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“Who’s Baoya the Golden?” asked Tris.
“The Queen of Khapik, the most legendary of all the female yaskedasi,” the blonde said, looking down a short nose at Tris. “Everyone knows Baoya. She’s a dancer. She’s performed for most of the Assembly and all of the Keepers of the Public Good for the last fifteen years.”
Yali regarded Tris. “What are you doing here unescorted, Dhasku Trisana?”
“It’s just Tris. I wanted to see what the talk was about,” Tris replied. “What is it that you do, anyway? You never said.”
Yali sighed. “I sing. Xantha, here, is a tumbler — she stays at Ferouze’s, too. Look, we’re due at the Butterfly Court right now. Why don’t you go home? Come back with someone who can look after you, like Keth. You’re fine here on the main streets, but in the back ways … Not everyone in Khapik is as nice as they’re paid to be.”
“You mean like the Ghost?” inquired Tris.
Yali and Xantha both made the sign of the Living Circle on their chests. “He’s one,” Yali replied. “Go home, Tris. Give that glass dragon of yours a polish for me.” The two women disappeared into the crowds, dodging people with the skill of long practice.
Curious, Tris sent a ribbon of breeze after them and called it back. It returned with their conversation.
“Keth’s teacher?” That was the voice of the blonde Xantha. “Of course! Why didn’t I realize that? Come on, Yali, if you keep pulling my nose like that, it’ll be as long as hers!”
“I’m not joking, Xantha,” was Yali’s reply. “She’s a dhasku —”
“And I’m Baoya,” interrupted Xantha. “Let’s take the short cut. We’re going to be late.”
Tris smiled at the remark about her nose. She was above all a realist, and her nose was long. She also had no intention of going home, but it was sweet of Yali to worry.
What if she listened to her breezes for the Ghost? He took his victims from Khapik — she might hear something. Eagerly, Tris summoned them all to her, adding a double handful of breezes from the streets of Khapik, then sent them out to listen. She couldn’t see things on them, but she might hear something worthwhile.
Her meal over, she set off once again, looking at the sights as she listened to dollops of conversation that came to her on currents of air. With the ease of practice she listened only for something unusual in the bath of chatter about money, music, politics, affections, excitement, and boredom. She also considered the situation she and Keth had been plunged into.
If the Ghost was grabbing yaskedasi, he did not do it among the processions, clusters of performers, idlers by the streams, or gate traffic. Someone would have seen him. He took his choices in deserted places. Accordingly Tris followed the maze of streets, looking for Khapik’s hazards. They were endless. There were too many shadowy nooks, unlit passages, alleys, and blind curves for the arurim to patrol. The courtyards shrank; the houses rose to three and four stories. Many outdoor stairways led to flat rooftops. A fugitive could go up there and run the length of the district to escape pursuit, if he knew his way.
Tris wandered down an alley, eyeing the houses on either side. Business was done back here, too. Her breezes told her what sort of business it was. Intent on her surroundings, toying with the end of one thin braid, Tris walked on, ignoring those who offered to sell her various items.
A hand darted from the shadows to grip her wrist; a man pulled her close. “Here’s a nice little armful. What is it, wench? What’s your price?” The man was big, his tunic rumpled and stained with wine. “If you’re sweet to me, I’ll be sweet to you.”
Tris looked up until she met his eyes. Rage fizzed under her skin, but she gripped it tight. “Let me go,” she told the man, her gray eyes glittering as they locked on his. Her free hand itched to undo a spark-braid. “I’m not what you think I am.”
The man laughed. “Then what are you doing here, by your lonesome?” he wanted to know. “I know what you’re looking for. Give me a kiss to seal the bargain.”
Tris slammed her hard-heeled northern shoe straight down onto his sandaled foot. The drunk yelled and let her go, then reached for her again. “You little mirizask,” he said, his voice a growl. “You’ll learn respect for me!”
