Glaki roused Keth from meditation when Dema arrived. It took both Dema and Little Bear to bring Tris back to the real world. Keth frowned as the older man helped his teacher to stand so she could remove her magical barrier on the workshop. As Tris’s student it was his job to look after her, not Dema’s.
Both Keth and Dema rushed to catch her when she staggered through the workshop door. When Keth touched her, a fizzing power like his own, only a hundred times stronger, flooded his body. He gasped and flinched back, then steeled himself to steady her on the left as Dema steadied her on the right.
“Oh, stop that,” she said when they placed her on a bench inside. “Give me a moment to catch my breath.” She looked at Dema. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying!” he retorted. “My eyes are watering. Girl, what were you doing?”
Her eyes darted to and fro, as if she tracked the movement of a dozen insects inside the workshop. “Meditating,” she said shortly. “Is there water?”
Glaki brought it, steadying it as Tris drank. Keth was silently grateful to the girl as he sat unnoticed on one of the benches. His knees were a bit unsteady.
When she finished her water, Tris looked at Dema and Keth. “Did you show him, Keth?” she asked.
Keth blinked, puzzled, then remembered his globe. He reached over to the nearby workbench and picked it up, turning it over in his hands. “Do you send your people into Khapik tonight?” he asked Dema.
“All four women, plus the guards we’re putting on them, arurimi in civilian clothes,” the older man replied. “The female arurimi will wear the yellow veil with the ends knotted, so they can be identified.”
“Will they perform?” asked Keth. He was trying to manipulate the lightning inside his creation, without result. He only felt as if he simply pretended to have magic.
“Gods,” Dema said, sinking onto the bench next to Tris. “Don’t ask. I’ve seen them try. They won’t get any customers with music or dancing.”
“What about weapons exhibitions?” asked Tris. “That’s entertainment for kings and emperors up north.”
Dema rubbed his lips with a knuckle. “That might work for some of the more hopeless ones. I’ll suggest it.”
Keth handed the globe to Dema. “Surface lightning’s not so bad, but the inside’s as clouded as ever.”
“I’ll take this back to the watch commander at the arurimat.” Dema said. “He’ll watch it while I look our yaskedasi over. Thank you, Keth.” He got to his feet, looking old. To both Keth and Tris he said, “Try not to kill yourselves, whatever you’re doing. It makes the city look bad.” He left them, the lightning globe cradled in his hands.
Instead of following the Street of Glass straight to Khapik when they finished for the day, Keth asked to stop by the Elya Street arurimat, to see how his globe fared, though his head ached thunderously. When they walked in, the arurimi present gave them a wide berth. Only one, a hard-faced woman in charge of the main desk, didn’t inch away from their small group, Keth saw, but perhaps she felt safe behind her wooden barrier.
“I’ll tell Dhaskoi Nomasdina you’re here, Dhaskoi Warder,” she said.
Keth started. It was the first time he’d been given the title of mage. He started to say, “I’m only a student,” but caught himself in time. After facing the prospect of torture in this building, it was very pleasant to be treated with respect and a little fear.
“If you’d like a seat, dhaski?” the woman asked, indicating the benches against the walls.
Keth and Tris sat gratefully. Once settled, Keth leaned over to Tris and murmured, “Different from my last visit.”
She smiled back, her eyes busy following some movement Keth was unable to see. “Mine, too. Chime, how many times have I told you to stay out of the ashes?” she asked as the dragon hiccuped and expelled a cloud of dust. “I don’t care if you like it, you don’t seem able to digest it.” She looked at Glaki. “If you catch her at it, don’t let her eat ashes.” Glaki nodded. She pressed close to Tris’s side and took the older girl’s hand. Keth was surprised at her apparent affection for the redhead. The Glaki he’d known in the company of Iralima and Yali had been shy.
“Keth! Tris! Hello, little one,” Dema said to Glaki as he walked into the waiting room. He held the lightning globe in his hands. The surface bolts were gone; shapes and colors were dimly visible inside. “I’m about to ride uptown so we can be close when it clears, since uptown seems to be where our kakosoi is headed. Do you want to come?”
