Yarrun was restless. He walked to the far side of the platform, but stayed only a few minutes before he returned.
“Can I ask something?” Daja inquired. The worst he could do would be to order her off the platform.
“Ask what you please,” he replied absently, staring at the firebreaks. “I can’t promise to answer, of course.”
Adults! Why were they always so complicated? Daja made a face. Since his back was to her, Yarrun didn’t see it. “Why did you say that to Niko, the first night we were here?” she inquired. “That he could do nothing to stop the fires? What did he do to you?”
The man took another turn around the platform, strolling all the way around its rim. He was quiet for so long that she believed he wouldn’t answer. She was thinking perhaps she ought to go inside when Yarrun said, “You are young. Young, and gifted with unusual magics. You are to be congratulated.”
Congratulated? Daja thought of Briar, grieving over burned crocus bulbs in private. What about Tris, who woke screaming three nights in four with dreams of slaves drowned when she had turned lightning on the ships they rowed? Or Sandry who carried a rock spelled to hold light with her all the time, because she was terrified of the dark? What about Daja herself, trangshi forever?
With no idea of the thoughts that raced through her mind, Yarrun continued, “People like you and Niklaren Goldeye will never be just another mage. You will never work day in and day out at ordinary spells—never mind that our world cannot do without spells to keep food from spoilage, or spells to hunt down criminals. Ordinary mages live in shabby rooms. They scramble for money to pay for rent and supplies. And the moment someone like Goldeye comes to town, no one has time for you anymore. You aren’t as interesting as he is—you aren’t as famous. You just do the spells to ward off pickpockets, and keep plumbing and chimneys from clogging.”
She was sorry she had asked.
Yarrun wasn’t done. “I worked for twenty years after I left the university, traveling constantly, trying to become one of the great ones. Why not? I was good. It was simply a matter of finding the right spells, and the right patron. Every time my father wrote, it was ‘When you stop deluding yourself and want a real job, come home.’ Finally, I did. I came home, to put out fires in north Emelan. And here I am, working magic few others have the talent for, while my lady seats Niklaren Goldeye at the uppermost table, and me with him. My usual place, when no great mages visit, is just above the salt, with the chamberlain and the steward.” He drank from his flask and smiled bitterly. “Now you regret that you asked.”
“Not at all,” Daja lied firmly.
Yarrun upended the bottle—only a few drops fell to the platform. “I must refill this. Were I you, I would pray that no one comes to think smith-magic is ordinary, or you will learn to your sorrow I am right.” He left her there and went inside.
Daja nibbled a thumbnail. Wasn’t it foolish, to worry over fame? Was it useful, to fret about someone else’s magic? It was a thing you had or you didn’t, whatever Yarrun believed about learning just the right spells. And she would give it all up in a breath, to be Tsaw’ha again.
Turning her face into the smoky breeze, she let it blow Yarrun’s bile from her mind.
Sandry wove.
At first she knew what happened around her: Briar and Tris made ointment, Daja left and Lark returned. Someone fed Little Bear; she smelled the food. Shriek sat on the pole at the far end of the loom and chattered; when she didn’t feed him, the starling left. At last everything faded as she continued to work. She felt like a glass filled with light. Under her fingers the pattern wriggled, as if made of worms. Those were the magics, spilling out of control. They fought her grasp as she wove, but she refused to release them. They had run wild since the month of Mead: playtime was over.
What had happened? In one terrified moment, positive the stones around them would grind her, her friends, and their dog into paste, she had remembered her spinning lessons. It had made sense right then to gather the threads of their power and spin them together to make them stronger, to give them a way to fight the quake. And just look how things had turned out!
She had done this. It was only right that she set the magics right.
