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“So fix the drought,” Briar said, nudging Tris. “If you can’t, who can?”
She made a face at him. “For something that big—something to cover this whole valley? I have to have something to work with, Master Know-It-All. I need wet in the ground, and there isn’t any.” The girl shivered. “I feel all thin and scraped, it’s so dry.”
“We passed a lake on our way here,” Daja pointed out.
“Did you see how low it was? The lake hasn’t enough water to make a difference, and I’d kill whatever’s still alive in there. No, thank you!” said Tris forcefully.
“Uncle will help, won’t he?” Sandry wanted to know. “He can send grain north, and meat—”
“He’ll do what he can,” said Lark. “That is why he made this trip. The problem is that Gold Ridge isn’t the only valley in trouble. The duke’s treasury has limits. His purse must stretch to cover all of north Emelan. And the meat and grain merchants can’t afford to make loans—they need coin themselves, if they’re to buy trade goods come spring.”
“Can these northerners even repay a loan?” asked Tris, who took an interest in such things.
“That’s going to be a problem,” Lark admitted. “Last year, before the drought got so bad, they pledged the saffron crop and the output of the copper mines. This year the crop has failed.”
“The mines are failing too,” Daja said gloomily. “I heard some of the men talking about it.”
“This is too depressing,” Briar said firmly as he finished his meal. “At least we’ll be well out of it, back at Winding Circle. I heard the duke tell Lady Inoulia he wants to be home before the snows fall.”
“There has to be something we can do.” Sandry looked at the plate on her lap. She’d barely nibbled its contents. Briar leaned over and helped himself to her sausage.
“We’re mages,” Lark said gently. “We do what we can, but some problems are too big to fix.”
“Then I wish I weren’t a mage,” Sandry replied, her voice low and stubborn. “What good is magic, if you can’t use it to help people?”
There was little any of them could say to that. Briar and Tris exchanged looks. They weren’t sure they wanted to help people for nothing, but there was no way they would admit as much to Sandry.
Not long after he’d returned to work, Briar felt the mildest of cramps. He was shocked, then amused at his shock. How long had it been since he’d eaten food that hadn’t agreed with him? Four months? It seemed like four years since his trial and sentencing in Sotat and his trip north to Winding Circle with a stranger called Niko. Only two nights before his trial he’d spent part of the night groaning over a slit-trench, because the chunk of goat meat he’d stolen and devoured had been about a week too old.
There was no sense in complaining—was he a bleater, to whine because the grease in the sausages was off? Instead he excused himself to Lark and the girls and went in search of a privy. A laundrymaid pointed him in the right direction, to another small courtyard where a latrine was set into the outer wall.
Coming out of it, he found Daja kneeling on the ground in the middle of the courtyard. “What’re you doing?” he asked.
“Well, I was going to use that privy,” she replied absently. “I think the grease they cooked the sausages in had turned.”
“I noticed,” he said wryly.
“But I felt this warm spot….”
He looked at her. She was wearing shoes; he was barefoot. “I didn’t feel any warm spots.” He walked over to her and put a foot on the patch of ground beside her hands. “It doesn’t feel hot, honest.”
She shook her head, making her braids dance. “It’s there, just a little way down—”
Silver light blazed around her palms. She and Briar flinched.
“What happened?” demanded the boy. Now the ground turned warm under his toes. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Daja protested, sweating. “It just leaped out of me!” Still on her knees, she backed away. The earth was quivering. Something hot was coming up.
The ground where she had been cracked. Steam shot out in a hot, sulfur-smelling cloud, followed by a jet of very hot water. Both of them yelped when droplets hit their skins. Warm mist rolled through the courtyard, as heavy as any fog.
A small, dirty hand wrapped around Daja’s wrist. C’mon, Briar ordered. Let’s go, before we’re seen here!
Since she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she obeyed. Once out of the pocket of steam, they saw they were both covered with mud splatters.
“Cleanup?” she suggested. “Otherwise we look guilty.”
