The Circle Opens #4: Shatterglass

by Tamora Pierce

  She took down two of her wind braids and freed half of what they held, spinning around to show them how she needed them to flow. They had been with her a long time: they settled into the spin as neatly as her sister Sandry’s favorite spindle. With her palms Tris thrust her winds low and flat, until they shaped a whirling disk of air. When she judged it to be solid, she halted the disk and stepped onto it.

  Now came the Tharian winds, pouring through the windows and down the inside of the tower like honey. When they touched the floor, they slid under her disk. Tris gripped the first of them and twirled her finger. Like her own winds, these understood what she wanted. They began to spin, rapidly, under the disk of air where Tris stood.

  Slowly, little by little, the column of twirling wind grew in height. Other breezes joined in, giving it strength, bulk, and speed. Steady on her disk of flattened air, Tris let the moving winds thrust her up through the hollow core of Phakomathen, passing the stairway by as she rode her tightly controlled cyclone. Higher and higher she went, until she reached the door to the outside platform, twelve hundred steps high. She tugged on her cyclone. It swayed, letting her step from her disk onto the landing.

  With a snap of her fingers her air disk came apart. Tris caught the ends of those winds and twined them back into her braids. The Tharian winds she set free, thanking them silently as they poured back into the city through the tower windows.

  “Now, how was that?” she asked Chime.

  The dragon, who had experienced the whole thing from her place on Tris’s back, climbed onto her shoulder. She rubbed herself, catlike, under the girl’s chin, making the musical glass sound that Tris was convinced was a purr.

  “I liked it, too,” admitted Tris. “Much more sensible than all those steps.” She suddenly remembered that people might wonder why the tower were locked. Putting two fingers in her mouth in a way Briar had taught her, she blew a piercing whistle. Chime made her glass-scratch complaining noise as the breeze that had secured the doors below returned to Tris. The girl listened to it for a moment, but the only sounds it carried were those of the tower and of the winds she had summoned, not of people trying the doors in frustration.

  “I don’t mind walking down,” she told Chime. “It’s the up part that’s a pain.”

  The dragon took flight, swooping and circling through the open air inside the tower. Tris watched briefly, thinking again how beautiful the creature was, then walked outside.

  She had not come for a view of the city, though she did admire it. She had not even come for the winds, which pushed her, teasing her for making them work. “Oh, you do it every time you power a windmill,” Tris scolded affectionately. “Don’t complain.”

  She looked over the balcony rail. Outside the walls, which had been added to and rebuilt for nearly two thousand years, lay the broad brown ribbon of the Kurchal River, once called “the lifeblood of empire.” On it flowed, down through the distant harbor town of Piraki and into Kurchal Bay. Beyond that lay the gray-green sparkle of the Ithocot Sea, more green than gray under the yellowish heat haze that lay over Tharios and everything beyond.

  Behind the city in the north lay the grasslands of Ubea, with the farms and villages that kept Tharios alive. To the west lay forests, then mountains; to the east, the rocky stretches that supported goats, olive trees, and little else until they touched the sea. Somewhere in all this, Tris reasoned, a storm was brewing. She just needed to find it, and see if it could be moved. Keth had to overcome his fear, and not just of the little bolts she had conjured in front of him. He would never master his power until he mastered that. She would need big proof, final proof, that his magic now shielded him from the dangers of normal, non-magical, lightning.

  There was a storm out there, one that would teach him a lesson he desperately needed to learn. Ignoring the snippets of conversation the city’s winds brought to her — bits of gossip, legal proceedings, speeches in the Assembly and the temples of the All-Seeing — Tris made herself comfortable on the platform and spread her spirit on the winds.

  She was forced to go farther afield than she’d expected. It made her cross as well as exhausted as she plodded down those many steps, past the first sightseers of the day. It shouldn’t have happened, she thought as she rested on a bench near the door. Quietly she gathered the magic that had kept her cyclone from ripping up the floor tiles. It was monsoon season in Tharios and the lands far south of the Pebbled Sea. Storms should have rolled steadily across that open stretch of water between here and Aliput, to die over the waves or to build their strength for an assault on this coast. If she remembered the maps correctly, she’d just gone two thousand miles to find those storms, locked in place around Aliput, piled up like so many logs behind one storm that would not move.

