The Circle Opens #4: Shatterglass

by Tamora Pierce

  Dema sat up, his eyes barely open, the taste of last night’s greasy supper in his mouth. He’d gone to sleep at his worktable, on top of the pages of notes taken on the murders of the four yaskedasi. No wonder he dreamed of them. A glance at the window showed him rays of sunlight that leaked through cracks in the shutters. The room was hot and stuffy. “I’m off duty,” he mumbled.

  “Good,” the sergeant on duty told him with false good cheer. “Then you’re free to ride to Labrykas Square. The district captain has sent for you.” The sergeant upended a ladle of water on Dema’s head. As Dema sputtered, the woman added with real kindness, “She knows you’ve been on duty all night. Don’t try to fix yourself up, just go.”

  Dema went, though he couldn’t imagine what the Fifth District commander of the arurim, Tharios’s law enforcement agency and his employer, wanted with a very new mage like him. Dema had been an arurim dhaskoi, investigator mage, for only eight months. He’d done little to draw anyone’s attention. True, he was working on the murders of four Khapik yaskedasi, but he also knew that he’d been given the task of investigating the first murder and the three that followed it because no one cared if he caught the killer or not. One of the first words of arurim slang he’d learned was “okozou”, which meant “no real people involved.” It was a phrase used to describe crimes among yaskedasi, prathmuni, or the poor of the slum called Hodenekes. It meant no one really meant Dema to work at finding the killer. He’d expected to be summoned before his watch station captain to explain why he’d made no progress weeks ago, until he realized the captain simply did not care.

  A mounted arurim waited in front of the Elya Street station with a horse for Dema. Groggily he mounted up, thinking that it was a good thing he wore his tightly curled black hair cut very short. It was probably the only thing about him that was presentable. He scrubbed at his teeth with a finger, which he wiped on the edge of the saddle blanket. “You’re sure you want me?” he asked the messenger.

  The woman looked as if she’d spent all night on duty and should have been home herself. She glared at him. “You’re arurim dhaskoi Demakos Nomasdina, in charge of the investigation of four murdered yaskedasi, are you not? This is the Elya Street arurimat, and not my house, where I should be fixing breakfast for my children right now.”

  “Sorry,” Dema replied, feeling guilty, even though he hadn’t been the one to assign the arurim to find him.

  The sergeant emerged from the station with a flask in each hand, one for the arurim and one for Dema. It held smoking hot jailers’ tea, guaranteed to take the finish off wood and to wake the dead. “You’re a lifesaver,” the woman told the sergeant. “I may live to go home after all.”

  “They owe you the time you’ve spent after your shift getting our greenie, here,” replied the sergeant with a nod to Dema. “Make sure they give it to you.”

  “I will,” the arurim replied.

  “And try not to dent the dhaskoi,” added the sergeant. “He’s a good enough sort, for all he belongs to the First Class.”

  Dema wasn’t sure which would bother him more if he were awake, the slight to his class or the fact that even after eight months of service they still thought he couldn’t take care of himself. It was too much to think about now. He thanked the sergeant for the tea instead and followed his arurim guide down the street.

  Drinking hot tea at a trot was a thankless effort, but Dema made it anyway, catching the spilled drops on an end of the blue stole that marked him as a mage. As he drank and dodged people in the streets, he reflected on how badly he’d been cheated. He had chosen the arurim as his area of advancement because it seemed far less regulated than the army or navy, and infinitely less boring than the treasury or law courts. Few people would be able to order him about among the arurim, while every person with one more stripe, dot, or sword on his sleeve would make military life into something very much like work. Even when his arurim superiors gave him night duty, Dema was pleased. The Elya Street station was just four blocks from Khapik. If things were dull at work, a short walk led him to the best food, drink, and entertainment in Tharios, all neatly tucked inside the walls of the pleasure district.

  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 neighborhood roughneck. These were all offenders that regular arurim found easily by talking to the family, friends, and neighbors of the victim, then tracking down all 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 must feel who chewed off a limb to escape a trap. His service to the arurim was no longer fun. He wanted to destroy the one who ruined the harmony of Khapik, and he couldn’t even get his fellow arurim to care about it as much as he did. One 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 ton 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 saw 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 onto open ground, the Labrykas fountain. It stood in its full glory, each of its four lower basins six feet 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 who 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 makeup showed dead white against her swollen 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 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 offense 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 him by the Elya Street arurim and the arurim dhaski, 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 specter of disorder? It’s not just the fountain that 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 and disease that 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 to open 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 tentlike 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 view another murdered woman. There were men and women at Elya Street, arurim and dhaski, who could look at 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, semisheer 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 and 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 — 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 her body.

  2

  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 onto 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 center 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 practice 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 second 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 downst
airs.

  Jumshida’s cook welcomed her. Preparing supper for an unknown number of mages was always 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. They not only knew her; they treated her as one of them, someone they loved.