the taxing of his power, Keth slept the night through. His dreams were filled with lightning.
When he woke, it was to open shutters, early morning light and three familiar faces. No, four: Yali balanced the silent Glaki on one hip. The child sucked her thumb, her brown eyes large and steady as she looked at Keth. The women were still dressed and made up from the night before. He winced, started to get out of bed, and just in time remembered he had nothing on. He clutched the sheet to his chest.
“The Ghost got another one,” Xantha said, yawning as she leaned against the wall. “She was dead in some Fourth District temple. The gossip is that you magicked something that helped the arurim find her.”
“I wanted to make something that would help them find the killer,” growled Keth. “Did they?”
The three yaskedasi shook their heads.
“You never said you were a mage.” Poppy’s tone was accusing, as if she thought Keth had made it a secret on purpose.
“I didn’t know,” Keth retorted.
“How could you not know you’re a mage?” demanded Poppy. “Or are you just a bad one?”
“How could you not know Arania pays Lysis twice what she pays you to play Laurel Leaf in The Creation of the Garden?” Yali enquired. “Maybe you’re just a bad actress.”
Poppy glared at her. “She does not. It’s Lysis who can’t act.”
Yali shrugged. “Arania thinks otherwise.”
“Bring down your pots!” a man yelled outside. “Bring down your pots!”
Keth looked out of the window next to his cot. The prathmun who collected night soil was in the courtyard below, waiting for Ferouze’s lodgers to dump their chamberpots into the small barrel in his cart.
“He’s early,” said Xantha, running for the door.
“He’s late,” argued Poppy. No one in Khapik wanted a full chamberpot in their rooms during the day, when the heat made the smell overpowering.
Yali set Glaki by the door and stooped to fish Keth’s chamberpot out from under his bed.
“Yali, I can do it,” Keth protested, looking around for his breeches.
“But I’m up and awake.” Yali stopped on his threshold, her brown eyes curious as she gazed at him. “Are you all right? Ferouze says you barely made it upstairs last night.”
“I was just tired,” Keth replied. “This magic wears me out. We went at it hard yesterday, trying to just make a globe, not even to make whatever was inside visible. And I did one, I don’t know how, but then I couldn’t make it clear so we could see who this killer is.” He rubbed his face, then smiled at Yali. “Did you do well last night?”
“Well enough,” Yali answered. “I — ”
“Last call for pots!” cried the prathmun below.
“I’d better go,” said Yali, “before he leaves.”
“I’ll see you this afternoon,” Keth promised.
“If that slave-driver teacher doesn’t work you as weak as an overcooked noodle,” Yali said drily. With Glaki in tow, she ran to fetch her own chamberpot.
Keth got dressed. “I don’t think she can work what isn’t there,” he muttered. He could feel the power inside him, but the best way he could describe it was “floppy”, very like the noodle Yali had mentioned. In his skull he could hear the slight buzz he’d come to associate with his magic, but it was not what it had been the day before.
As he shaved, ate a roll for breakfast and walked out to Touchstone, he tried to recapture the feeling that had shot through him in that moment when Dema had distracted him — the moment when the globe had produced itself. He’d felt like the strain of forcing it down the length of the blowpipe into the glass had broken and freed the thing he’d been wrestling with. Was it a matter of not thinking about his magic? Or of not thinking about his craft? He wasn’t sure, and he wanted surety. He didn’t want any more dead yaskedasi.
When he reached Touchstone Glass, the glass shop itself was still closed. Antonou wouldn’t open for another hour. Keth decided not to bother the family. He went straight to the workshop. As he rounded the corner into the inner courtyard, he saw an arurim sergeant leaning against the well. She had been in command of the squad that had arrested him.
Keth stopped cold. “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it,” he snapped, wondering if he should yell for Antonou. The yaskedasi told plenty of tales of those who’d vanished into arurimati, to return so bruised their mothers didn’t know them.