The Circle Opens #4: Shatterglass Read online

  “Iralima,” Yali whispered, her full mouth quivering. “Dhaskoi Nomasdina, who’s been investigating for the arurim, he came and described her.” She covered her mouth with a hand that shook. Keth hesitated, then reached out and clasped her shoulder, trying to comfort her. He had liked Ira, and his heart went out to Glaki. Iralima was the child’s only family. Ira’s clan had kicked her out when she declared her intention to be a Khapik dancer.

  “Where have you been all day, in a hole in the ground?” demanded Poppy. “The Ghost got her. He got her, and he strangled her, and he dumped her in the fountain on Labrykas Square like she was garbage.”

  “Hush!” scolded Yali in a whisper, covering Glaki’s ear. “Not in front of the child, Poppy, for the All-Seeing’s mercy!”

  “I shouldn’t have told Ira that she was a selfish old hen,” wailed Xantha. “It’s my fault.”

  Yah and Poppy exchanged disgusted glances. “We forgot the whole world spins around you, Xantha,” said Poppy, her voice as tart as vinegar. “Just don’t fight with us and we’ll have long, happy lives.”

  “Girls.” If Poppy and Xantha got started, Keth knew they’d be at it all night. “Did you tell this dhaskoi when you saw Ira last? Where she danced?”

  “We told him,” replied Yali, rubbing her arm over her eyes without disturbing the girl in her lap. “It’s not like he broke his back finding out who killed those other yaskedasi, is it?”

  “Arurim have a word for crimes against people like us, remember?” Poppy demanded.

  Defeated, Kethlun repeated it: “Okozou.”

  “Okozou,” Poppy repeated. “No one worth a bik”— Tharios’s smallest copper coin — “got hurt.”

  “If they scurry on this one, it’s because Ira fetched up in the Labrykas fountain,” added Yali. “They’ve had the cleansing tent up all day. They can’t have a dead yaskedasu defiling a public place, now, can they?”

  “Tell us your own arurim back in the north would care about the likes of us,” taunted Poppy. When Keth didn’t reply, Poppy nodded. “I didn’t think so.” She struggled to her feet. “I have to get dressed.”

  “You’re working tonight?” cried Xantha. “With Iralima at Noskemiou Thanas?”

  Glaki whimpered. Yali bent over her, smoothing the child’s rumpled curls with a tender hand.

  Poppy glared at Xantha. “And you’re not? Ira would be out there if it was you in Thanas. Didn’t you say you don’t have the rent money yet?”

  “Deiina!” muttered Xantha, naming the patron goddess of Khapik. “I forgot!” In a flash she was on her feet, pushing by the other two on her way upstairs.

  “It’s not right,” Kethlun told Yali. She was the cleverest of the three, the one he could talk with most comfortably. “Yaskedasi are Tharians, too.”

  “You’re sweet, Keth,” Yali said. “It won’t last if you stay here.” She got to her feet with a grunt, balancing Glaki’s weight on her hip. The child was all cried out and didn’t even stir. Yali said, “There will be a Farewell at the Thanion.” It was the temple dedicated to the god of the dead. “Shall I tell you when they have it?”

  “Please,” Keth replied. Tharios’s dead were burned outside the city, so there were no burials, only Farewell ceremonies. As Yali continued to climb upstairs, he called after her, “Yali, what about her?” He nodded to Glaki.

  Yali kissed the little girl’s hair. “She’s mine, now. I’ll take care of her.”

  “If you need help, just ask,” Keth said. “I’ll watch her, help pay for her food, whatever you need.”

  His reward was a slight lifting of the cloud in Yali’s brown eyes, and a smile that made his heart turn over. “You’re truly a good fellow, Keth,” she told him. “I’ll take you up on that.”

  “I want you to,” he said as she finished the climb to her room.

  The night was close and hot, bringing very little rest with it. Around midnight Keth took a sleeping mat up to the roof and placed it between Ferouze’s potted herb garden and the wall. He placed a jug of water beside him — he’d been unable to drink wine since his encounter with a lightning bolt — and lay down, locking his hands behind his head. Heat lightning played in sheets under the clouds in the sky. It made him edgy, but not enough to go back inside. Heat lightning didn’t strike, it only taunted those trapped in the baking city with the promise of rain.

