For an hour Daja walked her staff up and down Jory’s body, talking or silent, always in motion. At first it seemed as if she had overestimated Jory as the girl got angry, then sulky, then stubborn. Each time she lost her temper Daja saw Jory’s magic flare away from her in spikes. Once, angry, she struck at Daja’s head. Daja disarmed Jory, sending her staff flying against the barrier. It bounced back, nearly hitting the girl.

Daja nudged the staff with hers. “Pick it up,” she ordered.

“You’re not human,” Jory grumbled as she obeyed.

“More silliness. Come on, let’s go,” Daja urged. They began again.

When the house clock chimed, Daja, in the right-hand corner of the younger girl’s vision, snapped a middle strike at Jory’s ribs. Jory’s power swirled and soaked into her skin as she blocked Daja squarely.

Jory’s jaw dropped. She looked at the staff, and at Daja.

“I did it!” she gasped. “I did it! I-I felt it, it was like, being everything.”

“Good,” Daja said, wiping out part of the circle with her boot and retrieving her power. “But we won’t know if you really have something until you can do it all the time, not just once.”

“Oh, Daja,” moaned Jory, “you sound just like my parents.” She ran from the schoolroom.

“Well, there’s no reason to insult me,” muttered Daja, half offended.

After a hearty breakfast, she returned upstairs to do the physical work of fitting the living metal to the gloves, making sure it was anchored to an iron rod as well as the other pieces. There was just one more thing to do after that, but it had to wait. Simple tasks like protective circles for the twins were easy enough, and she needed no magic to fix the living metal onto the forms. For anything bigger, her magic felt weak and floppy, as her arms might after she lifted something far too heavy for her.

She collected her Trader staff and went down to midday when the bell rang, but she didn’t return to her room when she finished. She had things to do that involved no magic, but she wanted to skate. Staff in hand, Daja headed for the slush room. As she passed the servants, they bowed and got out of her way-they’d done so at breakfast too. Obviously they had heard tales from Jossaryk House.

They’ll get over it, Daja thought as she donned coat and scarves, picked up her staff, and slung her skates over her shoulder. A few quiet weeks and they’ll treat me like a human being again. If only she could hope there would be no more excitement for a few weeks!

Outside, she donned her skates. Gathering her courage, she skated out of the basin, under the bridge, and onto Prospect Canal, balancing the staff in her hands. The canal was as busy as any street with skaters and the large, heavy sleighs that carried supplies, pulled by horses shod for ice walking. Passenger sleighs kept to the dirt streets, owners not liking the expense of ice shoes and the risk to their horses if they were not specially shod.

It was snowing lightly as Daja skated north along Prospect, keeping well to the side. Daredevils raced down the middle of the canals. So did robbers and pickpockets: those good skaters looked to winter as their bounty season. Daja didn’t think she could move in the fast traffic in the center. She envied the speeders and liked to watch how they did it, half crouched, skates flashing, swerving around bumpy or uneven areas in the ice. She envied them, but she wasn’t about to copy them. Sometimes she had to use her Trader staff to keep herself upright.

Still, she had improved. She negotiated the turn into Mite Canal with no accidents, and slid to a halt at the hired sleigh stands a quarter of a mile north of Pozkit Bridge. Her skates hung over her shoulder, staff in hand, she climbed up to the street. Hollyskyt Way met Jossaryk Place, the road Daja and Frostpine had followed across Alakut on their way to the fire. The sleigh stand was probably the one where the firesetter left one pair of boots to burn.

She knew where she was going now, and she didn’t turn back. She had changed in the smoke, and the fear, and the dark. The change wasn’t to her magic. It would recover with meditation and rest, more quickly than her spirit would. If she was to make sense of that night and those deaths, if she was ever going to understand the kind of person who would sentence fifty people to death by burning, she ought to see the final result for herself.

Daja walked down Hollyskyt until she found the rising street that followed the edge of the cliff. The sign read FORTRESS VIEW ROAD. It showed little signs of winter use. Daja huddled deeper inside her coat and scarves-she would rather brave the Syth’s wind than tap her ability to warm herself for now-and hiked up the steep road.

No blast of lake wind caught her as she walked. The air was cold and still. “Oh, now you’re as nice as a kitten,” she told it as she toiled upward. “Back when it would have saved lives, you blew your worst.”

Her mother always said it wasn’t polite to mock other people’s gods, and Sythuthan was a notorious trickster. He was not likely to appreciate being scolded. Daja shut up.

Wall after wall showed her blank faces as she passed the homes of the wealthy. As she approached the summit, Daja found the damage left by fire and the people who fought it. The road was churned and frozen into peaks and dips that made the footing tricky. Once more she used her staff to brace herself. Soot marked the walls of Jossaryk’s neighbors. Then she reached Jossaryk House itself. The gate stood open. The wall was intact: the wind had blown so hard that the fire never turned this way. Daja took a breath, resettled her grip on her staff, and walked through the gate.