“But we’re doing it for you,” said Jory at her most innocent.

“If this is revenge for my revealing you have magic, it’s working,” Daja informed them. She tossed her covers aside and tried to get out of bed. After the previous day’s skating lesson she had gone stiff with pain in places she hadn’t known she could hurt. Muscles heavy with years of smacking things with hammers ached as if she’d picked one up only a day ago. Her back was one large bruise.

“It didn’t hurt me that bad,” Nia commented as Daja hobbled to her water pitcher.

Jory suggested, “Maybe you didn’t fall as much.”

“I don’t think it’s that she fell more.” Nia sounded as if she were genuinely trying to be helpful. “Maybe Daja hit harder, because there’s so much of her to hit.”

Daja turned to glare at them. “Unless you want to spend the winter stuck in ice to your knees, you will go downstairs and wait for me.”

“How can we get stuck in ice?” Jory demanded as Nia towed her from the room.

“She’ll melt it under us and let it freeze,” Nia replied as they closed Daja’s door.

Daja stared at herself in her looking-glass. “If this is how old people feel, I don’t like it,” she told her reflection. “I don’t have to do this. Plenty of other people walk. They don’t have to skate.” And they take forever to go anyplace, a treacherous part of her brain replied.

Somehow she dressed and tottered downstairs. When she emerged from the house in her winter clothes, her skates over one sore shoulder, she saw the twins had set out fresh torches and were skating as gracefully as birds, swooping and curving, spinning and gliding backward, the metal blades on their feet winking in the torchlight.

Oh, thought Daja with a sigh of longing. That’s why I want to learn.

She was a big, strong girl, not graceful like her foster-mother Lark, not elegant like Matazi Bancanor. Usually she liked to be big and strong: it helped her to handle iron, brass, and bronze. Still, now and then she wanted a little elegance, like the day she found that most boys preferred smaller, more delicate girls, or the day Teraud had shown her iron worked like lace. The skaters on Kugisko’s canals made her think that perhaps she could be elegant for a time with her own body. She wanted to try, at least.

She got down to the bench and put her skates on. As the twins glided to a halt to watch, Daja stood. This time she dug in with the toe of one skate until she felt steady. Then she pushed off, freeing the dug-in toe at the same moment. She stroked down with that skate next, gliding into the center of the ice. Feeling the smoothness of her motion, its grace, Daja got excited. Her next stroke was a little too enthusiastic. She flew across the basin and slammed into a frozen snowbank, face-first.

“Ow,” she said. Her nose was mashed flat.

The twins pulled her to her feet. I want to learn this, Daja told herself grimly. She pushed off again, gliding to the center of the basin.

After breakfast Nia and Jory rushed out of the house and clambered into Serg’s waiting sleigh. Once the girls were in place, Daja used her staff to climb in.

“You walk like an old woman,” Serg remarked, confused. “But you were fine yesterday.”

“It’s the ice-skating,” Jory informed him. “She’s trying really hard.”

“And you are really trying,” Daja said, trying to get comfortable on the padded seat. She glanced up at the sky: fat snowflakes drifted down in a slow dance. “I hope this doesn’t get too bad.”

“It won’t,” Nia replied. “The weather-mage’s crier comes every morning. Today’s supposed to be just snowfall like this. It’ll build up, but not too badly.”

“At least, it won’t if the weather-mage is right. Most of the time they are,” Jory contributed.

“Do not borrow trouble, Ravvikki,” Serg told Jory. “Viymese Daja, I await orders.”

“Camoc Oakborn,” began Daja.

“Nyree Street,” replied Serg. He clucked to the horses and drove out the main gate with easy grace.

Once they arrived, an apprentice ushered Daja and the girls into Camoc Oakborn’s large shop, then went to find the master. They didn’t have long to wait before Camoc joined them. “Viymese Daja,” he said with a nod. He looked at Nia. “This is the girl you spoke of?”

“Niamara Bancanor, this is Viynain Camoc Oakborn,” Daja said giving him the Namornese title for a mage. As Nia curtsied, Daja added, “And this is her sister Jorality.” Jory curtsied as well. “Jory doesn’t share Nia’s magic, Viynain Camoc.”

“I see that,” he said. “Come along, then, Ravvikki Niamara. I’ll give you the tour.” He led Daja and the twins around the shop, identifying for Nia what was being made. He took a moment to inspect each of his people’s work before he moved on. Nia looked at everything with wide and shining eyes, breathing the scents of paint and wood shavings as if they were perfume. By the time they reached the second floor, her dark and practical gown had acquired a coat of sawdust and a variety of wood shavings. Her creamy brown cheeks were flushed.

She belongs here, Daja realized. Remembering her misgivings when she’d met Camoc, she added, Or someplace like it.

On the next floor carpenters toiled over everything from tables to beds. Jory was bored by then; Daja sent her out to buy hot cider and wait with Serg at the sleigh.

Daja toiled up more steps behind Camoc and Nia, who remained spellbound by her surroundings. The third floor was for delicate work: inlays on fancy boxes, end tables, and cupboards, parts for looms and spinning wheels, even a dollhouse in the east Namornese style.