dragon while forcing her weary arms to undo one of her tidal braids. It had taken a third of the strength from that braid before Tris could get to her feet, and another third from the opposite tidal braid to get her and Chime down the steps. In the end she drew off all the power of both braids to feel like her old self. Normally she wouldn’t have used so much, not when she would pay the price later, but she and Keth had work to do before he could try another lightning globe. The sooner they got to it, the fewer yaskedasi would meet their end at the Ghost’s hands.
All the way back to Jumshida’s, Tris cursed in Tradertalk and in street slang from two countries. If she could scry the winds, see all they had touched, she might have found the idiot. She might not have used so much of her strength to hunt for storms if she could have seen from the beginning where they were.
She might be able to see the Ghost.
This was mad. As Niko and Jumshida kept saying, their conference was the single greatest collection of vision mages brought together in their time. Surely one of them should know about wind-scrying!
But she had a duty first, to Keth. She remembered how it felt, to believe she was cursed because so many strange things happened when she was present. She remembered how it felt, to get those things under control. Keth had the first claim on her time. She had to guide him before she tried to chase a kind of magic so rare that even Niko did not know who could do it.
As she walked into the courtyard of Jumshida’s house, she heard loud, belligerent voices around the side, by the servants’ entrance. Curious, she went to look. The cook stood in the kitchen door, arms folded over her comfortable bosom, the very picture of an outraged Tharian woman. The person who had drawn the cook’s ire was a slender brunette in her twenties, gaudily dressed and even more gaudily made-up. She wore pomade with bits of mica in it so her curls glittered, even under her yellow head veil. A wisp of breeze carried lavender scent to Tris’s sensitive nose.
“You obviously have the wrong house, Koria Yaskedasu,” the cook was saying coldly. “This is a decent residence. I assure you that no one you might be seeking would set foot in here.”
A prathmun, collecting night soil from the alley that ran beside the servants’ entrance, snorted as he emptied a barrel into his cart. Chime climbed out of the sling on Tris’s back to look at the man, who gaped when he saw her glittering in the morning sun. The moment he realized that Tris was smiling at him, pleased he had an eye for Chime’s beauty, he turned away and busied himself at his work. The cook and the yaskedasu didn’t so much as glance at him.
“I was told he was here,” the yaskedasu told the cook, her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry if it offends you, Koria Respectability, but I want to know how he is!”
The cook gasped. “All-Seeing guard us, you hussies get bolder every day!” she cried. She looked beyond the young woman’s shoulder and saw Tris. “Koria Tris, I apologize that we disturbed you. This — person — was just leaving.”
“Not until I know he’s all right,” the brunette insisted. She turned to look at Tris with large, suspicious brown eyes set over a short nose and full mouth. Tris noted the cheap wool of her kyten and the clumsy embroideries in gaudy thread. The yaskedasu wore brass bells on her wrists and cheap gilt jewellery at her throat and ears. Under the heavy white face paint and bright red lip and cheek colour worn by the entertainers at Khapik, she looked as weary as Tris had felt atop Phakomathen. “We heard that the Elya Street arurim dhaskoi, Nomasdina, took Keth to the arurimat last night, and the desk man at the arurimat says he came here with Dhasku Dawnspeaker.”
“And I told her we’d no more have one of those nimble-fingered Khapik sorts in here than we’d have a camel in the best bedchamber,” snapped the cook.
“Deiina!” whispered the brunette, pointing to Tris’s shoulder. “What is that?” Chime slid her head under Tris’s chin to peer at the yaskedasu. “It’s glass, and it’s moving. I’ve been up much too long.”