He’d got a proper meal into Keth. It seemed like the least he could do, when Keth had worked himself into numb silence trying to produce a vision of the next murder before it came to be. Dema knew that state of unblinking exhaustion all too well. Every student mage reached that point. He wished he had a bik for every time he had poured out all of his power over the course of a day, until he simply had nothing left.
He made sure an arurim saw Keth home, giving the arurim coins to buy Keth a honeycomb and good tea in one of the Khapik skodi along the way. Keth would need both in the morning. If he was like Dema, he would wake feeling as if someone had run a hot wire through his veins.
What would it have done to him, Dema wondered, to wake at twenty with strange magic on his back? He wasn’t sure. Like every other child of Clan Nomasdina, at the age of five he had been interviewed by mage testers. Once they proclaimed him a fledgling mage, Dema began the years of lessons, experiments, tests and study under various teachers. After he’d earned his credential from Heskalifos at twenty-two, he’d chosen a career, knowing that his position as a mage would make his advancement easier.
He had not known that the average arurim’s view of a new mage was one of cheerful contempt. One of them had advised him to “cast your little magic and don’t bump into the furniture”. They were laughing at him tonight, as Dema went everywhere with a basket on his arm. No matter that the nearness of the lightning globe made the hair on his arm prickle, or that every time he accidentally touched it he got a small, nasty sting. He wanted the thing where he could see it when the lightnings cleared.
In the meantime, he investigated the newest victim. Her name was Rhidassa; she had been a tumbler and a dancer. She left behind a husband and two children, all shattered by her death. She had not told them if she had noticed anyone strange loitering about in her last days of work. Her family’s blank faces and hard, shiny eyes told Dema that they might not tell him if they did know of such a person. Fortunately his truth spell worked on them. That was reassuring: his self-confidence had suffered when Kethlun’s magic had scorched it from existence. That was the problem with spells cast by those without innate ability as truthsayers: they were easily destroyed by strong magic.
Dema was drinking tea at his favourite shop on Peacock Street when he wondered if Keth realized just how strong his power was. Probably not, since he’d taken his failure to clear the globe he’d just made personally. Dema hoped Tris would tell Keth that he had done better today than most student mages did after years of study.
Two hours before sunrise Dema realized he’d brushed the globe without being stung. Looking at it, he saw that the surface lightning was reduced to specks that flashed and vanished. The bolts inside looked as if they were thinning out. At that point he gave up any pretence of investigating further. He ordered a horse saddled and a squad of arurimi prepared to ride with him, then sat at his desk to wait for the globe to clear. It did, an hour before dawn, to show a dark-skinned yaskedasu in a flowing, silvery kyten. She lay on an altar Dema did not recognize, the yellow veil knotted around her throat.
He ran outside to the arurimi he’d kept waiting. “Do any of you know where this is?” he demanded, holding out the globe.
They gathered around, bleary-eyed and no doubt thinking of the end of their shifts in two hours. Most shook their heads, but a twenty-year veteran frowned. She traced the line of the altar and the image of a cow-headed goddess behind it with her finger.
“Do you know it, sergeant?” asked Dema. “Quickly, if you do.”
“It’s a shenos temple, one of them inland religions,” she replied, squinting. “Oh, aye, the Temple of Ngohi. But Dhaskoi, it’s near the crossing of Apricot Street and Honour Street in Fourth District. Out of our boundaries.”
“I don’t care if it’s in Piraki,” retorted Dema. “Come on.” He put the globe in his saddlebag, mounted his horse, and galloped out of the courtyard without waiting to see if the amrimi followed or not. He urged his horse onward through the nearly empty streets, the animal’s hooves striking sparks from the cobblestones. Late guests of Khapik, staggering home, scattered out of his way.
The temple’s doors were unlocked. Dema seized his mage’s kit and rushed in, searching for the altar. There was the statue, three times the height of a normal human being. The altar, and the latest victim, were in front of it.
He approached as he fumbled in his kit for heartbeat powder. He didn’t know how long it would take for the priests to arrive, but he had to learn as much from the dead woman as he could. He sprinkled the powder over her, watching as its colour shifted to the faintest shade of pink. She had died recently, maybe as little as two hours ago.
Next came the vision powder, sprinkled over each bulging eye. Inside Dema felt shame for treating her this way, for using her as a source of information rather than mourning her. Even yaskedasi deserved better.
