Maybe then you can look into it and see what’s inside.”
Keth tried to do as Tris suggested. First he tried to combine the outer lightnings into one large bolt he could peel away, but things distracted him from the task. Chime produced a shower of glass flames that rained on the laughing Glaki. The dog wriggled on the workshop floor to scratch his back. Street noise seemed louder than ever.
Only Tris didn’t disturb Keth, though he wanted her to. He wanted her to thrust him aside and growl, “Oh, here, I’ll do it!‘ Instead she read from a small, leatherbound volume. She seemed lost in it, though every time Keth glanced at her, she looked up, raising colourless brows over the brass rims of her spectacles.
Frustrated after what seemed like a dozen interruptions, Keth grabbed a hank of lightnings with thumb and forefinger, literally trying to jerk them off his globe. For a moment he saw its frosty white surface. An image grew there: long brown hair, large brown eyes, a full mouth with a wicked twist to the side. It was Yali.
Keth trembled; his eyes stung. After he rubbed them to make sure no unmanly tears fell, her image was gone. The lightnings he’d yanked away escaped his hold to cover the globe again.
Keth set the globe down and covered his face with his hands, trembling with grief. He and Yali had only kissed once. For the most part they just talked, something Keth had never done with his betrothed in Namorn. They’d discussed food, music, plays, even the customs of their countries. Something in Yali spoke to his heart. She’d had a restful quality unlike that of any girl he’d ever known.
The Ghost had taken that from Keth, just as he’d taken a loving mother and a foster-mother from Glaki. What else would he take?
Settling the globe on his knees, Keth tried again.
Late in the afternoon Tris roused herself from her reading and proclaimed that Keth had worked enough today. Plagued with a savage headache, Keth didn’t argue. Instead they cleaned up the shop, bid Antonou and his family goodbye, and left for Khapik. Headache or not, Keth took Tris’s pack, though it seemed to get heavier as he walked. By the time they saw the yellow pillars of the Khapik gate, he felt as if someone had worked on him with hammers. Every bone in his body hurt.
As they passed through the gate, strong hands removed the pack from his grip. “You need a bath,” said Tris, her eyes sharp and knowing. She hung the pack on her own shoulders. “You’re exhausted. It happens when you aren’t used to working magic for hours, I should have remembered. Make sure the bath attendants know to wake you up and send you home. Do you cook in your rooms?”
Keth wiped his forehead, trying to think. “No,” he said at last. “We buy food cooked at the Lotus Street skodi. It’s cheap, and not bad. Instead of turning into Chamberpot Alley, you turn right and follow Peacock Street to the wall. The Lotus Street skodi is right there.” He fumbled in his pocket.
“Never mind,” Tris said testily. “I sold some of those pendants you made for me. We’ve money enough. Go wash.”
Keth stood there, staring down at the plump girl who looked up at him. If he hadn’t been drunk with exhaustion, he never would have said what he did: “You’re actually a nice person, aren’t you?”
She went beet-red. “No,” she retorted. Steering Glaki ahead of her, she walked away, disappearing into the crowd of early visitors to Khapik.
They were eating the supper Tris had bought when Xantha stuck her head into Yali’s old room. “There’s a Farewell for Yali at the Thanion,” she said. “If you want to go, Keth. And you,” she added with a glance at Tris.
Tris looked at Glaki. The little girl had been fine for most of the day, until they returned to this room. Now she was silent, eating little, burying her face from time to time in her battered rag doll.
“Thank you,” she told Xantha, “but I’ll stay with Glaki. It’s been a long day.”
Keth lurched to his feet, tired as he was. “I’ll drop the globe at Elya Street with Dema,” he told Tris. “I think it’s starting to clear.”
She nodded. Keth had placed it on the table, where it sparked and flashed. She had watched when he tried to clear it once he returned from his bath, but as before, he’d