Her protective globe completed, she opened her eyes and smiled. She liked to be enveloped by her magic. As a very young girl she’d had a favorite blanket that made her feel warm and safe. Her protections seemed much like the blanket, though she had never told anyone that.

Now she was ready. Daja sat down and reached for her silver disk.

Leaving her room with her completed mirror in hand, Daja heard her belly complain. Passing the hall clock downstairs, she saw why: it was two hours after supper. The family and Frostpine would be in the book room.

When she walked in, everyone turned to stare at her. Of the four Bancanor children only the twins were present, Nia tatting lace, Jory reading a book on the hearth. Frostpine, Kolborn Bancanor, and his wife Matazidah, or Matazi, were all there, Frostpine as close to the fire as he could manage. Kol and Matazi were in their favorite chairs near a table where a tea service already sat.

“Daja, we missed you at supper,” Matazi said, ringing the bell for a maid. “You must be starving.” She was a beauty who never seemed aware of her looks, a quality she had passed on to the twins. Her skin, the color of coffee well lightened with cream, was perfect; her eyes large and dark over a slim nose, and reddened lips, the lower slightly fuller than the upper. She wore her handfuls of dark, crinkly hair pinned up in coils, accented by the topaz drops that hung in her ears. She was dressed in Namornese fashion in a long, sleeveless tunic dress of cinnamon-colored wool with embroidered lilies around the hem and tiny gold buttons that went from collarbone to shoe. Under it Matazi wore a cream-colored undergown with full sleeves and a band collar, trimmed with gold ribbon. Daja fixed the details of her outfit in her mind: Sandry always liked to hear about the latest fashions, and the entire city looked to Matazi for colors and styles.

When a maid answered the bell, Matazi asked her to bring a tray for Daja. The maid bobbed a curtsey and left as Nia offered tea to Daja. With an inner sigh, Daja accepted. Even after three months in Namorn, two in this house, she still was not used to the idea of tea served in a glass cup with a wrought silver base.

“More tea, Frostpine?” Matazi inquired. He passed his glass to her and got a full one in return. From a dish on the table at his side he took a lump of sugar, set it in front of his teeth, and drank his tea by straining it through the sugar. Daja watched him do it with a shudder. He liked to practice the customs of the country they were in, and the Namornese drank their tea either that way or by straining it through a mouthful of cherry preserves. Daja didn’t care if it was rude not to follow the custom: she hadn’t eaten the baked sheep’s head in Karang, either.

Jory bounced up to a sitting position. “Were you doing something magical, Daja? Frostpine said you were doing something magical. He said he could tell.”

Daja sat down hard in a cushioned chair, clutching her tea glass to keep it from splashing. Suddenly her knees had gone watery. Her work had taken more out of her than she’d expected-missing supper hadn’t helped. “Yes, I was,” she told Jory. “And of course Frostpine could tell. He’s my teacher.” Holding her glass with both hands to steady it, she drank her tea. By the time she finished, the maid arrived with a large supper tray. As she caught a whiff of its contents, her stomach gave a growl that everyone could hear.

“Daja can tell you what she did after she eats,” Kol Bancanor told Jory as the maid put dishes and utensils on a small table beside Daja’s chair. Daja wasn’t about to argue. She started with the soup, spooning it up eagerly.

“I hear you had a fire in the alley today,” Frostpine remarked.

“A small affair. We’ve grown very casual about these things, thanks to Ben Ladradun. He’s drilled all Kadasep Island in what to do,” said Kol. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, easygoing man with a lean face and very sharp blue eyes. He wore his brown-blonde hair combed straight back. He dressed well because Matazi, a former seamstress, saw to it, but there was little trim on his plain brown wool coat and breeches or on his white, full-sleeved shirt. His boots were polished to a glossy finish, to the credit of the bootboy, not because Kol took an interest. He told Frostpine, “Three years ago, four, maybe five houses would have caught from that one mishap. Now our people walk around clapping one another on the back and saying ‘That wasn’t so bad.’”

“So this fellow, Ben-?” asked Frostpine.

“Bennat Ladradun,” Kol supplied.

“Ladradun did the island a favor,” remarked Frostpine.

Kol nodded. “Other islands, too. Over the last two years he’s been training firefighters and getting the island councils to clean up obvious fire hazards.”

“It was a wonderful thing, to draw out of such devastation,” Matazi said, sipping her tea. Daja had been relieved to see that the mistress of Bancanor House drank tea like a normal person, without sweet stuff smeared all over her teeth. “Only think, he lost his home, his wife, and his children. They feared for his sanity. He was absolutely shattered. And then off he goes to Godsforge-“

Frostpine raised his heavy brows. “The fire-mage?”

Kol nodded. “Ben studied with him for two years. Then he came back to Ladradun House like a man on fire, if you’ll excuse the expression. He talked, wheedled, bullied, all to get funds and firefighters to train. He’s changing how we approach fires. Other Namornese cities send people here to study his methods.” He shook his head. “Awe-inspiring. Heroic, even without the people he’s saved with his own two hands. If he sees smoke, he’s there as fast as he can move.”