Shatterglass (22 page)

I want permission to scry the past on the sites where the victims have been found. It’s possible your priests missed something as they cleansed.”

At that Dema bristled: surely the priests knew their craft! Still, he told himself, it couldn’t hurt to have a reputable mage at his side.

Most importantly, he was desperate. He’d seen the look on Keth’s face, when the glassblower recognized the dead woman. He remembered the accusations the people had thrown at him at the Forum and elsewhere, that he didn’t care about their lives.

Recently, to enter the arurimat, he’d had to pass through a crowd that grew larger with each murder. They watched him in silence, their eyes accusing: how many more would he allow to die.

“Do you have a horse?” he asked Goldeye.

One of the Nomasdina clan servants awaited Dema at the First Class entrance at Serenity House. The woman greeted him with a bow, took charge of his horse and Niko’s, and handed Dema a heavy, jingling purse.

“Your mother says that coin always gets a quicker response than chits to be redeemed,” explained the servant. “She also instructs me to tell you to take care. She hears what is being said of you, and worries that you risk forgetting your obligations to the clan in your eagerness to meet your obligations to the arurim.” She bowed again and led the horses away.

Dema had visited Serenity House several times with his family and knew how things worked here. As servitor passed him on to servitor, he distributed the bribes that would ensure he was being sent in the right direction, a silver bik each. When he and Niko reached the greeting room set aside for the First Class, Dema gave five silver biks to have his name presented to the Keepers. Then he and Niko were granted a private room in which to wait. Servants came with food and drink; others came with dry tunics for them both.

After a short time a clerk arrived to write down the reason they had come; Dema bribed him appropriately. Several hours later, when their clothes, dried and pressed free of wrinkles, were returned to them, another clerk came to clarify what the previous clerk had written down. She too received the proper bribe.

As the long hours dragged by, Dema and Niko talked of all manner of things: their educations as mages, Niko’s travels and how he’d come to teach Tris, Dema’s family history. They even napped for a time. It was nearly midnight when Niko asked, “I know the customs of Tharios and the blood doctrine. I confess, I’m curious — why do you keep sticking your neck out to trace the killer’s steps? You risk a great deal for a procedure that may not lead you to him.”

Dema looked at him, startled. “You don’t think I could catch him if I could dog his trail?”

Niko smoothed his moustache. “If there had only been one murder, I would say, almost certainly. But with each killing he has shown he is clever - and in our world, clever criminals always have ways to foil magical tracking. In any event, you have put your standing in Tharios in great danger. Why? He’s killed no one close to you. Is it the defilement of public places?”

Dema raised his eyebrows, shocked. “Defilement? That’s for priests to worry about.

The busier you keep priests, the less chance they have to pry into our private lives.

But the Ghost…” He thought for a moment, then sighed. “The All-Seeing, in his wisdom, arranged my birth to an honourable family in the First Class. I have privileges, but I also have a duty to the lower classes, to protect and guide them. Not everyone takes that duty seriously, but we Nomasdinas do. Even if it’s to yaskedasi and the rest of the Fifth Class. They trust us to watch out for them. That’s what I mean to do.”

“And if the Keepers don’t listen?” Niko asked gently.

Dema wanted to tell the older man that this was ridiculous, but he couldn’t. Refusal was always a possibility. “I’ll have to think of something,” he said, feeling defensive.

“Perhaps you ought to start thinking now,” suggested Niko. “Just in case.”

Tris watched as Keth roused everyone and gathered them in Ferouze’s sitting room to break the news of Yali’s murder. The result was chaos. Xantha collapsed in hysterics.

Ferouze punched the wall before she started to cry; Poppy sat and rocked as tears streamed down her face; the male lodgers hammered Keth with questions. Glaki clutched her doll and screamed for her dead mother and her Aunt Yali.

“Get her out of here!” shrieked Ferouze. Poppy lurched to her feet and scooped up the child, taking her outside.

Tris went to the wailing Xantha, considering slapping her out of her hysterics. A seed of pity stopped her. Instead she took the scent bottle she carried for such occasions from the purse on her sash. She removed the top and waved it under Xantha’s nose.

Immediately the blonde inhaled and coughed. The men standing near her flinched from the smell.

