Falcon in the Glass Read online

  “Back with you,” she said. “Stay back!”

  5.

  The Dungeon

  The little owl flew south over the marsh at the rim of the island and angled into the edge of the wind. One leg dragged on him a bit — the leg with the weight tied on. He tucked it up tighter and adjusted his wings. Soon the sounds of land faded away behind; he tilted in the air currents, drinking in the clear taste of sky. He followed the thin thread of kenning across the wide water — pumping, pumping his wings — until another island drew near, an island thick with glimmering lights and buzzing with the sounds of men. And now the kenning grew stronger, until it thrummed in his bones. The owl flitted between the encroaching cliffs of buildings; he swooped low over a ribbon of liquid moonlight. Then he slipped between iron bars and hurtled down into the dark.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  The bird startled them, brushing by. Its feathers did not touch them, but they felt a stirring of air and glimpsed a quick gray blur in the moonlight before the bird shot between the window bars of the second-floor landing and disappeared down the dark stone passage to the cells below.

  The guard named Guido spoke first. “It isn’t a crime,” he said. “Birds may come and go as they please.”

  The guard named Claudio replied, “True.”

  “They can’t be faulting us for birds,” Guido said. “We’re not the jailers of birds. And our job is to prevent escape. Those who wish to enter the dungeon of the Ten, welcome to it!”

  Claudio chuckled. “Yes,” he said. “Benvenuto! ”

  Voices drifted in, faintly, from outside. In a moment Guido heard the wake of a passing boat — the splash of waves, one after another, against the sides of the canal below.

  There was a problem, Guido knew, with his argument. True, they were not the jailers of birds. They were the jailers of men and of women. But if a bird were to go in and out, carrying messages for a prisoner, and if this were to be discovered . . . Well, excuses counted for nothing with the Ten. Less than nothing. Even reasonable excuses. Heads could roll.

  His own head, for example.

  Ordinarily it would not occur to Guido to be suspicious of a bird. Pigeons from time to time found their way into the dungeon. Once he had seen a wren, deep inside, pecking at crumbs on the floor. But this one tonight had seemed a purposeful bird. Not just fluttering in by chance but arrowing straight through the passage as if it knew exactly where it was going, like a dog sent to fetch a stick.

  The bird had seemed no larger than his own hand, but its head was wide. An owl, a tiny owl. And this was the third time Guido had seen it since the woman had arrived.

  The bird woman.

  Might she be a spy . . . or a witch?

  “I didn’t see a message capsule,” Guido said. “Did you?”

  “No,” Claudio said.

  “She couldn’t be sending messages,” said Guido. “Where would she hide the ink?” It was true that they hadn’t actually searched her person when she’d come in. The way she’d looked at them . . . No. They had not wanted to touch her. But they had thoroughly eyed her over. “We would’ve seen an ink pot if she had one,” he said. Though possibly not an ink stone — but Guido didn’t want to think about that.

  “Just so,” Claudio said. “We would have seen.”

  Guido sometimes wished that Claudio brought more to the discussion. Talking with Claudio was like having a conversation with a wall. He did not argue or contradict, and yet the exchange was somehow unsatisfying. Was he dim-witted? Guido couldn’t tell. It might be instead that he was canny.

  It might be that he was a spy.

  Guido glanced at Claudio — the hooked nose, the pitted brow, the thin frizz of hair. Claudio’s eyes lay deep in shadow, lit neither by moonlight from the window nor by the torches set in cressets behind them on the wall.

  Unreadable.

  “On the other hand,” Guido said, “I’ve seen owls like this twice before since the woman came. Maybe one of us should go down and search her.”

  Claudio nodded sagely. “Maybe.”

  “Good,” Guido said. “Then I’ll do the rounds, and you look to the bird.”

  Claudio did not answer. He opened the pouch at his waist; he shook something into his hand. A ducat. “Cristo or doge?” he said.

  Blast! “No, you go on to the woman,” Guido said. “You’ll be done in two shakes. I don’t mind the rounds. Truly! Go on!”

