wonderful if we had someone who could actually write about it as they do it.”
Tris slumped on the stool. “Oh.”
“Scrying the wind is very difficult, Tris,” Niko said gently. “It’s like scrying the future. You’re assailed with thousands of images — fragments, really. It drives many who try it insane.”
“You learned to scry the future,” Tris pointed out.
“And a number of people have informed me they think I am mad,” Niko replied, his voice very dry.
“Niko!” someone yelled from downstairs. “Will you hide all night? We’re starving. And Lieshield refuses to discuss anything else before we choose who will do the index!”
“And so it begins,” Niko said wearily, straightening his clothes. “We could be here for decades.” He stopped to give Chime a gentle caress. “You could always bring her down to distract my colleagues,” he suggested, hope in his eyes. “You could meet some of your peers.”
“I could always pull my ears from my head, too,” replied Tris. “It would be just as much fun. You know I hate parties.”
Niko sighed. “You’ve always been too sensible for me. Check on this Warder fellow tomorrow,” he reminded her. “Make sure he has a teacher.”
Antonou Tinas had agreed to give Kethlun shop-room, but that didn’t include sleeping quarters. The small building on the other side of the shop was just big enough to hold the old man, his wife, their youngest daughter and her husband. From the sound of the quarrels, Kethlun wasn’t even sure that there was room for the younger couple. There was certainly no room for Keth.
At the end of the day, Keth closed the workshop. After saying good night to Antonou, he walked down the Street of Glass to his home, located inside the entertainment district known as Khapik. It wasn’t the best housing, as the district hosted quite a few people who regarded theft as an art form, but it was interesting and cheap. Students and young journeymen like Keth could afford Khapik’s prices and also be entertained for free. Residents and guests spanned the full spectrum of performance, all lumped together under the name yaskedasi: poorer mages, actors, musicians, tumblers, dancers, illusionists, singers, gamblers and fortune-tellers. Other residents and employees included outright criminals; servants and cooks at the many eating-houses, theatres, inns, coffee and tea houses; and clerks who served in the multitude of shops that offered everything under the sun: clothing, souvenirs, jewellery, art, flowers and musical instruments.
Keth liked Khapik. There were things to see and do no matter how late the hour. Everyone came here sooner or later: foreigners, nobles, students and merchants — male and female — going from attraction to attraction. Keth’s slow speech, occasional stammer, and slight clumsiness went unnoticed in a district where the beggars were missing body parts and the poorer folk were missing teeth. No one cared that he didn’t talk much: here good listeners were in popular demand. Best of all, the occasional storms that swept through Tharios spent their lightning bolts on towers. There were no towers in Khapik.
After a few changes of address, Kethlun had settled at Ferouze’s lodgings on Chamberpot Alley. Ferouze let rooms cheaply, to yaskedasi and anyone else who could pay. Keth couldn’t see what had brought fame as a yaskedasu to this old, fat, snaggle-haired woman, but her house and her linens were clean and she had enough healing skills to treat the small injuries that befell even the most careful performer. She also played chess. With her help Keth was regaining his old skill at the game.
When he entered the house, built like other Tharian homes around a central courtyard, Keth was surprised to find it so quiet. This was the hour when the place should be waking up, with six yaskedasi in residence. Ferouze’s watchdogs came trotting down the corridor to sniff him, then returned to their normal pursuits, allowing Keth to pass into the courtyard. The rooms on all three floors opened on to this small square of green where Ferouze had a kitchen garden and the well.
Normally the yaskedasi would be talking back and forth from the upstairs galleries around the courtyard, trading gossip and insults as they prepared for work. Today Keth found three of the girls seated on one of the staircases, and no sign of their landlady or the two men who lived there. The girls still wore day clothes, undyed wool kytens. None of them wore a speck of make-up; all had been crying. Yali sat with the absent Iralima’s four-year-old daughter