Chapter 1, p.19
Chapter 1, page 19
The maid looked down. "Viymese, forgive me," she said "I'll bring Ravvot Ladradun right away."
Daja picked up a few things and moved her tools around, though it wasn't necessary. She always kept her room neat. She also lit more candles. As she put down the taper she'd used to light them, the maid showed Ben in.
"Shall I bring tea, Ravvot?" she asked him. "Cider, pastry?"
"Nothing, thank you," Ben replied. "I won't stay long."
The maid curtsied and left the room, leaving the door open an inch. Daja noticed; her mouth twitched with a smile. It seemed the Bancanor servants meant to look out for her reputation even if she didn't. Her amusement faded when she looked at Ben – he seemed weary. Part of that was fire and candlelight. They cast his face in sharp relief, making its lines deeper, his expression harder.
"I'm sorry I didn't come earlier," he confessed without looking at her. "I wanted to make sure you were all right before this, but the fire wasn't out till dawn on Moonsday. I was helping with the victims until almost noon on Starsday. Someone did tell me you and your teacher were fine." He looked at her with concern. "You are, aren't you?"
"Yes, of course we are," Daja said hurriedly, in the grip of a sudden wild thought. "Ben, who hates you this much?"
He looked at her, his face oddly still. "Why do you say that?"
Daja sat on her workstool to work the idea out aloud. "You told me you saw it on your way home. I bet if you'd gone home you could have watched it from your upstairs windows. I have to think maybe these fires are being set to hurt you. To, I don't know, destroy your name in the city, to make people think your firefighting ideas don't work. Maybe even to drag you into danger."
"Daja, that's a tremendous leap of logic," he murmured. He sat in one of her fireside chairs.
"I'm not so sure. Well, I'm a mage, and they teach us not to believe in coincidences, you see. You've met this person, that's my guess. Can you recall meeting someone who just seemed evil to you? Someone who made your skin crawl? Some you crossed?"
"Evil?" he asked.
"Only an evil person would harm others to get at someone else," Daja said flatly.
Ben ran his fingers through his thinning curls. "You honestly believe there are people who are either good or evil?" he asked. "How old are you?"
"Fourteen," she said, frowning. "What has my age to do with this?"
Ben shook his head. "This is the second time I've heard you talk like a young person. Usually I forget you aren't my age. People aren't that simple, Daja."
"Of course he's evil," she said, impatient with typical adult shillyshallying. "Look at what he does. Or maybe it's a she – " She stopped, abruptly. Morrachane? His own mother? Teraud's wife had said she whipped her servants… no. Morrachane Ladradun would never do something that would mean crawling into houses or walking icy, windswept clifftop roads.
So involved was she in thinking, then discarding, the possibility, that she had missed the start of what Ben said now. " – someone tired of being ignored, tired of others trampling on him. Perhaps some rich person treated him with contempt. At least, with Jossaryk House, people will know he did something that no one will forget. He would be less, less evil and more – besieged."
Daja stared at him. "It sounds like you're on his side."
"I'm exhausted, Daja, I can't think straight." Ben smiled ruefully. "Mother insisted I work late on the books to make up for my time at the fire. As if numbers are more important than lives… I'll consider what you've said. I certainly have enemies, people who don't want to hear what I tell them, but I doubt very much that any of them would kill innocents." He got up and walked over to her worktable, where the living metal gloves stood on their iron bases. In the flickering candle and firelight they seemed to move.
"They need more work. Try them on if you like," Daja suggested.
Ben picked one up, weighing it in his hand. "Do I roll up my sleeves?"
Daja shook her head, the beaded ends of her many braids slapping her cheeks lightly. "They're made so you can yank them on in a hurry. They'll be a little big even now, because I made allowance for your coat."
Ben slid on first one glove, then the other.
"I need a few more days to finish," Daja admitted as she watched Ben adjust the fit. "My control over my magic's still weak, after Jossaryk House."
"Was it hard, walking in there?" Ben wanted to know. He turned his hands back and forth, fascinated by the play of light on their mirrored surfaces.
