Tris slumped on the table, her chin on her hands, staring into space as Daja and Sandry worked. "Easy for him to say," she commented.

"I've seen him call a rope of forge-fire over to re-heat small pieces of metal," Daja remarked. "It's much the same, only he already has to have a fire burning. You can get winds to come up out of nowhere."

Being firm with winds and such, Tris thought, walking over to the stone jars where things like flour and spices were kept. What's the point?

It's worth a try, argued another part of herself. Anything is better than thinking about Aymery, and that awful soggy patch on his chest.

Using a tiny spoon, she carried flour back to the table, and dumped it in a heap in front of her chair. "Don't watch," she told the other girls. "It'll probably go wrong." Daja and Sandry nodded, and worked on their tasks.

Sitting, Tris propped her chin on her hands, looking at the flour. Taking a deep breath, she searched the air for a breeze - and found one, jumping in and out of the cottage at the back door. She snatched a pinch of it, and pulled it over to the table. Feeling it wriggle eel-like in her magical grip, she squeezed until it went still, then placed it over the flour.

Reaching out with one finger, she stirred her captured breeze. It began to spin.

Keep going, Tris ordered it, and gave her finger another twirl.

The breeze reached into the flour, drawing it up as it spun. Now it could be seen, a thin cone of white that whirled like a top, its point set firmly in a shrinking mound of flour. At last Tris flicked all of her fingers at it, pushing it across her end of the table, away from Daja and Sandry, until it reached the edge. With a twitch of the hand, Tris called it back. It spun in front of her briefly, then collapsed, leaving a spray of powder as its remains.

"Maybe a bigger wind holds the shape longer?" Tris asked, thinking aloud. Reaching out, she found a larger breeze, and called it. She worked up a sweat, making flour whirlwinds, but she also kept them on the table, away from her friends. That was a start, at least. She finally stopped fooling with the air when her nestling informed her - informed everyone - that he was ready for another feeding.

An hour after midday Tris checked the fog: it was almost gone, shredded by the winds from the cove. Her fingers had re-discovered Aymery's earring in her pocket, and were rolling it around and around in her hand. Magic ought to be simple, she thought. You create an illusion, and it ought to last until you uncreate it. You call up fog, and it should stay where you want it until you don't need it any more.

But anyone can play with magic, can't they? If they can't undo the fog, they can turn up something to blow it away. They'll use battlefire to kill the wall of thorns, once they can see to launch it again, and they'll use boom-stones to destroy the spell-net, taking the protections off the rest of Winding Circle. And then they'll come in.

"Start killing," the ugly pirate had said. That was what awaited them - that or slavery.

"I wish I could do it like you," Daja told Sandry in disgust as Tris returned. The Trader put her pliers down. "It would be so easy." Taking lengths of wire, she laid them on the table in straight lines and began to weave a fresh strand through them, under one wire and over the next, as Sandry giggled. She did four rows that way, until she had a neat checkerboard of copper, silver and gold strands on the table before her.

"Wait," Tris said as Daja was about to sweep the design away. "Wait a moment." Frowning, she sat back, and held her hand up. Thinking about Aymery had upset her again. The lightning had come back - she could see it flicker as her hair fluffed up. Now a spark shimmered between her thumb and forefinger, growing larger under her stare. It drifted left. The moment it touched her forefinger, it jumped to her thumb, leaving a bright trail behind it. The trail flickered, rippled, and stayed. A miniature lightning bolt now played between Tris's fingers.

She walked around the table to stand in front of Daja's work, not seeing that Daja moved away from her. Bending down, Tris held the tiny bolt over the point where a wire passed under another.

"Strike," murmured Tris, drawing on her magic. She pointed, just as she had with the small whirlwinds. The lightning was more difficult to handle; it kept trying to jump free of her control.

"Strike," she ordered, forcing her power on to the small strip.

The bolt flared, and lashed so fast that none of them could trace its path. It struck the table, leaving a deep scorch mark.

Tris bit her lower lip, and called up a new flake of lightning. This one was quicker to grow from its seed-spark. "Strike," she ordered, focusing her mind on the join of two wires.

It struck. A nearby piece of mirror cracked and blackened.

"Tris..." Daja said.

Sandry put her hand on Daja's arm, hushing her. Tris called a third bit of lightning out of the sparks that rippled over her hair. "Strike." She bore down even harder with her mind, her will, and her magic.

The strip reached across the space between her hand and the crossed wires. For a breath it hovered as if it were unsure. Then it leaped, arrowing into the space where the wires touched. There was a crackle, and a smell of hot copper. Tris moved back with a sigh as Daja bent in to look.

"Oti, log this," Daja whispered to the Trader goddess. The pair of wires were fused as neatly as if she had pressed hot iron against them. Sandry clapped.

All of her sparks had died in her glee over her success, but Tris had an idea. In making them big enough to act like real lightning bolts, she had got a better sense of her power and theirs. Tasting lightning, she knew it to the marrow of her bones, and could summon more. She did so three times, melting Daja's wires together in three more places, so they formed without twisting.