“Babies?” Daja croaked, and coughed. Matazi came to help her to sit. Jory, who Daja hadn’t seen on a stool beside the fire, poured something into a clay cup and brought it over. Nia stood at the foot of the bed, wide-eyed.

Daja sipped from Jory’s cup. Onion and garlic exploded in her mouth and Daja began to cough in earnest, hacking and fighting for breath. A clump of some dreadful mess blew from her chest into her mouth.

Matazi put a bowl under Daja’s chin. “Spit,” she ordered.

Daja spat. Three mouthfuls later, she could breathe without pain. “Your first spell?” she asked Jory.

The girl nodded. “Olennika told me to make her a copy, after I used it on Frostpine,” she said. “Only it’s not all mine. It was in a family book of cures that Aunt Morrachane gave me. I have to tell her how good it works.”

Daja nodded. “Thanks, I think,” she told Jory, onion and garlic still burning her tongue and throat. To Matazi she said, “The babies? The maid Frostpine brought out with… ?” Her voice trailed off as she read the answer in the woman’s dark eyes.

Matazi sat beside Daja in a drift of jasmine scent. “They saved the babies the girl carried,” she told Daja gently. “But she died in the courtyard.”

“And the baby I had?” Daja whispered. She felt tears rise; her mouth trembled. She wouldn’t cry in front of them, she refused to cry.

Matazi shook her head.

“It would’ve lived if I sent it with someone else,” Daja whispered. Tears overflowed for all her refusal to shed them. “I had to stay, to-to hold-” She couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear the thought of that baby suffocating on her back, couldn’t bear the thought of that brave maid, who had saved all those children only to die herself. Daja turned facedown into her pillow, and cried herself to sleep.

When she woke again, she saw that she still had company: Frostpine and Nia meditated in a protective circle on the floor. Daja blinked, her eyes stinging in the brilliance of Frostpine’s power. Beyond him she saw that Nia’s magic was now a steady silver glaze on her skin, still and unmoving.

Quietly she turned onto her side, away from them. The events of Sunsday night returned in all their fear and sorrow. Her own natural clearheadedness came with it. Yes, she ought to have sent the baby with someone else: who would that have been? Every adult had at least two other children in charge, and the handicap of water-soaked covers to manage. If she hadn’t held the fire, slowing her own escape to do so, it would have broken through on the ground floor and killed everyone inside, including the two babies who had lived while the woman who carried them began to die on the stair.

What had started this disaster-a kitchen fire? Overturned candles, a popping log on a hearth? The gods were cruel, to make such a tragedy from a stupid accident.

Real or set? asked that very determined part of her mind.

Daja bit her lip. She wished the others were here-Sandry, Tris, Briar. She didn’t have them, but she did have Frostpine. She could have lost him: they put themselves in danger when they agreed to enter the house. Their magics wouldn’t have prevented their being crushed by falling timbers.

The clock chimed downstairs; Nia’s eyes popped open. A moment later Frostpine emerged from his trance. “Very good,” he told Nia. “You’ve come a long way.” He rubbed out part of the circle. The protections around them collapsed and flowed into his body like a plume of smoke returning to its chimney. He helped Nia to stand, then dragged himself to his feet, using the bed as a crutch. He was stiff.

“You’re awake!” Nia said happily to Daja. “Hungry, too, yes?”

Daja sat up. “Starved,” she admitted.

“I’ll tell Anyussa,” Nia said, but for a moment she didn’t move, looking at Daja with huge brown eyes. “I could never do what you two did,” she said. “Walk into a burning house… I couldn’t.”

“You don’t know what you can do till you’re tested,” Frostpine said. He leaned down and kissed Nia’s forehead. “Wait until you are, before you judge yourself.”

Nia glanced up at Frostpine and gave him a tiny smile, then left the room, shaking her head.

Frostpine leaned back, hands on hips, stretching. Daja looked at him, worried. His skin was ashy over the brown; his few wrinkles seemed deeper. Did he have more white hairs now, or was it just that she hadn’t noticed how many he had before this? “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Better than when they fetched us back here,” he admitted. He threw several chunks of wood on the fire and poked up the embers so they would catch. “I had it easier,” he said. “Mine were adults. Once I got their attention, they did as they were told. I lost two,” he admitted, his full lips pinched. “Old people, stuck in beds. The others would have left them. You don’t see people at their best, times like this.”

Remembering the women who appeared to stop thinking at all when faced with peril, Daja nodded. “You tried to get them out?” she asked softly.

He went to her wardrobe, opened it, and began to take out clothes. “Smoke got them,” he said. “I think they died as I carried them out. Everybody always worries about burns, not smoke. Usually they’re dead before they know they’re in danger.”

Daja looked at the clothes he laid out for her. “I can’t put those on till I wash,” she pointed out. Someone-Matazi and the girls, she hoped-had cleaned the worst grime from her skin while she slept, since her nightshirt wasn’t too dirty, but she smelled of fire, and there was ash in her hair. “I need the steam room.” East Namorn lived for its huge, steamy bathhouses. Normally Daja hated the things, preferring nice, clean baths, but right now she felt grime in her pores. Steam would scour it out.