count of seven, stopped for a count of seven, then began to inhale once more. Like magic his troubled mind instantly calmed. He could almost smell his mother’s lavender sachet, his father’s spicy hair pomade, the scent of baking bread in the kitchen. Gently he slid his pipe into the crucible, into the mass of molten glass, and collected a glob of it at the pipe’s end. Bringing it out, he began to spin the pipe as he blew into it carefully.
“Let your mind drift,” murmured that sharp voice, its edges blunted. “Close your eyes — I’ll watch for you. Clouds go by, you smell spring rain — ”
His mood shattered. He smelled hot metal and death. The hairs on his arms went stiff: lightning was here! He had enough sense to yank his mouth away from the pipe before he gasped in panic. The bubble at the end of the rod shimmered, then flashed with lightning. Miniature bolts rippled on its surface and through the centre of the globe so thickly, it was impossible to see inside it.
Amberglass raised her hands and snapped her fingers. The bubble tore free of Kethlun’s pipe and flew to her. She caught it in her palms. If the hot glass burned her, she gave no sign of it.
Trembling, Kethlun lowered the rod. “I did say — ”
“Be quiet,” she snapped, eyes fixed on the ball.
He knew the voice of a master; he shut up. Quietly he cleaned the excess glass from the pipe, cleared the inside of the pipe, and put it away. When he finished, he glanced at the stool. Amberglass was gone. She soon returned, with his companion clerk who carried the lightning ball, tucked into a silk-lined basket. Keth noticed that the lightning that covered the outside of the ball seemed to have no effect on the silk.
“This is beyond my skills,” Amberglass told him. Her gaze gentled slightly. “I’m sending you to Dhaskoi Rainspinner. He works on weather.”
With anyone else Kethlun might have complained, but not with this woman. She had gone to some trouble to see precisely what was wrong with him. He bowed to her, resigned, and followed the clerk to the upper floors of Mages’ Hall.
By the end of the afternoon, Kethlun was more adrift than he had been that morning. He had seen two more mages after Rainspinner. Like Amberglass, they had sent him on to other glass mages or weather mages. Keth yearned to go home. If he spent much more time up here, Yali would have left Ferouze’s and gone to perform by the time he got home.
When the clock struck the fourth hour, his guide led him back to the area where the mages’ clerks sat, copying out schedules and lessons and reviewing correspondence. “You’ll have to return tomorrow,” the clerk said, wetting a reed pen in a pot of ink. He had placed the basket, with its sparking glass ball, at the farthest corner of his desk. The clerks at neighbouring desks inched away from it. “Present yourself at — ”
“Come back?” Keth asked, cursing his slow speech. What he wanted to do was scream, but he couldn’t. If he didn’t force himself to speak carefully, the stammer would return. Then no one would be able to understand him. He leaned on the counter between him and the clerks, his head and feet aching. “I have a debt to pay, work to do. I cannot spend my l-life h-here waiting like a pet dog. Aren’t y-you p-people sup-posed to help?” There, he heard it: the stutter. He thrust the knuckle of his index finger into his mouth and bit down just hard enough to grab his attention, pulling it away from his fury. He did meditation breathing until he thought he could continue. None of the clerks had budged since he started talking. “Your charter says you are duty bound to instruct new mages,” he said, letting each word finish its journey from his mouth before he tried the next sound. “Well, here I am. All new and shiny, fresh from the lightning strike. I need help now. Who knows what I will make next, when I do not know what I am doing?”
People were emerging from their offices. Most wore tunics and kytens, with the mage-blue stole looped to waist-length in front and left to dangle to the knees behind. Kethlun looked around, counted, and gulped: twenty-three mages now stood in the room.