Tris's Book

And how else could he have seen the person within the spell, unless it was a student who didn't quite have it right? Back in Deadman's District, he'd never seen the Thief-Lord pass invisible among his subjects, listening to their secrets and their plots against him. The Thief-Lord had always worked with the best spells money could buy.

The Hub clock struck the midday hour. He'd best get back home, so Tris could give her bird a little solid food.

The hide-and-seek ship was making Daja crazy. There it was at the corner of her eye whenever she looked up from her work, but if she stared straight at it, she saw only the Pebbled Sea, glassy and hazy with the day's heat. Ever since Tris had passed by on her way home, the ship seemed to hang out there, daring her to look quick and catch it. By the time the Hub clock chimed the end of the midday rest period, she felt as if she'd glanced up as often as she felt through the ground for more pieces of spell-net.

"Is something wrong?" asked Kirel. Frostpine had left them, questing for more of the net further down the cove. "You twitch like sand fleas are eating you."

"I've got an azigazi at the corner of my eye," she told him crossly, wiping her forehead. "It's as bad as sand fleas!"

"A - what did you say?"

"I'm sorry." He couldn't help being a kaq - a non-Trader, ignorant by birth - though she often forgot he was, because she liked him so much. "Azigazi. It's a vision, a false sighting. Out at sea they come when it's hot. White Traders say they get them in snow and sand fields. You see things that aren't real."

"A miracle, or a vision. Azigazi" He turned the word over in his mouth, as if he tasted it. "Could it be a mage thing?" He brought the water flask to her.

Daja drank gratefully. "Thank you. I don't know. There's plenty of mage things I never heard of."

"Where do you see it?"

She pointed to the open sea. "I keep thinking there's a ship out there, a plain old felucca -"

"A plain old' what?"

Poor Kirel was a landsman. "A felucca. It's a small sailing-ship with lateen - triangle - sails. There's plenty in the harbour - the commonest ships around, for fishing or courier service or small cargo loads. But whenever I look straight at this felucca, there's nothing."

"Are you sure you see it in the first place?" He shaded his eyes, peering at the water between Summersea's islands and the hills of the Emel Peninsula.

"It's clear enough to know what kind of ship it is," she reminded him.

"Oh." For a moment Kirel gazed out to sea, thinking. Suddenly he looked around for their teacher. "Frostpine!"

The man waved, and jogged back to them. "What is it?"

"I've been seeing an azigazi all day," Daja explained. "At least, I don't think it's real. It's a plain felucca, after all, no reason for me not to see one if it really exists. They're common to these waters. But every time I look straight at the thing, it's gone."

Frostpine's dark eyes flashed. "Sense for it, as you sense for the metal in the net. Cast your magic out to sea. If it's a real ship, it's got metal on it."

She tried. Closing her eyes, she listened, and smelled. All that came to her mind was seawater - restless, treacherous stuff ready to grab the unwary.

"It's just water," she told Frostpine, almost whining. She knew she sounded like a baby, but really, what did he expect? The sea was the sea, not metal!

"Ack," he muttered, "you're being difficult." Standing behind her, he reached around and clasped her hands in his. "Remember how Sandry was able to spin a magic cord from your inner self? Well, throw your cord out to me."

She tried to find the cord, but his touch was distracting her. It was easy to give a cord to Sandry, who was giving and soft, like well-woven cloth. Frostpine, though, was metal from top to toe. His metal rang where it touched hers, or rattled. Not cord, then, but wire, she thought. Taking a deep breath, reaching inside, she drew out a shimmering wire, and passed it to him.

"Good enough," he said. She felt his power bend, and spring. He towed her magic forwards, intertwined with his. Now she felt metal pass under and beside her as their power flew outward: pieces of chain, a metal-bound chest, a discarded anchor, all of it rusting on the ocean floor. They slowed; Frostpine sprang forward again. Their power swept further out...

It had to be a ship. What else held nails and metal straps in quite that way, as if she saw a vessel stripped of its wood? Wincing, she realized that she saw weapons, too: a number of swords and knives that no innocent fishing-boat should carry, and clusters of metal arrowheads.

Exhaling the breath in his own lungs, Frostpine ran back to the shore, taking Daja gently along. When she opened her eyes, she staggered.

Frostpine caught her. "You two load the pieces of net we've found, and bring them inside the walls," he ordered Kirell. "Don't dawdle. I'm telling them to close the gates."

Daja grabbed Frostpine's arm before he could go. "It's just one ship -"

He patted her cheek gently. "If his business were honest, youngster, he wouldn't be hidden, would he? That's a pirate's scout vessel, or I'm a dancing-girl. Help Kirel, and come in with him."

"Even if it's a scout, the main pirate fleet's nowhere near, surely?" Picking up a stack of net-pieces, she loaded them into one of the mule's baskets.