The Circle Opens #4: Shatterglass

by Tamora Pierce

  Next came the vision powder, sprinkled over each bulging eye. Inside Dema felt shame for treating her this way, for using her as a source of information rather than mourning her. Even a yaskedasu deserved better.

  The powder revealed only smudges over her eyes. She had not seen her killer. In all likelihood he had come up behind her.

  Next he got the bottle of stepsfind, took a mouthful, and sprayed it over the body with a fresh, silent apology. Looking down, he saw the killer’s footprints, shadows that led through a side door into an alley.

  Three white-clad priests were there, building a circle of protection around the temple. “How did you know?” cried Dema, furious past all common sense. “How did you know about this?”

  One of the priests, the one who held their supplies, turned to look at Dema. Behind him his partners, a man and a woman, closed the protective circle and brought it to blazing life, cutting Dema off from the killer’s traces. “You walk perilously close to the defilement of all you touch, Demakos Nomasdina,” the priest who’d looked at him said, grim-faced. “You would have carried the pollution from the corpse you just saw out into this district, letting the rot spread to innocents. We knew you were capable of it. A watch was placed on you.”

  “You had me followed?” shouted Dema. “By what right? I am a citizen of Tharios, a member of the First Class. I am doing my duty toward the city!”

  “Your vision of your duty blinds you to the risk you take, involving yourself with the rotting shell that once housed a spirit,” retorted the priest. “Continue as you meant to just now, and you will carry spiritual rot to the houses of the First Class and to the temples and offices that serve them.”

  The female priest looked at Dema. “If pollution spreads over the First Class, the city is doomed,” she said flatly. “It is our purity that saved us while an empire was falling to pieces. It is our cleansing and our vow to stay clean despite temptation that makes us a great power now. And you would destroy that, in your arrogance, in your belief that only Demakos Nomasdina of the arurim dhaskoi may speak for one of the Fifth Class. She is before the All-Seeing. He will judge her as well as her killer.”

  “But her killer spreads his pollution, too,” Dema said daringly. “He goes out into the city with death all over him. You say I risk polluting the city — what of the killer?”

  “The city’s priests cleanse Tharios in prayer, fasting, and meditation,” said the priest who had first spoken to Dema. “The killer will only pollute those who encounter him. They are plainly of the Fifth and Fourth classes, with the crimes of their last lives to pay for in this one. He is their penance. It is you who are the greater danger. You take this vile taint among those who must keep the city from plunging into chaos.”

  “You have lost sight of what is vital, imagining that matters of this world are as valuable as those of the spiritual realm,” the female priest announced. “You will spend this day and tonight among us, to fast, repent, and be cleansed.”

  “But there is a killing!” protested Dema. “He could kill again!”

  “He is in the All-Seeing’s hands,” said the third priest, who had been silent until now. “As you are in ours.”

  Dema clenched his fists, his heart racing with fury. “I have an investigation to run!”

  “Others will work on it,” the female priest said flatly. “Your superiors and your family are being notified. Tomorrow you may take up your work again.”

  “If you have a more fitting vision of what matters, and what does not,” added the third priest. “If you accept your true duty.”

  Dema turned, to discover more priests behind him. He was trapped. He looked beyond them, to his arurimi. “One of you go to Touchstone Glass when you are released from here,” he ordered. “Tell Kethlun Warder and Trisana Chandler about this.” His sergeant nodded. Dema faced the priests. “If he kills again tonight, it will be on your heads,” he snapped.

  “If he kills again tonight, he will answer to the All-Seeing,” retorted the female priest, “as we will answer if we allow you to continue in the path of error.”

  8

  Worn out by his day and the taxing of his power, Keth slept the night through. His dreams were filled with lightning.

  When he woke, it was to open shutters, early morning light, and three familiar faces. No, four: Yali balanced the silent Glaki on one hip. The child sucked her thumb, her brown eyes large and steady as she looked at Keth. The women were still dressed and made up from the night before. He winced, started to get out of bed, and remembered just in time he had nothing on. He clutched the sheet to his chest.

