Soon they heard the beat of a drum, somber and hard. Up the stairs that led to the canal came the execution party. Ben, in a rough sacking robe, was flanked by the black-robed priests of Vrohain, who oversaw every execution, and their attendant lawkeepers. A condemned prisoner could have a priest of his own faith, but Ben had chosen none. He stared at the ground as he shuffled forward. The loudest sounds were the drum, the flap of cloth in the hard wind, and the clank of the shackles secured to Ben’s wrists, ankles, and neck.

The priests helped him up the steps to the platform. They chained him to the stake, then climbed down. Ben stared across the sea of people as if his thoughts were years away.

The drum went silent. A herald read Ben’s name, his crimes, and his sentence. Then the priests of Vrohain brought their torches. They thrust them between gaps in the logs into oil-soaked kindling. The kindling blazed.

For a long time nothing changed. Ben stood expressionless. Below him the logs caught, and began to burn. They gave off little smoke, Daja realized: he would not be allowed to suffocate before the fire reached his flesh.

His image quivered as her eyes filled with tears. She suddenly remembered the Ben she had known at first, a rare non-mage who understood fire as she did, someone as eager and alive as any member of her foster-family.

Ben shifted, suddenly, as if he were uncomfortable. He lifted first one foot, then the other. The first darts of flame slid through the boards of the platform. Daja’s eyes spilled over and continued to spill. This was the law he’d broken, the death he’d given so many. Surely it was right, to give him that same death?

Suddenly flames ran up his sacking robe. Ben flinched aside, trying to crush the fire out on the pillar. His shackles were too tight. His face worked. In a moment he would scream.

She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t. She didn’t care about the law. Daja jammed her power deep into the ground, past bedrock, into the white-hot flow of molten rock and metal below. She summoned a single, overpowering, burst of heat and threw it all into the fire. Let the Namornese punish her, she thought. She couldn’t watch him slowly burn to death.

Then she saw it. The silver fire of directed magic roared out of Frostpine and Olennika. It rushed in a silver thread from Jory. Logs, platform, man, and stake turned into an immense, roaring column of flame that shot thirty feet into the air. For a moment it was so hot Daja’s face felt tight; she smelled burned hair close by. The column lasted only a breath of time. Then it vanished, out of fuel. A few black flakes drifted over the spot where Kugisko had decreed Ben would die. Smoke rose in discouraged wisps from the freshly charred ground where the stake had been.

Daja looked at Heluda Salt, defiant, expecting the mage to be furious. Instead Heluda stood with a hand over her eyes, shaking her head. Daja couldn’t be sure if Heluda was disappointed or resigned. After a moment it occurred to her Heluda might be both.

Someone in the governor’s party was more than disappointed or resigned. A man who wore the gold sunburst of a commander on his silver-trimmed black lawkeeper’s coat advanced toward Daja’s side of the square, his face dark with rage. He beckoned to a group of lawkeepers. “I want-” he began furiously.

Heluda stepped in front of him and put her hand on his chest. She said something; no one heard what it was. The lawkeeper commander glared down at her and opened his mouth. No sound emerged from it; she spoke again, quietly.

Frostpine tugged on Daja’s arm. “Let’s go,” he said, beckoning to Nia, Olennika, and Jory. “Heluda will settle him. It’s not like their cursed sentence wasn’t carried out.”

Five months later, word came to Bancanor House that the southern mountain passes were open. A week after that, Heluda, Kol, and Matazi accompanied Frostpine, Daja, their mounts, and three packhorses across Bazniuz Island and over Kyrsty Bridge, all the way to the construction site for Yorgiry’s new hospital and soup kitchen. While building had only started a month before, carpenters and masons risking the occasional late snow or ice storm to begin the new project, preparations had been underway all winter. Matazi and Kol had been in the forefront of the fund-raising, with donations from their own fortune so large they had shamed fellow rich Kugiskans into granting large sums. Less wealthy families of the merchant and laboring classes had donated cloth, pottery, cooking gear, herbs and oil for medicines, even food. Daja had sold plenty of jewelry and given the money to the new hospital. She, Frostpine, and Teraud had labored all winter on bolts, door latches, hooks, and endless supplies of nails, as had many other smiths. Carpenters set aside wood; weavers made blankets and sheets; herbalists and healers compiled medicines by the vatload.

Now the travelers, Kol, and Matazi sat on their horses, looking at the busy scene before them. Masons labored in cellars and on ground floor hearths as carpenters framed the inner wards and outer walls. The soup kitchen was in business already. Olennika presided over a line of cauldrons from which exquisite smells drifted. Jory, wearing a single plain gown like her teacher, her skirts and petticoats hanging just an inch below her knees, dumped an armload of chopped turnips into a kettle and walked over to them, her calf-high boots squelching ankle-deep into black mud with each step.

“You’re supposed to use those board walkways, you know,” her father pointed out. “That’s why they laid them down, after all. It’s not called Blackfly Bog for nothing.”

“Oh, Papa, it takes forever to get anywhere that way,” Jory complained. She stopped beside Daja’s horse, a hand on Daja’s booted ankle. They had said their important goodbyes while trading staff blows that morning, but Daja had wanted to see her in her element, in the life she was making for herself. To Daja Jory said, “You betrayed me. You turned my meditation over to her.” She pointed an accusing finger at Heluda Salt, who only grinned wolfishly down at her.