“No,” he told her stubbornly. “You don’t know the yaskedasi. I do. I’ve been living with them for eight months. The Ghost is killing their sense of, of excitement. Of fun, joy …” He fumbled to express his thought. “Khapik was the first place I’ve been where I c-could forget what h-happened to me. The, the Ghost is killing Khapik.” He collected a fresh gather at the end of the blowpipe.
Tris wanted to scream. She was hungry, she was soaked in sweat, she wanted to be out and about. She was pouring magic into the barrier to keep the wild bursts of Keth’s power inside. What was so wonderful about Khapik? she wanted to yell. It had theaters, inns, musical performances, women and men who flaunted themselves in form-fitting clothes, gambling dens, and wine shops. Every city had such places.
She said none of these things as Keth drew a shuddering breath and started to blow into the pipe. As a teacher her duty was to encourage Keth, not discourage him. From her own experience, Tris knew he would give himself enough discouragement without help from her.
“Nothing yet, then?” someone asked from outside the barrier. It was Dhaskoi Nomasdina, crisply dressed in a clean red tunic and blue stole, his short black hair still wet from the bath.
Keth, startled, made an apprentice’s mistake and puffed hard into the blowpipe. The molten glass at the end bulged, coated in tiny lightnings, and grew to the size of his hand. Tris and Nomasdina froze, watching. Tris could see that Keth’s hands trembled, but he continued to work, carefully twirling the pipe to see what shape his most recent accident would take. The bulb expanded to a perfect globe, then broke away. Keth reached out and caught it in one hand before it could fall.
That answers that question, thought Tris. He can hold hot glass.
The globe was a twin to the one he’d made at Heskalifos. Miniature lightnings played inside and outside of the glass, growing thicker and longer until they coated it entirely.
“You did it!” cried Nomasdina. “What do you see?”
“Lightning,” Keth said gloomily, and sat on a bench with a thump. Tris gently took the blowpipe from him and set it aside.
“May I look?” Nomasdina asked. “Maybe I can spot something. Dhasku Chandler —”
“Tris,” the girl interrupted. “Just Tris. Don’t touch it unless you’ve got some kind of fire magic, Dhaskoi Nomasdina. It’s hot, still.” She held out her hands. Glumly Keth handed the globe to her. It was warm to her touch, but only warm. She could handle molten rock for brief periods.
“But I could look at it,” argued the arurim dhaskoi, “maybe see between the lightnings.”
Tris turned the globe over in her hands. The lightnings were still excited. They whipped around the globe so fast that she saw no gaps between them. Reaching for them with her own power, thinking to draw them off, she failed. To her magical senses it felt as if the bolts were locked inside sheaths of glass that turned her power away.
Well! she thought, amused by the lightning’s defiance, I’m not to tinker with you, is that it? “I doubt you could see through them, Dhaskoi Nomasdina,” Tris replied. “But you’re welcome to look.”
“Dhasku Chandler,” the man said.
“Why is ‘Tris’ so hard to say?” she demanded, still looking at the ball in her hands, running her own power around it, trying to find a path inside the glass. She could no more do that than she could shift the lightnings outside it.
“But it’s the dhasku I need,” Nomasdina explained. “The dhasku who’s so strong that all the charms I know to break a circle of protection aren’t working. And the ones taught to the arurim dhaski are usually effective.”
That made Tris look up. Nomasdina stood outside the barrier she had raised, his hands against it. Starbursts of silver light spread around them as he tried to push through her protections. “I’m sorry, Dhaskoi Nomasdina,” she said, contrite. “You must be pretty good if you can stand to touch it, though.” She went to the door and erased part of her circle with her foot, gathering her power back into herself as the barrier gave way. Little Bear came bouncing in to see if anyone was interested in petting him.
“Please — under the circumstances, you should call me Dema,” the Tharian told her. As he walked past her, he lifted the ball from her hand. “Ow,” he cried, juggling the ball from one hand to the other. “It stings.”
Tris took the globe back from him. “Lightning has that effect. Among others,” she added, looking at Kethlun. “Do you remember how this happened?” she asked her student.