Here was Briar’s new thread, wound onto its own shuttle, not twined with the others as the first threads had been. He was anchored in the satiny mess on the left side of the cloth, in the area that had started out as his. Taking up the shuttle, Sandry concentrated on him. These days he smelled wonderfully of damp earth and herbs, of aloe, pine trees, and a tumble of flowers. Here a loop of silk caught his quick hands as he slipped a roll into his shirt-front, or balanced a knife on a fingertip. A shift of the light and she had his pale gray-green eyes under thin black brows. A ghostly hand tugged one of her braids, his favorite trick when she wasn’t looking. She reached the end of his stripe.
Now the border, a plain white cotton thread on a tiny shuttle, an empty piece with nothing of anyone in it. In her mind it was a glass wall, keeping Briar to one side, Tris to the other. Ten warp threads later, she let that shuttle go and picked up the next, the one that held Tris’s thread. It too was white, but silk like Briar’s, with a moonglow shimmer to it. Now Sandry had to forget the boy for the moment and concentrate on Tris.
Tris was easy to call to mind. This strand was coarse red hair, its curls scissored off, banished until Tris no longer grew lightning bolts in it when she lost her temper. Here was the smell of old books, and a hint of wood polish—Tris liked housework. Here were storm-gray eyes, gentling as Tris combed Little Bear’s coat, when she thought no one else saw how much she loved their ungainly dog.
Too quickly Sandry reached the end of Tris’s stripe. Well, she would return in a moment. Picking up another small shuttle, Sandry closed the redhead in with a fresh white border.
Now she had come to her own stripe. What was she supposed to do? It was one thing to weave her friends, who she knew so well. What could she bring here of herself?
With no warning, her own private nightmare flowered in her brain, fed by the magic. Her parents lay together on a bed. Their skins were riddled with dried smallpox sores; they stank of dead meat.
Dragging her mind from that memory, the girl stumbled into another, a windowless room filled with black velvet shadows. In its center was a silk braid that flickered with light: her first magic. She had worked it because she would try anything to keep back the dark, even call on magic she was certain she did not have.
Except that she’d had it. The braid glowed, as long as her mind was locked on it. It had glowed, and she survived captivity in that hidden room until Niko had found her. “I was looking for treasure,” he’d said once, except the treasure was hers: a new life, and magic, and friends who were more than life.
Now she was at the end of her own stripe, having fed her shuttle through without knowing it. Time to close herself off. Carefully, she added a white cotton border, then picked the shuttle with Daja’s thread. That was simple weaving, after all their dealings with Polyam. Daja was the sea. She was the fire in the forge, and a plain-capped staff. She was Sandry’s first friend at Winding Circle; she was hot metal and crimson, the Trader color for mourning. Sandry gave Daja, and the edge of the cloth, a white border.
Her back cramped. She needed to stretch. As she stood with a groan, her sensitive nose caught the enticing smell of food. Someone had left a tray on the table with a pitcher of juice, a plate of couscous and chicken, a cup of spicy chickpeas, and a platter of unleavened bread. Using her fingers she scooped up couscous as the people of Bijan and Sotat did and jammed it into her mouth. She reached for the pitcher with her free hand, meaning to pour a goblet full of juice.
“Allow me,” a velvet-soft voice said as a hand lifted the pitcher. Sandry yelped, and jumped, and choked. Her uncle pounded her firmly on the back until she caught her breath, then offered her a cup of juice. She drank slowly, beet-red with embarrassment that he had seen her eating like a commoner.
“I didn’
t mean to startle you,” Duke Vedris remarked, taking a seat. “It never occurred to me that you were not aware that I was here.”
Sandry cleared her throat. “For how long?”
“For some time,” he admitted. “I didn’t want to interrupt. It was fascinating to watch—did you know that you were glowing?”
Sandry shook her head, still blushing.
“Eat.” He nodded at the food. “You look ravenous.”
“I am,” she admitted, taking a chair. Picking up her napkin, she wiped her greasy hand thoroughly. “Shouldn’t you be at supper?”
“It was over an hour ago.” His deep-set brown eyes glittered with amusement. “Your friends went for a walk, rather than interrupt you. Did I hear Dedicate Lark correctly? They have no magic until you are done?” He put food onto a plate for her, his big swordsman’s hands graceful as he handled the utensils.
