Shatterglass (11 page)

“I don’t joke,” Tris said, her voice flat. “It makes my head hurt. Where are you taking Keth? Who are you, anyway?”

The mage sighed. “My name is Demakos Nomasdina, arurim dhaskoi at the Elya Street arurimat. That’s where we’re taking this murder suspect, teacher or no teacher.

And who are you?“

“Dhasku Trisana Chandler,” she retorted, giving herself the Tharian title. This superior young man would learn that she could not be pushed around. “And I’m coming with you.” She looked at the housekeeper. “Send someone for Jumshida and Niko. They’ll want to know about this.”

“Yes, dhasku,” the woman replied with a bow of the head.

“I hope you are a truthsayer,” Tris informed Nomasdina. She knew how to manage this. She had to keep him on the defensive, and not allow him time to think that she was only fourteen, medallion or not. “Because I doubt that Dhasku Jumshida Dawnspeaker will be happy to learn a guest of hers was abused.” From the looks exchanged by the arurimi and the mage, she knew she’d hit a nerve. She’d hoped that Jumshida’s name and position — that of First Scholar of Mages’ Hall and Second Scholar of Heskalifos — would throw a damper on things. “Or did you not notice whose house this is?”

The mage reassembled his lofty facial expression. “She may vouch for him at Elya Street,” he informed Tris. “And there are truth spells I can use. First, though, we are going to see the woman he murdered.”

“I didn’t—” Keth began, only to receive Tris’s elbow in his ribs.

Before he could ask why she’d poked him, Tris told Dema, her voice as lofty as his, “Then I go with him.” To Chime, who waited on the dining-room table still, she said, “You stay here.”

First they had gone to the Fifth District Forum, where Keth saw the reality of the image inside the glass ball. Numb all over, voiceless with pity over this unknown yaskedasu, he ‘was only dimly aware of the quarrel between Nomasdina and the priests of the All-Seeing. He overheard snippets. The priests had wanted to take the dead woman away two hours ago, but they had agreed to wait until the arurim dhaskoi confronted Keth with the crime he was supposed to have committed. Keth knew he’d disappointed Dhaskoi Nomasdina when he didn’t crumble and shout out his guilt. All he could do, seeing the tumbler’s remains, was address a prayer to Yorgiry, the Namornese goddess of death and mercy, that she grant the dead woman a new, longer life.

When he could bear to look no longer, he turned away and inspected his surroundings.

The arurimi who’d arrested Keth watched him, as intent as dogs looking at a bone just out of their reach. Keth shuddered. If the arurim dhaskoi’s truth spell didn’t work, and such spells were tricky if the caster didn’t originally have the ability to truth-read, Keth knew what came next: torture. Unless they had a truthsayer on duty at the arurimat. Somehow he didn’t think the district that included the charity hospital, Khapik and the slums of Hodenekes spent a great deal of money on truthsayers.

A small, nail-bitten hand rested on his arm briefly. “They’ll come,” Tris said quietly.

“Niko and Jumshida. Nobody’s going to hurt you if we can help it.”

Keth stared at her, numb. How could she possibly say that? Was she so young that she didn’t know how things worked for outsiders in any city, in any nation? Jumshida was a Tharian; she wouldn’t protest the way things were done.

“That fellow Nomasdina keeps watching me for some sign of guilt,” he replied at last, feeling he ought to say something. “I suppose I’m going to have to tell him I knew one of the Ghost’s victims.”

“The Ghost?” Tris repeated with a frown.

“It’s what the yaskedasi are calling the murderer. Because he seems invisible. A girl disappears, and the next day she’s dead with a yellow veil around her neck.”

“You mean to tell me there’s been more than one killing?” asked Tris.

Keth looked at the poor dead creature now enclosed in a circle of protective magical fire. “Six, with her.”

The arurim dhaskoi Nomasdina stamped over to them, a scowl on his dark, lean features. “They can report me to the First arurim all they want,” he grumbled, more to himself than to Keth or Tris. “I had to give it a try. Let’s go,” he ordered his arurimi.

“Elya Street.” To Keth he said, “I have to veil you again.”

Unlike the first time Dema shielded them, on their approach to the Forum, neither Keth nor Tris protested. As they had walked there, magically hidden inside a circle of arurimi, they had pushed through a crowd of people ripe for murder if they got their hands on the Ghost. Now Tris and Keth huddled inside the guards as the arurimi walked them out through the mob. There were cries of “When will you find the kakosoi?” and “How long does it take to find a killer?” There were other cries, suggestions of what should be done to the murderer when he was caught, bloody and fiery plans.

