Glasswrights' Progress (11 page)

“Why can't we go into the tavern, Shea?” Crestman was still whining as the village faded behind them.

“We don't know who's in the tavern, boy. We don't know what we'll find.”

“We'll find food and drink, we know that much.”

“Aye, and how would you buy it, boy?”

“You have two copper pennies.”

“How do you know that?” Shea tried to keep fear from her voice, letting anger wash her words instead.

“I know things,” the boy replied stubbornly.

Before Shea realized what she was doing, she whirled on the lionboy, catching his throat in her rough hands. “You don't go prowling through my pockets, boy. Awake or asleep, I'm the closest thing you've got to a family on this road. You sneak on me while I'm sleeping, and you just remember what I can do to you. I may have saved you from my children, but I'm not above slitting your throat and letting the crows eat your liver, if you do ill by me.”

As Shea spoke the words, she believed herself; she believed the rage that trembled through her fingers. Crestman must have believed her as well, for he dropped his grumbling and complaining, not even looking over his shoulder as the village faded from view. That night, Shea removed the two copper coins from her knotted kerchief, sliding them into the cracked leather of her shoe.

Shoes proved to be a problem again, only two days later. Shea had never worn her shoes for as long as she had on the road, and she'd rubbed blisters on the very first day of their expedition. She had tended to her feet carefully that first night, breaking the angry, watery bubbles and binding the tender flesh with soft cloth ripped from her underskirts. She'd hobbled a bit for the next couple of days, but her feet were beginning to heal, at least enough to let her focus on the other agonies of a body not used to walking, to the hard labor of living on the road.

Crestman, though, did not have as easy a time. Certainly, the boy was used to travel, accustomed to lean provisions and sorry accommodations. He was a growing child, though. Shea noticed him limping after the first couple of days, when her own pained feet had stopped burning and settled into a dull ache.

“What is it, boy? What's wrong with your legs?”

“Nothing.”

“Nonsense. I can see that you're limping. No reason to lie to me.”

“There's nothing you can do to help.” Crestman set his jaw and continued walking, visibly steeling himself not to limp. Shea did not have a chance to follow up until they reached a stream later in the morning. She pointed out some fleshy mushrooms growing along the edge of the creek, and she frowned as Crestman lurched toward the food. When he came back, he slipped in the wet earth, and he swore loudly as his feet twisted out from under him.

“Watch your words, lionboy.”

“I'm not a lion,” he responded reflexively, swallowing hard and offering her the newly harvested mushrooms. They smelled of good, clean earth. Shea brushed hers off against her skirts and began to chew, grateful for the food in her belly.

Crestman sank down beside her and raised his own mushroom to his lips. He had not begun to eat, though, when Shea darted out a hand, snaking it around his ankle. The maneuver sent her own food flying, but she caught the boy tightly. Her fingers crashed against the end of his leather shoes, jamming hard against his toes.

“Ow!” Crestman exclaimed, and he twisted to get away.

Shea only tightened her grip on the boy's leg, using stiffened fingers to test the shoes. There was no question – Crestman's feet were jammed into the leather; his toes were hard up against the front edge of the unforgiving leather. “Well, no wonder you're limping, boy! Why didn't you say something?”

“What was there to say?” Shea's ungentle ministrations had brought hot tears to the boy's eyes. “I'm a soldier in King Sin Hazar's army.”

“Not anymore, you're not. Not when you're wandering through the countryside with a sunwoman. Not when you're sneaking beside a riverbed, trying to avoid detection by His Majesty's troops. If we're going to travel together, you can't lie to me.”

“I haven't lied! I haven't said a word!”

“There are lies in silence, boy. Sometimes worse lies than speech.” Shea shook her head and let the youth go. “Take off your shoes.”

“What? I'll never get them back on again!”

“I said, take them off.” Shea's voice toughened as she spoke, until her words sounded harder than the water-tightened leather on Crestman's feet. Swallowing his grumbling complaint, the boy complied, easing off the cracked shoes. He handed them to Shea.