"Fire walking, no," Daja said, eyeing the gloves. The metal's edges had blended seamlessly, so it looked as if she had simply poured it over the forms. "But holding it back, with the wind driving it? That took all I had. Actually, I didn't think I had that much." And it wasn't enough, she thought, her eyes stinging at the memory of the baby who had died on her back.
"Why hold it?" Ben opened and closed each glove hand. "Why not just tell it to stop? To go out?"
"That works with tiny fires, not big ones." She grimaced as she saw the outline of hinges when he made a fist. She had to fix that. The gloves worked, but as a craftswoman she wanted them to look like cloth, and the bulge of iron hinges ruined it. "As long as there was fuel, that fire wanted it. The wind gave it strength. The more it ate and the harder the wind blew, the stronger it got. I wish I could've sent it somewhere else or put it out, but I couldn't."
Ben picked up one of the hearth pokers, then one of Daja's rods. The gloves grasped the thin rod as easily as the heavy poker. Daja watched as he twisted his hands to and fro. Hinging the wrists had been the most difficult part. They had turned out well.
"Doing a whole suit will be hard," she said with regret. "It'll need an iron scaffolding, almost, with hinges and ball and socket joints. It'll be heavy. I'll need all winter to grow enough living metal, and there's iron and brass to buy. And I haven't worked out how you'll see and breathe yet."
He stood in front of the hearth fire, moving his arms inside the gloves. Now he looked at her sidelong. "Are you giving up on me, Daja?"
She frowned, half distracted by planning. "Of course not! I'm just saying it's going to take lots of work."
"People do give up on me," he said quietly, looking at the gloves. "At first they think I'm fine. They admire how hard I work, how I try to teach others, prevent as much harm as I can…. But then they say I don't know how to enjoy myself, that I don't spend enough time with people. Then it's I'm obsessed, and they're busy. They find other, easier companions." He slid off a glove and angled it so the light of a branch of candles illuminated the inside. He peered at it. "It wouldn't surprise me if you decided this thing was just too much effort."
His words confused her. What was he talking about? She had meant only to explain the project would take months, not weeks: he needed that suit. Ben seemed to mean something else, something that made her uncomfortable, though she couldn't say why. "No. I just don't think you should look for results until spring." Daja sat again on her workstool. "Did Heluda Salt talk to you? About Jossaryk House."
About to put down the glove he held, Ben fumbled and nearly dropped it. He put it on the table and held the second glove up to the light. His hands were shaking.
"They won't break if you drop them," Daja pointed out. "They're up to a lot of work. They won't be of use to you otherwise."
"They're just so lovely it's hard to think of them as strong," Ben replied. He continued his inspection. "You talked with Heluda Salt?"
"She and Frostpine were working on something." She wasn't sure if she could tell him more than that, even if the counterfeiters were captured. "And I met her at the Mages' Society party. She hadn't seen the report about the boardinghouse fire, the one you told the mages was set. Did you tell them? I couldn't remember if you had or if you hadn't gotten a chance."
"I pity this firesetter," Ben said, smiling at Daja. "If Heluda Salt takes an interest, he should hang himself now, or he'll surely burn later."
"Is she good?" Daja asked.
"She's one of the best in the whole empire," Ben told her. "Certificate and advanced certificate from the university at Lightsbridge, crown honors by the basketload – I'm impressed." Reluctantly he put the second glove on the table. "When will these be ready?"
"I should be done by Firesday." Daja looked Ben over, making rough estimates of his height, shoulder breadth, waist, legs, and arms. "Should I bring them to your warehouse Sunsday afternoon?"
"Actually, Watersday is better. Come to the house in the afternoon, around one," Ben suggested.
Daja murmured, "Watersday is fine." She grabbed a slate and began to write down numbers. Only the major weight-bearing struts of the iron form need be heavy. Perhaps she needn't use thin iron rods to support the metal at all, but wire cables or even chain mesh…
"I'd best go," she heard Ben say.