“No,” he said with a sigh. He idly scratched the dog’s ears. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Dema remarked as he sat on a bench. Chime trotted out of her hiding place and began to sniff his hands. “Not thinking.”
“It’s harder than I thought,” Keth admitted. “What brings you here, anyway?”
“The honest answer? Hope. I’m on my way to Elya Street for the start of my watch,” replied Dema, wriggling his fingers for Chime. “I thought I’d stop by, on the chance you were here. And I was right. Now we have something to work with.”
“If it clears in time,” Tris reminded him. Eyeing her student, she added, “Keth, you’re in no shape to try and draw out your lightning.” She passed the globe to him as he slumped on a bench. He’d drained off all of his power for the time being; she saw not a flicker of it inside his skin. At least the lightning on the globe bothered him no more than it did her.
“No,” Keth replied, stubborn. “I’ll clear it and I’ll see what the Ghost looks like. I have to. He’ll kill someone else.” He began to breathe for meditation, staring at the flashing globe in his hands. Tris and Dema waited patiently.
Finally Keth glared at Tris. “Where is it?” he demanded accusingly. “This magic of mine? I don’t feel it. It’s a crackly buzz in my head, but I don’t hear it. You took it, didn’t you?”
Tris folded her hands in front of her, stifling her irritation at the question. She knew all too well how it felt to be as exhausted as he was. “I can’t take magic from people,” she replied in even tones. “Even if I could, you have none to take. Keth, look, it’s the study and the work of magic that builds up your reserves. You just started to learn today. You don’t have reserves. The only thing that will bring your power back is food and rest. You’ll have power to use tomorrow.”
“Someone will die,” whispered Keth.
“Maybe not,” Dema said briskly. “I’ll take the globe to the arurimat. If it clears before the murder, we’ll go where it leads us. And if we don’t, well, you’ll have other chances to make this work.”
Keth slumped forward, resting his forehead on his globe.
Tris felt sorry for him, but knew he wouldn’t thank her for showing pity. “On your feet, Keth,” she said briskly. “Is your octopus done?”
As Keth checked the annealing oven and began to clean up, Tris looked at Dema. “He’s been at it since this morning, trying as hard as he could,” she said.
“I know,” Dema said with understanding. “When you’ve drained yourself, that’s it. You have to eat and rest until your strength comes back.”
“It’s not just her coddling me?” Keth asked, his voice sluggish. His back was to them.
“I don’t coddle,” Tris said sharply.
“No, she isn’t,” Dema added. “Every mage learns, when you’re finished for the day, you’re finished. You’ll only make yourself ill if you try to do more magic. Look here, I know a good eating-house near the arurimat. I’ll pay — it’s the least I can do in trade for this.” He pointed to the globe Tris still held. She put it in the basket she’d used to carry Chime’s food and dishes, and handed it to him.
Dema accepted the basket with a bow of thanks. “I hope you’ll come, too, Tris.”
She smiled. “Thank you, but I’m tired. I think I’ll go back to Heskalifos. Keth, you are taking Dema up on his offer, yes?”
Dema grinned at her, then looked at Keth. A trace of concern crossed his sharp brown features. “Come on, old man,”
he urged Kethlun. “They’ve got a sauce for lamb cooked on skewers that will make you think you dine with the emperor of Aliput.”
“Then he goes home to sleep,” Tris added. She sighed. “And we wait for the globe to clear.”
Dema made the circle of the All-Seeing on his forehead. “Maybe it will clear beforetime,” he said.
Keth looked at him and smiled crookedly. “An optimistic lawkeeper. Now there is something unusual.”
“Have a proper meal and you’ll be an optimist, too,” Dema said, ushering Keth out of the workshop.
7
Tris watched the two men walk away, smiling when Dema draped an arm over Keth’s shoulder. She’d gotten a very favorable impression of the arurim dhaskoi the previous night, once they’d gotten over their original misunderstanding about the use of torture. As he’d questioned Keth, she’d watched his face and listened to his voice. He wanted to catch the Ghost, and she didn’t think it was all about glory for Dema. It didn’t seem to be much about the yaskedasi, either, but Tris would settle for what she thought he did want, the end of the killer’s lawlessness.