The powder revealed only smudges over her eyes. She had not seen her killer. In all likelihood he had come up behind her.
Next he got the bottle of stepsfind, took a mouthful, and sprayed it over the body with a fresh, silent apology. Looking down, he saw the killer’s footprints, shadows that led through a side door into an alley.
Three white-clad priests were there, building a circle of protection around the temple. “How did you know?” cried Dema, furious past all common sense. “How did you know about this?”
One of the priests, the one who held their supplies, turned to look at Dema. Behind him his partners, a man and a woman, closed the protective circle and brought it to blazing life, cutting Dema off from the killer’s traces. “You walk perilously close to the defilement of all you touch, Demakos Nomasdina,” the priest who’d looked at him said, grim-faced. “You would have carried the pollution from the corpse you just saw out into this district, letting the rot spread to innocents. We knew you were capable of it. A watch was placed on you.”
“You had me followed!” shouted Dema. “By what right? I am a citizen of Tharios, a member of the First Class, and I am doing my duty towards the city!”
“Your vision of your duty blinds you to the risk you take, involving yourself with the rotting shell that once housed a spirit,” retorted the priest. “Continue as you meant to just now, and you will carry spiritual rot to the houses of the First Class and to the temples and offices that serve them.”
The female priest looked at Dema. “If pollution spreads over the First Class, the city is doomed,” she said flatly. “It is our purity that saved us while an empire was falling to pieces. It is our cleansing and our vow to stay clean despite temptation which makes us a great power now. And you would destroy that, in your arrogance, in your belief that only Demakos Nomasdina of the arurim dhaskoi may speak for one of the Fifth Class. She is before the All-Seeing. He will judge her as well as her killer.”
“But her killer spreads his pollution, too,” Dema said daringly. “He goes out into the city with death all over him. You say I risk polluting the city —what of the killer?”
“The city’s priests cleanse Tharios in prayer, fasting and meditation,” said the priest who had first spoken to Dema. “The killer will only pollute those who encounter him. They are plainly of the Fifth and Fourth classes, with the crimes of their last lives to pay for in this one. He is their penance. It is you who are the greater danger. You take this vile taint among those who must keep the city from plunging into chaos.”
“You have lost sight of what is vital, imagining that matters of this world are as valuable as those of the spiritual realm,” the female priest announced. “You will spend this day and tonight among us, to fast, repent and be cleansed.”
“But there is a killing!” protested Dema. “He could kill again!”
“He is in the All-Seeing’s hands,” said the third priest, who had been silent until now. “As you are in ours.”
Dema clenched his fists, his heart racing with fury. “I have an investigation to run!”
“Others will work on it,” the female priest said flatly. “Your superiors and your family are being notified. Tomorrow you may take up your work again.”
“If you have a more fitting vision of what matters, and what does not,” added the third priest. “If you accept your true duty.”
Dema turned, to discover more priests behind him. He was trapped. He looked beyond them, to his arurimi. “One of you go to Touchstone Glass when you are released from here,” he ordered. “Tell Kethlun Warder and Trisana Chandler about this.” His sergeant nodded. Dema faced the priests. “If he kills again tonight, it will be on your heads,” he snapped.
“If he kills again tonight, he will answer to the All-Seeing,” retorted the female priest, “as we will answer if we allow you to continue in the path of error.”
Worn out by his day and the taxing of his power, Keth slept the night through. His dreams were filled with lightning.
When he woke, it was to open shutters, early morning light and three familiar faces. No, four: Yali balanced the silent Glaki on one hip. The child sucked her thumb, her brown eyes large and steady as she looked at Keth. The women were still dressed and made up from the night before. He winced, started to get out of bed, and just in time remembered he had nothing on. He clutched the sheet to his chest.
“The Ghost got another one,” Xantha said, yawning as she leaned against the wall. “She was dead in some Fourth District temple. The gossip is that you magicked something that helped the arurim find her.”
“I wanted to make something that would help them find the killer,” growled Keth. “Did they?”
The three yaskedasi shook their heads.
“You never said you were a mage.” Poppy’s tone was accusing, as if she thought Keth had made it a secret on purpose.
“I didn’t know,” Keth retorted.
