“But I hate to hit, and I hate being hit,” protested Nia. “Why can’t we meditate like before?”

“I hated that,” Jory told her. To Daja she said, “I’ll be good. Just do the things, and hit nicely, and not get excited.”

“Pay attention to the pattern and to the way your body works,” Daja said. “That’s all. Nobody’s going to hurt you, Nia. This is just a pattern, like the breathing, only with all of your body. All right, you strike, Jory blocks, high, middle, low, then switch. Begin.”

They obeyed, striking and blocking slowly, as they had at first. Little by little they relaxed. Daja watched carefully, noting when they began to speed up. Jory started to grin. Faster they went. Jory hit harder; Nia began to flinch. Then, as Nia struck high, Jory blocked and swung a middle strike at her sister’s ribcage. Daja, expecting it, slid her own pole in, hooked Jory’s, and sent it flying. After another lecture to Jory about emotions, Daja started the twins a third time. It was no good; after a minute she saw that Nia didn’t believe her sister’s promise to control herself. She flinched every time Jory struck her, even though she blocked Jory.

When the breakfast bell rang, the twins looked at Daja. She held out her hand for their poles. Nia thrust hers at Daja and fled. Jory gave her pole up reluctantly. “I’d get better,” she told Daja. “Only I suppose you’ll want to go back to the boring way now.” She ran out of the schoolroom.

Daja chose not to eat with the family. A burned scent in the air told her that breakfast cooked by a half-terrified staff was something she could give up. Instead she dressed for the outdoors, picked up her real staff and the satchel that held her tracings of Ben’s hands, and set out for Teraud’s smithy. Halfway down Tenniy Street an old woman made almost perfectly round by skirts and shawls sold dumplings from a cart. Daja bought herself breakfast there and strolled on, turning her problem over in her mind.

Nia liked to sit and meditate. Jory concentrated best when she was moving. No matter how many times Daja put those facts into the forge to heat, they always came out in the same shape.

That’s magic for you, she thought gloomily. One part glory, one part fun, and one part polishing the brightwork till your back and your knees and your hands all ache.

Then she chuckled. Sometimes her old seafaring life broke into her thoughts at the oddest moments. She also took the lesson. Brightwork got ruined by rust without plenty of scrubbing. The twins would never get the best out of their power if Daja was a lazy teacher. Work was work: it had to be done right.

Chapter 7

If Teraud Voskajo was not the ugliest white man Daja had ever met, she had mercifully forgotten the uglier man’s appearance. Stringy brown hair barely covered his blocky head. Dark eyes peered out from under a shelf of brow. His nose was mashed; a slab of chin jutted out beneath a thin mouth. His arms were mallets of muscle and bone. He was six-and-a-half feet tall.

Every child in the neighborhood knew the man who looked like a monster would do anything, from rescue kites to give coins for sweets. Girls told him their love troubles, young men asked his advice on dealing with their fathers. He was a leader of the smith’s guild in Namorn and knew more of working iron than even Frostpine. He was not a mage.

He had been delighted to give Daja forge-time in exchange for her assistance with some of his projects. With him she studied fine ironwork, shaping metal into lacelike forms: between the Syth and the Pebbled Sea, Teraud was the best at it. As a successful master smith Teraud supervised nearly twenty apprentices and journeymen in his massive Hammer Street forge.

Before she entered Teraud’s, Daja took a moment to look at the canvas-covered sleigh in the courtyard. The sleigh belonged to Kugisko’s governor. It was a glory of brasswork, enamel paint, and gilt moldings. All it required was runners; those were nearly finished. Today she and Teraud would harden the long metal pieces that would be shaped to create two silvery, elegant lengths of metal that would cut through ice and snow. If all went well, they could temper the steel the next day, and fit the runners the day after.

Once inside, she laid her Trader’s staff against the wall of the coatroom, then hung her satchel and outer coat over it to hide the telltale brass head from view. While none of Teraud’s people had spoken against Traders, it was silly to flaunt her people’s best-known symbol. She stuffed her scarf, gloves, and knit hat into her coat and worked off her fur-lined boots, replacing those with leather shoes.

“You ready to work?” Teraud stood in the doorway, tying on his leather apron. His family had been miners in the hard lands north of the Syth; he had still not shed the accent after thirty years on its southern shore. “Teaching didn’t wear you out?”

Daja grinned as she found her own leather apron. “How does anybody have a private life on this island, the way servants gossip?”

Teraud chuckled as he led the way to his forge. “The whole city prob’ly knows you teaching dose girls by now,” he teased. “Our servants are good at da gossip.”

Between stretches when the metal heated to the proper brownish yellow shade for hardening and Teraud checked his apprentices and journeymen, Daja worked on the iron rods she used for so much of her own work. That morning she took extra care, shaping her rods with her power as much as her drawing tongs. These would be the foundation of Ben’s gloves.

The morning flew past. Daja was startled when Teraud’s wife called them to midday. She stowed her tools as the journeymen and apprentices headed for the dining room in a fast-moving herd.