the table, where he picked up the glass ball with the gruesome scene at its heart.
“I’m sticking my neck out,” he admitted, “but I believe you are innocent. That won’t be enough for my superiors. I’m new at this. While mages know we must listen to and rely on what our instincts tell us, the regular arurimi are quick to tell me I’m a newborn babe in this business of the law.”
The clerk ducked her head to hide a smile.
“We’ll wait for a truthsayer. If yours doesn’t come, I’ll pay for one out of my own pocket. Will that satisfy you?” Nomasdina asked Tris.
She smiled sweetly. “I’ll wait until I actually see a truthsayer, thanks all the same,” she replied.
“It grieves me to find one so young who is this cynical,” Nomasdina said to no one in particular. “But let me ask you both something.” He hefted the globe in his hands. “If Kethlun here isn’t the Ghost and this globe isn’t a confession, then it is a way to see the future, maybe. The time the clerk said the lightning faded and he could see the image was close to the time the dead woman was left in the Forum, or the time we were meant to find her. What if you made another of these, and tried to clear it of lightning immediately?”
Keth scratched his head. “Why would I want to go through that again?” he asked, not unreasonably, he thought. “Perhaps you’re accustomed to death and murder, Dhaskoi Nomasdina. I’m not. I got into glassmaking because I love beautiful things.”
Nomasdina drew himself up, his face taking on that lofty, distant, proud cast that it had worn when he came to Jumshida’s house to arrest Keth. “Are you a citizen of Tharios?” he demanded.
“No,” Keth replied.
Nomasdina’s face quivered. A smile made him human again. “Very true. Look, Koris Warder, I can understand you don’t want to face this pollution, even with glass between you and it. But consider: you might save another yaskedasu from death. Better, you might give us a look at our murderer. You can be cleansed after.”
Keth sighed. “I don’t know how I did it.”
Nomasdina looked at Tris. “You might consider making such globes as teaching him his craft.”
Tris was not attending to the conversation. She sat up straight, her eyes on the door. It swung open.
“I do not appreciate learning that guests have been taken from my house without my leave.”
Keth recognized that haughty voice: Jumshida Dawnspeaker. In she swept, dressed for the most elegant circles in a bronze silk kyten with beaded hems, heavy gold earrings set with pearls, and a matching bronze stole. Niklaren Goldeye came behind her, dapper in a white silk overrobe, white shirt and white trousers.
The silver barrier around Keth vanished. He saw threads of it stream back into Tris’s hands.
Jumshida looked at the soot-streaked arurim dhaskoi, who grimaced and bowed to her, then at Nomasdina’s captain, who had followed her and Niko. “As well for you he hasn’t been tortured,” she said sharply. “Kethlun Warder, did you murder the woman who was found tonight?” Niko shaped signs in the air with his fingers.
“No,” Keth said wearily. “She just appeared in that glass bubble I made.”
Soft white light radiated around him, the sign that he told the truth under a properly applied truth spell.
“Did you kill any of the Ghost’s victims?” asked Jumshida.
“No,” Keth answered.
Once more the soft light shone.
“Satisfied, captain?” Jumshida asked. She didn’t even wait for the answer, but looked at Nomasdina. “If we may have the documents for his release? And next time, I recommend more caution, should you attempt to set a truth spell on someone whose magic is rooted in an unpredictable source, such as lightning.”
‘I’ll require Dhaskoi Goldeye’s signature,“ Nomasdina said. His brown cheeks were flushed under the soot that marked him when his truth spell went wrong.
“This way,” the captain said, bowing. “You understand we must interrogate all suspects in this so delicate a matter…” Jumshida, Niko, Nomasdina and the clerk followed the man out of the room. The door closed gently.
Keth sighed in relief, and dropped on to the stool Nomasdina had vacated. He looked over at Tris. The girl slouched in her chair, her spectacles near the end of her long nose, running her fingers along one of her thin braids. Silver glinted over every hair of the braid. Sparks followed her grasp.
“Please don’t do that,” Keth said nervously.
Her grey eyes flicked over to meet his. She thrust her spectacles