Keth pointed, then dropped his hand before she saw that it shook. “With the braid. The lightning thing. You’re sparking.”
Tris frowned, then looked at the braid in her hand. “This?” she asked, scraping the lightning from her hair. “It’s nothing.” She closed her hand, then opened it to reveal a tiny ball of lightning.
The hair on Keth’s arms and at the back of his neck rose, prickling against his shirt. “Please put that away.”
She pursed her lips and ran the ball of lightning over the braid it had come from. It vanished. “Kethlun, you won’t get very far like this. You have to overcome your fear of lightning.”
“Well, I won’t,” he retorted. “You’d understand if it made a cripple out of you and then turned your world on its ear.”
“I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that you may be immune now,” she offered.
“No,” Keth said flatly. “Now will you drop the subject?”
She did, but only because Jumshida had returned. “That’s settled,” the woman told Keth and Tris with satisfaction. “Now, Kethlun. Where do you stay? Touchstone Glass?”
“I live at Ferouze’s, on Chamberpot Alley, in Khapik,” he replied.
“Khapik?” Jumshida asked, startled. “You live in Khapik?”
“Lodging is cheap in Khapik,” explained Kethlun. “And it’s safer than in Hodenekes.”
“Safer?” Jumshida raised her eyebrows. “But surely they steal from you. Yaskedasi are born thieves.”
Keth shook his head. “Not the ones I live with, dhasku,” he replied. “Besides, everyone knows that if Khapik is the best you can afford, you don’t have anything worth stealing.”
“Well, I won’t hear of your going back to lodgings in Khapik,” Jumshida told Keth. “We brought chairs to ride in — you must be exhausted. You need a proper meal and rest, and you and Tris have things to settle tomorrow. Come along.”
Keth didn’t argue. The truth was that Jumshida’s house was pleasant and cool; Ferouze’s place was hot and stuffy, and he would have been forced to buy his supper. He’d got better at accepting free meals since he’d left his wealthy family’s house in Dancruan.
Nomasdina stopped him as he was about to walk out of the arurimat. “Think about what I suggested, that’s all I ask,” the arurim dhaskoi said to both Keth and Tris. “One of those balls might turn the tables on this monster.”
Long habit brought Tris and Niko downstairs the next morning shortly after dawn, despite their late bedtime. They ate breakfast in silence, the quiet broken only by noise made by the cook as she brought dishes and took them away. When her last plate had been removed, Tris sat with her head propped on her hand, while Niko had a second cup of tea.
All kinds of thoughts had been rolling through Tris’s mind. Many of them she preferred to keep to herself. It was the most recent one that bothered her. “Niko?”
“You’re the only one who can teach him,” he said instantly.
“It’s not that,” she said. “I know that!”
“What then?”
“Kethlun’s not going to like me telling him to do things, is he?” she asked. “Sooner or later he’ll forget the lightning and remember I’m just fourteen.”
“Gods,” Niko said wearily. “No, I’m not grumbling. You’re right. But Tris, teaching mages is different from teaching normal students in any event.” He rubbed his temple with his free hand. “It’s a matter of persuasion, not orders. Even if a student accepts your command, his magic might not. You have to work around it. Every teacher fumbles a bit until he finds the right approach to each new student. Your task is just twice as hard because Keth is a grown man. Try to understand his feelings.”
Tris nodded thoughtfully. It had occurred to her that she also had to find a way around his fear of her lightning before he could learn much. Niko had just confirmed her thinking. If Keth was to catch the Ghost, a cure for that fear should come sooner, rather than later.
With breakfast done, Tris took Little Bear into the courtyard and tethered him there with a meaty bone the cook had set aside. Then, with only Chime in a sling on her back as a companion, she set out for the heart of Heskalifos, following the maze of flagstone paths that covered the grounds. Except for the odd prathmun clearing away rubbish, the grounds were deserted. Even the clerks and teachers who worked here would not start their day until the third hour of the morning. That was fine with Tris. She didn’t want any