Shatterglass (6 page)

Kethlun wasn’t even sure that there was room for the younger couple. There was certainly no room for Keth.

At the end of the day, Keth closed the workshop. After saying good night to Antonou, he walked down the Street of Glass to his home, located inside the entertainment district known as Khapik. It wasn’t the best housing, as the district hosted quite a few people who regarded theft as an art form, but it was interesting and cheap. Students and young journeymen like Keth could afford Khapik’s prices and also be entertained for free. Residents and guests spanned the full spectrum of performance, all lumped together under the name yaskedasi: poorer mages, actors, musicians, tumblers, dancers, illusionists, singers, gamblers and fortune-tellers. Other residents and employees included outright criminals; servants and cooks at the many eating-houses, theatres, inns, coffee and tea houses; and clerks who served in the multitude of shops that offered everything under the sun: clothing, souvenirs, jewellery, art, flowers and musical instruments.

Keth liked Khapik. There were things to see and do no matter how late the hour.

Everyone came here sooner or later: foreigners, nobles, students and merchants —

male and female — going from attraction to attraction. Keth’s slow speech, occasional stammer, and slight clumsiness went unnoticed in a district where the beggars were missing body parts and the poorer folk were missing teeth. No one cared that he didn’t talk much: here good listeners were in popular demand. Best of all, the occasional storms that swept through Tharios spent their lightning bolts on towers.

There were no towers in Khapik.

After a few changes of address, Kethlun had settled at Ferouze’s lodgings on Chamberpot Alley. Ferouze let rooms cheaply, to yaskedasi and anyone else who could pay. Keth couldn’t see what had brought fame as a yaskedasu to this old, fat, snaggle-haired woman, but her house and her linens were clean and she had enough healing skills to treat the small injuries that befell even the most careful performer.

She also played chess. With her help Keth was regaining his old skill at the game.

When he entered the house, built like other Tharian homes around a central courtyard, Keth was surprised to find it so quiet. This was the hour when the place should be waking up, with six yaskedasi in residence. Ferouze’s watchdogs came trotting down the corridor to sniff him, then returned to their normal pursuits, allowing Keth to pass into the courtyard. The rooms on all three floors opened on to this small square of green where Ferouze had a kitchen garden and the well.

Normally the yaskedasi would be talking back and forth from the upstairs galleries around the courtyard, trading gossip and insults as they prepared for work. Today Keth found three of the girls seated on one of the staircases, and no sign of their landlady or the two men who lived there. The girls still wore day clothes, undyed wool kytens. None of them wore a speck of make-up; all had been crying. Yali sat with the absent Iralima’s four-year-old daughter curled up in her lap. Little Glaki’s black curls were tangled. Her face was red and swollen with weeping, and she slept with her thumb in her mouth. Xantha, the blonde northern dancer who lived there, still wept, her face puffy.

Keth looked at Yali, who raised wet brown eyes to his. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

All thought of the redheaded girl and her lightning fled his mind; goosebumps rippled over his skin. He didn’t have to be a mage to know he was about to hear bad news.

“Where is everyone?”

“Ferouze and the men are at Noskemiou Thanas,” replied Poppy. Her green-and-brown eyes, normally filled with anger, were dull. Her brown skin was ashen.

Keth had to think for a moment to translate what she had said into his native Namornese. The city’s great hospital for the poor was called Noskemiou; Thanas was the wing where the dead were brought. “Why?” he asked when his brain sorted it out.

“Who died?”

“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 rubbish.”

“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.”

Yali 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?”

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

Defeated, Kethlun spoke 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 Yah. “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 Antrim 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?”

“Deüna!” 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 Yah. She was the cleverest of the three, the one he could talk with most comfortably. “Yaskedasi are Tharians, too.”

“You’re sweet, Keth,” Yah replied. “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. Yah 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 her 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 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 his 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 streets 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 moulded 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 lighting ripple through the clouds, Kethlun Warder faced facts.

Tomorrow he would find a glass mage to teach him.

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 got up to begin her morning clean-up. At least she didn’t have to worry about feeding her starling, Shriek. After four years of screaming at her 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 to anyone 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 honeypot. 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 produce flames like bits of honey 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 more 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 on to 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 between the priests on the ground. The female priest carried a basket full of them. 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 grey-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 prathmun 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 prathmun 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 prathmun are reliable, as their kind go.”