“How could you not know you’re a mage?” demanded Poppy. “Or are you just a bad one?”
“How could you not know Arania pays Lysis twice what she pays you to play Laurel Leaf in The Creation of the Garden?” Yali enquired. “Maybe you’re just a bad actress.”
Poppy glared at her. “She does not. It’s Lysis who can’t act.”
Yali shrugged. “Arania thinks otherwise.”
“Bring down your pots!” a man yelled outside. “Bring down your pots!”
Keth looked out of the window next to his cot. The prathmun who collected night soil was in the courtyard below, waiting for Ferouze’s lodgers to dump their chamberpots into the small barrel in his cart.
“He’s early,” said Xantha, running for the door.
“He’s late,” argued Poppy. No one in Khapik wanted a full chamberpot in their rooms during the day, when the heat made the smell overpowering.
Yali set Glaki by the door and stooped to fish Keth’s chamberpot out from under his bed.
“Yali, I can do it,” Keth protested, looking around for his breeches.
“But I’m up and awake.” Yali stopped on his threshold, her brown eyes curious as she gazed at him. “Are you all right? Ferouze says you barely made it upstairs last night.”
“I was just tired,” Keth replied. “This magic wears me out. We went at it hard yesterday, trying to just make a globe, not even to make whatever was inside visible. And I did one, I don’t know how, but then I couldn’t make it clear so we could see who this killer is.” He rubbed his face, then smiled at Yali. “Did you do well last night?”
“Well enough,” Yali answered. “I — ”
“Last call for pots!” cried the prathmun below.
“I’d better go,” said Yali, “before he leaves.”
“I’ll see you this afternoon,” Keth promised.
“If that slave-driver teacher doesn’t work you as weak as an overcooked noodle,” Yali said drily. With Glaki in tow, she ran to fetch her own chamberpot.
Keth got dressed. “I don’t think she can work what isn’t there,” he muttered. He could feel the power inside him, but the best way he could describe it was “floppy”, very like the noodle Yali had mentioned. In his skull he could hear the slight buzz he’d come to associate with his magic, but it was not what it had been the day before.
As he shaved, ate a roll for breakfast and walked out to Touchstone, he tried to recapture the feeling that had shot through him in that moment when Dema had distracted him — the moment when the globe had produced itself. He’d felt like the strain of forcing it down the length of the blowpipe into the glass had broken and freed the thing he’d been wrestling with. Was it a matter of not thinking about his magic? Or of not thinking about his craft? He wasn’t sure, and he wanted surety. He didn’t want any more dead yaskedasi.
When he reached Touchstone Glass, the glass shop itself was still closed. Antonou wouldn’t open for another hour. Keth decided not to bother the family. He went straight to the workshop. As he rounded the corner into the inner courtyard, he saw an arurim sergeant leaning against the well. She had been in command of the squad that had arrested him.
Keth stopped cold. “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it,” he snapped, wondering if he should yell for Antonou. The yaskedasi told plenty of tales of those who’d vanished into arurimati, to return so bruised their mothers didn’t know them.
Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself as the sergeant straightened. If you’re being arrested, why is there just one of them?
“Your glass ball cleared around dawn,” the sergeant said. “You did do that, am I correct?”
Keth swore silently as he felt a blush creep over his face. His blushes always made him feel like an idiot. “Yes,” he muttered. He met the sergeant’s eyes. “The killer…?” he asked, but she was shaking her head.
“A yaskedasu, in the temple of Ngohi. Not long dead, from what Dhaskoi Nomasdina could tell. He asked me to let you know you won’t see him today,” the sergeant continued. An odd expression crossed her face. She rubbed her nose and explained, “He’s, ah, he’s been granted the chance to cleanse himself and to rededicate himself to the purity of the city.”
Keth blinked at her. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“The priesthood of the All-Seeing took him in charge, to pray and fast for a day and a night,” the sergeant explained. “He got a little careless about taking death pollution out into the city proper. He’s been warned before.”
“You know, you’d catch criminals a lot faster if you just accepted death as part of life,” Keth pointed out.
“And what of our souls?” enquired the sergeant. “I for one don’t want to come back to another life as one of the Fifth Class, or worse, a prathmun. Belonging to the Fourth Class is hard enough.” She nodded to Keth. “Good day to you, Koris Warder.” She walked out of the courtyard.
