Shatterglass (32 page)

Keth shrugged. “Given materials and shop time, yes.”

“That’d be a nice thing for patrols and such,” said a sergeant. “Be nicer if they weren’t so showy. If it were empty, like, it could fetch your partner back to you, without everybody hearing the whistle.”

“Let’s discuss this later,” Dema told Keth. “Even if they throw me out on my ear, I know the arurim will commission a batch of these. The army, too, might like them.

Excuse me.” He looked around the group once more. “Yaskedasi, both sexes. A moment, if I may.” He gave the bubble and the streambank globe to Keth and went apart with the disguised yaskedasi.

Keth slid the bubble into his shirt pocket, then held up the globe. “Does anyone recognize this place?” he asked.

His arurimi companions shook their heads. “Problem is, there’s willows and shrines all along the streams,” explained a woman in uniform. She could well have been somebody’s sweet-faced old grandmother, but for her muscular arms and the baton, knife and thong restraints that hung from her broad leather belt. “Willows are the symbol of the yaskedasi. You know, they bend but they don’t break. When Khapik was rebuilt about five hundred years back, they dug the streams with all these nips and tucks so folk could have privacy for their entertainment.“

“And since it’s raining, it’s dark out anyways, so we can’t tell if this is day or night,”

added one of the young arurimi. “Though the light’s greenish, so maybe it’s late day?”

“Near sunset,” another woman said. “We’ve an hour, maybe two, to get in place.”

The false yaskedasi streamed out of the room, on their way to their posts. When Dema came back to Keth’s group, they told him what they’d worked out from the scene in the globe.

“There’s one more thing,” Dema told them. He pointed to the globe. “Look at her.

She’s alive. We’ve a chance to find her and set a trap around her before he even gets there.”

“All-Seeing, make it so,” murmured the grandmotherly arurim. The believers around her drew circles on their foreheads.

Keth stayed close to Dema as they entered Khapik, keeping a watchful eye on his surroundings. At first he saw very few human beings. The storm was at its height, its thunders bouncing through the streets. Lightning jumped overhead, lacing the sky.

Keth wondered if Tris was on Ferouze’s roof right now, and wished he were there with her, gripped by lightning. Then movement and a flash of yellow caught his eye: he looked and saw one of the arurim dressed as a yaskedasu, sheltering in a doorway.

She smiled wickedly and beckoned; Keth grinned and shook his head. As far as he was concerned they behaved like real yaskedasi.

Dema settled to wait at their command post, upstairs in the Winking Eye. Keth decided to go walking on his own. He was known here; he belonged. If the Ghost knew Khapik, the sight of Keth, who had lived there eight months, would raise no alarms in his mind.

Up and down the streams Keth rambled, hands in pockets. The rain thinned, and stopped. He heard the sound of a flute on the air, then a tambourine. Now business would pick up, though many customers would stay home rather than risk a second shower. Yaskedasi moved out into the open. Normally they were discouraged from using the neatly clipped stream banks for performances, but Khapik guards could be persuaded to look the other way for a coin or two, if the yaskedasi weren’t too noisy or didn’t get enough of an audience to trample the grass.

Here came the customers, pleasure-seekers from all over the known -world. Some visitors left after seeing one red tunic too many. Keth grimaced. The fewer genuine tourists there were on the streets, the more likely it was that Dema’s people would stand out.

A light rain began to fall. Now Keth really searched the stream banks. He found what he sought on Little Rushing Brook, which ran beside Olive Lane. The yaskedasu was far downstream in the shadow of the city wall. She huddled under a willow on the opposite side of the brook from Keth, peering out at the rain.

Keth dared not leave: the Ghost might be here already, in the shadows. Slowly Keth reached into his shirt pocket and drew out one of his bubbles. He closed his eyes briefly, willing it to seek out anyone in a red tunic, then sent it flying on its way. The arurimi would be here in a hurry, and the yaskedasu would be safe.

Keth sighed in relief, then froze as the yellow veil slipped off the girl’s head. In a flash it looped out of the dark to drop around her neck. The Ghost had used the shadows and rain to creep up behind her. She staggered back into the darkness behind the willow, flailing as she clawed at the strangler’s noose.

