The Circle Opens #4: Shatterglass

by Tamora Pierce

  Glaki clung to her, even with a doll in each hand. Tris soothed her until she was sure the little girl was calm. This too was something she knew all too well. The anger of adults almost always had meant packing her bags and moving on to a new home. An adult in a temper meant new relatives with new rules and new places where she was not welcome.

  When Glaki was calm, Tris sat her on a bench with Little Bear and Chime, and gave the child her spectacles. Closing her eyes, she entered the trance she needed to scry the winds. When she opened her eyes, colors and half-images assaulted her, flashing by so quickly she couldn’t track them. Time after time she tried to seize an image and hold it, but by the time she’d picked one, it was gone. Grimly she persisted until her eyes began to water and ache.

  Once more, she thought, biting her lower lip. One, just one … She imagined hooks magically tethered to her eyes, and sank them into a flash of crimson. Then she fought to keep her eyes in one position. They wanted to flick aside to capture another of the images that raced by like a river in flood. She widened her eyelids and refused to let them jitter, staring instead at what she had caught. Slowly the image cleared as the fight to keep her eyes steady got harder.

  Suddenly she realized what she saw. Excitement surged through her, cutting the vision free of her grip, but Tris didn’t care. Her eyes began to dance again as eyestrain tears streamed down her cheeks.

  She had seen something real.

  “A ship, Glaki!” she said, reclaiming her spectacles. “I saw a ship on the wind! A ship with a crimson sail and a sun emblem on it!”

  “Course you did,” the little girl replied, for all the world as if she were Tris herself. “There’s all kinds of ships down in Piraki harbor.”

  It took some time for Tris’s vision to clear. When she could actually see, she asked Glaki, “Show me the ships?”

  The girl pointed. Far below, through a gap in the rocky hills between Tharios and Piraki, Tris saw the antlike shapes of vessels anchored in the harbor. Above one was a dot of red: the red-sailed ship Tris had seen life-size on the wind.

  “Supper now?” Glaki pleaded, tugging her skirt.

  Tris hugged the child to her side. “Definitely supper.” She looked around for Chime and saw the glass dragon on the wall several feet away, inspecting the guards and tourists as they inspected her. “Chime, come,” Tris called. The dragon took flight and returned to her, while the tourists clapped. “Show-off,” Tris murmured as Chime wrapped herself around Tris’s neck.

  “But she’s beautiful,” protested Glaki. “She should show off.”

  Tris smiled. “Spoken like a yaskedasu’s daughter,” she said. “Come on. Maybe Keth caught the Ghost.” Her pride would suffer if he did, but her pride wasn’t important. Sending that murderer to a place where he could kill no more was.

  Two hours after he left the arurimat, Keth returned to Ferouze’s. To his considerable surprise, Dema was there with Tris and Glaki. The older man stared gloomily into a cup of water. “You can hear it from me,” he told Keth. “We found her in a trash bin, in Perfume Court. We tracked him to the temple of the All-Seeing, where it looks like he vanished into thin air. Of course, the place is hip-deep in cleansing spells, enough so that they stick to you when you come out of it. He’s gone, and we lost him.” He got to his feet. “Sorry, Keth. You did all that work, and we failed you.” He walked out without even saying good-bye.

  Keth sat down hard. “All I did was stop for supper on the way,” he complained. “And a bath. And this Ghost killed and escaped. Maybe he is a ghost. Maybe we need an exorcist, not mages.”

  Tris shook her head. “He’s just a man who knows Tharios from top to bottom,” she told Keth. “Look at it this way — tonight your globe brought the arurimi down on him before he could even smuggle his prey out of Khapik. You get closer every day.”

  Keth smiled crookedly at her. “I won’t be happy until he’s in chains, and neither will you.” He looked at Glaki. “So what did you have for supper?”

  They had just finished the dish washing when Tris straightened, staring at the door. “What is he doing here?” she asked. Before Keth could inquire into “his” identity, Tris had run out of the room. Little Bear galloped at her side, barking furiously as his tail wagged hard enough to create a breeze.

  By the time Keth could reach the door, Niklaren Goldeye had stepped onto the third floor gallery. “No, Bear, you know better,” he informed the dog as Little Bear danced around him. “Just one pawprint on my clothes and I will make myself a Little Bear rug.”