When Tris arrived an hour later, Keth was catching up on work he’d promised Antonou. Seeing he wasn’t ready to do magic, the girl produced a large-toothed comb from her sash and began to groom Little Bear. As she struggled with a particularly stubborn knot, Keth told her about the dead yaskedasu, and about Dema.
Tris gaped at him. “These people,” she said at last. “I won’t understand them if I live for a century. He should be trying to find the one who killed that poor girl, not holed up in some temple.”
“The Tharians see it differently,” Keth answered, and sighed. “To them it’s the pollution that matters. I have to wonder if they’d be so concerned about Dema’s wallowing in death if the victims belonged to their precious Assembly.” He was putting a crucible of sand and chemicals into the furnace to melt when he realized he’d forgotten to use gloves or tongs. He felt nothing except a gentle warmth against his skin. The crucible placed, he held up his hands and looked at them. The only change was a bit of ash on his knuckles. He blew it off, and noticed that Tris was looking at him. “I didn’t know,” he commented, then grimaced at the stupid remark.
“There are good things about what’s happened to you,” she pointed out. “You can admit it, if you like. I promise not to say ‘I told you so.’ ”
“Oh, no,” retorted Keth. “You’d just think it really loudly.” He looked at Chime, who’d perched on top of the furnace. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll melt?” he asked the dragon.
For answer, Chime curled up, tucked her muzzle under one paw, and appeared to go to sleep.
“I don’t know how much work on globes you’ll do today,” Tris remarked after Keth had worked in silence for a time. Once Little Bear was combed, she had taken out a book and begun to read. “I’ve been watching. While your power’s come back, it’s not what you started with yesterday.”
“It doesn’t seem a rush, since he kills every other day or so, but I still want to try,” Keth said, twirling his blowpipe in one hand as he pressed a bowl mould to the molten glass to shape it.
“We’ll meditate in a while, then,” said Tris, “and try for a globe after midday.” She went to the doorway and sniffed the air. “There will be rain tonight.”
“We need it,” Keth said absently as he set his bowl in the annealing oven.
Other chores caught him up. Tris stayed out of his way, though once she startled him when she sang the words to a song he didn’t even know he was humming. “So that one made it all the way to the Pebbled Sea,” he remarked.
“Here I thought it made it all the way to Namorn,” she retorted.
They didn’t get to meditate until after midday. Tris enclosed the workshop within her magical protection — Keth’s mage relatives would have ground their teeth to see how easy it was for this girl-child to wrap an entire building with her power — and explained that day’s exercise to Keth. He thought it was ludicrous. Whoever heard of stuffing all of one’s own magic into a small object?
But she insisted, and he agreed to try. First he selected a crucible for the job. Next he imagined himself pouring all of the light of his power into it, as if magic were sand he meant to heat.
What vexed him was that the exercise turned out to be hard. His power fought his grip, sending out darts and flares like those thrown off by his lightning globes. For each spike that Keth grabbed and stuffed back into the crucible, two more seemed to sprout. By the time Tris called a halt, he was hot, sweaty, irritated and out of patience. The weather didn’t help. The air was stuffy, unmoving and sticky. When he begged Tris to lower her barrier, convinced it made the workshop’s air stale, she refused.
Keth sighed and prepared a gather of molten glass, though he doubted he could get a globe from it now. His neck was stiff, his hands sore, and no matter how much water he drank, he was soon thirsty again. Around mid-afternoon he threw off his shirt and leather apron. The apron only protected his clothes from embers. His body ignored small burns now. He rolled his breeches up above his knees. Tris, as aggravating as ever, had arrived wrapped around with breezes that ruffled through her pale grey cotton gown and white petticoats, leaving her with just a slight dew at her temples and the base of her neck.
“One thing I miss about home,” Keth remarked, wiping his dripping forehead on his arm as he prepared to take his gather from the furnace, “it cooled off at night. Of course, the winters are a curse from the gods. I suppose no place is perfect.”
“Emelan’s much like this,” Tris remarked, inspecting one of Keth’s glass bowls. “So’s Capchen. But we get the sea breezes at night, even in summer. My friends and I go down to the beach during the midday rest period, sometimes, and swim. Sometimes we don’t mean to get wet, but then Little Bear shakes off on us and we’re wet anyway.”