“None,” she admitted, picking up her fork with properly bred daintiness. “So I’m trying to do as much tonight as I can.” She began to eat, quickly but neatly.
The duke said nothing more for a while, but poured juice for himself. When she had devoured nearly half of what he’d set before her, Sandry took a breath and sat back. Her uncle was gazing through the doors that opened onto the balcony. The smoke that came in on the night breeze didn’t seem to bother him.
There was something she wanted to ask. “Would you have been able to do much for Gold Ridge? Or would it have been bad, if we hadn’t found the copper?”
He didn’t turn his head, but his eyes shifted in her direction.
“It’s good we found the copper,” Sandry answered herself. Many people said they found her great-uncle impossible to fathom, but she rarely had trouble guessing his thoughts.
“My treasury is perilously low,” he admitted. With a sigh, he turned to face her. “Damages from the earthquake and pirate attacks drained off my surplus cash, and the funds I have must be spread through not just Gold Ridge, but all of the northlands. With copper being mined here once again, it can be traded for supplies—if they can get enough from the ground. There is little time before winter closes these mountains in.”
Peering in a covered dish, Sandry discovered a pudding and began to eat it with a good will. “I’m glad we’ve been able to help, Uncle.”
The duke gently tugged one of her braids. “I am glad, too. You and your friends saved me from unpleasant choices, at least for Inoulia’s lands.”
Once the supper dishes were cleared, a few people brought musical instruments to the main hall and began to play. After the duke returned, Niko created illusions to amuse those who had stayed. Lark juggled a collection of plates and tableware to much applause, and two household guards performed a sword dance. Other talented people came forward, with the result that it was very late when Daja, Tris, Briar, and their teachers went to their rooms. Sandry was curled up in a chair, asleep. Her loom lay flat on the floor, with four inches of clean stripes after the section where fibers had created a satinlike cloth. The green, white, blue and orange-red stripes were not purely colored: the fibers still mingled enough to give lights in all four shades to each stripe. The white cotton barriers between the stripes were solid, though, and the cloth was ready to be cut from the loom.
Daja knelt and pressed a hand to the stripe that glowed like the heart of a fire. She felt the heat of embers on her palm, a warmth that grew up her arm to sprout limbs and branches within her flesh. Her veins filled with fire. Her magic blazed inside her once more.
Briar set a palm to the green stripe, Tris to the white. Pale fire rolled and twined through their bodies, blazing out through their eyes before it began to shrink—not to vanish, but to settle into their very bones. Daja looked at Sandry and realized that her friend had already reclaimed her own power.
“So now, with luck and hope, you will be settled,” Rosethorn announced with satisfaction.
“They won’t have just one kind of magic,” Niko reminded her. “Briar’s power is still bound to fire and lightning. You’ll have to work with him, to discover what he can do.”
“Could we work with me later, instead of now?” Briar yawned hugely. “It’s past my bedtime.”
Tris stumbled into her room without a word to anyone. Daja waved to Frostpine—who waved back—and followed the redhead.
“Go to bed, urchin,” Rosethorn told Briar, her eyes amused. “We’ll have all winter to explore your power.”
Frostpine picked up Sandry, who fussed a little. “Back to sleep, weaver,” he said quietly. “You did a giant’s work today.”
10
Just after breakfast the next day Daja thought it would be a good idea to give her iron vine one last, complete going-over before the Traders came for it. Tiptoeing in and out of the girls’ bedroom—Sandry was not yet awake—she got her creation and took it into the main room. Propping it on a wooden chair, she went over it by hand and by eye, fingering each stem, leaf and blossom. It had eaten all of Polyam’s copper plate, translating metal into flower buds. Many of them had opened roselike blooms like the one she’d planted in the glacier valley; a few were still half-open or tightly closed. There were as many leaves as flowers; tiny iron buds on all of the branches hinted at more leaves to come.
Her exploration told her that the vine had reached the limits of its growth. It needed more iron for the remaining leaves to open, and the large stems were a bit fragile. There was something else not right with it, though she had no idea what it was.
