Katrina Smith - [BCS298 S04] Read online

  The Glassblower of Galilei

  Katrina Smith

  The woman who comes in is no lady nor a lord, but my master sucks air between his teeth and nods at her with a respect he doesn’t show ladies or lords either. My master is a proud man, top of his craft, and ladies and lords are the ones who respect him, not twistwise round. This deference is strange enough that I stop grinding the hollow bones beneath the stone.

  It’s loud work, raspy and deep, and the lack of it rings. My master cuts eyes at me but says nothing in front of this stranger, and that’s strange enough too. I catch her eyes glittering deep inside the black hood she wears pulled over her face, and I look back to my work. Ground ruby, weedwind, platinum, iron, canyon dust, a brewer’s flower—all these go in with the bones, break piece to piece, make something new for my master to breathe will into.

  He bows—bows! Not even to kings does he bow, he always says, having won through a clever application of his art the whole planet for the current king to play god on, and besides, isn’t he bound to spend every third Sunday cask-deep in good whiskey with the king? Weren’t they brothers, king or no, and he the elder?—but to this not-lady clothed in cloth glossy as a green raven’s wing and deep as the noonday shadows, he bows. It takes all my focus to count the tens and grind widdershins lest I ruin everything.

  She sweeps by him towards the back of the workshop, where my master meets those who have come to beg his artistry, gliding more than walking. She is large, bulky, gliding light despite that. As soon as the velvet cloth hanging over the back room drops into place, I give the bones one more good grind, scraping all the pieces into dust, and quick as quick can I’m listening at the curtain.

  Still, I’ve missed something. She’s already speaking, sharp as teeth, answering my master.

  No. I’m not here for you, she says. You had the chance you had once and did what was done. No one promised you a second.

  Chances can be taken when they are not offered. I would give everything, and more, to undo what has been done.

  Her laugh breaks like glass shattering on the workshop floor, and there is no lightness in it. Your everything would not be enough.

  A deep silence, and then:

  Fine, my master says. Why should you trust? Tell me, then, what you have on offer.

  If you do this thing for me, you will never see us again.

  A scrape of chair. A soft huff, something that might have passed for amusement among smaller men.

  If that’s what you think I desire most, you truly know nothing.

  After a moment, he says:

  You know there is no one else, on this world or another, who could do this thing but I.

  She waits.

  If I am to do this, I need something in return.

  What happened to your everything, your desire for atonement? Her voice curdles, hot as the blistering canyon wind.

  The stars. That would be enough.

  This is insolence, she says finally. Even from you. Especially from you, and her voice drops to whispers, the way they all start to whisper when they come to the heart of their need, and in a moment or two my master’s voice answers her, fine and formal and cold enough for me to know he must be heartbroken. So it is.

  When will it be done?

  Next week. One day or another. You’ll know.

  I’m calibrating the forgebox and preparing my master’s tools when she brushes by me and is gone, scenting of dewdown and smallfruit and the stretch of darkness between stars, or something spacewise anyway.

  I was born on Galilei, and like all my kind will die here. I will never go to the stars. I have never smelled anything quite like her before, and I wonder if I will ever again.

  My master watches her go, stops next to the pestle, dips a discerning finger into the mix. The bow, the strange longing in his voice when he spoke with her, these things seem impossible the farther from the moment we travel. He’s back in his full mantle of glory: the creator, a peerless artisan, a craftsman of infinite value, the silver-tongued liar who defeated the fierce winged termagants and handed the rule of Galilei to his brother. He is comfortable under these titles. This is, I think, how he can pretend so effortlessly that nothing real has happened.

  “Dim.”

  “Yes, Master Damon.”

  “Is the grind complete?”

  “Yes, Master Damon.”

  He stops for a moment and looks out at the view from atop our towering spire, the light dropping off the edge of the cliffs, the steep winding path the not-lady must be walking from our peak to the red canyon below, before he moves to the cabinet where artifacts and additives are stored.

