“I don’t feel splendid,” replied Daja. “I feel unclean.” Picking up her soap, she began to scrub. “Besides, an opening bid means nothing. Only a hamot takes the first offer—it’s the lowest possible. They only bid gold to start because everyone knows magic drives the price up.”

“I don’t know what hamot means,” Sandry admitted. “I never saw much bargaining.”

Daja rested her head on the rim of the pool. “It’s the kind of person Traders dream of dealing with. Someone who’s too stupid to know the offered price is insulting.”

“Hm,” Sandry murmured, undoing her braids to wash her hair. “How high do you think they’ll go?”

Daja tried to think. “If I knew where they meant to sell, it would help,” she admitted. “They must have a buyer in mind.” She kicked her legs gently. “If they find a way to talk to me even though I’m trangshi, that says I should hold out for three gold majas at least.”

“You can buy more scrap iron with that kind of money,” Lark murmured. She examined the vine through squinted eyes, then reached out to brush it with her fingertips. “I’ve never even heard of such a creation. Metal that grows—how big will it get?”

Daja shrugged. “Depends on how much metal’s in the soil where it’s planted, I suppose. Once it’s used all the spare iron in the trunk, it’ll need fresh metal from somewhere.”

“I hope you make other things like that,” Sandry told her. “I think it’s beautiful.”

“Beautiful only because I didn’t want the iron for something else,” Daja pointed out gloomily. “What if I had? What if someone really needed the nails I was supposed to craft? I can’t even use this iron again, not with all our magics swimming through it. And what if someone wants me to create another one? This isn’t the smithcraft I’m supposed to be learning. I wouldn’t know where to start—the magic got away from me when I wasn’t paying attention.”

Sandry bit her lip. “Mine got away from me this morning, too,” she admitted, and told them about the scorched embroidery.

Lark settled back in the water, looking at the girls with interest. “Well. So far the results of your magic veering onto some unknown path have been good, or at least, haven’t done any serious harm, but things obviously aren’t settling down. The magic in all four of you is continuing to change.” She nodded decisively. “It’s time to see if it can be mapped.”

“How will you map something like magic?” Sandry wanted to know. Her blue eyes gleamed at the thought of learning something new.

“Not me, Lady Sandrilene,” Lark told her with a smile. “You. These changes came about as a part of your spinning. That makes you the best one to weave the map.”

3

Night came early in mountain valleys, earlier than on the heights that surrounded them. An hour or so before supper in the castle, the valley floor was in shadow. From the balcony outside the suite of rooms where Lark, Rosethorn, Niko, Frostpine, and their students slept, Daja watched the bands of dull orange wildfires glow brighter and brighter in the dark.

She knew without looking that the person who had just entered their rooms was Frostpine. “I wonder what could be forged in a blaze like that,” she called without turning around. “A bridge over these mountains, or a sword as long as the Emel Peninsula.”

“I doubt it. Grassfires don’t burn that hot.” He came out and sat on the rail where he could see her face.

A bird dropped from the sky to land on the railing between them. It was a starling, a brown, speckled bird with a sharp yellow bill and clever black eyes. Ignoring Frostpine, it chuckled to Daja, fluffing up its chin-feathers.

“I don’t know where Tris is,” Daja told the bird. “I think she was in the library all afternoon. Go catch bugs for supper, Shriek.”

The bird named Shriek chirped harshly.

“I can never tell if he knows what’s said to him,” Frostpine remarked.

“The problem is that he’s most interested in food, and he always wants that now.” Daja grubbed in a pocket and came up with some brown bread from lunch. Breaking it up into crumbs, she put them down for the starling. He ate briskly.

“I’ve been thinking about the work you can do while we’re here,” said Frostpine, watching Shriek. “We don’t want you getting out of practice, and I’m afraid helping Kahlib with his extra work is out of the question for now. It seems the Trader caravan wants him to do some touch-ups here and there.”

“And I can’t do any of their work ’cause I’m trangshi,” Daja said bitterly. “So what’s left?”

“Both Kahlib and the castle’s head carpenter are in need of more nails.”

“Frostpine!” Daja protested.

“I know, I know—but that’s the best I can manage. Besides, the discipline is good for you. Smithing of any kind, magical or not, is plain hard work.”

The door opened to admit Briar and Tris. The moment he saw Tris, the starling began to shrill in the bone-rattling squall used by all fledglings of his breed. Flapping inside to perch on Tris’s shoulder, he pecked her ear.

“Shriek, stop! You’re a grown bird—act like it!” Flinching, she removed the lid of the small covered bowl that she carried. It was partly filled with tiny balls of raw meat and hard-boiled egg yolk. Bouncing to her wrist, the starling began to gulp them down.