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5
Once inside the Elya Street arurimat, they were taken to a room where magic could be worked and kept from spreading to other parts of the building. There Dema positioned Keth inside a holding ring set into the floor and called on its protections so the northerner couldn’t escape. Once they were set and Tris was tucked into a chair in the corner, Nomasdina produced vials of powdered sage, coltsfoot, and orris, and blew a pinch of each at Keth’s face. The powders hung, sparkling with the magic that made them more powerful. Nomasdina then used a carnelian to sketch the signs for truth and eloquence in the air between them, watching the silvery paths the symbols made as they floated in the air.
“Lie to me,” he told Keth. “Tell me something —”
He never finished his suggestion. Keth took a deep breath to speak, and the room flashed with white fire, blinding Nomasdina, the arurim who was there to take notes, Tris, and Keth himself. Vision only returned slowly. The first thing Keth saw, when he could see, was that the circle he’d been standing in was a charred mark on the floor. Its barrier was gone, as if lightning had struck the thing and burned it out of the wood. Nomasdina’s powders were a small, black clump on the floor. Nomasdina himself was covered in soot. His carnelian, which he still held, was black and cracked.
“Deiina of all mercy, what was that?” whispered the arurim clerk.
Tris removed her spectacles to rub her eyes. Keth thought that without the spectacles she actually looked her age, not like some fierce old lady with unwrinkled skin. Nomasdina rounded on her. “What did you do?” he growled. “I ought to put you in irons, and don’t think I can’t!”
“Excuse me, dhaskoi,” said the clerk. She was there because she too could see magic. “It didn’t come from her. It came from him, and he didn’t actually do anything. It just surged out of him, like — like lightning. Like he couldn’t help it.”
“Lightning is part of Keth’s magic,” Tris informed Dema. “He only found out about it recently. He hasn’t learned to control it yet. And if I may, a hint? Don’t threaten someone unless you’re certain you can carry out the threat.”
Nomasdina snorted and turned to Keth. “Well, if your power fights me, then there’s only one way to do this,” he said. He went to the door and pulled it open.
Keth’s knees buckled. He dropped to the floor. Nomasdina was going to call for torturers.
“Just one moment.”
Everyone turned to stare at Tris, who had risen from her chair. The door yanked out of Nomasdina’s hand and slammed shut, as if a high wind had blasted through the windowless room.
“Keth, get up,” Tris ordered, her eyes fierce. Keth obeyed without realizing he was taking instructions from her. Tris walked over to stand between him and the arurim dhaskoi. To Nomasdina she said, “Now, I’ve been nice and cooperative so far.” Her eyes blazed up at the Tharian. “We came peaceably; we didn’t make trouble. You had your disgusting show back there, exhibiting that poor girl to us without so much as covering her face. But I am at the end of my patience. You are not torturing Keth. You’re going to get a truthsayer, like a civilized human being.”
Nomasdina sighed. “The arurimat has no truthsayer funds. It’s not like we’re in First District here.”
“Then you wait until my teacher comes with Dhasku Dawnspeaker,” retorted Tris. “She will tell you that my teacher is the finest truthsayer known, and he’ll do it for no charge. You should be ashamed, leaping to torture a man on no more evidence than a glass ball!”
Nomasdina looked puzzled as he stared at Tris. Keth knew how the other man felt. “Are you so ignorant of your standing?” asked the arurim dhaskoi, genuinely curious. “You’re a foreigner, here on sufferance. In Tharios we take the law very seriously. Interference is not appreciated.”
“We take it seriously in Emelan, too,” snapped Tris. “I’m not saying you can’t question him, I’m just saying you can’t torture him. If you try, I promise you, I will bring this place down around your ears.”
Keth saw a spark crawl out of one of her braids, then another, and another. “Please listen to her,” he begged, suddenly as afraid of her as he was of torture. “You won’t like it if she loses her temper!”
“I still want to know why you’re in my way,” Nomasdina repeated stubbornly, his eyes fixed on Tris’s.
“He’s my student,” Tris said. “Maybe we haven’t been together very long, but I learned from the best teachers what a student is owed. I refuse to shame them by letting you do whatever you like to Keth, when anyone but a desperate idiot could have seen back there that Keth didn’t kill that woman.”
