“I suppose nothing like this ever happened to you,” Tris accused sourly. She and Daja were still trapped. Before she had left them, Polyam had found a tall stool for Tris to sit on. Daja could not sit—the metal had grown down as far as her thighs, making it impossible for her to bend.
“Actually, my power got away from me once. I was—” Frostpine cleared his throat. “I was attempting to put some gold ornaments back onto a tribal queen’s jeweled collar.”
“She gave him her gems, and he knew that her husband would miss them and suspect that she had given them to a lover.” Rosethorn leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, her delicately carved mouth curled in a half-smile. Sandry and Briar sat on the ground next to her.
“I didn’t know she was married,” said Frostpine defensively.
“Did you ask?” Rosethorn inquired. She was a stocky woman only an inch taller than Daja, with short-cropped chestnut hair and wicked brown eyes. In her green habit, which marked her dedication to the gods of the earth, she was hard to see in the shadowy forge.
“Not all of us are as perfect as you,” said Frostpine, putting his hands on the iron that held Daja and Tris captive. “Sometimes magic gets away from a mage, is the point I was trying to make.” He glared at Rosethorn, then concentrated on his task.
Daja smiled. Frostpine would make things right. He always did. She could feel the power that welled from him as his magic fed into the iron vine.
“There.” Polyam had come back to the smithy. This time she brought company, two other Traders: an older woman who wore a gold-trimmed maroon gauze veil on her hair, and a mimander, a Trader mage, robed head to toe in lemon-colored cloth, wearing a face-veil of the same eye-smarting shade. “It is as I told you,” Polyam said to them.
Daja felt her teacher’s power draw back as Frostpine glared at the newcomers. “I don’t mind if you watch, but you must be silent. We don’t need distractions.”
The older woman nodded as regally as any queen; the mimander bowed. All three Traders, including Polyam, leaned on their staffs as they watched.
After a moment, Daja felt Frostpine’s power return to the vine. He was putting forth more effort now. “You know, I expect liveliness from gold,” he murmured to her. “It’s such an agreeable metal, and it takes suggestions a bit too well. But iron? Iron shouldn’t be getting into this kind of mischief—aha!”
No one had to ask why he had exclaimed: the metal vines were shrinking, pulling away from the girls’ captive arms. Tris yanked free. The vines loosened their grip on Daja more reluctantly, but eventually they let her go. She slid out of their hold with a sigh of relief. The moment she was loose, she and Frostpine drew their magic from the iron.
“Now what do you do with it?” Rosethorn wanted to know. “It seems a shame to melt it down.”
The iron tendrils coiled, shrinking away. “I think you scared it,” Tris remarked.
Daja picked up the metal plant. “I don’t know if we could make anything normal with it even if we did melt it down.” She ran her fingers over the corded trunk. “It doesn’t exactly feel like iron now.”
Rosethorn put a hand on one of the branches. A thin iron twig sprouted between two of her fingers. “I think it’s going to keep growing. That’s how it feels to me.”
“You are certain that it will grow?” asked the mimander, his voice slightly muffled by his yellow veil. He walked farther into the smithy, bowed to Rosethorn and Frostpine, and held a yellow-gloved hand over the iron vine. “Yes—I can feel the power. This is like nothing I have known.”
“May we help you, honored mimander?” Frostpine inquired.
The older woman spoke quietly to Polyam, who announced, “Tenth Caravan Idaram will pay, in the coin of Emelan, a gold maja for this thing.”
Daja frowned at the Traders. A gold maja was half a year’s income for a poor family. That was startling enough. What was more startling yet was that she knew Trader custom: that sum had to be the lowest bid the newcomers could think she might accept.
“It must be cleansed of contact with a trangshi,” the mimander remarked to Polyam and the other Trader.
“It was a trangshi that made it,” snapped Rosethorn. Tris beamed at her.
“Even a rat has fur and meat,” Polyam replied, her eyes bright. “A gold maja and a gold astrel. We would offer more, but there is the cost of the herbs and oils for the cleansing to be considered.”
Three hundred silver crescents! Sandry told Daja through their magical tie. It’s a dowry, or new took, or even gold to work with. Maybe you ought to take it?
Think it over, Briar advised. You have something they want. Make ’em pay through the nose. That’s a fine revenge, after how Traders dealt with you.
“It’s not for sale,” Frostpine told Polyam and her companions. “We need to study it before any decision is reached.”
“A gold maja and two gold astrels,” the older woman said. “Not a copper more. The trangshi may have the night to consider it.” She walked away, head high. The mimander hesitated. He might have been looking at Daja, but it was hard for her to tell through the fine yellow veil on his face. Then he, too, followed the older woman. Polyam shifted position to let him goby.
“You needn’t think gilav Chandrisa will go up from that price,” she said to Frostpine. “Hers is the last word in any bargaining.”