“What is that stuff?” demanded the flute-player,

a pretty young fellow with bronze skin and grey-green eyes. “It’s hideous!”

“The friend who made it calls it ‘Infallible’,” replied Tris, corking the vial. She chose not to mention that her foster-mother Rosethorn had no respect for hysterics. The herbs in her version of smelling salts were chosen with that attitude. “We need some water.”

As Xantha drank the water, Tris looked around. The drummer held Ferouze, his muscled arms tight as he kept her from lashing out again. Tris remembered hearing something shatter as she brought Xantha around: the pieces of a basin lay on the floor at Ferouze’s feet. Glaki could step in that mess, she thought, and fetched the broom to sweep up the shards. Finished, she looked for Glaki. The child and Poppy were still missing.

One of the male yaskedasi was also gone. He soon returned, having spread the news throughout the neighbourhood. Others came with him, men and women, old and young, to weep and to curse the killer and the city that didn’t care if yaskedasi died. It wasn’t long before Tris’s head ached fiercely. Little Bear and Chime had escaped the room when the first guest arrived.

When Tris gave a final look through the crowded chambers, she saw Poppy had returned. The brunette sat with Ferouze as they shared the contents of a jug with their neighbours. Poppy wept still, without making any sound.

Tris asked one of the men for directions to Yali’s room, where she assumed that Poppy had left Glaki.- She guessed that the little girl would cry herself to sleep, but Tris didn’t like the idea that Glaki would wake alone.

Tris walked out to the courtyard, glad to be in cooler, less stuffy, air. She let rain fall on her head for a moment, enjoying its comforting feel on her braids. It was over the rain’s soft patter that she heard hiccups. Glaki was huddled on the stair to the upper galleries, weeping into Little Bear’s fur. Chime sat on her shoulder, crooning as she groomed the child’s tangled hair with her claws.

For a moment Tris could only stare, appalled. Did Poppy just bring the child out here and leave her to cry alone?

How often had Tris herself done this, crept into a corner to weep, knowing the only ones who cared about her were the animals of the house? She had not lost a mother or an aunt as Glaki had, but time after time she had been passed on to yet another relative. It was overhearing the talk that decided that she and her many strangenesses would be sent to some other.family member that had always sent Tris to cry in secret.

When Cousin Uraelle, who had kept her the longest, died, Tris had wept not for the mean, stingy old woman, but for the loss of the most permanent home she could remember.

She touched the girl on the shoulder. Glaki flinched against Little Bear, throwing up an arm to protect her face. Gently Tris pressed her arm down. A handprint showed clearly on the girl’s cheek. Poppy had slapped Glaki to silence her.

“It’s just me, Glaki. You saw me yesterday, remember?” Tris kept her voice gentle as she sat on the flagstones of the ground floor gallery. She leaned back against a wooden pillar.

“Mama,” the child mumbled at last. “Aunt Yali. When do they come home?”

Tris drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She knew she wasn’t good with children, though her heart went out to this one. What could she say?

What did people say?

She could only know what she would say. She hated people who tried to evade the truth. “They died, Glaki. Mama and Aunt Yali died. They won’t be coming home.”

Fresh tears welled in the girl’s eyes. They spilled over her stained cheeks. “No,” Glaki replied, shaking her head. “No.”

“I’m sorry,” Tris said gently. “Yes.”

Glaki began to sob again, then to wail. Tris bit her lip, trying to decide what was right.

In the end it was her knowledge of Sandry, her good-hearted sister, that guided her.

Tris sat beside Little Bear and pulled Glaki on to her lap. The little girl fought, straining to get back to the dog. “Doggie!” she screamed, her face turning beet red.

“It’s Little Bear. That’s his name,” Tris explained, panting as she hauled on the struggling child. “He’s not going anywhere. If you sit with me, he’ll be here, and so will Chime. We must talk, Glaki. You have to learn some hard new lessons. I wish I had someone nice to teach them to you, but you’re stuck with just me.” She finally got the little girl on to her lap. Glaki howled, battered Tris’s chest with her fists, and drummed her heels on the ground. Tris held on grimly, still talking softly. “It isn’t right, what’s happened to your mother and Yali. I hope you grow to be someone incredible, to repay you for all this misery. Why is it, do you suppose, the gods are said to be favouring you when they dump awful things into your lap? Is it because the other explanation, that sorrow comes from accidents and there are no gods doing it to help you be a strong person, is just too horrible to think of? Let’s stick with the gods.

