her on to the bench. “You didn’t even twitch when the Bear chased a cat in the garden. We owe Antonou basil plants, by the way.”
“I don’t know why that dog bothers,” muttered Tris. “Every time he corners a cat, it beats the fur off him. I should get our midday.” Her head swam. Odd sparks flared in her sight as she moved her head.
“Antonou is bringing it,” Keth assured her.
Tris looked at him sharply. “Why? He’s under no obligation to feed me or Glaki.”
Keth grinned and sat beside her. “There’s been a change in our arrangements,” he explained. “Antonou likes having a glass mage in the shop, that’s why he’s left us alone. And he really likes those globes.” He pointed to his morning’s creations, which continued to glitter and spark, pale copies of his lightning globes. “If he sells anything I create that I don’t need to keep, I’ll get half the price. It solves a lot of problems, Tris. He says what he can make just from the globes will pay for my time and materials, and we’ll have plenty left over. I thought you’d approve, since you sold those pendants I made of Chime’s flames.”
“Ah, she is back with us.” Antonou approached from the kitchen wing of the house, a tray of dishes in his broad, scarred hands. “So, Dhasku Tris, does Keth need these globes? As mementoes, or for study? I can get a very good price for these. People love magical novelties that don’t carry unpleasant consequences.” He set the tray down on a table near the kitchen garden and took another tray from his wife, who had followed him.
“But I won’t always be making magical devices, will I?” asked Keth, placing benches around the table. “I’ll be able to do plain glass again?”
“You can do whatever you like, when your magic is completely under control,” replied Tris. “And those globes are your work. They’re yours to dispose of. Just let me test them this afternoon, to be sure they don’t hold any surprises.” She looked for Glaki, and saw that the girl was now hiding behind Little Bear. Both she and the dog stared at the good-smelling dishes with yearning.
“Here, you are too skinny,” Antonou’s wife said, putting things on a plate for the child.
While Keth tried to blow another lightning globe that afternoon, secure inside Tris’s protective circle and working on his magical control, Tris inspected the new globes, exploring them with her power. They held not a flicker of true lightning, or of anything else. When she put the last one down, she noticed that Keth watched her. “They’re empty,” she said. “If Antonou wants them, and you want him to sell them, go ahead.”
He nodded. “So Khapik is safe for tonight,” he said, inspecting the globe he had just, finished. It glittered like a round piece of ice in his hands. “As far as we know.”
“As far as we know,” Tris repeated with a sigh. “We should tell Dema.” She was tired.
Keth finished his work, cleaned the shop, and told Antonou the globes were there for him to sell.
At last he, Tris, Glaki, Little Bear and Chime set off towards Khapik. “How’s business?” he asked the guard who stood at the district gate.
“Not good,” the man replied, disgusted. “The yaskedasi are scared. Some are leaving. And the guests are falling off, too. I suppose they think there’s a chance this madman will mistake them for one of us.”
“How bad is business off?” inquired Keth.
“A quarter,” the guard replied.
Keth winced as they passed through the gate. “This will hurt everyone,” he told Tris. “We’ve got to catch him.”
Tris looked up at him and saw lightning flash in his eyes. “Keth, calm down,” she ordered. “Breathe and count. You’re sparking.”
“I’m what?” he asked. “Where?” Tris pointed to his eyes. “Oh,” Keth said sheepishly. “That never happened before,” he pointed out, breathing slowly and carefully. The lightnings in his eyes faded.
“But the lightning found a path through you it likes, so it will keep following it. You’ll have to learn to control your temper,” Tris said firmly.
He grinned unexpectedly down at her. “And you’re going to teach me?” Though he knew she kept a tight hold on her deepest feelings, he’d also got enough of the tart edge of her tongue to find the idea funny.
Tris drew herself up. “I can lose my temper because my power is under control,” she said in her primmest voice. In a return to her normal, dry