hand as casually as if it were a bracelet she had just taken off. It glinted in that free lock of hair by her face like the bits of mica the yaskedasi, or entertainers, used to make their hair glitter in the torchlight. The girl had thrown lightning as a soldier would a spear, shocking his hand and arm into numbness. And she’d done it to save the abomination that had wriggled out of his breath and into a gather of molten glass.
Keth never wanted to see that girl again. Please, he prayed to any gods that might be listening, I don’t even want to see her shadow again..
Earlier that day:
Dema Nomasdina was asleep. In his dreams he saw the four dead women whose killer he had yet to find: Nioki the tumbler, Farray the dancer, Ophelika the musician and Zudana the singer. All four women wore the yellow veil of the yaskedasi, licensed entertainers who worked for the most part in the garden district called Khapik. Instead of floating around their heads, pinned over curls or braids, their veils were wrapped tightly around their necks and knotted. Each woman, who was beautiful, their friends had assured Dema, had the swollen, dark face of the strangled.
“He left me dumped in an alley like rubbish,” said Nioki. Despite the silk knotted around her throat, her voice was perfectly clear and damning in its grief.
“I was thrown down a cellar stair,” whispered Farray.
“He sat me against a building at the intersection of Lotus and Peacock streets for the world to see,” Ophelika reminded him.
“Me he laid in front of the Khapik Gate for some tradesman to find as he stumbled home,” Zudana said bitterly. “That tradesman fell over me like I was a sack of onions.”
“What are you doing?” asked Nioki. “Why does my ghost still drift in the great emptiness?”
“What are you doing?” moaned Ophelika through swollen lips. “My spirit is not cleansed.”
“What are you doing?” the dead women asked, their voices sharp in Dema’s ears. “Avenge us,” they said as they faded from view. The last thing Dema saw was their outstretched, straining hands, and the flutter of yellow silk.
“Nomasdina!” A rough hand shook his shoulder. “Wake up, dhaskoi. You’re wanted.”
Dema sat up, his eyes barely open, the taste of last night’s greasy supper in his mouth. He’d gone to sleep at his worktable, on top of the pages of notes taken on the murders of the four yaskedasi. No wonder he dreamed of them. A glance at the window showed him rays of sunlight that leaked through cracks in the shutters. The room was hot and stuffy. “I’m off duty,” he mumbled.
“Good,” the sergeant on duty told him with false good cheer. “Then you’re free to ride to Labrykas Square. The district captain has sent for you.” The sergeant upended a ladle of water on Dema’s head. As Dema sputtered, the woman added with real kindness, “She knows you’ve been on duty all night. Don’t try to fix yourself up, just go.”
Dema went, though he couldn’t imagine what the Fifth District commander of the Arurim, Tharios’s law enforcement agency and his employer, wanted with a very new mage like him. Dema had been an arurim dhaskoi, investigator mage, for only eight months. He’d done little to draw anyone’s attention. True, he was working on the murders of four Khapik yaskedasi, but he also knew that he’d been given the task of investigating the first murder, and the three that followed it, because no one cared if he caught the killer or not. One of the first words of arurim slang he’d learned was okozou, which meant “no real people involved”. It was a phrase used to describe crimes among yaskedasi, prathmuni, or the poor of the slum called Hodenekes. It meant no one really expected Dema to work at finding the killer. He’d expected to be summoned before his watch station captain to explain why he’d made no progress weeks ago, until he realized the captain simply did not care.
A mounted arurim waited in front of the Elya Street station with a horse for Dema. Groggily he mounted up, thinking wearily that it was a good thing he wore his tightly curled black hair cut very short. It was probably the only thing about him that was presentable. He scrubbed at his teeth with a finger which he wiped on the edge of the saddle blanket. “You’re sure you want me?” he asked the messenger.