Shatterglass (24 page)

“Keth, watch—” Tris began, but it was too late. He’d let himself get worked up.

When he blew into the pipe, a fat streamer of his power went with the air, straight into the glass. It lengthened and burst, spraying droplets on to the wall.

Tris surveyed the damage. Luckily the walls, though wood, had been treated to resist fire. “You know, a few more of these, what with the drops, you put on the wall the other day, and you could make a design,“ she remarked, falsely cheerful. ”It looks pretty, in an over-enthusiastic way.“

Under his breath Keth told Tris what he thought of her comments. She caught the small puff of air from his mouth and twisted it in her hand until they both heard “-

claybrained flap-mouthed impertinent—”

“Now, was that nice?” Tris asked, releasing the puff of air. “I was only trying to help.”

Very gently Keth beat his head against the wall, rousing Glaki from her sleep. “Ow”

the four-year-old observed, watching Keth.

“Men are like that, little one,” Tris replied. “Keth, feel sorry for yourself later. Start again.” She dug inside one of her packs until she found the dates and dried figs she’d bought at the skodi. These she gave to Glaki, who ate silently.

Keth cleaned his blowpipe, then thrust it once more into the kiln and its crucible.

Chime glided over to sit on a shelf beside the furnace and observe. Keth drew out the gather and began to count, breathe, twirl and blow. Gently he coaxed the bubble along, reheating and twirling, enlarging it each time, growing more confident as everything went smoothly.

“One more,” he murmured as he drew out the gather. “One more go.”

Tris saw his magic spike, leaping to flood down the barrel of the blowpipe and out over the skin of the ball. Burdened with its strange weight, the glass ball dropped from the pipe and on to the floor, where it sprayed outward.

“I used to be able to do this!” yelled Kethlun, furious. “I used to be able to do this in my sleep! How can it be so hard? Why does the magic fight me? Why do I fight me?

This will never work!” He flung the pipe into the corner and got to work to clean up the mess.

Tris leaned her chin on her pulled-up knees, watching him through slitted eyes as she thought. One day she, Briar, Daja and Sandry had been on the roof of their home, basking in the sun and talking. They had spoken of their first real experience with their crafts, the one they didn’t actually associate with magic. Talking it over, Sandry and Daja could see how their teachers had used magic to teach them something about spinning with a hand spindle, in Sandry’s case, and drawing thin wire from thick, in Daja’s. Maybe what Keth needed was help with his craft.

She waited until Keth was ready again. Glaki moved into a corner with her doll as Tris got to her feet. “Here,” she said, “walking over to Keth. ”Let’s try something.

You’re going to meditate like before, and blow like before, but you’re going to close your eyes and let me help you.“

“I don’t need help!” Keth snapped, red-faced and out of patience with himself and the world. “I know perfectly well how to do this!”

“You know perfectly well how to blow glass,” she said. “That’s what you’re going to do. You’re not going to interrupt yourself by sticking it into the kiln to reheat, that’s all. I’ll keep the glass warm.“

“How can you do that?” demanded Keth. “Your lightning will fry it.”

“I won’t use lightning.” She walked her fingers through her braids until she found the loops on either side of her head that she used to store warmth. She removed their pins, then undid two centimetres of each braid. Pulling her fingers through the freed hair, she collected two palmsful of that heat, drawn from the molten rock of the earth’s core. She pressed her hands together to mix their contents, then drew them apart. Now she had a thirty-centimetre-square surface to use on the glass. She checked it against the furnace, making sure they were equally as hot, before she looked at Keth again.

“Stand at right angles to the furnace once you have your gather,” she told him. He looked green, as he always did when she fidgeted with her braids. “Now, start breathing.”

Once he had his gather on the end of the blowpipe, he backed away from the furnace.

Tris moved until she stood in front of the gather. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,”

Keth said. “Or weren’t you watching when the last two splattered?”

“Just breathe, and close your eyes, and blow, Keth.”

He hesitated. “I can’t shape it that way,” he warned.

“It shaped itself the first time. Stop talking and get to work.”

Counting, Keth twirled the pipe as Tris held her outstretched hands on either side of his gather. Closing his eyes, he exhaled into the blowpipe for the count, drew his mouth away without stopping the motion of the pipe, then blew again.

