Tris watched as Keth roused everyone and gathered them in Ferouze’s sitting room to break the news of Yali’s murder. The result was chaos. Xantha collapsed in hysterics. Ferouze punched the wall before she started to cry; Poppy sat and rocked as tears streamed down her face; the male lodgers hammered Keth with questions. Glaki clutched her doll and screamed for her dead mother and her Aunt Yali.
“Get her out of here!” shrieked Ferouze. Poppy lurched to her feet and scooped up the child, taking her outside.
Tris went to the wailing Xantha, considering slapping her out of her hysterics. A seed of pity stopped her. Instead she took the scent bottle she carried for such occasions from the purse on her sash. She removed the top and waved it under Xantha’s nose. Immediately the blonde inhaled and coughed. The men standing near her flinched from the smell.
“What is that stuff?” demanded the flute-player, a pretty young fellow with bronze skin and grey-green eyes. “It’s hideous!”
“The friend who made it calls it ‘Infallible’,” replied Tris, corking the vial. She chose not to mention that her foster-mother Rosethorn had no respect for hysterics. The herbs in her version of smelling salts were chosen with that attitude. “We need some water.”
As Xantha drank the water, Tris looked around. The drummer held Ferouze, his muscled arms tight as he kept her from lashing out again. Tris remembered hearing something shatter as she brought Xantha around: the pieces of a basin lay on the floor at Ferouze’s feet. Glaki could step in that mess, she thought, and fetched the broom to sweep up the shards. Finished, she looked for Glaki. The child and Poppy were still missing.
One of the male yaskedasi was also gone. He soon returned, having spread the news throughout the neighbourhood. Others came with him, men and women, old and young, to weep and to curse the killer and the city that didn’t care if yaskedasi died. It wasn’t long before Tris’s head ached fiercely. Little Bear and Chime had escaped the room when the first guest arrived.
When Tris gave a final look through the crowded chambers, she saw Poppy had returned. The brunette sat with Ferouze as they shared the contents of a jug with their neighbours. Poppy wept still, without making any sound.
Tris asked one of the men for directions to Yali’s room, where she assumed that Poppy had left Glaki. She guessed that the little girl would cry herself to sleep, but Tris didn’t like the idea that Glaki would wake alone.
Tris walked out to the courtyard, glad to be in cooler, less stuffy, air. She let rain fall on her head for a moment, enjoying its comforting feel on her braids. It was over the rain’s soft patter that she heard hiccups. Glaki was huddled on the stair to the upper galleries, weeping into Little Bear’s fur. Chime sat on her shoulder, crooning as she groomed the child’s tangled hair with her claws.
For a moment Tris could only stare, appalled. Did Poppy just bring the child out here and leave her to cry alone?
How often had Tris herself done this, crept into a corner to weep, knowing the only ones who cared about her were the animals of the house? She had not lost a mother or an aunt as Glaki had, but time after time she had been passed on to yet another relative. It was overhearing the talk that decided that she and her many strangenesses would be sent to some other family member that had always sent Tris to cry in secret. When Cousin Uraelle, who had kept her the longest, died, Tris had wept not for the mean, stingy old woman, but for the loss of the most permanent home she could remember.
She touched the girl on the shoulder. Glaki flinched against Little Bear, throwing up an arm to protect her face. Gently Tris pressed her arm down. A handprint showed clearly on the girl’s cheek. Poppy had slapped Glaki to silence her.
“It’s just me, Glaki. You saw me yesterday, remember?” Tris kept her voice gentle as she sat on the flagstones of the ground floor gallery. She leaned back against a wooden pillar.
“Mama,” the child mumbled at last. “Aunt Yali. When do they come home?”
Tris drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She knew she wasn’t good with children, though her heart went out to this one. What could she say? What did people say?
She could only know what she would say. She hated people who tried to evade the truth. “They died, Glaki. Mama and Aunt Yali died. They won’t be coming home.”
Fresh tears welled in the girl’s eyes. They spilled over her stained cheeks. “No,” Glaki replied, shaking her head. “No.”
“I’m sorry,” Tris said gently. “Yes.”
Glaki began to sob again, then to wail. Tris bit her lip, trying to decide what was right. In the end it was her knowledge of Sandry, her good-hearted sister, that guided her. Tris sat beside Little Bear and pulled Glaki on to her lap. The little girl fought, straining to get back to the dog. “Doggie!” she screamed, her face turning beet red.
“It’s Little Bear. That’s his name,” Tris explained, panting as she hauled on the struggling child. “He’s not going anywhere. If you sit with me, he’ll be here, and so will Chime. We must talk, Glaki. You have to learn some hard new lessons. I wish I had someone nice to teach them to you, but you’re stuck with just me.” She finally got the little girl on to her lap. Glaki howled, battered Tris’s chest with her fists, and drummed her heels on the ground. Tris held on grimly, still talking softly. “It isn’t right, what’s happened to your mother and Yali. I hope you grow to be someone incredible, to repay you for all this misery. Why is it, do you suppose, the gods are said to be favouring you when they dump awful things into your lap? Is it because the other explanation, that sorrow comes from accidents and there are no gods doing it to help you be a strong person, is just too horrible to think of? Let’s stick with the gods. Let’s stick with someone being in charge.”
As she continued to speak, rattling along about any topic that came to mind, whether Glaki could understand or not, she held the girl close. Tris was so used to the child’s struggles that she didn’t notice at first when Glaki’s screams began to grow softer, her small body relaxing into Tris’s hold. It was only when Glaki was quietly sucking her thumb, whimpering against Tris’s chest, that the older girl realized she could loosen her grip. Her hands and arms stung from being locked in the same position for so long. She smoothed damp, tumbled curls away from the child’s face. “That’s very good.” She hesitated, then awkwardly kissed Glaki on the forehead. “We can’t let you make yourself sick on top of everything else.”
It was some time before Glaki would let Tris get up without hysterics. Each time the child’s voice rose, Tris would settle back into place. Finally Glaki herself climbed off Tris’s lap. ‘“Pot,” she whispered, not meeting Tris’s eyes.
“Chamberpot?” Tris asked. Glaki nodded. With a groan Tris struggled to her numb feet. “You don’t have a real privy here?” Glaki shook her head. “Wonderful,” Tris said, easing the kinks in her spine. She held out a hand. “Show me where,” she said.
Glaki took her hand and led her up the stairs. Little Bear, with Chime on his back, followed them.
“Let’s go to where you sleep,” Tris suggested.
From the neatness of the room and the absence of dust, Tris guessed that this was Yali’s room, not Iralima’s. As Glaki used the chamberpot, Tris opened the shutters to let some air in. She leaned outside for a moment, calling her favourite breeze to her. It had come all the way from Winding Circle and was Tris’s most faithful attendant in the hot south. When she held out her hand, the breeze wound around it. “Find Niko,” she instructed it. “Tell him I’m all right, and that I don’t know when I’ll be home.” It sped off on its way.
It had been frustrating to send her winds out before in search of a woman being killed, but what else could she do to help right now? Keth was torn up in spirit, too much so to attempt to make another globe. No one had mentioned it, but it was plain to Tris that they couldn’t rely on the killer waiting a day in between strikes, not when he’d taken Yali just a day after the previous victim.
She had to do something. Her breezes were all she had.
Tris looked around. Glaki and Little Bear had curled up together on the bed, the child watching the dog as he slept. Chime sat on the window sill beside Tris, cocking her head, her eyes curious.
“Will you stay there a little while and be quiet?” Tris asked Glaki. “There’s something I need to do. It’s going to be windy in here, but don’t worry. It’s just me. I’m a mage. There are things I do with winds and breezes.” She wasn’t sure that the child understood, but she thought it did no harm to talk to her as if she could. Tris had never understood the need for adults to address children in baby-talk.
