“No,” Daja said woodenly. She refused to believe it.

“I began to wonder at Jossaryk House,” Heluda continued, her voice inflexible. “The fire that came after Ladradun was slighted by the island’s council. Burning one of their houses-we would have questioned Ladradun at the very least. He was careful. Burning the home of one of their mistresses… tricky thinking. In my work, coincidences are suspicious. And Ladradun said he agreed with you that fires were being set. He had to say that, because you had already told me. Otherwise I doubt he’d have drawn the magistrates’ attention to it. Ladradun knows every inch of the city. He had the governor’s leave to explore as he trained his brigades. And after a long summer with no big fires, a Ladradun warehouse burns. The Bazniuz mages slipped up there. They should have questioned him, and they didn’t.”

So much didn’t make sense, Daja thought. That collection of blackened, foul mementoes… “Someone tired of being ignored,” he’d said during a very odd conversation. “Are you giving up on me?” he’d asked.

“I won’t believe it,” she insisted, trying to sound forceful. “He’s a hero. He’d never burn a houseful of people because he was angry with someone barely connected to them.”

“I’m thinking as he thinks,” Heluda replied gently. “You learn how to do that, you’ve been at this as long as I have. Don’t look at him as a friend. Look at him for who he is, Morrachane Ladradun’s son. Killers like Bennat, they’re sad when they’re little, when someone knocks them about like toys, but not when they grow up. The only way we learn how adults act is from the adults who raise us. The children of monsters become monstrous, too.”

She leaned forward and held Daja’s eyes with her own as she took Daja’s hands in her dry ones. “Morrachane was fined ten times by the island council for beating servants. Her younger sons fled the city as soon as they were able; her husband died young, probably shrieked to death. And Bennat? The first time in his life he got kindness and attention was when his family died in an accidental fire. The second time was when people he trained saved lives in another fire. And so it goes, burning after burning. People are saved, houses are saved. Councils hear him with respect. He isn’t Morrachane Ladradun’s idiot burden of a son-she called him that in front of a room full of people-he isn’t that when something burns. Except he does his job too well. He’s gotten rid of too many fire hazards. People get accustomed to his work, and the number of big fires drops off. Respect, attention-he only gets those if the fires get worse. If there are no fires, well, if he starts one, and saves everybody, there’s no harm done, practically.

“So he sets a fire. Then a bigger fire next time, then a bigger one. People die. And he is given a tool that will let him shape huge fires.” Heluda stopped. Fumbling in a pocket, she pulled out a handkerchief and thrust it at Daja.

Only then did Daja realize that tears ran down her face in steady streams. “You don’t know,” she whispered. Even in her own ears she sounded weak.

“I think I do,” Heluda replied quietly. She pointed to the twisted iron handle. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me he didn’t use your gloves to pitch something loaded with black powder boom-dust into the furnace, something to protect the boom-dust for half an hour or so. When the morning’s business started, his creation exploded, taking the entire furnace with it. Thirty-three dead right now, from the bathhouse and the homes around it that burned. Sixty-eight are in hospitals all around the city. Some won’t live. It’s his handiwork, isn’t it?” She leaned back in her chair and laced her hands over her stomach.

“He’s my friend,” Daja told her.

“He’s the fire’s friend,” was the brutal reply. “It’s the only thing he loves.”

Daja wiped her face, then ran a warm hand over the linen. When she returned the handkerchief to Heluda, it was dry. “He did it,” Daja said. “He used my gloves-gloves I made to help people-he used them to blow people to pieces and burn them alive.” A tear rolled down her cheek. She swiped it away with an impatient hand. “I made something good, something bright, and he, he dirtied it. This piece of iron tore through a man’s body when the furnace exploded. I lived that.” She had to stop, and drink her tea, and eat a cookie, and wipe her eyes on her sleeve again. Through it all Heluda Salt waited, drinking her own tea, her eyes not leaving Daja.

As she poured fresh tea, Daja thought of something she had felt through her gloves. “But he wasn’t just doing a job that would yield something he wanted. He liked it. He was all, all giggly inside. Like a nasty little boy putting a nail on his sister’s chair.”

“They like excitement, criminals of this stripe,” replied the magistrate’s mage. “Danger, the risk of arrest, all your senses awake-it’s like dragonsalt, or bliss leaf, or wake paste. At first a taste is enough. Maybe the second taste is as good, but the third isn’t. You need more. And more after that. Excitement’s a drug.”

“How could I not know?” Daja asked.

“Because for all you’re an accredited mage at fourteen, with the kind of power that most mages whistle for, you’re still human,” Heluda informed her. “I didn’t suspect till Jossaryk House, and I’ve been at this game forty years. Blaming yourself is natural enough, but silly. Blame Morrachane. She made him what he is. And blame him. He knows what he does is wrong, or he’d just burn the first thing he sees. He picks, he works out a plan, and he goes to a lot of trouble not to get caught. He could stop. He doesn’t want to.” She watched Daja think about this, then asked, “Will you testify against him at the magistrate’s court? Will you tell the judges what your power has just told you-” she pointed to the twisted iron-“and what you have observed?”