  As always, once he was in the open air, the tangled ball of thoughts that had kept him awake began to unravel. Here in the dark, alone, with the sounds of the crowds on the main street of Khapik muffled, he could think about the girl who threw lightning. His gut twisted over the memory, but he could think about it, and he could admit some truths to himself. The glass in the blowpipe had fought him. When, before his accident, had he ever felt that the stuff he’d worked with all his life had a mind of its own? That idea had grown since his travels began, along with the notion that glass had come to life while he wasn’t looking. It never even occurred to him to call that feeling magic. Perhaps that was because none of the glass mages in his family had mentioned sensing the glass was alive. He was used to thinking of glass magic as his family described it: a matter of charms, signs, special twists in pulled glass, special shapes in molded glass, and blown glass shaped to hold and direct spells. They spoke of glass as Keth and his friends did: a substance to which they did things, not a living being.

  As much as it pained him, Keth finally admitted the redhead was right. He should have been relieved to find an answer, but he wasn’t. He’d had plans, important ones. His master’s credential, marriage, a family, a rise in the guild until, one day, he led it. He would make glass for the imperial court and have the power and wealth to work on his own projects.

  Now he was back at the foot of the ladder, a student, a beginner along with children. The study of magic would cut into his time with glass for years.

  He had regrets; of course he did. He supposed he would always have them. But watching heat lightning ripple through the clouds, Kethlun Warder faced facts. Tomorrow he would find a glass mage to teach him.

  3

  Tris had used shawls to make a nest for Chime by the window, but when morning came, she turned over in bed and felt a glass corner poke her right eye. She opened the left: the cause of her discomfort was Chime’s tail. The rest of the glass dragon was draped over an extra pillow, just as Little Bear sprawled over her feet. Tris grumbled and gently moved Chime’s tail, then rose to begin her morning cleanup. At least she didn’t have to worry about feeding her starling, Shriek. After four years of screaming at Tris the moment she woke up, Shriek had joined a flock of Hataran starlings when she and Niko passed through that country. Tris, secretly a romantic, told herself that a particularly comely lady starling must have caught her bird’s eye. She never let on that she missed the speckled bird’s chatter any more than she admitted to missing Sandry, Daja, or Briar.

  Screams in the kitchen and Little Bear’s deep-throated barks interrupted Tris as she made her bed. She raced downstairs. The maid was in hysterics, having discovered what she called “a monster” — Chime — in the honey pot. Little Bear had already decided Chime was family. He stood between the maid and the glass dragon, barking a warning. The cook scolded the girl for being upset while Tris ordered Little Bear outside. Together Tris and the cook managed to get Chime clean. By the time she was free of honey, the glass dragon had begun to produced flames like bits of amber glass.

  “May I keep some?” asked the cook. “They’re so pretty.”

  Tris, glad to find a way to calm the servants, shared out the flames with the cook, the housekeeper, and even the trembling maid, then went to finish straightening her room. She hated to let others do housework, but looking after her own room and the workroom that Tris shared with Niko was all Jumshida’s staff would permit her to do. After a light breakfast, she made a shawl into a sling, tucked Chime into it, then set off for Touchstone Glass with her dog at her heels. She would check on Kethlun as she had promised Niko, then explore m
ore of the city’s glass shops.

  She had almost reached Touchstone when the flare of magic caught her eye. Three priests, two in white tunics, one in a kyten, all in white head-veils and complex red stoles that marked them as servants of Tharios’s All-Seeing God, stood where an alley opened onto the Street of Glass. One priest wielded a censer of smoking incense: cypress, Tris’s nose told her, with myrtle, cedar, and clove — cypress for death, myrtle for peace, clove for protection, cedar for purification. A white candle burned on the ground between the priests. The female priest carried a basket full of candles. The third priest was the mage. Power flowed from his moving hands and lips to sink into the ground under the candle.

  “What’s going on?” Tris asked the stocky older man who leaned against the open door of Touchstone.

