“Potcracker once told me she cooks for parties-she doesn’t go to them,” a harsh female voice said behind them. “She’s also referred publicly to some of our richer members as parasites. I doubt they’d welcome her.”

Daja and Frostpine turned to face the speaker. She was in her early fifties, two inches shorter than Daja, with pale, weathered skin and crows’ feet wrinkles around small, dark eyes. Her no-nonsense lips were thin and wind-chapped, her nose a sharp angle thrust straight down from her forehead. Like many older native Kugiskan women she had dyed her hair blonde so many times that it looked like straw. In contrast to her plain looks, she wore a black silk undergown and a sleeveless maroon velvet overgown, both decorated with gold embroideries. The buttons down the front of the overgown were small gold nuggets. She wore a sheer black veil and a round maroon velvet cap over the ragged twists of her hair.

She continued, “I personally think Potcracker is overgenerous. After all, there are creatures that feed on real parasites, so the real ones do some good. Our wealthier members feed no one but themselves.”

“I bless Shurri and Hakkoi for keeping my nature sunny, unlike yours,” Frostpine told the woman, naming the fire gods to whom he had dedicated his life. To Daja he said, “Anyone connected with magistrates sees too much of the bad side of things.”

“You can hide from it in your pretty temples,” the woman said. She measured Daja with thoughtful eyes. “We don’t.”

“That’s why I prefer the pretty temples,” retorted Frostpine. “Viymese Heluda Salt, this is my student and friend, Viymese Daja Kisubo. Heluda’s the mage I’ve been working with lately.”

“I’m honored, Viymese Salt,” Daja told the older woman politely. “I hope the investigation goes well.”

“We’re close,” said Frostpine.

“Don’t say that until we have the naliz in irons,” Heluda advised him. She offered Daja a hand gloved in black lace. A smile softened her firm mouth, though her eyes remained wary. Daja had a feeling that Heluda Salt remained watchful even in her sleep. “I hear many good things about you,” she told Daja.

“Then you can’t have been talking to him,” Daja said, giving the older woman’s hand a squeeze and letting go. “He only ever gives me a hard time.”

“But it’s for your own good,” Frostpine said, inspecting the room below again. “I force myself, so you will be strong.”

Heluda jerked her head at Frostpine. “Was he always impossible, or has the cold he moans about so often done this to him?”

Daja shrugged: she too could be as wary as a magistrate’s mage. “I wouldn’t know. He likes to keep me confused.”

In the air below, five golden swirls rose, coming together in a whirlwind beneath the huge chandelier. They sparkled as they whirled and spread, until they formed a soaring palace in midair. The watchers applauded. Slowly the illusion faded until only a handful of specks glittered in the air. These vanished, one by one. The last shimmered, faded, then blazed into flaming orange glory as a sun. Then it too winked out.

“It’s a Society tradition,” Heluda explained to the two southerners. “The illusionists compete all winter, and the Society votes a winner at the last meeting, in the spring. A waste of magic, but nobody listens to me.”

“If you earned your living making old men look young and fat women look thin, I should think just doing something pretty would be a relief,” Frostpine commented. “Let them have their fun.”

For a time they watched the crowd, Heluda naming some of Kugisko’s mages and what they did. Daja leaned on the stone rail, listening to her and to bits of conversation that rose from people below.

“-and I said, why not give up doing love potions? If you have to keep moving so jealous husbands and lovers won’t catch you-“

“-undersold me by five gold argibs. Five! I told him, do that again, and I’ll go to the Fair Practices Council-“

A handful of mage-students descended on the tables where food was laid out. Some looked like this was their first solid meal of the week. Daja was grateful that Frostpine was a great believer in the theory that well-fed students worked harder. Many teachers weren’t.

“-now that he’s got a noble protector, he can afford pearls instead of moonstones for his money-drawing spells.”

“His protector’s wife isn’t complaining either, not when her husband’s out making money until all hours!”

The two who discussed that topic laughed in a knowing way. Daja hated them. Was this what the meditation, work, and study were for, to make rich men richer and supply material for smutty jokes?

“I did all I could.” That voice was tearful, female, coming from the stair to Daja’s left. “I tried to call rain to put it out, but I couldn’t fight the snow. It-it froze. It coated everything like glass.” The speaker sniffled. A male voice murmured something. “I told them the dangers, that I couldn’t warm it enough to rain, but they ordered me to do it. Just trying half-killed me. My head still hurts. My landlord wants me out because the district’s angry at me. A man in the crowd broke his leg on the ice.” The woman’s voice quavered. “And this beggar woman, who always blessed me when I gave her a copper? She was sleeping there after the shopkeeper left, and-and-Griantein shrive me, she burned. They brought her out… “The woman began to sob.