Keth was eager to go. He wanted to catch this beast, not just tell others where to find him. He glanced at Tris, who frowned. “Not me,” she replied. “I’m not going to leave Glaki by herself.” She pursed her mouth, then looked directly into Keth’s face for the first time since she had meditated that morning. “Are you sure that you feel up to this?” she asked sharply. “Because you have maybe a pinch of magic left in you, no more than that. My experience is that when you’re that drained of magic, your body’s on the edge of exhaustion, too. You may collapse before too much longer, no matter how good you feel right now.”
“I’m fine,” Keth said testily, through the pounding in his head.
Tris shrugged. “Please yourself. Glaki and I are going to Ferouze’s.” She looked at Dema, her face serious. “I hope you catch him,” she said quietly. “Good luck.” She levered herself up from her bench, gathered up dog, dragon, and girl, and left the arurimat.
Dema turned bright, eager brown eyes on Keth. “We’re going to ride. Come on, let’s get you a horse.”
Progress up the Street of Glass toward Assembly Square and Heskalifos was annoyingly slow. Time after time Keth wanted to shout for people to get out of the way, but with the globe’s contents still shrouded in lightning, it made no sense to hurry. The press of humanity on the streets was loud and colorful, a constant irritation to Keth’s nerves. He also didn’t like it that Dema kept sneaking looks at him.
At the Apricot Street skodi, Dema halted at a street vendor’s stall that sold small eggplants stuffed with lamb and rice, a Sotaten dish that was popular in Tharios. He bought enough for everyone, and ordered Keth to eat. Keth bolted the food: he hadn’t realized how very hungry he was. Dema paid another vendor for skewers of grilled kid marinated in olive oil, cinnamon, and onion, and a third for plum juice. They moved their horses to the side of the street to devour it all, licking their fingers when they were done.
The thickest crowds were bound for Khapik, but even headed uphill there was plenty of traffic as the city’s shopkeepers, clerks, and merchants turned their faces toward home. The First and Second classes would not venture out for their evening’s entertainment until dark, Dema told Keth. Their servants ran last-minute errands at the skodis, doing business at a trot that made their hobnailed sandals strike sparks from the stones of the roadway.
Dark drew down slowly. Torches were lit at eating-houses, other shops that stayed open late, and inns. Foot traffic began to thin out, replaced by horses, chairs, and litters. Keth’s headache eased after he’d eaten, but now he was dizzy. He bit his lip, determined to say nothing to Dema.
They halted at Achaya Square, where the Ghost had left Yali’s body. At an open-air eating-house they bought dishes of olives, dates, liver patties, dried apricots, and flatbread, along with a pitcher of grape juice, and settled down to wait. The globe held the place of honor at the center of the table, drawing attention from diners and from passersby. Keth and his companions watched as it cleared inside, the lightnings fading.
Keth couldn’t eat a thing once they were seated. He tore a piece of flatbread into the tiniest of crumbs, to the approval of the pigeons who came to forage by torchlight. It was unfair, to wait for his own device to reveal something in its time, not Keth’s. Magic, he thought ruefully, is more the master than the pet dog. In his mind he heard Tris say scornfully, “Whoever told you it was anything else?”
He tried again to draw the lightnings out, but it was as if his magic no longer existed
. It was maddening to sit here and wait, and risk the chance that they would be too late to save the next victim.
Dema put a hand on Keth’s arm. “It’s clear what you’re thinking,” he said quietly. “But Keth — she’s probably dead by now, whoever she is.”
Keth sat bolt upright, his mouth dry. “That’s a horrible thing to say! We might see her in that, still alive!” He pointed to the globe. “Don’t pronounce her dead until you’ve found the body — as well invite the gods to kill her, not the Ghost!”
Dema leaned closer, inspecting Keth’s face by torchlight. Suddenly he placed the inside of his wrist on Keth’s forehead. When Keth jerked away, Dema calmly produced a black leather case from his sash and opened it to reveal a lens. He held it up to one eye, then put it away, shaking his head. “She was right, and I was too eager to get moving to realize it,” he muttered. “Your skin’s clammy, you’re hot, and you’re sweating a river. You’ve overdone it. If you try more tonight, you’ll make yourself ill. You need rest.”