  “A man dropped dead there last night,” the Tharian replied. He was plump and gray-haired, light-skinned for a Tharian, with small, sharp brown eyes and a chunky nose. He wore a pale blue tunic. His shopkeeper’s short, dark green stole lay over his shoulders, its ends hanging even with the hem of his tunic. “Once the prathmuni collect the remains and scrub the site, the priests must cleanse the area of all taint of, well, death. No one here may do business until then.”

  “Everything dies,” Tris pointed out, watching as the air between the three priests turned magic-white. “Do you also cleanse for dead animals and insects?”

  The shopkeeper shrugged. “You are a shenos. You’re not used to our ways. The death of humans, the highest form of life, clings to all that it touches. It must be cleansed, or everyone who comes near will be polluted.”

  The priests turned their backs on the space they had just cleansed. As one they clapped their hands three times, then walked off. It was neatly and precisely done, with the deftness of long practice.

  “Well, thank heavens the prathmuni were here first thing,” remarked the shopkeeper. “Sometimes they don’t come until late in the day. The place can’t be cleansed until the remains are gone, and we can’t open our doors until the cleansing is done. Lucky for us the district prathmuni are as reliable as their kind go.”

  Tris wiped her forehead on her sleeve to hide her scowl. Of all the peculiar foreign customs she had encountered since traveling north with Niko, she wasn’t sure which she disliked more: the creation of the prathmun class, or the need to ritually cleanse anything touched by death. Tris thought the treatment of prathmuni was cruel and the pollution of death stupid. Thinking about it called on every speck of control over her temper that she had.

  “Have a good day,” the man said. He started to open the shutters on his shop. Tris, remembering why she had come, said, “Actually, koris …” She didn’t know the man’s name.

  “Antonou Tinas,” the shopkeeper informed her and bowed.

  “Koris Tinas,” Tris said, with a polite bow in reply. “I’m here to see a man who works for you, Kethlun Warder.”

  “Keth’s not in just now,” Antonou replied. “I’m not — Hakkoi’s hammer,” he whispered, calling on the Living Circle’s god of smiths and glassmakers, “what is that?” He pointed to Tris’s bosom.

  Tris glanced down. A small, clear glass muzzle with hair-fine whiskers stuck out of the shawl as Chime peered up at her. The girl smiled and tickled the dragon’s chin with a gentle finger. “That is why I need to talk to Koris Warder,” she explained.

  “May my fires never die,” murmured the older man. “Come in, koria —?”

  “Chandler,” replied Tris, following Antonou into the shop. It was a relief to get out of the sun, even with her usual cocoon of breezes wrapped around her. “Trisana Chandler.”

  “Please sit down, Koria Chandler,” Antonou urged, indicating a chair. This shop was meant for customers, unlike the workroom in back. The floors and countertops were covered with pale tiles in cream or beige to best display the glassware. Arranged on shelves throughout the room were plates, bowls, vases, figures, bottles of every imaginable size, even pendants, and ear and hair ornaments.

  Tris sat and helped Chime out of her sling. “Don’t start flying about and breaking things,” she warned. “I can’t afford to pay for them.”

  “May I?” asked Antonou, holding out his hands. “It’s not koria, is it? It’s dhasku.” He had properly identified her as a female mage.

  “It’s just Tris,” she replied as she offered Chime to him. The glassblower gently wrapped his square, blunt-fingered hands around the willing dragon and sat on a stool, steadying Chime on his knees. Chime looked up into his face and nibbled one of his fingers.

  “You should be careful,” warned Tris. “She tries to eat anything she sees.”

  “I would be old and gamey to the taste,” Antonou told Chime. He surveyed the creature with wonder, noting each detail of her eyes, muzzle, feet, and mouth. “You say Keth knows something about this creature?”

  “He made her,” Tris replied, watching the glassblower’s face. Antonou was no mage; she had already looked inside him for that.

  “Keth?” repeated the man, shocked. “Kethlun made this lovely being?”

  A low, musical, steady note rose from Chime. “That’s her purr, I think,” explained Tris. “Be careful. You don’t want her to be vain.”

