“Magic is not a toy,” Niko continued. “It is not a convenience. It is a precious thing. It is not for use in getting around your elders. I don’t believe I realized until we began this trip how often you children call on it when it would be every bit as easy to do things physically instead. You are so strong that you have never learned that you cannot, cannot throw magic about like water. That a day will come when you will need every dram of magic you possess, and you will have weakened it to eavesdrop, and play, and do chores that are otherwise boring.”
He smoothed his hair back from his face. “As of this moment, none of you are to use magic without one of your teachers to watch you. I mean this. If I suspect you dealt in power without supervision, I will see it on you—you know that I can—and it will go the worse for you.”
He examined them all again. None of them would meet his eyes. “This wasteful use of magic will stop before any of us is one day older. Now, go to bed. I am really quite disappointed in all of you.”
4
The castle’s farrier was glad to lend his portable forge to Daja the next day. The girl wouldn’t have minded working on horseshoes for him, but the farrier had an apprentice, and his smithy was a small one, with no room to spare. Instead Frostpine placed Daja in a little-used courtyard between the castle keep and the outermost wall. As Briar, Tris, and Sandry carried in baskets of charcoal taken from the farrier’s supplies, Frostpine gave Daja a fresh bundle of iron rods and left her to the work of making nails.
Yesterday’s bundle of iron rods she set against the wall, next to her staff. The iron vine had put out a number of leaves overnight, while the rods that formed its trunk grew thinner and thinner. Little Bear curled up next to it and settled his long frame for a nap. Tris’s starling, Shriek, after eating part of a wheat roll and a few insects for breakfast, perched on one of the vine’s branches and chattered to local starlings as they flew by.
As he placed his basket of charcoal near the others, Briar sighed with relief. Looking the vine over, he said, “I think you have to plant it in metal-bearing earth, if it’s to grow. It has to get new metal from somewhere.”
“All I want is to keep it in good condition until I get every copper crescent out of Tenth Caravan Idaram that I can,” Daja replied. Drawing a heated rod from her fire, she slid it into the nail header. “After that it can wilt, for all of me.” Twisting fiercely, she broke off the rod.
“That’s not nice, is it?” Briar asked the vine, running his hands over the trunk. “She doesn’t appreciate what a beauty you are, is all. She’s used to iron being dead.”
“Iron isn’t dead!” protested Daja. A stroke of the hammer put a head on the nail; another tap sent the finished piece into her water bucket. “It’s just not the same as plants!”
They all turned at the sound of clumsy steps. It was the Trader Polyam coming through the arch that opened onto the main courtyard. Everyone’s jaw dropped. The part in her hair, down the center of her scalp, was traced in bright yellow paint of some kind: it ended in a dripping mark on her forehead. Her one good eye was lined in the same color; so too were her mouth, nostrils, and both ears, scarred and unscarred alike. Her neck, wrists, and ankles all sported chains decorated with small wooden charms. Each charm was painted with an odd design in bright yellow. Yellow thread was wrapped around the top of her staff; more yellow thread bound one legging to her wooden limb. Even her toenails and fingernails had been tinted yellow. The color almost seemed to glow, even on the bumps and dents of her scarred face and in the shadow of her ruined eye.
“What happened to you?” asked Briar.
“Trader Koma protect me,” whispered Daja, forgetting that she had just wrapped her fingers around a rod that was still heating in the fire. “You’re qunsuanen.” She had heard of the qunsua ceremony, its use and intent. Never before had she seen it done—though she knew it when she laid eyes on the results.
“What do you call that shade of yellow?” Sandry inquired. “It’s so vivid.”
Polyam stared at her for a moment, as if she didn’t believe what the girl had asked, then made a face. “I call it yellow.” She looked straight at Daja. “Are you happy?” she demanded. “I can now talk to you. I can deal with you. I can even bargain with you. And I will never, ever, acquire enough zokin to erase this from the books of the caravan.”
“I don’t get it,” said Briar. “What’s koo-soo—what’s zokin? And the other thing?”
Polyam looked away. Obviously she wasn’t about to explain.
“I never heard of the koon-soo thing,” remarked Sandry “but zokin is the credit listed against your name in the ledgers of your people. Pirisi—my old nurse—was a Trader,” she explained to Polyam. “Pirisi said there are two kinds of zokin, the kind that’s your actual savings in coin, your part of the ship’s—”
“Or caravan’s,” Daja added.
Sandry grinned at her. “Or caravan’s profits. The other kind of zokin is, well, honor, or personal standing. Is that the kind you mean?”
Polyam stared at her. “It’s not right, a kaq knowing so much of our ways.”
“She’s not a kaq,” Daja said flatly, staring at the woman. “She is my saati.” The word meant a non-Trader friend who was as dear as family. “So are Briar and Tris—and our teachers.”