He lunged onto the ice. Three strokes and he went sprawling, the price of skating with his mind on other things. He took a breath and forced himself to stand carefully. He’d fallen beside a wood pile. Quickly he cut off his boot covers, pulled them out of his skate straps, balled them around his knitted gloves, and thrust them under a few logs. He always carried a vial of oil and flint and steel in his pockets: he poured the oil over the logs that concealed his clothes, then set it to burn. Then he kept his eyes on the ice and skated off slowly.

Near Joice Point he turned to watch the eastern sky. Those who liked to take steam before work would be lining up at the bathhouse doors. Some might already be inside. Ben sighed. It was hard to judge how long each device took to do its job. Black powder boom-dust was particularly unreliable, though effective when it finally worked.

He heard a muffled thump, then a booming roar. A geyser of water, fire, wood, and who knew what else blew into the sky. Ben’s breath caught in his chest as oily black smoke and fountaining water soared above the buildings that stood between him and the bathhouse. It was beautiful. He shook with the need to go back. How much would be left? How many would be alive?

He bit his lower lip until it bled. His eyes stung; he was sweating ferociously. He must not do it. He had to follow his plan. He could not be seen here.

Somehow he forced himself to turn and skate on. He and his escort must be out of the city before word reached Suroth Gate of the disaster on Airgi Island.

On the day Ben left, Daja practiced combat meditation with Jory and puttered about after her bath, repairing jewelry for Matazi’s friends and mulling over the living metal suit. She was inspecting a triple chain like a white gold waterfall when she heard loud voices below. Curious, she went to the servants’ back stair, closest to the noise.

“All those old fur throws, and I mean all. Don’t argue anymore, you put me out of patience.” That was Matazi, sounding unusually crisp. “Tea, kettles. Yanna preserve us, I’ve never seen such a thing, never. Aloe balm, all we can spare. Don’t stint. Muslin and linen for bandages. Make up beds in the cow loft and the storage rooms - we can take twenty people if they don’t mind crowding. Half of Stifflace Street is in flames.”

Daja pelted downstairs. Matazi stood in the hall to the slush room, hands to her temples, as servants hurried to do her bidding. Maids bustled to and fro, building piles on either side of their mistress: the chest of medicines that Matazi kept for emergencies, cheap tin mugs, bowls, and tableware, and bottles of spirits used as stimulants and soothers in open crates. Footmen emerged from a storeroom with rolls of canvas used for shelters over their shoulders; a houseboy followed with a collection of long tent poles.

Daja looked at Matazi. “What happened?” she asked. “Can I help?”

Matazi’s dark eyes were haunted. “I was visiting one of Kol’s aunts. She lives on the other side of Kadasep. We were to go shopping. We… ” Matazi’s lips trembled. She put her hand over them, trying to compose herself. Maids arrived with more supplies; the footmen carried them outside. “We heard the fire bells, of course,” Matazi said. “There’s-there’s a bathhouse on Airgi Island, a big one, where Stifflace Street and Barbzan Street come together. They said the furnace exploded-it’s just a crater now. The whole block around it is burning.”

Daja clenched her hands. She didn’t want to do this again, but… surely it would be better than Jossaryk. And maybe she could send the fire somewhere-into what was left of the bathhouse, that might work.

“Daja? Are you all right?” asked Matazi.

Daja rested a hand on Matazi’s shoulder. “If there’s fire, maybe I can help,” she reminded her hostess. “Do we know where Frostpine is?”

“Right here.” He came from the kitchen, tying his crimson habit over breeches and shirt. “Matazi, we need horses.”

By the time Frostpine and Daja reached the fire zone, the blazes were contained inside the streets around the destroyed bathhouse. Most were out, having consumed every house near the center of the destruction. Rather than fight them, now that no one or nothing else could be saved, Daja and Frostpine let them alone. Instead they joined the volunteers who cared for the survivors and moved them as quickly as possible onto sleighs that carried them to hospitals or families who would take them in. Daja and Frostpine labored until mid-afternoon, when the last victims alive were taken away. Now the wagons for the dead arrived. The bodies had been placed in one street under pieces of canvas. The thought of loading them on wagons made Daja’s eyes fill with tears. She tried not to look relieved when the lawkeepers ordered them home. They said others would finish up.

They didn’t leave immediately. Instead they walked to the deep black gouge in the earth that was all that remained of the bathhouse.

“Shurri defend us,” Frostpine whispered, taking the sight in. “Does this look familiar to you?”

Daja nodded. In her first summer at Winding Circle, pirates had attacked the temple city and neighboring Summersea. They brought with them a new, terrible weapon, a substance packed in baked clay balls and lit with fuses. Wherever the boomstones and the black powder they carried hit, they exploded. Their mark was a distinctive sunburst pattern in blackened ground and scorched wood.

“Maybe the furnace blew up, but it was helped along,” Frostpine said grimly. “This wasn’t an accident.” He went to the nearest lawkeeper and spoke to her. As Daja waited for him, something caught her eye. A freak of the explosion had driven a triangle of glazed tile like an arrowhead into a chunk of wood: it was embedded there. She tried to pry it loose, until a thought intruded: Was she doing as Ben did, taking mementoes of a fire?