  Claudio did not withdraw his hand. “Cristo or doge?” he repeated.

  Guido silently groaned. “Cristo,” he said.

  Claudio tossed the coin, caught it, slapped it onto his wrist. He removed his upper hand and held out the coin for Guido to see.

  In the moonlight Guido beheld the dim shapes of the old doge and San Marco.

  Blast!

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  The moonlight evaporated behind him as Guido descended the narrow stairs to the ground floor. The harsh glare of his torch sent shadows lurching across the walls. He smelled damp stone and burning pitch and, increasingly as he walked, other, more unpleasant things. Excrement. Sweat. Fear.

  Sounds echoed strangely in this place — moans and murmurs, and from time to time a shriek. You couldn’t tell if the sounds came from a cell nearby or from another, far away.

  Guido reached the bottom of the stairs and set off along the dark corridor. He searched the floor for feathers or droppings — signs that a bird had flown past. The stench thickened; his gorge rose sour in his throat. Farther along, the passage forked and twisted, but he knew the way. He peered into the small, barred openings in the doors of the cells — the thief huddled in his corner, the madman pacing and muttering, the murderer with the scar on his cheek.

  No bird. But he hadn’t truly expected one. Until at last, he crossed the threshold to the women’s part of the prison, and came to her cell.

  She sat cross-legged in the center of the floor in the patch of light cast by the small oil lamp. Despite her age she held herself as straight as a gondola pole. Guido felt for the key on the ring and thrust it into the lock; the door creaked open. Cautiously he stepped inside. The woman turned to regard him, unafraid. There was nothing of the evil eye about her gaze, but it seemed someway unnatural to Guido, disturbing in its calmness.

  He held up his torch and surveyed the cell — the floor, the walls. The stonework was rough; here and there a block thrust out beyond the others, forming a niche where a small owl might perch.

  But no. It wasn’t there.

  Or at least he couldn’t see it.

  Still, the torch couldn’t penetrate every dim pocket of gloom. And she might have hidden the bird inside her cloak. Or behind her. In the corner. On the floor.

  She watched him with those eyes of hers. Those bright green, witchy eyes.

  Guido was torn. She could likely curse him with a glance, that one. If he forcibly searched her, bad things could happen. He pictured himself with boils all over his body. With one arm broken and hanging. He pictured himself dead.

  On the other hand, there was the Council of Ten. If she was sending messages, and they found out . . .

  Guido cleared his throat. “Stand,” he said. “Step to one side.”

  Slowly, she rose and moved over. Such a sliver of a woman! It seemed unmanly to fear her so.

  Guido crept nearer. “Take off your cloak. Hold it up, then set it on the floor.”

  Silently, she obeyed.

  “Now lift the pail. Let me see behind it.”

  She did.

  There was nothing behind her, nothing in her cloak, nothing behind the waste pail. Nothing that he could see, though the torchlight didn’t penetrate the thick shadows massed in the far corners of the cell.

  But Guido had had enough. He edged backward, not taking his eyes off the woman. He slammed her cell door behind him, locked it, and hastened back along the passage. When he had nearly reached the stairs, a sound drifted to his ears — a run of high, clear, fluted notes, echoing eerily down the corridor.


  The owl.

  Guido shivered. Something so chilling about that sound!

  Should he go back?

  No. He’d never find it.

  Since the day she’d arrived in the dungeon, the old woman hadn’t given him a lick of trouble. But he would heave a sigh of relief when she was gone from here — whether banished or hanged, it was all the same to him.

  6.

  Skin of a Bubble

  Renzo gaped at her. Then, “You’re here,” he said.

  She didn’t budge, neither to acknowledge that he’d spoken nor to turn aside the end of the blowpipe — still aimed straight at him.

  He set down the tagianti, filled with a strange, sharp gladness. He moved toward her, away from the blistering heat. From habit he had unlatched the shutter, though he had nearly given up hope of her return. “Did the boy tell you I was looking for you? Because — ”

  “Get back!” She brandished the blowpipe.

  Renzo halted.