  Keth’s eyes bulged as he took in Niko’s appearance. Even for Khapik the mage dressed well: tonight he wore a crimson sleeveless overrobe with a gold thread subtly worked into the weave, loose black trousers, and a cream-colored shirt. His long hair was combed back and secured with a red-gold tie.

  Tris looked entirely unimpressed by her teacher’s splendor. She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. “Those aren’t Khapik clothes,” she informed Niko tartly. “Those are Balance Hill clothes.”

  “Actually, they’re Phakomathen clothes,” Niko told her, allowing Chime to light on his outstretched arm. “You are more beautiful than ever,” he told the dragon. To Tris he said, “You look dreadful.”

  “I don’t feel dreadful,” she retorted. “I know what I’m doing, Niko. I don’t need a nursemaid.”

  He raised his black brows at her. “And did it ever occur to you that I might need reassurance that you are well and sane?”

  To Keth’s astonishment, Tris turned beet red. Looking at the boards under her feet, she mumbled something that sounded like an apology. Keth stared at Niko in awe. In one sentence he had transformed Tris from a short, plump, sharp-nosed terror into a fourteen-year-old girl. It occurred to Keth for the first time that perhaps magic wasn’t simply a matter of fires, lightning, and power in the air, if spoken words could also create such a transformation.

  Niko turned his dark eyes, with their heavy frame of lashes, on Keth next. Keth managed to meet them for a moment, before he too gave way to the urge to inspect the floor. Suddenly he remembered that Niko’s magic revolved around sight, and that if he saw magic, he would know the state of Keth’s power. “She keeps telling me not to overdo,” he said hurriedly, thinking Niko might feel Tris was careless in her teaching. “And we try, really, we try so I don’t go too far, but I need to stop the Ghost.”

  “Any kind of weather magic is hard to regulate,” Niko said mildly. “Academic mages have trouble building their strength up, because it all comes from within them. Ambient magics suffer the opposite problem, struggling to manage a great deal of power that is drawn to them without their knowledge. Lightning, of course, only increases the levels of power that run through you.”

  “Of course,” whispered Keth sheepishly. He felt like an apprentice who hadn’t seen the obvious.

  When Niko remained quiet, Keth looked at him, and saw that the older man stood still, his hand out. Keth looked to see who Niko was trying to lure to him, and saw that Glaki was peering around the door. Slowly she inched forward as Niko’s hand remained where it was, steady in the air. At last Glaki put her fingers in his. “Good evening, young one,” Niko said quietly. “What is your name?”

  “Glaki,” whispered the girl. “Glakisa Irakory.”

  “She’s an orphan,” Tris murmured. “And she’s staying with me, Niko.” She met Niko’s glance with steady eyes this time.

  “We will discuss the details later,” Niko replied. He smiled at the child. “It is very nice to meet you, Glaki Irakory.”

  He sees her magic, Keth realized. What doesn’t he see?

  Niko left soon after, once Keth and Tris described the things they had done since Tris left Jumshida’s house for Khapik. When he stood to go, he looked as weary as Keth felt. “I’ve started to scry for this Ghost,” he said, rubbing one temple. “It’s more useful than listening to my fellow mages blather, which doesn’t mean a great deal.”

  “Have you seen him?” asked K
eth. It would smart if someone else caught the Ghost after so much work, but not as much as it would hurt if he killed another yaskedasu. “What does he look like?”

  Tris went over to help Niko adjust his overrobe to a perfect drape while Niko smiled wryly. “I’m sure I have seen him somewhere, in the thousands of futures that have appeared to me since I began to look,” he said. “I am sure I have seen him imprisoned, killed, making a successful escape, murdering others…. I only need to sift through all of the futures I’ve seen, in addition to all the futures that result from the next thing you do, or Dema does, or the Ghost does. I told you it was only a little more useful than listening to my peers argue about the foreword to our text.”

  Tris followed him out as Keth collapsed onto the bed.

  “What was he talking about?” Glaki asked.

  “About the idea that mages are powerful being a great big joke,” Keth replied. “Is that a new doll? Let me see it.”

