safety of Tharios in your pursuit of the Ghost. I will not sully my hands by association, Dhaskoi Nomasdina. And you must decide which is of more value: a few lives, which are fleeting at best, or your family’s standing and your own immortal spirit.” Her body stiff with disapproval, she picked up her notes and walked away.
“I’ll go with you,” Goldeye said, his voice clipped. “I may be only a shenos, but perhaps the Keepers will listen to me.”
Dema hesitated. Would support from a shenos, even one as famed as Niklaren Goldeye, hurt or help him?
As if he read Dema’s mind, Niko said, “I’ve been wanting to talk to them in any case. I want permission to scry the past on the sites where the victims have been found. It’s possible your priests missed something as they cleansed.”
At that Dema bristled: surely the priests knew their craft! Still, he told himself, it couldn’t hurt to have a reputable mage at his side.
Most importantly, he was desperate. He’d seen the look on Keth’s face, when the glassblower recognized the dead woman. He remembered the accusations the people had thrown at him at the Forum and elsewhere, that he didn’t care about their lives. Recently, to enter the arurimat, he’d had to pass through a crowd that grew larger with each murder. They watched him in silence, their eyes accusing: how many more would he allow to die.
“Do you have a horse?” he asked Goldeye.
One of the Nomasdina clan servants awaited Dema at the First Class entrance at Serenity House. The woman greeted him with a bow, took charge of his horse and Niko’s, and handed Dema a heavy, jingling purse.
“Your mother says that coin always gets a quicker response than chits to be redeemed,” explained the servant. “She also instructs me to tell you to take care. She hears what is being said of you, and worries that you risk forgetting your obligations to the clan in your eagerness to meet your obligations to the arurim.” She bowed again and led the horses away.
Dema had visited Serenity House several times with his family and knew how things worked here. As servitor passed him on to servitor, he distributed the bribes that would ensure he was being sent in the right direction, a silver bik each. When he and Niko reached the greeting room set aside for the First Class, Dema gave five silver biks to have his name presented to the Keepers. Then he and Niko were granted a private room in which to wait. Servants came with food and drink; others came with dry tunics for them both.
After a short time a clerk arrived to write down the reason they had come; Dema bribed him appropriately. Several hours later, when their clothes, dried and pressed free of wrinkles, were returned to them, another clerk came to clarify what the previous clerk had written down. She too received the proper bribe.
As the long hours dragged by, Dema and Niko talked of all manner of things: their educations as mages, Niko’s travels and how he’d come to teach Tris, Dema’s family history. They even napped for a time. It was nearly midnight when Niko asked, “I know the customs of Tharios and the blood doctrine. I confess, I’m curious — why do you keep sticking your neck out to trace the killer’s steps? You risk a great deal for a procedure that may not lead you to him.”
Dema looked at him, startled. “You don’t think I could catch him if I could dog his trail?”
Niko smoothed his moustache. “If there had only been one murder, I would say, almost certainly. But with each killing he has shown he is clever — and in our world, clever criminals always have ways to foil magical tracking. In any event, you have put your standing in Tharios in great danger. Why? He’s killed no one close to you. Is it the defilement of public places?”
Dema raised his eyebrows, shocked. “Defilement? That’s for priests to worry about. The busier you keep priests, the less chance they have to pry into our private lives. But the Ghost…” He thought for a moment, then sighed. “The All-Seeing, in his wisdom, arranged my birth to an honourable family in the First Class. I have privileges, but I also have a duty to the lower classes, to protect and guide them. Not everyone takes that duty seriously, but we Nomasdinas do. Even if it’s to yaskedasi and the rest