After the first day, Daja knew that her left hand was not hurt as badly as she had feared—it was sore, but only that. It did itch, as if the brass were a scab over a healing wound. As the nights got chilly, she found that it ached in the cold. She began to long for the warmth of southern Emelan.
At the very first opportunity, their teachers sat her down to examine her hand. Niko and Frostpine poured spells on the brass, to discover its nature. Nothing seemed to affect it, or to change its mild clasp on her flesh. She was able to peel some off, like old skin. More remained, on her palm and the back of her hand, with three strips passing between her fingers to connect them. The metal that she didn’t peel away grew back loosely, so she kept pulling off what she could. When she left the peeled-off bits in a metal bowl, they merged like molten brass. If she put a strip of that on her wrist, it lengthened until its ends touched, forming a wristband that she could peel off like wax.
“It might go away eventually,” Niko said when they could think of nothing else to try on her hand. “I can’t say for sure, much as I hate to admit it.”
Daja shrugged and tucked the brass-covered hand into her tunic pocket. “At least it doesn’t hurt.”
On the third day after the fire, Yarrun was buried in the small castle cemetery. Rosethorn and Briar planted one of the trees that Yarrun had loved so well at the head of his grave.
By the fourth day after the fire, Daja knew that she could use her hand just as she always had. No matter whether she cut up her food, wielded tools, or buttoned her tunics, the brass remained as flexible, and as sensitive, as her own skin. That night she lay awake for a long time, rubbing her metal-covered palm and thinking as hard as she had ever thought in her life.
In the morning, she took all of the brass she had put in the bowl and went to Frostpine with it. They talked long and hard, then called in Niko and talked some more. It was Niko who asked gilav Chandrisa to let them borrow the iron vine for a day. Once they had it, they summoned Rosethorn and Briar, and examined the vine inch by inch.
“You’ll need a lot of iron for your project,” Frostpine told Daja when they took the vine back to the Trader camp. They settled it in Polyam’s cart, strapping it in and covering it with blankets.
“I figure twenty rods for the longer parts in the frame—” She stopped, hearing footsteps behind them. They turned to see a group of Traders, each with staff in hand. Gilav Chandrisa held two staves: her own, and another. She gave the newer staff to Daja, who ran her fingers over the cap. It was crowned with a many-pointed star of inlaid brass wire—the insignia of Tenth Caravan Idaram. Two flames, and a sailing ship half-sunk in waves, had been etched into the sides.
“If you are one of us, you require a staff,” said the gilav. “See that you carry it from now on.” She would not look Daja in the face. “When you do come to us, we shall see about proper mimander training for you.”
“It is a good thing you are young,” added the mimander. “There is time for you to unlearn bad habits, and begin to concentrate your power.”
Daja did not like the sound of that. She knew that mimanders focused all their attention on mastery of one thing, such as wind or rock. They would make her choose one aspect of her magic and forget the rest.
They would make her give up working with tools.
Of all the Traders standing there, only Polyam met her eyes. She also fell into step with them as Daja and Frostpine walked up the road to the castle.
“They could have been more polite about it,” grumbled Daja’s teacher.
Polyam chuckled. “Come, come, Master Frostpine. Tsaw’ha have a dozen words that mean ‘thank you’—each with its drop of dislike. We don’t like to owe. Our gilav won’t be happy until the caravan’s debt is paid in full.”
“Owing me doesn’t seem to bother you,” Daja pointed out, knowing Polyam was right about thanks and bitterness.
“It does,” the Trader replied coolly. “But I know you better than does my mother. I know the prices you paid for what you are. That eases the sting for me—a little, anyway.”
Daja worked on her project for an entire month as the weather got colder and the leaves fell. In the end, all of the Winding Circle mages helped her and Frostpine in their forging. Plant and thread magics gave their device the movement and flexibility that iron was not expected to have. Niko guided the placement of interwoven spells, while Tris touched the design with heat, just a drop, to make it as warm as living flesh.
Once the ironwork was done, Daja brought out the large bowl that held all of the liquid brass that she had pulled off her hand in the weeks since the fire. As the others watched, she stretched out small dollops of the stuff as she might pull taffy and draped them over the iron. Once the brass was gone, she let Sandry wrap the finished work in blue silk as she cleaned out the portable forge and returned it to the castle farrier.
That night, after Lark had blown out the candles and left the girls to sleep, Sandry uncovered the spelled lump of crystal that was her night-light. She tossed it from hand to hand for a moment before she asked, “Daja? Have you decided?”
Tris sat up in her own bed, and put on her glasses. “You haven’t said a word, and Niko didn’t want us bothering you.”
Daja realized what they meant. “I didn’t know you were worried.”
“You should,” growled Tris. “You’ve been carrying that staff everywhere like it’s a favorite toy.”