Glasswrights' Progress (6 page)

“Hush,” she crooned, resting her chapped hand against his cheek. “Hush, little lion. It's all right. You're in my hut, here with your brothers and sisters. You'll be fine. You'll be safe.”

Crestman quieted beneath her soothing touch, never fully waking. Shea sat by his chair long into the night, rocking back and forth and thinking of Pom. Thinking of her lost son, who had been among the first wave of children sucked into the whirlwind of King Sin Hazar's schemes, after the Uprising had been put down. Shea thought of the wise men in the village who had first decided to rebel against their king because of taxes, because of cold, hard
money
. She thought of starvation and honor and helpless, hopeless children.

The next morning, Hartley confronted Shea as Tain served up bowls of acorn porridge. Shea knew the gruel was bitter, but at least she could put something in each of the small bellies beneath her roof. She scavenged an extra bowl and started to carry it to Crestman.

“The prisoner may not eat.” Hartley's voice was flat.

“Nonsense! He's a growing boy!”

“He's a growing boy who would have killed you. You risk our safety and your own if you feed him.”

“Hartley, I can't let him starve to death. I'd be no better than King Sin Hazar.”

“Torino,” Hartley appealed.

The owl chimed in immediately. “The lion speaks the truth, Sunwoman. That soldier intended to kill us. To kill us and steal our food.”

“But what –” Shea almost stopped, overwhelmed by the notion that she – a
sunwoman – was debating an owl. “What if he
wasn't
deserting? I thought he was. It
looked like he was. But what if he was just gathering troops to bring to King Sin Hazar?”

“Is that any better?” Torino cocked his head to one side, and he sounded honestly
curious about Shea's thoughts.

“That means he's not a bad person. He's merely trying to do as his king commands. He's merely trying to recruit the Little Army.”

“But his king would command him to take all the boys. And Serena too.”

Of course King Sin Hazar wanted the boys – whatever their skysign. And he wanted Serena. He wanted all the swanchildren in Amanthia, all the potential leaders from Shea's rebellious province, even though the Uprising was over, had been over for years.

Poor Serena. The pale, moonstruck child was sleeping even now, huddled in her tiny private room beneath the eaves. The sun's strong rays were too great for Serena – how could the swangirl possibly survive King Sin Hazar's military camp?

“Very well,” Shea acceded after a long minute's indecision. The words tasted bitter in her mouth. “To save my children.”

Hartley nodded his approval. “All right, then. Let's get everyone organized. We'll head to the stream and try to catch some fish. The trout should finally have begun their run.”

“Watch your step, Lion!” Shea snapped. “We sunfolk know about gathering food, not you lions. Have you already forgotten what happened when you decided to hunt a boar?”

Hartley looked abashed, and Shea swallowed the anger that constricted her throat. First she was arguing with an owl, and now she was angry at a lion! What was the world coming to? What evil had King Sin Hazar worked, even in her own house?

There was no sense in making Hartley look foolish, especially in front of the others. “You're right, though,” Shea said after an uneasy pause. “Fish would be sweet on the tongue.”

Only when Hartley had gathered the children together did Shea decide not to accompany them. “You go ahead, Hartley. Take the owls along with the suns. They all need sunlight and fresh air. No, no, Torino. No arguments. Take your owls and play your debates by the brook. Tain, keep an eye on everyone.”

“But aren't you coming?” Tain seemed concerned.

“I have things to do here. This house doesn't take care of itself.”

Hartley frowned. “I can't spare extra lions to guard you.”

“Nonsense. You need to leave someone to watch over Serena, in any case.”

“But there's an additional risk, with the prisoner.”

“With a fifteen-year-old boy, tied to a chair? I may be a sunwoman, Hartley, but I'm not daft. I can take care of myself.” Hartley grumbled, and he left his two best lions to guard the cottage. He glanced back with every step, but he led the other children toward the distant riverbank.

Shea made sure that the lions left behind were busy scanning the horizon before she ducked back inside her cottage. She was moving to the hearth before she knew it, looking down at Crestman.