Tris grabbed the little finger of his hand and pulled it back in its socket until he howled with pain. She had learned the stomp from Briar and the fingerhold from Daja, both of whom had given her long instruction in all the ways they knew to end an unpleasant conversation. “It’s a dreadful thing,” she said grimly as he tried to free himself without breaking the finger, “when a respectable tourist can’t enjoy the sights without some idiot getting in her way. And I do so hate stupid people.”
She stepped back as she released his hand, yanking the tie off a spark-braid. Then she waited, holding it as she watched the man. It would be shameful to turn lightning on someone who was clearly drunk, but she didn’t want any more nonsense, either.
The man cradled his aching hand as he glared at Tris. Something in her gaze made him think at last. “Stick to the main streets, then, shenos,” he snapped. “And bring a guard, next time you feel like a stroll.”
“Oh, I don’t think I need a guard,” Tris replied. “Do you?” She walked off, sending two breezes in her wake to warn her if he attacked. It seemed he’d had enough. He stumbled off in the opposite direction.
It was just after midnight when Tris decided she would not be lucky enough to hear the Ghost snarl, “I’m going to kill you! ”, then have him wait for her to trace that particular bit of wind back to the killer. Instead she spread her awareness through the ground until she found the web of streams, and followed her sense of them back to the islands, the boats, and the main gate.
Ghost or no, she thought that she had not wasted her time. This walk had been instructive. While she’d dealt with the drunkard, not a single nearby window or door had opened; no one had peered over the edges of the roofs. No wonder there were no witnesses when the Ghost seized his victims. There were too many hidden places, and too few people who cared enough to stop a disturbance.
All that Tharian love of order applies only outside the Khapik fence, she thought grimly as she left the district. All that white marble, good manners, and agreement of equals is only meant for the higher classes, not anyone else. They ought to be ashamed.
The most maddening aspect of her walk, of course, was her failure with her breezes. She’d hoped for something, though she knew how unlikely it was that she might hear the Ghost at work. What he did was no doubt accomplished in silence. She needed to see what the winds saw, not just hear it. Surely if anyone could do it, it would be her. She could scry the present, though she couldn’t control what she saw. And she worked in winds and puffs of air all the time, using them to eavesdrop.
Tris hated to feel useless. Keth had the lightning globes as a goal, though she still believed it would take much more work before he could get anything useful from them. Quite possibly the Ghost would be caught by other means before Keth mastered his globes. She wondered if there might be something about Keth that made him attuned to crimes in general, not just crimes against people he knew. Once the Ghost was accounted for, would Keth make other such globes? She probably ought to suggest it to him, so he could prepare himself. He’d made it clear he wanted to make beautiful glass, not deal in ugly crime.
Her mind busy, Tris strode up the Street of Glass. She stopped to quietly gather Little Bear and Chime from the Touchstone Glass courtyard, then resumed her walk up the long hill back to Heskalifos.
Tris was reading in the workroom when Niko found her. He and Jumshida had been out late, attending yet another party for the conference. On his way to bed, he’d seen the light under the workroom door and looked in.
The moment he saw her, his black brows snapped together. “You’ve been using your braids again,” he remarked sourly.
Tris looked up from her book. “And with very good reason. I need to help Keth with his fear of lightning, and the closest stor
m on the path to Tharios was stuck in Aliput.”
Niko crossed his arms. “Trisana …”
“It’s true!” she protested. “Some mage over there had things locked down, and I had to pry them loose.” As he remained silent, she made a face. “All right, I used winds to lift myself to the top of Phakomathen first. But I’m not joking about the storms, Niko, and I am careful, using the stronger powers I store.”
Niko sighed. “No, it’s true, you are. And I suppose we’re beyond the point where I can lecture you about such things. I do like to think you’re too sensible to use them so often that they become a drug for you.”
“As sick as I’ll be once I can stop to rest? That’s not at all addictive. You don’t have to worry,” she replied. She inspected his face. “What’s the matter? You look cross.”