Once the men were gone, she went into the glass shop to ask Keth’s cousin Antonou a favor. Would he mind if she left Little Bear and Chime in the courtyard for a few hours? She would get them later, without disturbing the family. Not only did Antonou agree, but his quiet, shy wife found a meal of table scraps for Little Bear. Tris thanked them, and ordered the dog and dragon to wait for her return. She brushed the soot and dirt from her pale green dress — woven and sewn by Sandry, it refused all stains and hardly wrinkled — and headed down the street.
This Ghost mess revolved around Khapik, and Tris had yet to see the place. She had heard of it, long before they had reached Tharios. Other travelers, learning where they were bound, sang the praises of Khapik; its gardens, its entertainers, its food, its wine. The best performers worked there at some point in their careers; the guests who saw them spread their names from the Cape of Grief in the south to Blaze-Ice Bay in the north. Some men had spoken more fondly of Khapik than they did of their families. To Tris it seemed that many of the young people they’d met were saving their money for one holiday only, at Khapik.
She’d seen Khapik when they rode into Tharios, of course, or at least, its brightly painted walls. Normally she might not have gone there. While she loved music, acting, tumbling, and food, she thought it folly to pay for such things when she had to watch every copper. Now, though, Keth’s globes had given her an excuse at least to look around.
She joined a river of visitors all headed in the same direction, on foot, in sedan chairs, on horse, camel, or donkey back. The caravan master who’d brought her and Niko to Tharios had mentioned that no wagons were permitted inside Khapik. She wondered if the prathmuni had to carry the garbage, night soil, and dead bodies out of Khapik by hand, without using their carts. She wanted to ask a prathmun who drove his cart across the Street of Glass if that was the case, but there were too many Tharians around, all retreating from cart and driver, most drawing the circle of the All-Seeing God on their foreheads.
Some blocks past Touchstone Glass, above the shabby stores that sold overpriced items to newly arrived tourists, Tris saw the bright yellow pillars that marked Khapik’s entrance. They towered over the district’s walls, which were painted with dancers, musicians, bunches of grapes, illusionists, wine jugs, plates of steaming food, tumblers, and all the other delights that lay inside. The guards at the gate watched the flood of tourists go by them with blank faces, unimpressed by the number and variety of the visitors.
The moment she passed inside the wall, Tris felt cool moisture in the air. Ahead of her lay a shaded expanse of ground divided into small islands by streams and riverlets, some broad enough to allow boats to pass along their length. Inside the boats, people lazed, nibbled on fruit, talked, or trailed their fingers in the water. Squat candles burned inside flower-shaped cups that floated in the water, like fireflies that skimmed its surface: those who poled the boats avoided the candles with the ease of long practice. Trees grew here and there along the banks, cooling the streets under them. On the islands she saw delicate pavilions lit by lanterns and torches where musicians, singers, and dancers performed for small groups.
Scents drifted on the air: roses, jasmine, patchouli, sandalwood, cinnamon. She heard bits of music and the splash of fountains. Her breezes, which had come back when she lowered her protections on the glassmaker’s workshop, whirled around her like small children, eager to run away and explore the maze of streets and streams. She let them go, reminding them to come back to her. As she looked around, watching the guests break up into small groups and disappear down the streets, something tightly knotted inside her loosened a bit.
She had to walk a distance to leave the area where the streams flowed. Beyond them she found the streets where businesses thrived: eating houses, wineshops, theaters, tea houses, gambling dens, and shops that sold trinkets, perfumes, scarves, even toys. Here too were houses where entertainers performed for smaller audiences than those found in the theaters, in courtyards, and in brightly lit rooms with gauze curtains.
Tris saw yaskedasi at street corners, beside the many fountains, on the stream banks, in courtyards, on the islands, on balconies and porches. Six tumblers stood on one another’s shoulders to shape themselves into a human pyramid, then to leap free, tucking, rolling, and landing on their feet. Next to a many-tiered fountain Tris listened to a handsome boy play a melancholy song on a harp. On the far side of the fountain an older woman juggled burning torches. An illusionist produced flowers and birds from his sleeves under a willow tree, while dogs danced together under a trainer’s eye. A woman draped in an immense snake and a handful of veils perched in a low window, stroking her pet. When she saw Tris watching, she beckoned, but Tris shook her head and walked on.