“I admire their imagination,” Tris murmured to Keth as the crowd jostled the arurimi and the arurimi jostled her and Keth.

He looked down at her, startled: though they were invisible to everyone else, they could see each other perfectly well. How could she joke at a time like this? “Th-they might think I did it,” he reminded her, fright making him stammer. “Hard to admire their imagination wuh-when they wuh-want to do that to m-me.”

“Oh — sorry,” replied Tris casually. “But are you the killer? This Ghost?”

Keth started to shout a denial, then remembered he was supposed to be invisible.

“No,” he whispered fiercely. “Do I look like a killer to you?”

“Just for curiosity’s sake, how long have you been student and teacher?” Dema asked.

The circle of arurimi broke free of the crowd and marched toward Elya Street, dodging pleasure-seekers on their way to Khapik.

Keth and Tris looked at one another and shrugged. “Two hours?” asked Keth.

“Something like that,” Tris replied.

Once inside the Elya Street arurimat, they were taken to a room where magic could be worked and kept from spreading to other parts of the building. There Dema positioned Keth inside a holding ring set into the floor and called on its protections so the northerner couldn’t escape. Once they were set and Tris was tucked into a chair in the corner, Nomasdina produced vials of powdered sage, coltsfoot and orris, and blew a pinch of each at Keth’s face. The powders hung, sparkling with the magic that made them more powerful. Nomasdina then used a carnelian to sketch the signs for truth and eloquence in the air between them, watching the silvery paths the symbols made as they floated in the air.

“Lie to me,” he told Keth. “Tell me something—”

He never finished his suggestion. Keth took a deep breath to speak, and the room flashed with white fire, blinding Nomasdina, the arurim who was there to take notes, Tris and Keth himself.

Vision only returned slowly. The first thing Keth saw, when he could see, was that the circle he’d been standing in was a charred mark on the floor. Its barrier was gone, as if lightning had struck the thing and burned it out of the wood. Nomasdina’s powders were a small, black clump on the floor. Nomasdina himself was covered in soot. His carnelian, which he still held, was black and cracked.

“Deüna of all mercy, what was that?” whispered the arurim clerk.

Tris removed her spectacles to rub her eyes. Keth thought that without the spectacles she actually looked her age, nojJike’some fierce old lady with unwrinkled^skm.

Nomasdina rounded on her.

“What did you do?” he growled. “I ought to put you in irons, and don’t think I can’t!”

“Excuse me, dhaskoi” said the clerk. She was there because she too could see magic.

“It didn’t come from her. It came from him, and he didn’t actually do anything. It just surged out of him, like - like lightning. Like he couldn’t help it.“

“Lightning is part of Keth’s magic,” Tris informed Dema. “He only found out about it recently. He hasn’t learned to control it yet. And if I may, a hint? Don’t threaten someone unless you’re certain you can carry out the threat.”

Nomasdina snorted and turned to Keth. “Well, if your power fights me, then there’s only one way to do this,” he said. He went to the door and pulled it open.

Keth’s knees buckled. He dropped to the floor. Nomasdina was going to call for torturers.

“Just one moment!‘

Everyone turned to stare at Tris, who had risen from her chair. The door yanked out of Nomasdina’s hand and slammed shut, as if a high wind had blasted through the windowless room.

“Keth, get up,” Tris ordered, her eyes blazing. Keth obeyed without realizing he was taking an order from her. Tris walked over to stand between him and the arurim dhaskoi. To Nomasdina she said, “Now, I’ve been nice and cooperative so far.” Her eyes blazed up at the Tharian. “We came peaceably; we didn’t make trouble. You had your disgusting show back there, exhibiting that poor girl to us without so much as covering her face. But I am at the end of my patieince. You are not torturing Keth.

You’re going to get a truthsayer, like a civilized human being.”

Nomasdina sighed. “The arurimat has no truthsayer funds. It’s not like we’re in First District here.”

“Then you wait until my teacher comes with Dhasku Dawnspeaker,” retorted Tris.

“She will tell you that my teacher is the finest truthsayer known, and he’ll do it for no charge. You should be ashamed, leaping to torture a man on no more evidence than a glass ball!”

Nomasdina looked puzzled as he stared at Tris. Keth knew how the other man felt.

