Closer to Labrykas Square the shops had ordinary, shuttered windows, with the wares arranged on shelves to tempt passers-by. Tris lingered at one and another, admiring the curve of a bowl or the blue-green hue of a cosmetics bottle, but she always made herself walk on after a moment. She was determined to start at the very bottom of the glassmak ers pecking order.

As Tris approached Labrykas Square, the first public square beyond the Piraki Gate, her bree zes carried a conversation to her; a disgrace!someone cried. of the riff-raff, murdered and left in the Labrykas Square fountain like, like so much rubbish!

will take a powerful cleansing to purify the fountain again,a woman replied soberly. Surely the All-Seeing God will take offence against the district for the defilement

District? I think not!retorted the first

speaker. s obviously the work of some shenos who respects nothing and no one. The All-Seeing knows that no Tharian would commit so foul an act.

Keepers of the Public Good will put a stop to it, the woman said with the firmness of complete belief. have

The breeze had not caught the rest of the discussion. Tris shook her head as she walked on. Someone is murdered, and all these people care about is the purity of Assembly Square? she thought, baffled.

Thats pretty heartless.

She also wasnt incl ined to believe these Keepers would be able to do much about the killing. How effective could they be? They were elected to serve a three-year term each by the Assembly, a body of the oldest citizens and the wealthiest landholders. They would not have the experience or cunning of a proper ruler whod been raised for the position, like Duke Vedris of Emelan, Capchen s king and queen, or Empress Berenene of Namorn. She was amazed that the Tharians got anything done, if their entire political system was run by a mob. She had seen at home how much a governing council could quibble, fuss, debate, argue and fight, with nothing to show for it - and Winding Circles governing council was only twenty people. She d heard there were over three hundred in the Assembly.

s different when one man or woman is responsible for a country, she told Little Bear as they passed through Labrykas Square. The

Fountain, which she had seen on her arrival in the city, was shrouded in a kind of white, roofless tent. h ave to jump on this kind of nonsense right away, or everyone knows theyre to blame. Here, all the rulers have to do is point to the other Keeper, or someone from the Assembly, and say theyre supposed to be in charge of that.Disgusted, Tris shook her head and thrust all such dissatisfactions from her mind. She was here to learn, not to let the strange ways in which other people governed themselves get on her nerves.

At last she reached the part of the Street of Glass that she meant to explore first, the part that stretched between Labrykas Square and the pleasure district known as Khapik. She took a moment to look around using her magical vision. One thing she would say in favour of the Tharians, they looked after the magic that was used in public places . She saw very few tag-ends of old charms and spells gleaming silver on walls or around windows and doors. Spells there were in plenty, the usual creations for protection, health and prosperity that anyone who could afford it paid to have laid on their hom e s and businesses. The thing that Tris admired was that local mages either got rid of what remained of older spells, or wrote the same kind of spell in afresh, so that the magic in them shone in bright silver layers, an indication that differences in the s pells did not conflict and cause the magic to go astray.

Tris walked idly up the street, admiring the lace-like patterns of spells on the shop walls, tracing a

curve here, a letter there, with her finger. She knew most by heart, but this Tharian way of copying them over and over seemed to extend their power, even if the mage who added the most recent layer wasn t particularly strong.

Suddenly she felt a twist in the air. Most of her breezes, all of the ones she had acquired in recent months, fled. Only those she had brought from Winding Circle stayed, though she felt them struggle against some powerful call. The escaping breezes whipped around the corner of a nearby workshop:

Touchstone Glass, according to the sign.

The breezes werent the only things on the move. Power from every charm and spell within twenty metres of the shop streamed past Tris to round the corner in silvery ribbons: protection magic, fire-damping magic, health magic, wards for luck and prosperity, it didn t seem to matter. Something flexed in the air a second time. Without stopping to ask if she did the wisest thing, she pelted around the corner into the rear yard of Touchstone Glass.

She plunged into a stream of magic. All of it poured through the open doors of a workshop set apart from th e main building. It swirled around a man who toiled in front of a furnace. He stood sidelong to the door, a glassmaker s blowpipe to his lips as he tried to give form to an orange blob of molten glass. Twirling the pipe with one hand, he shaped the base of his creation with a mould clasped in the other.

For a moment Tris thought all was well. Then

she realized that despite the glassblowers twirling of the pipe and the steady stream of air he forced into it, the orange blob wriggled, bulged, then sank like a burlap sack with a cat inside. She had never seen glass do that before. Magic flooded into the man, sliding under his leather apron, squirming into short blond hair cropped close to his blocky head, tugging at his sleeves, then merging where his lips me t the pipe. Down its length the magic streamed, disappearing into the molten glass.

The man thrust the glass back into the open furnace, waited a moment, then brought the pipe back to his lips. He cupped the base of the glass with his mould and blew into th e pipe. The material at its end bulged, twisted, and thrust about even harder, plainly fighting him. It grew longer and snake-like, with big lumps on top and underneath. Magic gleamed, as if the glass were shot through with silver threads as it stretched away from the pipe. As it pulled free, its connection to the blowpipe stretched thinner and thinner. Only a thread connected it to the pipe.