"Mindy L. Klasky - Glasswright Apprentice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Klasky Mindy L)

obedience, even if she fainted from hunger.

Directing a well-aimed kick toward a Touched brat who refused to let her pass, Rani
permitted herself an angelic smile, indulgently dreaming of the day she was presented with
her instructor's sash. Instructors were glasswrights who had completed both their
apprenticeship and their journeys and returned to the guildhall. Treated with the greatest
esteem, they were courted daily by the guild, enticed to stay and impart their knowledge to
worthless wretches of apprentices, instead of setting up profitable masters' workshops.

Rani's immediate concern, though, was not instruction, but making her way through the
thick crowds closest to the cathedral doors. Everyone hoped for a glimpse of Prince
Tu-vashanoran in his Presentation regalia. It was not every day that a living king stepped
down as Defender of the Faith, in favor of his eldest son. Even though King Shanoranvilli
would retain his throne and all the secular power in the kingdom, he was transferring his role
as religious leader of his people. The honor bestowed on Tuvashanoran was great; in fact, the
event was unusual enough that Rani's guild had been commissioned to reglaze one of the
cathedral windows in commemoration.

Even now, Instructor Morada was putting the finishing touches on the work, making certain
that the glass had settled well in its armature. Ideally, the window would have been
completed well before Presentation Day, but there had been countless delays. First, they had
not been able to get rare cobalt glass from the eastern province of Zarithia. Then, when the
glass finally did arrive, the yellow stain had refused to take to the blue, leaving muddy
streaks across the surface instead of the expected grassy green. Even after new glass was
found to replace the faulty stuff, work had gone slowly. Designs had been mistakenly erased
from whitewashed tables, and a dozen grazing irons—used to cut the planes of glass—had
gone missing from the storerooms.

As late as yesterday morning, Rani had blended pot-paints for Morada to stipple into the final
design, adding the last touches to the window as it rested in its cathedral armature. Morada
had climbed down the scaffolding to view her handiwork in the full light of the previous
noon, only to decide that a little more stippling was needed in the Defender's face, filling out
the fierce features that symbolized the heart of the Pilgrims' faith. Of course, the paint could
not be added once the sun had passed to the cathedral's western side—it was impossible to see
the effect on the glass. Morada contented herself with rising at dawn, forcing Rani to remix
the pot-paints in the sleepy hours after she had served up Cook's glutinous porridge.

Now, as the sun lent autumn's warmth to the cathedral wall, Rani stood at the foot of the
scaffold. Often, she thought that scaffolding was the reason she had yearned to be a
glasswright in the first place. She loved climbing, loved the feeling that she was moving above
the workaday world. Slinging Morada's lunch over one shoulder, Rani tossed back her short,
black cloak and grasped the narrow wooden supports. Her hands were well used to climbing,
and she started up the structure with a scant breath of prayer to Roan, the god of ladders.
Roan had watched over Rani since she first climbed to her bed in the loft of her father's shop.

The touch of wood sliding beneath her fingers was comforting, familiar, and Rani was almost
at the top of the scaffold before she realized that the usual rope supports had been pulled up
to the plank platform at the top. Before she could question that oddity, she was confronted by
Morada's look of outrage. "Ranita! What are you doing here?" Sheer fury coated the
instructor's words as completely as yellow stain on glass, and Rani bowed her head in an