She walked over to the door and flung it wide, summoning her breezes from the courtyard. She also called any of the Khapik air currents that would respond, drawing them to her through door and window. In they sped, making blankets, curtains, skirts, hair and fur dance, spinning around Glaki, Little Bear and Chime in curious exploration before they circled Tris.
She let her power spill out around her, doing her best to magically convey the sounds she wanted to hear, frustrated because it would be so much easier if she could just see what they passed over. Only when she was sure that she could explain no more did she let them go. “All of Khapik, mind,” she told them. “Every street, every alley, every courtyard.”
The breezes sped away to do as she asked. With a sigh, Tris lit the cheap tallow lamp, then sat on the bed, resting her back against the wall. Glaki inched over and tucked herself under Tris’s left arm. Little Bear belly-crawled until he was sandwiched between Glaki and the wall, then resumed his slumbers.
“You know, I lost my mother when I was small, and some of my aunts,” Tris confided. She chose not to mention that her mother and aunts had not been lost to her through death. “It was scary, going from house to house. Everyone has different ways of doing things, and they yell at you if you don’t do them properly, have you noticed that?”
Glaki nodded, her thumb firmly in her mouth.
“But animals are always friendly, if you don’t hurt them,” Tris said. “And you can tell yourself stories just like your mother and your aunts tell you stories. You could tell yourself stories about the family you will have one day. I have a wonderful family now. And you know, Glaki, that your mother and your aunt still love you, wherever they are.”
Glaki took her thumb from her mouth. “Did you cry?” she asked.
“I cried like you did, where nobody would hear and yell at me, or slap me,” replied Tris softly.
“Tell me about your family?” asked the girl.
Tris was telling Glaki about the day Briar stole a miniature tree when she realized that Keth stood in the doorway. She glanced at the little girl, who was fast asleep. “How is everyone?” Tris asked Keth in a whisper.
“Frantic,” Keth replied abruptly. “Angry. They’re talking about a march to Balance Hill in the morning, to tell the Keepers that they’ll stop working if something isn’t done. Khapik brings a lot of money into the city, it’s the place foreigners usually visit first. Maybe the Keepers will listen.”
Tris frowned. If that was true, that the district brought income to the city, what chance did Dema have of making the Keepers shut Khapik down?
Keth rubbed the white spot in his hair. “Look, I’ll get a chair to take you home. You — ”
Tris cut him off. “You’re out of your mind,” she said flatly. “This child just lost the two most important people in her life. I’m not taking her from the only home she knows, and I’m not leaving her with this lot. That Poppy slapped her, for Mila’s sake! I’ve sent word to Niko. In the meantime, I’m staying here.”
“But she’s not your problem,” Keth protested. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know how she feels,” replied Tris. “I’ve been in her shoes, or a pair that looked a lot like them. If Little Bear and Chime give her some comfort, I’m not taking it away. Have you heard word from Dema?”
“Tris, this isn’t necessary,” argued Keth stubbornly.
Tris glared at him, refusing to share any more of her private miseries to explain why it was necessary. “I asked, have you word from Dema?”
He might not know about her childhood, but he did understand the look on her face. “Nothing.” He wandered to the window and leaned out, letting the rain fall on his head. “At least not that many yaskedasi are out working in this.” Struck by an idea, he turned to Tris. “Could you keep it raining a few days? The fewer people on the street, the fewer targets.”
Tris shook her head. “The storm’s already moving on.”
“Then stop it,” replied Keth.
“You don’t stop storms,” she explained. “You usher them on, guide them down a path they might have taken anyway, but you can’t stop them. That’s why you had a drought before this, someone was holding the rains in place across the sea. Besides, Keth, the rain won’t stop him from killing. If he can’t find someone on the street, he’ll go elsewhere.”
Keth jammed his hands into his pockets. “You mean he’ll go to the nice, sheltered women of the city. Women with families who care what happens to them. Women who aren’t as shady as yaskedasi!”
She had only meant that the killer would try the back alleys, the courtyard yaskedasi, or even go after Khapik’s women in their homes. There was nothing in this room to stop anyone from coming in who wanted to; Yali’s lock was even worse than Kethlun’s. It hadn’t occurred to Tris that the killer might leave Khapik, to find victims in the rest of the city.
Once he’d said it, though, the truth became clear. “They’ll refuse him, won’t they? The Keepers, and Dema. Between the money this place brings, and the risk the killer will go elsewhere, they won’t let Dema shut Khapik down.”
Keth slumped into the room’s sole, rickety chair. “No. I don’t think they will.” He looked down at his clasped hands. “I don’t know what Dema can do if the Keepers won’t help.”
Tris leaned her head back, staring at the ceiling. “Me neither,” she admitted.
For a long moment Keth was silent. Finally he said, “I need to get back to work on the lightning globes. I’ll make them clear sooner. I’ll make one that will show us his face.”
“Then sleep,” Tris advised. “Try, anyway. We’ve a long day tomorrow.”
Her breezes reported back to her all through the night. They brought Tris nothing.
In the morning Tris made sure that Glaki, Chime and Little Bear were comfortable in the workshop at Touchstone Glass with Keth. He had agreed to watch them while Tris ran some necessary errands. Once she had purchased breakfast for the group Tris headed back up the Street of Glass, dodging two brawling prathmun whose wagons had collided. Other pedestrians and riders swerved around the brawlers as if they didn’t even see them.
The skies were clear; the brooklets that had run in the gutters were shrinking. The city sparkled, rinsed clean for the moment. Atop the two hills ahead, the white marble structures of Heskalifos and the Assembly gleamed like hope and dignity given shape. For the hundredth time Tris wondered how Dema had fared with the Keepers of the Public Good. She was almost positive that she and Keth had been right, that the Keepers would not shut Khapik down, but she wanted very badly to be mistaken.
At Jumshida’s, Tris found her hostess seated at the breakfast table, reading a book. “Niko’s still abed,” she told Tris. “He made a late night of it, at Serenity House.”
Tris frowned. “What was he doing there?”
“The arurim dhaskoi, Nomasdina? He came to us for reinforcements for when he talked to the Keepers yesterday. I felt badly for him,” Jumshida said, peeling an orange, “but he’s so obsessed with catching the Ghost that he forgets what truly matters here in Tharios. I tried to remind him of the duty he owes his clan, but he would have none of it. He convinced Niko to go to the Keepers with him. The Keepers didn’t see them until after midnight. I think it was the third hour after that when Niko returned to us.”
“Do you know if the Keepers listened?” asked Tris.
Jumshida shrugged. “Niko said nothing to me, but I would be much surprised if they changed the way we have done things for a thousand years, just to meet a temporary emergency.” She met Tris’s eyes with her own grey-green ones. “We are great believers in time, here in Tharios,” she explained. “Time, and the eternal balance of things.”
The cook walked into the room with a tea tray. “He rang for this,” the woman explained.
“I’ll take it up,” Tris offered. The cook was more than happy to relinquish the heavy tray to her, and Tris was more than happy to get away from Jumshida, before the woman patronized her any more. Sheer survival over centuries isn’t a guarantee of virtue, Tris fumed as she climbed the stairs. It’s just a guarantee that nothing will change for the better!
Niko was busily cleaning his teeth when Tris came in and set the tray on a table. “Jumshida said you went with Dema,” she said as Niko spat, rinsed, and spat again. “Will the Keepers do anything?”
“Nothing,” he informed her waspishly, throwing down his facecloth. “They will not close Khapik. They said it would alarm the populace and cause financial hardship to those who work there. They will not intercede with the priesthood of the All-Seeing to let the arurim dhaskoi or even me work seeing-spells over the dead. They will not risk the purity of the city and of the conference. Even though I am a foreigner, they will protect me for my own good. Arrogant, hide-bound, unimaginative — ”
He might have gone on, but Tris interrupted. “Niko. Yali, the woman who came here to see if Keth was all right? She was the most recent victim.”
