She thought about Ben’s collection of tokens. He brought them away from fires where he’d done good, he’d said, or that was the sense of it. Unless she was mistaken, though, his recent additions were from fires he could only stop from spreading: the boardinghouse, the confectioner’s shop, and Jossaryk House. In his shoes, she would be happy never to be reminded of those fires. Were she Ben Ladradun, the boardinghouse and Jossaryk fires would look like personal failures. The confectioner’s shop, when his raw firefighters had done so poorly, would be maddening.

Teraud was uncomfortable with Ben’s crusade against fire. Teraud she knew as well as any piece of iron she had ever worked. He was true in every fiber, not a spot of rust on him, and Teraud didn’t like what Ben did. Surely Teraud saw that Ben was Kugisko’s best defense against what he’d called a firebug.

What did Heluda Salt think of Ben? The magistrate’s mage had impressed Daja. How did she see Kugisko’s firefighter? What did Frostpine make of Ben? Maybe she ought to find out. Something was not right here. She didn’t know what it was, but she could feel it like a faulty weld.

Perhaps I misunderstood, she thought as she closed the shutters. Maybe he chooses a token when he’s learned something from a fire. That has to be it. He’s a good man, a real hero. I shouldn’t let nightmares make me crazy-and perhaps I’d better leave the pirozhi with jam and fruit alone too. Rich desserts probably had more to do with the nightmare than anything else.

On Starsday, Ben came to the house well after supper. Daja escorted him up to her room and began the rest of her measurements for his waist, hips, legs, ankles, and feet.

“I won’t see you for a while-two weeks at least,” he said as she measured and wrote down numbers. “The last fur shipment of the year comes in through Izmolka. Mother has asked that I meet it and escort it back.”

Daja stared at him, surprised. “You travel in winter?” she asked. “But you could be caught in a storm at any moment.”

Ben smiled. “It’s not as bad as you think. The empire keeps wayhouses every twenty miles along the merchants roads-it’s never far to shelter. And we always work like this. The best time to trade furs is late autumn and early winter, when the pelts are at their finest.”

Daja shook her head as she continued to measure. “Move your legs a bit apart?” she asked. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I need thigh measurements.”

“Always the last moment you want your old teacher walking in,” Frostpine said. Daja jumped at the unexpected sound of his voice, and very nearly measured Ben in an area that would have shocked them both. “We never really got properly introduced at Jossaryk House,” Frostpine continued as he came over to them. “I’m Frostpine, and you are the Kugisko miracle worker.”

“No miracle worker,” Ben said glumly as he clasped Frostpine’s hand. “Jossaryk House was a disaster from start to finish. It’s a miracle we saved any, mostly due to you and Daja.”

“Ah, but it was your organization that saved the other houses and kept the victims from dying of exposure.” Frostpine leaned against Daja’s worktable.

“Have the magistrates turned up any information about who set the fire?” Ben asked. “I know Heluda Salt is a friend of yours.”

“If they have, they’re keeping it to themselves,” Frostpine answered. “They just asked what I saw. I hear you studied with Pawel Godsforge. We’ve been corresponding for years. What’s he like in person?”

Daja continued to measure, listening to the men talk about Godsforge. She was glad that Frostpine had come to give Ben a proper adult conversation-she got the feeling Ben rarely talked to people for sheer enjoyment-but she was also concerned. Why had Frostpine come here, tonight? He could have visited Ben at the warehouse, or invited him for tea.

While Frostpine was the most easygoing of the Winding Circle teachers, he made sure that he met any new person in Daja’s life. Once a Fire temple novice had begun to meet Daja accidentally on her way home from the forge. After a few weeks of meetings he had persuaded her to walk through private areas of the temple city, where he stole a few kisses. What might have come after that Daja didn’t know. The kisses were interesting, but she didn’t like it when the novice’s hands strayed to her body. She was still trying to decide what to do on the day that they turned down a side path and ran into Frostpine. He asked for an introduction. Then he asked other things as the three of them strolled through the gardens: what the boy studied, where his family came from, if he meant to take vows, how long had he been at Winding Circle, who his friends were.

Daja never saw the novice again except in the training yards or the dining hall. She knew that something had passed between him and Frostpine as they talked, but she had never figured out what. She didn’t get quite the same feeling as Frostpine talked with Ben now, but she still didn’t know why he was there.

Measuring Ben, she noticed worrisome things. He trembled slightly. It was almost invisible, but as she wrapped her measuring cord around his body she felt it. When she touched one of his hands, it was clammy. He had a faint sour odor, as if he hadn’t bathed in a couple of days. The lines around his mouth were deeper than ever. That might be the angle from which she looked at him and the flickering light. He looked like a man who was being hounded by zyerui, a hungry ghost-or more likely, a man who was being worked to death. Why did Morrachane drive him so?