Keth grinned. “Our dogs at home do that. My mother and sisters won’t go down to the Syth when the dogs come along, because they know they’ll get splashed.” He set the blowpipe to spinning and concentrated on the feel of his magic, letting it flow down the length of the pipe. A breeze wrapped around his body, cooling his skin. When he looked at Tris, she looked back at him, all innocence.
His efforts to make a new globe came to nothing. His magic simply hadn’t come back enough. His third attempt gave off a few sparks of lightning, but they soon faded.
“Enough,” Tris said when he would have tried again. “Go home, rest. You can’t work with nothing.”
Keth scowled at her. “I don’t want to hear the ‘sometimes you have to know when to halt’ speech again,” he informed her.
“Then don’t make me give it,” she retorted. “Have you got a globe’s worth of magic in you?”
Keth hung his head. Complain about it though he had, the morning’s crucible exercise had shown him how to measure the extent of his power.
“Go home,” Tris ordered. “Relax. Visit a bathhouse. Something. I know it’s maddening, if that helps.”
“Do you?” he asked suddenly, wanting to know. “It doesn’t seem like you’re ever at a standstill.”
She stared at him for a moment, then glared, propping her fists on her hips. “The hardest lesson any of us must learn is there’s only so much we can do,” she informed him, her voice lemon-tart.
“We run into it head-first all the time, knowing what we can do, what we can’t, how much we can do. We think of magic as this promise that we can fix anything that comes our way, Keth. We can’t. Power’s just a tool some of us can use.” Her mouth curled wryly. “Now look. You went and made me give a speech. Go home and rest. There’s always later.” She gathered up her belongings, the dragon and the dog, and left the workshop.
Keth stood there, frowning. Even if he couldn’t produce another globe, he’d have thought she would try another exercise, rather than go. Perhaps she had a project of her own waiting back at Jumshida’s.
But now that she had mentioned it, a bathhouse sounded like a wonderful idea. Once he cleaned up the shop and took the finished work to Antonou, Keth headed straight for the bathhouse he used in Khapik. The steam in the hot bath was unbearable after the heat and damp outside. Keth stayed only long enough to scrub and rinse before he waddled down to the cold bath pools. There he soaked, and dozed, comfortable at last.
After she left Kethlun, Tris idled the rest of her afternoon away, exploring Khapik by daylight. There were no lights on the streams, no entertainers at most of the corners. The gates to the courtyard houses were closed. Some shops were open, as were some of the lesser eating-houses. Tris took a light supper at one of these, seated on a streambank. The help was in no hurry to shoo her away, so she read a book of glass magic as she waited for time to pass.
Now and then she sniffed the air. Her storm was coming on fast, turning the sky greenish-grey as it advanced. The little hairs on Tris’s arms and at the back of her neck stirred with its approach. Her big lightning braids quivered against her hairpins. It was far too long since the last rain, the earth complained to her. The very stones knew a downpour was coming. They welcomed it; the water in the streams of Khapik shivered with its approach.
At last Tris left her table and walked into the maze of the district, asking shopkeepers for directions to Chamberpot Alley. It was one of the twisty back streets close to the shadow of the Khapik wall, in an area where the locals dwelled and shady business was done. When she asked the yaskedasi for directions to Ferouze’s, they gave her and Little Bear strange looks, then reluctantly showed her the way. Tris, they made it clear, was not at all the sort of person they were used to seeing. Chime at least was spared the looks. She was tucked away in her sling on Tris’s back.
Ferouze’s lodging-house was stucco over crushed stone, three storeys high. The street windows were small and barred; the wooden gate that led to the courtyard was open. Tris hesitated by the door inside the courtyard passage, wondering if she ought to knock and ask for Keth, but then she heard voices. Following them seemed more appealing than knocking on an unknown, very dirty, door. She walked out into the open air.
At the heart of the courtyard was a well, one that had been in use so long that the broad stones that formed its rim — and provided a place to sit —dipped at the centre by generations of use. Three yaskedasi sat there, watching a dark-haired child as she played with a doll. Tris recognized two of them, Keth’s friend Yali and the tumbler Xantha. The third, a curvaceous brunette with a lush mouth and green hazel eyes, was someone Tris hadn’t seen.
The child saw Tris first. She gasped, stretched out her arms and cried, “Doggie!”
