Antonou has a crate and shovel, so we can clear out the mess when it settles.”
Keth flapped his hand at her in gloomy resignation and walked out of the shop, smack into the barrier around the outside. “Just what I needed,” he moaned as she retrieved its magic. “A knock on the head.”
“Well, it’s not like it hurt anything important, is it?” Tris asked tartly.
Keth turned, expecting to see that disgusted expression on her face. Instead she grinned at him. “Why aren’t you one of those teachers who believes in coddling students?” he demanded.
“I couldn’t,” she said, straight-faced. “It would be bad for your character.”
He fled, before she could think of another joke to make at his expense.
The globe began to clear as their afternoon’s work, getting rid of the mess of molten glass and charcoal, came to an end. They were packing to leave Touchstone for the day when Dema arrived. Under the shade of the courtyard trees he told them of the fruitless search the night before, then took charge of the globe.
Keth had recovered after his midday, enough to help clean up and to blow the small globes that Antonou liked to sell. Tris wasn’t sure that he ought to go with Dema after the previous night’s collapse, but Keth didn’t give her the chance to debate it. He simply followed Dema out into the street.
With Keth gone, Tris turned to Glaki. “Have you ever been up on the wall?” she asked. “The wall around the city?”
“No,” replied the girl. She had begged a scrap of cloth from Antonou’s wife and fashioned it into a sling like the one Tris used to carry Chime. Into it she had tucked her dolls. Little Bear carried his ball. All afternoon he and Glaki had played with it, until it was covered with dirt and dog drool.
“Would you like to climb the wall, Glaki?” Tris wanted to know. “I want to try something. I’m always better at new things when I’m up somewhere high.”
“Let’s go,” the four-year-old said eagerly, grabbing Tris’s hand. She towed the older girl down to the city’s gate.
As Tris had expected, Tharios’s wall was a favourite with visitors: the guards waved them straight to the stair. When they reached the top, they found a broad walkway, ten metres above the ground. From there they could see the roads that led around the city, the river bridges, and the road that led south-east to the seaport of Piraki. To their left, a tumble of huts and hovels clung to the rocky hillside between Tharios and the Kurchal River. A number of huge pipes dotted the same rocky ground, pipes that emitted streams of brown, clotted water that flowed into the river: the city’s sewer outlets. Swarming over the hillside, hanging out washing, minding goats and chickens, talking, grinding grain, playing and cooking, were prathmuni, recognizable even from this height by their clothes and haircuts. Tris felt cold, seeing their dwelling place. She knew the mages at Heskalifos had to be aware of the connection between sewage and disease, yet they allowed people to live where the night soil of Tharios was dumped. How many prathmuni children lived even to Glaki’s age, let alone her own? Tris wondered. How many old prathmuni were there?
“Tris, please don’t,” whispered Glaki, tugging Tris by the sleeve. “Please don’t.”
She glanced at the little girl. “Don’t what?” she asked, her voice clipped.
Glaki actually backed up a step. She still found the courage to say, “Please don’t thunder inside. It’s scary.”
Remorse flooded Tris at the fear in Glaki’s eyes. She knelt and held her arms out. “It’s not about you, Glaki,” she said, deliberately gentling her voice. “You could never make me angry.”
Glaki clung to her, even with a doll in each hand. Tris soothed her until she was sure the little girl was calm. This too was something she knew all too well. The anger of adults almost always had meant packing her bags and moving on to a new home. An adult in a temper meant new relatives with new rules and new places where she was not welcome.
When Glaki was calm, Tris sat her on a bench with Little Bear and Chime, and gave the child her spectacles to hold. Closing her eyes, she entered the trance she needed to scry the winds. When she opened her eyes, colours and half-images assaulted her, flashing by so quickly she couldn’t track them. Time after time she tried to seize an image and