  “A beauty like this has every right to be vain,” Antonou replied. Chime gnawed one of his shirt buttons. “Well, if Keth did this, it explains this morning,” Antonou commented. “He came here just after dawn, looking as if Hakkoi’s Firewights were on his trail. When he told me he’s got magic, like it’s a disease to be caught, and he needed to find a teacher, I thought he’d been drinking.”

  Tris thrust her brass-rimmed spectacles up on her long nose. “I’m sure he thinks magic is a disease,” she said drily. “That’s how he acted yesterday. You say he’s looking for a teacher now?”

  “At Heskalifos,” Antonou replied. “And magic explains more than it doesn’t. He was struck by lightning, you know.”

  Tris stared at Antonou, mouth gaping, before she remembered her manners and closed it. When she had enough wit to speak again, she said, “He neglected to mention it.”

  “Oh, well, he usually does, poor lad. He lived, but it made a shambles of his life.” Suddenly Antonou beamed at her. “Actually, this is wonderful news. A proper teacher can rid him of the malipi that’s gnawed on him since he came. Anyone could see he was troubled. I kept saying, go to Dhaskoi Galipion over on Witches Row. Whatever malipi rides you, he’ll be able to banish it.

  “But young people, they don’t understand how many troubles come from the unseen world,” he continued, shaking his head. “They insist that all this reason and rationality that’s so popular these days proves there is no supernatural, only what the mind can grasp and make plain. ‘How about magic?’ I ask them, but they tell me magic is also governed by reason. Pah.” Antonou shook his head. “Law and reason are very well, but to say the gods are only tales told to comfort us … Hey, you!” Tris jumped. Antonou lunged over to a counter, where Chime was attempting to thrust her muzzle into a low, fat jar. “What is she looking for?” Antonou demanded.

  “Food,” Tris said, getting to her feet. “Actually, Koris Antonou, what substances are used to color glass, and where might I buy them? At this rate Chime’s going to eat all of my mage supplies.”

  Antonou was happy to assist her. Half an hour later, he sent her off with a list and explanations for every item on it, and directions to the Street of Glass’s skodi, or marketplace. There Tharios’s glassworkers bought raw ingredients and residents could buy whatever they fancied in the way of plain glasswork. Tris would find all she needed to feed a glass dragon there.

  She went happily, just as curious to see the raw materials of glassmaking as she was to see the work itself. A small part of her mind was uneasy about the information she had gathered from Antonou regarding Keth’s search for a teacher. That part of her demanded constantly: And what of the lightning? Lightning and glass don’t go together in the day-to-day world. Lightning melts glass. How c
an a glass mage teach him to combine the two?

  Tris ignored that part of her mind. Keth was no longer her problem. That was all that mattered.

  Still, she might cut her day of exploration short, she thought. Go back to Heskalifos, to the Mages’ Hall library, and see what books they had on the subject of glass magic. In the past she’d never thought about it much, but now that she had, she wanted to find out how it was worked, and what could be done with it. If she had a motto, it was “New learning never hurt anybody.” She wouldn’t know what insights she could or could not get from glass magic until she learned more.

  Rather than wander the Street of Mages, Kethlun went straight to the source, Mages’ Hall at Heskalifos. He presented himself to the clerks at the third hour of the morning, when he was informed that few mages were available. It seemed most of them were at some kind of conference in Philosophers’ Hall, and would not return to their offices until midday. In the meantime, a clerk sat with him to ask a number of questions, writing Keth’s answers down as he gave them. The clerk made it plain that he was not surprised to find a northerner who hadn’t recognized his power until he was twenty. His attitude was that it was a wonder that northerners, unschooled in logic, reason, and discipline, discovered their magical skills at all. Keth tried to explain his near lack of power before his encounter with lightning, then gave up. Perhaps the mages would be more understanding.

  After the questions, Keth was interviewed and tested by three student mages. One of them gave Keth a glass ball to hold as the student gazed into it. One used a glass wand to perform the same exercise. The third used a mirror made of glass and backed in silver. Each young mage reacted to his testing in the same way: they inspected their devices, then summoned the waiting clerk. After a few words from the Student, the clerk made a note on the paper of information about Keth, then led Keth to the next student. After the third student, the clerk sent Keth off to eat his midday meal, with instructions to return in the afternoon.