way to show her how to get her power to tell her about metals she couldn’t see.
Finished, Tris knelt behind the row of things she had set up at Kethlun’s back. If she remembered her own lessons properly, the idea was to keep her voice soft and her movements quiet, until the teacher’s voice seemed almost like part of the students thoughts. As he inhaled she whispered, “Keth, feel for the power that moves in you. Find it in you, find where it runs. Gather it strand by strand to you. Slowly, slowly.”
She repeated it over and over, watching as the silver tracework of magic in his body drew in. Multitudes of glittering pale threads that ran through his muscles came together, their tracks thickening as they merged. Once she judged that he had gripped as much as he could manage, she said, “Let that power flow out behind you. Let it spread there. Let it cover everything behind you. Let it run towards me, let it flow…”
His breath hitched in his throat as his mind fumbled with this new trick. The heavier strands of magic began to pull apart. Tris went silent, waiting. At last Keth found his breathing rhythm and tried again.
Three tries later, the power he’d gathered flowed out to cover Tris and the things that she had set there. It was cool on her skin, as if she were coated in fluid, cold glass. Tris savoured the relief from the heat, then drew her thumb and forefinger down a thin braid to coax a grain of lightning from her hair. The spark glimmered on her fingertip as Tris touched it to the first thing she had set at Keth’s back.
“Stay as you are,” she began softly. “Tell me what I’m touching back here.” She had meant to say that she used lightning to point, then changed her mind. His magic would know the difference between lightning and glass. “Find me with your power and tell me what I’m touching.” That should be easy. They had lightning and fire in common, if precious little else.
“Bowl.” Kethlun’s lips barely moved, he was so deep within himself. “Blown glass, green, stylized birds impressed around the sides by tongs.”
“Do you know this because you recognize the piece, or because you feel it with your power?” Tris wanted to know.
“It — it’s there,” he said, his voice agonizingly slow. “In the glass. In its shape. It knows — it knows what it is.”
Tris raised her eyebrows, impressed. Perhaps his glassmaker’s training made it easier for him to know so much about the bowl. She lifted her finger away, still with the spark of lightning on it, and touched the next piece. He identified an undecorated blue glass bottle, a clear vase blown on to a mould of a many-petalled rose, and an over-heated piece of cloudy glass that Tris had taken from the cullet, or junk glass, barrel.
The last item at Keth’s back was Chime. She had curled into a cat-style ball to nap.
Tris restored her spark to its braid. “What do I touch now?” she asked. Keth shouldn’t need her to lead him to Chime, not when the dragon was infused with lightning. “There’s one more item behind you.”
Keth fidgeted. He twitched his shoulders, then yelped and tried to scramble away, not remembering that his legs were crossed and that he’d been sitting in that position for quite a while. He pitched forward on to his face, his ankles tangled behind him. After a moment he said grumpily, his nose mashed flat on the beaten earth of the floor, “Chime. That stings!”
“There’s quite a bit of lightning in her, even though she’s so small,” admitted Tris, speaking in her normal volume. “You did really well. I hope you know that.”
“Good. Are we done?”
Tris scowled. She had done the right thing, praising him. He should appreciate it; she didn’t give compliments easily. A more patient part of her whispered that he didn’t know that. She took her own deep breath, counting until her temper settled. Only then did she say, “No. Now you’ll try blowing glass.”
Chime squeaked and scrambled under a bench. Keth rolled over to untangle himself. “About time. He could be killing a yaskedasu right now.”
“Start the meditation breathing as you start your gather,” Tris instructed as he prepared to work.
“You know what a gather is?” he asked, shaking out his shoulders.
“I like to watch glassblowers, and often they let me ask questions,” replied Tris.