Shatterglass (8 page)

Kethlun looked around, counted, and gulped: twenty-three mages now stood in the room.

“How is it, my peers, that anyone can make such a complaint on this of all weeks?”

The speaker was a tall chestnut-brown woman with startling blue-grey eyes. Her nose was long and thin with broad nostrils, her wide mouth smoothly curved. She wore her greying dark hair in curls bound up with ribbons, covered by a sheer blue veil weighted with tiny glass drops at the hems. Like most Tharian women she wore the kyten and sandals that tied around her calves. Her ribbon belts were the same shade of blue as her mage’s stole. Kethlun hadn’t seen her or her companion, a white-skinned older man, emerge from an office behind him. The woman continued, “Here we have gathered a conclave of seers, glass mages, truthsayers and masters of visionary magics from half the world, and we cannot name one man’s power?”

“It is a mixture, Dhasku Dawnspeaker,” explained the clerk who had shepherded Kethlun all day. “Something the mages and assistants who have seen Koris Warder have never encountered before.”

“You give it a try, Jumshida Dawnspeaker,” said the mage Amberglass with a sigh.

“I’ve never got such a mangled reading of someone’s power.”

“Then perhaps we must stop wasting everyone’s time, and go to the best vision mage present,” replied Dhasku Dawnspeaker. She looked at her male companion. “Dhaskoi Goldeye?” she asked with a smile that Keth judged too warm for a woman who addressed a mere colleague.

Goldeye was a lean, wiry fellow, dressed in a sleeveless lilac overrobe, light grey silk shirt and loose grey breeches. His long hair was black-streaked grey, held back from his craggy face with a tie. His eyes, dark and fathomless, set between heavy black lashes, caught Kethlun’s gaze and held it well past the time Keth would gladly have looked away. At last he nodded, freeing Keth of the power in his eyes.

“I see why those who tested you were confused,” he told Keth. “You have ambient glass magic, which means you draw power not from inside yourself, as academic glass mages do, but from glass and the things which go into making it, including earth, air, water and fire. The thing that has transformed it, however, is lightning. That lightning gives your power strength and unpredictability. Your power flickers, jumping from element to element within you.”

“Then we have a problem after all,” Dawnspeaker admitted. “We have the finest glass mages in the world in Tharios, but lightning … changes matters. Does anyone here work in lightning at all?”

One of the other mages replied, “None. Lightning mages are rare, if any even exist.”

“They exist,” Goldeye said. “There are lightning mages among the Traders, and one of the academic mages at Lightsbridge has learned to handle it. For that matter, there is a lightning mage in Tharios. A very accomplished one, as it happens.” He looked at Kethlun. “How advanced in the Glassmakers’ Guild are you?”

“Journeyman, Dhaskoi Goldeye,” Kethlun said politely. His brain was racing with new ideas. His problem had a name, and a solution, right here in Tharios. He could gain control over it, and return to his real life. And his family would be pleased.

Keth’s lack of magic had always disappointed them. In the world of the Namorn trade guilds, mages equalled power for their guild.

Goldeye smoothed his moustache with a bony finger. “Since you know your craft, it seems to me that any spells you might need could be learned from books, perhaps with advice from a glass mage once your power is controlled.” There was a glint of mischief in the mage’s eye, one Keth didn’t understand. It vanished as the mage continued, “The lightning aspect is the thing that requires most of your attention.”

“You mean you can help me?” Kethlun’s voice cracked with desperation. He blushed hotly. He didn’t want these people to know how scared he was. “What must I do?”

Goldeye put a comforting hand on Keth’s shoulder and squeezed, then let go. Kethlun looked down a scant couple of centimetres into the older man’s face. “Come to supper with Dawnspeaker and me,” Goldeye said. There was understanding in his gaze.

“We’ll sort you out.”

After she had chased the glass dragon first from the alum, then the salt, then the myrrh jars in the workroom, Tris used a ribbon to make a leash for Chime and secured her to a chair leg in the downstairs dining room. “I can’t concentrate on these books with you rattling things,” she scolded as she made sure Chime could retreat under the table.

Little Bear enjoyed washing his new companion, and Tris wanted Chime to have a place where the dog couldn’t reach her if the dragon decided she had endured enough.

