this morning, trying as hard as he could,” she said.
“I know,” Dema said with understanding. “When you’ve drained yourself, that’s it. You have to eat and rest until your strength comes back.”
“It’s not just her coddling me?” Keth asked, his voice sluggish. His back was to them.
“I don’t coddle,” Tris said sharply.
“No, she isn’t,” Dema added. “Every mage learns, when you’re finished for the day, you’re finished. You’ll only make yourself ill if you try to do more magic. Look here, I know a good eating-house near the arurimat. I’ll pay — it’s the least I can do in trade for this.” He pointed to the globe Tris still held. She put it in the basket she’d used to carry Chime’s food and dishes, and handed it to him:
Dema accepted the basket with a bow of thanks. “I hope you’ll come, too, Tris.”
She smiled. “Thank you, but I’m tired. I think I’ll go back to Heskalifos. Keth, you are taking Dema up on his offer, yes?”
Dema grinned at her, then looked at Keth. A trace of concern crossed his sharp brown features. “Come on, old man,” he urged Kethlun. “They’ve got a sauce for lamb cooked on skewers that will make you think you dine with the emperor of Aliput.”
“Then he goes home to sleep,” Tris added. She sighed. “And we wait for the globe to clear.”
Dema made the circle of the All-Seeing on his forehead. “Maybe it will clear before time,” he said.
Keth looked at him and smiled crookedly. “An optimistic lawkeeper. Now there is something unusual.”
“Have a proper meal and you’ll be an optimist, too,” Dema said, ushering Keth out of the workshop.
Tris watched the two men walk away, smiling when Dema draped an arm over Keth’s shoulder. She’d got a very favourable impression of the arurim dhaskoi the previous night, once they’d got over their original misunderstanding about the use of torture. As he’d questioned Keth, she’d watched his face and listened to his voice. He wanted to catch the Ghost, and she didn’t think it was all about glory for Dema. It didn’t seem to be much about the yaskedasi, either, but Tris would settle for what she thought he did want, the end of the killer’s lawlessness.
Once the men were gone, she went into the glass shop to ask Keth’s cousin Antonou a favour. Would he mind if she left Little Bear and Chime in the courtyard for a few hours? She would get them later, without disturbing the family. Not only did Antonou agree, but his quiet, shy wife found a meal of table scraps for Little Bear. Tris thanked them, and ordered the dog and dragon to wait for her return. She brushed the soot and dirt from her pale green dress — woven and sewn by Sandry, it refused all stains and hardly wrinkled — and headed down the street.
This Ghost mess revolved around Khapik, and Tris had yet to see the place. She had heard of it, long before they had reached Tharios. Other travellers, learning where they were bound, sang the praises of Khapik: its gardens, its entertainers, its food, its wine. The best performers worked there at some point in their careers; the guests who saw them spread their names from the Cape of Grief in the south to Blaze-Ice Bay in the north. Some men had spoken more fondly of Khapik than they did of their families. To Tris it seemed that many of the young people they’d met were saving their money for one holiday only, at Khapik.
She’d seen Khapik when they rode into Tharios, of course, or at least, its brightly painted walls. Normally she might not have gone there. While she loved music, acting, tumbling and food, she thought it folly to pay for such things when she had to watch every copper. Now, though, Keth’s globes had given her an excuse at least to look around.
She joined a river of visitors all headed in the same direction, on foot, in sedan chairs, on horse, camel, or donkey-back. The caravan master who’d brought her and Niko to Tharios had mentioned that no wagons were permitted inside Khapik. She wondered if the prathmun had to carry the garbage, night soil and dead bodies out of Khapik by hand, without using their carts. She wanted to ask a prathmun who drove his cart across the Street of Glass if that was the case, but there were too many Tharians around, all retreating from cart and driver, most