garments were cotton, linen, or silk, with sashes or ribbon belts twined around waists and hips. On top of the tunic or kyten upper-class Tharians also wore stoles of many colours, each of which indicated the wearer’s profession. She knew that mages here wore blue stoles, shopkeepers green, and priests of the All-Seeing God red. Beyond that she was lost. No matter what colour the stole, it was usually made of the lightest cotton, or even silk, money could buy. The Tharians looked cool and comfortable to Tris.
Since the prathmun girl had called her attention to shoes, Tris noted that better-dressed Tharian men and women generally wore leather sandals that laced up to the knee. Many of the poorer residents went barefoot. This wasn’t as risky as it might be anywhere else: Tris saw prathmun collecting trash and cleaning the street on nearly every block.
Though Little Bear was content to stay with his mistress, Tris’s breezes were not. They roamed freely around her, tugging at curls, tunics, kytens and stoles, exploring people’s faces, then returning to Tris like excited children gone for a walk with a favourite aunt. They brought her scraps of conversations about trade rates, fashions, family quarrels and political discussions from all around her, pouring those scraps into her ears. She half-listened, always interested in local gossip.
Some conversations mentioned her. A few of the Tharians she passed had discovered her way to stay cool. Perhaps her breezes wouldn’t have been noticed if the air were not perfectly still. The only winds outside Tris’s circle of influence were those made by hand-held fans and those roused by pigeons in flight from uncaring feet.
Tris sighed, and drew the breezes closer to her. People continued to stare as her dress and petticoats stirred in different directions. She ignored them. It was too hot to give up her fresh air so a number of stuck-up southerners weren’t made nervous. If they were as clever as they claimed, they’d find ways to hold breezes of their own, Tris told herself.
She had a number of breezes tied up in knots of thread back at the house. Perhaps she could peddle some at the market, and make a bit of extra money. There were two more moons of summer to go, and the problem with city walls was that they tended to keep out the wind. She ought to be able to sell a knot, or two, or three, for pocket money. She would ask Jumshida how to go about it.
On she walked, planning and observing. She passed between shops filled with wonders: vases, bowls, platters, glass animals in a multitude of colours and sizes. In the shops on the Achaya Square end of the Street of Glass, windows were made of small panes of glass, treasures in and of themselves, which gave a watery, rippling shape to the beautiful objects behind them.
Mingled with the higher-priced glass was glass that had been spelled in some way. Magical charms and letters in the sides and rims of pieces, suncatchers magicked to catch more than just sun, rounds of glass imbued with magic to capture and hold an image in them, all glinted silver in Tris’s vision, showing her the work of the glass mages of Tharios. It was for this reason that she chose to start among the poorer shops, those more likely to sell plain glass and few charms. Tris knew she would spend most of her time later among the glass mages, comparing notes and learning how they practised their craft.
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 glassmakers’ pecking order.
As Tris approached Labrykas Square, the first public square beyond the Piraki Gate, her breezes carried a conversation to her; “—a disgrace!” someone cried. “One of the riff-raff, murdered and left in the Labrykas Square fountain like, like so much rubbish!”
“It 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 — ”
“The district? I think not!” retorted the first speaker. “It’s obviously the work of some shenos who respects nothing and no one. The All-Seeing knows that no Tharian would commit so foul