  It was even more maddening to realize she would never know who had done it. She wanted to give a piece of her mind and a few other tokens of her esteem to the mage who had pulled this costly stunt. Tris knew this was mage-made. No one else could halt a storm in its track. But it was a stupid mage who had cursed all of Aliput with floods while here in the west the fields withered for lack of rain. She’d given herself an earache, straining to hear a name or any information on the tired winds that reached her. If his name was known, no one had spoken it. If he had spoken, it had gotten lost on the way east.

  Well, at least the storms were moving once more. Just to ensure he couldn’t do this again for a while, Tris had traveled along the line of weather, tying each storm to the one ahead with a mage-knot she had learned from Sandry. He’d never break the string. She hoped he drained himself trying.

  She barely made it back to Phakomathen. She must have looked terrible: when she opened her eyes, Chime sat on her chest, giving voice to small tinkling sounds that seemed to mean dismay. She’d had to reassure the dragon while forcing her weary arms to undo one of her tidal braids. It had taken a third of the strength from that braid before Tris could get to her feet, and another third from the opposite tidal braid to get her and Chime down the steps. In the end she drew off all the power of both braids to feel like her old self. Normally she wouldn’t have used so much, not when she would pay the price later, but she and Keth had work to do before he could try another lightning globe. The sooner they got to it, the fewer yaskedasi would meet their end at the Ghost’s hands.

  All the way back to Jumshida’s, Tris cursed in Tradertalk and in street slang from two countries. If she could scry the winds, see all they had touched, she might have found the idiot. She might not have used so much of her strength to hunt for storms if she could have seen from the beginning where they were.

  She might be able to see the Ghost.

  This was mad. As Niko and Jumshida kept saying, their conference was the single greatest collection of vision mages brought together in their time. Surely one of them should know about wind scrying!

  But she had a duty first, to Keth. She remembered how it felt, to believe she was cursed because so many strange things happened when she was present. She remembered how it felt, to get those things under control. Keth had the first claim on her time. She had to guide him before she tried to chase a kind of magic so rare that even Niko did not know who could do it.

  As she walked into the courtyard of Jumshida’s house, she heard loud, belligerent voices around the side, by the servants’ entrance. Curious, she went to look. The cook stood in the kitchen door, arms folded over her comfortable bosom, the very picture of an outraged Tharian woman. The person who had drawn the cook’s ire was a slender brunette in her twenties, gaudily dressed and even more gaudily made up. She wore pomade with bits of mica in it so her curls glittered, even under her yellow head-veil. A wisp of breeze carried lavender scent to Tris’s sensitive nose.

  “You obviously have the wrong house, koria yaskedasu,” the cook was saying coldly. “This is a decent residence. I assure you that no one you might be seeking would set foot in here.”

  A prathmun, collecting night soil from the alley that ran beside th
e servants’ entrance, snorted as he emptied a barrel into his cart. Chime climbed out of the sling on Tris’s back to look at the man, who gaped when he saw her glittering in the morning sun. The moment he realized that Tris was smiling at him, pleased he had an eye for Chime’s beauty, he turned away and busied himself at his work. The cook and the yaskedasu didn’t so much as glance at him.

  “I was told he was here,” the yaskedasu told the cook, her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry if it offends you, Koria Respectability, but I want to know how he is!”

  The cook gasped. “All-Seeing guard us, you hussies get bolder every day!” she cried. She looked beyond the young woman’s shoulder and saw Tris. “Koria Tris, I apologize that we disturbed you. This — person — was just leaving.”

  “Not until I know he’s all right,” the brunette insisted. She turned to look at Tris with large, suspicious brown eyes set over a short nose and full mouth. Tris noted the cheap wool of her kyten and the clumsy embroideries in gaudy thread. The yaskedasu wore brass bells on her wrists and cheap gilt jewelry at her throat and ears. Under the heavy white face paint and bright red lip and cheek color worn by the entertainers at Khapik, she looked as weary as Tris had felt atop Phakomathen. “We heard the Elya Street arurim dhaskoi, Nomasdina, took Keth to the arurimat last night, and the desk man at the arurimat says he came here with Dhasku Dawnspeaker.”

