Glasswrights' Progress by Mindy L Klasky

kingdom.… He stifled a sigh and forced his voice to an even tone. “I’m not suggesting that we raid the north. I’m only suggesting that we need more information. We need to send a trusted agent to parley with Sin Hazar and determine his demands.”
    Determine his demands. Check his hands. Ride the lands.
    The sing-song rhymes rolled about in Hal’s skull. He’d spent years protecting himself behind a facade of idiocy, building up wall after wall of inane babble. Now, he knew enough to not speak the rhythms that rolled behind his eyes, but he could not silence the voices, could not still the beasts that had gnawed through his brain for seventeen years.
    â€œYour Highness,” Duke Puladarati spoke as if he were chiding a wayward toddler. “This may not be the time to send someone north. We don’t know that Sin Hazar was even involved with the abduction.”
    Hal whirled on the duke. The silver-maned man had long fought his king in the council chamber, questioning each and every decision that Hal attempted to make. The entire court knew that Puladarati had chafed at King Halaravilli’s emancipation the year before. Of course, a duke was powerful in the realm, but a regent.… A regent had been able to command the entire kingdom.
    Now, Hal let some of his frustration with his erstwhile protector bleed through his protest. “We’ve been through this a thousand times! We can’t know that Sin Hazar was involved until we send an emissary. We can read the signs, though. We can recognize the marks of a curved dagger blade. And we know that Bashanorandi has allies in the North – your own men intercepted the letters from Sin Hazar’s court, this past spring.”
    This past spring. Long talking. Who’s plotting?
    â€œAnd your men were the ones who determined that those letters were nothing more than a distant uncle expressing concern for his nephew. Your Highness, I’m not trying to debate with you.” Puladarati held up his hands in protest, as if he would ward off Hal’s anger. The burly man was missing the last two fingers of his right hand, mute testimony to the battles he had fought long ago, at the side of Hal’s father. “You know as well as I that the letters to Bashanorandi did not speak of any plot to spirit him north. We can’t know that Sin Hazar was behind the ... events on the hill.”
    â€œEvents? At least call them what they were! The murders . My knights were murdered within sight of my city. My falcon-master was cut down, an afternoon’s ride from my mews!”
    Puladarati shrugged, the motion moving his hands enough that Hal’s attention was dragged to the two missing digits. What had Hal ever given to the kingdom of Morenia, that these council lords should follow him? What battles had he fought to gain their faith? Who was Hal, to order around the entire King’s Council?
    King’s Council. Denounce all. Cat’s pounce –.
    Enough.
    â€œMy good duke Puladarati. We know that you are only trying to counsel us in our hour of need.” The dozen lords at the table all leaned closer. Hal rarely lapsed into the royal plural. “We are concerned, though, that we may not act properly in this, the first major confrontation of our rule. You know that we value your counsel, Your Grace. We value the counsel of all our lords.”
    Hal sat back and watched the tension begin to defuse around the table. Not for the first time, he wished that his father had allowed him into the council chamber when Shanoranvilli had still been alive. Hal might be able to fight these battles better if he’d been permitted to watch an admitted master at work. The lords at the table were like a nest of rats, all tossed into a sack. They were too busy clawing their way to freedom to worry about whose flesh they tore on the way out.
    And of all the rats, Duke Puladarati was the oldest, most yellow-toothed beast, the