At least the snow had stopped for the moment. Three fresh inches lay on the road that led across North Fortress Island. It hissed under the runners and muffled the horses’ hooves.

Daja worked a hand through Frostpine’s cocoon until she found his arm. Through their magic she said, I don’t see why they built the Mage Society Hall all the way at the western tip of North Fortress.

Kugiskan mages were infamous for experiments once, Frostpine replied. The idea was to get them as far from the city as possible without actually throwing them out.

Maybe these northerners are smarter than I thought, Daja said. She could feel his body shake with laughter through his cocoon.

The wind picked up sharply as the sleigh raced across Schoolman Bridge onto Odaga Island. Most of the artisans and servant families who served the wealthy of Kadasep and Alakut Islands lived here. Their wooden houses were dark, shuttered against the snow and the wind off the Syth. Only the brass-backed lanterns on Mage Road were lit. No one stayed up late on Odaga, not when they rose at servants’ dawn, the cold gray hour before sunrise.

Daja saw pinpricks of light on Kadasep Island, across an intersection of canals from Odaga. More winked along the rocky cliff that was the north point of Alakut Island. A bigger light bloomed next to them, one that grew even brighter as the sleigh approached Bolle Bridge.

Daja yanked at Frostpine’s wrappings. His head shot up out of his cocoon like an irate turtle from its shell. “Girl, what are you doing to me? We aren’t there yet… .”

His eyes followed Daja’s pointing finger to the fire on Alakut Island. It blazed from a house at the peak of the cliff.

Frostpine lunged forward and tapped their driver’s shoulder. “Look!”

The man turned his eyes from his horses to Alakut. “Sythuthan!” he cursed. “That’s Olaksan Jossaryk’s house!”

Daja and Frostpine gauged the fire. Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then Frostpine told the driver, “You’d better take us there. We might be able to help.”

The man glanced back, as if he had a mind to argue. If he did, he changed it, and turned the horses not down the road to Pozkit Bridge, but onto a steeper one that climbed the heights of Alakut. Daja stared at the blaze as they approached it, a strange, idiot thought repeating itself over and over: real or set? real or set? as if a fire deliberately started were any less deadly than those with natural causes.

Frostpine scrambled free of his blankets; Daja grabbed his wrist and threaded warmth through his veins until they were three houses downhill of the blaze. There the driver halted the sleigh.

“This is as close as I can get,” he said, apologetic. Other sleighs blocked the street; a crowd had formed ahead. “I have to stay with the horses,” he added, even more apologetic.

“You should go back-” Frostpine began as he clambered out of the sleigh.

“The master and the mistress would kill me,” the driver said, his voice flat. “Take some of them lap robes. They’ll be needed.”

Frostpine and Daja each grabbed an armful of quilts and fur rugs, then headed up the street. People stood in the road watching, coats thrown on over nightclothes, belongings thrust into pillow slips, sheets turned into bundles. Servants ranged around the houses on either side of the Jossaryk home and on the opposite side of the street, watching for deadly, floating embers ushered along by the bitter wind. Others formed rough lines to sand piles in kitchen courtyards, passing full buckets to those who fought the blaze. Sand was safer: it didn’t freeze to slippery ice. People helped others-wrapped in sheets or blankets, sobbing, soot-marked-through the tangle of sleighs and gawkers into houses farther down the road.

Onlookers moved away from Frostpine’s scarlet habit, hardly noticing Daja in his wake. Once the pair entered the main courtyard of the sprawling Jossaryk House-it was nearly a palace-they stopped, panting, and measured what they saw.

The parts of the house that wrapped around the outer edges of the courtyard were one-story extensions. They led to two-story sections that attached to the three-story main house. These extensions would include servants’ quarters, storerooms, coops, stables, dairy, and all the other workaday parts that supported the elegant building. They were not yet on fire. Behind those additions the ornately carved and painted main house was half in flames. The hard wind off the Syth struck the rock cliff on which it sat and raced upward, picking up speed and strength until it blasted over the cliff’s edge against the face of the house. The fire that burned along the roof’s peak stretched toward courtyard and street, thrust almost horizontal by the wind. There would be no saving the house, only the people.

Firefighters stood on the wall around the place with buckets, ready to shout an alarm if they saw clumps of fire blown toward other homes. Men and women hidden under sodden blankets streamed in and out of the extensions, returning with those who were still inside.

“Get the gawkers out of here!” Daja heard a clear voice order over the roar of wind and fire. “Take the victims inside-they’ll freeze in this wind. Tell the neighbors to open their homes-if they balk, come to me!”

Ben stood in the courtyard in the gap between the extensions. The wind whipped the curls that escaped his fur hat; his coat was half-buttoned; one pant-leg hung outside his boot. He directed those who left the buildings with people in their arms. For a moment Daja wondered how he’d known to come, before she realized he probably saw the fire from his house.

Frostpine and Daja went to Ben. “Where can we help?” asked Frostpine. “Tell us what’s left to be done.”