to calm the servants, shared out the flames with the cook, the housekeeper and even the trembling maid, then went to finish straightening her room. She hated to let others do housework, but looking after her own room and the workroom that Tris shared with Niko was all Jumshida’s staff would permit her to do. After a light breakfast, she made a shawl into a sling, tucked Chime into it, then set off for Touchstone Glass with her dog at her heels. She would check on Kethlun as she had promised Niko, then explore more of the city’s glass shops.
She had almost reached Touchstone when the flare of magic caught her eye. Three priests, two in white tunics, one in a kyten, all in white head-veils and complex red stoles that marked them as servants of Tharios’s All-Seeing God, stood where an alley opened on to the Street of Glass. One priest wielded a censer of smoking incense: cypress, Tris’s nose told her, with myrtle, cedar and clove — cypress for death, myrtle for peace, clove for protection, cedar for purification. A white candle burned between the priests on the ground. The female priest carried a basket full of them. The third priest was the mage. Power flowed from his moving hands and lips to sink into the ground under the candle.
“What’s going on?” Tris asked the stocky older man who leaned against the open door of Touchstone.
“A man dropped dead there last night,” the Tharian replied. He was plump and grey-haired, light-skinned for a Tharian, with small, sharp, brown eyes and a chunky nose. He wore a pale blue tunic. His shopkeeper’s short, dark green stole lay over his shoulders, its ends hanging even with the hem of his tunic. “Once the prathmun collect the remains and scrub the site, the priests must cleanse the area of all taint of, well, death. No one here may do business until then.”
“Everything dies,” Tris pointed out, watching as the air between the three priests turned magic-white. “Do you also cleanse for dead animals and insects?”
The shopkeeper shrugged. “You are a shenos. You’re not used to our ways. The death of humans, the highest form of life, clings to all that it touches. It must be cleansed, or everyone who comes near will be polluted.”
The priests turned their backs on the space they had just cleansed. As one they clapped their hands three times, then walked off. It was neatly and precisely done, with the deftness of long practice.
“Well, thank heavens the prathmun were here first thing,” remarked the shopkeeper. “Sometimes they don’t come until late in the day. The place can’t be cleansed until the remains are gone, and we can’t open our doors until the cleansing is done. Lucky for us the district prathmun are reliable, as their kind go.”
Tris wiped her forehead on her sleeve to hide her scowl. Of all the peculiar foreign customs she had encountered since travelling south with Niko, she wasn’t sure which she disliked more: the creation of the prathmun class, or the need to ritually cleanse anything touched by death. Tris thought the treatment of prathmun was cruel and the pollution of death stupid. Thinking about it called on every speck of control over her temper that she had.
“Have a good day,” the man said. He started to open the shutters on his shop. Tris, remembering why she had come, said, “Actually, Koris. . .” She didn’t know the man’s name.
“Antonou Tinas,” the shopkeeper informed her and bowed.
“Koris Tinas,” Tris said, with a polite bow in reply. “I’m here to see a man who works for you, Kethlun Warder.”
“Keth’s not in just now,” Antonou replied. “I’m not — Hakkoi’s hammer,” he whispered, calling on the Living Circle’s god of smiths and glassmakers, “what is that!” He pointed to Tris’s bosom.
Tris glanced down. A small, clear glass muzzle with hair-fine whiskers stuck out of the shawl as Chime peered up at her. The girl smiled and tickled the dragon’s chin with a gentle finger. “That is why I need to talk to Koris Warder,” she explained.
“May my fires never die,” murmured the older man. “Come in, Koria —?”
“Chandler,” replied Tris, following Antonou into the shop. It was a relief to get out of the sun, even with her usual cocoon of breezes wrapped around her. “Trisana Chandler.”
“Please sit down, Koria Chandler,” Antonou urged, indicating a chair. This shop was meant for customers, unlike the workroom at the back. The floors and counter-tops were covered