She nodded absently. "The maid will let you out." She glanced at his head. If she hung the weight from his shoulders, she might create a helm that was also a long sack, a cloaklike bag filled with air. That would solve the breathing problem, if only for short periods. What about living metal coated over a fine mesh? There was still the vision problem to settle, but the suit appeared to be emerging from a tangle of half thoughts and problems.
"You won't let me down, will you, Daja?" he asked.
She smiled quickly at him, still lost in her plans. He would understand her liking for him was true when she created his suit. He just didn't know that mages above all understood what it was like to be obsessed. She was as fixed on her magic – most of the people she cared about were as fixed on their magic – as he was on fire. "I try not to let my friends down," she told him.
When she thought to look up from her notes again, he was gone. She didn't remember that he hadn't said if he'd talked to the magistrate's mages.
Over the next two days Daja continued her staff classes with Jory, who began to grasp the idea of waiting emptiness that would open the door to her power. When breakfast was over Daja continued work on her gift jewelry and on her plans for the living metal suit. As the days ended she would go for a nice, long skate to air out her mind.
The first day she timed her return to meet Nia under Everall Bridge as the younger girl came home from Master Camoc's. The next day she reached Bancanor House as Morrachane dropped Nia off. It seemed that she had "just happened" to be driving past Camoc's as Nia left for the day.
"I feel so sorry for her," Nia confided as she and Daja climbed the stairs to the schoolroom. They stood aside as the two youngest Bancanors, free to play outside after their lessons, raced by yelling at the tops of their lungs. Their harassed nursemaid followed, murmuring apologies as she tried to catch her charges.
When the older girls could hear again, Nia continued, "She misses her grandchildren. She never sees the families of her other two sons, and…"
"She blames Ben," Daja said drily, nodding to the young Bancanors' tutor as he left the schoolroom.
"I wish she wouldn't," Nia admitted, and sighed. "She's so dreadful to him and her servants at the same time she's good to Jory and me."
"That's what Jory says," Daja told her as she closed the schoolroom door. "Now, let's begin."
They settled to their meditation. Nia reached the next step, pulling all of her magic into a small object – she had chosen a pine knot – as Daja had once fitted her power into the striking head of one of her favorite hammers. Supper followed, then an evening in the book room with the Bancanors and Frostpine.
On Firesday Daja left the book room early. Her grip on her power was strong at last. It was time to finish the gloves. She mixed two washes, each blended from different herbs, powders, and oils, then thinned with boiling water. One she applied inside the gloves, the other outside. After that was done, she hung them out the window overnight. In the morning, after her session with Jory, Daja brought the gloves in. A final polish inside and out with a soft cloth, and her creations were finished.
Watersday morning dragged: she wanted to go to Ladradun House. She wanted to see Ben's face when he tried the gloves. The Bancanors and Frostpine went to temple; Daja worshipped at her personal Trader shrine. For the first time in years other thoughts distracted her during prayers for her family and ancestors. She loved it when she created something people could use, not simply admire. This was the first time she had made something that might save lives. She wanted Ben to have it before the next fire broke out.
Midday came and went. Daja finally set out for Ladradun House.
Ben opened the door so quickly after she rang the bell that she had to think he'd been waiting for her to arrive just as impatiently as she had waited for the hour set for her visit. Any odd feelings she'd had after their last, strange conversation evaporated as she noted his blazing indigo eyes and eager face. "Daja, you came! Come in, come in!"
She obeyed with a grin, smelling fresh beeswax, lemon oil, and wool, the smells of a well-kept Namornese house. Ben disposed of her coat, hat, and scarf while she carefully wiped her boots on the coarse mat. She didn't want Morrachane to get annoyed with her son because his guests left tracks on her perfect floors.
"Mother's at a meeting – these merchants have to do some business every day, I think," he told Daja as he led her to his study. A pot of tea and a plate of cakes waited on his desk. He poured the tea out like a good host, but his hands trembled; he was that eager to try the gloves. Daja took them from the satchel and offered them to him.
He slid them onto his arms without a word, opened his small stove and thrust one gloved hand inside, scooping up coals. He dumped them, grabbed a second handful, and squeezed. The coals broke apart in his metal-clad fingers.
"And…?" Daja asked.