Tris kept the heat she had summoned just beyond the glass, watching sharply as the globe got bigger. Tiny lightnings, magic that Keth mixed with the air he breathed, darted along the glass surface like minnows in a pond. When the globe had reached the proper size, she grabbed a pair of cutting tongs and put them around the glass still attached to the pipe. “Keth,” she said quietly. He opened his eyes as she pinched with the tongs and twisted, freeing the globe.

Keth yanked the pipe back and caught the globe in one hand. It didn’t burn him. He stared at it, awestruck. As the lightnings in the glass played, they grew to fill the inside of the globe and to run amok across its surface. By the time Keth had got the composure to set his blowpipe aside and cup the globe in both hands, it was a ball of miniature lightnings.

“It’s pretty!” cried Glaki. She clapped her hands and reached up. Before Tris or Keth realized what was happening, the globe left his hands and flew towards her.

“It’ll burn,” Tris said quickly. “The glass is hot, Glaki. Only Keth can hold it.”

Glaki pouted and sent the ball soaring back to its creator. The child had just confirmed a suspicion that Tris had held since the child stopped the cyclone Tris had used to write Yali’s name in the courtyard dust.

Keth stared at Glaki. “I can’t deal with this now,” he said hurriedly. “Tris, don’t expect me to. I just can’t.”

“You won’t have to,” Tris replied with resignation. “The responsibility is mine. Find somewhere to put the globe.”

“Why?” asked Keth. “We have to make it clear up, don’t we?”

“First we stop. You need a walk, and a breather, and food,” Tris informed him.

“No! Let’s work on it now, get the lightning out. I can do it!”

Tris sighed. He was dead white and covered in sweat, shaking so hard he could barely hold on to the globe. “When did you last eat?” she asked.

Keth had to think. “Breakfast.”

“And drink? And visit the privy? And sit down?” she demanded.

Keth glared at her, his blue eyes reflecting the lightning on his globe. “I don’t need any of that,” he said, and swayed.

Tris propped her hands on her hips and glared back. “You’ve been working all morning and part of the afternoon in this hotbox. If you don’t eat, you’ll collapse, and if you collapse with this thing, you might break it, so stop arguing with me!”

Chime swooped over to land on Tris’s shoulder. She chinked worriedly at Keth, who wiped his forehead on his sleeve.

“Just for a moment, perhaps,” he admitted. He swayed again. Quickly he placed the ball on his workbench.

Tris began to say something rude but decided to hold her tongue. Keth needed to rest before he fainted, now that his excitement and the strength he had built up by repeated use of his newly gripped power had drained away. Rather than speak hastily, she first took down her magical barrier on the shop.

“Sit,” she ordered. “I’m going to the skodi across the street for some food. Glaki, why don’t you tell Uncle Keth what your doll did this morning?”

As the child walked Keth to the bench by the well, Tris left Touchstone Glass. Only when she was three doors down did she stop to sag against a shop’s wall in relief. She hadn’t been sure that her help would work.

They were almost done with their belated midday when Keth looked up to see Dema in the workshop door. “Sit,” he offered through a mouthful of flatbread and chickpea spread. “Eat something.”

Glaki towed Dema over to the bench, where he sat abruptly and took the food Tris offered. A handful of olives and a wedge of cheese revived him a bit, as did the ladle of cold water Glaki fetched for him. “Hello,” he said to her, “what’s your name?”

Glaki, suddenly shy, stuck her thumb in her mouth and hid behind Tris.

“She’s Glaki,” Tris explained quietly. “Iralima was her mother, Yali her foster-mother.”

“Gods,” Dema said, dejected. “That’s more ill luck than anyone should have in one lifetime.” He looked at the globe that sparkled on a counter. “Another one. Splendid.

If the last two are any indication, he’ll strike tonight. Any luck in getting the lightning to clear?”

“We’re going to work on that after we eat,” Keth replied with a sidelong glance at Tris. “They turned you down, didn’t they? The Keepers.”

“Niko said they did,” Tris murmured.

