“You’re as old as him, and you aren’t scared of us,” Briar pointed out.

Niko glared at him. “Thank you oh so much,” he retorted waspishly.

“It’s not like I mean anything by it,” protested Briar. “Nothing bad, anyway.”

Lurching to his feet, Yarrun pushed Lark out of his way and stomped over to Niko. “I’m beginning to think those tales I heard of the last few months at Summersea are true!”“ he cried. “If these four young people are running wild, I’m not in the least surprised to hear they caused an earthquake!”

“That’s not true!” cried San dry, clenching her hands into fists.

Yarrun scowled at her. “I doubt that you caused a true earthquake—not four children,” he said with awful emphasis. “Credulous people have plainly blown the entire story out of proportion as it traveled north. But certainly you appear to be running amok—”

Niko swept past Yarrun, one lean arm snaking around the other man’s shoulders. “I had no idea that the tales that reached Gold Ridge were so dramatic,” he said, talking calmly as he forced Yarrun to keep up with him. “Let’s find someplace quiet, and I’ll give you the facts of the matter.”

Lark was cross for one of the few times that her charges could remember. “Ignore him,” she told them firmly, once Niko had led him away. “He thinks the whole world should be ordered as he expects it. Thank heavens Niko got away from the university before they made him into someone like that.”

Everyone got back to work without much talk—Yarrun had unsettled them all. Finding that her grid worked as well as a fire to heat her rods, Daja continued to use it: for one thing, it didn’t add more smoke to the haze-filled air. Briar finished straining aloe from oil and began to heat the oil and wax to blend them. Tris worked through the basket of aloe leaves, cutting out the moist centers. Sandry finished winding her thread onto the stakes. She and Lark had just transferred the threads to the various long sticks that would serve her as a portable loom when the castle servants brought their midday meal.

5

The midday they got was very different from the sumptuous meal of the night before: hard cheese, cold sausages, bread, and buttermilk. “There’s no good complaining to me,” the manservant who brought it announced, though no one had said a word. “It’s the same fare we all have, though her ladyship would dine better, if she joined my lady and the other gentry in the lesser dining hall.”

Sandry shook her head and smiled. “I’ll eat with my friends, thank you. Tell her ladyship you couldn’t find me, if she asks.”

A hint of a smile twitched the man’s lips. He bowed to Sandry and left them all to their meal.

“I hate buttermilk,” complained Tris once they were alone. “And the water here tastes awful.”

“The bread is stale,” added Daja.

“Drought fare,” Lark said. “They need to save all they can for the winter. Things will be worse come spring, if they don’t get help from outside.”

“So fix the drought,” Briar said, nudging Tris. “If you can’t, who can?”

She made a face at him. “For something that big—something to cover this whole valley? I have to have something to work with, Master Know-It-All. I need wet in the ground, and there isn’t any.” The girl shivered. “I feel all thin and scraped, it’s so dry.”

“We passed a lake on our way here,” Daja pointed out.

“Did you see how low it was? The lake hasn’t enough water to make a difference, and I’d kill whatever’s still alive in there. No, thank you!” said Tris forcefully.

“Uncle will help, won’t he?” Sandry wanted to know. “He can send grain north, and meat—”

“He’ll do what he can,” said Lark. “That is why he made this trip. The problem is that Gold Ridge isn’t the only valley in trouble. The duke’s treasury has limits. His purse must stretch to cover all of north Emelan. And the meat and grain merchants can’t afford to make loans—they need coin themselves, if they’re to buy trade goods come spring.”

“Can these northerners even repay a loan?” asked Tris, who took an interest in such things.

“That’s going to be a problem,” Lark admitted. “Last year, before the drought got so bad, they pledged the saffron crop and the output of the copper mines. This year the crop has failed.”

“The mines are failing too,” Daja said gloomily. “I heard some of the men talking about it.”

“This is too depressing,” Briar said firmly as he finished his meal. “At least we’ll be well out of it, back at Winding Circle. I heard the duke tell Lady Inoulia he wants to be home before the snows fall.”

“There has to be something we can do.” Sandry looked at the plate on her lap. She’d barely nibbled its contents. Briar leaned over and helped himself to her sausage.

“We’re mages,” Lark said gently. “We do what we can, but some problems are too big to fix.”

“Then I wish I weren’t a mage,” Sandry replied, her voice low and stubborn. “What good is magic, if you can’t use it to help people?”

There was little any of them could say to that. Briar and Tris exchanged looks. They weren’t sure they wanted to help people for nothing, but there was no way they would admit as much to Sandry.