Little Bear looked at Tris. “Go,” she said, “be careful.” One of the hardest things to teach Little Bear was that “be careful” meant he was to approach, then hold still. He trotted over to the child, wagging his tail and panting cheerfully. With no qualms at all the girl stood and wrapped her arms around the dog’s neck.
The curvy brunette looked at Tris and grimaced. “Who let Koria Respectability in?” she asked, getting to her feet. “Isn’t anywhere safe from that sort?”
“Leave her alone, Poppy,” Yali said with a sigh. “She’s a friend of Keth’s.”
“Well, he’s not here,” said Poppy. “He’s off studying magic somewhere.”
“Actually, he isn’t,” Tris said mildly. “He finished a couple of hours ago. I hoped he’d be home by now.”
“You can wait if you like,” Yali said. “He usually comes home before we leave for work.”
Tris looked up at the sky. “Will you work? There’s rain coming,” she told them.
Poppy scowled. “How do you know?”
Tris shrugged. “It’s what I do.”
Poppy and Xantha traded glances. “Grab what trade we can, then,” Xantha said. She and Poppy raced upstairs.
Tris looked at Yali. “I don’t understand,” she said hesitantly. “What’s the rush?”
“We’re street yaskedasi, not house ones,” Yali replied, watching the little girl pet the dog. “We lose money on rainy nights. Even if it only rains for a short time, guests are afraid it will start again, so they find other things to do.”
“I’m sorry,” Tris apologized. “But the city really needs the water. The wells are down everywhere, and the gardens are drying up.” She nodded towards a small patch of green: Ferouze’s herbs and vegetables hung limp.
Yali blinked at her. “Why are you sorry?”
Tris opened her mouth to reply, and thought better of it. Confessing that she would cause the yaskedasi to lose a night’s income seemed like a bad idea.
“Never mind. May I sit?” she asked Yali.
The woman nodded. “Glaki, don’t pull the dog’s ears,” she warned. “He won’t like it.”
“Sorry, doggie,” the child said. She looked at Tris. “What’s his name?”
“Little Bear,” Tris replied, easing Chime’s sling into her lap.
This made Glaki chuckle. “He’s not a bear!”
“He’s big enough to be one,” Yali remarked drily.
“Is she yours?” Tris asked Yali as she let Chime climb out of her sling. When the glass dragon unfurled her wings, the child gasped in awe.
“What?” asked Yali as Chime flew over to land on Little Bear’s back. “Glaki, mine? No. She was Iralima’s.” She lowered her voice so Glaki wouldn’t hear. “Our friend who was murdered.”
Tris watched Glaki run a careful hand over the edge of Chime’s left wing. Chime sang a low, soft note, stretching out her long neck to look directly into the little girl’s face.
“What will happen to her?” Tris wanted to know. “Her father—?”
Yali shook her head. “As far as we know, Iralima was alone in the world. No family — if she had a man, she never mentioned it.”
Tris frowned. For ten years her relatives had hammered into her mind how their generosity saved her from the fate that waited for a little girl cast on to the street. They had included details about just what that fate might be. “She has no one?”
Yali shrugged. “She’s got us. We’re keeping her — I am, mostly. Poppy and Xantha mean well, but they tend to get caught up in things. They forget that children must eat and go to bed at regular hours. But they chip in, and the men do, so there’s coin enough to provide.”
“And when you work?” Tris asked.
“Ferouze or Keth watches her.” Yali smiled. “Keth’s cheaper — I have to pay Ferouze to do it. But at least she hasn’t kicked Glaki out, or me for keeping her.” Yali propped her chin on her hands. “I can’t believe that Keth made that dragon without knowing about his magic.”
“It was a mad occurrence,” replied Tris. “The kind that doesn’t happen often. He accidentally called a lot of stray magics while he tried to make the glass do what he wanted. With those and his own power mixing, he got Chime.”
“And then he tried to break her, he told me,” Yali commented, and shook her head. “Men. They’re so excitable. Usually over things they can’t help.”
“I can’t exactly blame him for being upset,” Tris said. “From what he’s said, Chime was the first real clue to what had changed in him since he got hit by lightning. My experience is that adults don’t like surprises.”
“Oh, it is?” Yali asked, chuckling. “And you with vast experience, I take it?”