  “The Ghost got another one,” Xantha said, yawning as she leaned against the wall. “She was dead in some Fourth District temple. The gossip is that you magicked something that helped the arurim find her.”

  “I wanted to make something that would help them find the killer,” growled Keth. “Did they?”

  The three yaskedasi shook their heads.

  “You never said you were a mage.” Poppy’s tone was accusing, as if she thought Keth had made it a secret on purpose.

  “I didn’t know,” Keth retorted.

  “How could you not know you’re a mage?” demanded Poppy. “Or are you just a bad one?”

  “How could you not know Arania pays Lysis twice what she pays you to play Laurel Leaf in The Creation of the Garden?” Yali inquired. “Maybe you’re just a bad actress.”

  Poppy glared at her. “She does not. It’s Lysis who can’t act.”

  Yali shrugged. “Arania thinks otherwise.”

  “Bring down your pots!” a man yelled outside. “Bring down your pots!”

  Keth looked out the window next to his cot. The prathmun who collected night soil was in the courtyard below, waiting for Ferouze’s lodgers to dump their chamberpots into the small barrel in his cart.

  “He’s early,” said Xantha, running for the door.

  “He’s late,” argued Poppy. No one in Khapik wanted a full chamberpot in their rooms during the day, when the heat made the smell overpowering.

  Yali set Glaki by the door and stooped to fish Keth’s chamberpot out from under his bed.

  “Yali, I can do it,” Keth protested, looking around for his breeches.

  “But I’m up and awake.” Yali stopped on his threshold, her brown eyes curious as she gazed at him. “Are you all right? Ferouze says you barely made it upstairs last night.”

  “I was just tired,” Keth replied. “This magic wears me out. We went at it hard yesterday, trying to just make a globe, not even to make whatever was inside visible. And I did one, I don’t know how, but then I couldn’t make it clear so we could see who this killer is.” He rubbed his face, then smiled at Yali. “Did you do well last night?”

  “Well enough,” Yali answered. “I —”

  “Last call for pots!” cried the prathmun below.

  “I’d better go,” said Yali, “before he leaves.”

  “I’ll see you this afternoon,” Keth promised.

  “If that slave-driver teacher doesn’t work you as weak as an overcooked noodle,” Yali said drily. With Glaki in tow, she ran to fetch her own chamberpot.

  Keth got dressed. “I don’t think she can work what isn’t there,” he muttered. He could feel the power inside him, but the best way he could describe it was “floppy,” very like the noodle Yali had mentioned. In his skull he could hear the slight buzz he’d come to associate with his magic, but it was not what it had been the day before.

  As he shaved, ate a roll for breakfast, and walked out to Touchstone, he tried to recapture the feeling that had shot through him in that moment when Dema had distracted him — the moment when the globe had produced itself. He’d felt like the strain of forcing it down the length of the blowpipe into the glass had broken free to the thing he’d been wrestling with. Was it a matter of not thinking about his magic? or of not thinking about his craft? He wasn’t sure, and he wanted surety. He didn’t want any more dead yaskedasi.


  When he reached Touchstone Glass, the glass shop itself was still closed. Antonou wouldn’t open for another hour. Keth decided not to bother the family. He went straight to the workshop. As he rounded the corner into the inner courtyard, he saw an arurim sergeant leaning against the well. She had been in command of the squad that had arrested him.

  Keth stopped cold. “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it,” he snapped, wondering if he should yell for Antonou. The yaskedasi told plenty of tales of those who’d vanished into arurimati, to return so bruised their mothers didn’t know them.

  Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself as the sergeant straightened. If you’re being arrested, why is there just one of them?

  “Your glass ball cleared around dawn,” the sergeant said. “You did do that, am I correct?”

  Keth swore silently as he felt a blush creep over his face. His blushes always made him feel like an idiot. “Yes,” he muttered. He met the sergeant’s eyes. “The killer …?” he asked, but she was shaking her head.