Niko sighed. “So Dema told me.” He took the cup of tea Tris handed to him.
“Well, she left a foster-daughter, the child of one of the other dead women. I mean to stay with the little girl — her name’s Glaki — until some provision is made for her. I don’t think she ought be left to the other women in the lodging house, and Keth wants to concentrate on the globes.”
“Is he Glaki’s father?” Niko asked, sipping his tea.
Tris hadn’t thought of that. She considered it, then shook her head. “Glaki’s Tharian clean through. Anyway, I’m back for some clothes, and I wanted to ask about scrying again.” Tris smoothed a wrinkle in her dress. “I sent my breezes through Khapik last night, to let me know if they heard a woman being strangled, but it doesn’t work very well. Has anyone arrived yet who can see things on the winds?”
“You are still determined to learn?” asked Niko. “Even after all I’ve told you?”
“You survive being pelted with images,” Tris pointed out. “It hasn’t driven you mad — though you can be quite odd, when you put your mind to it.”
Niko sat on his bed and looked at her. “So much of it means nothing,” he pointed out. “So much of it you don’t even really see because it’s gone in a flash. The headaches are ferocious. Every account I’ve read of wind-scrying compares it to seeing the future, and the grief involved in that I know all too well.”
Tris sat next to him. “Has anyone come who knows it?” she asked again. “Niko, these women deserve better than to have a monster pick them off one by one while those who should protect them say it’s all right if they die, as long as they don’t spread the pollution of their deaths around. I could go as mad from not being able to help as I could from being drowned in visions.”
Niko sighed. “Start looking at and through a particular breeze, clearing your vision as you clear your mind. According to what I’ve read, you should first begin to see colours, then movement… Tris, you do realize that only one mage in thousands can do this? One in a generation?”
“I have to try,” replied Tris, her voice low but passionate. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, but stared at her hands, fisted in her skirt. “It’s not right, what’s happening here.”
Niko stood and went to the trunk of books he carried everywhere he travelled, opened it, and pushed back the lid. These were the texts of his craft of seeing, volumes on ambient and academic magic, and other books which helped him in the exercise of his own power. He brought out a small, leather-bound volume closed with a strap and a catch, lifted it in his hand as if weighing it, then held it out to Tris. “Take it. There are exercises that may help. The writer could scry the wind.”
Tris looked at the tiny volume and gasped. “Niko! You have a copy of Quicksilver’s Winds’ Path, and you never told me?”
He smiled. “My fears for your sanity are real, you know. My best friend at Lightsbridge, when I was a student there? She went mad from the study of wind-scrying. She was — more easily distracted than you are, though. I always meant to let you see the book in time. I suppose that time is now.”
Tris stroked the embossed lettering on the cover with reverent fingers. It was said to be the ultimate book on wind magics. It was also very old. “You can’t lend this to me. What if something happens to it?”
Niko smoothed his moustache. “That’s why I’m giving it to you, so you needn’t worry if anything happens to it. I’ve learned all I can from it, and you need the half that’s about scrying the wind. Just remember, it takes time to master it, if you can. You may not learn enough to stop this madman.”
That Niko would trust her with such a prize told her more about how he saw her than anything else that had passed between them in recent months. It said that he believed she was a full-fledged mage, an adult and craftswoman. She met his eyes, her own filling with tears. What would happen to her now? Was he saying he wanted her to leave him?
“Not that you get rid of me,” he added, as if he’d read her mind. Neither of them was good at being sentimental with the other. “We’ve places to go yet, libraries to search. Now, scat, so I can dress.”
“I need to go back to Touchstone Glass,” she said. “You’ll find me there or at Ferouze’s, Chamberpot Alley, in Khapik, if you need me.”
“I will be here or at Phakomathen, scrying the future,” Niko said. “The conference can manage without me, until this monster is caught.”
Tris sighed in relief. “Thank you. You’ll probably see him long before we will!”
Tris packed, then visited the university baths. Dressed in clean clothes, her pack slung over one shoulder, she visited the Akaya Square skodi, or market. There she bargained with a jewellery seller for a price on the glass pendants Keth had made with Chime’s flames, selling a quarter of them. At Jumshida’s she had collected all of Chime’s flames she could find, as well as the spiral glass circles that were the dragon’s vomit and the lumpy glass rounds that were Chime’s dung. If she and Keth were to create more lightning globes and look after Glaki properly, they would need cash for glassmaker’s supplies, clothing and food. Tris had money set away, but saw no reason to dip into that if Keth were right about the attraction of the pendants.
Once the bits of glass were sold, Tris set off for Touchstone. The day was heating up. By the time she arrived, she was red-faced and puffing under the weight of her things. Inside the workshop, Glaki napped on Little Bear’s flank as Chime tried to wrestle the cork out of a jar of colouring salts. Keth was pacing as Tris set down her pack.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “Most of the morning has gone! I made three vases already!”
“I had things to do,” said Tris. “Whenever you propose to up-end your life, arrangements have to be made.”
“Nobody asked you to come live with us,” protested Keth with a glance at the sleeping child. “We managed before you.”
“You’ll manage better with me.” Tris went to the well and gulped down a ladle of water, then looked at Keth. “Are you ready?”
Once her circle of protection was drawn and the magical barriers raised, Keth meditated, popping all of his power into and out of his imaginary crucible in the blink of an eye. “Well?” he asked Tris. “I think I remember how to create a globe. I’m going to try to make it big, so we see as much of the surroundings as we can.”
“All right,” Tris said. “Try.”
He got excited as he picked up the blowpipe. His fingers trembled, though his hands were steady enough as he collected a gather of molten glass from the crucible. Tris breathed with him as Keth inhaled, counted, held, and counted, forcing himself to calm down. Raising the pipe to his lips, he exhaled into it steadily as he twirled it. He continued to twirl the pipe as he stopped, inhaled, and held to the count. His second exhale expanded the bulging gather from the size of an orange to the size of Little Bear’s head. He reheated the glass and blew a little more. “It cools faster when I work this way,” he grumbled, reheating the glass again. “I hate going slow.”
“Keth, watch — ” Tris began, but it was too late. He’d let himself get worked up. When he blew into the pipe, a fat streamer of his power went with the air, straight into the glass. It lengthened and burst, spraying droplets on to the wall.
Tris surveyed the damage. Luckily the walls, though wood, had been treated to resist fire. “You know, a few more of these, what with the drops you put on the wall the other day, and you could make a design,” she remarked, falsely cheerful. “It looks pretty, in an over-enthusiastic way.”
Under his breath Keth told Tris what he thought of her comments. She caught the small puff of air from his mouth and twisted it in her hand until they both heard “claybrained flap-mouthed impertinent — ”
“Now, was that nice?” Tris asked, releasing the puff of air. “I was only trying to help.”
Very gently Keth beat his head against the wall, rousing Glaki from her sleep. “Ow,” the four-year-old observed, watching Keth.
“Men are like that, little one,” Tris replied. “Keth, feel sorry for yourself later. Start again.” She dug inside one of her packs until she found the dates and dried figs she’d bought at the skodi. These she gave to Glaki, who ate silently.
Keth cleaned his blowpipe, then thrust it once more into the kiln and its crucible. Chime glided over to sit on a shelf beside the furnace and observe. Keth drew out the gather and began to count, breathe, twirl and blow. Gently he coaxed the bubble along, reheating and twirling, enlarging it each time, growing more confident as everything went smoothly.
“One more,” he murmured as he drew out the gather. “One more go.”