  Hidden at the very back of the middle shelf is a small black chest, and he presses his finger to the top to unlock it. I have never seen him use these ingredients before. He moves quickly to the grind, tilting a plain glass vial until two drops of a glittering substance fall into the pestle. I have been told it is not for me to know the ways of the masters, even of Master Damon.

  He takes the grind and tips it through the sieve, runs it through a series of his devices, mixes it with blood from a tiny vial. From there it goes into the melter and turns golden with heat. I have seen him do this mundane alchemy many times.

  “The reactor and crucible?”

  “Ready, Master,” I say, when the fusion is precisely calibrated to his needs, and this is when the real work starts.

  He gathers the material on the end of his iron rod and breathes it to life.

  He once told me that this takes enormous concentration. After the calculations are done and the material prepared, the most important part is to come. He must believe his work has the ability to hold; that his calculations will result in each thin line of information accurately placed in a nexus of complexity the likes of which I couldn’t hope to understand. This, he says, is the work of gods, and he is the only god of the universe who can do this.

  What I know is that it is beautiful, this work Master Damon does.

  He directs the gathered fire with one long intention, his eyes closed and his face peaceful. It swells larger moment by moment until it is a giant yellow-green egg, breathlessly delicate, shot with traces of gold. In the depths of the egg, sparks ignite. Something begins to twist and take shape.

  When the glass begins to cool I take it into my hands and warm it with my own heat. When it needs to be cooled instead, I pull the heat out with my touch. We work this way, twisting it round and round, for hours until Master Damon is convinced the job is done to his satisfaction.

  The eggs are always the same size, nearly as tall as me and half the height of Master Damon, but this one stretches above my head. It glimmers, yellow shot with brilliant gold where the late afternoon light catches it. I cannot reach around it with both arms, but I want to hold it, to put my body against it and feel it dreaming.

  When we’re done, dripping with sweat and panting in the heat of creation, Master Damon points at the shape coalescing in the interior of the egg.

  “See, Dim,” he says. “It’s another one of you, made from raw sand and bone. With necessary differences, of course. A gardener would have no need for your thermoreactive hands, would she?” He claps me on my shoulder.

  I say nothing, too busy watching the face of my sister grow out of the darkness inside the egg.

  “You’ll make delivery to Court tomorrow,” he says. “My work is too important for petty interruptions. I’ll stay. Take yourself to rest, Dim. Tomorrow we start something very new.”

  The next morning I come in before the first of our suns splits the canyon to make the strong drink my master craves above all else at dawnlight, but he is already up. I think he has not slept at
all. His robes are wrinkled and covered in stains, but his eyes are fever-bright and glittering, the way my people’s eyes get at the end of our life cycles when we return to dust and bone.

  “I’m fine,” he says, surprised that I have noticed at all. “Better than fine. Superb. Exalted. This, Dim—this commission will be the crowning achievement of my legacy, the glory that writes my name larger than crude Galilei and these arrogant swine who call themselves masters. This will set me amongst the stars for eternity.” And my master, ignoring the usual repast set under his jeweled awning in the morning sun, bends himself to work.

  He works like a man possessed, but today nothing is good enough. We smash five or six creations before Galilei’s second sun even fully rises. He twists valves, fiddles knobs, slams the reactor with an angry fist. He mutters constantly under his breath where even my keen ears cannot hear him and writes equations madly on his reusable paperglass.

  The egg is still there, pulsing in the corner, the accelerated matrix forcing the thrall within to grow faster than I thought possible. Inside the egg, my sister’s eyes crease and twitch.

  “Master Damon,” I say. “The egg.”

  “Hm?” He jolts irritably from where he is bent over the extractor, fuming. “What damned egg? Oh, yes.” My master bends to the table and scribbles a note on his paperglass.

  “Take this note and the egg to the Master Gardener at Court. Pay particular attention to the fragility of the matrix during transport. Exercise extreme caution. My reputation relies on undamaged merchandise. Be back no later than first sundown.”