Crestman. Such a sturdy name for so young a soldier.

Hartley had tightened the youth's gag, and the rough cloth sawed into the corners of the young lion's mouth. His blindfold had slipped off sometime during the night, and he glared at her, his scarred cheek livid in the gloom beneath the rafters. Shea thought of Pom, of the way her son had raged when she had punished him for stealing boiled sweets in the village. “
I
had nothing to do with this, child. The lions protect us. You should remember that much, from the days before you cast your lot with King Sin Hazar. Now I'll feed you, if you swear to stay quiet. If the lions outside hear you, I'll have Hartley to answer to. Do you promise?”

She held a bowl of porridge so that he could see the food he was missing. She imagined his belly clenching in hunger. Berries were no meal for a growing boy. Besides, he'd eaten their meager hoard hours before. At last, Crestman nodded. She set the bowl on the floor as she loosened his gag.

“Let me go!” he whispered as soon as he had worked spit back into his mouth.

“I can't do that, boy.”

“They'll kill me!”

“And King Sin Hazar will kill us all, when you lead him here. Kill us or steal my boys for the Little Army.” Shea kept her voice quiet, fighting for reason as if she were an owl.

“I won't lead him here. I promise. You were right. I
was
leaving the king's army. I don't want to be a soldier anymore.”

“He'll find you, though. He'll track you down and bring you back to his camp.”

“But I won't tell about you! I promise!”

“You'll have no choice. We've heard stories about the king, about what he does to the children who desert him.”

“No worse than what your lions will do to me!”

“They'll do what they need to. They'll do what's best for all of us.”

“For all of
you
. Not for me.” Crestman's voice broke across his harsh whisper. “You know they'll kill me.” His eyes brimmed with tears.

“I know nothing of the sort. Father Nariom has taught my little owls well. They'll think on this and decide what is right. Now, are you going to eat or not? I need to sweep the floor.”

For a moment, she thought that Crestman would send her away. Then, the boy's belly rumbled, loud enough that she could hear it in the close room. “I'll eat.”

She fed him the bitter gruel, using the spoon to wipe spilled porridge from his chin. She ignored the tears that trickled down his cheeks, silver against the scar from his missing tattoo.

The sun was setting by the time the other children returned to the cottage. Shea heard them before she saw them; their voices bounced off the trees. When the group emerged from the forest, they were in high spirits, singing and whooping. Four of the children held strings of fish – lithe, silver trout that danced in the dying sunlight.

Shea crowed praise for her charges, lavishing compliments as Tain cooked supper. She longed to give some of the flaky fish to Crestman, but she dared not. She had replaced his gag at the first sound of the other children, and now she tried to ignore the guilt that tugged at the back of her mind.

Hartley turned to her when everyone had finished eating, after the children had sucked the sweet flesh from heads and tails and fins. Shea's belly tightened at the grave expression on his face. “We've decided. Crestman must die.”

“No!”

“We have no choice. If we let him go, he'll likely be caught by King Sin Hazar's men. When they're through torturing him, they'll come after us. At the very least, they'll take Serena and conscript my lions. They might take
all
the boys. They might burn down the house. They might kill us all.”

“So we'll keep him. We'll make him one of us!”

“We can't trust him, Shea, and I don't have enough lions to watch him every day. The owls finally agreed. We'll take him down to the stream and drown him. It will look like an accident, in case any of King Sin Hazar's soldiers come through here later.”

“He's just a boy!” Shea exclaimed in anguish, and the words sounded oddly familiar, as if she had wailed them in the past.

“He's a soldier.”

“Did all of you agree to this?” Shea rounded on the other children. Tain returned her
stare placidly. Some of the younger suns looked abashed, but the lions all stared back without
blinking. Shea caught a couple of the owls tilting their heads, studying her as if she were some
curious specimen.

Torino stepped forward and nodded deferentially. “All of us discussed it. We owls debated it for the better part of the day. There are no alternatives – the soldier must die.”

“Crestman! Say his name, at least.”

Torino shook his head. “His name has no meaning. He's the enemy. His death will enable us all to live.”