In low houses circled by colonnades, women and men lounged on couches, talked, ate, drank, and gambled. When Tris glanced down the inner passages of such houses into the courtyards, she saw scantily clad dancers, female and male, performing to harp, flute, or sometimes only drum music. She heard lone singers and groups of singers, their melodies twining among the songs played on instruments. In one courtyard a poet declaimed verses on the art of love. In another, a group of people played Blind Man’s Bluff.
When her belly reminded her that it was nearly dark and she had not eaten for some time, she found an eating-house whose bill of fare promised a decent meal. The prices would have made her gasp if she had not seen those posted beside houses whose charges were even higher. She chose a table outside, on the street, so she could better watch the crowds. She ignored the stares, thinking it was her pale complexion and red hair that drew attention, rather than her youth and the fact that she looked like no pleasure seeker.
The serving maid brought her a supper of lamb grilled on skewers, lentils cooked with onions and bay leaves, plum juice, flatbread, and cheese. Tris thanked her politely, then turned all of her attention on the street as she ate.
Why the yaskedasi? she wondered. Six dead women, all of them yaskedasi — why did he choose them? It wasn’t for their money, not from what she’d heard. And why only women?
Did he choose them because he knew that the arurim wouldn’t care about the murder of entertainers whom respectable folk viewed as disreputable, if not out-and-out dishonest? But if that were so, why had he placed the last two so visibly, outside Khapik, where respectable folk would raise a fuss? If he’d wanted to be entirely a Ghost, he should have stayed inside Khapik, or even turned to the slums of Hodenekes, where no one would care about another dead body.
He was clever, to make use of the Tharian beliefs about death. Tris had helped Niko often in the past, when Niko had raised a vision from the site of an event that had taken place there recently. That would be impossible in Tharios. The priests always showed up on the heels of the discovery of a body, and erased all magical influences to rid the area of death’s pollution. They made it easier for
the killer to get away with his murders.
Staring into the cup that held her plum juice, Tris idly wondered if she could scry for the killer. It was just an idle fancy. Niko had tried to teach all four of them how to scry in water, oil, mirrors, and crystals. Daja had succeeded once, but Tris had been the only one to find an image each time. It was frustrating. She saw only scraps of things, many of which made no sense, and there was no way to control what she saw. Following her progress, Niko said her images seemed to come entirely from the present; she could not see anything in the past or future. Now she let her mind drift, her eyes fixed vaguely on the dark liquid in her cup, its surface glinting in the torchlight. Scraps of things began to rise to the surface: Niko talking animatedly to a dark brown man in a pure white turban, Market Square back home, a wooden building ablaze as people scurried around it like lines of ants, a small mountain village where a shaggy-haired blacksmith labored at his forge.
Tris growled and drank her juice, ignoring the beginnings of a headache. She was no better at this now than she had been at Winding Circle. No wonder so many seers had a reputation for being odd, if all they saw was a flood of meaningless pictures. Feeling useless, she returned to her meal.
As she finished, a procession came down the street, led by tumblers and musicians, surrounded by a cloud of orange blossom scent. At its center, four muscular men carried a woman in a sedan chair. Its curtains were open, framing her like a picture as she reclined on satin pillows. Her black hair was dressed in glossy, ornate loops, not the curls of Tharian fashion, twisted through with the yellow veil of the yaskedasi. Her kyten was pure white with golden embroideries, her jewelry gold encrusted with pearls.
“That’s Baoya the Golden,” a female voice remarked near Tris’s shoulder. A breeze carried a drift of lavender scent to the girl’s sensitive nose. Tris turned. Keth’s friend, the yaskedasu Yali, lounged against the low fence around the eating-house as she watched the procession. She was dressed much as she had been that morning, though her makeup and kyten were fresh, and she looked the better for some sleep. With her was another yaskedasu, a blonde, dressed northern-style with a tumbler’s shorter skirts and leggings.