Briar spat on the ground. “I wish we were home,” he snapped. “I wish we were back in Winding Circle, in our own gardens. Why did we come with the duke, anyway?”
“Because the north’s in trouble,” Niko said. “He made this trip to see who needs help and how much, remember? He’ll require all the aid we can give him to keep these people from starvation when the snows come.”
“We may yet fail,” added Rosethorn. “Winter comes early up here, and it comes hard when it does. We’d better think of something fast.”
By the time she finished the climb up the road from the forge to the castle, Daja was more depressed than she had been in a long time. This was the closest she had come to Traders in months, and they had treated her like dirt. “Like—like trangshi,” she muttered, entering the castle gate. She could have worked all afternoon not caring that she was covered with iron and soot, but the idea of being too disgusting to talk to had sunk into her pores. She doubted a bath would fix that, but it beat trying to peel off her skin, the only other remedy that came to mind. She headed straight for the entrance to the baths that lay off the main courtyard.
Billows of mineral-scented mist wrapped around her as she walked down a few steps into the underground rooms. The mineral odor came from the water. Unlike the Winding Circle bathhouses, where the water was heated by a furnace, these were filled by a natural hot spring warmed by fires deep within the mountains. Here she could steam the dirt off.
Wrapping the base of her vine in her leather apron to keep it from marking the tiles, Daja propped it against the wall, then went to remove her clothes. Except for a lone attendant, the large chamber was empty. The attendant looked at her oddly as she gave Daja soap, towels, and a scrubbing brush. It seemed no one came here so early in the day. Since she didn’t feel like talking, she was grateful for that.
The water was hot. She lowered herself into it a breath at a time, letting the mineral-rich liquid take her over. At least the metals in it welcomed her. They didn’t think she was trangshi. Even in this form they wanted her to shape them. Welcoming her, they rearranged themselves around her body until she felt better. The water cradled her as the sea had cradled Third Ship Kisubo. Daja closed her eyes and let her barriers down.
In her mind she found her iron vine-tree, magic shimmering in each strand, branch, and twig. The metal shifted slowly, spreading a touch here and a hint there. Barely moving, breathing softly, Daja examined her creation. She could feel bits of Sandry, Tris, and Briar mixed in with her own power, but only because she knew what to look for. The time when it was easy to tell her magic apart from that of her friends was over. In the weeks since Sandry had spun the four of them into one so they might survive an earthquake, Daja’s fire and metal talents had picked up touches of Sandry’s thread-power, Tris’s nature-magic, and Briar’s connection to growing things. The vine was as much Briar as Daja in its ability to grow, but Sandry’s magic had made the rods twist around one another to make a strong trunk. What part of it was Tris’s Daja couldn’t tell yet, but sooner or later she would know.
So Polyam’s gilav wanted to buy it—after it was cleansed. They would even blame her creation because her family had drowned and she had not. Would she sell it? Frostpine would want to keep it until he understood how it had come about. And it wasn’t as if she needed money, not while she lived at Winding Circle. But to have Traders, any Traders, talk to her as one of them again …
Dream on, part of her said. You are trangshi for life—unless, of course, a miracle happens and a Trader family is so indebted to you that they will pay to have your name written in the Trader logs once more. And how often has that happened? Once? Twice, in a thousand years?
She heard voices. With a scowl, Daja opened her eyes.
It was Sandry and her teacher, Dedicate Lark, robed for the bath. They were accepting wash-things from the attendant. Sandry glanced at Daja, then murmured to the servant. The woman bowed and left the room.
While Sandry shed her robe and inched into the steaming water, Lark sat on a bench. Lark’s skin was bronze-colored, revealing an eastern ancestor in her family. She looked a bit like a cat, with her broad cheekbones, sharp chin, and short, straight nose. Seeing Lark comb out her short, curly black hair with her black eyes half-closed, Daja expected the woman to purr. An earth dedicate like Rosethorn, Lark was a thread-mage, who worked her power into the things she spun and wove. She and Rosethorn managed the cottage at Winding Circle where the four young mages lived.
Had the new arrivals been Tris or Rosethorn, Daja would have gotten angry all over again, because that was what one did when they were around. Instead she tried to smile when Lark slipped into the pool. “I guess it’s silly for a trangshi to bathe, since uncleanness is more than skin deep,” said Daja. The joke failed miserably as tears rolled down her cheeks and continued to fall. She closed her eyes, which didn’t stop the tears. “If only it was all because of something I did.”
Lark sighed. “I’m sorry about the Traders.”
“At least I understand being trangshi, even if I hate it,” Daja whispered. “I don’t want other Traders to catch my luck.” She dashed the teardrops from her cheeks.
Lark put a gentle hand on Daja’s shoulder and nodded toward the vine. “Is that your creation, the one they bid so high for?”
Daja nodded as Sandry remarked with pride, “She told them they had to negotiate with her. She was splendid!”