Shatterglass

still functioned, they brought in the best healer-mages in Dancruan. The happiest moment of his life was in the morning when he returned to his uncles factory, ready to work once more.

By noon that day his happiness was dust. His old ease was gone. Even as a first-yea r apprentice his hands were never clumsy with the tools, sands, salts, ashes and woods that were the basis of glasswork. The first time he tried to blow glass, his breath had hitched, he d jerked the pipe up, and a fleck of red-hot glass rolled on to his t ongue. When he tried to pour glass into a mould, it shifted, making one side of a bowl far thinner than the other. For weeks every piece he made ended in the cullet or waste glass barrel, to be remelted

j or used in other projects.

Now the other apprentices and journeymen smirked as his gathers dropped in the furnace or on to the floor. They grinned as the masters rejected piece after piece. Once Kethlun had never measured how much of a colouring agent to add to a crucible of molten glass: he just knew. Whe n he measured now, the colours came out wrong.

He did not dare say that he thought the glass itself had turned on him. He had the notion that it was trying to tell him things. It wanted him to shape it in ways that differed from what

he wanted. Keth feared that if he spoke such thoughts to any of his family, they would turn him over to healers who specialized in madness, and never let him near a furnace again. Even the mages in his family never talked of glass as if it were alive.

One spring day he came home to find the guildmasters seated with his father and uncles. All of them, men and women, looked decidedly uncomfortable when they saw him. Keth s brain, so much quicker than his tongue or hands, told him what was in the wind. The guildmasters meant to strip him of his journeymans rank and send him back among the apprentices until he regained his old skill, if he ever did.

He could not bear it. ve been th-thinking, he said, trying to keep from stammering. He leaned against the receiving-room wall, hoping to look casual, hoping they would not sense his fear. change of scene, th-thats what I need. Fresh inspiration. Im a j-journeyman. I ll journey. South, I th-think. Visit the cousins. Learn new techniques.

Guildmistress Hafgwyn looked at Kethluns father. might be for the best,she said. I am not comfortable with the matter we discussed.Her bright black eyes met Keths. will do. You may go with the guilds protection. Bring fresh knowledge back to us, along with your old skill.

And so he had worked his way down the coast of the Endless Ocean, going around the Pebbled Sea and continuing south and east. At last he reached the shop of his fourth cousin once removed, Antonou Tinas, in Tharios. By then he d recovered some of his old ability with moulds and pulled glass. Antonou was getting old. He preferred to do engraving and polishing in the main shop as he waited on customers. Keth could make the pieces

Antonou needed, then practise his glassblowing in private, with no one to see how badly he did it.

Just when he felt safe, along came this girl, and her lightning.

Trembling, Keth forced himself outside, to the well, and drank some water. Then he returned to the workshop. It was a shambles. Hed broken finished glass, thrown his blowpipe, knoc ked over jars of colouring agents. He had to clean up before Antonou saw the mess. He reached for a broom.

The plump redhead had held lightning in her hand as casually as if it were a bracelet she had just taken off. It glinted in that free lock of hair by her face like the bits of mica the

yaskedasi, or entertainers, used to make their hair glitter in the torchlight. The girl had thrown lightning as a soldier would a spear, shocking his hand and arm into numbness. And she d done it to save the abomination that had wriggled out of his breath and into a gather of molten glass.

Keth never wanted to see that girl again. Please, he prayed to any gods that might be listening, I don t even want to see her

shadow again..

DEMA

Earlier that day:

D

ema Nomasdina was a sleep. In his dreams he saw the four dead women whose killer he had yet to find: Nioki the tumbler, Farray the dancer, Ophelika the musician and Zudana the singer. All four women wore the yellow veil of the yaskedasi, licensed entertainers who worked for t he most part in the garden district called Khapik. Instead of floating around their heads, pinned over curls or braids, their veils were wrapped tightly around their necks and knotted. Each woman, who was beautiful, their friends had assured Dema, had the swollen, dark face of the strangled.

Left me dumped in an alley like rubbish, said Nioki. Despite the silk knotted around her throat, her voice was perfectly clear and damning in its grief.

was thrown down a cellar stair,whispered Farray.

sat me against a building at the intersection

Of Lotus and Peacock streets for the world to see,Ophelika reminded him.

he laid in front of the Khapik Gate for some tradesman to find as he stumbled home, Zudana said bitterly. tradesman fell over me like I was a sack of onions.

Are you doing?asked Nioki. does my ghost still drift in the great emptiness?

Are you doing?moaned Ophelika through swollen lips. spirit is not cleansed.

Are you doing?the dead women asked, their voices sharp in Demas ears. us, they said as they faded from view. The last thing Dema saw was their outstretched, straining hands, and the flutter of yellow silk.

A rough hand shook his shoulder. up,

Dhaskoi. Youre wanted.

Dema sat up, his eyes barely open, the taste of last nights greasy supper in his mouth. He d gone to sleep at his worktable, on top of the pages of notes taken on the murders of the four

yaskedasi. No wonder he dreamed of them. A glance at the window showed him rays of sunlight that leaked through cracks in the shutters. The room was hot and stuffy. m off duty,he mumbled.