If Keth waited, she would die before the arurimi came. Yelling, he plunged into the stream and slogged up the far bank, toiling in slippery mud to get to her and capture her assailant. He stumbled over a root on the outskirts of the willow. As he struggled to stay on his feet, the girl flew at him out of the dark, yellow veil wrapped twice around her throat and knotted tight. Her face was plum-coloured, her fingers increasingly feeble as she dug at the silk. Keth wavered between helping her and chasing the Ghost, then unsheathed his belt knife. The veil was expensive silk, his knife not at all good. Finally he cut the knot and unwrapped the cloth from the yaskedasu’s swollen neck just as his glass bubble and the arurimi found them.

“Which way?” demanded their sergeant. Keth pointed wordlessly with his free hand, his other wrapped around the coughing girl to keep her from falling into the stream.

The arurimi pelted away, their feet striking great splashes from the wet grass.

Keth pulled the girl further under the willow’s shelter and waited with her. Her racking coughs slowed, then stopped. She clung to Keth as if he were her last hope in the world.

“He’s gone,” Keth told her over and over. “He won’t come back. Let me fetch you some water from the stream…”

She shook her head furiously. Her fingers dug deeper into his arm.

“Or not,” said Keth. “Let’s go and sit, at least.” He swung her up in his arms — she was just a scrap of a thing — and carried her over to the shrine. The topmost step was dry, protected by the domed roof from the rain that pelted down with a roar. Keth reached out with cupped hands and ferried mouthful after mouthful of rain to the girl.

She drank greedily, wincing as the liquid passed through her bruised throat.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle again when the arurimi returned. Dema and a number of other arurimi came with them, summoned from the command post. Judging by the mud that splattered all of them royally, Keth guessed they had searched all through the downpour at its worst.

Dema stood in the rain, hands on hips, water pouring from his sopping mage-blue stole and arurim red tunic. “What were you thinking?” he asked amiably enough.

“What, if anything, was passing through your mind?”

Keth glared up at him as the yaskedasu shrank into the shelter of his arm. “He was killing her. I didn’t know when your people would arrive.”

“You let him go,” Dema said, bright-eyed. “He was right there, almost within our grasp, and you let him escape.”

“She would have been dead if I hadn’t cut the scarf from her throat,” Keth insisted. To the girl he said gently, “Show them, please.”

She raised her chin to show them the plum-and-blue mass around her neck.

Dema refused to meet her eyes. “The fact remains, he was right here, and you scared him off.”

“What did he do?” Keth asked knowingly. “Run through another of those ridiculous cleansing temples you have?”

“A mage’s storeroom,” grumbled one of the arurimi, smearing mud as he dragged his forearm over his face. “There’s no telling where he went from there.”

“He’s probably got escape routes all over the city,” Keth said.

“I know that.” Dema’s voice was thick with awful patience. “That’s why we needed to catch him in the act.”

“She would have died,” Keth insisted stubbornly. “Where’s the honour in catching him if you let him kill someone else?” He held Dema’s eyes with his own, trying to get the other man to see his point.

The yaskedasu at his side muttered something, and coughed.

“What?” asked Keth.

The yaskedasu looked at him, then glared at the arurimi. “Okozou” she said in a voice like a dry file drawn over broken glass.

“Your murder isn’t an okozou matter to me,” Keth said fiercely. “And it shouldn’t be okozou to you,” he added, with a glare of his own for Dema.

Dema sighed. “All right,” he told the arurimi. “You know the drill. Search the area once more, then resume your patrol pattern. Move out.” To Keth and the yaskedasu he said, “Come on. We’ll get you dried off and looked after. And then we’ll try and find out what you saw.”

“Din’t see nothin‘,” the girl rasped.

“I know,” replied Dema with heavy patience. “But we’ll try to dredge something from you anyway.”

Keth got up and helped the girl to her feet. They followed Dema as the rain slowed, then stopped.

Glaki was restless that night. Tris finally settled her late, by telling stories of her time at Winding Circle. Outside she felt the rain slack off, build, pour, then stop. There would be no more rain for two days; this storm had moved on. With Glaki asleep at last, she wished the storm well and gave Little Bear a much-needed combing. Chime was a useful dog’s maid, her thin claws easily working their way through the matted coat.

When the clocks chimed midnight and Glaki did not so much as twitch, Tris collected Chime. Little Bear, worn out by the process of beauti-fication, snored on the bed next to the sleeping child. Once Tris set the usual terms with Ferouze and watched the old woman climb up the stairs to Glaki’s room, she settled Chime in the sling at her back and ‘walked out into Chamberpot Alley.

