it will be the same for me. I’m an adult. She was — is — a child. Patiently he reminded her, “I can meditate, I know I have magic now. All I need is practice.”
“And if it were just a matter of glass magic, you would probably be right,” she replied. “You’re a journeyman in your guild. I concede your knowledge of glassmaking. But you’ve forgotten that small matter of lightning. It’s tricky. It doesn’t do what you expect. Magic itself is like lightning, only worse.”
“You manage to work it pretty well,” Keth said, frowning at her. For the first time in months he felt that control of his life was within his grasp, and here she was trying to muddle it.
“How do you think I got so fast at throwing up protections?” Tris asked. “And some unusual things happened to help me grip it better than most people ever learn to do. Those things won’t happen for you. Don’t expect to hand Dhaskoi Nomasdina a clear globe this evening.”
“Well, the sooner we start, the sooner we know,” he snapped, impatient. The gall of her, trying to patronize him! “So let’s move, already.”
He stalked out of the house, fuming, without looking to see if she kept up or not. She judged everything by herself and her little friends. Children learned by rote because it would be years before they understood the ideas behind the memorization. He’d seen it over and over with apprentices. Tris had to realize that an adult like Keth would make good progress, now that he knew what he dealt with.
Tris let Keth go. Without rushing she put on Chime’s sling and packed a basket of the dragon’s dishes and foods, then beckoned for Chime to hop into the sling. Once the dragon was settled, Tris went into the courtyard and put a leash on Little Bear. After leaving word with the cook about where she would be, she set out along the Street of Glass with her dog, letting him sniff and ornament whatever he wanted to. It was better to let Keth walk his temper off now. He would be in a quieter frame of mind when she reached Touchstone.
She knew what he was thinking. Over and over in these last four years she had seen it: adults always believed they knew more than younger people. Normally this was true, but magecraft always turned the normal world on its head. The rules that governed accounting houses, craft shops, armies and trade were not the rules of magic, even craft magic. Keth’s problem was not his skill. It was the crazed power that was a combination of air, water, heat and cold. Lightning never formed or struck the same way twice. Tris understood that, and managed it. It was something Keth would learn, if she could stop him from getting killed in the process.
“I wish Lark was here,” she told Little Bear and Chime as they passed through Labrykas Square. “She can gentle anybody into doing anything. He’d even thank her for it.” Tris sighed. “I’m not good like Lark. I don’t know how to gentle anybody. We don’t have the time for me to step nicely around his being an adult stuck with a teacher who’s a kid.” When most people used that word, it meant “baby goat”, but to Briar, the street urchins of Summersea and Briar’s foster-sisters, “kid” would always mean someone who was not an adult.
Mila of the Grain, give me patience, Tris prayed as she walked around the side of Touchstone Glass. Yanna Healtouch, give me coolness to keep my temper down. Shurri Firesword, don’t strike him with your lightning arrows.
Kethlun had stripped off his shirt, donned a leather apron, and begun to make something. Carefully he worked a lump of liquid glass at the end of his blowpipe. He wasn’t blowing this piece. He used the pipe to hold the glass as he manipulated it with tongs, pulling out long tendrils and flipping them inward at the end. Tris could see that he breathed in the slow, steady count of meditation. In her magical vision his skin flickered with lightning, but it was gentle, a shimmer rather than a blaze. Working glass calmed him. Perhaps she could use that in her teaching.
If he had seen her, he didn’t show it. His big hands and blue eyes were steady as he pulled the glass, thrust the piece back into the furnace to heat, then worked it again. Tris and Chime stayed