Though she stood only as high as the arurim dhaskoi’s collar bone, there was no question in Keth’s mind who dominated the conversation: Tris. Something in the way he felt about her changed, frightened though he was by the sparks in her hair. He wasn’t sure what had changed just yet, only that something was different.
Nomasdina frowned. “You know, I’m beginning to believe you are a mage,” he remarked slowly. He turned to Keth. “So tell me something. Did you kill her?”
“Gods, no,” Keth replied, trembling. “I hate the Ghost. I’d kill him myself, given the chance. Iralima was a friend of mine.”
“Iralima? The last victim?” Nomasdina asked.
Keth nodded, then winced. He’d just spoken the fact he’d thought he was too clever to reveal.
“You realize that makes you look even more suspicious,” the dhaskoi pointed out.
Keth nodded again. Suddenly a breeze whipped around him, and Tris raised a hand. A cocoon of silver mage fire enclosed Keth from top to toe. He touched it: the fire stung.
“I told you, Nomasdina, you’re not going to torture him,” Tris said flatly.
Nomasdina looked at Keth in his cocoon. Then he looked at Tris. “Do you know how long it would take me to raise protections like that? You’re starting to scare me.”
“Join the guild,” Keth muttered.
Nomasdina glanced at him and smiled crookedly. Then he pulled a stool over to the barrier that sheathed Keth, sat on it. “Right now I’m just asking questions,” he informed Tris wearily. He looked at Keth and inquired, “How did you know Iralima?”
“She lived at my lodging house. You were there yesterday,” replied Keth. He sat cross-legged on the floor, inside the protections Tris had set around him.
“Did you know any of the other victims?” inquired Nomasdina.
“I knew Zudana by sight,” Keth replied. “I used to listen to her sing all the time. She had a beautiful voice.”
“She did,” Nomasdina agreed. “Before they put me on the murders, I used to sneak out on my shift to hear her. How long have you been in Tharios?”
He questioned Keth for an hour as the clerk took notes. Tris resumed her seat in the corner without lowering her protective barrier. Keth gave Nomasdina the details of his movements for the last two weeks, the tale of his arrival in Tharios and his employment at Touchstone Glass, and all that he’d heard said about the Ghost and his murders. At last Nomasdina went to the table, where he picked up the glass ball with the gruesome scene at its heart.
“I’m sticking my neck out,” he admitted, “but I believe you are innocent. That won’t be enough for my superiors. I’m new at this. While mages know we must listen to and rely on what our instincts tell us, the regular arurimi are quick to tell me I’m a newborn babe in this business of the law.”
The clerk ducked her head to hide a smile.
“We’ll wait for a truthsayer. If yours doesn’t come, I’ll pay for one out of my own pocket. Will that satisfy you?” Nomasdina asked Tris.
She smiled sweetly. “I’ll wait until I actually see a truthsayer, thanks all the same,” she replied.
“It grieves me to find one so young who is this cynical,” Nomasdina said to no one in particular. “But let me ask you both something.” He hefted the globe in his hands. “If Kethlun here isn’t the Ghost and this globe isn’t a confession, then it is a way to see the future, maybe. The time the clerk said the
lightning faded and he could see the image was close to the time the dead woman was left in the Forum, or the time we were meant to find her. What if you made another of these, and tried to clear it of lightning immediately?”
Keth scratched his head. “Why would I want to go through that again?” he asked, not unreasonably, he thought. “Perhaps you’re accustomed to death and murder, Dhaskoi Nomasdina. I’m not. I got into glassmaking because I love beautiful things.”
Nomasdina drew himself up, his face taking on that lofty, distant, proud cast that it had worn when he came to Jumshida’s house to arrest Keth. “Are you a citizen of Tharios?” he demanded.
“No,” Keth replied.
Nomasdina’s face quivered. A smile made him human again. “Very true. Look, Koris Warder, I can understand you don’t want to face this pollution, even with glass between you and it. But consider: you might save another yaskedasu from death. Better, you might give us a look at our murderer. You can be cleansed after.”
