Daja nodded, mute with admiration. No going on about her youth, no refusal: he accepted her on her own terms. How many adults did that?

Ben thrust the rolled-up blanket into her hands and led her through the lines of firefighters. He stopped five yards from the blazing door and looked down at her. “I imagine you can be killed like anyone else if the roof or floors collapse.” Daja nodded; he continued briskly. “Don’t be a fool. If your hear beams groan, get out of there. Understand?”

Daja nodded and ran through the front door, which hung off its hinges. The firefighters had hacked it to pieces to get inside.

A quick look around told her that the hall floors and the stairs were still intact, a minor miracle. Instead the fire busily gobbled the contents of the rooms on either side and reached for those side rooms on the upper floors. Someone, or several someones, had spelled the halls and stairs with charms against fire, so people could still escape when the house burned. Those charms shone pale silver in Daja’s magical vision as they fought to hold their ground against the eager flames. Soon the fire would get so big that it would overwhelm these spells as avalanches did snowballs.

The fire puzzled Daja as she ran to the stairs and began to climb. Why hadn’t the blaze consumed this entire ground floor, not just the rooms on either side? The spells were no match for it. Had it come up from the cellar? If so, it should have worked its way forward or back from its starting point, sweeping along to burn everything in its path. Upstairs, she saw the rooms on either side were burning, but again the hall floor was barely touched. It was as if the fire had begun on each side of the house, which made it no accident.

When she reached the third story, she heard the girl called Gruzha coughing in the front room. Daja ran through her open door. “Gruzha, come on! We’re getting out of here!”

The blind girl whirled away from the window, hands before her, questing. “Who is it? Who are you?” She coughed helplessly.

“Not important,” Daja said, and hacked a puff of smoke from her own throat. As a by-product of fire, smoke wasn’t as dangerous to her as it was to others, but it was an annoyance that would clog her lungs until she got rid of it. “Cover as much of you as you can with this.” She handed the girl the wet blanket.

“My birds!” Gruzha cried.

Daja saw the cage in the corner. “Leave them!” she snapped.

The girl opened her mouth, then shut it, and swallowed hard. Tears ran down her sooty cheeks, leaving pale tracks.

If she had argued, Daja might have abandoned the birds. Instead Gruzha’s mute acceptance twisted Daja’s heart. As Gruzha draped the wet wool over her head, Daja seized the cage by its wire handle and laid her hand flat on top. Her power coursed through thin wire bars, wrapping cage and terrified occupants in her magic, holding air inside, fire outside. Gripping the cage in one hand, Daja took Gruzha’s blanket in the other. “Can you stay right behind me?” Daja shouted at the area where the girl’s ear must be.

The sodden wool cocoon nodded. Gruzha stuck a hand out; Daja pulled Gruzha’s free arm around her own waist.

Carefully she led the way down the hall. The blaze had reached this floor; it mumbled cheerfully in the rooms around the stairwell. Daja thrust it back first, then the flames that began to test the stair itself. In a tunnel of fire they descended to the ground floor.

Daja stretched her power through the kitchen and beyond, seeking a better escape route. There was none: the fire had reached the storeroom at the back of the house. She felt it feed on exploding jars of oil. The rear half of the building was in flames. It was the front door or nothing.

She wrapped Gruzha’s hands around her waist, feeling the sodden blanket soak the back of her shirt and trousers. Daja set the birds’ cage at her feet, then beckoned to streamers of rippling flame. The fire came eagerly, curling around her arms, sniffing at her clothes. Daja gripped its strands firmly before it found the less-protected girl at her back.

The ceiling above them groaned.

Swiftly Daja wove fiery strands, shaping the blaze as a tube made of flame net. When she thrust the tube wide and high between her and the door, it pushed away the flames in walls and ceiling to open a path. Only a handful of fiery tendrils reached through holes in the net to threaten the two girls. Daja picked up the cage in her left hand and walked forward. She used her right hand to weave escaping bits of flame into the net over her head, to make it stronger and tighter.

The ceiling collapsed. The roof of her tunnel sagged. Clumps of plaster dropped through two wide spaces in her net, but the rest of it held the weight of the upper floor.

The front door was still an opening filled with a sheet of fire. That part fought her, strengthened by the wind outside, but Daja was in no mood to be nice. She was willing to let this fire continue because someone had invited it here, but it could not be allowed to delay her.

She gripped cords of fire in the door and began to weave again, pulling flame-threads tight, yanking them ruthlessly into a fiery square. Once done, she thrust it ahead of her like a shield. It bulged out through the doorway, bubblelike.

Daja felt the blaze surge. Under her, the floor sagged.

She turned, bent, then thrust up from her knees, draping Gruzha over her shoulder. With the other girl’s head and feet just inches from the flames, Daja strode outside with her and the birdcage. As they crossed the threshold, the floor where they had stood dropped into the cellar with a roar.

Outside Daja helped Gruzha to stand and released her fire weavings in the house. The flames returned to their meal.