Shatterglass (20 page)

Keth shivered. He could smell rain on the wind. “I told you, no. Just because there’s a storm coming doesn’t mean I’m going to play in it.”

Tris removed her spectacles and rubbed her nose. “Keth, I’m not asking you to play.”

Her voice was surprisingly gentle and reasonable. “But I need to show you something.”

“I don’t need to be shown anything.” Keth folded his arms over his chest. He hoped she couldn’t see that he was shaking. “Not in a storm, anyway.”

“But you do.” This time her voice was even gentler; that same kindness was in her level grey eyes. Now she scared him. She wasn’t kind. “Keth, as long as you fear lightning, you’ll fear your power. It doesn’t have to be that way. You’re not the same fellow who got struck beside the Syth. I can prove it to you.”

He shook his head stubbornly, though he couldn’t have said what he was denying or refusing. Outside, the tiniest growl of thunder rolled through the greenish air. His skin rippled with gooseflesh.

Tris took a deep breath and tried again. “So, you’ll learn magic, but only to the point where it starts to scare you. Is that it? How far will that get you? Magic doesn’t respond to orders like ‘this far and no further’. The more you do, the better you get, so the more power you have. If you don’t keep ahead of it — if you don’t learn how to release it safely — it will find its own ways to come out. You really don’t want that to happen.“

Keth shook his head again, his heart thudding in his chest. What she said had the unpleasant feel of truth. For all her fiery temperament, she wasn’t the dramatic sort who liked to exaggerate. She was irritating, but she was also forthright. And when she spoke of magic, somehow the things she said carried more weight than the pronouncements of his mage uncles. She was fourteen and difficult, but when it came to magic, she seemed as much a master of her craft as Niko or Jumshida, and even more than Dema.

Tris went to the window, turning her face up to the blast of the rising wind. The two thin braids she wore loose on either side of her head fluttered wildly.

Chime flew over to hover in front of Keth as she made a chinking sound. Once she got his attention, she flew to the door and back, as if in invitation. She wanted Keth to go outside.

Tris faced him, the wind turning her braids so they reached towards Keth like yearning hands. Quietly she said, “I don’t believe lightning has the power to hurt you any more. I think it would recognize you as a kindred spirit. But in case I’m wrong, and I suppose I could be,
can protect you from it. I can keep it off you. But Keth, for that to happen, you have to trust me.“p>

For a long moment he said nothing, his mind in an uproar. It did come to trust, didn’t it? She was his teacher. Until now she’d been a good one. “You threw lightning at me,” he reminded her. “That hurt.”

“Because you’d put all of yours into Chime.” Quick as a flash her hand whipped forward. A thin stream of lightning — where had she got it with her braids all done up? — shot between them to strike Keth’s crossed arms. His muscles twitched, then stilled. Nothing else happened.

“You did it again!” he yelled, outraged.

“That’s right.” Her eyes were cold and steady. “Just a bit I yanked from the air, with the storm almost on us. Did it hurt?”

“That’s beside the point!” he cried. “You threw—”

“Did it hurt?” she interrupted, steely-voiced.

Keth struggled, trying to think of something cutting to say. Finally he snapped, “You tell me to trust you, then you throw lightning at me.”

It was her turn to cross her arms over her chest. “Show some sense, Keth. How else am I going to get you to listen to me, if you won’t take my word for it?”

Suddenly the wind went out of his sails. She was right. She was right, and he, a grown man, was wrong. “You won’t let it hurt me?” His voice emerged far smaller, and far more trembly, than he liked. “You said you’d protect me.”

“I will.”

Keth sighed and wiped his sweaty face with a hand that shook. “Let’s go, then.”

They climbed to the second-floor gallery, then up to the roof. Ferouze had already taken the wash down from the lines strung up here, leaving a few buckets and a bench to endure the storm.

Keth looked up. Rough black clouds billowed overhead. The wind rose, whistling through the streets and over the rooftops. In a lodging house across the way someone had not closed his shutters completely: they slammed in the wind until one ripped free of its hinges. The air had taken on the green hue of olive oil. Thunder rolled in the distance. Keth shivered, and huddled in a corner of the rooftop wall, Little Bear on his left, Chime tucked securely in his lap. He had thought he would be safe in this low part of Tharios that would not draw lightning. That no longer mattered with Tris here.

With Tris for company, no place was safe.

I’ll protect you, she had said. Now he had to learn, did he need protection?

Tris stood at the centre 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 silendy to himself. At thirty he heard the roll of thunder. The storm was fifteen kilometres 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.

Ten kilometres. 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 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 in front of 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, napped her glass wings in farewell.

The rain continued to fall as it had fallen all night, steadily, without let-up. 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 rubbish swept away the night before. The white stucco of the houses and store-fronts blazed; the orange-coloured roof tiles shone. It was all scrubbed clean, right down to the soaked and sullen prathmun. 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 passers-by 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 flame-like 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 colour 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 back 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 you.”

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—”