was her mage’s kit. Suddenly he believed that she held other forces ready for use in her many braids. She had not been joking when she had described the range of her power. Niko had said nothing that day, not because he liked the joke Tris played on Keth, but because she told the literal truth.
I’m dead, he thought helplessly. And all thanks to a cross-grained fourteen-year-old.
Chime’s claws bit into Keth’s breeches, forcing him to yelp and straighten his legs. Free of the bowl of his lap and arms, the glass dragon took flight, swooping and soaring around the trapped branch of lightning that still clung to Tris.
Keth stared. Inside Chime he saw a skeleton of silver. Around it twined veins that flickered and rippled like lightning.
Little Bear had seen enough. The big dog scrambled to the door and into the house, tail between his legs.
The bolt that held Tris shrank. It wasn’t dying, Keth realized. It was soaking into the hair that his young teacher had freed of its pins. It grew thinner and thinner, until it was gone. The braids that had absorbed it shimmered.
An immense fist pounded Keth on the head. He fell to his knees, staring at his hands. They blazed — he blazed — with lightning. He groped his scalp, and found something stronger and far hotter than the power in the globe he’d made for Dema. A bolt of lightning had struck his head, in the same place the last bolt had struck. His brain fizzed, his eyes filled with a glory of white fire that trickled down his throat, into his belly, through his arms and legs. In that splendid moment Keth saw that all things had some lightning in them. Physical matter did not reject lightning; it was simply overwhelmed by it, as a teardrop was overwhelmed by the ocean.
Lightning struck objects because it was drawn to the ghost of itself within them.
Except there was no ghost of lightning inside Keth: he had the true thing. He drank the power in like a thirsty man drinks water and, like Tris, raised his arms to call even more to him.
Later, as they staggered down into the house, he found the voice to croak, “You promised you’d protect me.”
“I did,” she replied, her voice as rough as his. “I saw that your power was calling to the lightning, and I made sure that you weren’t hit by so much you’d panic.”
“You made me think you’d — ” he began.
She interrupted him. “What? Wrap you in a cocoon of magic? In a nice safe blanket? I would have done so, had there been the need. There wasn’t. It’s my job to know these things, remember? I wasn’t about to lose my very first student because he didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain.”
They had reached Keth’s door before he’d summoned the energy to say, “You are a wicked girl.”
Tris shrugged. “So I’ve been told. I’ve learned to live with the shame of it.” She looked at Little Bear, who huddled in front of Keth’s door. “Come on, Bear. Lightning’s done.” She turned her sharp gaze on Keth. “Answer me truly — have I done you a disservice?”
It was his turn to shrug. He hung his head for good measure. “You know you didn’t.”
“I knew. I wanted to make certain that you did, too.” Before Keth could jerk away, Tris stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. A spark jumped between them. They both grinned. “If you have any leaks, put a big pot under them,” she warned. “It’ll rain all tonight and all tomorrow. Not my doing — this storm built up a lot of power while it was stuck in the east, and coming this way has made it stronger. I hope you’ve got a hat to wear to the shop tomorrow.”
Though he wasn’t sure if he would like the answer, Keth heard himself ask, “How do you know so much about it?”
Tris grinned, waved, and left him without a reply. Chime, riding on her shoulder, napped her glass wings in farewell.
The rain continued to fall as it had fallen all night, steadily, without let-up. Tris was glad for it. She felt like parched ground in the first showers of spring, greedily drinking up the moisture in the air.
Rain washed Tharios. Gutters ran clean on both sides of the Street of Glass, their burdens of rubbish swept away the night before. The white stucco of the houses and store-fronts blazed;