with pale tiles in cream or beige to best display the glassware. Arranged neatly on shelves throughout the room were plates, bowls, vases, figures, bottles of every imaginable size, even pendants and ear and hair ornaments.
Tris sat and helped Chime out of her sling. “Don’t start flying about and breaking things,” she warned. “I can’t afford to pay for them.”
“May I?” asked Antonou, holding out his hands. “It’s not koria, is it? It’s dhasku,” He had properly identified her as a female mage.
“It’s just Tris,” she replied as she offered Chime to him. The glassblower gently wrapped his square, blunt-fingered hands around the willing dragon and sat on a stool, steadying Chime on his knees. Chime looked up into his face and gnawed one of his fingers.
“You should be careful,” warned Tris. “She tries to eat anything she sees.”
“I would be old and gamey to the taste,” Antonou told Chime. He surveyed the creature with wonder, noting each detail of her eyes, muzzle, feet and mouth. “You say Keth knows something about this creature?”
“He made her,” Tris replied, watching the glassblower’s face. Antonou was no mage; she had already looked inside him for that.
“Kefir?,” repeated the man, shocked. “Kethlun made this lovely being?”
A low, musical, steady note rose from Chime. “That’s her purr, I think,” explained Tris. “Be careful. You don’t want her to be vain.”
“A beauty like this has every right to be vain,” Antonou replied. Chime nibbled one of his shirt buttons. “Well, if Keth did this, it explains this morning,” Antonou commented. “He came here just after dawn, looking as if Hakkoi’s Firewights were on his trail. When he told me he’d got magic, like it’s a disease to be caught, and he needed to find a teacher, I thought he’d been drinking.”
Tris thrust her brass-rimmed spectacles up on her long nose. “I’m sure he thinks magic is a disease,” she said drily. “That’s how he acted yesterday. You say he’s looking for a teacher now?”
“At Heskalifos,” Antonou replied. “And magic explains more than it doesn’t. He was struck by lightning, you know.”
Tris stared at Antonou, mouth gaping, before she remembered her manners and closed it. When she had enough wit to speak again, she said, “He neglected to mention it.”
“Oh, well, he usually does, poor lad. He lived, but it made a shambles of his life.” Suddenly Antonou beamed at her. “Actually, this is wonderful news. A proper teacher can rid him of the malipi that’s gnawed on him since he came. Anyone could see he was troubled. I kept saying, go to Dhaskoi Galipion over on Witches Row. Whatever malipi rides you, he’ll be able to banish it.
“But young people, they don’t understand how many troubles come from the unseen world,” he continued, shaking his head. “They insist that all this reason and rationality that’s so popular these days proves there is no supernatural, only what the mind can grasp and make plain. ‘How about magic?’ I ask them, but they tell me magic is also governed by reason. Pah.” Antonou shook his head. “Law and reason are very well, but to say the gods are only tales told to comfort us… Hey, you!” Tris jumped. Antonou lunged over to a counter, where Chime was attempting to thrust her muzzle into a low, fat jar. “What is she looking for?” Antonou demanded.
“Food,” Tris said, getting to her feet. “Actually, Koris Antonou, what substances are used to colour glass, and where might I buy them? At this rate Chime’s going to eat all of my mage supplies.”
Antonou was happy to assist her. Half an hour later, he sent her off with a list and explanations for every item on it, and directions to the Street of Glass’s skodi, or marketplace. There Tharios’s glassworkers bought raw ingredients and residents could buy whatever they fancied in the way of plain glasswork. Tris would find all she needed to feed a glass dragon there.
She went happily, just as curious to see the raw materials of glassmaking as she was to see the work itself. A small part of her mind was uneasy about the information she had gathered from Antonou regarding Keth’s search for a teacher. That part of her demanded constantly, And what of the lightning? Lightning and glass don’t go together in the day-to-day world. Lightning melts glass. How can a glass mage teach him to combine the two?
Tris ignored that part of her mind. Keth was no longer her problem. That was all that mattered.