I’ll protect you, she had said. Now he had to learn, did he need protection?
Tris stood at the center of the roof, idly removing hairpins, releasing some braids. They hung below her shoulders, flapping and popping in the wind.
Lightning flashed. Keth waited, counting silently to himself. At thirty he heard the roll of thunder. The storm was ten miles away — plenty of time to scramble downstairs, except that now he couldn’t bring himself to move.
Lightning again. Keth resumed his count, ending when thunder boomed at twenty. Six miles. The storm moved fast. Another flash and another. Thunder made the stones under him shiver. He hoped Glaki wasn’t frightened. He couldn’t remember if Ira had ever said if her child was afraid of storms. Keth had never been afraid, one of the reasons he was stupid enough to be caught in the open when the Syth blew up a surprise.
Lightning jabbed down near the Piraki Gate. Thunder blasted through the narrow canyons made by the buildings.
Here came another bolt, three-pronged, thunder on its heels. It struck Tris squarely, all three prongs twining around her. She held up her arms; she laughed as the bolt clung to her without vanishing, a white hot ladder to the clouds. Several of her braids exploded from their ties, the hair in them wrapping around the lightning that secured her to the sky. Oddly enough, the rest of her hair stayed where it was, unbudging, locked in place with pins. Keth’s rescuers told him that his hair had been standing straight up when he was found. Why did some of Tris’s hair move, but not the rest?
It was her mage’s kit. Suddenly he believed that she held other forces ready for use in her many braids. She had not been joking when she had described the range of her power. Niko had said nothing that day, not because he liked the joke Tris had played on Keth, but because she told the literal truth.
I’m dead, he thought helplessly. And all thanks to a cross-grained fourteen-year-old.
Chime’s claws bit into Keth’s breeches, forcing him to yelp and straighten his legs. Free of the bowl of his lap and arms, the glass dragon took flight, swooping and soaring around the trapped branch of lightning that still clung to Tris.
Keth stared. Inside Chime he saw a skeleton of silver. Around it twined veins that flickered and rippled like lightning.
Little Bear had seen enough. The big dog scrambled to the door and into the house, tail between his legs.
The bolt that held Tris shrank. It wasn’t dying, Keth realized. It was soaking into the hair that his young teacher had freed of its pins. It grew thinner and thinner, until it was gone. The braids that had absorbed it shimmered.
An immense fist pounded Keth on the head. He fell to his knees, staring at his hands. They blazed — he blazed — with lightning. He groped his scalp, and found something stronger and far hotter than the power in the globe he’d made for Dema. A bolt of lightning had struck his head, in the same place the last bolt had struck. His brain fizzed, his eyes filled with a glory of white fire that trickled down his throat, into his belly, through his arms and legs. In that splendid moment Keth saw that all things had some lightning in them. Physical matter did not reject lightning; it was simply overwhelmed by it, as a teardrop was overwhelmed by the ocean. Lightning struck objects because it was drawn to the ghost of itself within them.
Except there was no ghost of lightning inside Keth: he had the true thing. He drank the power in like a thirsty man drinks water and, like Tris, raised his arms to call even more to him.
Later, as they staggered down into the house, he found the voice to croak, “You promised you’d protect me.”
“I did,” she replied, her voice as rough as his. “I saw that your power was calling to the lightning, and I made sure that you weren’t hit by so much you’d panic.”
“You made me think you’d —” he began.
She interrupted him. “What? Wrap you in a cocoon of magic? In a nice safe blanket? I would have done so, had there been the need. There wasn’t. It’s my job to know these things, remember? I wasn’t about to lose my very first student because he didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain.”
They had reached Keth’s door before he’d summoned the energy to say, “You are a wicked girl.”
Tris shrugged. “So I’ve been told. I’ve learned to live with the shame of it.” She looked at Little Bear, who huddled by Keth’s door. “Come on, Bear. Lightning’s done.” She turned her sharp gaze on Keth. “Answer me truly — have I done you a disservice?”
It was his turn to shrug. He hung his head for good measure. “You know you didn’t.”