  “A yaskedasu, in the temple of Ngohi. Not long dead, from what Dhaskoi Nomasdina could tell. He asked me to tell you that you won’t see him today,” the sergeant continued. An odd expression crossed her face. She rubbed her nose and explained, “He’s, ah, he’s been granted the chance to cleanse himself and to rededicate himself to the purity of the city.”

  Keth blinked at her. “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “The priesthood of the All-Seeing took him in charge, to pray and fast for a day and a night,” the sergeant explained. “He got a little careless about taking death pollution out into the city proper. He’s been warned before.”

  “You know, you’d catch criminals a lot faster if you just accepted death as part of life,” Keth pointed out.

  “And what of our souls?” inquired the sergeant. “I for one don’t want to come back to another life as one of the Fifth Class, or worse, a prathmun. Belonging to the Fourth Class is hard enough.” She nodded to Keth. “Good day to you, Koris Warder.” She walked out of the courtyard.

  When Tris arrived an hour later, Keth was catching up on work he’d promised Antonou. Seeing he wasn’t ready to do magic, the girl produced a large-toothed comb from her sash and began to groom Little Bear. As she struggled with a particularly stubborn knot, Keth told her about the dead yaskedasu, and about Dema.

  Tris gaped at him. “These people,” she said at last. “I won’t understand them if I live for a century. He should be trying to find the one who killed that poor girl, not holed up in some temple.”

  “The Tharians see it differently,” Keth answered, and sighed. “To them it’s the pollution that matters. I have to wonder if they’d be so concerned about Dema’s wallowing in death if the victims belonged to their precious Assembly.” He was putting a crucible of sand and chemicals into the furnace to melt when he realized he’d forgotten to use gloves or tongs. He felt nothing except a gentle warmth against his skin. The crucible placed, he held up his hands and looked at them. The only change was a bit of ash on his knuckles. He blew it off, and noticed that Tris was looking at him. “I didn’t know,” he commented, then grimaced at the stupid remark.

  “There are good things about what’s happened to you,” she pointed out. “You can admit it, if you like. I promise not to say ‘I told you so.'”

  “Oh, no,” retorted Keth. “You’d just think it really loudly.” He looked at Chime, who’d perched on top of the furnace. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll melt?” he asked the dragon.

  For answer, Chime curled up, tucked her muzzle under one paw, and appeared to go to sleep.

  “I don’t know how much work on globes you’ll do today,” Tris remarked after Keth had worked in silence for a time. Once Little Bear was combed, she had taken out a book and begun to read. “I’ve been watching. While your power’s come back, it’s not what you started with yesterday.”

  “It doesn’t seem a rush, since he kills every other day or so, but I still want to try,” Keth said, twirling his blowpipe in one hand as he pressed a bowl mold to the molten glass to shape it.

  “We’ll meditate in a while, then,” said Tris, “and try for a globe after midday.” She went to the doorway and sniffed the air. “There will be rain tonight.”

  “We need it,” Keth said absently as he set his bowl in the annealing oven.

  Other chores caught him up. Tris stayed out of his way, though once she startled him when she sang the words to a song he didn’t even know he was humming. “So that one made it all the way to the Pebbled Sea,” he remarked.

  “Here I thought it made it all the way to Namorn,” she retorted.

  They didn’t get to meditate until after midday. Tris enclosed the workshop within her magical protection — Keth’s mage relatives would have ground their teeth to see how easy it was for this girl-child to wrap an entire building with her power — and explained that day’s exercise to Keth. He thought it was ludicrous. Whoever heard of stuffing all of one’s own magic into a small object?

  But she insisted, and he agreed to try. First he selected a crucible for the job. Next he imagined himself pouring all of the light of his power into it, as if magic were sand he meant to heat.

  What vexed him was that the exercise turned out to be hard. His power fought his grip, sending out darts and flares like those thrown off by his lightning globes. For each spike that Keth grabbed and stuffed back into the crucible, two more seemed to sprout. By the time Tris called a halt, he was hot, sweaty, irritated, and out of patience. The weather didn’t help. The air was stuffy, unmoving and sticky. When he begged Tris to lower her barrier, convinced it made the workshop’s air stale, she refused.

