Free Glasswrights' Apprentice by Mindy L Klasky Page B

and we didn’t know what the soldiers were saying when they dragged us from our beds. They barely gave me time to waken Varna and pull my Dona from her cradle - they would have harmed my babes just like that.” The woman snapped her fingers in front of Rani’s nose. “If they hadn’t stopped to confiscate your father’s trinkets, we all might have smothered in our beds, with the smoke billowing about.”
    Rani stared at the scorched flagstones, at the heat that had twisted her neighbors’ stalls. Certainly, the tinker’s home was left standing, but the fog had lifted enough to show that the fancy-painted sign - the board Goody Tinker had taken such pride in only a few months before - was black with soot as it swung in the night breeze.
    â€œYou’ve brought shame on us, girl! You plucked the flower of Shanoranvilli, and the City will never be the same. Get away from here - you don’t belong with civilized folk.”
    â€œPlease, Goody Tinker, let me explain -”
    â€œGuard!”
    Rani scrambled into the night, frantic to leave behind her home, desperate to escape the safety she had sought only a few minutes before. As she rounded the corner, she realized that the voice that had summoned the guards was Varna’s. Rani’s own friend had turned against her.
    This time, Rani fled without any conscious plan. She was exhausted; her sleep in the kiln had completely failed to refresh her. Nevertheless, she was able to avoid the guards easily, familiar as she was with this quarter. The fog assisted her escape, and she drifted in and out of the clammy banks, with only the tolling Pilgrims’ Bell and her pounding heart to break the silence of the sleeping City.
    The entire time she ran, Rani wondered about Goody Tinker’s words. Her mother, her father, all her brothers and sisters… They couldn’t be dead; Goody would not have spoken about them in the present tense. Rather, they must be taken into Shanoranvilli’s dungeons, reluctant companions to the glasswrights’ apprentices.
    That conclusion was easier to dwell on than the other lesson she had learned on the tinkers’ doorstep. Varna hated her. Varna, who had been her best friend, whom she had pledged to love as a sister for her entire life.… Varna had called the guards.
    When a stitch daggered her side, Rani slowed her headlong pace and set aside her bitter thoughts. She staggered down deserted streets, stumbling over her own feet in utter exhaustion. Pulling her tunic closer and cinching in the waist, she wished that she had managed to keep her cloak. When her fingers snagged in the ragged hole where her guild badge used to be, she could only stare stupidly at the trailing threads.
    That evil crow had done her a service. Tuvashanoran’s edict against the Guild would have forced her to sacrifice the shiny emblem herself; better that some living creature profit from the loss. That thought was so drenched in self-pity that Rani could not keep a solitary tear from leaking onto her cheeks. The tear turned to a sob, and the sob to a torrent. Huddling in a shadowed doorway, a thirteen-year-old disgraced apprentice cried herself to sleep, accompanied only by the tolling of the Pilgrims’ Bell, summoning wanderers from the fog-shrouded hillsides around the City.
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    Chapter 4
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    Rani woke before dawn. At first, she was not sure what had summoned her from her uneasy dreams. Then, she realized that it was her turn to light the kitchen fires, and she’d best hurry or Cook would be furious. That thought, of course, reminded her that Cook was furious, if she wasn’t dead. And that reminded her that she had promised to light a candle to Lan. Rani rolled over and forced her eyes to open.
    And closed them again when she saw the ring of eyes staring back at her.
    â€œCor!” came a harsh exclamation. “Ye’ve gone ’n’ woke ’er,