Tris saw his magic spike, leaping to flood down the barrel of the blowpipe and out over the skin of the ball. Burdened with its strange weight, the glass ball dropped from the pipe and on to the floor, where it sprayed outward.
“I used to be able to do this!” yelled Kethlun, furious. “I used to be able to do this in my sleep! How can it be so hard? Why does the magic fight me? Why do I fight me? This will never work!” He flung the pipe into the corner and got to work to clean up the mess.
Tris leaned her chin on her pulled-up knees, watching him through slitted eyes as she thought. One day she, Briar, Daja and Sandry had been on the roof of their home, basking in the sun and talking. They had spoken of their first real experience with their crafts, the one they didn’t actually associate with magic. Talking it over, Sandry and Daja could see how their teachers had used magic to teach them something about spinning with a hand spindle, in Sandry’s case, and drawing thin wire from thick, in Daja’s. Maybe what Keth needed was help with his craft.
She waited until Keth was ready again. Glaki moved into a corner with her doll as Tris got to her feet. “Here,” she said, walking over to Keth. “Let’s try something. You’re going to meditate like before, and blow like before, but you’re going to close your eyes and let me help you.”
“I don’t need help!” Keth snapped, red-faced and out of patience with himself and the world. “I know perfectly well how to do this!”
“You know perfectly well how to blow glass,” she said. “That’s what you’re going to do. You’re not going to interrupt yourself by sticking it into the kiln to reheat, that’s all. I’ll keep the glass warm.”
“How can you do that?” demanded Keth. “Your lightning will fry it.”
“I won’t use lightning.” She walked her fingers through her braids until she found the loops on either side of her head that she used to store warmth. She removed their pins, then undid two centimetres of each braid. Pulling her fingers through the freed hair, she collected two palmsful of that heat, drawn from the molten rock of the earth’s core. She pressed her hands together to mix their contents, then drew them apart. Now she had a thirty-centimetre-square surface to use on the glass. She checked it against the furnace, making sure they were equally as hot, before she looked at Keth again. “Stand at right angles to the furnace once you have your gather,” she told him. He looked green, as he always did when she fidgeted with her braids. “Now, start breathing.”
Once he had his gather on the end of the blowpipe, he backed away from the furnace. Tris moved until she stood in front of the gather. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Keth said. “Or weren’t you watching when the last two splattered?”
“Just breathe, and close your eyes, and blow, Keth.”
He hesitated. “I can’t shape it that way,” he warned.
“It shaped itself the first time. Stop talking and get to work.”
Counting, Keth twirled the pipe as Tris held her outstretched hands on either side of his gather. Closing his eyes, he exhaled into the blowpipe for the count, drew his mouth away without stopping the motion of the pipe, then blew again.
Tris kept the heat she had summoned just beyond the glass, watching sharply as the globe got bigger. Tiny lightnings, magic that Keth mixed with the air he breathed, darted along the glass surface like minnows in a pond. When the globe had reached the proper size, she grabbed a pair of cutting tongs and put them around the glass still attached to the pipe. “Keth,” she said quietly. He opened his eyes as she pinched with the tongs and twisted, freeing the globe.
Keth yanked the pipe back and caught the globe in one hand. It didn’t burn him. He stared at it, awestruck. As the lightnings in the glass played, they grew to fill the inside of the globe and to run amok across its surface. By the time Keth had got the composure to set his blowpipe aside and cup the globe in both hands, it was a ball of miniature lightnings.
“It’s pretty!” cried Glaki. She clapped her hands and reached up. Before Tris or Keth realized what was happening, the globe left his hands and flew towards her.
“It’ll burn,” Tris said quickly. “The glass is hot, Glaki. Only Keth can hold it.”
Glaki pouted and sent the ball soaring back to its creator. The child had just confirmed a suspicion that Tris had held since the child stopped the cyclone Tris had used to write Yali’s name in the courtyard dust.
Keth stared at Glaki. “I can’t deal with this now,” he said hurriedly. “Tris, don’t expect me to. I just can’t.”
“You won’t have to,” Tris replied with resignation. “The responsibility is mine. Find somewhere to put the globe.”
“Why?” asked Keth. “We have to make it clear up, don’t we?”
“First we stop. You need a walk, and a breather, and food,” Tris informed him.
“No! Let’s work on it now, get the lightning out. I can do it!”
Tris sighed. He was dead white and covered in sweat, shaking so hard he could barely hold on to the globe. “When did you last eat?” she asked.
Keth had to think. “Breakfast.”
“And drink? And visit the privy? And sit down?” she demanded.
Keth glared at her, his blue eyes reflecting the lightning on his globe. “I don’t need any of that,” he said, and swayed.
Tris propped her hands on her hips and glared back. “You’ve been working all morning and part of the afternoon in this hotbox. If you don’t eat, you’ll collapse, and if you collapse with this thing, you might break it, so stop arguing with me!”
Chime swooped over to land on Tris’s shoulder. She chinked worriedly at Keth, who wiped his forehead on his sleeve.
“Just for a moment, perhaps,” he admitted. He swayed again. Quickly he placed the ball on his workbench.
Tris began to say something rude but decided to hold her tongue. Keth needed to rest before he fainted, now that his excitement and the strength he had built up by repeated use of his newly gripped power had drained away. Rather than speak hastily, she first took down her magical barrier on the shop.
“Sit,” she ordered. “I’m going to the skodi across the street for some food. Glaki, why don’t you tell Uncle Keth what your doll did this morning?”
As the child walked Keth to the bench by the well, Tris left Touchstone Glass. Only when she was three doors down did she stop to sag against a shop’s wall in relief. She hadn’t been sure that her help would work.
They were almost done with their belated midday when Keth looked up to see Dema in the workshop door. “Sit,” he offered through a mouthful of flatbread and chickpea spread. “Eat something.”
Glaki towed Dema over to the bench, where he sat abruptly and took the food Tris offered. A handful of olives and a wedge of cheese revived him a bit, as did the ladle of cold water Glaki fetched for him. “Hello,” he said to her, “what’s your name?”
Glaki, suddenly shy, stuck her thumb in her mouth and hid behind Tris.
“She’s Glaki,” Tris explained quietly. “Iralima was her mother, Yali her foster-mother.”
“Gods,” Dema said, dejected. “That’s more ill luck than anyone should have in one lifetime.” He looked at the globe that sparkled on a counter. “Another one. Splendid. If the last two are any indication, he’ll strike tonight. Any luck in getting the lightning to clear?”
“We’re going to work on that after we eat,” Keth replied with a sidelong glance at Tris. “They turned you down, didn’t they? The Keepers.”
“Niko said they did,” Tris murmured.
Dema looked at the hardboiled eggs and helped himself to two. “They said the city can’t afford the loss of income from Khapik,” he said, shoulders drooping as he peeled an egg. “That the people would lose confidence in the Keepers, even the Assembly. That it would look as if they were admitting defeat at the hands of a lone madman. That all order is lost. In the audience chamber, while Niko asked about the cleansing, I heard someone whisper that if Khapik closed, the Ghost might come for respectable women.” Chime clambered into Dema’s lap, purring musically. He smiled absently at her, ate half an egg, then continued, “The Keepers asked why they shouldn’t replace me now and let my family deal with the loss of status. Thank the All-Seeing I had a fallback plan to give them. If I don’t find the Ghost in ten days, Nomasdina Clan loses one of our Assembly seats as punishment for sending an idiot like me to work for Tharios. I asked how could I save our honour with Khapik open and my hands tied, but they were done with me. How can they not care?” he burst out, looking from Keth to Tris. “Women are dying! Why won’t they do whatever is necessary to save them?” He stuffed the other half of his peeled egg into his mouth.
Tris laid a hand on Dema’s arm. “Why are you up? You need sleep. Tired folk make mistakes.”