He looked up at her, the stove's heat turning his cheeks a feverish crimson. "I may as well be holding sand, or salt. How hot a fire could they withstand?" He withdrew one arm and dug in the fiery coals with the other, stirring them with a gleaming finger, shoving them together in a pile.
"Well, the living metal came about in a forest fire. I suppose maybe if the governor's palace was to burn, they might get warm."
Ben snorted. "Governor's palace? He builds in stone, like the rest of the nobility. He's no fool. I've been trying to convince Mother to rebuild in stone. She says wood is good enough for her neighbors, it's good enough for us." He shut the stove. "I know I'm being rude, but… would you mind if I tried these in the kitchen hearth? It's a bigger fire. You can stay here – I won't be long." He didn't even wait for Daja's answer, but left the study at a trot.
Daja smiled, shook her head, and tried one of the cookies – they were very good. So was the tea. She hoped that Ben hadn't dipped into Morrachane's finest supplies. Though the woman did her best to be polite to someone who was Jory's and Nia's friend, she always made Daja feel as if she must have cheated somehow to get her medallion. Daja had the feeling Morrachane wouldn't like knowing Ben had given her the best tea and cakes.
Bored after a few minutes' wait with no sign of him, she got up to look around the room. A touch of the stove told her it wasn't as badly made as the one in his warehouse office. His books interested her for a moment, as did his pen-and-ink drawings and knickknacks. She tried to keep her attention on those things, but time stretched. They weren't very interesting. Daja found herself standing before the shelves half hidden in the shadows behind his desk. There was the skeleton hand with its molten gold ring. Looking at it, Daja felt the hair stand on the back of her neck. What if it had come from Ben's dead wife?
She shook her head. Where had such a gruesome imagining come from? That was more the kind of nonsensical thing Sandry or Tris might think. There would be something very wrong with Ben for him to keep his dead wife's hand. The only thing that was wrong with him was that he lived with his dreadful mother, a mistake any widower could make. That didn't make him bad or cracked enough to keep a piece of his dead wife on a shelf.
She had stared at the hand too long. She forced her eyes to other things: the partly melted soldier, the glass lump, pieces he said he saved from fires he had beaten. Her nostrils twitched: the odor of smoke was stronger than it had been the first time she had seen these shelves.
Her eyes moved higher through the collection. The upper shelves were empty, except… Daja blinked. She had thought the shelf on a level with her own face was empty last time. Yet here were three objects. One looked like a half-burned corner piece from a Namornese outer door, carved with good luck signs. One was a scorched glass bowl; its contents smelled like burned sugar. The last was a blackened female figure with a loop on the back, as if it were a pendant. Silver gleamed through cracked gilt. Daja stared at it, memory stirring at the back of her mind like that gleam of silver. She had seen that figure around someone's neck.
Goosebumps prowled her arms and her spine. Was she falling ill? The stench of smoke was thick around this shelf. It made her stomach lurch. That alone was proof that she might be ill, because smoke never made her queasy.
She backed away from the shelves and smashed her thigh into one of the sharp corners on Ben's desk. Daja yelped and bent over, grabbing the hurt muscle, all other thoughts banished in that white-hot burst of pain. I hit it on exactly the wrong place, she thought, exasperated, as her head cleared.
Ben strode back in and grabbed Daja in a hug that lifted her off her feet. "They're incredible!" he cried, putting her down at last. He still wore the gloves. "I've never seen anything like them. No wonder they gave you the medallion at fourteen!"
She wanted to correct him, to say she'd actually been thirteen, but it wasn't important. His delight in her creation was important. "I'm glad you like them."
Ben grabbed her face, the metal gloves flesh-warm against her skin. Enthusiastically he kissed her first on one cheek, then the other, before he let her go. "Is a whole suit really so much trouble?" he asked.
Any reluctance she felt about the suit evaporated. He did so much for others: she could do this for him. "I started my calculations," she reassured him. "I have the air problem solved, at least for short periods. There's still how you'll see, but we have all winter to thrash that out. If you'll come by Bancanor House on your way home a couple of nights next week, I'll take all the measurements I need."
