The man breathed as Niko had taught the children, then strode to the front of the plate to seize the wire’s point with his tongs. This time he didn’t brace himself, he only pulled, backing up. The metal flowed through the plate slowly first, then faster, as if half liquid. Frostpine didn’t turn away when the end popped out; he lifted his hand. The free end of the wire leaped into it.
“Physically, it’s easier this way.” He gathered the new, thinner wire. “But it burns up my strength here”—he touched his chest—”and here.” He patted his head. “I’d hate to get a nasty surprise and have nothing to fight it with.” Examining the metal, he frowned. “This needs the fire again.” He crossed the room, entering a small cubicle. Heat rippled through the open door; inside was a small forge. The only light came from its fire.
He placed the gold coil on the coals with tongs. Another, thicker length of wire was already there. This he lifted out.
“See that red color? Your gold is just hot enough to be worked.” Carrying the wire out of the cubicle, he put it on an anvil and turned it several times, as if he turned sausages in a frying pan. “The anvil draws the heat out. Any questions?”
She blinked. “Umm—no, sir.”
“Then here.” He rubbed beeswax on the new wire, then fed one narrow end through a hole in one of the plates. “The flat metal pieces are properly called ‘drawplates,’ since this way of making wire is called ‘drawing.’” Taking Daja’s arm, he placed his tongs in her hand and folded her fingers around them. “These are draw-tongs—the flattened ends make it easier to grip the metal. Draw the wire.”
She stared at the tool. “How?”
“Take a deep breath—” She did it as he raised his hand before her face. “Clear your mind. Let your breath out. Now, grab that end with your tongs, shut your eyes, and call the metal to you. When it feels right—mind that, it must feel right, not look right—start pulling. Don’t stop. If you do, that makes a weak spot in the wire. Keep going till it’s all the way through.”
“I call it?”
Frostpine grinned, white teeth flashing. “Come, Trader girl. You know gold, surely? You’ve held it, seen it in different forms. Think of gold in your innermost heart, and call it to you. Don’t forget to pull on the wire as you call.”
Thunder boomed outside.
Nervous, she walked to the front of the plate and gripped the wire’s end in her pincers. Call metal to her? It was metal, not a living thing—
Once, when she was small, she had crept into a goldsmith’s shop. It was dark inside. Only the smith was visible, her body outlined in forge fire. With tongs she had lifted a bottle from the coals. Turning until she held the bottle over a mold, she had tilted it. Living fire poured out in a yellow-white stream that sparkled and glittered as it fell.
Daja, eyes closed, called the memory of that flow, her arms straining. The metal fought her at first. She called it again in her heart. Slowly—a little at a time—that remembered gold turned away from the mold in her mind’s eye and reached out to her.
Catching her foot, she opened her eyes. She stood a yard from the drawplate. Her tongs gripped a wire three times longer than the piece that she had started with.
With a gasp, she dropped tongs and wire to the ground. “I’m sorry—I muffed it! I didn’t take it through all the way. I weakened your gold,” she said. Even her arms and knees felt weak and loose, trembling after so much effort. Had it taken an effort? Thunder boomed, almost overhead. She sat on the floor, hard.
“Don’t worry—that was just an experiment. Drink this.” He put a stone cup filled with liquid under her nose. “It will put you to rights.”
It tasted like water with mint leaves crushed into it. She drank it all and found that she could get to her feet.
“You have a talent for this,” Frostpine told her. “And any fool can see you love metalwork. Would you like to learn smithcraft? Come here, say, in the afternoon, after the rest period? I’d like to have the teaching of you.”
“Can I?” she whispered. “No one will beat me, or lock me in my room, or make me do extra chores for being with lugsha? You’ll let me learn?”
“It’s more than just my letting you, Daja,” Frostpine said, tweaking one of her braids. “I waited for years for someone who loves it as I do to come along.”
Trembling, she stared up into his face. “If I hadn’t—” The words caught in her throat. She tried again. “If our ship hadn’t sunk, if I wasn’t trangshi now—”
“Daja—”
She shook her head. “I would have gone all my life thinking I was wrong. Thinking I was dirty to want to do lugsha things. Being a bad Trader. Being a bad Kisubo.”
The man shook his head. Outside, rain whipped the air. “Don’t blame your people. They live hard lives. Their beliefs help your people to stay together, to defend themselves against lords and merchant guilds.”
“I know that,” she admitted. “But how many Trader kids are like me, wanting to learn lugsha work?”
“‘Kids’?” he asked with a smile.
“Something a boy I live with says.”
“Well, ‘kid’“—he winked, drawing a smile from Daja—”after we get well into things like charcoal, coal, different hammers and different tongs, you may think the Traders have the right of it after all.” He put his hands on his hips and looked her over. “We start by finding you a proper apron. And you might consider wearing clothes you don’t mind soiling. You’re going to get very dirty at this.”