Shatterglass (4 page)

The nettle in the garden of his service, the first dead yaskedasu, sprouted five months after he’d finished his training and settled in at Elya Street. He hadn’t realized that the easy service of an arurim dhaskoi was due to the fact that, more than nine times out of ten, the victim knew the criminal. It was a family member, or a friend, or a neighbourhood roughneck. These were all offenders that regular arurim found easily by talking to the family, friends and neighbours of the victim, then tracking down everyone who looked suspicious, questioning them until they confessed. The arurim dhaskoi were called in only when the criminal was a mage, or when no one with a motive or chance to get at the victim could be traced. When the investigation of yaskedasu Nioki’s murder produced no possible killers, the case had come to Dema.

Now, three dead women later, Dema felt like those animals who chewed off a limb to escape a trap must feel. His service to the arurim was no longer fun. He wanted to destroy the one who destroyed the beauty and harmony of Khapik, and he couldn’t even get his fellow arurim to care about it as much as he did. One cheap yaskedasu or three yaskedasi, the others told him, okozou still meant no one was supposed to work up a sweat over this.

So Dema did his best, and knew it wasn’t good enough. He was too ignorant. Most of his spells for uncovering events could be used only when he had a suspect or when the crime had taken place elsewhere or had not led to death. Trying to find the killer was like sifting through a tonne of barley in search of a pin. No one knew anything. No one saw anything. The priests who had ritually and magically cleansed the murder sites noticed nothing irregular, and Dema found no traces of magic. He was at his wits’ end, even dreaming about the case. What was he doing wrong?

“I see word’s got out,” grumbled his arurim guide. Dema’s head jerked up. He’d done it again, forgotten what he was supposed to be doing as he worried over the case.

He’d been so preoccupied that he hadn’t even noticed they had reached the square.

Despite the very early hour — the sun was just up — the outer edges of the square were packed with human beings. Unlike most Tharian crowds, this one was a hushed, silent, nervous gathering. The arurim had to poke and nudge people aside to clear the ‘way for herself and Dema.

At last they emerged on to open ground, the Labrykas fountain. It stood in its full glory, each of its four lower basins two metres wide, fed from the mouths of three rearing horses. A long stone pillar topped by the double-headed axe called a labrys spouted water to bedew the heads of the beautifully carved white marble horses. It was the first official Tharian monument seen by new arrivals who came through the Piraki Gate, and Dema never got tired of looking at it. Many mornings he would sit on the rim of a lower basin to listen to the water and relax after his night’s service, calming down until he could ride home, serene.

When Dema saw the blot that fouled the south basin, he gasped. Inside a ring of priests and arurim that stood around the fountain, a dead woman sprawled, her legs hanging out of the basin, her upper body in the water, her arms flung wide. Her make-up showed dead white against her swollen, bloated face. Her long black curls floated in the water, creating a chilly semblance of life. Her kyten, the longer, feminine version of the Tharian tunic, was streaked with filth. The long ends of her yellow veil had been carefully straightened to grip the basin’s edge, like a yellow arrow that ended at her neck.

A short, stocky man in arurim red, wearing the silver-bordered white stole of the district commander, stalked up to Dema’s horse. “Why haven’t you caught this monster, Dhaskoi Nomasdina?” he growled. “Why didn’t you stop him before he committed this, this, atrocity!” He glared at the ring of priests and arurim. “A week, the priests of the All-Seeing tell us, a week before the fountain can be fully cleansed!”

Already the priests were placing in the anchor-posts and white cloths that would shroud the entire fountain while they performed a major spiritual and magical cleansing. “A week before the people can begin to forget this offence against the order of the city!”

Dema tumbled from his horse’s back and stood at attention as the commander raved.

Finally, when the man fell silent, Dema said, “I’ve been doing my best, sir. This is a canny murderer, not the usual sort of criminal at all. He has found a way to hide his tracks from magical scrutiny, there are no witnesses when he kills them, and he transports them where he likes. I’ve only eight months in the arurim, and I did request extra people to patrol Khapik. He kills them there.”

