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 snivelling 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. Grey 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 lightning,” she said, grey 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 might 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