“I knew. I wanted to make certain that you did, too.” Before Keth could jerk away, Tris stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. A spark jumped between them. They both grinned. “If you have any leaks, put a big pot under them,” she warned. “It’ll rain all tonight and all tomorrow. Not my doing — this storm built up a lot of power while it was stuck in the east, and coming this way has made it stronger. I hope you’ve got a hat to wear to the shop tomorrow.”
Though he wasn’t sure if he would like the answer, Keth heard himself ask, “How do you know so much about it?”
Tris grinned, waved, and left him without a reply. Chime, riding on her shoulder, flapped her glass wings in farewell.
The rain continued to fall as it had fallen all night, steadily, without letup. Tris was glad for it. She felt like parched ground in the first showers of spring, greedily drinking up the moisture in the air.
Rain washed Tharios. Gutters ran clean on both sides of the Street of Glass, their burdens of trash swept away the night before. The white stucco of the houses and storefronts blazed; the orange-colored roof tiles shone. It was all scrubbed clean, right down to the soaked and sullen prathmuni. They were almost the only people in sight as they went about their endless chores. Those Tharians of the other classes who walked abroad did so in oiled straw hats and capes, or with oiled silk umbrellas over their heads. Tris simply ushered the rain away from herself, Little Bear, and Chime. She’d had her fill of rain the night before, and the heat of Keth’s workshop would make a wet dress unbearable. Let the passersby stare at her and her dog, shedding drops as if a glass bowl lay over them. It was time they learned that they did not control all the wonder in the universe.
Keth was hard at work by the time she reached the shop. “Did you sleep at all?” Tris asked, seeing the lightning’s power blaze through his skin.
“A little,” he said, “but I had an idea, and I wanted to test it.” He grinned. “Close your eyes,” he ordered. “I’ve got something for you.”
“It had better not be slimy,” Tris warned as she obeyed.
“Spoken like a girl with a brother,” Keth said, moving behind her. “Even in Khapik I’d have to look hard for anything slimy.” Something light fell around Tris’s neck as Chime crooned.
Tris opened her eyes and looked down. On a black silk cord around her neck dangled a bright red flamelike piece of glass, its tail twisted to provide a loop for the cord. On either side of it hung two smaller, blue glass flames. “Keth, this is beautiful,” she whispered. “How did you make it?”
“Actually, Chime did most of the work,” replied Keth, standing back so he could see the full effect of the necklace. “I found these on my sketches when I woke up this morning. She leaves them everywhere she goes, practically. I guess because she eats the ingredients that make and color glass.”
Tris nodded.
“Well,” continued Keth, “I got to thinking that we could sell them as novelties, to pay Antonou for supplies and to buy more food for Chime. The hardest part was actually heating the tails to bend them for the loop. Whatever’s in those, it resists fire.” He poured a handful of glass flames, all with looped tails, into her hands. “I kept some for the girls at Ferouze’s,” he confessed. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Tris frowned. “You aren’t thinking of taking Chime back, are you?”
Keth shook his head. “I gave up my responsibility to her. Besides, I think she belongs with y
ou.”
Chime underscored Keth’s words by twining around Tris’s neck.
“I love you, too, Chime,” mumbled Tris, her cheeks crimson. “Thank you, Keth. It’s a wonderful idea.” She patted her necklace, then looked at him. “Ready to meditate?”
Meditation that day was easier than it had ever been, particularly the exercise in which Keth placed his magic into a crucible. It was as if the night’s lightning had cleared his mind of fear and increased his strength. Tris watched as he treated the lightning in him just as he did glass, with a friendly but firm hand. Today he gripped the power just hard enough to control it, but not so hard that it erupted through the weak places in his concentration. On his fourth try he managed to pack it all into the image he held in his mind of a crucible: Tris could see its shape as it folded in on itself, reduced to a blazing, fist-sized sun. He was so giddy with his success that he repeated the exercise two more times, just because he could.
“We’ll stop for midday,” Tris said, gathering in the magic she had used for her circle of protection. “Then let’s try for another globe.”