“You will do the proper work -with those you have,” snarled the commander. “With this abomination in a public place, the people will be more eager to come forward, to name this murderer and cleanse Tharios of him.”

Dema’s heart plummeted into his belly. According to the advice given to him by the Elya Street arurim and the arurim dhaskoi, he had been doing all the proper things.

“May I get a ban on the cleansing of this site, then?“ he asked, his voice breaking.

”Until I have a chance to go over it with spells of investigation?“

The commander leaned in close, his eyes fixed on Dema’s. “Ban the cleansing?” he whispered in a voice more frightening than a yell. “Take one more moment than we must to erase this spectre of disorder? It’s not just the fountain which must be cleansed, you young idiot. It’s the pipes and the source of the water itself. Apply yourself to proper investigation, and let us purify the square!”

Dema bowed his head. “I spoke rashly, without thought,” he whispered. With the taint of death hanging over the square, the least he could expect was sin and riots in the Fifth District. The immediate cleansing of the city had stopped the violence that had followed the fall of the Kurchal Empire. Ridding Tharios of all taint of death in those days had purified her, had kept the city safe and standing while the rest of the world ran mad. Its purity had guarded the city from barbarian attacks and made her leaders strong enough to do all that was necessary to restore order. Asking the priests to delay their cleansing was opening the door to madness. He hadn’t stopped to think of that when he’d made his request.

The problem was, in crimes of this sort, cleansing nearly crippled investigators. It was both physical and magical, erasing all trace not just of the death, but of the killer and how the killer had come and gone from the death site.

“You had best start thinking, Demakos Nomasdina,“ the commander whispered, gripping Dema’s arm in a hold that would leave bruises under Dema’s brown skin. ”Remember the pride of your clan. Now go look at that mess, then let the priests do their job.“

Dema swallowed. He walked between two priests who were setting up the tent-like veil that would hide the long process of cleansing from the people’s eyes, so they would not carry the taint of death away from the square. He approached the south basin of the fountain, steeling himself to look on another murdered woman. There were men and women at Elya Street, arurim and dhaski, who could look on someone who’d been robbed of life and eat a hearty meal after. Dema didn’t know how they could do it. Even after eight months he still felt as if someone had offended him personally, had killed a member of Dema’s own family — which was true enough.

The other classes of Tharios were the responsibility of the First Class, Dema’s class.

Someone had taken the life of a young woman in his charge.

That she was young he guessed from her hands, unlined, with well-tended nails, and the fresh, tight skin of her belly, feet, and legs. She wore the halter top, semi-sheer skirt and tight, calf-length leggings of a tumbler or dancer; her brown arms and legs were muscular. Dema glanced away from her eyes, so startled at the fate that had come upon her.

As he leaned over the edge of the basin, he noticed two priests closing in. “I’m not going to touch her,” he snapped. “Stand away, leave me be.”

They took a step back and waited, hands clasped at their waists, their eyes level as they watched Dema. The morning breeze tugged at their white head-veils and the ends of their complexly draped red stoles.

Dema glanced at the knot in the yellow veil -right under the left ear, just like the knot on the other four victims. Bending, he squinted at the ends of the veil, laid so neatly on the basin’s rim.

A gloved hand thrust its way into his vision, holding an ivory rod. “Use this,” the priest of the All-Seeing told Dema, a kind note in his voice. “We will send you such tools, blessed for this work, dhaskoi!‘

“Do other arurim dhaski have them?” Dema wanted to know, meeting the priest’s dark brown eyes.

“None of them want to get so close as you,” replied the priest. “We have seen this in you before. Do not let curiosity take you too far. Yours is a noble house, free of the stain of corruption. We will protect you, as best we may.”

Dema hesitated, then accepted the rod with a nod of thanks. He used it to straighten the curled ends of the veil. By law yaskedasi had to carry their home address stitched along the hem of their veils, one of the ways the city kept watch on their disreputable ranks. While most were fairly honest, everyone knew that their ethics in matters of theft were flexible.

Here was the dead woman’s address: Ferouze’s Lodgings, Chamberpot Lane, Khapik.

