Shatterglass (7 page)

Tris wiped her forehead on her sleeve to hide her scowl. Of all the peculiar foreign customs she had encountered since travelling south 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 prathmun 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 at the back. The floors and counter-tops were covered with pale tiles in cream or beige to best display the glassware. Arranged neatly 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 gnawed 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.

“Kefir?” 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 nibbled 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’d 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 colour 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 can 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.

Several hours passed after he came back. He spent them in the mages’ museum, marvelling at the many objects they had created, and briefly in the library, flipping through books. For a moment he thought he’d glimpsed braided red hair and the gleam of light along a long, curved glass edge passing by a stack of shelves on his right. Rather than see if it was the lightning girl or not, he went back to the museum.

At mid-afternoon his clerk-escort brought him to one of the university’s mages, Vishaneh Amberglass. Keth felt better the moment he was ushered into her ground floor offices. Amberglass’s office was a glassmaker’s workshop, stifling hot from the fire in the furnace.

The mage herself was a tiny creature in her sixties, perched on a high stool. She had icy grey-green eyes, olive skin and black hair worn in a coil ruthlessly pinned to her scalp. Instead of the Tharian kyten and stole, she dressed in the long tunic coat and leggings of a Trader or Bihanese. “I am told that you are a journeyman glassmaker,”

she said, eyeing him through round spectacles.

“Yes, dhasku” replied Kethlun.

“There is a crucible in the oven. Blowpipes over there.” Amberglass pointed them out.

“Have you studied breath control through meditation?”

“Of course,” he replied, startled by the question. “You don’t get past your ‘prenticeship without it.”

“Do you know that meditation is a form that mages use to get at their power?” Her voice was crisp.

“Yes, dhasku. I learned from my uncles, who are glass mages.”

“Then blow me a round glass ball, meditating as you do so,” the mage instructed.

“Don’t take for ever about it.”

He didn’t take for ever. He did take his time, inspecting several blowpipes before he chose one that suited him, then eyeing the crucible in the glory hole of the oven.

“Dhasku Amberglass, you do understand that it’s blowing glass where I get into trouble. It’s why I’m here at all.”

She inspected a thumbnail. “Either you are a journeyman, or you are not,” she said tartly. “Which is it?”

Kethlun sighed. Closing his eyes, he fell into the breathing rhythms he had learned years ago. Meditation and breath control were as much a part of his family life as meals. Slowly he counted to seven as he inhaled, then held his breath to a count of seven, let it go for a count of seven, stopped for a count of seven, then began to inhale once more. Like magic his troubled mind instantly calmed. He could almost smell his mother’s lavender sachet, his father’s spicy hair pomade, the scent of baking bread in the kitchen. Gently he slid his pipe into the crucible, into the mass of molten glass, and collected a glob of it at the pipe’s end. Bringing it out, he began to spin the pipe as he blew into it carefully.

“Let your mind drift,” murmured that sharp voice, its edges blunted. “Close your eyes — I’ll watch for you. Clouds go by, you smell spring rain—”

His mood shattered. He smelled hot metal and death. The hairs on his arms went stiff: lightning was here! He had enough sense to yank his mouth away from the pipe before he gasped in panic. The bubble at the end of the rod shimmered, then flashed with lightning. Miniature bolts rippled on its surface and through the centre of the globe so thickly, it was impossible to see inside it.

Amberglass raised her hands and snapped her fingers. The bubble tore free of Kethlun’s pipe and flew to her. She caught it in her palms. If the hot glass burned her, she gave no sign of it.

Trembling, Kethlun lowered the rod. “I did say—”

“Be quiet,” she snapped, eyes fixed on the ball.

He knew the voice of a master; he shut up. Quietly he cleaned the excess glass from the pipe, cleared the inside of the pipe, and put it away. When he finished, he glanced at the stool. Amberglass was gone. She soon returned, with his companion clerk who carried the lightning ball, tucked into a silk-lined basket. Keth noticed that the lightning that covered the outside of the ball seemed to have no effect on the silk.

“This is beyond my skills,” Amberglass told him. Her gaze gentled slightly. “I’m sending you to Dhaskoi Rainspinner. He works on weather.”

With anyone else Kethlun might have complained, but not with this woman. She had gone to some trouble to see precisely what was wrong with him. He bowed to her, resigned, and followed the clerk to the upper floors of Mages’ Hall.

By the end of the afternoon, Kethlun was more adrift than he had been that morning.

He had seen two more mages after Rainspinner. Like Amberglass, they had sent him on to other glass mages or weather mages. Keth yearned to go home. If he spent much more time up here, Yali would have left Ferouze’s and gone to perform by the time he got home.

When the clock struck the fourth hour, his guide led him back to the area where the mages’ clerks sat, copying out schedules and lessons and reviewing correspondence.

“You’ll have to return tomorrow,” the clerk said, wetting a reed pen in a pot of ink.

He had placed the basket, with its sparking glass ball, at the farthest corner of his desk. The clerks at neighbouring desks inched away from it. “Present yourself at—”

“Come back?” Keth asked, cursing his slow speech. What he wanted to do was scream, but he couldn’t. If he didn’t force himself to speak carefully, the stammer -

would return. Then no one would be able to understand him. He leaned on the counter between him and the clerks, his head and feet aching. “I have a debt to pay, work to do. I cannot spend my l-life h-here waiting like a pet dog. Aren’t y-you p-people supposed to help?” There, he heard it: the stutter. He thrust the knuckle of his index finger into his mouth and bit down just hard enough to grab his attention, pulling it away from his fury. He did meditation breathing until he thought he could continue.

None of the clerks had budged since he started talking. “Your charter says you are duty bound to instruct new mages,” he said, letting each word finish its journey from his mouth before he tried the next sound. “Well, here I am. All new and shiny, fresh from the lightning strike. I need help now. Who knows what I will make next, when I do not know what I am doing?“

People were emerging from their offices. Most wore tunics and kytens, with the mage-blue stole looped to waist-length in front and left to dangle to the knees behind.