steel tool with a razor-sharp tip.
"You understand, this will take adjustments," she told Zhegorz softly. "Depending on what you want them to do, just speak the name for each sign. Then the pieces should let that much more sound into your ears." She knelt beside Zhegorz and gently fit one of the living metal pieces into his left ear. Watching as it shaped itself to fill the opening precisely, Daja asked, "How is that? Comfortable?"
"It's warm," whispered Zhegorz, looking up at her.
"I'm not going to put cold metal in your ears," Daja said, a little miffed that he would suspect that of her. Once she checked the fit of the first piece, she gently turned Zhegorz's head and inserted the second. "There," she whispered, deliberately speaking more quietly to test the ability of the pieces to pick up everyday sound. She recited the first lines of her favourite story. "In the long ago, Trader Koma and his bride, Bookkeeper Oti, saw that they had no savings in their accounts books, no warm memories laid up for the cold times."
"That's a Trader tale," Zhegorz said. "It's about how the Trader and the Bookkeeper created the Tsaw'ha and wrote their names in the great books."
Daja sat back on her heels. "On the way to Dancruan you can tell me how you learned Trader stories," she told him with a smile. "Not now. I would like to get some sleep tonight." She reached over to her worktable and carefully picked up her second creation. Tris had sacrificed a pair of spectacles for this piece. Daja had replaced the lenses with circles of living metal hammered as thin as tissue. Once they were fixed over the wire frames, she used her sharp-pointed tool to write in signs to fix the metal in place and cause it to work as she wished it to.
Gingerly she settled the bridge on Zhegorz's bony nose and hooked the earpieces in place. I really don't know about this, she thought, nibbling her lower lip. I've made plenty of odd things, that's certain, but eyeglass lenses that let someone see normally and not magically? Only Tris would even come up with the idea.
"Can you see me?" she asked.
Zhegorz nodded.
"He'd have to be wrapped in steel not to see you, Daja," said a grumpy and drowsy Tris from the bed. "You're a big girl and you're right in front of him. Chime, will you fly around? Zhegorz, can you see Chime?"
Daja watched Zhegorz follow the glass dragon's flight as Chime dove and soared around the wood carvings of the ceiling. She began to grin, elated. "I begin to think I can cure dry rot with this stuff," she said, proudly stroking the living metal on the back of her hand.
"Rosethorn would say pride will trip you on the stairs," Briar said with a yawn. "Come on, Zhegorz. We'll give those things a real trial in the morning."
Daja got to her feet, wincing as her back complained after hours bent over her work. She was stretching when Zhegorz patted her shoulder. "I'll tell you what they do in the morning. I'm sorry I ever said no one could see through metal spectacles." He scuttled out of the room as Daja shook her head over him.
Tris caught her by surprise, swooping in to press a rare kiss on Daja's cheek. "I know they'll work," she said. "Thank you, for him."
"He's my crazy man, too," Daja said as Tris hurried from the room.
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
The 6th - 8th days of Rose Moon, 1043 K.F.
Clehamat Landreg to
Dancruan, Namorn
They travelled the next day with Ambros, his family and personal servants, their own servants, and ten men-at-arms for company, ploughing or no. Even in the short time they had stayed at Landreg, Sandry noticed plenty of changes. The fields now flourished with assorted grain crops, made heartier and more immune to blight by Briar. He had done the same work in the orchards. Workers labored on the restoration of the bridge on the road to Dancruan. "By the time we return, it will be fixed," Ambros said as Sandry waved to yet another knot of farmers who bowed to her from the fields.
It's good to see all this progress being made, Sandry thought as they passed two wagonloads of mortar and slates destined for the repairs at Pofkim. Back at the castle, jewels that had belonged to her mother alone and were not part of the Landreg estate now lay in a locked box in Ambros's