Shea looked at her charges. Hartley gazed back with the solemn expression he used when he assigned his lions their guardposts. Torino blinked hard, but his face betrayed no emotion.

I want things the way they were.
Shea thought.
I want my own son and daughter. They were
good
children. They would know right from wrong.
Shea raised her chin and announced, “I want this brought before the swan.”

“What!”

She had surprised Hartley. “I want to take this to the swan. Let the swan make the decision.”

“Shea, you know that the Swancastle is empty. King Sin Hazar came through there first of all, when he began assembling the Little Army. You told us yourself that your own daughter was taken.”

She set her jaw against the memory. “We have our own swan. We'll ask her.”

“Serena?” Hartley almost snorted his surprise.

“Serena.”

“Don't be ridiculous! She's a child –”

“Serena,” Shea repeated firmly, feeling the rightness of what she demanded.

“Fine.” Hartley squinted in the dim light and nodded to Tain. “Fetch her downstairs.”

Only a moment later, the oldest sungirl led Serena into the room. The little swan's pale features were creased into a frown, and her nose twitched at the lingering aroma of trout. She had eaten her share, along with the better part of Tain's portion, before she had gone up to her room.

Crestman was hustled upright, his hands bound tight behind his back. His mouth was
still lashed tight with the gag. Hartley appointed two lions to stand beside the soldier. “The
prisoner is to stay silent,” Hartley snapped. “If he so much as sneezes, kill him. Do you
understand?” The last question was directed at the trussed-up child-soldier, not the guards.
Crestman merely glared at the older lion.

Hartley turned back to Serena. “Swangirl,” he said, and he made a stiff, formal bow. “We would have you decide a matter of justice.”

Serena sniffed again, but a light of power kindled at the back of her eyes. “Aye?”

“The lions and the owls have concluded that this prisoner must die. The sunwoman thinks his life should be spared. What do you say?”

Serena's voice went soft with wonder. “You want me to decide?”

Hartley responded gruffly, but his words were laden with ingrained respect. “You're the swan. The only one we have.”

Shea forced herself to step forward. She must speak out against her lion. Hartley was wrong; Torino was wrong. Tain too. They were only children. She was an old woman, and she knew what was right. Shea swallowed hard and worked her throat to get past a lifetime of belief. “Serena, Crestman does not deserve to die.”

“
Crestman
,” Hartley's voice grated over the lionname, “is a traitor to his people. He came to kill us. He raised steel against the sunwoman as the children gathered berries. He belongs to King Sin Hazar. We have no idea what deviltry he learned in the Little Army's camps. He probably knows a dozen way to kill you, swangirl.”

“He's just a boy!” Shea cried, and now she remembered the first time that she had wailed those words. She remembered receiving the terrible news that Pom had been cut down in King Sin Hazar's camps. Her only son had been murdered in the barracks of the first corps of child-soldiers, killed when he refused to go along with some brutal Little Army training regimen. Learning of her loss, Shea had cried out even before she realized that she was alone, that she had lost both Pom and Larina, and Bram so long ago. For just an instant, she had pictured herself kneeling in the middle of King Sin Hazar's camps, on her knees among the children who served the king's cause. She had seen herself holding Pom's body, stretching out his boy-arms and his boy-legs.

But she had never seen him. She had never learned what King Sin Hazar's troops did with Pom's body, although she had heard the rumors about archery practice and the children's ravenous hounds. Shea swallowed hard, knowing that she needed to plead her case, knowing that she needed to make Serena understand. The words would not come, though. Shea could only manage, “Serena, he's a child.”

“We're all children!” Hartley spat. “We're all children, and if you let that one live, then all the rest of us will die.”

Serena looked from Hartley to Shea and back again. A look of wonder brightened her pinched face. “You'll do whatever I say?”

“Aye,” Hartley vowed promptly.

“Aye,” Shea managed after a much longer pause. Serena was a swangirl. Swans must be obeyed. That was what Shea had always believed, before the Uprising. Before the Little Army. Before children had their tattoos carved from their faces.