  Her face looked just as he remembered. Pale, heart-shaped, small-boned. Surrounded by a tangle of dark hair. Almost elfin, she seemed. And those eyes: bright green, unnatural. She wore a ragged, threadbare cloak with strips of fringed and tattered cloth sewn to each shoulder. Like the boy. Her foreignness — wildness — struck him now, more forcibly than before.

  He peered up into the shadows of the rafters and made out the shape of the small, dark bird.

  Was this wise, his plan? He knew nothing of her.

  “You came looking,” the girl said. “What d’you want?”

  If he said “work” right away, she might flee. “I, ah, want to help you,” he said. “To give you shelter and food — ”

  “Don’t lie. You’ve no cause t’ help me. What d’you want?”

  She had an odd accent that he couldn’t identify. Renzo turned up his palms to show he held nothing in his hands. “Truly, I want to help.”

  She thrust the blowpipe at him. “No. You don’t. There’s none that purely wants to help — not ever. Not ’less they’re kith or kin. And any who says elsewise is a liar. So I ask you: What d’you want?” She took a soundless step toward him. He glanced down at her feet and saw she had wraparound rags for shoes, like the boy.

  She was shivering.

  It came to Renzo, of a sudden, how her life must be. Begging and stealing food, sleeping in dark corners. Looked down upon by respectable citizens, and driven off when it suited them. Perhaps from time to time some had claimed to want to help her. Men, perhaps. Perhaps they had betrayed her . . .

  The furnace heat beat at his back; he grew warm — too warm.

  “Help me keep the fire and stir the melt. And help me with the glasswork itself, when I need a second pair of hands.”

  “Why me?” she demanded. “So you can play at being master? So you can have a slave to toy with?”

  “No! It’s not that. It’s — ”

  She narrowed her eyes. He felt her slipping away from him.

  “There’s . . . no one else,” he admitted. Hating that he had to say it, that he had to show her his need.

  “Why not? What of the day workers?”

  “I can’t ask them.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got all night.”

  Renzo glowered. What business was it of hers?

  But she was backing away. Leaving.

  “My father . . . ,” he began.

  She hesitated. Flicked the blowpipe as if to say, Go on.

  “My father was the padrone of another glassworks, one of the finest on the island. I want his skill, his mastery. I want to carry out his . . .” His prophecy. His legacy. But he wouldn’t tell her that.

  “So you’re wanting t’ be a big man, like your father.”

  Renzo bit back a sharp retort.

  “Whyn’t you work there, then?” she asked. “In your father’s glassworks?”

  Because it no longer existed. Because it had to be sold to pay off the debts. Because . . . The old glassworks swam into his memory, ravaged and bare — stripped of its iron tools, its shelves, its bins of sand and frit and soda. Even the furnaces were gone, taken apart stone by stone by stone and reassembled elsewhere for another padrone.

  “He died,” Renzo said. “And now I have to prove myself here. There’s to be a test in a couple of months, and I’ve got much to learn. I’m not allowed to keep the other glassworkers from their work, their sleep, or their families, and I’m not allowed to bring outsiders in.”

  “I’m an outsider.”

  “Yes, well. I’m breaking the rule.”

  She regarded him for a long moment. He breathed in deep, waiting, filling up with the familiar smells of wood smoke and melting glass.

  “Why me?” she repeated softly. “You could smuggle someone else in here, a friend or — ”

  “If a friend stole in here night after night — even if he told no one — his family would sooner or later catch him leaving or notice he was gone. And then the secret would be out. But you — ”

  “Oh, no one’d miss me. At least none who matters. Is that it? And I can’t be telling your secret, ’cause if I did, your constables or your thugs would come for me. Is that what you think?”

  Her voice had gone harsh. He’d angered her. But what could he say?

  Slowly he nodded. The furnace roared behind him. His bloodbeat throbbed painfully in a spot just above his right eye.

  “Well, then,” she said, “show me what work you’re wanting from me, and I’ll think on’t.”

  Renzo let out a silent breath.