  “And I told her we’d no more have one of those nimble-fingered Khapik sorts in here than we’d have a camel in the best bedchamber,” snapped the cook.

  “Deiina!” whispered the brunette, pointing to Tris’s shoulder. “What is that?” Chime slid her head under Tris’s chin to peer at the yaskedasu. “It’s glass, and it’s moving. I’ve been up much too long.”

  Tris absently stroked Chime. “You said Keth. Kethlun Warder?”

  The brunette nodded. “He has lodgings in our house. He’s our friend.”

  The cook snorted. “Partner in theft, I don’t doubt. I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Actually, he’s here,” Tris said. “I’m sorry, Cook. We brought him back with us late last night, after you’d gone home. He’s in the guest room above mine.” To the brunette she said, “Come in. I’ll see if he’s awake.” As she walked by the cook she explained, “Keth’s my new student.”

  “Keep an eye on her,” the cook said fiercely as the yaskedasu passed her. “And how does a student have a student of her own?”

  “It’s a long story,” Tris replied. “Have you got honeycakes? I’m famished. And tea would be lovely, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “She doesn’t go past the dining room!” the cook said.

  Tris whirled. She’d been quite patient until now, considerate of the cook’s lacerated feelings over being wrong and having a yaskedasu in the house, but enough was enough. She was tired still and might need some lightning to pick up her step; she was hungry and in no mood for an argument. Just as she opened her mouth to let the cook know her true feelings, the yaskedasu stopped her with a hand on her arm.

  “It’s all right,” the young woman told her. “That’s the way of things in Tharios.”

  Tris scowled as Chime stretched out, trying to grab one of the yaskedasu’s curls. “The way of things in Tharios is starting to give me a rash,” she snapped, leading the way into the dining room. “Please, sit,” she said. “What’s your name?”

  “Yali,” the woman replied. She put her head in her hands. “Keth is really all right?” she asked, her voice muffled. “Don’t lie to me. Everyone knows the Fifth District arurim have no budget for truthsayers, and the truth spells the dhaskoi have aren’t much good.”

  “He’s safe and well and undented,” Tris said as the cook came in with a tray of cakes, a teapot, cups, and honey. “Thank you,” Tris said, lifting it out of the older woman’s hands. “I appreciate it, with you being so busy and all.”

  The cook looked at Yali, sniffed, and returned to her kitchen.

  “Let me give you a hint, since you’re a shenos,” Yali said as she sat up straight. “Yaskedasi are not in the least respectable. She won’t appreciate it that you made her let me in.”

  “Why aren’t they respectable?” asked Tris, pouring two cups of tea. “You just perform, right? It’s not like you’re prostitutes.”

  “We flaunt our bodies and our skills before anyone who will look,” replied Yali, running her fingers along one of Chime’s wings. “We have no chaperons, we keep late hours, we don’t work at dull, boring tasks all day, we hold noisy parties, we sing loud songs. We must be half streetwalker and half thief. My goodness, this is a beautiful thing.”

  “She’s not a thing. She’s a glass dragon that Keth made two days ago,” Tris said, blowing on her tea before she sipped it. “Her name is Chime.”

  Yali looked at her, kohl-lined eyes huge with astonishment. “But Keth’s no mage!”

  “He wasn’t,” Tris said. “He is now. Let me see if he’s awake.” Leaving Chime and the tea tray, she went upstairs to see if Keth was out of bed.

  He was awake, dressed, and shaving when Tris rapped on his door. When he bid her enter, she poked her head inside. “There’s a yaskedasu named Yali in the dining room,” she said as he carefully scraped a razor over his whiskers. “I don’t think she’ll leave till she’s counted all your legs and arms.”

  “Yali?” Keth hurried to finish his shave and wiped his face. “She should be at home, in bed! Why did she come here?”

  “Ask her yourself,” Tris said. “I’ll be down shortly.”

