Once inside, apprentices at one long table and journeymen, Teraud, and Daja at another, everyone fell on their loaded plates. Unlike plenty of masters, Teraud made sure his people were well fed. He’d once told Daja it was just self-interest-happy workers meant better work.

The meal was half-over when a maid showed in a boy who carried a sealed sheet of parchment. She pointed Daja out. As he approached, Daja saw he wore the Ladradun insignia on the shoulder of his threadbare gray coat. He was trying not to stare at the laden table. Mutely he offered his message to her.

She took it and signed for him to wait, digging in her pocket for a silver argib as a tip. He looked half-starved. She hoped he’d buy himself something to eat before he returned home.

“Better read dat careful, make sure you don’t need to send back no answer,” Teraud advised her. He speared a thick slice of roast pork with one hand as he scooped up two slabs of bread with the other. He dropped the meat onto one piece of bread, capped it with the other, and thrust the whole at the boy. “My wife cooks too much,” he growled. “Eat before it goes bad.”

The boy didn’t need encouragement. He clutched the offering with both hands and took a huge bite. Daja slowly cracked the seal and read the few lines of Ben’s note. It was his answer to her request for a time to fit him for the gloves. If it wasn’t too late when she finished at Teraud’s, he wrote, she could find him at the Ladradun warehouses on Bazniuz Island, at the joining of Cashbox Street and Covil Way.

She read it three times before the boy finished what he’d been given and accepted a second bread-and-meat slab from Teraud. Then she gave the messenger her argib and said, “Tell Ravvot Ladradun I will see him later this afternoon.”

The boy nodded, still chewing, and trotted away. Teraud’s wife Nushenya came over, shaking her head. “The way that woman stints on food, you’d think every grain of wheat was taken from her own children,” she said to her husband. “She whips them, you know. The servants. The island council fines her-she doesn’t care.” She glared at the journeymen, openly eavesdropping. “Don’t think any of you are too big for a whipping. I saw that vegetable plate! A vegetable plate goes back half-empty at supper and we serve what you turn away instead of meat tomorrow!”

Daja ducked her head to hide a smile as the diners, male and female alike, dug into eggplant and carrots.

“Somet’ing’s not right at dat house,” Teraud commented as he sat back and dug at his teeth with a toothpick. “Morrachane’s half crazy.”

Daja put her fork down. “But what about Ben? He’s all right isn’t he?”

“He’s a hero,” insisted a young journeywoman. “That carriage shop on Rider Street would have burned last winter-

“The hat shop on Stifflace Lane,” someone else put in.

“Emperor Noodles,” called a girl apprentice.

“If you can talk you can work,” Teraud said. Apprentices and journeymen left the tables to wash up and walk around a bit before they returned to their tasks. Only Daja remained with Teraud at the table. His wife joined them with sturdy mugs of honeyed tea. She was from Capchen, where tea was drunk in the way Daja expected it to be drunk. She too sat with her husband, willing to let the maids clear the tables.

“Call me a grumpy old man wit’ a nose full a soot and a copper-coated tongue,” Teraud said over his toothpick. “To hear da world tell it, Ben Ladradun’s de only good dat family ever gave Kugisko.” He shook his blocky head. “Me? If somet’ing like a fire took my joy”-he engulfed his wife’s hand with one of his own-“I wouldn’t go hunting da t’ing dat took my sweetheart and my children.” He sighed and looked into his mug, then drained it.

Daja followed him back into the main forge. Ben’s intense focus on fire didn’t seem odd to her. She had seen Tris destroy part of a fleet because those who sailed with it had murdered her cousin. Sandry had battled her terror of the dark to keep her friends alive. Briar had plunged into death rather than let go of his beloved teacher. Dreadful events, in her experience, led people to do extraordinary things. It made sense to her that Ben would devote his life to a war on fire. Maybe Teraud just didn’t know the kind of people she did.

It was mid-afternoon when Daja left Teraud’s forge, staff in hand, a bundle of slender iron rods and her rolled parchment tracings of Ben’s hands in her satchel. Outside it seemed warmer than it had that morning. Despite there being two more hours until sunset, the light was going. Masses of clouds like fat gray moonstones slid by overhead, their edges fuzzy and soft. After weeks in the mountains and months in the north, Daja knew snow clouds. These looked serious.

With her satchel over her shoulder, Daja strode briskly along Kategan Way, testing the ground with her staff where she suspected hard ice lay under the snow, and dodging sleighs and riders. She could risk her life to cross to Bazniuz on foot, or she could risk her life to hire a sleigh: they all seemed to be driven by madmen. I have to practice skating, she thought as a sleigh hurled slush on her boots and coat. I don’t care how much I ache, it will be worth it.

She did take in the vividly painted storefronts and fences along the way. Color was a Namornese obsession. Roofs were trimmed in yellow, scarlet, emerald green. Outside walls were blue, red, pink, and orange. Doors were bright enough to startle. It was hard to believe that Sandry, whose taste in color was perfect, was half-Namornese.

By the time Daja stepped onto Bazniuz Island, the lamplighters were out. As she walked down Sarah Street, shopgirls and boys left their businesses for the walk home. When she turned north on Cashbox Street, fat snowflakes began to drift idly through the air, as if they toured the city.