“I’m fine,” Keth retorted. “What is it, getting a mage’s credential turns you all into old women, forever fussing and worrying over someone? I made that cursed globe and I’ll see it through. You and Tris can go nursemaid each other!” He struggled to his feet and stood, wavering, as sweat trickled down his cheeks. “I’ll settle the Ghost —”
His ears buzzed. His legs turned to overcooked noodles. Shadows filled the edges of his vision, shadows that grew and expanded as the buzz turned to a roar.
In the room that Tris shared with Glaki, they sat together on the bed, the little girl freshly bathed. Glaki petted Little Bear as Tris explained how Sandry, Briar, and Daja had decided that Tris would miss the dog most of all of them during her travels. She had reached the point at which Little Bear had to be coaxed onto the ship when she heard Ferouze’s hoarse bellow in the courtyard below.
She stalked out to the gallery over the courtyard, ready to berate Ferouze for raising such a noise when it was nearly Glaki’s bedtime. Looking down, she saw the old woman at the entrance to the street passage. Three men stood with her, two in arurim red. The third, sagging between them, was Keth.
Tris tucked Glaki in, ordered her to sleep, then went down to her student.
“Just keeled right over,” the older arurim said as Tris guided them to Keth’s room. “Dhaskoi Nomasdina was saying he overdid it, and Keth here was giving him what-for when his eyes rolled up and down he went.” The arurimi laid Keth on his bed and set about removing his boots. “Will he be all right, dhasku?” the man asked. “Dhaskoi Nomasdina said he would, but then, Dhaskoi Nomasdina didn’t see this lad was reeling in the saddle.”
“He won’t even know he was ill in the morning,” Tris assured them. “This is normal enough, when a student’s too big for the teacher to order him to bed.” She waved them out and returned to open Keth’s shirt and bathe his sweaty face. “You want to cure all the ills of the world in one day, because you think magic can do that,” she murmured as she drew a sheet over the unconscious Keth. “You’ll learn.”
Dema
Less than an hour passed after Dema had sent Keth home when the globe began to clear. The men he’d sent with Keth were riding into Dema’s view when one of his arurimi leaned in to stare at the globe. “I know that balcony! It’s at Lagisthion, the debate arena at Heskalifos!”
They scrambled for their horses, Dema tossing coins from his purse onto the table to pay for the dishes they broke. They rode to Heskalifos like fiends, scattering people left and right as they galloped up the Street of Glass. Bolting through Achaya Gate, they ignored the yells of the university peacekeepers as they sped over paths not meant for riders. Where the paths failed to provide the most direct route, Dema led them across carefully tended gardens between buildings.
They reined in before a small, round hall built of white marble with pillars all the way around. Dema slid from the saddle, the globe clutched to his chest. He raced up the bank of steps that served as pedestal to the hall.
“Brosdes, open that thing,” he ordered, pointing to the door.
One of the arurimi, a short black man with knots of muscle in his arms and legs, approached with a heavy pack over one shoulder. He inspected the double doors with an expert eye. “Right,” he said, kneeling to extract a chisel and mallet from the pack. “Majnuna, give me a leg up,” he ordered.
The arurim Majnuna, a huge, olive-skinned woman who stood a full head taller than any of the others, knelt beside the door. Brosdes jammed hammer and chisel into his sash, then climbed onto Majnuna’s shoulders. The big woman stood and braced herself.
Brosdes cut the head off the pin that secured the hinge with two hammer blows, then knocked the pin out. When Majnuna lowered him, Brosdes did the same for the lower hinge. Everyone moved aside as half of the door trembled, groaned, then fell to the marble floor.
Inside the globe, Dema saw a limp woman on the stage of the debating hall. He led his arurimi inside, motioning for them to spread out in every direction and cover the doors out of the place. They obeyed, lighting torches from those that blazed outside the front entrance. The outer lobby was empty. Two arurimi vanished up the curving stairs on either side to search the balcony.
Dema and three arurimi, each with a lead-weighted baton in hand, passed into the immense theater where the university’s famed debates were held. Opposite them was the stage.