Briar nodded, and they dashed for the baths. In the outermost chamber at the foot of the stairs, troughs filled with heated water from the springs awaited those who just needed a quick wash. Both of them scrubbed their arms, legs, and faces, then did their best to remove the stains from their clothes.
“Where’d it come from?” asked Briar, drying his face and hands on a rough towel. “If you pulled that squirter out of the pipes down here and they’re broke, we’re in deep dung. And not just with Niko, either.”
“I don’t know where it came from,” she hissed, keeping an eye on the slumbering attendant across the room. “I haven’t anything to do with water!”
“No more than Sandry does vines, or I do lightning. Come on, feel around. Maybe we can fix the plumbing if you cracked it!”
Daja glared at him, still rubbing her arms dry, then glanced at the attendant. The woman was snoring.
“You need kettledrums to wake her,” said Briar.
As if in agreement, the woman snorted and turned away from them on her stool. Now comfortably wedged into her corner, she looked as if she might not stir until the supper bell was rung.
Daja took a deep breath, counting to seven, as she was trained. Briar joined in, closing his eyes as he took up the rhythm. There was her magic, and his, the edges blended together in spots. She let awareness spread, testing for heat where it shouldn’t be, or for breaks in the smooth tiles that covered the floor and walls. Metal rang in all her senses: the fixtures in the baths and the pipes. Riding on magic, she and Briar threaded their way through the ground until they found the broad pool of mineral-laden water from which the baths were supplied. They drifted around the immense underground rock chamber the water had shaped for itself.
There Briar split away to let his magic run over the walls. Daja found herself drawn to one of the many springs that fed the pool and dropped through that. She thrust along its length, exploring the walls, discovering a multitude of tiny outlets that bled into the mountains that cupped Gold Ridge Valley.
Sudden heat—much hotter than that of forge or springs, hotter than anything she’d felt in her life—wrapped around her and squeezed. She tried to shout, or thought she did, writhing against that breathless hold. Three months ago she had needed Tris’s help to reach the liquid rock that ran far below Winding Circle. Even then they weren’t able to touch the lava itself: Tris had called its heat up to where Daja could use it. Now the earth’s lifeblood of molten rock and metal had her and didn’t want to let her go.
She fought. Heat poured over her, making her edges go cherry red, then start to melt.
A square of blazing white light popped into existence and wrapped itself around her, forcing the lava back. The fire-weaving she had made just hours before was saving her life—or at least, her magical self. Niko was right, Daja thought crazily it doesn’t seem to need any air to burn!
Spying a crack in the rock overhead, Daja shot out of her protective blanket, arrowing straight for the exit. The moment she was free of it, the weaving collapsed, swamped by measureless heat.
Daja zipped through a crack in the earth and into a pocket of water. She was too frightened to stop and get her bearings, or to call for Briar. Escape was the only thing on her mind. Surely there ought to be a way out in this web of seams and cracks, some vent that would take her into open air.
She found it. Coolness w
ashed over her, the gentleness of deep shade: she soared free of the ground. Below her another hot spring bubbled, pool after pool of mineral-rich water and cooking mud. It was cupped in masses of granite. The trees were all pines, which meant she was high up indeed.
For long moments she drifted, letting the cool air ooze through her magical self. Am I the luckiest girl in Emelan or not? she thought. I’d’ve cooked for certain, if not for a thing I made by accident—by accident!—this morning.
If it was by accident, she thought again. I did something almost like it yesterday, just to have some light.
I wonder if squares like those could be, well, magical shields. I’d have to try them out, though—tinker with them, like Frostpine does with gadgets. What uses might they have?
She gave up such thinking after a while. This was something best talked over with her teacher.
Daja rose higher in the air until she could see an entire complex of pools and mudpots. Where was all this, anyway? Curious, she flowed over the granite rim of the area around the springs and up a smaller hill, where a herd of shaggy white animals grazed. She stopped to look at them, baffled. Never before had she seen such creatures, though they looked much like very large, very shaggy white goats. Thin black horns punctuated the top of their long faces.
