Ben waved some women forward. They wept as they took the wet blanket off Gruzha and wrapped her in a dry one, patting her head, face, and arms as if they couldn’t believe she was real. As they did they backed away from Daja, taking the blind girl with them. Daja sighed and held out the birds’ cage, reclaiming the silvery protective shield she had put on it. The finches began to chatter in tiny voices as a woman carefully took the cage.

Daja looked down. Her shirt and breeches, overcome by more fire than they were spelled against, were crumbling on her body. Firefighters and those in the crowd backed away, just as Gruzha’s friends had.

“Very admirable,” Ben snapped at the onlookers, striding toward the woman who still held Daja’s belongings. He snatched them from her hands; the woman then fled into the crowd. Ben turned to Daja and offered the girl her boots and stockings. Daja pulled on the boots, shaking her head at the stockings: they were too much trouble to put on now. Her clothes fell away in flakes as she straightened. By the time Ben shook out her coat and wrapped it around her, she wore only a breastband and loincloth. The harsh wet air raised goosebumps all over her and made her teeth chatter. She dragged more warmth into herself from the house until her teeth stopped clacking.

“I’d see you home myself, but I’m not done here.” Ben glanced at the burning house, then scanned the crowd. “Is there a hired sleigh about-“

Daja pointed wordlessly at Serg, who had left his place in the line of firefighters to come for her.

Ben looked at him. “Serg, isn’t it? You’re in one of the Kadasep brigades.”

The footman nodded, gingerly offering his arm to Daja.

“Get her home,” Ben said. “If you’ve any hot, sweet tea, give her some. Forgive me for rushing off.” He strode over to a neighboring house, shouting to those on the roof and pointing to a cluster of shingles that had started to burn.

Daja looked at Serg and at the offered arm: it shook. He gulped and tried a quivering mockery of the smile he’d given so readily that morning. “There are side streets we can follow to Everall Bridge,” he told her.

Daja waved the arm aside and followed him back to the sleigh. Everyone moved away; whispers preceded them. They’ll get over it, she told herself as Serg helped her into the sleigh. They always do. Eventually.

Later, when all the gawkers had scattered to their homes, he returned to inspect the remains of the boardinghouse. He checked them thoroughly, breaking open large clumps in case embers still burned at their hearts, but the true fire had gone. His bones ached, warning of snow on the way. If any hidden fire pockets remained, they would soon be dead, covered with snow and ice.

Sythuthan, but she had been glorious to watch! As much as it burned him to see her go where he could not, it had been wonderful to see her in action. To watch the fire bend and reshape itself to her liking. She had gone up the steps and through the flame-wreathed door as she might walk into her own house. Flames slid from her clothes, her hair, her skin. In that moment alone she was a beauty and a terror, this stocky, brown-skinned girl with her calm, thoughtful eyes and her fistfuls of thin braids.

He and the watchers had waited as the blind girl screamed-how was he supposed to know she was home?-for someone to help her. Then the blind girl turned from her window, and was gone. The crowd had moaned. Had the wench heard Daja? Or had the fire caught her?

The second floor was well and truly burning by then. Flames spurted through the third floor windows at the sides of the house. He’d done such a fine job of shaping this fire, starting on both sides of the basement. It had raced first up the side walls, as he’d wanted. He’d left an escape path clear in case anyone remained inside, because he did try to cover all possibilities. He’d honestly thought he was being overcareful, that no one was there when he’d lit the wicks in their lamps of oil. He’d heard nothing as he’d prowled the cellar and the ground floor. If he’d heard anyone, he would have left the place alone. Nobody was supposed to die, particularly not some blind shopgirl, but the firefighters had to be tested. They had to prove themselves, not on some tame fire, in a building that was scheduled for destruction, but on a real fire with lives and property to worry them.

Somewhere inside the house as it burned, after Daja had gone in, he’d heard the crash of wood and plaster. Ceilings had started to drop.

Then, a miracle. The flames around the front door bulged out, away from the house, like a sail in a strong wind. Suddenly the bubble they formed popped, tearing the sheet of fire into long streamers. At the center of the streamers stood Daja Kisubo, a blanket-muffled body over one shoulder, a cage in her hand.

A cage?

Daja walked out of the building. The body was the blind girl, still very much alive. And Daja carried a cage full of finches, of all things.

The sight of the birds made his heart twist. He hadn’t wanted to kill any animals, especially none so harmless as finches.

Daja put the girl on her feet. Behind her the streamers of fire turned back into the doorway, released to finish their meal of wood and cloth, oils and glass.

The idiots in the crowd shrank away from Daja. They ought to flinch from a goddess like her. They weren’t fit to kiss her bare feet as she stood there in the icy mud, offering the birdcage to anyone who would take it.

Why was she here, in Kugisko, now? Had she come for him, to make him her servant, or her priest?

He would have to see. He would have to find out if she was worth his service. She might not even be a goddess, just another self-satisfied mage. And wasn’t it funny, at his age, to fall in a kind of love with a teenaged girl barefoot in the mud, her clothes blackened and crumbling, her dark skin gleaming with sweat? Whatever she was, he would love her until they died.