Dema swallowed, drank some water, and sighed. “I’m on my way back to Elya Street now. There’s a room in the back I can use.”
“What about your fallback plan?” Keth wanted to know, curious. “What’s that?”
Dema peeled his second egg. “My sergeants will find as many arurim as they can, particularly females, to bring into Khapik disguised as locals. I can do that if I pay for it myself, or rather Nomasdina Hall pays. With an Assembly seat at risk, Mother will let me spend the money.” He looked at the globe. “Come for me when that clears?”
Keth nodded and squeezed Dema’s shoulder. “Get some rest,” he said. Dema nodded and left, eating his second egg.
“So they won’t close Khapik,” Tris mused, “but if he can find people to act the victim for him, and if he pays for their time, he can do that. This city doesn’t make sense.”
“It does in a strange way,” replied Keth as he gathered their leavings. “If you belong to a great family, your power is shown by what you give to the city that grants you greatness. The city gives to you, you give to the city. It’s worked for Tharios until now.” He dumped their rubbish in the barrel by the rear gate. “And honestly, Tris, have you ever heard of anything like these murders? Women in the same line of work, killed the same way by one person, left out in public for everyone to see?”
He. watched as she tugged her lower lip. “Sandry — my foster-sister — wrote to me that some assassins worked like that in Summersea a few months ago,” she replied slowly. “But they were killing the members of another family as part of a trade war, in a way that would frighten anyone who might think to cross them.”
“I don’t think the Ghost does it for that,” Keth said. “Yaskedasi aren’t exactly anyone’s rivals for anything. I think he likes it. And maybe he looks to shame Tharios, by showing that no one can stop him.”
“And if you can’t afford fountains or extra arurimi, like the yaskedasi and the Fifth Class, the city does nothing to help,” Tris remarked tartly. She got to her feet and stretched to loosen her back. “Back to work, Keth. I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you try to blend the lightning on the outside of the globe, so you can clear the surface. Maybe then you can look into it and see what’s inside.”
Keth tried to do as Tris suggested. First he tried to combine the outer lightnings into one large bolt he could peel away, but things distracted him from the task. Chime produced a shower of glass flames that rained on the laughing Glaki. The dog wriggled on the workshop floor to scratch his back. Street noise seemed louder than ever.
Only Tris didn’t disturb Keth, though he wanted her to. He wanted her to thrust him aside and growl, “Oh, here, I’ll do it!‘ Instead she read from a small, leatherbound volume. She seemed lost in it, though every time Keth glanced at her, she looked up, raising colourless brows over the brass rims of her spectacles.
Frustrated after what seemed like a dozen interruptions, Keth grabbed a hank of lightnings with thumb and forefinger, literally trying to jerk them off his globe. For a moment he saw its frosty white surface. An image grew there: long brown hair, large brown eyes, a full mouth with a wicked twist to the side. It was Yali.
Keth trembled; his eyes stung. After he rubbed them to make sure no unmanly tears fell, her image was gone. The lightnings he’d yanked away escaped his hold to cover the globe again.
Keth set the globe down and covered his face with his hands, trembling with grief. He and Yali had only kissed once. For the most part they just talked, something Keth had never done with his betrothed in Namorn. They’d discussed food, music, plays, even the customs of their countries. Something in Yali spoke to his heart. She’d had a restful quality unlike that of any girl he’d ever known.
The Ghost had taken that from Keth, just as he’d taken a loving mother and a foster-mother from Glaki. What else would he take?
Settling the globe on his knees, Keth tried again.
Late in the afternoon Tris roused herself from her reading and proclaimed that Keth had worked enough today. Plagued with a savage headache, Keth didn’t argue. Instead they cleaned up the shop, bid Antonou and his family goodbye, and left for Khapik. Headache or not, Keth took Tris’s pack, though it seemed to get heavier as he walked. By the time they saw the yellow pillars of the Khapik gate, he felt as if someone had worked on him with hammers. Every bone in his body hurt.
As they passed through the gate, strong hands removed the pack from his grip. “You need a bath,” said Tris, her eyes sharp and knowing. She hung the pack on her own shoulders. “You’re exhausted. It happens when you aren’t used to working magic for hours, I should have remembered. Make sure the bath attendants know to wake you up and send you home. Do you cook in your rooms?”
Keth wiped his forehead, trying to think. “No,” he said at last. “We buy food cooked at the Lotus Street skodi. It’s cheap, and not bad. Instead of turning into Chamberpot Alley, you turn right and follow Peacock Street to the wall. The Lotus Street skodi is right there.” He fumbled in his pocket.
“Never mind,” Tris said testily. “I sold some of those pendants you made for me. We’ve money enough. Go wash.”
Keth stood there, staring down at the plump girl who looked up at him. If he hadn’t been drunk with exhaustion, he never would have said what he did: “You’re actually a nice person, aren’t you?”
She went beet-red. “No,” she retorted. Steering Glaki ahead of her, she walked away, disappearing into the crowd of early visitors to Khapik.
They were eating the supper Tris had bought when Xantha stuck her head into Yali’s old room. “There’s a Farewell for Yali at the Thanion,” she said. “If you want to go, Keth. And you,” she added with a glance at Tris.
Tris looked at Glaki. The little girl had been fine for most of the day, until they returned to this room. Now she was silent, eating little, burying her face from time to time in her battered rag doll.
“Thank you,” she told Xantha, “but I’ll stay with Glaki. It’s been a long day.”
Keth lurched to his feet, tired as he was. “I’ll drop the globe at Elya Street with Dema,” he told Tris. “I think it’s starting to clear.”
She nodded. Keth had placed it on the table, where it sparked and flashed. She had watched when he tried to clear it once he returned from his bath, but as before, he’d used up his magical resources. Now the surface lightnings were growing thin, showing the bolts that still shone thick inside the globe. If it cleared as the last one had, it would be another hour before they could see anything. Since Keth was exhausted, it was better that Dema get the thing before the lightning was gone.
Xantha’s blue eyes widened. “Keth, did you do that? You did magic!”
“Not any that’ll be of use,” Keth said bitterly. He picked up the globe and ushered her outside.
As the door closed behind them Tris heard Xantha say, “Can you do anything with complexions? Mine chaps so easily these days.”
Tris shook her head. Then she looked at Glaki, who sat on the floor with her back to Tris. Here was another problem, one she needed to sort out. “Can you make a picture in fire?” She picked up the table lamp and walked around in front of the child, then sat on the floor and placed the lamp between them. “Would you show me a picture in the flame?” she asked gently. “It’s not much of a fire, but I bet you can do it. What do you see there?”
Glaki frowned at the lamp, her fine black brows knit, her deep brown eyes intent. Slowly the lamp’s flame rose, then spread until it formed an oval the size of Glaki’s hand. A face appeared in it, that of a woman with Glaki’s large, heavily lashed brown eyes, glossy black curls and olive complexion. “Mama,” whispered the child. The image dissolved: the lamp was out of oil. Glaki began to weep.
This time she didn’t fight when Tris dragged her into her lap. Softly she cried into the front of Tris’s sensible pale blue dress. Tris patted her back and crooned softly, letting her weep. Now she was certain. Glaki had shown two of the three signs of academic magic: moving things and producing images in fire.
As if my life weren’t complicated enough already, Tris thought, grouchy, though she was already making plans. Glaki would not be pushed from household to household as Tris had been. She would have a proper home and all the things a child needed to hold her head up in the world. Tris would take her to Lark, Rosethorn and Discipline Cottage when she and Niko returned to Emelan. Glaki would become part of the household that was rooted there.
Chime’s flames would help. They had to pay Keth’s cousin Antonou for the sands, scrap glass and colouring agents that Keth used to study his magic, but part of the money to be made from Chime’s flames would go to Glaki, to give her the things that little girl-mages needed. Tris nodded, her mind made up. She would not leave Glaki to scrabble for a living in Tharios.