Shea managed not to gloat over Crestman's ill-disguised look of relief, the easing of pain in the tight lines of his jaw, his temples. Instead, she drew her long knife, the only weapon that she had taken from her cottage. The blade was sharp, but she still needed to fight with the stony leather. She set her own jaw as she sawed through the toes at the front of each shoe. When she handed them back to Crestman, he looked up at her in disbelief.

“My feet will freeze!”

“You'll wrap them in cloth. You'd be a cripple if you wore those things much longer.”

“They were good shoes!”

“Good for a child, perhaps. You're not a child anymore, Crestman.” She spoke the words in a chiding tone, but they made the youth stand taller. He wasn't a child. He was growing to be a man. “We'll see if we can get you new ones, when we arrive.”

“Arrive where?”

“Wherever we find ourselves,” Shea finally responded. The answer sufficed to get Crestman to wrap his feet with more bandages, torn from the last of her underskirts. When they walked away from the stream, the boy moved awkwardly at first, growing accustomed to his new, open-toed footwear. It only took him a few strides, though, to fall into a soldierly swagger. Shea swallowed a smile and let him take the lead for the rest of the day.

Their newfound companionship made Crestman's behavior doubly shocking when the boy lashed out at her, less than one day from the Swancastle. They had stopped to drink by a stream, grateful for the cool water after a morning of walking along a high, dry road.

“Stay here,” Crestman insisted. “I'll go on ahead and let you know what I find.”

“Nonsense. We'll walk together, as we have so far.”

“It's dangerous. I'll go first.”

“You're only a boy.”

“That's not what you said the other day. I'm a soldier in King Sin Hazar's army!”

“Not anymore.” Shea set the words down stubbornly. She had almost grown accustomed to speaking back to lions. How a few days on the trail could change a good sunwoman like her.… “You're not anything anymore, Crestman. You're eager enough to point that out when you think it will work to your advantage. I won't let you go on alone.”

“And how will you stop me?” The boy's face had flushed crimson, as if he were stained by the leaves of the trees that flirted across the road. He steadied his voice by settling a hand on his knife-hilt.

“I'll box your ears, if I have to. You're not so old that I won't treat you like a child, if you insist on acting like one.”

“You wouldn't dare!”

“I wish we were back at the cottage, lionboy. You'd talk to Hartley, then. You'd know that I don't make idle threats.”

“You're only a sun.”

Shea moved faster than she'd thought possible. Her hand darted out and grasped at Crestman's fleshy earlobe, twisting viciously as she jerked him close. Even as he opened his mouth to protest, she curved her hand into a cup. She clapped the side of his head with all her force, setting free her nervousness, her fear, her hatred of this frightening, unknowable life.

Her own fingers stung with the force of her blow, but she kept her grip on the boy's ear as he tried to twist free. Her hands were strong, wiry after years of laundering and scrubbing, plucking chickens and shelling peas. “Only a sun, boy?” she asked, but she was not certain if she said the words aloud, or if she only thought them.

Crestman's cry was wordless, a gasping protest like a toddler who startles itself by falling down a steep slope. Shea shook her stinging fingers and grimaced at the boy. “You asked for it, you did! I've told you to listen to me. I've told you that I'm the one leading us. I saved your life, you miserable brat!”

Shea heard the words tumble from her lips, scattering across the clearing like shards of broken pottery. She wanted to scramble after her anger, gather it up in her trembling hands, but it was too late. The words were spoken, the blow delivered. Shea shook in the morning sunlight, remembering the last time that she had struck Pom, the last time she had raised her hand against her own flesh and blood.

That had been the day when Pom announced that he was leaving her, that he was riding to the Swancastle. She had protested then, told Pom that he could not leave her alone and unattended in the woods. Pom had stood up proudly, drawing himself to his full height as he must have imagined warriors doing for generations before him. Shea had flung herself at him, rage tightening her hands into fists. She had pounded on her son's chest, beating at him with wordless fury. She could not believe that he would abandon her, could not imagine that he would let his own mother live alone and unaided in the woods.…

Shea could remember that fury as if it had only beat in her veins a moment before. Lionboys. They were all fools. They all claimed that the stars drove them, forced them onto distant paths. They all claimed that the skychildren were bound by the fate of their births. Well, Shea knew better now. She knew that a sun could make decisions, could decide her fate, even if she wasn't born under one of the night signs.