  She stood at the top of the stairs, watching as Keth stumbled down the steps. His face had lit up. There was concern in his voice when he’d asked about Yali. If he still had an arranged marriage back in Namorn, he had a problem, but that at least was not her affair. She walked to her own room, closed the door, and sat on the bed. Carefully she took down two of her heavier lightning braids and began to draw a little of their power into her veins, to liven the tidal strength. As she worked, she wondered what would happen to her when this dose of borrowed power was used up, then shook her head. She’d worry about that when it happened.

  6

  The cook surprised Keth by making breakfast for him after Yali left. First he said she didn’t need to; when she insisted, he apologized for putting her to the extra work. “A good-looking young fellow needs all the strength he can get, to chase off the hordes of girls who must be chasing you,” she said with a wink. Keth laughed for what felt like the first time in ages. He stayed in the kitchen while she cooked, talking to her about the news of the city and her children. She shooed him into the dining room when she finished, saying she had the marketing to do, then sat him at the table and ordered him to eat.

  Keth was happy to do so: he was hungry. She had given him fresh flatbread, cheese, and a dish of eggs cooked with cinnamon, cumin, cardamom, and fermented barley brine. On his arrival in Tharios, he’d tried eggs prepared this way and thought that, with so peculiar a combination of flavors, they weren’t fit for hogs to eat. Now it was one of his favorite Tharian foods.

  He hadn’t been eating long when Tris came downstairs. She was accompanied by a just-fed Chime — Keth could see the coloring agents for purple and blue glass in the dragon’s belly. The girl looked odd, strangely awake for someone who had gone to bed well after midnight and risen not long after dawn according to the cook. Tris poured herself a cup of tea and sat across from him.

  “Is your friend Yali all right?” Tris asked as Chime curled around the teapot. “She was upset over you being taken up by the arurimi.”

  “She knows they don’t pay truthsayers in Fifth District,” Keth replied, carefully producing each word. His tongue seemed to get thicker when she was near. He couldn’t make himself forget what she could produce from those thin braids on either side of her face. “She just wanted to know I was in one piece.” He scooped up some eggs with a wedge of flatbread. “She didn’t really believe they got a truthsayer because you told them to,” he added. After he chewed and
swallowed, he continued, “I was there. I’m not sure I believe it.”

  “But I was so polite,” Tris replied with a razor-thin smile. “Dhaskoi Nomasdina was such a gentleman, giving way to a lady’s wishes.”

  Keth blinked, startled. “Did you just make a joke?” he asked. He’d never thought she had a sense of humor. If she did, it was very dry.

  “I hardly ever joke,” Tris informed him, straightfaced as she sat at the table. “It steams up my spectacles.”

  Keth put down his spoon to give his full attention to her. For the first time it sank in that this odd girl two-thirds his age was to be his teacher. He had no idea who she was, apart from a heroic bad temper, a hand for lightning, a claim to handle forces too big for any human to wield, and a dislike of being balked. She was gentle with tweezers and medicine. She loved Chime and her impossibly sized dog. The eyes behind those spectacles were uncomfortably sharp. She also took their new relationship more seriously than he did, which shamed him.

  “So we’re stuck with each other,” he said carefully.

  She propped her chin on her hand, her smile crooked. “Yes, we are. Do you think your cousin will let us do magic at Touchstone? Otherwise we’ll have to find a glass mage who will give us a place to work. If you were younger, I wouldn’t even try to have you do craftwork as you learn basic mage discipline, but we can’t untangle the two now.”

  “Antonou won’t mind as long as I keep making glass for him. If we use a lot of materials, I’ll have to find a way to pay him, though. He isn’t rich.” Keth sighed. He would have to stay in Tharios long after he’d mastered his power, just to repay his cousin. Well, it can’t be helped, he told himself. “Let’s go,” he said, pushing back his chair. “The sooner we start, the sooner we catch the Ghost.”

  Tris stayed where she was, drumming her fingers lightly on the table. Chime woke from her nap and looked from Keth to Tris. “It’s not that easy,” Tris said at last. “You won’t be creating any lightning globes today.”