Outside Tris saw that the sky was growing dark. In the street under the window she could hear the chime of dancers’ bells, chatter and laughter, test notes played on musical instruments. Khapik was coming to life, which meant the Ghost would be stirring, too.
Glaki had dozed off on Tris’s lap. Carefully the older girl got to her feet. Glaki protested sleepily, just as she grumbled while Tris got her into her night clothes; but once tucked into bed, with Chime on one side and Little Bear on the other, she slept. Tris suspected that, like Keth, Glaki was probably exhausted from her first deliberate use of magic.
She went to the window and leaned out, summoning breezes. As she had the night before, she sent them out to bring her word of violence done with silk and a woman’s stolen breath. Then she refilled the lamp, lit it, and sat down with Winds’ Path. She had little hope for what her breezes might learn tonight, but she wanted them to get used to searching. They might find something and take her to its source, and they would be practised at exploration when Tris learned enough to scry what they had touched. She didn’t care about seeing the future, as Niko did. She just wanted to catch the Ghost before any more little girls were left motherless.
Keth returned from the Farewell for Yali to bid Tris good night. The city’s clocks chimed midnight. Some time after that, Tris closed her book. She was unable to grasp another word; what she had read was a jumble of complex ideas that would take time to sort out. With the tides and lightning still moving in her veins, she wasn’t sleepy. She needed a walk.
First, she discovered that Chime did not want to be left behind, which meant Tris had to don the sling and settle the glass dragon. Then she went downstairs. As she’d hoped, Ferouze was awake. The old woman kept the same hours as the yaskedasi. “I’d like to go for a walk,” Tris explained. “Would you watch Glaki until I come back? She’s asleep in Yali’s room.”
“She pays no rent for it,” Ferouze grumbled through her handful of remaining teeth. “And I’m no children’s maid.”
Tris got two copper five-bik pieces out of her purse. “One of these to watch Glaki, one to pay a week’s rent, and don’t tell me Yali paid more than that. Will you do it?”
“I’ll do it.” Ferouze reached greedily for the money.
Tris held up a finger in warning, then stroked a thin braid with her free hand. Sparks of lightning jumped on to the copper coins. She loved copper: it held lightning for hours. “When I come back, I’ll take the sparks off these,” she said, placing them on Ferouze’s table. “I wouldn’t do that,” she added as the woman grabbed for the coins.
“Ouch!” Ferouze sucked on her stinging fingers. “That hurt!”
“I know,” Tris replied. “Better hope that I remember to take the spell off when I get back. Of course, I’ll find you up where Glaki is, won’t I?”
“You dhaski are hard folk,” grumbled Ferouze as she followed Tris into the passage. “Your mother would be ashamed.”
“I’ll tell her you said so,” Tris promised, turning on to Chamberpot Alley.
Khapik was as fascinating as ever to both Tris and to Chime. Together they went down alleys and through streets designed to tempt the coldest heart, up to rooftop gardens and down to sunken open theatres where dancers, jugglers and fire-eaters entertained the public. She passed rough taverns overflowing with drunkards and select wine shops where people sipped and talked about vintage and palate. Her breezes sought her out wherever she went, carrying snippets of conversations, including some that made her blush.
“They say you’ll get an education down here.” she confided to Chime. “They just don’t say if you’ll like what you learn.”
Only once did she encounter a problem, on a street off Willow Lane. A man drew a knife when he saw her, showing bad teeth in a nasty grin. “Just the purse, girl. I’m doing you a favour here, teaching you about walking dark streets alone.” He came so close to her that Tris could smell his breath. She moved back a step before he grabbed her by the arm.
Tris tried to yank away. “What if I don’t want the favour?” she asked coldly, trying to decide how she would punish him. She felt Chime clamber on to her shoulder.
“That’s life, Dimples,” the robber said, fumbling for Tris’s purse. He was on the girl’s far side, in the light. Tris’s right shoulder, and the dragon, were in shadow.
Chime pulled herself on to Tris’s braids, leaned forward, and spat a handful of needles into the man’s cheek. The robber yelped, released Tris, and backed away, pulling the sharp bits of glass from his face. His fingers bled as the needles cut them.
“Maybe I’d better call for an arurim,” Tris remarked, though it seemed to her that Chime had punished the man enough. “Men like you are probably terrible for business.”
“Mage!” croaked the robber. He turned and fled into the darkness, still trying to pull bits of glass from his skin.
“I don’t have dimples!” Tris called after him. She sighed and walked down a broader street. “That was well done,” she praised Chime. “I’m impressed by your aim.”
The glass dragon butted her head against Tris’s ear. A breeze circled around them, carrying the voice of someone who yawned and said, “I’m done for the evening, Nerit.”
Tris caught herself yawning. “Sounds like a good idea,” she murmured, and returned to Chamberpot Alley.
When they arrived at Touchstone Glass in the morning, Dema was there, waiting for them. Keth halted in the courtyard, fists clenched. Get it over with, he told himself, and asked Dema, “Who, and where?”
Dema’s face was covered with sweat. He wiped it on his stole. “Stenatia, a courtyard yaskeasi from Swansdown House. He left her on the steps of the Hall of Records on the Keeper’s Road.”
“A courtyard…?” Tris asked, not sure what that meant.
“From one of the entertainment houses. Yaskedasi there are a cut above those who perform on the street,” explained Keth. “Their customers pay just to get in, plus whatever they give the performer. And the houses have watchmen to make sure the guests don’t get rowdy.”
“Which means he took her from under the nose of someone who was supposed to stop that sort of thing,” Dema added. “You have good instincts for this, Keth, to remember about the watchmen.”
“I don’t think that’s a compliment,” Keth said bitterly. “When was she taken, do you know?”
As they talked, Tris set out the breakfast they had purchased on the way to the shop. Glaki took a honeycake to Dema, who smiled wearily at the child. He was ashen-faced with exhaustion. “Around midnight, between performances. Last anyone recalls seeing her, she was on her way to the privy at the back of the house.”
Heat — temper? magic? he didn’t know — welled up in Keth until he thought he might burst. The courtyard houses were safe, particularly for yaskedasi. There were hazards to performing on the streets, enough that those who could afford to do so and those who had gained some measure of fame thought it worthwhile to pay the monthly fees to those who operated the houses. “Does he walk through walls?” he cried, furious. “Is he invisible?”
Inside the shop two tall vases shattered. Everyone turned to stare at the pieces on the floor until Tris remarked, as sensibly as ever, “The problem with bringing your magic under control is that it gets more powerful. If your control isn’t perfect…” She went into the shop and found the broom. “We’ll work on that today.”
“And the globes,” Keth said grimly. She sounded unmoved and level-headed, but Keth knew her a little better now. He could see the quiver at the corners of her mouth. She was as upset as he was. It startled him to realize that, even though he knew she was upset, her braids remained where they were, without movement, without sparks. For the very first time he wondered at the amount of emotional control it took, for her hair not to give her feelings away.
“And the globes,” agreed Tris as she swept up glass. “You said you have a fallback plan. When does it go into action?” she asked Dema.
“Tomorrow night at the earliest,” he replied, inspecting his honeycake as if he’d forgotten what it was for. “The arurimati have to rearrange schedules. The women, some of them, have families to be looked after. At least Mother isn’t screaming over the expense. She knows how close I am — we are — to disgrace.” He took a bite of the cake and chewed as though it were made of wood. “I wish I could explain how maddening this is!” he cried when he had swallowed his bite. “Nine times out of ten — no, better than that — ninety-four times in a hundred, the victim knows her killer, his killer, whoever. We question the family, the neighbours, fellow workers, and usually it’s one of them. But how do we handle a thing like this? We question those who knew the dead, who saw them before they were taken, but all of the possibilities have turned to lead. We’ve found no one who knew all of the victims, no one at all. And no one who saw anyone suspicious around even two of the yaskedasi.”