Let’s stick with someone being in charge.”

As she continued to speak, rattling along about any topic that came to mind, whether Glaki could understand or not, she held the girl close. Tris was so used to the child’s struggles that she didn’t notice at first when Glaki’s screams began to grow softer, her small body relaxing into Tris’s hold. It was only when Glaki was quietly sucking her thumb, whimpering against Tris’s chest, that the older girl realized she could loosen her grip. Her hands and arms stung from being locked in the same position for so long. She smoothed damp, tumbled curls away from the child’s face. “That’s very good.” She hesitated, then awkwardly kissed Glaki on the forehead. “We can’t let you make yourself sick on top of everything else.”

It was some time before Glaki would let Tris get up without hysterics. Each time the child’s voice rose, Tris would settle back into place. Finally Glaki herself climbed offTris’s lap. ‘“Pot,” she whispered, not meeting Tris’s eyes.

“Chamberpot?” Tris asked. Glaki nodded. With a groan Tris struggled to her numb feet. “You don’t have a real privy here?” Glaki shook her head. “Wonderful,” Tris said, easing the kinks in her spine. She held out a hand. “Show me where,” she said.

Glaki took her hand and led her up the stairs. Little Bear, with Chime on his back, followed them.

“Let’s go to where you sleep,” Tris suggested.

From the neatness of the room and the absence of dust, Tris guessed that this was Yali’s room, not Iralima’s. As Glaki used the chamberpot, Tris opened the shutters to let some air in. She leaned outside for a moment, calling her favourite breeze to her. It had come all the way from Winding Circle and was Tris’s most faithful attendant in the hot south. When she held out her hand, the breeze wound around it. “Find Niko,”

she instructed it. “Tell him I’m all right, and that I don’t know when I’ll be home.” It sped off on its way.

It had been frustrating to send her winds out before in search of a woman being killed, but what else could she do to help right now? Keth was torn up in spirit, too much so to attempt to make another globe. No one had mentioned it, but it was plain to Tris that they couldn’t rely on the killer waiting a day in between strikes, not when he’d taken Yali just a day after the previous victim.

She had to do something. Her breezes were all she had.

Tris looked around. Glaki and Little Bear had curled up together on the bed, the child watching the dog as he slept. Chime sat on the window sill beside Tris, cocking her head, her eyes curious.

“Will you stay there a little while and be quiet?” Tris asked Glaki. “There’s something I need to do. It’s going to be windy in here, but don’t worry. It’s just me.

I’m a mage. There are things I do with winds and breezes.” She wasn’t sure that the child understood, but she thought it did no harm to talk to her as if she could. Tris had never understood the need for adults to address children in baby-talk.

She walked over to the door and flung it wide, summoning her breezes from the courtyard. She also called any of the Khapik air currents that would respond, drawing them to her through door and window. In they sped, making blankets, curtains, skirts, hair and fur dance, spinning around Glaki, Little Bear and Chime in curious exploration before they circled Tris.

She let her power spill out around her, doing her best to magically convey the sounds she wanted to hear, frustrated because it would be so much easier if she could just see what they passed over. Only when she was sure that she could explain no more did she let them go. “All of Khapik, mind,” she told them. “Every street, every alley, every courtyard.”

The breezes sped away to do as she asked. With a sigh, Tris lit the cheap tallow lamp, then sat on the bed, resting her back against the wall. Glaki inched over and tucked herself under Tris’s left arm. Little Bear belly-crawled until he “was sandwiched between Glaki and the wall, then resumed his slumbers.

“You know, I lost my mother when I was small, and some of my aunts,” Tris confided. She chose not to mention that her mother and aunts had not been lost to her through death. “It was scary, going from house to house. Everyone has different ways of doing things, and they yell at you if you don’t do them properly, have you noticed that?”

Glaki nodded, her thumb firmly in her mouth.

“But animals are always friendly, if you don’t hurt them,” Tris said. “And you can tell yourself stories just like your mother and your aunts tell you stories. You could tell yourself stories about the family you will have one day. I have a wonderful family now. And you know, Glaki, that your mother and your aunt still love you, wherever they are.”