Dema selected one of the blessed ivory rods that had arrived at the arurimat the day after hed spoken with the priests at Labrykas Square. He used it to pull the veils ends out flat. Melchang lodgings, Willow Lanewas embroidered at the edge.

Aside, Demakos Nomasdina, before you are in need of cleansing yourself,called a clear, female voice. are too close to the pollution.

Dema looked around. The prathmuni in charge of the dead had come and, with them, the priests of the All-Seeing, ready to cleanse the Forum. Like the fountain, it would need prolonged cleansing. It was a public place. The Fora were also the heart of Tharios, the reason the city had grown and succeeded without emperors and their follies.

havent touched her,he replied sharply. your cleansings wipe away all traces I can use to track this mirizask. The clerk with the globe, standing behind the priests, squeaked at Dema s coarse language.

Turning his back on them, Dema selected the bottle of stepsfind from his kit, took a mouthful, stood and sprayed it in the air over the dead woman. When it fell to the ground, it revealed blurred footmarks leading to the back of the dais. He followed those smudges off the dais, down two steps to the small meeting rooms behind the Forum, past the privy set aside for the use of government officers, and through the hallway to the rear entrance. He tracked the smudges through the unlocked door and ran smack into a wall of silver fire. With a yelp Dema sprang back. He d just tried to walk through a circle of enclosure. Not only was he unable to pass, but his face and hands felt as if hed scrubbed them with nettles.

can we catch him if you erase any trace he leaves?he cried, maddened, to the white-veiled priest outside the circle.

good will his capture do, if his infection spreads to the city? If you take on his pollution at the risk of your clan?demanded the priest coldly. Our souls are more important than these sacks of putrefaction and disease we call bodies, Demakos Nomasdina. Go and be cleansed yourself.

Dema shivered and walked back into the Forum, thoroughly ashamed of himself. For a moment he d been so caught up in the need to catch the murderer that he had lost sight of his duty to his family and to Tharios itself, to keep the pollution that accompanied death from tainting the city. At the very least he risked his own soul and his status; at most, he risked dragging all of his kinsmen, everyone whod had contact with him or his immediate family, into exile, or worse, into the ranks of the prathmuni. He had nearly ruined one of the great clans of Tharios.

There has to be another way to find the killer, he told himself as the priests inside the Forum cleansed him with prayer, ritual and incense. Then he remembered the clerk. The man sat on a bench at the rear of the Fo rum, the basket at his side, a glum look on his face as he watched the priests go to work over the dead woman.

Dema took the globe from its basket. made this device?he asked.

CHAPTER FOUR

Removing each needle from Kethluns face was an exacting task. Tris sat on the table, Keth on a chair in front of her. As she worked, he told her, Niko and Jumshida about his life before and after one summer day on the Syth.

When he finished, Niko regarded his fingernails. seed of magic you had all along probably saved your life when you were struck, Kethlun.

m not thanking it for any favours,grumbled Keth. d pass it to anybody else in a heartbeat.

Dont have that choice,Niko retorted. until you master the lightning side of your power, you wont be able to make another satisfactory piece of glass not blown, anyway. Not shaped by the breath that keeps you alive. That is why you need Tris, not a glass mage.

Tris scowled. isnt anybody else?she demanded. dont bother answering, I know there isnt. All the needles were out. She dipped some cotton into a jar of balm made by her foster-brother and dabbed it on the bloody spots on Keths face.

Keth snapped, flinching away.

T be such a baby,Tris ordered. bore getting bit by lightning, you can bear a little sting.

Keth grumbled, then let her continue. shes a student he protested to Niko. dont teach!

s unusual,Jumshida said, her voice comforting. lightning magic is so rare. . .

J umshida and Keth had made an understandable mistake. Normal mage students got their credential in their twenties, and taught only after that. Tris, her two foster-sisters, and her foster-brother, were unique. They had mastered their power when they were a ll thirteen or so. Winding Circle gave them their mages medallion, spelled so that, until they were eighteen, the four would forget they had them unless asked to prove they were mages. It was a useless exercise: Tris s ability to see magic and detect metal meant that she always knew what she wore.

Now she glanced at Niko; he nodded. Tris set aside the balm, reached under her collar, and drew out the ribbon from which her medallion hung. The metal circle had a silvery sheen to it, but it was a blend of silve r and other metals. The spiral sign for Winding Circle was stamped on the back, to show where Tris had earned it. Triss name and Niko s were inscribed on the edges of the front of the medallion: student and principal teacher. At the centre, small but still clear to the eye, the smith-mage Frostpine had engraved a tiny volcano, a lightning bolt, a wave and a cyclone, to show where Triss weather-magic worked. She hated bringing it out where people could see it. It felt too much like bragging.

shes a mage, why do I never see her with a mage kit?demanded Keth. both carry yours, even though youre just attending a con ference.He pointed through the door to the hall, where Jumshidas and Niko s mage kits, fitted into good-looking packs, lay on a table.

Tris let go of her medallion and picked up the balm again. She dabbed more on Keths wounds. carry a mage kit all the time, she replied, squinting to get the bloody spots under his short-cropped gold hair. She pointed to her head with the hand that held the cotton. there.