  14

  Tris went out after Glaki was asleep, leaving the child under Keth’s drowsy eye. She found a very different Khapik. Arurimi were everywhere. There were new faces among the yaskedasi, strong, stern women who tumbled or did exhibitions of hand-to-hand combat with no-nonsense faces and without any trace of the alluring smiles one usually found in Khapik.

  “I suppose they think nobody can tell the difference,” Tris heard a yaskedasoi tell one of the musicians who lived at Ferouze’s.

  He replied, “I’m surprised they remembered to take the red tunic off.”

  Tris shook her head. She would have to tell Dema his volunteers had to work harder at pretending to be true yaskedasi. If these people knew the difference, chances were that the Ghost would know, too.

  Other things were different with the newcomers’ arrival. Laughter and music sounded forced. Yaskedasi and shopkeepers gathered on corners, talking softly, their eyes darting everywhere.

  Of course, Tris thought. With all these disguised arurimi under their noses, they can’t ignore the fact that the Ghost exists. Now they have to face it. They can’t tell themselves pretty lies.

  Seated for awhile by the Cascade Fountains, Tris eavesdropped on a group of girl singers. Tris could see they were frightened, watching their surroundings and jumping at unexpected noises.

  “I don’t understand,” one of them told the others, her mouth trembling. “Why does the Ghost do this? What have yaskedasi done to him?”

  “Nobody cares when we disappear,” an older girl replied. “If the dead weren’t showing up outside Khapik, do you think they’d have the arurimi out now?”

  “That can’t be all of it,” retorted the girl who’d first spoken. “Look how many he’s killed. If it was people nobody cares about, he’d pick prathmuni, or those who live in Hodenekes.”

  A prathmun who swept the sidewalk glared at the yaskedasu. Tris wanted to tell him that the singer hadn’t meant it the way it came out, but she knew the girl had indeed spoken the truth as she believed it to be.

  Tris walked on, still thinking about the conversation. They would have to catch the Ghost to learn what truly drove him. After so many deaths, she had come to think it wasn’t the simple matter of a grudge against the yaskedasi. He went to considerable trouble and risk to rub Tharian noses in death’s reality. He must know that when he despoiled public spots the city would be forced to hold long, expensive rituals before its people could use those places again. He even turned those same Tharian beliefs about death to his benefit, to cover his tracks from the arurim.

  The Ghost staged his show of hate not for just one group, or two, but all of Tharios: for its people, its lifestyle, its religion, its customs, its history. Tris couldn’t imagine a hate so thorough as that of the Ghost for Tharios. Once she reached the headache point of a case of hate, she simply walked away. She had a feeling the Ghost enjoyed hate headaches.

  Something else occurred to her as she trekked the back alleys of Khapik. Thwarted of his display at Heskalifos, the Ghost had killed the very next day — and he hadn’t been able to display that victim, either. “He’ll kill again tomorrow,” Tris told Chime. “He’s shown he can’t stop himself.”

  And who was to stop him? He knew the city so well he’d turned its laws and customs against it, coming and going as if he were invisible. How could anyone arrest a ghost?

  Though she hadn’t slept after her return to Ferouze’s, the power of the tides kept Tris awake and alert the next day. When her strength ran out in a few days, she would have to accept the consequences and not try to revive it again. There was only so much of the ocean’s might a human body could stand before the blood turned to salt water and the muscles to braids of kelp.

  At Touchstone that morning, Glaki joined Tris and Keth at meditation. As before, she ended up napping. Keth, his power at full strength again, crafted bowls, small globes, and vases for Antonou, to make up for the materials he used for his magical work.

  As Keth blew glass, Tris returned to her scrying. She let the flood of colors, textures, and half-recognized shapes wash over her, her mind snagging on images of a temple cornice, a finch in a tree, a ball rolling across an empty courtyard, and angry people in motion against the white marble splendor of Assembly Square.

  It’s about time they protested, she thought when she came out of her trance. Then she realized that a public outcry might drive the Keepers to remove Dema from the investigation, disgracing him and his clan. He would be made to pay because, as he’d said at the beginning, he was green and expendable.

