Silence. Ben stepped quietly into the main sitting room and lit a lamp from his coals, then took his grandfather’s sword from the brackets over the icy hearth. Blade in one hand, lamp in the other, breath steaming in the chilly air, he walked down the hall to his study, lightly, so no floorboards would squeak.

His study was empty, though he was sure the sound had come from there. He went back to search the other rooms off the hall without success. Bothered still-he knew what he’d heard, and it wasn’t mice-he searched the house, checking their jewel boxes and Morrachane’s supposedly secret caches of money. Nothing was missing. He found no one.

His heart still chattered as he set the sword in its place and returned to his study, lamp in hand. Inside he opened the shutters, started a fire, then looked around. There was a folded sheet of paper on his desk, identical to the one in his coat pocket. On the outside of the note he saw a note in his mother’s hard hand: What is this? Why does this woman want to speak to you?

Ben opened the paper with a finger. It was the same note-polite, businesslike-that the sergeant had given him. He let it close and looked at his shelves and desk. His mother had come here already, he knew that; she did it every time he went away. “Straightening,” she called it. He called it poking her nose into his correspondence, drawings, and books, making sure he didn’t plan to escape her. It was an insult he’d come to live with, but he was getting tired of it, and tired of her.

He checked his memento shelves last. She never touched those, at least. She said they were disgusting, that she wouldn’t dirty her hands with them, but Ben knew why she let them be. They frightened her. He liked that.

He smiled now, remembering her fear, until the smile froze on his mouth. At least three items had been moved. His wife’s hand: he’d searched the ashes for hours to collect the remains, but in the end, he couldn’t bear to let all of her go into her grave. He’d wired the bones together himself, weeping as he’d done it. Untouched, the wire was enough to hold the hand upright and outstretched. Shift it, and some bones would be knocked out of line. The tips of three fingers had fallen over backward.

A lump of crystal, riddled with cracks, had been replaced curved side up. He disliked the curved side. And the half-melted figure of Yorgiry, taken from the neck of the maid who had saved two infants, had been moved.

Someone had been searching his mementoes. Someone who, in all likelihood, carried an invisibility charm. Someone who had taken nothing, who had only looked. And now Ben had two notes from Heluda Salt-Salt the suspicious, Salt the clever, Salt the best. The cold draft across his neck was suddenly a northwester off the Syth.

Well.

As usual, he was ready for whatever the gods threw at him. His plans for this day were long prepared. The time had come to burn away his old life.

His chief regret was that he would never see that living metal suit, never walk into an inferno as Daja could. At least he had the gloves. He would take care of them and use them to further his understanding of fire.

Everything was ready by the time his mother returned from Vrohain’s temple. “You!” Morrachane snapped when she saw him. “Why are you back so soon? How even you could bungle so easy a thing as a simple escort trip-“

“Shut up,” he said, cutting his mother off for perhaps the first time in her life.

“How dare you interrupt me?” Morrachane’s mouth was flat with rage, her eyes poisonous.

Ben shrugged. “I know, Mother. I’m surprised myself. Now that I’ve done it, though, it doesn’t seem that difficult. It’s never too late to learn, so they say.”

Watersday afternoon Daja was virtually alone in the house. Nia had gone to visit Morrachane. Most of the adult refugees were meeting with the Airgi Island council to discuss what to do next. Eidart and Peigi Bancanor were building snow forts in the courtyard with the refugee children. The servants who had offered to work that day were scattered over the large house. Jory was at Potcracker’s kitchen, trying to improve her mastery over stews, while Matazi and Kol paid calls on friends, and Frostpine and Anyussa visited a winter fair. That left Daja in the book-room, reading Namornese history.

“Daja?” Nia stood in the doorway, pale under her bright red cap. “I think something’s wrong at Ladradun House. Aunt Morrachane always expects me at this hour and lets me in, but she hasn’t, and-and-I know I’m not supposed to do anything with my magic outside protections till you say I can, but I spread it out, my magic? I think there’s a fire in the cellar.”

Daja raced to the slush room for her coat. Nia followed. Together they ran up the alley to Ladradun House. Behind them came the two youngest Bancanors and their playmates, curious about what was going on.

Daja and Nia halted at the ten-foot wooden fence that guarded Ladradun House from the rear. Above it Daja saw the roofs of the extensions that included the same lesser buildings as did Bancanor and Jossaryk Houses, and the shuttered windows of the top two stories of the main house.

Nia said wonderingly, “The garret shutters are open.”

A look up told Daja that Nia was right. From the darkness behind the open shutters, there were no windows to block the wind from coming in.

Daja sent her magic rolling over the big house, and felt the fire in the cellar and kitchen immediately. She grabbed it, trying to hold it, only to sense other blazes, in the cellar on the far side of the house, and in the western extension. Those she seized as well. All of them fought her control.

“Nia! The rest of you!” Daja ordered, inspecting the rear gate, “find the alarm bells around here and start ringing them-ring every one you see. Keep ringing them till a brigade comes! Go!” She and Heluda knew Ben had set the bathhouse fire. Was it possible that another firesetter was loose in Kugisko, one with a grudge against Ben, as she once thought? Because she knew Ben was somewhere between Kugisko and Izmolka. This fire couldn’t be his work.