“Did you know they magically cleanse the site where a dead person is found?” Niko demanded. “Scour it of all traces of the events there?” Tris nodded. “It’s obscene!” cried Niko. “I talked to the arurim officials in a position to allow me to raise a vision of the past to help catch this beast, but they tell me the cleansing isn’t just religious, it’s magical as well. How do they ever catch criminals here?”
Tris shrugged. “Dema — Demakos Nomasdina, the arurim dhaskoi you met — and Keth think Keth’s globes will do it.”
“And you don’t.” The way Niko said it, it was not a question.
“It’ll be awhile before Keth can do magic to order instead of by accident,” Tris said frankly. “He seems to think that now he knows the problem, he can just get to work. And maybe he’s too involved. He knew one of the women; he watched another of them perform. He wants it to work too badly. It’s getting in his way.”
“You’ll have to find a way to calm him down,” Niko said, yawning. Suddenly he smiled. “Something I would give a great deal to see, actually.”
He’d lost Tris in his thinking. “What?” she asked. “What do you want to see?”
Now he grinned outright. “You, trying to calm someone down.”
Tris smiled, but wryly. “So funny I forgot to laugh,” she retorted.
Niko stretched. “I will laugh for us both, then.”
Tris ran her fingers over her book. “Niko?”
“Yes?”
“Have you ever been to Khapik?” she asked.
“Many times. Not since we came, but in my youth,” he admitted. “It had the unfortunate effect of sucking all the coins from my purse, so I stopped going.” His eyes were distant as he thought. “I remember it was very beautiful, particularly the area of streams and islands around the main gate.
“It’s still there, and it’s still lovely,” Tris informed him. “Why would anyone want to ruin it? Maybe the yaskedasi aren’t as respectable as they could be, but they do such amazing things, and this Ghost is killing them.”
Niko sighed, his dark eyes gentle as he looked at her. “I’ve never known why anyone would destroy something beautiful, but such people exist.” For a long moment there was silence between them. Tris regarded the book in her lap, while Niko watched her. At last he said, “Did you know that Lark used to work in Khapik?”
Tris’s head jerked up at the sound of her foster mother’s name. “No!” she exclaimed. “She did?”
Her teacher nodded. “There was a year when the performing troupe she was with decided to rest for a few seasons and create new material. They stayed and performed in Khapik.”
“She wore that dreadful yellow veil?” Tris asked, the hair on her arms prickling. She loved Lark. The thought that a killer like the Ghost might have gone anywhere near her was chilling.
“Actually, I believe she wore it as a neck scarf,” Niko replied, his eyes somber. “There’s a frightening thought.”
Tris made the sign of the Living Circle on her chest.
Niko sighed. “It’s late. I’m off to bed, unless there’s something else you need?”
“Someone to teach me to scry the wind,” she said wryly. “I could send my breezes searching for the killer in Khapik, if I could see things in them.”
Niko rubbed his temples. “Tris, I’ve told you, it’s very like seeing the future,” he pointed out. “You drown in different images and events — how do you sort one from another? That’s why future seers are as rare as lightning mages. Most go mad from sheer confusion. Does it really mean so much to you?”
“I feel useless,” Tris admitted. “Like a bride’s attendant to Keth — I get to hold the basket of herbs, but he’s the one who says the vows.”
“Do you think I’m useless?” asked Niko. “Or Lark, or Frostpine, or Rosethorn, or Crane?” He’d named the main people who had taught her and her friends at Winding Circle.
“No!” cried Tris, startled. “You’re wonderful, all of you!”
“You will produce wonders in Keth, I’m sure of it,” Niko said. “Think again about scrying for something that will drown you in visions. The price you pay is every bit as high as what you’ll pay when the strength of lightning and tides runs out of you.” With a tired wave, he went off to bed.
Tris thought about what he’d said for a long time.
Dema
He’d gotten 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 spell 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 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 eyes told Dema that they might not tell him if they did know of such a person. Fortunately his truth spell worked; they weren’t lying. 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 favorite 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 pretense of investigating further. He ordered a horse s
addled 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 Honor 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 arurimi 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 color shifted to the faintest shade of pink. She had died recently, maybe as little as two hours ago.