  Keth sighed and prepared a gather of molten glass, though he doubted he could get a globe from it now. His neck was stiff, his hands sore, and no matter how much water he drank, he was soon thirsty again. Around midafternoon he threw off his shirt and leather apron. The apron only protected his clothes from embers. His body ignored small burns now. He rolled his breeches up above his knees. Tris, as aggravating as ever, had arrived wrapped around with breezes that ruffled through her pale gray cotton gown and white petticoats, leaving her with just a slight dew at her temples and the base of her neck.

  “One thing I miss about home,” Keth remarked, wiping his dripping forehead on his arm as he prepared to take his gather from the furnace, “it cooled off at night. Of course, the winters are a curse from the gods. I suppose no place is perfect.”

  “Emelan’s much like this,” Tris remarked, inspecting one of Keth’s glass bowls. “So’s Capchen. But we get the sea breezes at night, even in summer. My friends and I go down to the beach during the midday rest period, now and then, and swim. Sometimes we don’t mean to get wet, but then Little Bear shakes off on us and we’re wet anyway.”

  Keth grinned. “Our dogs at home do that. My mother and sisters won’t go down to the Syth when the dogs are along, because they know they’ll get splashed.” He set the blowpipe to spinning and concentrated on the feel of his magic, letting it flow down the length of the pipe. A breeze wrapped around his body, cooling his skin. When he looked at Tris, she looked back at him, all innocence.

  His efforts to make a new globe came to nothing. His magic simply hadn’t come back enough. His third attempt gave off a few sparks of lightning, but they soon faded.

  “Enough,” Tris said when he would have tried again. “Go home, rest. You can’t work with nothing.”

  Keth scowled at her. “I don’t want to hear the ‘sometimes you have to know when to halt’ speech again,” he informed her.

  “Then don’t make me give it,” she retorted. “Have you got a globe’s worth of magic in you?”

  Keth hung his head. Complain about it though he had, the morning’s crucible exercise had shown him how to measure the extent of his power.

  “Go home,” Tris ordered. “Relax. Visit a bathhouse. Something. I know it’s maddening, if that helps.”

  “Do you?” he asked suddenly, wan
ting to know. “It doesn’t seem like you’re ever at a standstill.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then glared, propping her fists on her hips. “The hardest lesson any of us must learn is there’s only so much we can do,” she informed him, her voice lemon-tart. “We run into it headfirst all the time, knowing what we can do, what we can’t, how much we can do. We think of magic as this promise that we will fix anything that comes our way, Keth. We can’t. Power’s just a tool some of us can use.” Her mouth curled wryly. “Now look. You went and made me give a speech. Go home and rest. There’s always later.” She gathered up her belongings, the dragon, and the dog, and left the workshop.

  Keth stood there, frowning. Even if he couldn’t produce another globe, he’d have thought she would try another exercise, rather than go. Perhaps she had a project of her own waiting back at Jumshida’s.

  But now that she had mentioned it, a bathhouse sounded like a wonderful idea. Once he cleaned up the shop and took the finished work to Antonou, Keth headed for the bathhouse he used in Khapik. The steam in the hot bath was unbearable after the heat and damp outside. Keth stayed only long enough to scrub and rinse before he waddled down to the cold bath pools. There he soaked and dozed, comfortable at last.

  After she left Kethlun, Tris idled the rest of her afternoon away, exploring Khapik by daylight. There were no lights on the streams, no entertainers at most of the corners. The gates to the courtyard houses were closed. Some shops were open, as were some of the lesser eating-houses. Tris took a light supper at one of these, seated on a stream bank. The help was in no hurry to shoo her away, so she read a book of glass magic as she waited for time to pass.

  Now and then she sniffed the air. Her storm was coming on fast, turning the sky greenish gray as it advanced. The little hairs on Tris’s arms and at the back of her neck stirred. Her big lightning braids quivered against her hairpins. It was far too long since the last rain, the city’s earth complained to her. The very stones knew a downpour was coming. They welcomed it; the water in the streams of Khapik shivered with its approach.