Glasswrights' Apprentice Read Online Free PDF

called out the marching cadence. Merchants pulled in their trestles while the sun still shone, and frantic mothers summoned children into the safety of dark doorways.
    Rani had been tempted to run to her own family, but she realized reluctantly that she needed to warn her guild. She was an apprentice now, not a merchant, and she needed to tell her brothers and sisters of Morada’s evil, even if that meant revealing her own unplanned complicity in Prince Tuvashanoran’s death. Although half the City sprawled between her and the stricken prince, Rani could still see the streaks of crimson across Tuvashanoran’s pale, pale flesh. There was no chance that he still lived.
    â€œBrother Gatekeeper!” she cried again, desperation ripping her throat as she wracked her brain to remember which of the guildsmen was assigned gate duty. Her cries remained unanswered, and she abandoned the gate to duck down the alley that lined the guild’s garden, all the while imagining a ravening crowd sweeping around the bend in the street, bent on bloody vengeance against Morada Glasswright.
    The deserted mews gave Rani some feeling of safety, and she dashed one hand against her cheek, leaving dirty streaks in the tracks of her tears. Stone walls towered over her as she fought back sobs, letting her fingers trail against the rough rock as she stumbled down the alley.
    This was all a nightmare. Tuvashanoran was the greatest warrior who had ever lived. He could not be felled by a single arrow. He could not be murdered in the house of the Thousand Gods. And Morada could not have committed the murder. Still, Rani could see the lead stripping coiled on Morada’s scaffold, and she could hear the wicked anger in the Instructor’s voice. Morada had removed at least one pane of glass from the Defender’s Window, and she’d been prepared to cover up her action with hastily applied lead. Morada had been furious when Rani discovered her. If the Instructor had not murdered Tuvashanoran, she had certainly been directly involved in the attack.
    Now, standing in the alley, Rani was startled by a crow’s harsh cry. Reflexively, she reached for a large stone amid the broken cobbles. Years of working before a board of shining pretties had taught her excellent aim - she could frighten off the largest crows that were intent on stealing from her hard-working family.
    The bird was perched on a low branch of a straggling apple tree - possibly even the tree that had borne the apples that Rani had carried to Morada that morning. Remembering the fruit made the girl’s stomach clench in hunger. For a moment, she was ashamed - how could she even think of eating when the greatest hero of her people lay dead in the cathedral, cut down by an arrow because she had called him from his prostration before the altar? Perhaps, without Rani’s unintended assistance, the archer-assassin would have missed the prince. Perhaps Tuvashanoran would have lived. Rani might not have plucked the bow, but she had surely summoned Prince Tuvashanoran to his bitter, untimely death.
    Thrusting aside her guilt, Rani studied the immediate problem of gaining entry to the guildhall gardens. The apple tree was at least fifteen feet above her, the wall itself the height of two men. Casting about the alley, Rani discovered a quartet of broken barrels. Some of the staves were cast in on each of the casks; the coopers had deemed them past repair. Still, Rani made short work of rolling the barrels to the wall and balancing them to create a rickety tower.
    She was still far from the top of the wall when her stomach clenched with hunger, bile painting the back of her tongue. There was no help for it. Dusting her hands against her grimy doublet, she set her jaw and pawed for a handhold amid the stones.
    She may have only worked in the guildhall for a few months, but in that time, she had been forced to stir innumerable pots of paint. She had scrubbed endless acres of