Brightly Burning

Nobody would believe I was sixteen anyway. Skinny and lanky he might be, but he was also undersized. He didn't even look fourteen. Feodor looked older than he did, and was certainly taller.

Of course, as his father pointed out constantly, a lack of height didn't matter to a merchant or a Guildsman.

By this time he had brooded himself into a truly black humor, and the moment he heard the housemaids come giggling into the kitchen for their late breakfast, he bolted up the stairs for his room, now carefully polished and scrubbed, any trace of him erased. He took a perverse pleasure in pulling the curtains shut on the morning sunshine and undoing their work by casting himself on the bed, boots and all.

He closed his eyes, nursing his bitterness in silence, wishing that he could will himself back home to Alderscroft.

*

HE didn't realize that he'd dozed off until he started awake to find his mother shaking him and the curtains pulled wide open again to admit the midday sun.

'Wake up!' she said crossly, the dreaded frown lines making deep creases between her brows. Her face, a perfect oval framed by the braids she wore wrapped around her head, was the very portrait of parental annoyance. Her hazel eyes narrowed with suppressed anger. 'When I told you to find something to do, I didn't mean to go take a nap! Here—'

She thrust the same forgotten roll of tools at him that the Guildmaster had forced on him last night, and Lan suppressed a groan. Was he never to be rid of the blasted thing?

'Did you hide this in the cushions last night?' she accused.

He blinked and began to dissemble; she cut him off before he'd gotten more than a word or two out. 'Don't bother to lie,' she said acidly. 'You do it very badly. You did. It's just a good thing that the Guildmaster thought Feodor was older than you—he offered to take Feo as his 'prentice, so Feo can use these, and he won't be offended to see that you've given Feo your present.'

Relief must have shown on his face, for his mother's lips tightened. 'Tidy yourself and get downstairs. Your father and I have something to tell you.'

She clattered out of his room, and Lan's relief evaporated, replaced by dread.

Oh, gods, now what? Was he going to be 'prenticed to someone after all? His heart plummeted, and with cold hands he straightened his tunic and swept his hair off his forehead.

Feeling as if he were going to his doom, he plodded down the stairs and into the lesser sitting room where he could hear his mother and father talking.

They both looked up as he entered; his mother still had that tightly-closed expression around her mouth, as if her lips were the opening to a miser's purse, but his father looked less grim. Archer had a milder temper to go with his gray-threaded, tidy chestnut hair, but today there was a sense of sadness around his calm, brown eyes, and his square jaw was set in a way that suggested it would not do Lan any good to argue with the fate planned for him.

Lan took deep breaths, but still felt starved for air.

'Sir,' he said, suppressing the feeling that he ought to bob like a servant, but keeping his eyes down. 'Ma'am. You wanted me?'

'Sit down, Lavan.' That was his father; Lan took a seat on the nearest chair, a hard, awkward thing that was all angles and a little too tall for his feet to lie flat on the floor. That was the signal for his father to rise and tower over him. Lan's chest tightened, and he truly felt as if he couldn't breathe. 'I was hoping for all of my sons to follow in my trade.'

'Yes, sir,' Lan replied in a subdued tone of voice, going alternately cold and hot, a feeling of nausea in the pit of his stomach. I'm going to be sick, I know it....

He looked up through his lashes as his father looked down at him and sighed.

'Well, having two of my offspring take to the trade is more than any man should expect, I suppose.' Archer shook his head. 'Lan, have you any idea what you propose to do with yourself with the rest of your life?'

His feeling of sickness ebbed, but he started to sweat. 'Ah—' Don't say that you want to go into the Guard! he cautioned himself before he blurted out the truth. That was not what Archer wanted to hear. 'I, ah—'

'That's what I thought.' Archer looked back at his wife, who grimaced. 'You know, in my day, you'd have found yourself packed off to whatever master I chose to send you to. You wouldn't have a choice; you'd do what I told you to do, as I did what my father wished for me.'

'Yes, sir.' A tiny spark of hope rose in him. Did his father have some other plan? Whatever it was, could it be better than being sent off to some miserable dyer or fuller? Unless—he— oh no—not a temple—

'If you were lucky, I'd have sent you to be a priest,' his father continued, echoing Lan's unfinished thought. 'There's some that would say it's the proper place for you.'

'You'd at least be serving your family if we did,' Nelda said acerbically. 'Which is more than you can claim now, lolling about in bed most of the day and glooming around the house doing nothing the rest of the time!'

'Superfluous' sons and daughters were often sent to one temple or another; the sons of the highborn were the ones that became the priests that were ultimately placed in the best situations. The rest took what they were assigned, normally poor temples in tiny, isolated villages in hardscrabble country or in the worst slums of the cities. Their families were greatly praised, of course, and it was generally thought that they incurred great blessings from the god or goddess of their choice for sending one of their blood to serve.

Lan gulped back alarm and forced himself to keep his eyes up. If he read his mother's words aright, he wasn't being sent to a temple either.

'You're luckier than you deserve,' she said after a pause, sounding very bitter and resentful of her son's good