Tris smiled. She liked this woman. It also couldn’t hurt Keth if Yali understood a bit more about his new life. “Vast enough. Our kind of magic — Keth’s, mine, what my brother and sisters have — it’s tricky until you get to know it. And it’s different for everyone, because we’re all different inside. It helps if you’re younger when you start. You’re more used to being surprised as a kid.”
“But Keth’s going to be all right now?” asked Yali, worried. “He was so haunted when he first came here.”
“With a bit of work, he’ll be all right,” Tris assured the woman. “Right now he’s still getting used to the idea that he’s a mage.”
Chime took off, gliding here and there as Glaki and Little Bear chased her around the courtyard. Glaki was laughing so hard she nearly tripped. Both Tris and Yali started to their feet, then sat again as Chime turned to land on the little girl’s shoulder. Glaki carried the dragon over to them.
“Yes, she’s very pretty,” Yali told the child as she held Chime up for her to inspect. She glanced at Tris. “So yours is with the weather?”
Tris grinned. “The rain prediction gave me away, I take it.”
“Well, Keth said. And that’s how you became his teacher, because he’s got lightning.” Yali sighed. “Let’s hope he doesn’t try to work with it here, or Ferouze will pitch a fit. She doesn’t even like it if we hang curtains at the windows.” She stared into the distance for a moment, then asked shyly. “Is there anything magic you could do? Just a little thing? I love magic.”
Tris hesitated, then pointed to a dusty patch of courtyard and twirled a finger. The dust began to rise and spin, until she had a miniature cyclone no bigger than her hand. Moving her index finger, she guided the cyclone through the dust, until she had written Yali’s name in the packed earth at their feet.
The yaskedasu laughed and clapped her hands, then looked at the gateway to the street. “And here’s Keth, before I impose on you any more. Thank you so much!”
“You’re welcome,” Tris said, ushering the cyclone over towards Glaki. Little Bear backed away, growling — he didn’t care for Tris’s displays. Chime showed no interest whatsoever. Glaki waited until the cyclone was within reach, then set her palm on it and pressed the cyclone flat against the ground. When she raised her hand, it was gone.
Keth walked over to them with a smile for Yali and a frown for Tris. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be home?”
“I have to change,” Yali said, getting to her feet.
“But the rain,” Tris protested.
“There are covered walkways where I can sing,” Yali told her. “And Glaki needs shoes for winter. Ferouze says she’ll watch her,” she added, looking at Keth. “Make sure she feeds her more than dates and stale cheese. I paid her five biks.”
“I’ll keep an eye on Ferouze,” Keth promised. When Yali passed him, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Be watchful,” he told her, blue eyes serious. “Stay off Falsedice Way, even if you do get customers that pay well there. It’s too far back from the travelled streets.”
“I’ve been taking care of myself for years.” replied Yali. She kissed him on the cheek. “But you’re sweet to worry.”
Tris pretended not to watch this exchange. Instead she showed Glaki the spot behind the dog’s ears where he most liked to be scratched. Only when Yali had vanished into her upstairs room and Keth had turned to Tris did she say, “Perhaps I should have mentioned your lessons aren’t done for today.”
Xantha and Poppy ran down the steps, both in their gaudiest clothes, Poppy carrying a cape painted with peacock feathers. They waved goodbye to Keth and blew kisses to Glaki, who blew them back. For Tris Poppy had a scowl. Xantha only fluttered her fingers in a wave and called, “So long, Koria Respectability.”
Tris watched them run out to the street. “She says that like it’s an insult,” she commented.
“From her, it is. What lessons haven’t we done?” demanded Keth.
Tris looked up at the sky. “I thought we might talk about lightning a bit.”
Keth too looked up. The clouds were lower, fatter and the dark grey of thunderheads.
“Oh, no,” said Keth, turning pale. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no.”
“No?” asked Glaki.
“Suppertime,” Keth told her. He gently removed Chime from the girl’s fingers, setting the dragon on the lip of the well. Then he swung Glaki up on to his shoulders as the child whooped with glee. To Tris he said again, “No.” To Glaki he said, “Let’s see Aunt Ferouze and find out what’s for supper.” He trotted Glaki to the door in the passageway to the street. Opening it, he called, “Ferouze, I’ve got Glaki.” He looked at Tris, repeated, “No,” and disappeared inside.