Dema looked at the hardboiled eggs and helped himself to two. “They said the city can’t afford the loss of income from Khapik,” he said, shoulders drooping as he peeled an egg. “That the people would lose confidence in the Keepers, even the Assembly. That it would look as if they were admitting defeat at the hands of a lone madman. That all order is lost. In the audience chamber, while Niko asked about the cleansing, I heard someone whisper that if Khapik closed, the Ghost might come for respectable women.” Chime clambered into Dema’s lap, purring musically. He smiled absently at her, ate half an egg, then continued, “The Keepers asked why they shouldn’t replace me now and let my family deal with the loss of status. Thank the All-Seeing I had a fallback plan to give them. If I don’t find the Ghost in ten days, Nomasdina Clan loses one of our Assembly seats as punishment for sending an idiot like me to work for Tharios. I asked how could I save our honour with Khapik open and my hands tied, but they were done with me. How can they not care?” he burst out, looking from Keth to Tris. “Women are dyingl Why won’t they do whatever is necessary to save them?” He stuffed the other half of his peeled egg into his mouth.

Tris laid a hand on Dema’s arm. “Why are you up? You need sleep. Tired folk make mistakes.“

Dema swallowed, drank some water, and sighed. “I’m on my way back to Elya Street now. There’s a room in the back I can use.”

“What about your fallback plan?” Keth wanted to know, curious. “What’s that?”

Dema peeled his second egg. “My sergeants will find as many arurim as they can, particularly females, to bring into Khapik disguised as locals. I can do that if I pay for it myself, or rather Nomasdina Hall pays. With an Assembly seat at risk, Mother will let me spend the money.” He looked at the globe. “Come for me when that clears?”

Keth nodded and squeezed Derm’s shoulder. “Get some rest,” he said. Dema nodded and left, eating his second egg.

“So they ‘won’t close Khapik,” Tris mused, “but if he can find people to act the victim for him, and if he pays for their time, he can do that. This city doesn’t make sense.”

“It does in a strange way,” replied Keth as he gathered their leavings. “If you belong to a great family, your power is shown by what you give to the city that grants you greatness. The city gives to you, you give to the city. It’s worked for Tharios until now.” He dumped their rubbish in the barrel by the rear gate. “And honestly, Tris, have you ever heard of anything like these murders? Women in the same line of work, killed the same way by one person, left out in public for everyone to see?”

He. watched as she tugged her lower lip. “Sandry - my foster-sister - wrote to me that some assassins worked like that in Summersea a few months ago,” she replied slowly.

“But they were killing the members of another family as part of a trade war, in a way that would frighten anyone who might think to cross them.”

“I don’t think the Ghost does it for that,” Keth said. “Yaskedasi aren’t exactly anyone’s rivals for anything. I think he likes it. And maybe he looks to shame Tharios, by showing that no one can stop him.”

“And if you can’t afford fountains or extra arurimi, like the yaskedasi and the Fifth Class, the city does nothing to help,” Tris remarked tartly. She got to her feet and stretched to loosen her back. “Back to work, Keth. I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you try to blend the lightning on the outside of the globe, so you can clear the surface. Maybe then you can look into it and see what’s inside.”

Keth tried to do as Tris suggested. First he tried to combine the outer lightnings into one large bolt he could peel away, but things distracted him from the task. Chime produced a shower of glass flames that rained on the laughing Glaki. The dog wriggled on the workshop floor to scratch his back. Street noise seemed louder than ever.

Only Tris didn’t disturb Keth, though he wanted her to. He wanted her to thrust him aside and growl, “Oh, here, I’ll do it!‘ Instead she read from a small, leatherbound volume. She seemed lost in it, though every time Keth glanced at her, she looked up, raising colourless brows over the brass rims of her spectacles.

Frustrated after what seemed like a dozen interruptions, Keth grabbed a hank of lightnings with thumb and forefinger, literally trying to jerk them off his globe. For a moment he saw its frosty white surface. An image grew there: long brown hair, large brown eyes, a full mouth with a wicked twist to the side. It was Yali.

Keth trembled; his eyes stung. After he rubbed them to make sure no unmanly tears fell, her image was gone. The lightnings he’d yanked away escaped his hold to cover the globe again.

Keth set the globe down and covered his face with his hands, trembling with grief. He and Yali had only kissed once. For the most part they just talked, something Keth had never done with his betrothed in Namorn. They’d discussed food, music, plays, even the customs of their countries. Something in Yali spoke to his heart. She’d had a restful quality unlike that of any girl he’d ever known.