“That’s what I hoped to do,” Keth replied. “I might be more successful, now that I have some idea of how my power works —”
“Tris. Keth.” Dema stood in the doorway, wearing a rain hat and cape. He looked harried, and he would not meet their eyes. “The Ghost struck last night — another girl from Keth’s lodgings. I need you to identify her,” he explained, tight-lipped. “I’ve got horses. Can the dog keep up?”
Keth turned white and rushed from the shop. Tris followed, throwing her rain shield over all of them. In silence they mounted the horses Dema had brought, Chime riding on Tris’s shoulders.
Dema led the way to Elya Street, past the arurimat, and onto Noskemiou Way.
Tris kneed her horse even with Dema’s. “Where?” she asked. “Where was she? Back in Khapik?”
“No,” Dema said tersely. “She was at the foot of the last emperor’s statue in Achaya Square. They didn’t tell me until she was taken to Noskemiou Thanas, so I wouldn’t risk pollution by getting too near the body.” His mouth tightened into a grim line. “They won’t try that little trick again.”
They rode on to Noskemiou Way, where the great hospital lay directly across the Piraki Gate from Khapik. Tris gasped when she saw the sprawl of buildings, larger than any of Winding Circle’s infirmaries or Summersea’s hospitals. Four stories high, white stucco over brick, Noskemiou was laid out like a series of ladders. Between the wings that were the ladders’ rungs lay courtyard gardens where the healers grew herbs for their medicines.
Dema led them past the wings, each with a sign that named it as a House in Tharian, Kurchali, and Tradertalk, the main languages spoken here. They rode by Children’s House, Mothers’ House, Elders’ House, Poverty House. Beyond them the blazing white stucco was painted black. This part of the hospital had no windows, only a few doors, and no signs at all. An arurim stood in front of one of its small doors.
Dema rode up to him and dismounted. “The arurim will mind the horses,” he said curtly. “It would be better if the dog remained, too.”
“Little Bear, stay,” ordered Tris as she slid out of the saddle. “What is this place, anyway?” she asked.
“Noskemiou Thanas,” Keth said, his voice more crackly than usual. “The House of the Dead.”
They followed Dema into the building. Magical signs of preservation, cold, and permanence shone in Tris’s vision from the walls and floors. The people who walked here were civilians — who quarreled, wept, or bore their losses silently — or they were those who worked here, silent prathmuni dressed in black tunics or kytens.
Dema led them to a door that bore a brass number five and opened it, motioning for Tris and Keth to go in. Two black-robed prathmuni, at work there, turned toward them. “Number eighteen,” ordered Dema. They led him, Tris, and Keth to a covered form on a wooden table.
Tris clenched her hands until her ragged nails bit her palms. She hated the sight of dead people: they looked sad, alone, abandoned. Though she had seen a great many dead since her career as a mage began, they still made her flesh creep.
The prathmuni drew the cover away from the dead woman’s face.
Tris bit her lip. The woman had been strangled. Under the mud splatters of last night’s storm the weapon showed yellow at her throat: the head veil of a yaskedasu. While she and Kethlun had reveled in lightning, rain, and cool air, the Ghost had struck. His way of killing had changed the woman’s face enough that her own family might not recognize her, but Tris knew the lavender scent, the soggy brown curls, and the embroidery on the dead woman’s kyten.
Keth was not as slow as Tris to recognize the victim. He dropped to his knees, burying his face in his hands.
“Oh, Yali,” Tris murmured, her lips trembling. She closed the dead woman’s staring eyes with one hand. From her sash she brought out a pair of coppers and used them to weight Yali’s eyelids, so that the soul could not return to its old home, which had begun to decay. Chime crept onto Yali’s body, making the screeching of metal on glass sound that was her distress cry.
Now the prathmuni, who had seen people behave as Tris and Keth did a thousand times, showed emotion. Chime caused them to step away nervously as they sketched the circle of the All-Seeing on their foreheads.