The air was cool and fresh, the winds that explored Khapik lively and curious. Tris slipped off her spectacles and tucked them in her sash, dropping into the trance she would need to scry the winds. As colour, movement and shapes soared by, she set off into Khapik. She kept to the back alleys, not wanting the sight of arurimi in disguise to distract her.

The winds were interesting that night. They came from the northeast instead of the usual south-east. She caught a glimpse of towering, snow-capped mountains, red stone fortresses and a small, crazed jungle that was once a garden in a dry land. She gasped with wonder at that last. Not only was it infused with magic from root to leaf, but the magic was familiar: Briar’s. She would have loved to know how a garden that was such a mess had anything to do with him, but the wind had carried the image away while she groped for more of it. She leaned against a building with a sigh, waited to regain the calm she needed to do this, and set forth once again.

It was easier to see wind-borne colours and images that night. Darkness and torchlight leeched the colour from her surroundings. Feeling more confident in her ability to navigate, Tris wandered down Woeful Lane, through the mazes of back-of-the-house paths and service alleys to Painted Place, then out along Drunkard’s Grief Street. She saw very few people, which was how she wanted it. These were the paths taken by servants, prathmuni, and those whose business in Khapik was suspect. As she made her way the air showed her things: silk gliding along a woman mage’s arm, the flare of magic at hennaed fingertips, and a metal bird coming to life. She wanted to see that bird.

Not tonight, she told herself. You’re looking for other things tonight. Standing at the intersection of three streets, she turned, eyes wide, searching for any hint of the Ghost.

There: the air blowing down Kettle Court showed her a dirty hand fumbling at a ragged tunic. It yanked out a yellow head veil, a yaskedasi veil.

The Ghost. It was him, and he was running into the breeze that took his image to Tris.

She ran, her eyes fixed on that current, following it along Kettle Court. Her feet pounded along the cobblestones. Rounding a corner she stepped in rubbish and slipped, the movement jarring the image from her eyes. A thick hand gripped her arm.

A yellow scarf-wrapped around her neck.

Dema paced as the arurim healer examined the rescued yaskedasu. If the healer pronounced the girl fit to-bear it, Dema would try a spell to enhance her memory of the attack, to see if she could describe the man who had so nearly killed her. In the meantime, he alternated between chewing his nails and berating Keth. For his own part, Keth understood Dema’s frustration, but he was preoccupied. The globe, which had earlier cleared to show the yaskedasu under her willow, had clouded again. Keth sat with it gripped in his hands, Dema’s words falling on inattentive ears. Sparks of lightning flowed from Keth’s fingertips, lancing through the mist inside. There was a new image in the globe. He could see the outlines of it, dark buildings, a back street, wooden fences.

A girl raced down a street, sling around her torso, twin braids flapping against her cheeks. She wore no spectacles, but Keth had no trouble recognizing Tris. If these globes were connected to the Ghost, then Tris was in danger.

“Where is this?” he demanded, trying to recognize her surroundings. “Dema—”

“I tell you we don’t have time to deal with whoever’s in charge!” a clear, crisp voice shouted. The speaker was downstairs in the Winking Eye, where Dema had his command post. “A woman’s in danger now, you bone-headed behemoth!”

Dema looked at Keth. “Niko?” they chorused. Both ran for the stairs.

Below stood the arurimi Brosdes and Majnuna. Each of them held one of Niko’s arms, impervious to the mage’s fury. “He says he knows where our boy is and who’s the next victim,” explained Brosdes. “Wants us to turn out the whole force to track ‘em.”

“Let him go,” ordered Dema. “What is it, Dhaskoi Niko?”

“Dhaskoi?” muttered the taller of the arurimi. “He never said nothin‘ about bein’

dhaskoi.”

Keth thrust the globe at Niko. “Is this it?” he demanded. “Is this why you’re here?”

“Where did that come from?” Dema wanted to know. “Where - Tris?”

“I made it clear again,” Keth explained.

“This is why I’m here,” snapped Niko. “I was scrying for the future, and this time the images came together.” Hands trembling, he laid them over the globe, his fingers touching Keth’s. Both of them concentrated, Keth letting what power he had left pass into the glass. The image of Tris shrank as the vision grew wider and wider. “Where is that?” demanded Niko. “Where is she?”