Shatterglass by Tamora Pierce Page B

leave for the day. He brought it to us,” replied the mage.
    Tris squinted at the ball and frowned. “That woman looks dead.”
    To his sergeant the mage said, “Arrest him.” The arurimi surged forward to grip Keth by the arms.
    “Stop!” cried Tris, outraged. “You can’t march into a private house — can they?” she asked the housekeeper. The woman nodded.
    The arurim mage frowned at Tris in a well-bred way. “I do not answer to children,”
    he informed her. “Murder was done at the Fifth District Forum. The whole thing looked just as it does here, which means we arrest Kethlun Warder for murder.”
    “But I just blew the globe, I didn’t kill anyone!” protested Keth.
    “Quiet,” growled an arurim as she twisted one of Keth’s arms up behind his back.
    “You’ll speak when spoken to.”
    Tris looked from the arurimi to their mage to Keth. She had no understanding of what was going on here - she’d been in Tharios less than a week -but she knew what Niko would say her duty was. Briar and her foster-mother Lark both had told stories of what happened to defenceless people who ‘were taken away by those who enforced the law.
    “Then I am going with him,” she informed the mage haughtily. “He is my student.
    You will answer to me should any harm come to him.”
    The mage lost his air of superiority when he goggled at her. “You’re joking,” he said in a less self-important, more matter-of-fact way.
    Tris gave the housekeeper Little Bear’s collar, then reached for the ribbon around her neck. She pulled out the medallion and allowed the arurim mage to see both sides.
    When he reached for it, she closed her eyes. The moment he touched the medallion to test if it were a proper mage’s token, it threw out a blaze of white light that left everyone but Tris blinking.
    “I don’t joke,” Tris said, her voice flat. “It makes my head hurt. Where are you taking Keth? Who are you, anyway?”
    The mage sighed. “My name is Demakos Nomasdina, arurim dhaskoi at the Elya Street arurimat. That’s where we’re taking this murder suspect, teacher or no teacher.
    And who are you?“
    “Dhasku Trisana Chandler,” she retorted, giving herself the Tharian title. This superior young man would learn that she could not be pushed around. “And I’m coming with you.” She looked at the housekeeper. “Send someone for Jumshida and Niko. They’ll want to know about this.”
    “Yes, dhasku,” the woman replied with a bow of the head.
    “I hope you are a truthsayer,” Tris informed Nomasdina. She knew how to manage this. She had to keep him on the defensive, and not allow him time to think that she was only fourteen, medallion or not. “Because I doubt that Dhasku Jumshida Dawnspeaker will be happy to learn a guest of hers was abused.” From the looks exchanged by the arurimi and the mage, she knew she’d hit a nerve. She’d hoped that Jumshida’s name and position — that of First Scholar of Mages’ Hall and Second Scholar of Heskalifos — would throw a damper on things. “Or did you not notice whose house this is?”
    The mage reassembled his lofty facial expression. “She may vouch for him at Elya Street,” he informed Tris. “And there are truth spells I can use. First, though, we are going to see the woman he murdered.”
    “I didn’t—” Keth began, only to receive Tris’s elbow in his ribs.
    Before he could ask why she’d poked him, Tris told Dema, her voice as lofty as his, “Then I go with him.” To Chime, who waited on the dining-room table still, she said, “You stay here.”
    First they had gone to the Fifth District Forum, where Keth saw the reality of the image inside the glass ball. Numb all over, voiceless with pity over this unknown yaskedasu, he ‘was only dimly aware of the quarrel between Nomasdina and the priests of the All-Seeing. He overheard snippets. The priests had wanted to take the dead woman away two hours ago, but they had agreed to wait until the arurim dhaskoi confronted Keth with the crime he was supposed to have committed. Keth