room with a tea tray. “He rang for this,” the woman explained.
“I’ll take it up,” Tris offered. The cook was more than happy to relinquish the heavy tray to her, and Tris was more than happy to get away from Jumshida, before the woman patronized her any more. Sheer survival over centuries isn’t a guarantee of virtue, Tris fumed as she climbed the stairs. It’s just a guarantee that nothing will change for the better!
Niko was busily cleaning his teeth when Tris came in and set the tray on a table. “Jumshida said you went with Dema,” she said as Niko spat, rinsed, and spat again. “Will the Keepers do anything?”
“Nothing,” he informed her waspishly, throwing down his facecloth. “They will not close Khapik. They said it would alarm the populace and cause financial hardship to those who work there. They will not intercede with the priesthood of the All-Seeing to let the arurim dhaskoi or even me work seeing-spells over the dead. They will not risk the purity of the city and of the conference. Even though I am a foreigner, they will protect me for my own good. Arrogant, hide-bound, unimaginative — ”
He might have gone on, but Tris interrupted. “Niko. Yali, the woman who came here to see if Keth was all right? She was the most recent victim.”
Niko sighed. “So Dema told me.” He took the cup of tea Tris handed to him.
“Well, she left a foster-daughter, the child of one of the other dead women. I mean to stay with the little girl — her name’s Glaki — until some provision is made for her. I don’t think she ought be left to the other women in the lodging house, and Keth wants to concentrate on the globes.”
“Is he Glaki’s father?” Niko asked, sipping his tea.
Tris hadn’t thought of that. She considered it, then shook her head. “Glaki’s Tharian clean through. Anyway, I’m back for some clothes, and I wanted to ask about scrying again.” Tris smoothed a wrinkle in her dress. “I sent my breezes through Khapik last night, to let me know if they heard a woman being strangled, but it doesn’t work very well. Has anyone arrived yet who can see things on the winds?”
“You are still determined to learn?” asked Niko. “Even after all I’ve told you?”
“You survive being pelted with images,” Tris pointed out. “It hasn’t driven you mad — though you can be quite odd, when you put your mind to it.”
Niko sat on his bed and looked at her. “So much of it means nothing,” he pointed out. “So much of it you don’t even really see because it’s gone in a flash. The headaches are ferocious. Every account I’ve read of wind-scrying compares it to seeing the future, and the grief involved in that I know all too well.”
Tris sat next to him. “Has anyone come who knows it?” she asked again. “Niko, these women deserve better than to have a monster pick them off one by one while those who should protect them say it’s all right if they die, as long as they don’t spread the pollution of their deaths around. I could go as mad from not being able to help as I could from being drowned in visions.”
Niko sighed. “Start looking at and through a particular breeze, clearing your vision as you clear your mind. According to what I’ve read, you should first begin to see colours, then movement… Tris, you do realize that only one mage in thousands can do this? One in a generation?”
“I have to try,” replied Tris, her voice low but passionate. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, but stared at her hands, fisted in her skirt. “It’s not right, what’s happening here.”
Niko stood and went to the trunk of books he carried everywhere he travelled, opened it, and pushed back the lid. These were the texts of his craft of seeing, volumes on ambient and academic magic, and other books which helped him in the exercise of his own power. He brought out a small, leather-bound volume closed with a strap and a catch, lifted it in his hand as if weighing it, then held it out to Tris. “Take it. There are exercises that may help. The writer could scry the wind.”
Tris looked at the tiny volume and gasped. “Niko! You have a copy of Quicksilver’s Winds’ Path, and you never told me?”
He smiled. “My fears for your sanity are real, you know. My best friend at Lightsbridge,