Glasswrights' Test by Mindy L Klasky Read Free Book Online Page A

metal jaws, catching a gasp against the back of her throat as she discovered the smooth motion, as she measured the increased gripping strength.
    â€œMaster, it’s amazing!”
    â€œWe’ll have forty of them within a fortnight. Left and right—they’re on their way to Brianta now.”
    â€œAll thanks go to the Pilgrim,” Larinda said. Parion swallowed a grimace. All thanks did not go to the Pilgrim. In fact, some thanks should go toward him, toward Parion.
    After all, he was the one who had negotiated with the Fellowship. He was the one who was letting Larinda view the treasure now, letting her realize the riches that she would soon have at her disposal. Nevertheless, he was not surprised that the journeyman’s first instinct was to salute the Pilgrim. Better to bathe in the stream of Brianta, than. … He let the old proverb trail off in his mind.
    â€œMay I, Master?” The longing on her face was naked, and she nodded toward her crippled hand, toward the wondrous new tool.
    â€œYes, Journeyman. I would like to see how it works. Let me help you with that.” He reached out to unfasten the heavy metal Hand that already closed about her wrist.
    Larinda merely eyed him with steady accusation. Of course she did not need help with her existing Hand. She had spent eight years mastering the tool. If she could not tame the straps and buckles herself, she could hardly profit from their use.
    Parion stepped back, darting his agile fingers in the ritual symbol of apology, offering up his mistake to all the Thousand Gods. He winced as Larinda set aside the precious new armature and waved her own fingers through the traditional acceptance of an apology. She made the motion without seeming to realize how awkward it was, without appearing to be aware that it required both thumbs to gather in his gesture, to reply in the traditional way.
    He shook his head, knowing that he rebelled against the Briantans’ strict rituals so that he did not have to pay attention to Larinda’s actions. The girl began removing her older Hands, settling the heavy structures on the table. As he watched her painful progress, he remembered that she had been the first apprentice maimed in the old guildhall. A soldier’s knife had flashed and left her with her without a thumb, with her right hand suddenly seeming too long, too thin. The resulting limb would have been eerily graceful, if blood had not pumped from the wound.
    Others had suffered, once the apprentices were herded into the king’s dungeons. There, more apprentices lost first one thumb, then the other. He could still remember how the soldiers had come for Larinda in the grey light before a winter dawn, come to destroy her other hand. They had dragged her from the squalid holding cell, bullied her into the courtyard. She had fought like a wildcat, twisting, turning, biting the soldiers who sought to overpower her. Four men had forced the hysterical child to the ground, and a fifth had raised his fateful blade. A single flash, which Parion had glimpsed from the barred dungeon window, and then Larinda had been tossed back into her cell, shivering, whimpering, unable to catch her breath against the pain and the shock and the blood. So much blood.
    If Larinda resented the fact that she had nearly been spared the second amputation, she never spoke of it. She never outwardly mourned the cruel twist that had deprived her of her left thumb on the very day that the old king declared the forlorn guildsmen free to go. But Parion knew that he would have resented the happenstance. It would have settled in his belly like a burning stone, and he would have hated the world even more than he already did—he would have despised the Traitor with a passion hotter than a glass kiln.
    But who knew how Larinda Glasswright’s mind worked? Who knew what thoughts coursed behind her eyes as she stared at the new armature? She caught the tip of her tongue between