test if it were a proper mage’s token, it threw out a blaze of white light that left everyone but Tris blinking.
“I don’t joke,” Tris said, her voice flat. “It makes my head hurt. Where are you taking Keth? Who are you, anyway?”
The mage sighed. “My name is Demakos Nomasdina, arurim dhaskoi at the Elya Street arurimat. That’s where we’re taking this murder suspect, teacher or no teacher. And who are you?”
“Dhasku Trisana Chandler,” she retorted, giving herself the Tharian title. This superior young man would learn that she could not be pushed around. “And I’m coming with you.” She looked at the housekeeper. “Send someone for Jumshida and Niko. They’ll want to know about this.”
“Yes, dhasku,” the woman replied with a bow of the head.
“I hope you are a truthsayer,” Tris informed Nomasdina. She knew how to manage this. She had to keep him on the defensive, and not allow him time to think that she was only fourteen, medallion or not. “Because I doubt that Dhasku Jumshida Dawnspeaker will be happy to learn a guest of hers was abused.” From the looks exchanged by the arurimi and the mage, she knew she’d hit a nerve. She’d hoped that Jumshida’s name and position — that of First Scholar of Mages’ Hall and Second Scholar of Heskalifos — would throw a damper on things. “Or did you not notice whose house this is?”
The mage reassembled his lofty facial expression. “She may vouch for him at Elya Street,” he informed Tris. “And there are truth spells I can use. First, though, we are going to see the woman he murdered.”
“I didn’t — ” Keth began, only to receive Tris’s elbow in his ribs.
Before he could ask why she’d poked him, Tris told Dema, her voice as lofty as his, “Then I go with him.” To Chime, who waited on the dining-room table still, she said, “You stay here.”
First they had gone to the Fifth District Forum, where Keth saw the reality of the image inside the glass ball. Numb all over, voiceless with pity over this unknown yaskedasu, he was only dimly aware of the quarrel between Nomasdina and the priests of the All-Seeing. He overheard snippets. The priests had wanted to take the dead woman away two hours ago, but they had agreed to wait until the arurim dhaskoi confronted Keth with the crime he was supposed to have committed. Keth knew he’d disappointed Dhaskoi Nomasdina when he didn’t crumble and shout out his guilt. All he could do, seeing the tumbler’s remains, was address a prayer to Yorgiry, the Namornese goddess of death and mercy, that she grant the dead woman a new, longer life.
When he could bear to look no longer, he turned away and inspected his surroundings. The arurimi who’d arrested Keth watched him, as intent as dogs looking at a bone just out of their reach. Keth shuddered. If the arurim dhaskoi’s truth spell didn’t work, and such spells were tricky if the caster didn’t originally have the ability to truth-read, Keth knew what came next: torture. Unless they had a truthsayer on duty at the arurimat. Somehow he didn’t think the district that included the charity hospital, Khapik and the slums of Hodenekes spent a great deal of money on truthsayers.
A small, nail-bitten hand rested on his arm briefly. “They’ll come,” Tris said quietly. “Niko and Jumshida. Nobody’s going to hurt you if we can help it.”
Keth stared at her, numb. How could she possibly say that? Was she so young that she didn’t know how things worked for outsiders in any city, in any nation? Jumshida was a Tharian; she wouldn’t protest the way things were done.
“That fellow Nomasdina keeps watching me for some sign of guilt,” he replied at last, feeling he ought to say something. “I suppose I’m going to have to tell him I knew one of the Ghost’s victims.”
“The Ghost?” Tris repeated with a frown.
“It’s what the yaskedasi are calling the murderer. Because he seems invisible. A girl disappears, and the next day she’s dead with a yellow veil around her neck.”
“You mean to tell me there’s been more than one killing?” asked Tris.
Keth looked at the poor dead creature now enclosed in a circle of protective magical fire. “Six, with her.”
The arurim dhaskoi Nomasdina stamped over to them, a scowl on his dark, lean features. “They can report me to the First arurim all they want,” he grumbled, more to himself than to Keth or Tris. “I had to