  “Yes, Master.” He has already turned back to his workbench. The wheels of the thin, flat cart stick twice, but I manage to position it just underneath the egg. Inside, my sister twists and turns, stretching against the dark. Underneath my hand I can hear her dreaming of soil and green things. By this time tomorrow, she will be digging flowerbeds and watering roslings as if she has been born for this, because she has.

  Master Damon says it is good to know purpose, but I wonder sometimes if his purpose is the only thing we are allowed to know.

  My master’s workshop is on the edge of all things, far enough away that he will not be bothered by gawkers, fameseekers, and triflers. Those who make pilgrimage to him come on foot, spiraling up a narrow spire of rock overlooking the canyon. There are no barriers, just a razor drop into depths below, and I keep a wary hand on my sister’s egg as the cart and I inch slowly down the incline.

  The road is dusty and quiet. The wheels on the cart jolt up and down against the rough terrain, the egg hanging in the air thanks to one of Master Damon’s devices. The air shimmers with a slow boil of heat, but I have been born to this and what bothers my master and the court does not bother me. I stop only once, underneath the spikes of a thorntree, to check the egg. It should be weeks before the egg is ready to hatch, but hairline fractures are already crisscrossing the shell. Underneath my hands, my sister still dreams of vines and grasses and water.

  I see no one else until midday, when I reach the glittering gates of Court. Its heavy doors are set inside a stone arch with a crested, flying creature, arms and wings outstretched, on the apex. It is the highest noon hour, when both of our suns burn down together, and too hot for most not born of the canyon dust.

  It is another one of my kind who opens the door, a soldier with strong muscles and an innate sense of suspicion. She cannot read, but the sight of my master’s note and the egg is enough to convince her I come from Master Damon.

  “What’s this?” she asks, and raps once on the egg. It rings softly, like a bell, and I put my hand protectively over the space where she touched it.

  “Delivery for the Master Gardener,” I say. “Don’t touch.”

  She grunts and yawns. “Leave it in the garden,” she says. “The bigwise are probly sleeping again. Too hot.” The last a bark of sound—impossible, for she and I, this idea of too much heat driving men to dreaming.

  The gates to Court swing open into an alien expanse of shivering leaves. The Greenway is like nothing else on Galilei; expansive and lush, filled with a shade my planet doesn’t produce without a lot of help. Water is pumped in from deep beneath the surface, spread out over miles of grass, fruit trees, flowers, bowers of hanging vines and square beds swelling with tartroot and sweet cubine. It is unbroken green from side to side with only a few brown spots where something has failed to survive. Here and there redstone pillars stretch towards the sky, crowned with more of the flying statues or topping out into flat platforms of stone. If it were not for the presence of these, the masters would have completely turned this piece of land into something of their own, as different from Galilei’s red rock, yellow sands, and deep purple hills as it can be.

  A half dozen of my kind are moving dreamily amongst the orchards and fields, weeding and watering. The Master Gardener and a master I don’t recognize walk along one of several circular stone paths despite the heat. Moisture hangs in the air and they fan themselves, their skin gleaming with sweat.

  I guide the cart to the side and wait patiently for them to intersect with my path. The egg glows and starts to tremor, small cracks spiderwebbing out from the apex, and I hope they do not take long. I know better than to interrupt the masters at their business.

  “...don’t know why we didn’t tear down the last record of these abominations,” the master I don’t recognize says irritably. “I find them appallingly primitive. They assault the eyes.”

  “The King likes to be reminded of his victory,” the Master Gardener says.

  “You mean his brother’s victory. Damon never lets him forget whose cleverness won the war.”

  The Master Gardener tuts in amusement. “Indeed. But the war was won. None of them remain. The pillars are now strictly ornamental. It does no harm for the King to look on them and gloat.”