Tris also left a small bowl of water, though she wasn’t sure Chime drank water, and a dish with a tablespoon each of red and blue lustre salts, as well as the powder that turned glass a deep emerald green. These she also tucked well under the table. Little Bear was as convinced as Chime that there was no harm in trying to eat everything at least once.

With dog and dragon settled, Tris returned to the upstairs workroom to read. At first glance all that she had found was academic magic, not ambient. This troubled her.

While any ambient mage could and did use spells, signs, talismans and potions to amplify her power, the source of ambient magic came from outside the mage. It had to be approached differently. Academic mages reached first for spell books, ambient mages for the things that gave them their power. Only another ambient mage held the truth of that difference in her very bones. What if Keth didn’t find an ambient glass mage?

I just need to look harder for books on ambient glass magic, she told herself. I’m sure they have them.

Downstairs Little Bear was barking. Tris ignored him, fascinated by the instructions for making a bowl to scry with; the Bear tended to bark at anything and everything.

Another sound did shatter her concentration, a bone-shivering screech like a shard of glass dragged over hard stone. She raced downstairs and into the dining room.

Chime had climbed a table leg to the top. She clung there, tucked into the corner of the table’s frame as she made that awful sound. Tris scrabbled to undo the ribbon leash. The moment she freed the dragon, Chime threw herself at her, digging her claws into Tris’s clothes and skin.

Tris crooned gently to the trembling creature, trying to calm her. Looking at the dragon’s food, she saw a few glass flames beside the dish. Holding Chime with one hand, she set the flames in the dish with the colouring powders and put it on the table, where she couldn’t break them by accident. Chime continued to screech. Over and over Tris stroked the dragon, trying to breathe meditation-style, hoping she would calm the frightened creature.

The front door opened as Little Bear continued to bark. Tris’s breezes swirled into the front hall and returned to her with voices: Jumshida’s, then Niko’s.

“It’s all right,” she assured Chime. “They belong here. You remember Niko, don’t you?” Now she was really puzzled. Chime had been admired by total strangers all day and had voiced nothing louder than her musical purr. What had upset her?

Red-faced with effort, several of her braids knocked free of their pins, she edged out from under the table. Once in the open air she sat back on her heels and straightened, holding Chime to her chest with one hand.

“Oh, no,” said a man with a slightly husky, slow, familiar voice.

Tris whirled, forgetting that she still knelt, then fell on her side. Chime leaped free, taking flight. As the dragon zipped around the room, Tris glared up at Niko, furious to be caught unkempt and awkward before a stranger. Looking past him, she recognized the newcomer.

“You!” she cried at the same moment as Kethlun did.

“I take it you two have met?” asked Niko mildly. “Kethlun, Tris — Trisana Chandler — is the lightning mage I told you about.”

Chime screeched, that same earsplitting sound of a nail on glass, and flew straight at Kethlun. Thirty centimetres away from him the dragon spat a flurry of glass needles into her maker’s face.

“Chime, no!” cried Tris. “Bad!” Quick as a flash - she had practised the movements for weeks so she could do this bit of magic in a hurry — she stripped the tie from one thin braid and collected a handful of sparks. She threw them at the dragon, imagining each spark as a tiny ball of thread connected to her fingertips. The balls spun around Chime to form a lightning cage with the dragon suspended inside. Tris reeled in the cage. Only when she held it in her hands did she look at Keth.

He’d flinched when the dragon came at him, saving his right eye, but that side of his face and head were peppered with thin red, blue and green needles. Niko tried to pull one out and cut himself.

“Serves you right,” Tris informed Keth, scowling at him. “You did try to kill her.”

Keth looked from Tris to Niko. “Oh, no,” he said, voice shaking. “Not her.”

“I’m afraid so,” replied Niko. “She is a lightning mage. You may have noticed,” he added drily.

“I don’t understand,” said Tris, but she was afraid she did, all too well. She had tried to find other lightning mages, just as she had tried to find other mages who could master the forces of the earth or of the sea, with little success. It seemed that, of all the ambient magics, weather was the most dangerous. It drew its power from all over the world. Mages who tried to do more than call rainstorms or work the winds often misjudged their ability to handle the forces that supplied their power, and were crushed. It had been in the back of her mind since Niko had shown her the lightning in Chime, that Keth would have trouble finding a teacher who could help with that aspect of his power.

