Free Glasswrights' Progress by Mindy L Klasky

prince’s certainty that she would never succeed in rebuilding the destroyed glasswrights. She made her voice cold, almost as cold as Mair’s had been. “She’s my friend, Your Highness. She stood by me when no others would. Surely even you understand the value of that?”
    Bashi looked as if he’d been slapped. His pale blue eyes blinked as he measured the passion in Rani’s voice. “What do you mean? I understand the value of friendship. I understand the value of faithful friends. Do you realize that I have lost them all, Ranita? Do you realize that I used to be a prince among men, and now I’m nothing but an outcast traitor, despite the fact that I’ve done nothing to earn men’s distrust?” The prince spoke without any of his usual haughtiness, as if he were truly inquiring about Rani’s thoughts, about her beliefs.
    Bashi’s tone gave Rani the courage to answer from her heart. “You can’t understand faithfulness, Bashanorandi. Otherwise, you’d never tell me not to trust a girl who has proven herself my friend. You’d never advise me not to trust a girl who has been injured in her service to me. She’s beside me! She rose up from her own sickbed even now to make sure that I was all right.”
    â€œI’m saying you can’t trust a brat who was bred in the streets and will do anything to put food in her own mouth.”
    â€œAnd you think that your own twisted birth makes you so much more trustworthy?” Rani retorted before she had a chance to think about her words.
    Bashi’s eyes blazed beneath his ginger hair, and he reached out to grab at Rani’s face. He caught her chin between his fingers, pinching hard through the flesh to her bone. “I had no control over my birth! I chose neither my father nor my mother, and I did not ask to play out that farce in King Shanoranvilli’s court.”
    The prince’s fingers dug into Rani’s flesh as if Bashi intended to sculpt new bones for her. Rani looked into the youth’s eyes with terror, wondering what he would do, how he would focus his anger. She longed to point out the complete illogic of his argument, to show him that he was merely proving what she herself had said. Bashi had had no say in his life, and he’d been scarred. Mair, too, had not chosen to be Touched.
    But Rani dared not speak. She dared not make any attempt to force words past Bashi’s iron grip. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, unbidden. The sign of weakness only tightened Bashi’s fingers more, and his wrist trembled. Then, like a drunken man pushing away more wine, the prince thrust Rani away, shoving her toward the railing that protected the boat’s prow.
    Rani clutched the wooden support and forced herself to take deep breaths. She forbade herself to raise a hand to her face, to finger the bruises that she knew would be swimming to the surface of her flesh. Instead, she concentrated on quieting her rebellious belly, on breathing past the pain in her jaw. She let the breeze of the ship’s passing carry away her tears.
    â€œRanita –” Bashi began, and she felt him step nearer. There was a note of panic
in his voice, a true fear that appeared to spring from deep inside his mind. She did not want to
hear a prince’s fear, though. She did not want to hear an awkward apology. She did not want Bashi to
change from evil to good, and possibly back again.
    Rani forced herself to gaze out over the prow. Incredibly, the sleek black and white fish still frolicked in the wake, oblivious to the angry drama played out above them. When Bashi did not leave, Rani finally managed to speak, determined to shatter the heavy, awkward silence as if it were a piece of flawed glass. “Look at the fish.”
    â€œThey’re dolphins,” the prince answered dully. Nevertheless, even he could not ignore the leaping creatures, and Rani caught a loosening in the