Carrying broken glass to the cullet barrel inside the door, Tris saw a prathmun pick up the rubbish from Antonou’s house and carry it to his wagon in the alley. “Have you questioned the prathmun?” she asked, turning to Dema. “Maybe they saw something.”
“Of course we’ve picked up and questioned a number of them already,” Dema replied, suddenly uncomfortable as well as unhappy.
“Did they have anything to do with Khapik, or the victims?” Keth wanted to know.
Dema shrugged. “They’re Khapik prathmuni. And they haven’t admitted anything so far.”
“You’re torturing them,” Tris accused.
“That’s how we handle prathmuni,” replied Dema. “Everyone knows a prathmun lies as easily as he breathes. Since the arurim prathmuni bring them in anyway, it’s easiest to go right to it. If you were Tharian, you wouldn’t even ask about it.”
“So you get the torture out of the way, whether there is reason to suspect the prathmuni you arrest or not,” Tris said angrily.
“That’s how things are done here,” replied Dema. “Our ways aren’t yours. Could we change the subject? It’s not exactly a decent one, particularly in front of a child.” He got to his feet, half of his honeycake still in one hand. “If you create another globe today?”
“We’ll let you know,” Keth said.
Tris, Keth and Glaki watched Dema trudge out of the courtyard. Only when he was well out of sight did Keth hear Tris mutter, “Barbarians.” She looked at Glaki and scowled. “It’s fine to talk about torture in front of a child, but gods forbid we talk about the people who get tortured.”
When Glaki’s eyes went wide with fright, Tris smiled crookedly. “I’m not angry with you,” she assured the little girl. “Not even a bit.” Glaki relaxed slightly and returned to playing with her ragged doll.
“Tharian customs,” murmured Keth, though he understood Tris’s feelings. “We’re only guests here.”
“Slavery is more honest,” she retorted. “At least the only thing anyone ever blames slavery on is bad luck, not impurity.”
Keth nodded. “We’d better start. I want to get some ordinary pieces done for Antonou today besides the other things. He’s been very good about me using up his supplies.”
Tris settled Glaki with her toys and placed her magical protections around the workshop. Once more she and Kethlun settled into meditation. That morning, at her direction, Keth worked on letting his magic fill just his skin without going outside his body. Tris barely said a word apart from letting him know that his efforts were successful.
Once they finished pure meditation, Keth blew glass. Working slowly, taking pains, he produced three glass balls. None of them held lightning; all had lightning that flickered over their surfaces, but only in bursts that did nothing to hide the glass underneath.
Glaki was placing the third globe where the others sat — the lightning on these globes didn’t sting — when someone outside the barrier cleared his throat. It was Antonou. “Keth? Cousin? Might I have a word?”
Tris lowered her magical barrier. “Keep an eye on Glaki,” she told Keth, walking past Antonou into the centre of the courtyard. “I’ll be right here, but don’t disturb me.”
Standing beside the well, Tris took off her spectacles and tucked them in her sash, then closed her eyes and began to meditate. The men’s voices and the sound of Glaki as she played with her doll, Little Bear and Chime, faded from her attention, along with the street noise. Once Tris was ready, she opened her eyes.
The day’s breezes slid before her sight: they were clear in her vision, though nothing else was. She saw the air’s eddies and pools, the change in currents where heat from the kitchen flowed through cooler air. Chime soared past her nose. Tris’s eyes picked out the curling and parting of the air as the dragon cut through it, as water parted around a boat.
Whispering a magical formula, Tris drew signs first on her left temple, then on her right: the crescent for magical vision, the seven-pointed star for the strength to manage what she would see, and the four small waves of the winds. Then she clasped her hands before her, and waited for her sight to improve.
A wisp of colour shone on a current of air, like the glint in the depths of an opal. Another wisp. Another. The air streamed with flares in many hues, threads of fast-moving colour. The wisps grew infrequent, then rare. At last they stopped appearing to Tris’s eyes at all.
She sighed. Her first try was over. Using a counter-clockwise motion, she wiped the signs from her temples, and lurched. A strong arm caught her. She looked up into Keth’s face. “Why are you mauling me?” she demanded, struggling weakly. She felt as wrung out as a sheet on laundry day.
Something on Keth’s face looked suspiciously like a smile. Tris gave up her fight and groped in her sash for her spectacles.
“I had to stop you from falling into Antonou’s well,” he explained, his voice quivering. “They’d never get the taste of mage out of the water.”
Tris shoved her glasses on to her nose and glared at him. He was smiling. “What’s so funny?” she growled.
“You. Did you know it’s almost midday?” Keth set Tris on her feet.
She swayed as she looked around. There was the lip of the well, just thirty centimetres away. Little Bear, Chime and Glaki sat on the ground nearby, staring at her in fascination.
“Come on, great teacher,” Keth said, wrapping an arm around Tris’s waist to steady her as she tottered over to a bench. “Rest your weary bones.”
“It can’t be nearly midday,” Tris argued, though her magical senses told her it was. “What happened to the morning?”
“It passed while you gazed into the air,” Keth replied, easing her on to the bench. “You didn’t even twitch when the Bear chased a cat in the garden. We owe Antonou basil plants, by the way.”
“I don’t know why that dog bothers,” muttered Tris. “Every time he corners a cat, it beats the fur off him. I should get our midday.” Her head swam. Odd sparks flared in her sight as she moved her head.
“Antonou is bringing it,” Keth assured her.
Tris looked at him sharply. “Why? He’s under no obligation to feed me or Glaki.”
Keth grinned and sat beside her. “There’s been a change in our arrangements,” he explained. “Antonou likes having a glass mage in the shop, that’s why he’s left us alone. And he really likes those globes.” He pointed to his morning’s creations, which continued to glitter and spark, pale copies of his lightning globes. “If he sells anything I create that I don’t need to keep, I’ll get half the price. It solves a lot of problems, Tris. He says what he can make just from the globes will pay for my time and materials, and we’ll have plenty left over. I thought you’d approve, since you sold those pendants I made of Chime’s flames.”
“Ah, she is back with us.” Antonou approached from the kitchen wing of the house, a tray of dishes in his broad, scarred hands. “So, Dhasku Tris, does Keth need these globes? As mementoes, or for study? I can get a very good price for these. People love magical novelties that don’t carry unpleasant consequences.” He set the tray down on a table near the kitchen garden and took another tray from his wife, who had followed him.
“But I won’t always be making magical devices, will I?” asked Keth, placing benches around the table. “I’ll be able to do plain glass again?”
“You can do whatever you like, when your magic is completely under control,” replied Tris. “And those globes are your work. They’re yours to dispose of. Just let me test them this afternoon, to be sure they don’t hold any surprises.” She looked for Glaki, and saw that the girl was now hiding behind Little Bear. Both she and the dog stared at the good-smelling dishes with yearning.
“Here, you are too skinny,” Antonou’s wife said, putting things on a plate for the child.
While Keth tried to blow another lightning globe that afternoon, secure inside Tris’s protective circle and working on his magical control, Tris inspected the new globes, exploring them with her power. They held not a flicker of true lightning, or of anything else. When she put the last one down, she noticed that Keth watched her. “They’re empty,” she said. “If Antonou wants them, and you want him to sell them, go ahead.”
He nodded. “So Khapik is safe for tonight,” he said, inspecting the globe he had just, finished. It glittered like a round piece of ice in his hands. “As far as we know.”
“As far as we know,” Tris repeated with a sigh. “We should tell Dema.” She was tired.
