“Put it on and come here, then,” Tris ordered. When the girl’s belly band was secure and she was wrestling with a worn, faded tunic of pale blue wool, Tris returned to her tide braids, undoing five centimetres of each. She drew their strength in, letting it slide through vein and bone, foam through her lungs, and race to her head. When she had taken it all in, she redid the braids and pinned them back into their patterns. She hoped they caught the Ghost soon, before the price she had to pay to keep awake and alert through all this got high enough to be painful, not just exhausting.
Her strength restored, she dressed, put a leash on Little Bear, tucked Chime into the sling on her back, tied Glaki’s sandals, and bustled everyone out of the door.
At Touchstone Keth assembled everything he would need, put ingredients into the crucible to melt, checked his work from the previous day, tried to read the book of glass magic Tris had lent him, gave up and paced, unable to stand still. He blinked when she arrived with Glaki, the dog and Chime. At Ferouze’s she’d been the colour of ash, her smattering of freckles darker in contrast. Now she was so full of vigour she nearly threw off sparks. If he needed a reminder that those cursed braids truly were her mage’s kit, packed with magic both powerful and invisible, this was it.
She was the strangest girl, he thought as she settled Glaki in the corner. Kind when she was teaching, testy when people argued with her, briskly caring with the child. He would love to know her life’s story.
“We did business with a family named Chandler out of Capchen in Anderran,” he said abruptly. “Natron, mostly.”
About to walk her protective circle around the workshop, she looked over her shoulder at him. “My family handles natron imports,” she replied, a little stiff. “My great-uncle Murris. Not exclusively, of course. My family deals in all kinds of goods.” She smiled crookedly. “Except defective ones. Those they don’t handle very well.” She set to work, leaving Kethlun puzzled. They had thought her defective? he wondered. Then he thought of the way she handled lightning. He could see where that might unnerve even his own family.
Once they were enclosed in her magical shield, Tris turned to Keth, hands on hips. “Meditation first,” she ordered.
“Do we have to?” he asked, trying not to whine as if he were still a restless boy in the schoolroom. “I don’t think I can concentrate.”
“But you will try, won’t you?” she asked, in the sweet way she used when she was about to close the steel fist in her steel glove. “Because you won’t control anything without first working on your control.”
He took a breath to argue, but memory made him breathe out without speaking. She sounded just like the guildsman who’d taught the apprentices how to master their breathing and how to use as much of their lungs as possible, vital skills for a glassblower. “I’ll try,” he mumbled, thinking, What kind of a world is it, when a chit of fourteen sounds like a guild master?
To his surprise, it was easier to reach the state she demanded in meditation than he thought. Keth felt sheepish when he realized that. He considered an apology, and decided against it. She would only be smug, and he hated it when she was smug with reason.
Maybe if I didn’t keep putting my foot in my mouth with her, he thought as they got to their feet and stretched. A scary thought occurred to him. “You say there are three more of you in Emelan?” Keth asked, goosebumps covering his arms at the thought. “Just like you?”
“Oh, no,” Tris replied, mischief in her grey eyes. “They’re much worse than I am.”
Thinking of the kind of people who could be counted on to survive long acquaintance with her, Keth said, “I believe you.”
“It could be worse,” Tris assured him. “We could all be here. Now,” she added, going from playful to brisk, “let’s think about this next globe. Am I wrong, or when you blow into the gather, do you deliberately allow your power to flow on your breath?”
“Sometimes,” Keth admitted, thinking it over. “Sometimes not.”
“Let’s make a choice, then,” she suggested. “This time, try to let only a trickle of your power run through the blowpipe. Just a thread. Can you do that?”