Tris faced him, the wind turning her braids so they reached towards Keth like yearning hands. Quietly she said, “I don’t believe lightning has the power to hurt you any more. I think it would recognize you as a kindred spirit. But in case I’m wrong, and I suppose I could be, I can protect you from it. I can keep it off you. But Keth, for that to happen, you have to trust me.”
For a long moment he said nothing, his mind in an uproar. It did come to trust, didn’t it? She was his teacher. Until now she’d been a good one. “You threw lightning at me,” he reminded her. “That hurt.”
“Because you’d put all of yours into Chime.” Quick as a flash her hand whipped forward. A thin stream of lightning — where had she got it with her braids all done up? — shot between them to strike Keth’s crossed arms. His muscles twitched, then stilled. Nothing else happened.
“You did it again!” he yelled, outraged.
“That’s right.” Her eyes were cold and steady. “Just a bit I yanked from the air, with the storm almost on us. Did it hurt?”
“That’s beside the point!” he cried. “You threw — ”
“Did it hurt?” she interrupted, steely-voiced.
Keth struggled, trying to think of something cutting to say. Finally he snapped, “You tell me to trust you, then you throw lightning at me.”
It was her turn to cross her arms over her chest. “Show some sense, Keth. How else am I going to get you to listen to me, if you won’t take my word for it?”
Suddenly the wind went out of his sails. She was right. She was right, and he, a grown man, was wrong. “You won’t let it hurt me?” His voice emerged far smaller, and far more trembly, than he liked. “You said you’d protect me.”
“I will.”
Keth sighed and wiped his sweaty face with a hand that shook. “Let’s go, then.”
They climbed to the second-floor gallery, then up to the roof. Ferouze had already taken the wash down from the lines strung up here, leaving a few buckets and a bench to endure the storm.
Keth looked up. Rough black clouds billowed overhead. The wind rose, whistling through the streets and over the rooftops. In a lodging house across the way someone had not closed his shutters completely: they slammed in the wind until one ripped free of its hinges. The air had taken on the green hue of olive oil. Thunder rolled in the distance. Keth shivered, and huddled in a corner of the rooftop wall, Little Bear on his left, Chime tucked securely in his lap. He had thought he would be safe in this low part of Tharios that would not draw lightning. That no longer mattered with Tris here. With Tris for company, no place was safe.
I’ll protect you, she had said. Now he had to learn, did he need protection?
Tris stood at the centre of the roof, idly removing hairpins, releasing some braids. They hung below her shoulders, flapping and popping in the wind.
Lightning flashed. Keth waited, counting silently to himself. At thirty he heard the roll of thunder. The storm was fifteen kilometres away — plenty of time to scramble downstairs, except that now he couldn’t bring himself to move.
Lightning again. Keth resumed his count, ending when thunder boomed at twenty. Ten kilometres. The storm moved fast. Another flash, and another. Thunder made the stones under him shiver. He hoped Glaki wasn’t frightened. He couldn’t remember if Ira had ever said if her child was afraid of storms. Keth had never been afraid, one of the reasons he was stupid enough to be caught in the open when the Syth blew up a surprise.
Lightning jabbed down near the Piraki Gate. Thunder blasted through the narrow canyons made by the buildings.
Here came another bolt, three-pronged, thunder on its heels. It struck Tris squarely, all three prongs twining around her. She held up her arms; she laughed as the bolt clung to her without vanishing, a white-hot ladder to the clouds. Several of her braids exploded from their ties, the hair in them wrapping around the lightning that secured her to the sky. Oddly enough, the rest of her hair stayed where it was, unbudging, locked in place with pins. Keth’s rescuers told him that his hair had been standing straight up when he was found. Why did some of Tris’s hair move, but not the rest?