The killer had vanished into the bowels of the Heskalifos temple of the All-Seeing. He had carried his pollution into the temple’s foundations, where the guardian spells erased all trace of him. Once more he’d managed to be a Ghost in fact, vanishing from a trail so plainly marked Dema could have followed it blindfolded.
“You take too much on yourself,” a priestess informed Dema. She had found him on the temple steps, waiting as his people searched outside the grounds in case the Ghost had not vanished into the service tunnels. “You think that magic is not a force of nature but something dead, a tool to be used,” she continued, standing beside him. She was robed and draped as a high-ranking priestess. She had the age for it, with laugh lines and the lines drawn by long watches framing her eyes. Her nose was a straight edge with delicate nostrils, her thin-lipped mouth painted the same red that decorated her robes.
“Magic is not dead,” protested Dema, watching for his arurimi. “But it is a tool, a device we can use to set the balance of justice right.”
The priestess shook her head. “Magic is a living force that obeys its own time and its own laws. We must accept that and learn to live with it, for our own serenity’s sake. Magic leaves us no choice.”
Dema shook his head stubbornly. He hated not having a choice.
The priestess rested a hand on his shoulder. Dema looked at her, wary. So far his contacts with this particular priesthood were less than encouraging.
“Your heart is in Tharios, Demakos Nomasdina,” she told him.
Dema flinched. He hadn’t mentioned his name, not wanting to be punished for tracking the polluted steps of a killer.
“You are a true and noble servant to our city,” the priestess continued. “When you have laid hands upon this Ghost, return here. I shall see to it that you are made clean by rite and magic, so that you may do your work unhindered. I trust that your clan takes pride in so devoted a citizen.” She drew the circle of the All-Seeing on Dema’s forehead, bowed and retreated into the temple. Dema stared after her, mouth agape.
“Dhaskoi.” There was reverence in Majnuna’s deep, thick voice. The arurimi had come up while Dema was speaking with the priestess. “You’ve been blessed by Aethra Papufos!”
Gooseflesh crawled up Demi’s spine. The high priestess of the All-Seeing almost never appeared in public. Her prayers guarded Tharios; she was considered to be the voice of the All-Seeing on earth.
She had set her hand on him in full view of a handful of priests and arurimi. She had called him a “devoted citizen”. And she had virtually told him that he would be able to find killers unhindered by considerations of pollution — once he caught the Ghost.
The worst part, Tris thought as she groped her way down Imperial Alley, was how confusing it all was. She felt as if she walked through an opal when she tried the magics of Winds’ Path, an opal alive with glittering bits of colour that threatened to overwhelm her sight. None of them served to make any kind of a picture for her, not even so much as last night’s glimpse of a gauze butterfly wing. Worse, they made her half-blind in Khapik, not precisely a good thing to be. Tonight she had Chime and Little Bear with her, and her breezes to warn her, but her head was spinning. Floods of dizziness came and went.
“Enough,” Tris told her companions. “I’ll just have to try again tomorrow.”
Chime rubbed her head against Tris’s cheek. The girl sighed and closed her eyes, willing the magic away. At last she put her spectacles back on and returned to Ferouze’s. She doubted that she could sleep, thanks to the tides in her blood and bones, but at least she could read further. Maybe there was a way to sort all these firefly bits until they showed her something real.
About to climb from the first storey of Ferouze’s to the second, she saw that Chime scratched at Keth’s open door. Tris looked into his room. Her student lay awake on his bed, watching the ceiling shadows by the light of one candle. He pulled the sheet up to his bare chest when she came in and smiled ruefully. “Yes, they had to send me back because I was exhausted. Please don’t say ‘I told you so’,” he begged.