Still, the metal felt good in her hands. Closing her eyes to concentrate on the power that trickled through the vine, she realized that while this was not the kind of magic that she had learned as Frostpine’s student, it felt every bit as familiar. Could she do this again? she wondered, with growing interest. Could she create more living metal?
She thought that maybe she could.
Briar had watched as she inspected the vine. When she looked up, he commented, “It needs repotting. Actually, it needs a pot. And there’s something not right with it.”
She had never thought to get advice on care from him or from Rosethorn. “You think so?” she asked.
“I know so.” He jerked his head toward the vine and raised his eyebrows. Daja nodded, understanding, and moved back so he could handle her creation. Briar went over it as she had, by sight and by feel. When he got to the trunk, he lifted the whole vine. “I know what’s wrong. It’s got no roots.”
“Does it need them?” she asked.
“Well, the flower you poked in the ground yesterday sure put them down in a hurry.” Rosethorn and Tris had come in. Briar asked the woman, “Doesn’t this thing need roots?”
“If you want it to live it does. A pot wouldn’t hurt, either.” Rosethorn drew some copper coins out of her belt-purse. “Buy a clay pot the size of a bushel basket. This will cover the cost, if the potter isn’t a robber.”
“I can pay you back when I get the money from Polyam,” Daja offered. It was nice to know she now could repay Rosethorn and Lark for the things they’d bought her in the past.
Rosethorn waved the offer away. “It’s my contribution to this”—she looked at the vine, fumbling for a word—”experiment. Have you some iron to put in the pot with it?”
“I have scraps from the nails I’ve made.” Daja went to get them.
When she returned, Tris was looking at the vine over Briar’s shoulder. “I don’t think I realized it before,” she said, her voice hoarse, “but from overhead it looks like a cyclone.” She pointed to the cleft where the branches split away from the vine’s main stem. “See? The rods in the trunk all twist in the same direction, to make a funnel. Or you could say it looks like water going down a drain.” She started to cough from the smoky air. Rosethorn gave her a cup of juice, frowning.
While Daja got her scraps, Lark had joined the group in the main room. Now the dedicate looked down at the vine from overhead. “To me it looks like yarn,” she said, interested. “After several threads are spun together into one t
hick one. And the trunk is the single thick length.”
“It still needs a root,” Briar said. “C’mon, Daj”. Let’s find that potter.”
“You think those scraps will keep it fed?” she asked, trotting after him.
“Should do, unless the Traders don’t mean to sell it for a while.” In the hall outside he slowed to a walk as she caught up. “Just tell Polyam to give it more iron. Did you feel the power in it? It wants to grow more, but I don’t think it wants to grow a lot. What do you get off it?”
Daja thought about that. “It’s young,” she remarked slowly. “Right now it’s still full of fire, and the copper helps feed that. Its iron nature should take over in a month or two, though. Iron isn’t a leaping kind of metal. It’s just lively now with all that magic in it.”
They clattered down the steps and out the door. “Cold’ll make it hunker down, too,” Briar said.
“Remind me to tell them to watch the stems and twigs in the cold,” said Daja. The main courtyard was packed with refugees. The two mages ducked and dodged around people and wagons as they crossed it. “They’ll go brittle and break off if the people handling it aren’t careful.”
The potter sold them not only a round green pot of the right size, but he let them have some of his discarded clay. They got enough of that to fill their pot almost to the brim. Daja spent the next hour under Rosethorn’s direction, placing gravel at the bottom of the pot for drainage, then a layer of clay, a layer of scraps, a fresh layer of clay, and so on, until the vine was firmly planted and its weight supported by its new foundation.
“If you hadn’t closed the deal, I’d say charge the Tsaw’ha for the pot and clay,” Briar remarked when they were done. “You don’t want them thinking you’ll give them free things all the time.”
“I think Polyam at least understands I won’t do that,” Daja said drily. “And it sounds like she’ll be doing business with us again.”