He turned that over in his mind. He did like their days in the city, when he was free to go with Flick and her friends, if he wasn’t visiting the market with the girls. “You’re being nice to Flick,” he said at last.

“You needn’t adore humanity to feel bad for someone in this fix,” she replied. “Street rat or no, she’s sick and frightened. There’s a difference between people like her and adults who think they know more about your life, and their illness, than you do. If you’ve nothing better to do than chatter, you can help take inventory of these cupboards. If we get more patients in here, I don’t want to run out of anything important.”

By the time the clock on top of the Winding Circle tower known as the Hub rang three in the afternoon, Daja had come to work at the big table. Before her lay a spool of thick iron wire, cutters, a thin-tipped punch, and a small hammer and pliers, the tools needed to make chain mail. She was threading a link through its neighbors when she heard a familiar voice in the road that ran past the cottage.

“Don’t whine at me, woman! A lack of planning in the Water Temple should not be an emergency for me!”

The pliers slipped from Daja’s fingers. Frostpine yelling? He was usually the most easygoing of men. When she’d left him earlier that day, he had been lazy with good humor over the success of the morning’s work.

She ran to the door and threw it open. The rain had stopped. Her teacher, Dedicate Frostpine of the Fire Temple, was striding through the front gate. He looked like a thundercloud about to spit lightning.

A thin, fluttery, pale-skinned woman in the blue habit of the Water Temple followed him. “Your language is intemperate!” she cried.

Frostpine whirled to glare down at her. His brown skin was flushed; his eyes blazed. His wild mane of side-hair and beard gave him the look of a bald lion. His bright red habit, scarred with burns and soot, made him an even more vivid figure. He pointed at the Water dedicate with a finger that trembled with frustration. “‘Intemperate’?” he repeated. “Gods bless me, you people would make the moon intemperate. Last year you ran out of bandages on the eve of a pirate attack, and now, now this—”

“How could we have known?” wailed the dedicate. “We have enough for normal diseases. Who would have dreamed a new one could appear and we might need ten times our supply!”

By this time Lark and Sandry had come to see what was going on. Little Bear thrust his big head between Daja’s knees for a better view, rocking her. Daja could sense Tris overhead as the redhead watched from an attic window.

“Who would have dreamed?” demanded Frostpine. “Who would—! You’re supposed to dream, of anything, of everything. Now scat!”

The dedicate ran. Frostpine watched her briefly, then stormed into the house. Everyone got out of his way.

“You shouldn’t yell at her,” Lark said reproachfully.

“Of course I should,” Frostpine barked. “Gods bless us all, Lark, but our Water dedicates would try the patience of a stone!”

“Well, yes,” admitted Lark, sitting at the table. “What did they forget this time?”

“The warded boxes, the ones for samples of body fluids from the sick,” he said, sinking down on the bench across from her. “They have five.”

Lark put a hand to her mouth. “That’s not even enough for a disease we know, where all that’s needed is to see if it’s changed.”

“Crane threw a fit—I don’t blame him—and sent them to me,” Frostpine said bitterly. “If I were Moonstream, I’d scatter the whole lot to the four winds.” He looked at Daja. “Bundle up everything you’ll need for two or three days,” he said with regret. “I can’t turn out enough of these boxes on my own. We’re going to work till we drop, I’m afraid.”

Daja raced upstairs.

“She’s leaving too?” asked Sandry. She stood by the household shrine, a bit of forgotten needlework in one hand. Her eyes were huge. “Three of us gone?”

“What do you mean, ‘three of us’?” Frostpine asked.

Sandry vanished into her room as Lark explained. When Daja came downstairs, Tris in her wake, Frostpine was leaning against Sandry’s open door. “So you see, Rosethorn has plenty of experience,” he was telling the young noble. “Even if she doesn’t know what causes a disease, she’s been known to hold them off with sheer force of will.” He turned to Daja. “Ready?”

Daja nodded. She gave Little Bear a final scratch around the ears and followed her teacher out of the house.

Sandry ran into her room, to the front window. She waved her handkerchief at Daja and Frostpine as if they were on parade and kept waving until they had gone from view.

“Lark?” she heard Tris say out in the main room. “I’m sorry.”

“I know, dear,” murmured Lark. “Just remember—your sharp tongue cuts.”

Sandry reached into the leather pouch she always wore around her neck and drew out a thread circle. It was thick, undyed wool marked by four lumps, each spaced equally apart, with no way to tell where the thread began or ended. It was the first thing she had ever spun, lumps and all, except that originally it had been just a thread, its two ends separate. It had become a circle when, trapped underground in an earthquake, she had spun the four young people’s magics together to make all of them stronger. As far as Sandrilene fa Toren was concerned, that thread was the four of them.