  “No, they won’t get rid of him yet,” Antonou said over lunch. Keth’s relative knew much of the city’s gossip. “Nomasdina clan pays for the arurimi to patrol Khapik for the Ghost.” He made Glaki’s yaskedasu doll jump, surprising giggles from the girl. “The Assembly may be sniveling cowards when it comes to popular opinion,” Antonou went on, “but they’re also cheap. Getting rid of young Nomasdina means they must come up with a plan and pay for it from the Treasury. If this goes on another week, I’m not certain, but for now your friend is safe.”

  “How reassuring,” drawled Keth.

  “That’s Tharios,” Antonou replied. “Reassuring in its miserliness. Now, I happen to know a bunch of grapes I believe a certain girl would like very much. Who will carry them back from my house for Keth and Tris to have a share?”

  “Me, me!” Glaki cried, jumping to her feet.

  Tris watched the girl and the old man walk back to his residence. “Your cousin’s a good man,” she remarked thoughtfully, seeing a swarm of rainbow sparks part around him as the air flowed around his body.

  Keth looked at her, surprised. “He gave me a berth, didn’t he? And he was a curst good sport about me destroying the cullet. Plenty of masters would have thrown me out on my ear.”

  “And you’re repaying him with those globes,” Tris said. “It all works out.”

  “I’d like to work the Ghost out,” Keth muttered. “Before he orphans another child.”

  While Glaki napped and Tris read in the shade to escape the hottest part of the day, Keth went to visit other glassmakers. He found enough journeymen at work while their masters rested to buy three crates of cullet glass to replace what he had destroyed. As he filled the new barrel that Antonou had provided, he felt the first twinges of a globe coming on. The feeling was distant, not the roaring pressure it would be soon. When he finished with the barrel, he doused himself with a bucket of well water to cool off and hunkered down by Tris.

  “Taking the lightning back yesterday helped some, but I didn’t pay for more cullet just to explode it again,” he announced when the girl put down her book. “What can I do, o wise mistress of all knowledge?”

  She made a face at him. “If I were such a mistress, I’d have this killer in a lightning cage,” she informed Keth. She looked up. Gray clouds rolled over the sky above, a promise of more rain now that Tris had put an end to the blockage overseas. The normal summer storms flowed over Tharios as they should. “I think I can, um, redistribute your ligh
tning,” she said, gray eyes as distant as the clouds overhead.

  Keth looked up. “There?” he asked, startled.

  “Why not?” she wanted to know. “It’s already brewing some of its own. A little more won’t hurt.”

  “Most girls your age worry about husbands, not the redistribution of lightning,” he pointed out, getting to his feet.

  She grinned up at him, showing teeth. “Most girls aren’t me,” she reminded him.

  And thank Vrohain for that, he thought, paying tribute to the Namornese god of justice. I hope I never meet those sisters of hers, or that brother, he told himself as he checked the crucible in the furnace. I’d probably have nightmares for weeks.

  That afternoon he blew globe after globe to hurry along the one he wanted, but he may as well have blown smoke. Antonou was pleased to have more trinkets to sell, but Keth thought he would put his own head through the wall in frustration. Tris helped as she did that first time, shaping the glass with heat drawn from the heart of the earth, but even that produced no visions of death.

  Taking a break, Keth worked on an idea he’d had. He blew a handful of tiny glass bubbles as fragile as a butterfly’s wing, almost lighter than air. That alone was enough to make him glow with pride: since he’d begun to master his power, his old skill and control were slowly returning.

  He didn’t stop there. With Tris to advise him, he infused each bubble with a dab of his lightning-laced magic. They sprang to life like a swarm of fireflies, darting around the workshop, then the courtyard, as Glaki and Little Bear chased them.

  “Signal flares,” Keth told Tris as he tucked them very gently into his belt purse. “Or tracking aids, I’m not sure which.”

  She smiled at him proudly. “Very good. You’re learning the most important thing an ambient mage can learn. Your power shapes itself to your need, if you put some thought into it.”

  Keth’s need to create a globe with a new image of a murder blossomed at last, shortly before they would have stopped for the day. Keth worked the glass with care. When it was done, he and Tris went outside. There he drew the lightning out of the globe, imagining his hand as a pair of tongs and the lightning itself as glass that he pulled into a new shape. Once he worked part of the lightning free of the globe, he sent it streaming to Tris. She guided it up into the sky, where it slithered into thunderheads that had already begun to voice the odd rumble or two.