  “Here, what’s this?” the other master says, because they have rounded the corner now to find me waiting, my sister’s egg filled with light, her eyes now nearly open.

  “This,” the Master Gardener says, “is Master Damon’s assistant. Ah, and my newest garden thrall. I’d forgotten I’d ordered this.” He bends down, one hand on the top of the glowing egg, and peers into the interior.

  “Good, strong back, solid hands, sun-resistant skin,” he notes professionally. “And nearly hatched, too. Just drop it here and I’ll stay until it’s done. Damon knows his work, at least,” he says, this last to the other master.

  There is a high, clear note and my sister’s egg vibrates, the air around it humming with static and scenting with the sharp, clean tang of rain. I settle it gently on the soft grass underneath a scenting smallfruit tree. I wonder if my sisters who are born here, in the Greenway, find the rest of Galilei as alien and uninviting as the masters do, or if they still feel the call of the canyon in their bones and the heat in their skins.

  “What are you waiting for? Return to Master Damon,” the other master says, and turns back to the Master Gardener, his mouth twisted with distaste. “I find these things unsettling. I suppose it’s only to reason, given the eccentricities of the man himself.”

  “Damon has his uses—much like his creatures. Though I do confess, were he not the King’s brother, we would not stand his place here on Galilei no matter what science he can bring to bear. Dimwit, was it? He always names them Dimwit,” he tells the master. “Give your master my highest compliments and deepest, most sincere thanks for his art. Go.”

  I nod, unable to take my eyes off the egg. I have not been present at a hatching, other than, I suppose, my own. For a moment I watch the cracks grow and light begin to seep through, but I have been instructed to leave and my master’s task awaits. I will be miles and hours away, back at the workshop with Master Damon, before my sister emerges.

  I arrive before the given limit, both suns just two hours past midpoint, but still Master Damon is elevated, ecstatic, raging.

  “Dimwit! Where have you been? I have needed you and you weren’t here. I should
craft a replacement—I should—no, this would take too much time. What happened with my egg? Was it stable?”

  “No,” I tell him. “The first fractures started in the sun, on the road to Court. I was able to deliver it to the Master Gardener before full hatching.”

  “Ahh, of course!” he says. “The accelerated process is overly reactive. I can use that. Dim!” He is shouting, pointing at components, and I am grinding them faster than I have ever done before, in combinations we have never tried. He storms around the room, dashing equations so quickly I wonder that he can read the calculations or remember what they are supposed to represent. He runs projections and tests the thickness of different material blends, modifying his equations after each one. He will not stop to rest or eat. It is like he is possessed by the fires of creation or some kind of relentless fever or both. I manage once to put a cup of cold black protein into his hands, and he drinks it down without thought.

  Finally, sometime after first sundown, when our second sun is just dipping to touch the horizon and the shadows are stretching to meet the canyon, he stops dead, the light from his devices playing across his face. There is a strange easing in his frame, a tightness loosening that has always been there and that I did not realize could be changed.

  “This is it,” he says, more to himself than to me. His lips curve upwards. I watch hunger and exultation play across his face. Master Damon has found the answer.

  The first of the new eggs takes us all night. It is green-black, the color of midnight after moonrise, and three times as large as my kind’s eggs, taller even than Master Damon himself. Inside, yellow dots glow and spark like a night sky, a set of unknown constellations turning on their own inner axis. Master Damon insists on storing it in his personal chamber. We create a woven nest of silks and velvets next to his own bed. We nestle the egg into as much protective softness as Master Damon’s significant wealth can provide, and we cover it with a sheet of fine linen.

  Five more join it until the nest is full. Master Damon, paranoid of some unknown threat, has me stand guard over them for six nights but does not sleep himself. I do not know what he is doing in the workshop while I am watching thought and form grow inside them. When I spread my hands against the egg and listen, I can hear whoever is inside dreaming of galaxies, sharp knives of matter, stars colliding. Listening to their thoughts, I can almost forget that my master is keeping a secret, even from me.