Tris put a hand on Keth’s shoulder, then offered him her handkerchief. He ignored it, though tears dripped to the floor through his fingers. Tris looked around: where had Dema gone?
She found him in the hall, talking to an arurim. “I don’t care what it takes in bribes to the secretaries, I’m good for it,” he said fiercely, his dark eyes ablaze. “I want to talk to the Keepers of the Public Good today.”
“But, dhaskoi, what can they do?” inquired the arurim. “They aren’t equipped to investigate criminals!”
“They can shut down Khapik!” snapped Dema. “Close it down until we find the rotted polluting Ghost! So get moving. Lay those bribes on as thick as you can. Stop by Nomasdina Hall and get chits from my mother for it, but I need the Keepers’ attention now.”
There was sufficient iron in Dema’s voice; the arurim left at a trot. Before he could open the door to the outside, a man and a woman in the white robes of priests emerged from a room next to the door. The arurim halted and raised his arms as the man surrounded him with incense smoke from a censer, and the woman rattled off the prayers for cleansing. Tris gritted her teeth. They all would have to undergo this nonsense when they tried to leave.
Dema turned to her. “What?” he demanded.
Tris shook her thoughts about cleansing. “That was badly done, in there,” she said, pointing to the room where Yali lay. “Springing it on us like that. You could have warned us.”
“I didn’t know,” Dema retorted. “Wouldn’t it be just as cruel for me to say I think it’s a woman I’ve only seen for thirty minutes in my life, and have it turn out not to be so? There are two other yaskedasi at Ferouze’s, remember. And I have other things on my mind.”
Tris folded her arms over her chest. “Such as?”
“We have to shut down Khapik, forbid the yaskedasi to work. We need to put extra arurimi on this, as many as can be spared. I don’t want any more dead women. They have to listen to me this time,” Dema insisted, trembling with urgency. “He’s moving closer to Assembly Square. He’s taunting us — it can’t be allowed to go on, and it won’t!”
“Well, while you’re enraged over being taunted, Keth just lost somebody he cared for,” Tris said coldly. “I wish you had thought better, Dema.”
He took a step back, startled to be addressed in that tone. “I’m trying to save lives, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“So in your rush to save lives you don’t care if you shatter one or two? And they tell me I’m not kind,” Tris said flatly. “Her name is Yali. She was a friend of Iralima, and she was taking care of Iralima’s daughter.”
“You don’t understand,” Dema said wearily, ru
bbing his forehead.
“I don’t want to,” Tris replied.
The door to the room where Yali lay opened. Keth emerged. His eyes were red and puffy with weeping. Chime stood on his shoulder, steadying herself by gripping his hair in her forepaws. She looked at Dema and hissed, spraying him with tiny glass pellets.
“I agree,” Tris said, glaring at Dema.
Keth ignored her. To Dema he said harshly, “You have to close Khapik. Before he kills anyone else. How does he come and go unseen, even in Achaya Square? I know the arurimi patrol up there.”
“I’m going to see the Keepers of the Public Good today, to petition them to shut down Khapik,” replied Dema, leaning against the wall. He looked exhausted. “As for how …” He grimaced. “There are service and sewage tunnels throughout the city.”
“Wonderful,” Keth said sarcastically. “Let me guess. Nobody wants to see the prathmuni and servants at work.”
Dema nodded. “This city is a giant sieve. It can’t be guarded well, though I’ll bet the Assembly authorizes the money for more guards. They’ll have to pay a lot to get them into the sewers, and they’ll have to have priests to cleanse them, or no one will do it. Even the arurim prathmuni refuse sewer duty.” His voice, cracking with exhaustion, softened. “Keth, I’m sorry. My mind was going in six different directions…. You were close.”
Keth nodded. “I have to go home,” he said. “I want them hearing it from me.”
“Did she work last night?” asked Dema.
“Yes,” Tris replied softly.
“You know how it is for the street yaskedasi,” explained Keth. “If they don’t work, they don’t eat, they risk losing their lodgings…. And Yali was clever. She wouldn’t take risks.” He looked at Tris. “I can’t go back to Touchstone —”