Keth sighed. “I don’t know how I did it.”
Nomasdina looked at Tris. “You might consider making such globes as teaching him his craft.”
Tris was not attending to the conversation. She sat up straight, her eyes on the door. It swung open.
“I do not appreciate learning that guests have been taken from my house without my leave.” Keth recognized that haughty voice: Jumshida Dawnspeaker. In she swept, dressed for the most elegant circles in a bronze silk kyten with beaded hems, heavy gold earrings set with pearls, and a matching bronze stole. Niklaren Goldeye came behind her, dapper in a white silk overrobe, white shirt, and white trousers.
The silver barrier around Keth vanished. He saw threads of it stream back into Tris’s hands.
Jumshida looked at the soot-streaked arurim dhaskoi, who grimaced and bowed to her, then at Nomasdina’s captain, who had followed her and Niko. “As well for you he hasn’t been tortured,” she said sharply. “Kethlun Warder, did you murder the woman who was found tonight?” Niko shaped signs in the air with his fingers.
“No,” Keth said wearily. “She just appeared in that glass bubble I made.”
Soft white light radiated around him, the sign that he told the truth under a properly applied truth spell.
“Did you kill any of the Ghost’s victims?” asked Jumshida.
“No,” Keth answered.
Once more the soft light shone.
“Satisfied, captain?” Jumshida asked. She didn’t even wait for the answer, but looked at Nomasdina. “If we may have the documents for his release? And next time, I recommend more caution should you attempt to set a truth spell on someone whose magic is rooted in an unpredictable source, such as lightning.”
“I’ll require Dhaskoi Goldeye’s signature,” Nomasdina said. His brown cheeks were flushed under the soot that marked him when his truth spell went wrong.
“This way,” the captain said, bowing. “You understand we must interrogate all suspects in so sensitive a matter….” Jumshida, Niko, Nomasdina, and the clerk followed the man out of the room. The door closed gently.
Keth sighed in relief, and dropped onto the stool Nomasdina had vacated. He looked over at Tris. The girl slouched in her chair, her spectacles near the end of her long nose, running her fingers along one of her thin braids. Silver glinted over every hair of the braid. Sparks followed her hand.
“Please don’t do that,” Keth said nervously.
Her gray eyes flicked over to meet his. She thrust her spectacles higher on her nose. “Do what?”
Keth pointed, then dropped his hand before she saw that it shook. “With the braid. The lightning thing. You’re sparking.”
Tris frowned, then looked at the braid she held. “This?” she asked, scraping the lightning from her hair. “It’s nothing.” She closed her hand, then opened it to reveal a tiny ball of lightning.
The hair on Keth’s arms and at the back of his neck rose, prickling against his shirt. “Please put that away.”
She pursed her lips and ran the ball of lightning over the braid it had come from. It vanished. “Kethlun, you won’t get very far like this. You have to overcome your fear of lightning.”
“Well, I won’t,” he retorted. “You’d understand if it made a cripple out of you and then turned your world on its ear.”
“I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that you may be immune now,” she offered.
“No,” Keth said flatly. “Will you drop the subject?”
She did, but only because Jumshida had returned. “That’s settled,” the woman told Keth and Tris with satisfaction. “Now, Kethlun where do you stay? Touchstone Glass?”
“I live at Ferouze’s, on Chamberpot Alley, in Khapik,” he replied.
“Khapik?” Jumshida asked, startled. “You live in Khapik?”
“Lodging is cheap in Khapik,” explained Kethlun. “And it’s safer than in Hodenekes.”
“Safer?” Jumshida raised her eyebrows. “But surely they steal from you. Yaskedasi are born thieves.”
Keth shook his head. “Not the ones I live with, dhasku,” he replied. “Besides, everyone knows that if Khapik is the best you can afford, you don’t have anything worth stealing.”
“Well, I won’t hear of your going back to lodgings in Khapik,” Jumshida told Keth. “We brought chairs to ride in — you must be exhausted. You need a proper meal and rest, and you and Tris have things to settle tomorrow. Come along.”
