Tucking the mirror into her pouch, Daja trotted downstairs.

She found Nia yawning as she inspected a handful of wooden buttons. They dropped from the girl’s fingers when Daja walked in. “I won’t do it!” Nia cried. She knelt, scrambling for the wooden rounds. “That isn’t meditating! Nobody ever talks about hitting when they meditate!”

“Then they haven’t met Dedicate Skyfire,” Daja said, picking up a button that rested against her foot. “You can’t decide you hate it after just one try.”

“Yes, I can,” Nia said, her chin thrust out mulishly as she glared up at Daja. “I hated it even before we were done. I’m not Jory! She always gets excited, and she starts hitting, and she’s always sorry after, but that doesn’t make my fingers not hurt, and I liked the other way, the sitting and counting-why are you looking at me like that?”

“I just wanted to see how long you would make that sentence last,” Daja admitted. “I honestly don’t think you meant to stop before breakfast.”

Nia stared at Daja for a long moment, plainly baffled. Finally she said, “You aren’t really like anyone else, are you?”

Daja smiled. “I am, but I don’t think you’d be comfortable around the people I’m like.” She sobered again. She knew where this was leading, and her own heart was in rebellion. She wanted more time to herself, not less, to work on Ben’s gloves and maybe even a suit for him to firewalk in. It’s not like I wanted to be a teacher, she told herself.

“Children in Capchen want the same things you do,” her Aunt Hulweme used to say. “They can have them, because they’re only kaqs. Our children don’t get the things kaqs get, so now you decide. Are you a Trader, or are you a kaq?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to try the staff?” Daja asked, though she knew the answer. “It’s like dancing lessons, only different.”

Nia’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry I’m a coward,” she said, and sniffed.

Daja sighed. “You’re not a coward,” she told her second student gently. “You just don’t know what you’re brave at.”

“I’m a coward,” Nia insisted, tears running down her cheeks. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “Jory says I’m always squeaking and jumping, I always hide, I don’t argue… “

It bothered Daja to talk so long to a kneeling girl. She knelt and helped to gather buttons. “The bravest person I know is afraid of the dark. She sleeps with a night lamp always, but if her friends are threatened? She suddenly thinks she’s a bear twelve feet tall and attacks whoever scared her friends. There are all kinds of courage. You’ll find yours.” She felt a sigh rise in her chest and swallowed it. Nia felt bad enough: Daja would not let the girl think that she was unhappy to teach her. “Though looking for courage when Jory gets worked up doesn’t seem useful. We’ll go back to the meditation we tried first.”

Nia stopped gathering buttons and frowned. “But Jory. She wiggles until I just want to scream.”

“I’ll use this hour of the day for Jory’s meditation,” Daja said, offering Nia a handful of buttons. “You and I will meditate the hour before supper.”

“And I can breathe, and count, and sit, and not get hit with things?” Nia asked, suspicious. “We’ll be quiet?”

“Quiet as mice,” Daja said. Remembering her first nights sleeping aboard her family’s ship, she corrected herself: “Quieter, actually.”

With Nia reassured, Daja left to rejoin Jory. She glanced into the kitchen on her way to the back stair. The main hearth fire roared, sending heat throughout the house. Anyussa was rolling out dough for the dumplings called pirozhi as Frostpine stirred a pot of buckwheat kasha cooked with milk and spices. Anyussa laughed at something he said and looked at him in a decidedly flirtatious manner.

Daja smiled and walked on. She liked the brisk, irritable cook much better, knowing that Anyussa had it in her to like Frostpine.

“Well?” Jory demanded when Daja reached the schoolroom. “You couldn’t find her, could you? I didn’t think you would.” Her hair was popping out of its braid; her cheeks were red, testimony that she had been exercising.

“Nia and I made other arrangements,” said Daja as she picked up her own broom-handle staff. “We’ll meditate in the afternoons. You and I will go on meeting here at this hour.”

“How does learning to fight with a staff help me get my magic under control?” asked Jory nervously as Daja spun her light staff hand over hand, moving out into the center of the room.

“We’ve got all winter to thrash it out,” Daja told her. “See, the idea is, you get so used to those three blocks and those three strikes that your body will move, but your mind will be free. Then it doesn’t matter if someone tries to hit you. You’ll be at your center, within your spirit and your magic. That’s when you start to learn control, where you pull your magic in or let it out as you need. But for now-” She struck high at Jory, who blocked just in time. Daja went immediately to the middle strike, then the low strike, slowly enough that the girl saw the blows coming and blocked them. They continued to trade blocks and strikes, so preoccupied that when the clock chimed the first hour of the day, both jumped.

“Right here, tomorrow,” Daja said. Jory nodded and ran to dress for the outdoors. She was due to leave for Blackfly Bog in half an hour.