  The girl cast a glance toward the rafters. The kestrel fluttered down out of the darkness. It alit on a strip of tattered cloth on the girl’s shoulder and trained a wild black eye on Renzo. Something . . . odd about that bird. Some bond between it and the girl, more than just the bond between performers.

  The girl feinted at Renzo with the blowpipe. “My bird stays here with me. And if you throw rocks at her again or harm her howsoever, I’ll run you clean through.”

  He didn’t think she could. She didn’t look strong enough. He would have bet a week’s wages that he could grasp the blowpipe, wrest it from her, and pin her against the wall.

  But still, with the bird glaring as if to pluck out his eyes, and the girl herself so wild and strange . . . He wouldn’t want to try.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  She did not set down the blowpipe straightaway but kept it pointed in Renzo’s direction while ordering him about.

  First she demanded food. He hadn’t brought an extra portion this night, not imagining that she would come. But Mama had packed him a small repast, wrapped up in a napkin: sausage, cheese, and a hunk of barley bread.

  The girl took the food — all of it — but did not eat. She backed away from Renzo, still holding the blowpipe before her, and set it on a shelf near the door.

  “Show me the work,” she said.

  He did. He chopped alder wood and fed the fire, showing how to tell from the color of the flames when it was hot enough and when it must be fed again. He moved in close to the furnace and, as waves of heat leaped out and threatened to blister his skin, stirred the melt in the crucible with a long iron rod. He stepped back, strapped a strip of wood to the front of his right thigh, and held out a hand for the girl’s blowpipe.

  She eyed him levelly, refusing to give it up.

  He sighed, took another blowpipe from the rack, gathered a mass of molten glass from the crucible, and rolled it back and forth on the stone malmoro. Then he sat on a bench and, resting the blowpipe against the strip of wood on his thigh, spun the pipe. With his free hand he picked up the tagianti and pulled at the glass to elongate it.

  All this he did while explaining what he was about, at the end of the girl’s well-aimed blowpipe. Mostly she stayed behind him; he couldn’t see her while he worked and had to twist round from time to time to talk to her. He began to wonder if she was paying heed to him at all. He began to wonder if she had any
intention of helping him, or if she only relished watching him work, treating him as her slave.

  Who was whose drudge now?

  The next time he looked back, she had slumped down on the padrone’s bench, eyes shut, the tip of the blowpipe resting on the floor. The bird, now a speckled gray puffball on her shoulder, had tucked its head beneath a wing.

  Was she listening? Had she heard a single word he’d said?

  Renzo sagged, feeling all his hopes collapse within him. How had he ever imagined that this half-wild, ignorant girl could be of use?

  “Go,” he said. “Take the food, I don’t care. Just go.”

  She didn’t stir.

  He moved toward her and reached for her shoulder to shake her awake.

  The kestrel roused and hissed at him. Its eyes, with dark vertical stripes beneath them, were eagle-fierce.

  Renzo drew back. Who knew what that bird might do?

  The girl, now awake, lifted the tip of the blowpipe to point at him — but absentmindedly, with no threat behind it. She seemed to be thinking. Then, “Why d’you keep the fire so hot all night? Whyn’t just stoke it up next day?”

  “Because. The glass won’t be right if you don’t keep the fire hot.”

  She frowned at him, seeming unsatisfied. “Why d’you stir the glass? It’s already well melted, yes?”

  “To prevent seed and cord.”

  “Seed?” she asked. “Cord?”

  “Bubbles,” he said, “and stringy lumps.”

  “Hmm.” She chewed her lip, seeming to consider. “And the malmoro? For what purpose is that?”

  The malmoro? She remembered the malmoro? So she had been listening, after all!

  “To shape the glass, make it even.”

  “But then you go pulling at it with those pliers. Doesn’t that do the same?”

  Renzo wasn’t certain which was more annoying — when she paid too much attention or not enough. “No. Both steps are necessary.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, chewing her lip again. She pointed at the smaller furnace, a little way across the floor. “Is that for when you’re making little things?”

  “No. That’s the calcara. It’s for the first melt.”