Glasswrights' Progress by Mindy L Klasky Page A

were good children. They would know right from wrong. Shea raised her chin and announced, “I want this brought before the swan.”
    â€œWhat!”
    She had surprised Hartley. “I want to take this to the swan. Let the swan make the decision.”
    â€œShea, you know that the Swancastle is empty. King Sin Hazar came through there first of all, when he began assembling the Little Army. You told us yourself that your own daughter was taken.”
    She set her jaw against the memory. “We have our own swan. We’ll ask her.”
    â€œSerena?” Hartley almost snorted his surprise.
    â€œSerena.”
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous! She’s a child –”
    â€œSerena,” Shea repeated firmly, feeling the rightness of what she demanded.
    â€œFine.” Hartley squinted in the dim light and nodded to Tain. “Fetch her downstairs.”
    Only a moment later, the oldest sungirl led Serena into the room. The little swan’s pale features were creased into a frown, and her nose twitched at the lingering aroma of trout. She had eaten her share, along with the better part of Tain’s portion, before she had gone up to her room.
    Crestman was hustled upright, his hands bound tight behind his back. His mouth was
still lashed tight with the gag. Hartley appointed two lions to stand beside the soldier. “The
prisoner is to stay silent,” Hartley snapped. “If he so much as sneezes, kill him. Do you
understand?” The last question was directed at the trussed-up child-soldier, not the guards.
Crestman merely glared at the older lion.
    Hartley turned back to Serena. “Swangirl,” he said, and he made a stiff, formal bow. “We would have you decide a matter of justice.”
    Serena sniffed again, but a light of power kindled at the back of her eyes. “Aye?”
    â€œThe lions and the owls have concluded that this prisoner must die. The sunwoman thinks his life should be spared. What do you say?”
    Serena’s voice went soft with wonder. “You want me to decide?”
    Hartley responded gruffly, but his words were laden with ingrained respect. “You’re the swan. The only one we have.”
    Shea forced herself to step forward. She must speak out against her lion. Hartley was wrong; Torino was wrong. Tain too. They were only children. She was an old woman, and she knew what was right. Shea swallowed hard and worked her throat to get past a lifetime of belief. “Serena, Crestman does not deserve to die.”
    â€œ Crestman ,” Hartley’s voice grated over the lionname, “is a traitor to his people. He came to kill us. He raised steel against the sunwoman as the children gathered berries. He belongs to King Sin Hazar. We have no idea what deviltry he learned in the Little Army’s camps. He probably knows a dozen way to kill you, swangirl.”
    â€œHe’s just a boy!” Shea cried, and now she remembered the first time that she had wailed those words. She remembered receiving the terrible news that Pom had been cut down in King Sin Hazar’s camps. Her only son had been murdered in the barracks of the first corps of child-soldiers, killed when he refused to go along with some brutal Little Army training regimen. Learning of her loss, Shea had cried out even before she realized that she was alone, that she had lost both Pom and Larina, and Bram so long ago. For just an instant, she had pictured herself kneeling in the middle of King Sin Hazar’s camps, on her knees among the children who served the king’s cause. She had seen herself holding Pom’s body, stretching out his boy-arms and his boy-legs.
    But she had never seen him. She had never learned what King Sin Hazar’s troops did with Pom’s body, although she had heard the rumors about archery practice and the children’s ravenous hounds. Shea swallowed hard, knowing that she needed to plead her case, knowing that she needed