“Are you so ignorant of your standing?” asked the arurim dhaskoi, genuinely curious.

“You’re a foreigner,

here on sufferance. In Tharios we take the law very seriously. Interference is not appreciated.“

“We take it seriously in Emelan, too,” snapped Tris. “I’m not saying you can’t question him, I’m just saying you can’t torture him. If you try, I promise you, I will bring this place down around your ears.”

Keth saw a spark crawl out of one of her braids, then another, and another. “Please listen to her,” he begged, suddenly as afraid of her as he was of torture. “You won’t like it if she loses her temper!”

“I still want to know why you’re in my way,” Nomasdina repeated stubbornly, his eyes fixed on Tris’s.

“He’s my student,” Tris said. “Maybe we haven’t been together very long, but I learned from the best teachers what a student is owed. I refuse to shame them by letting you do whatever you like to Keth, when anyone but a desperate idiot could have seen back there that Keth didn’t kill that woman.”

Though she stood only as high as the arurim dhaskoi’s collarbone, there was no question in Keth’s mind who dominated the conversation: Tris. Something in the way he felt about her changed, frightened though he was by the sparks in her hair. He wasn’t sure what had changed just yet, only that something was different.

Nomasdina frowned. “You know, I’m beginning to believe you are a mage,” he remarked slowly. He turned to Keth. “So tell me something. Did you kill her?”

“Gods, no,” Keth replied, trembling. “I hate the Ghost. I’d kill him myself, given the chance. Iralima was a friend of mine.”

“Iralima? The last victim?” Nomasdina asked.

Keth nodded, then winced. He’d just spoken the fact he’d thought he was too clever to reveal.

“You realize that makes you look even more suspicious,” the dhaskoi pointed out.

Keth nodded again. Suddenly a breeze whipped around him, and Tris raised a hand. A cocoon of silver mage fire enclosed Keth from top to toe. He touched it: the fire stung.

“I told you, Nomasdina, you’re not going to torture him,” Tris said flatly.

Nomasdina looked at Keth in his cocoon. Then he looked at Tris. “Do you know how long it would take me to raise protections like that? You’re starting to scare me.”

“Join the guild,” Keth muttered.

Nomasdina glanced at him and smiled crookedly. Then he pulled a stool over to the barrier that sheathed Keth and sat on it. “Right now I’m just asking questions,” he informed Tris wearily. He looked at Keth and asked, “How did you know Iralima?”

“She lived at my lodging house. You were there yesterday,” replied Keth. He sat cross-legged on the floor, inside the protections Tris had set around him.

“Did you know any of the other victims?” inquired Nomasdina.

“I knew Zudana by sight,” Keth replied. “I used to listen to her sing all the time. She had a beautiful voice.“

“She did,” Nomasdina agreed. “Before they put me on the murders, I used to sneak out on my shift to hear her. How long have you been in Tharios?”

He questioned Keth for an hour as the clerk took notes. Tris resumed her seat in the corner without lowering her protective barrier. Keth gave Nomasdina the details of his movements for the last two weeks, the tale of his arrival in Tharios and his employment at Touchstone Glass, and all that he’d heard said about the Ghost and his murders. At last Nomasdina went to the table, where he picked up the glass ball with the gruesome scene at its heart.

“I’m sticking my neck out,” he admitted, “but I believe you are innocent. That won’t be enough for my superiors. I’m new at this. While mages know we must listen to and rely on what our instincts tell us, the regular arurimi are quick to tell me I’m a newborn babe in this business of the law.”

The clerk ducked her head to hide a smile.

“We’ll wait for a truthsayer. If yours doesn’t come, I’ll pay for one out of my own pocket. Will that satisfy you?” Nomasdina asked Tris.

She smiled sweetly. “I’ll wait until I actually see a truthsayer, thanks all the same,”

she replied.

“It grieves me to find one so young who is this cynical,” Nomasdina said to no one in particular. “But let me ask you both something.” He hefted the globe in his hands. “If Kethlun here isn’t the Ghost and this globe isn’t a confession, then it is a way to see the future, maybe. The time the clerk said the lightning faded and he could see the image was close to the time the dead woman was left in the Forum, or the time we were meant to find her. What if you made another of these, and tried to clear it of lightning immediately?“

Keth scratched his head. “Why would I want to go through that again?” he asked, not unreasonably, he thought. “Perhaps you’re accustomed to death and murder, Dhaskoi Nomasdina. I’m not. I got into glassmaking because I love beautiful things.”