Cold Fire by Tamora Pierce Read Free Book Online Page B

servants left to worship, visit their own kin, and run personal errands. Frostpine was absent, chasing his counterfeiter. Daja tried skating on her own, now that she could fall as much as she liked without anyone to see her, but grew discouraged after her fifth landing on her back. Stripping off her skates, she went to her room and spent the rest of the day working on her Longnight gifts.
    At breakfast the next day, Sunsday, Matazi gave Daja the promised list of Kugiskan mages versed in carpentry or cookery magic. “I’ve also assigned you a sleigh and driver for all this,” she told Daja. “You’ve only been here for two months, and some of these places are out of the way. Do you know our footman Serg? He’ll be waiting outside-just send word to the housekeeper when you’re ready to go.”
    Daja thanked Matazi with a rueful inner sigh. It would be so much easier if she could skate. Or perhaps it wouldn’t, she thought as she looked the list over. She hadn’t the least idea of where most of these streets were.
    When she walked out of the house, Trader staff in hand, her medallion gleaming against her sheepskin coat, a young man in the yellow-trimmed brown livery of Bancanor House jumped down from the driver’s seat of the small sleigh in the front courtyard. “Viymese Daja, good morning!” he said. Serg was in his late teens, an efficient young man with a long, cheerful face and light brown hair that hung to his shoulders. Despite the flakes of snow that drifted slowly from the sky, he wore his sturdy, quilted wool coat open. It revealed a band-collared tunic shirt that fastened near the right shoulder, favored wear for eastern Namornese. This garment was a cheery red like his full trousers. He wore cowhide boots lined with fur, and carried leather gloves, also fur-lined, thrust into his belt. “Ravvi”-Namornese for “Mistress”-“Matazidah has asked me to take my orders from you.” He had the Kugisko accent that Daja liked so much, one that made each word sound like a particularly tasty piece of cheese. “Where do we go?” he asked.
    Daja consulted her list. “Nyree Street,” she told him as she climbed into the sleigh.
    Serg took the driver’s seat. He clucked to his horses, snapped the whip well over their heads, and guided them out the open main gate onto Blyth Street with the ease of long practice.
    Walking into the large, prosperous, busy woodworking establishment that belonged to Camoc Oakborn, wood-mage, Daja felt ridiculous, a child in adult clothes pretending to be a mage. How was she supposed to convince this man that she was any judge of who had magic and who did not? Her palm was sweaty where she gripped the ebony of her staff; her mouth was paper dry.
    Standing inside the door, she eyed her surroundings. This was no single-mage operation, or even the average carpenter’s workshop: this was a major business, employing dozens of men and women. They smoothed wood with planes, made and repaired barrels, wagons, sleds, sledges, and even small boats for the canals in summer. From the nearby stairwell Daja heard the sounds of hammers and saws: more carpentry was done on the upper stories.
    She was gathering her courage to ask one of the busy workers where she might find the master when someone called, “You! Mage!”
    She looked toward the source of the voice. A tall, raw-boned white man with curly hair turning from red to gray advanced on her. His bushy eyebrows formed caves in which pale-blue eyes fixed on her. He wore a full-sleeved shirt under his leather apron, and baggy trousers covered with wood dust and shavings.
    “Nobody’s ever come through this door so grained with magic as you,” he informed Daja in a rough voice. He stopped in front of her and leaned down to squint at the medallion on her coat front. “Well, that makes sense, at least. Forgive me, but-” He touched Daja’s medallion with a finger tipped in the silvery light that was magic in the working.
    Daja, also used to