For just an instant, Shea thought that he was going to settle on Serena, that he was going to order the swangirl to assist him. Shea started to step forward herself, to volunteer so that she might spare her littlest orphan, but Davin growled and shook his head. Instead, he pointed a bony finger at one of the southern girls, at Mair.

“You! No, no! Don't kneel in front of him. That'll just be confusing. There you go. Off to the side. Let's hear you! Even, girl, even! In
between
the boy's count. Louder! Louder!”

“Come on!” Mair shouted between Crestman's count. “Come on!”

In reply, Monny sawed his legs back and forth, activating the back wings of the moth-machine. Crestman raised his voice, as if to remind the boy to control the front wings. “Stroke! Stroke!”

Mair shortened her command to keep the timing straight. “Mon!” she cried. “Mon!”

Shea saw the syllable register with the little boy. She saw the way he arched his back, the way he caught his breath in his narrow chest. Crestman shouted; Mair replied. Monny bit his lip and swept his hands up and down, swaggered his legs back and forth.