Shatterglass (21 page)

“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 on to 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 storeys 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 for preservation, cold, and permanence shone in Tris’s vision from the walls and floors. The people who walked here were civilians — who quarrelled, 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 towards 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 revelled 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 on to Yali’s body, making the screeching metal on glass sound that was her distress cry.

Now at last the pmthmuni, 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?” enquired 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.

Demi turned to her. “What?” he demanded.

Tris shook off 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 was Yali. She was a friend to Iralima, and she was taking care of Iralima’s daughter.“

“You don’t understand,” Dema said wearily, rubbing 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 amrim patrol up there.”

“I’m going to see the Keepers of the Public Good today, to petition them to shut 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 entire 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 most of 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 —”

She shook her head. “I’ll go to Ferouze’s with you,” she said, thinking, Maybe I can do him some good.

After a moment’s hesitation, Keth nodded.

“Let’s get cleansed, then,” said Dema, leading them to the priests. “Keth, take your horses with you. Just have someone return them to Elya Street.”

Tris endured it as the priests worked their cleansing with incense and prayers, her mind racing furiously. As they mounted their horses, she asked Dema, “Do you think your Keepers will listen?”

“They must.” Dema gathered the reins and urged his horse to a trot down Noskemiou Way.

DEMA

As Dema trotted through Achaya Square, he saw that the priests of the All-Seeing had already erected cloth barriers around the defiled statue until it and its surroundings could be purified. They turned to watch him pass. Seeing their eyes on him, Dema remembered his own, slow process of cleansing at their hands — a day and a night stolen from his hunt for the Ghost! — and the priests’ complete lack of interest in the methods needed to trace a murderer. What if the Keepers of the Public Good ignored his arguments? When all was said and done, he was still an arurim dhaskoi of less than a year’s standing, without enough service to Tharios to give weight to his words.

He must not waste a trip to Balance Hill or worse yet, waste the clan’s bribe money.

In theory the Keepers were duty-bound to hear any Tharian, but there was a great deal of difference between the ear of the Keepers when they were awake, and that of vexed, half-asleep Keepers. There was also a difference between the Keepers and their obligations, and the interests of those who served the Keepers.

It was the sight of Phakomathen, stabbing into the grey mists of rain that gave Dema an idea. The Keepers would have to listen to him if he came with support from Heskalifos, particularly those mages who attended the conference on visionary magics. He turned his mount aside, and rode to the university.

He arrived at the conference hall shortly before the midday break. He waited outside until the doors opened and mages of all races and nationalities spilled out, then strode through them into the hall. The morning’s speakers were still on the dais, talking to one another and collecting their notes. One of them was Jumshida Dawnspeaker; another was Tris’s teacher, Niklaren Goldeye.

Jumshida smiled when she noticed him. “Dhaskoi Nomasdina, is it not?” she asked, her rich voice friendly. “Have you come to join us?”

“Actually, no,” he said, nervous. “I’ve come to beg you for help. The Ghost killed another yaskedasu last night — another woman who lives in the same house as Kethlun Warder.” Jumshida drew the circle of the All-Seeing on her forehead. Dema continued, “I’m on my way to Balance Hill to speak to the Keepers. It was my hope that you would lend me your support.”

Was it his imagination, or did she stiffen?

“I fail to see what use I might be to the arurim,” Jumshida said.

“You underestimate the honour you have in the city,“ Dema replied. ”You are First Scholar of Mages’ Hall, Second Scholar of Heskalifos. You are responsible for bringing together the greatest vision mages of our time, to produce a work that will define vision magic for centuries.“ Children of the First Class also learned the art of flattery. One of their maxims was that bees went to sweet-smelling flowers, not earth-smelling mushrooms. ”How would the Keepers not value anything you have to say?“

Everyone but Goldeye left discreetly, watching Jumshida from the corners of their eyes. “What, exactly, do you wish them to value from me?” asked Jumshida, smoothing the folds of her mage’s stole.

“That Khapik must close until this monster is caught,” replied Dema. He took a breath. “And that cleansing the site of a murder must wait until the arurim can trace every influence present.”

“Very sensible,” Goldeye said tartly. “I can’t believe this hasn’t been raised before.”

“Why should the Keepers listen to any thoughts I might have on Khapik?” asked Jumshida. “Have you considered the serious hardship a closing would place on the shopkeepers and the yaskedasP. They exist day by day on their earnings. As for the other…” She looked at Goldeye. “You don’t understand, Niko. Killing destroyed the Kurchali emperors, with their mass executions and their gladiators fighting to the death on sacred days. Why else would the blood plague have begun here, where people bled to death through the very pores of their skins? It was a thousand years ago for you of the north, but it took us three centuries to recover from the disorder of those times.“ She turned a stern face to Dema. ”You are a Tharian, Demakos Nomasdina.

You already know these things. It was the cleansing, and the banishment of pollution through death, which saved us from the chaos that followed the emperors.“

“But it hurts us now,” argued Dema, wanting her to understand. “In the case of these murders—”

She covered her ears with her hands. “You speak blasphemy,” she retorted when he stopped talking. “So the rumours are true. You risk your soul and the safety of Tharios in your pursuit of the Ghost. I will not sully my hands by association, Dhaskoi Nomasdina. And you must decide which is of more value: a few lives, which are fleeting at best, or your family’s standing and your own immortal spirit.” Her body stiff with disapproval, she picked up her notes and walked away.

“I’ll go with you,” Goldeye said, his voice clipped. “I may be only a shenos, but perhaps the Keepers will listen to me.”

Dema hesitated. Would support from a shenos, even one as famed as Niklaren Goldeye, hurt or help him?

As if he read Dema’s mind, Niko said, “I’ve been wanting to talk to them in any case.