“And you don’t.” The way Niko said it, it was not a question.
“It’ll be a while before Keth can do magic to order instead of by accident,” Tris said frankly. “He seems to think that now he knows the problem, he can just get to work. And maybe he’s too involved. He knew one of the women; he watched another of them perform. He wants it to work too badly. It’s getting in his way.”
“You’ll have to find a way to calm him down,” Niko said, yawning. Suddenly he smiled. “Something I would give a great deal to see, actually.”
He’d lost Tris in his thinking. “What?” she asked. “What do you want to see?”
Now he grinned outright. “You, trying to calm someone down.”
Tris smiled, but wryly. “So funny I forgot to laugh,” she retorted.
Niko stretched. “I will laugh for us both, then.”
Tris ran her fingers over her book. “Niko?”
“Yes?”
“Have you ever been to Khapik?” she asked.
“Many times. Not since we came, but in my youth,” he admitted. “It had the unfortunate effect of sucking all the coins from my purse, so I stopped going.” His eyes were distant as he thought. “I remember it was very beautiful, particularly the area of streams and islands around the main gate.”
“It’s still there, and it’s still lovely,” Tris informed him. “Why would anyone want to ruin it? Maybe the yaskedasi aren’t as respectable as they could be, but they do such amazing things, and this Ghost is killing them.”
Niko sighed, his dark eyes gentle as he looked at her. “I’ve never known why anyone would destroy something beautiful, but such people exist.” For a long moment there was silence between them. Tris regarded the book in her lap while Niko watched her. At last he said, “Did you know that Lark used to work in Khapik?”
Tris’s head jerked up at the sound of her foster-mother’s name. “No!” she exclaimed. “She did?”
Her teacher nodded. “There was a year when the performing troupe she was with decided to rest for a few seasons and create new material. They stayed and performed in Khapik.”
“She wore that dreadful yellow veil?” Tris asked, the hair on her arms prickling. She loved Lark. The thought that a killer like the Ghost might have gone anywhere near her was chilling.
“Actually, I believe she wore it as a neck scarf,” Niko replied, his eyes sombre. “There’s a frightening thought.”
Tris made the sign of the Living Circle on her chest.
Niko sighed. “It’s late. I’m off to bed, unless there’s something else you need?”
“Someone to teach me to scry the wind,” she said wryly. “I could send my breezes searching for the killer in Khapik, if I could see things in them.”
Niko rubbed his temples. “Tris, in some ways it’s very like seeing the future, you know,” he pointed out. “You’re showered with different images and events — how do you sort one from another? That’s why future seers are as rare as lightning mages. Most go mad from sheer confusion. Does it really mean so much to you?”
“I feel useless,” Tris admitted. “Like a bride’s attendant to Keth — I get to hold the basket of herbs, but he’s the one who says the vows.”
“Do you think I’m useless?” asked Niko. “Or Lark, or Frostpine, or Rosethorn, or Crane?” He’d named the main people who had taught her and her friends at Winding Circle.
“No!” cried Tris, startled. “You’re wonderful, all of you!”
“You will produce wonders in Keth, I’m sure of it,” Niko said. “Think again about scrying for something that will drown you in visions. The price you pay is every bit as high as what you’ll pay when the strength of lightning and tides runs out of you.” With a tired wave, he went off to bed.
Tris thought about what he’d said for a long time.
He’d got a proper meal into Keth. It seemed like the least he could do, when Keth had worked himself into numb silence trying to produce a vision of the next murder before it came to be. Dema knew that state of unblinking exhaustion all too well. Every student mage reached that point. He wished he had a bik for every time he had poured out all of his power over the course of a day, until he simply had nothing left.
He made sure an arurim saw Keth home, giving the arurim coins to buy Keth a honeycomb and good tea in one of the Khapik skodi along the way. Keth