“Of course you understand,” replied Niko.

Tris glared at him. Niko knew her too well.

“Moreover, you will do your duty,” Niko added, looking down his nose at her. “You accepted that when you donned the medallion of your certification.”

About to argue or even refuse, Tris made the mistake of looking at Keth. He was the picture of misery, blood dripping from the needles in his flesh, lines of exhaustion bracketing his mouth, dark circles under his eyes. Instead of speaking as she had meant to, she pulled out a chair with one hand. “Sit,” she ordered Keth. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

DEMA

For once the Elya Street arurimat was quiet when Dema sat at his desk. The night patrols had gone out; the higher-ranking officers had left. With no one to hang over his shoulder, Dema took out the envelope of reports on the Ghost murders, from Nioki’s, the first, to Iralima’s, the most recent. He’d had two arurimi carry in a long worktable: now he used it to lay out the notes on each killing in order, so he could look for a pattern.

He was studying them when an arurim rapped on his door. “Dhaskoi Nomasdina, there is something you should see.”

Dema turned, scowling. Standing beside the arurim was a little Tharian who wore the yellow stole of a clerk or scribe, hemmed with the white key pattern of Heskalifos. He clutched a covered basket with hands that shook. The silk of the cover shone to Dema’s magical vision: spells for purification and containment were stitched into every centimetre of the cloth.

“I took it to the Heskalifos arurimat” the clerk explained, wheezing. “The captain there said to bring it to you. It was blown by a man who claimed to possess magic. He was at Heskalifos looking for a teacher. When he made this, it ‘was just covered in lightning.”

“And now it is not?” asked Dema, taking the basket. If this was a joke at his expense, he would seek revenge, he thought as he pulled the silk covering aside. He had too much to do without dealing with jokes.

Inside the basket was a globe of clear glass that sparkled. Curious, Dema touched a spark: it stung.

“Lightning, you say?” he asked. He went to his mages’ kit and got his leather gloves.

“Miniature,” replied the clerk, wheezing still.

Dema glanced at his two guests as he pulled on his gloves. “Arurim, perhaps a cup of water for the koris?”.

The arurim bowed and hurried off. Dema lifted the globe from the basket. The globe was fully fifteen centimetres wide and perfectly round, with something inside. When Dema held it before his eyes, he saw a room in its depths. It looked to be some public space. He saw a thirty-centimetre-high dais with seven backless chairs. Beyond it was a good-sized room furnished with benches, and another, smaller dais with a podium, set to face the chairs.

A dead woman lay on the big dais before the chairs. Dema knew she was dead: there was no mistaking the swollen, dark face of a strangler’s victim, even under a yaskedasu’s make-up. She was dressed in a tumbler’s leggings and short tunic, with brightly coloured short ribbons stitched into the seams. The yellow noose itself was lost in the swelling of her neck, but the bright yellow ends of a yaskedasu’s veil once more lay straight from her side, almost as if they were placed to make the delegates seated in the chair look right at the body.

“What did the captain at the Heskalifos arurimat tell you?” Dema inquired.

“That this was a matter on which you are chief investigator,” replied the clerk, “and that if I spoke to anyone else before you gave me leave, I could be arrested for promoting disorder.”

“He was right,” Dema said, continuing to examine the ball. He looked at the proscenium that framed the dais. There, in mosaics, was Noskemiou, the charity hospital, and the brightly painted walls that wrapped around Khapik, with the yellow pillars that marked the main entrance. There on the right side was the Elya Street arurimat. He knew this place. It was the Fifth District’s Forum, where the affairs of that part of the city were discussed and voted upon before the seven District Speakers.

The place was closed during the day, when everyone worked. He glanced out of the window of his office: the sun was reaching the horizon. They would open the Forum any minute.

Dema shoved the ball into the basket. “You’re with me,” he told the clerk, who was drinking the water the amrim had brought. To the arurim Dema said, “I want a full squad at the Fifth District Forum, soonest. We’ll need barricades, arurimi to watch them, and prathmuni with a death cart. Scramble!“ He grabbed his mage’s kit in his free hand and strode out of his office.