“Well,” Nia said, determinedly cheerful. “Let’s try again.”

The lesson went forward. Daja caught the rhythm and managed two circuits of the basin before they decided to stop. Back into the house they went, shedding their winter gear and skates in the long, enclosed area called the slush room. Afterward they followed the halls that made the outbuildings part of the house to reach the kitchen.

Daja accepted a mug of hot cider from one of the maids. She sat near one of the small hearths, where her jeweler’s tools and a task that she could handle awaited her. No servant would ask a great mage like Frostpine to mend their bits of jewelry. Daja was fair game; they thought she was a student, willing and skilled. The whispers that she too might be a great mage had not come as far north as Namorn.

Daja enjoyed the work. She liked to sit here doing small repairs, breathing the scents of spices and cooking meat, and listening to servants and vendors chatter in Namornese. Before she had mastered the strange tongue, her travels with Frostpine in the empire of Namorn had been lonely. It was wonderful to know what people actually said.

She touched the necklace the cook, Anyussa, had given her. Daja’s left hand bore a kind of brass half-mitt that covered the palm and the back; strips passed between her fingers to connect them. As flexible as her body, the brass shone bright against her dark skin. The magic in the living metal told Daja that the necklace was gilt on silver-expensive for a servant, even one so well paid as Matazi Bancanor’s head cook, but Matazi herself would turn up her nose at it.

Daja laid the gilt metal rope straight on the table. She didn’t touch her pliers. Gilt was tricky stuff on which to apply any force: badly worked, it would flake off to expose the metal underneath.

She needed to warm it a bit. Turning, Daja reached toward the hearth and called a seed of fire to her. It swerved around the two cooks who worked there: Anyussa was watching Nia’s identical twin Jorality, or Jory, stir a green sauce. Jory saw the fire seed go by and grinned at Daja, then shifted nervously from foot to foot as Anyussa inspected her work.

“Now look-you rushed. It’s gone lumpy,” the woman said, lifting a few green clumps in a spoon. “That’s the ruin of any sauce. If you don’t stir enough, or let your attention wander, or add flour too fast, it lumps, and it’s ruined.” Anyussa turned to chide a footman who had dropped a basket of kindling.

Daja was about to tell the glum Jory it was just a green sauce for fish, not a disaster, when a silver tendril of magic leaped from Jory into the sauce-pot. The girl stirred it in with a trembling hand. Daja stared. She and Frostpine had lived here for two months. No one had mentioned that any of the Bancanor children, the twins or their younger brother and sister, had power.

Anyussa returned to Jory. Daja watched the cook. Had the woman seen Jory’s small magic?

Anyussa dipped her spoon again. “I tell young girls, you cannot rush-” She fell silent as she raised her spoon and turned it to spill the sauce back into the pot. A long, smooth, green ribbon flowed neatly down, without a lump in sight. “But I was sure… “

As Daja repaired the necklace and mended cracks in the gilt, Anyussa drew out smooth spoonful after smooth spoonful. She tasted the sauce and poured it into a dish: no lumps. When a baker’s apprentice came to argue with Anyussa over a bill, Daja slid over the bench to sit close to Jory. The girl regarded the bowl with a puzzled frown.

“You know,” Daja said quietly, “if you can find a way to fix that spell to a powder or liquid, you could sell it. Cooks everywhere will sing your praises.”

Jory blinked at her. She had Nia’s large brown eyes and slender nose, set in a face the color of brown honey, a shade lighter than her southern mother’s. She was lively, smile-mouthed, and a handful-her twin, Nia, was the quiet one. Her chief beauty (and Nia’s) was the masses of gold-brown crinkled hair that fell to her waist. “What spell?” she asked Daja.

Daja smiled. “What spell? You unlumped your sauce. I can see magic-it’s no good telling me you didn’t spell that pot.” She inspected Jory’s face, and frowned. The twins weren’t hard to read. “You didn’t know?”

“I don’t have magic,” Jory insisted. “Papa and Mama had magic-sniffers at me and Nia when we were two, and again when we were five. Not a whiff.” She grinned at Daja. “Maybe it was a spark. Things glitter in here all the time.”

Daja got to her feet and draped her coat over her arm. Anyone who saw magic would glimpse it all around this kitchen. There were runes to keep out rats and mice, spells in the hearthstones to keep a few embers alive until someone rebuilt the fires, and a spice cupboard magically built to keep its expensive, imported contents fresh.

“You would know,” Daja said. “If you do figure out what you did, you should write it down.”

“Oh, Anyussa just scraped from the bottom or something,” Jory said airily. “She wants everything perfect-“

“Fire!” someone yelled outside. “Fire in the alley! Fire brigade, turn out!” Jory fled, Daja assumed to warn her mother and the housekeeper. The kitchen help streamed outside.

Daja put her coat down and followed them, wondering what “fire brigade” meant. She was surprised that Anyussa had allowed everyone to run off to gawk-the woman was fair, but strict. When she reached the courtyard Daja discovered her mistake in thinking the servants had come to watch. A line of kitchen helpers stretched between the well and the alley off the rear courtyard; they passed buckets of water out the rear gate. Another line of people led from the large pile of sand kept for use on icy paths. They passed buckets of sand the same way.