Dema would start his questioning there. He straightened and returned the rod to the priest, fixing the woman in his mind. Then he turned to be cleansed before he went to find her name. The arurim prathmuni moved in to take charge of the body.

Tris put the rest of her time in the lower part of Tharios to good use, visiting other glassmakers. Most of the people with shops on the Street of Glass understood that they were there to entertain as well as to create, and that someone who saw a piece being made often bought it. They were happy to welcome Tris into their workshops and to answer her questions, though the sum of what she learned was not comforting.

None of them knew of any glass mage at Touchstone, only that the owner, Antonou Tinas, had a distant kinsman from the far north working there. His name was Kethlun Warder, they told Tris, and they described the man that Tris had met. They also had never heard of anything like the glass dragon, though all of them were fascinated by the creature and insisted on giving it a thorough examination. From the way the glass dragon preened, it enjoyed the attention.

Tris would have talked to the city’s glass mages as well, but found only their students in the workshops near Achaya Square. The mages themselves were at the same conference as Niko, since glass magic was often used in order to see things or to make a problem clearer. Talking to the students did teach her one thing: while glass mages were as common as dirt in Tharios, a glassmaking capital, for the most part they were academic mages, people who worked with charms, spells and signs worked on to the material. Tris knew, since she had seen the dragon shape itself, that in all likelihood this Kethlun was an ambient mage, one whose magic came from something in the world around him. Tris had always thought the balance between academic mages and ambient ones was equal, until Niko explained that it only looked that way to her, because she had been schooled at the single greatest centre for ambient mages in their part of the world.

For every ambient mage there were four academic ones, not counting those with ambient magic who could also practise academic magic. Moreover, some types of ambient magic were more common than others: the magics for stones, carpentry, healing, cooking, thread and needlework, pottery, fire and the movement of weather in the air. Ambient glass magic, one of the mages’ journeymen told her, was “middling rare”, though Tris had no idea what that meant.

With such a scant amount of information, Tris returned to Heskalifos and Jumshida’s house. If memory served her, Jumshida’s private library held a number of books on magic. Tris might learn more there.

Inside the house, she banished Little Bear to the inner courtyard and carried the glass dragon to her room. Jumshida had granted Tris and Niko the whole of the first floor on the east wing of the house rooms for each of them, as well as a workshop they could use during their stay. Tris put the dragon in her room, freshened up, then went downstairs.

Jumshida’s cook welcomed her. Preparing supper for an unknown number of mages was always a tricky business. Even with the help of a maid hired for the length of the conference, there was still plenty for Tris to do. She chopped, grated, washed and peeled, soaking in kitchen scents and listening to the servants talk about their lives and the schedule for the week. Muscle by muscle, Tris relaxed. Kitchen life comforted her. It was a place where she knew the rules and knew how to act. Since the staff only knew her as Niko’s student, they didn’t watch themselves around her as they would around a fully accredited mage. Tris could be ignored as long as she made herself useful, and she could hear about the university and the people who lived on its grounds.

The bell that marked the closing of the city’s gates had just rung when the front door of the house burst open, admitting a flood of chattering men and women. The maid picked up the “waiting tray with its pitcher of wine and many cups; the housekeeper gathered the tray of fruit juice and cups. “Tell my husband I will greet him in the next world,” the maid said drily as she walked out.

Tris snorted with amusement as the women braved the guests. “Is it that bad?” she asked the cook.

“Girl, there is nothing worse than a crowd of hungry mages who don’t have to pay for the food,” the cook informed her. “I’d as soon be hunted by wolves. Aren’t you going out there?”

Tris shook her head. “I don’t like parties,” she confessed. “I never fit in.” If older mages knew her as Niko’s student, they treated her like an idiot, not fit to converse with adults. If they’d heard of her, they treated her with distrust and suspicion. Her own talents, so broadly distributed over forces in the air, ground and water, intimidated those who actually believed she had them. Many chose instead to think Tris lied about the extent of her power to make herself look more important. Tris preferred to stay with her own circle: her foster- • sisters and -brother, their teachers, a handful of mages and students from Winding Circle, and Duke Vedris of Emelan.