It was empty.
“Is the globe wrong?” asked one of the men.
Dema looked at the globe, where the image was rapidly fading. Keth had done it, Dema realized. He’d made the inside visible before the Ghost could display his victim. His success wasn’t complete — what Dema wanted was a look at the murderer himself— but Keth had come a long way toward their ultimate goal.
Hope burned in Dema’s chest like a red-hot coal. The killer might be nearby. “Quietly,” he whispered. “Fan out and search. Inside and out.”
He and Majnuna were in the wings of the stage when one of the arurimi came for them. The arurimi outside Lagisthion had found a service entrance to the hall’s underbelly. It was hidden by a clump of brush a hundred feet away.
Dema cursed. He had forgotten the service entrances. “They didn’t want to ruin the beauty of the building with anything as sordid as taking out the trash,” he panted as he and his arurimi raced outside. “They never do anything simple if they can think of a complicated way around it.”
Quickly they found the path into the greenery and followed it to a circle of open ground. An open door yawned at its center. On top of the steps leading down lay the body of a yaskedasu.
Dema clenched his fists. They were too late, again.
He looked around. They had been quiet since coming outside. There was a chance that the killer was still nearby.
An application of heartbeat powder over the dead woman told him she’d been dead less than an hour. He didn’t waste time with the vision spell, but immediately gulped a mouthful of stepsfind and sprayed it over the yaskedasu. In the gloom of the night it drifted to one side of her, and shimmered in the form of footsteps on the ground.
None of the arurimi said anything. They followed. They tracked the Ghost through the back ways of Heskalifos, through alleys and service entrances hidden with brush and trees, until the trail of the killer turned downhill. They followed him right up to the white marble columns and stones of a building so thoroughly protected by cleansing magics that all trace of him was lost. Dema’s curses brought the priests out to discover who was making so unholy a racket.
Seeing them, Dema literally ground his teeth. The killer had vanished into the bowels of the Heskalifos temple of the All-Seeing. He had carried his pollution into the temple’s foundations, where the guardian spells erased all trace of him. Once more he’d managed to be a ghost in fact, vanishing from a trail so plainly marked Dema could have followed it blindfolded.
“You take too much upon yourself,” a priestess informed Dema. She had found him on the temple steps, w
aiting as his people searched outside the grounds in case the Ghost had not vanished into the service tunnels. “You think that magic is not a force of nature but something dead, a tool to be used,” she continued, standing beside him. She was robed and draped as a high-ranking priestess. She had the age for it, with laugh lines and the lines drawn by long watches framing her eyes. Her nose was a straight edge with delicate nostrils, her thin-lipped mouth painted the same red that decorated her robes.
“Magic’s not dead,” protested Dema, watching for his arurimi. “But it is a tool, a device we can use to set the balance of justice right.”
The priestess shook her head. “Magic is a living force that obeys its own time and its own laws. We must accept that and learn to live with it, for our own serenity’s sake. Magic leaves us no choice.”
Dema shook his head stubbornly. He hated not having a choice.
The priestess rested a hand on his shoulder. Dema looked at her, wary. So far his contacts with this particular priesthood were less than encouraging.
“Your heart is in Tharios, Demakos Nomasdina,” she told him.
Dema flinched. He hadn’t mentioned his name, not wanting to be punished for tracking the polluted steps of a killer.
“You are a true and noble servant to our city,” the priestess continued. “When you have laid hands upon this Ghost, return here. I shall see to it that you are made clean by rite and magic, so that you may do your work unhindered. I trust that your clan takes pride in so devoted a citizen.” She drew the circle of the All-Seeing on Dema’s forehead, bowed, and retreated into the temple. Dema stared after her, mouth agape.
“Dhaskoi.” There was reverence in Majnuna’s deep, thick voice. The arurim had come up while Dema was speaking with the priestess. “You’ve been blessed by Aethra Papufos!”
Gooseflesh crawled up Dema’s spine. The high priestess of the All-Seeing almost never appeared in public. Her prayers guarded Tharios; she was considered to be the voice of the All-Seeing on earth.