You look like a collection of grandfathers, she thought, amused.
Reaching the hilltop, she found she was at the edge of a cliff. Below was a rocky valley. A small river cut it in two along its length.
Cold air drifted by. She looked for the source, and quivered with astonishment. Near her end of the valley lay an immense, jagged ribbon of ice. The valley seemed to continue on under it; the mountains that hemmed the valley also limited that frozen river. It stretched back into those mountains as far as she could see. She tried to guess how deep the center of the ribbon went before it reached the valley floor. It must have been hundreds of feet thick.
Now she heard sounds under the whistle of the wind, an abundance of creaks, groans, and snaps. They rose from the deep cracks in the ice-river’s surface, as if the ice either moved or had thousands of residents inside, hammering away. Its depths glinted cool blue. Its surface was filthy, covered with scattered rock and dirt.
What could it be? she wondered. And why did it make so much noise?
Daj’? sounded in her mind. Briar’s magical voice was thin and distant. This is no time to go frisking off! Where are you?
I have no idea, she replied. I think I took the wrong way out.
Wait—I’ll catch up, the boy ordered.
She looked at the iceless end of the valley. Where was Gold Ridge castle? For that matter, where were the farms and trees? If the land below had ever supported people, it did so no longer. Brush and reeds grew on the banks of the small river that trickled from the end of the ice-ribbon and lay more thickly on the sides of the valley, but it was all short growth, not very old. A herd of elk grazed in the distance as calmly as if it were full night. These animals weren’t used to being hunted.
If she couldn’t see the castle, she ought to know at least where Tris and Sandry were. She could certainly feel Briar’s approach. Concentrating, she searched for a sign of the other two girls’ magic.
There it was, miles away, and hidden behind a granite ridge. Their power was a glow on that horizon, shining through a layer of smoke.
The grassfires were closer to the castle than they’d been the day before.
That old buzzard Yarrun better do what he says he can, Daja thought grimly. I’d as soon not be grilled like sausage for a giant’s supper.
Where is this place? Briar demanded, popping from the hot springs to halt beside her. You’re miles from Gold Ridge!
I know, she said. Look at that!
Briar disappeared so quickly she thought he’d evaporated like water in the sun. He’d jumped over to the icy ribbon and was drifting across its surface, visible just as a silver glimmer to her magical vision.
I don’t want to go there, she told him. It’s cold. It won’t like me!
It’s just ice, he protested.
And ice and smiths are supposed to mix? she demanded, ghosting down the cliff face. I’ll freeze and go all brittle and break.
Have you ever seen anything like it? he asked, his voice filled with wonder. He seeped into a deep blue crack.
I liked the hot springs better, she said. The cold ate into her, making her feel sluggish and heavy.
There must have been something in her magical voice; he was at her side in a flash, urging her up the cliff face. The higher she rose, the more warmth she took from the stone. By the time they were at the ridge, she felt much better.
I saw a river down there, Briar remarked. Melted water, running through a long tube in the ice. It was beautiful! Recovering from his daze, he added, What happened? We got in the hot springs under the castle and you were gone. We didn’t wreck any plumbing, by the way. The water came through another crack in the stone. We should close the opening, though, before somebody gets flooded.
How? Daja asked. I don’t know which of us did it or how, and I truly don’t know how to stop it up again. Moving rock is what Tris does.
Then let’s ask her, the boy replied sternly. Let’s get it fixed and go back to work, before some long-neb finds our bodies just standing in the baths. You got your bond to her?
Daja found it. Racing along, taking the quick way back to the castle and their bodies, they called to their friend. Tris! Tris!
—and hematite to draw illness from a body—Tris was memorizing one of the many lists Niko gave her while she worked. To ground and stabilize, to focus on the physical plane, for scrying. Jade for lave, healing—
TRIS! Briar and Daja shouted, throwing their power behind the call.