Keth didn’t argue. The truth was that Jumshida’s house was pleasant and cool; Ferouze’s place was hot and stuffy, and he would have been forced to buy his supper. He’d gotten better at accepting free meals since he’d left his wealthy family’s house in Dancruan.
Nomasdina stopped him as he was about to walk out of the arurimat. “Think about what I suggested, that’s all I ask,” the arurim dhaskoi said to both Keth and Tris. “One of those balls might turn the tables on this monster.”
Long habit brought Tris and Niko downstairs the next morning shortly after dawn, despite their late bedtime. They ate breakfast in silence, the quiet broken only by noise made by the cook as she brought dishes and took them away. When her last plate had been removed, Tris sat with her head propped on her hand, while Niko had a second cup of tea.
All kinds of thoughts had been rolling through Tris’s mind. Many of them she preferred to keep to herself. It was the most recent one that bothered her. “Niko?”
“You’re the only one who can teach him,” he said instantly.
“It’s not that,” she said.
“I know that.”
“What then?”
“Kethlun’s not going to like me telling him to do things, is he?” she asked. “Sooner or later he’ll forget the lightning and remember I’m just fourteen.”
“Gods,” Niko said wearily. “No, I’m not grumbling. You’re right. But Tris, teaching mages is different from teaching normal students in any event.” He rubbed his temple with his free hand. “It’s a matter of persuasion, not orders. Even if a student accepts your command, his magic might not. You have to work around it. Every teacher fumbles a bit until he finds the right approach to each new student. Your task is just twice as hard because Keth is a grown man. Try to understand his feelings.”
Tris nodded thoughtfully. It had occurred to her that she also had to find a way around his fear of her lightning before he could learn much. Niko had just confirmed her thinking. If Keth was to catch the Ghost, a cure for that fear should come sooner rather than later.
With breakfast done, Tris took Little Bear into the courtyard and tethered him there with a meaty bone the cook had set aside. Then, with only Chime in a sling on her back as a companion, she set out for the heart of Heskalifos, following the maze of flagstone paths that covered the grounds. Except for the odd prathmun clearing away trash, the grounds were deserted. Even the clerks and teachers who worked here would not start their day until the third hour of the morning. That was fine with Tris. She didn’t want any witnesses to what she
was about to do.
Phakomathen, the Torch of Learning, was the pride of Heskalifos and of Tharios. Its tower rose from the east side of the Heskalifos Museum, soaring three hundred feet into the air. At its peak a figure of Asaia Birdwinged, the Living Circle goddess of learning, faced east, massive wings outstretched. In both hands she grasped a torch. Its flame was made of crystals that flashed in sun and moonlight, spelled against damage from wind and lightning. Twenty feet below the goddess a platform and guardrail were set. From the platform, visitors who had survived the twelve-hundred-step climb could see all of Tharios. On their second day here, Jumshida had brought Niko and Tris up to view the city that had thrown off the ancient Kurchal Empire and pursued its own glorious destiny.
Now Tris opened the doors at the base of the tower and walked inside. It was a point of pride for the university that Phakomathen was never locked, so that stargazers, young lovers, students, and tourists could see the city in each of its moods, if they had the desire and the stamina for the climb. Tris remembered the climb. She had managed it, of course. Though she was plump, the legs beneath her sensible skirts and petticoats were hard with muscle. She just saw no reason why, after a long, dramatic night, she could not cheat.
Besides, she wanted to realize an ambition she’d had since she’d laid eyes on the hollow heart of that tall stone cylinder.
She thrust the doors shut with a breeze, and looped it to and fro around the latches. It would serve as a rope lock until Tris removed it. The doors secured, Tris sent a few more breezes out to explore the upper reaches. They returned to her carrying nonhuman sounds — settling building, outside winds, birds who nested in the owl figures set over each of the staircase windows. There were no humans in Phakomathen, no one to spy upon Tris.
She summoned all the winds and breezes within reach, calling them in through the windows of Phakomathen. Waiting for their arrival, she walked a large protective circle around the floor. She then called her magic not to form a cylinder or cocoon of protection, but a flat shield within the circle she had made, to protect the elegant, tiled floor.