Keth finished his work, cleaned the shop, and told Antonou the globes were there for him to sell.
At last he, Tris, Glaki, Little Bear and Chime set off towards Khapik. “How’s business?” he asked the guard who stood at the district gate.
“Not good,” the man replied, disgusted. “The yaskedasi are scared. Some are leaving. And the guests are falling off, too. I suppose they think there’s a chance this madman will mistake them for one of us.”
“How bad is business off?” inquired Keth.
“A quarter,” the guard replied.
Keth winced as they passed through the gate. “This will hurt everyone,” he told Tris. “We’ve got to catch him.”
Tris looked up at him and saw lightning flash in his eyes. “Keth, calm down,” she ordered. “Breathe and count. You’re sparking.”
“I’m what?” he asked. “Where?” Tris pointed to his eyes. “Oh,” Keth said sheepishly. “That never happened before,” he pointed out, breathing slowly and carefully. The lightnings in his eyes faded.
“But the lightning found a path through you it likes, so it will keep following it. You’ll have to learn to control your temper,” Tris said firmly.
He grinned unexpectedly down at her. “And you’re going to teach me?” Though he knew she kept a tight hold on her deepest feelings, he’d also got enough of the tart edge of her tongue to find the idea funny.
Tris drew herself up. “I can lose my temper because my power is under control,” she said in her primmest voice. In a return to her normal, dry speech she added, “And quite a fight it is.”
At Ferouze’s, Xantha, Poppy, Ferouze and the four musicians were in the courtyard, talking. Keth went to his room. Tris and Chime settled on a step, watching Glaki and Little Bear stretch their legs in a game of chase.
Xantha, relaxing as Poppy combed her long gold hair, began to hum, then to sing, her voice a sweet soprano. Poppy joined in to sing the counterpart in her lower voice. From overhead they heard the sound of a Namornese balaka, a plaintive, sharper version of a lute: Keth descended the stairs playing it. Ferouze and one of the men fetched common lutes to play. One musician brought a recorder, another a set of graduated wooden pipes, while the fourth backed his deep bass voice with a harp. One song passed into another, as naturally as the late afternoon breeze flowed through the galleries around the courtyard.
It was the kind of time Tris had never expected to find in Khapik, like the evenings when her foster-mothers, sisters, and brother all sat in the main room of their cottage, working on projects and singing, talking, or telling stories as the sounds of Winding Circle drifted through the windows.
As Tris watched the players, sparks appeared in the air’s currents. She thought they might be part of a picture, but when she strained to see them, they disappeared. At last she gave up, relaxed and drifted.
The gathering broke up as the shadows lengthened. Everyone but Ferouze, Keth and Glaki had to work. Keth, seeing that Tris was not inclined to move, took Glaki and Little Bear to the Lotus Street skodi to fetch their supper.
That night the three of them ate in Yali’s room, washed their dishes, and settled in for an evening’s study. Keth pored over a book of glass magic Tris had borrowed from Heskalifos. Tris continued to read Winds’ Path. When she caught Kethlun yawning, she ordered him off to bed. Glaki was already asleep — she barely twitched when Tris changed her dress for a nightgown and tucked her in. Little Bear curled up beside the child. Tris napped, exhausted by her day, but she woke some time after the clocks had struck midnight, the mix of lightning and tidal strength in her veins fading but strong. Her magic told her that dawn was still hours away, but she was no longer sleepy.
She went to Ferouze and made the same bargain as the night before, that the woman would stay with Glaki. She barely trusted Ferouze, but Keth needed his rest. With Ferouze to watch over Glaki and her lightning-sparked payment, Tris went out into Khapik. Once more Chime rode on her back, as fascinated by the changing worlds inside the district as Tris.
Tonight there was a festival in which yaskedasi dressed as butterflies, their wings huge creations of gauze and bamboo painted in a variety of designs. They paraded around the streams and islands in a soaring of flutes and the silvery tones of bells and hand cymbals. Guests and other yaskedasi showered them with confetti, dancing around the butterflies.
When Tris tired of the noise and crowd, she turned down one of the quieter streets, venturing into Khapik’s darker areas. She came upon two women taking a purse from a drunken man. Tris considered putting a stop to it. She finally decided that if the man were fool enough to get so drunk that he could be separated from his friends and robbed, perhaps the missing purse would teach him a lesson he’d remember. The women looked at Tris, eyes glittering, as if they considered doing something about her, but when she walked by silently, they left her alone.
The encounter made her wonder again about what manner of person the Ghost was. He must look normal enough, to come and go everywhere with no one the wiser. He was clever, to turn the city’s dislike for the dirtier side of life to his advantage. That he loathed the female yaskedasi was obvious. Did he want to be caught? Given that he left his victims in public places, it would seem that he did — or was that due more to his contempt for the city as a whole? Perhaps he didn’t hate just the pretty, shady entertainers. Perhaps he hated all Tharios.
Tris shook off her musings. Thinking about what drove the Ghost, while fascinating, was Dema’s job. If she was to help, if she was to do more than shepherd Keth as he followed his strange connection to these deaths, it would be through wind-scrying. The air was everywhere. If she could see what the moving air touched, she could trace the killer, and avenge Glaki’s loss of the women who loved her.
Her breezes, sent out that night from Ferouze’s, found her now and then with their burden of sound. She listened to the conversations and noise they carried, finding nothing she could use. She also strained to view something, anything, in them. Once she thought she saw the curve of a gauze butterfly wing. She froze, trembling, needing to see more, but if she had actually glimpsed anything, the air that carried it had moved on, one of a hundred currents that flowed down the street.
“Probably just my imagination,” she muttered to Chime, and sighed.
Deep within Khapik, she walked down a service alley for the first time, having avoided them for their rubbish and smell until now. Two prathmuni sat there with a wagonload of garbage, eating supper. Tris was about to pass them by, but curiosity made her stop. “Have the arurimi talked to you?” she asked. “About the murders? Whether you’ve seen anyone or anything suspicious?”
The prathmuni — a woman with muscles like a bull’s and a teenaged boy — regarded Tris with equally flat eyes. Finally the woman spat on the flagstones at her side. “Shenos, get some local idiot to explain what happens if you’re caught talking to one of us. We’d as soon not catch the whipping. And go away.”
“No one will hear about this talk from me,” Tris replied. “So will you answer my question?”
“Why?” demanded the boy. “What have you done for us?”
“Shut up,” growled the woman.
“It’s what I can do for you, if you pass the word around,” Tris replied. “If I tell the dhaskoi who’s charged with finding the Ghost that you’re helping, he can stop the arurim prathmuni from taking your people in for questioning.”
“He must be a god, then,” said the woman. “How ’bout it’s more likely the arurimi will just keep torturing till one of us confesses and gets executed for it?”
“What if it is one of you?” Tris asked, curious.
The prathmuni looked at one another and drew the circle of the All-Seeing God on their foreheads. “They beat that out of us long ago,” said the woman, but she looked uneasy.
“One of us — gods,” breathed the boy. “They’d slaughter us all.”
“Is it one of you?” Tris asked again.
“No,” they said at once.
“Never,” added the boy.
“But surely you’ve angry folk among you,” Tris pointed out, watching as sparkles, a fistful of them, flowed past her eyes.
“Plenty,” replied the woman. “But they know better than to risk everyone’s lives. They know how the upper classes feel about us.”
“That’s right,” the boy agreed weakly.
There was no image in the passing clump of light. Tris sagged with disappointment. To the woman she said, “Madmen aren’t guided by what their people need.”
The woman spat to one side again before she said, “You’re strange even for a shenos. Are there more at home like you?”
Tris smiled ruefully. “No, mostly they’re travelling, too.”
“I hope not here,” the woman said. “Now please go away.”