What?! What? I’m busy! cried Tris.
Rather than waste time by telling her what had happened, they showed her images of the break in the ground Daja had made and the water jet shooting out of it. Tris needed a moment to sort out what they needed; the doubled images of the same event were more confusing than useful at first. I’ll fix it, she told them grumpily. And you better hope Niko doesn’t find out.
He won’t if you stop jawing and get to it, Briar retorted, as he and Daja fell into their physical bodies again.
As they began to stretch limbs that had gone stiff, they felt Tris in the earth nearby, grumbling like a vexed housewife. By the time they walked out of the baths, she had used the bubbling force of the hot springs to block the channel Daja had opened.
“We’d better change clothes,” Briar commented with a sigh. “If Lark sees us like this, she might think we got in a fight or something.”
There was no arguing with that: all their work to get the mud out of their garments had just created large smears. Daja followed Briar to their rooms, where they changed into clean things. Daja also seized the opportunity to use their privy. On their way back to Lark, Tris, and Sandry they peered into the courtyard where Daja’s power had gotten away from her. Tris had done things properly. The only sign that hot water had jetted from the ground here was soaked earth and water-splattered stone.
6
There you are,” Lark began, rising to her feet when Briar and Daja returned. There was a look of welcome and relief in her eyes.
Daja blinked at the scene before her: she could see why Lark was so glad they were back. Across from the entry to the courtyard, someone had placed two piles of cushions on a groundcloth. Between the cushions was a low wooden table decked with covered plates, a pitcher, and a teapot. Little Bear lay with his muzzle on his forepaws, nose just touching the groundcloth, eyes locked on the plates.
In front of the whole arrangement waited Polyam. With a bow to Daja, the Trader indicated the cushions, and said, “It is a fine day for a conversation.” The words were set by centuries of custom around the Pebbled Sea. They meant that the one who spoke them wished to do serious business.
Daja walked over, passing close to her forge. A quick glance int
o it showed that her white fire grid was gone, used up far below the ground.
“I beg you to accept this gift,” Polyam added with a wave toward the iron vine. Beside it was a chased dish a foot in width. Daja picked it up. It was copper of a particular ruddy shade, with an inch-wide rim decorated in scalloped patterns, and a central design of shaggy horses and fur-capped riders in full gallop. It was a good piece of metal, comfortably solid in her hands. “It’s just a token,” commented Polyam, her words still those of bargaining custom. “To show my respect for your work.”
Daja flipped the dish over, searching for the maker’s mark. It was in one horse’s round haunch; not the mark of a smith she knew. “This is Gold Ridge copper,” she murmured. During the trip north, she had taken every chance to see and handle local metalwork. Long before their arrival, she knew the feel of Gold Ridge copper as well as she knew her own name.
“I bought it here,” Polyam replied. “We come through every two years or so.”
You must have done better then, to afford this, thought Daja. The plate was worth at least two silver astrels, a lot of money for a wirok. “I couldn’t take one of your things.”
Polyam shook her head. “I was a different woman then. The business I hope to do with you is more important.”
Daja ran her fingers over the chasing. The copper sang behind her eyes as she stared at Polyam. At last she rested the piece next to the iron vine. Getting her staff from where it leaned against the wall, she laid it on the dropcloth and sat next to it, one pile of cushions at her back.
Once Polyam was seated with her own staff beside her, she carefully poured tea into small cups. Bargain-cups were supposed to be fine work; this pair had seen better days. Daja chose to ignore it. She had a feeling that Polyam had been forced to use her belongings—no one wanted the caravan’s bargain-goods handled by a trangshi. They would only have to be cleansed later, or even destroyed.
Polyam raised her cup to Daja. “To business,” she said.
Daja copied her. “To business.” She sipped as her hostess did and hummed with pleasure. This was real Trader tea, hot, strong, flavored with smoke. She’d drunk nothing like it since her last night aboard Third Ship Kisubo.
