While Daja got her scraps, Lark had joined the group in the main room. Now the dedicate looked down at the vine from overhead. “To me it looks like yarn,” she said, interested. “After several threads are spun together into one thick one. And the trunk is the single thick length.”

“It still needs a root,” Briar said. “C’mon, Daj”. Let’s find that potter.”

“You think those scraps will keep it fed?” she asked, trotting after him.

“Should do, unless the Traders don’t mean to sell it for a while.” In the hall outside he slowed to a walk as she caught up. “Just tell Polyam to give it more iron. Did you feel the power in it? It wants to grow more, but I don’t think it wants to grow a lot. What do you get off it?”

Daja thought about that. “It’s young,” she remarked slowly. “Right now it’s still full of fire, and the copper helps feed that. Its iron nature should take over in a month or two, though. Iron isn’t a leaping kind of metal. It’s just lively now with all that magic in it.”

They clattered down the steps and out the door. “Cold’ll make it hunker down, too,” Briar said.

“Remind me to tell them to watch the stems and twigs in the cold,” said Daja. The main courtyard was packed with refugees. The two mages ducked and dodged around people and wagons as they crossed it. “They’ll go brittle and break off if the people handling it aren’t careful.”

The potter sold them not only a round green pot of the right size, but he let them have some of his discarded clay. They got enough of that to fill their pot almost to the brim. Daja spent the next hour under Rosethorn’s direction, placing gravel at the bottom of the pot for drainage, then a layer of clay, a layer of scraps, a fresh layer of clay, and so on, until the vine was firmly planted and its weight supported by its new foundation.

“If you hadn’t closed the deal, I’d say charge the Tsaw’ha for the pot and clay,” Briar remarked when they were done. “You don’t want them thinking you’ll give them free things all the time.”

“I think Polyam at least understands I won’t do that,” Daja said drily. “And it sounds like she’ll be doing business with us again.”

“A pity that, whenever you do, she’ll have to get painted up and qunsuanen and all,” Tris said raspily. Rosethorn had finally ordered her to wear one of Sandry’s finest gauze scarves over her mouth and nose.

“Who would have thought that you’d learn so much Tradertalk on this journey?” Lark teased.

They could see Tris’s grin under the scarf.

“Daja, are you free?” Niko asked from the doorway. “If you are, Tris and I need you to show us the route you followed underground—” He began to cough. Once he caught his breath, he continued in a whisper. “We need to find the hot springs near the glacier. And where’s Sandry?”

“Abed still,” replied Lark. “She’s all right—just tired.”

Rosethorn had gone to her room the moment Niko started to cough. Now she returned with her syrup and a firm look in her eye. “I thought you were having trouble last night. Drink this.” She poured some into a cup and held it out to him.

Niko looked at it as if she offered him rotten fish. “I am fine. I am per—” He couldn’t even finish the sentence for coughing.

“It’s not bad,” said Tris, crossing her fingers behind her back. “Really. Tastes like—like mangoes.”

Niko looked at her, then took the cup and downed its contents. The four watched with interest as his cheeks turned pale, then scarlet. “That’s terrible!” he cried, his voice a thin squeak.

“Maybe I was thinking of some other syrup,” Tris remarked with a straight face.

Daja found another of Sandry’s finely woven lengths of gauze. “She’ll run out of scarves at this rate,” remarked Daja cheerfully, handing the cloth to Niko. He tied it over his nose and mouth.

Rosethorn looked at Lark. “I know the people who live here must exist with air like this, but we don’t,” she pointed out. “I want to ask the duke when he plans to move on.”

“He’s with Lady Inoulia in her library,” said Niko, clearing his throat. As Rosethorn left them, he said, “Now, Daja, if you will?”

“But I don’t want to enter the lava,” she protested. “It would have killed me last time if the fire-grid I made hadn’t come down there to protect me.”

“I’ll handle the lava.” Frostpine came in, rubbing a towel through his damp mane. “We finished the caravan’s forge-work,” he explained. “Now I can put my other talents to use.”

“Won’t the lava melt you too?” Daja asked.

“It can try,” he said with a grin, sitting cross-legged on the floor. He waved her down beside him. The moment his hard fingers wrapped around hers, Daja felt better. He wouldn’t let any harm come to her.

Niko and Tris joined them. They were just about to start when Briar ordered them to create a space for him. He had been with Daja too, he pointed out; perhaps his experience would be of use. As they settled, Lark took Little Bear for a walk, to keep him from wading into their circle and licking their faces, as was his habit.

All five joined hands, closed their eyes, and breathed in, counting to seven. They stopped; held their breaths for another count of seven, then released as slowly as they had inhaled. Briar, Daja, and Tris were instantly together in their magic: Tris wondered if they could ever be truly apart. Soon they felt the approach of Niko and Frostpine, the fire of the men’s power blazing not just hotter, but smaller, than their own, as if they filled less space with more intensity.