The Glasswrights Series by Mindy Klasky

Author:Mindy Klasky [Klasky Mindy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504046213
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-05-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Mareka Octolaris leaned her head against the cool window. Rain streaked down the panes, pulling the heat of her flushed face through the glass. She closed her eyes against the silver brightness and reminded herself to take a deep breath, to exhale some of the fire that burned in her blood. The octolaris nectar that she had just consumed was strong, almost too strong.

She had brewed the potion to be more potent than she ever would have dared back at the spiderguild. There, masters would have reminded her that she was only an apprentice, that she did not have the skill to handle the largest doses of dilute octolaris poison. But here, in Liantine, she needed to manipulate the strongest spiders the guild had ever known.

Mareka lifted her head, and the blood in her cheeks flamed hotter. The delicate embroidery of her arm-band seared into her flesh. She had decided to don the symbol of a spiderguild journeyman, if only in secrecy beneath her formal gown. After all, it had not been her fault that she had been kept from her examination. Jerusha had ordered the slave girl to her death. Serena’s poisoning was not Mareka’s doing.

Trembling in reaction to the infusion in her veins, Mareka crossed to the mantel above her hearth. A pitcher of water – cold, clear water – rested on the wooden shelf. Mareka filled her earthenware goblet carefully, loathe to lose even a single drop of the cooling stuff. She swirled the cup, making sure that it incorporated all of the pearlescent liquid at the bottom, the remnants of the nectar that she had just consumed. She drank down the water and forbade herself from being distracted by the glinting silver patterns that the nectar tracked around the cup. Twice more she rinsed the goblet, swallowing greedily to quench the thirst that raged at the back of her throat.

There. The power of the nectar radiated from her belly like a spider’s web. She set the goblet beside the pitcher, taking care to place it precisely. If she were not cautious, she would move too quickly; she would drag the cup off the mantel and send it crashing onto the floor. She could control the nectar. She could control herself.

After all, she had completed eight years of apprenticeship in the spiderguild.

Once she was a journeyman, Mareka would be trained in all the finer points of octolaris nectar. She would mix the spiders’ poison with more and more complex potions, so that she did more than merely immunize herself to the dangerous shimmering venom. Masters in the spiderguild could use nectar to slow their heartbeats, to make their bodies resemble cold and lifeless corpses. They could raise their skin’s temperature, so that they could walk through winter nights without a cloak, tread through snowbanks without boots. They could adjust their bodies’ cycles, so that they chose when to bear a child, when to bring a pair of squalling twins into the world.

Whatever Mareka did with octolaris nectar here in Liantine was really unimportant, the apprentice assured herself.

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