“Daja, wait and leave with us,” Ben said. “We have plenty of room, and it’s a miserable night.”

Morrachane’s lips crept upwards at the ends. Daja winced. She had forgotten-happily-the unfortunate results of Morrachane’s attempts to smile. “I am happy to offer a ride to the twins’ friend,” she informed Daja. “Particularly the one who revealed their magical talents. I always suspected it, of course, but having no familial ties, I couldn’t very well get them examined by a better mage than those the Bancanors hired.”

Daja opened her mouth to reply to the implied insult to Kol and Matazi, then closed it again. The mark of a born Trader was to know when persuasion and discussion were useless. Instead she bowed to Ben, then to Morrachane. “I thank you, but I’ve been at the forge all day. I need the walk. Good night to you both.” Rather than risk Ben arguing with her, she walked briskly to the gate on the street.

In her wake she heard Morrachane tell her son, “It’s just as well. I want to review those accounts from the capital.”

Chapter 8

Outside the Ladradun gate lamps burned, marking the edges of the road in the snow. Daja trudged down Sarah Street, looking around her. She didn’t care what Frostpine said: she loved freshly fallen snow, the way it clung to trees, fences, and ornamental carvings, softening even the jingle of sleighbells, muffling the clop of horses and the sounds of people going home. She loved the way it danced in the air, shaping globes of light around the lamps, swirling in and out of patterns. In the mountains between the Syth and Emelan snow was untouchable, hard, and deadly. Here people trudged through it, swept it, rode through its curtains and streamers, played with it. It made the busy Kugiskans into friendly people. Everyone she passed wished her a good evening, or smiled and said things like, “A foot or two by morning, at least!” Daja answered them with smiles and nods. She didn’t know enough about this white element to predict how much would come down before sunrise.

She heard bells approach behind her and moved close to the lamp-posts to give the sleigh plenty of room to pass. She kept her head down, hoping the vehicle coming up on her wasn’t the Ladraduns’.

“Viymese Daja?” a familiar voice called. “Is that you?”

She turned as the Bancanor sleigh, Serg at the reins, drew up by her. Behind Serg Daja saw a lump of quilts and furs that had to be Jory.

“Why are you afoot?” Serg demanded, reining up. “Get in. You’ll freeze.”

Daja climbed up beside him rather than disturb the girl. They drove on in friendly silence until they turned into the back courtyard at Bancanor House. A stable hand emerged from the snow to take the sleigh as Serg scooped Jory off the seat, blankets, furs, and all. He carried her into the slush room, Daja behind him.

After hanging up their own coats and boots, they unwound the sleepy Jory. She had ash on one cheek and flour on another; her apron was splashed with some kind of red sauce, and a gluey substance clung to the end of her braid. “She says Anyussa’s a good teacher,” Jory told Daja drowsily as they went into the kitchen. “She said I don’t have to unlearn things.”

In the kitchen they saw Frostpine at one of the tables. He worked his way through a bowl of soup as he talked to Anyussa. Nia sat across from them, whittling buttons. Other members of the household were gathered there, some with sewing in their hands, others giving pots and boots a thorough polish, still more just gossiping.

“What’s going on?” Jory asked, sliding onto the bench next to her twin. “Why’s everybody in here?”

On of the maids opened the door that led to the family’s part of the house. They heard a clear, commanding female voice: “-the day that one of my granddaughters would be spending any more time in Blackfly Bog than she might need to drop off a basket for the poor-” The maid shut the door again.

“Oh,” said Daja with a wince. She had forgotten this was the night that Kol’s mother came for her once-a-week meal with her son and his wife.

“‘Beware the matriarchs of Namorn,’” Frostpine said, quoting a proverb, ‘“for they are queens without crowns.’”

Daja grimaced. If Morrachane’s a queen, it’s of pijule fakol, she thought, placing Ben’s mother in the worst of the Trader afterlives, reserved for those who did not pay their debts.

Frostpine eyed Daja. “You look all nice and rosy with the cold,” he remarked. “I suppose you’re going to tell me this weather isn’t so bad.”

He looked so miserable that she went over and kissed his head. “I won’t say any such thing,” she promised him. Instead she laid her fingers under his beard, where she could feel the pulse in his neck veins. Slowly, carefully, she let heat trickle into his body to warm his blood.

Frostpine sighed his gratitude. “Not that the food hasn’t thawed me out wonderfully,” he told Anyussa, who smiled.

“Or that you’re practically sitting in the kitchen fire,” Daja added, feeling its heat on her back. She asked Nia, “How did it go, your first day?”

Nia held up a wooden rod the width of Daja’s thumbnail, and gestured to a small saw, carving knives, sanding paper, and a heap of buttons and sawdust before her. “Arnen showed me how to make buttons,” she said with a shrug. “I’m to work on them at home, and he’ll check every week to see how many I do.”

Daja grinned. “Smith apprentices get nails,” she said. “I used to think they start you on boring things so you’ll be half-crazy by the time they show you anything real. We have meditation in the morning, first thing. Don’t forget.”