Why didn't the lions listen to their mothers? Why didn't they do what was right? Why didn't they let the old order of the world work?

“Crestman,” Shea began, uncupping her hand. The young soldier took a step away,
lowering his head and shaking it, like a bull tossing away flies from its ears. “I didn't mean
–” she began, and fumbled for words. “I thought that.…”

Shea trailed off, helpless to explain what she had thought. Maybe if she were an owl she could have explained. Maybe then, she would have had the words to tell this boy that she had not meant to harm him. She stepped forward and grasped for his wrist with her rough, callused hands.

Crestman leaped away as if her touch burned him, and his cry of protest broke through Shea's foggy misery. Before she could say anything, though, she saw that Crestman had drawn his dagger from the sheath at his waist. The curved blade glinted in the malevolent sunlight, and Shea stepped back in surprise. “Boy! No need for steel!”

Before she could continue with her startled exclamation, Crestman hissed and jerked his chin toward Shea. No, not toward her, she realized with a sick flip of her belly. Past her. Over her shoulder. Shea forced herself to breathe, forced her numb fingers to scramble toward the kitchen knife that hung at her own waist. She turned about slowly.

Shea and Crestman were quickly surrounded. A company of soldiers had weapons trained upon them, curious crossbows that nestled along their forearms. The archers were children, every one of them peering up at Shea with young eyes that knew too much. Each boy's hair was lashed back from his face, savagely woven into a warrior's clout.

Even as Shea struggled for a breath, she could make out the tips of the arrows set in the miniature weapons. The bows might be small, the archers might be young, but Shea had no doubt that the glinting iron arrowheads could gouge out her life.

Even as she registered the threat, an icy cage clanged shut around her heart. Her breath froze in her lungs, and she clutched at her torn and soiled dress, clawing at her chest to unlock the iron bars, to make the pain disappear. Her fingers buzzed and jangled, as if she'd slept with her head across her arm for too long. She fought for another breath, and another, but the tingling in her hand crept up her arm.

She never should have boxed Crestman's ear, she thought absurdly. She never should have beaten the boy. A gasp escaped her lips, sounding suspiciously like a sob. She stretched her tingling hand toward the scarred lionboy, muttering his name as she fell to her knees.

Crestman's only answer, though, was to grip her by her hair. His fingers twisted cruelly against the nape of her neck, and he forced her to stay upright in the leaf mold along the path. Shea cried out, pushing feebly against his hand, but she was no match for the boy's strength. “Crestman!” she gasped, but he only twisted harder.

As if in reply, the pain beneath her breastbone leaped higher, cutting off her breath, forcing her to gasp like a trout dangling on a line. A child's voice piped across the clearing. “Keep your arrows trained on both of them! This may be a trick!”

Crestman swore, a more vicious oath than any he had used while he sought sanctuary with Shea and her skychildren. “Don't you recognize me, boys? I'm one of you! I'm a soldier in King Sin Hazar's army. I'm helping this woman. I'm trying to help her breathe!”

As if to reinforce his claim, Crestman gave one last vicious tug to Shea's hair, pulling her upright. The motion forced some air past the metals bars that enmeshed her chest, but her heart squeezed again, forcing that hard-gained breath from her lungs. Black clouds roiled up from the edges of her sight, and she toppled forward to the grass. The last thing she saw before the world faded to starless night was Crestman's twisted face and the blood that snaked from his boxed ear to his filthy tunic.

 

Shea heard people moving around her before she was able to open her eyes. There were grunts and the sound of shifting bodies, the angry murmur of orders. She could make out the smell of a rich stew, and her belly clenched at the aroma of meat. There was also the ripe smell of fresh-baked bread, powdery and clean.

Shea wondered who had drugged her, and what potion they had used. She was so tired.… Tired like when she'd brought her son into the world. Like when she'd birthed her swandaughter, fast and furious, bringing the girl forth while the stars still shone auspiciously in the sky. Then, she'd had the ladies from the village to help her, to lift her head, to feed her rich broth.