Read Online Daja's Book by Tamora Pierce - Free Book Online

that door closed, and then I want all four of you to come with me.”
    Tris released the branch of air. Briar called thewood of the door to the wood of the frame, until they came together and the latch caught. Without giving up his grip on Tris’s ear, Niko led the four out of the tower and back to their rooms. When they came in, Little Bear jumped up barking.
    Niko deposited Tris in a chair. “Sit,” he told the three remaining young people.
    There was a couch next to Tris that could hold all three of them. Settling on it, they meekly folded their hands on their laps. Niko scowled at Little Bear, who fled into one of the bedchambers.
    The man paced, hands in his pockets, heavy brows knit in the blackest frown they had ever seen on his face. His mouth was drawn down tight, the lines around it pulled deep.
    â€œThe fault is mine,” he said at last. “I never had students so young before. It simply did not occur to me that you would not understand the manners or the common sense that goes with magecraft.” He stopped to glare at the four.
    â€œI confess, had I not been so interested in the way your powers combine, I would have called you to book before this,” he continued. “Certainly I knew there were other occasions when you eavesdropped on conversations not meant for your ears.”
    Tris stared at her blue cotton-covered lap.
    â€œMagic is not a toy,” Niko continued. “It is not a convenience. It is a precious thing. It is not for use in getting around your elders. I don’t believe I realizeduntil we began this trip how often you children call on it when it would be every bit as easy to do things physically instead. You are so strong that you have never learned that you cannot,
cannot
throw magic about like water. That a day will come when you will need every dram of magic you possess, and you will have weakened it to eavesdrop, and play, and do chores that are otherwise boring.”
    He smoothed his hair back from his face. “As of this moment, none of you are to use magic without one of your teachers to watch you. I mean this. If I suspect you dealt in power without supervision, I will see it on you—you know that I can—and it will go the worse for you.”
    He examined them all again. None of them would meet his eyes. “This wasteful use of magic will stop before any of us is one day older. Now, go to bed. I am really quite disappointed in all of you.”

4
    T he castle’s farrier was glad to lend his portable forge to Daja the next day. The girl wouldn’t have minded working on horseshoes for him, but the farrier had an apprentice, and his smithy was a small one, with no room to spare. Instead Frostpine placed Daja in a little-used courtyard between the castle keep and the outermost wall. As Briar, Tris, and Sandry carried in baskets of charcoal taken from the farrier’s supplies, Frostpine gave Daja a fresh bundle of iron rods and left her to the work of making nails.
    Yesterday’s bundle of iron rods she set against the wall, next to her staff. The iron vine had put out a number of leaves overnight, while the rods thatformed its trunk grew thinner and thinner. Little Bear curled up next to it and settled his long frame for a nap. Tris’s starling, Shriek, after eating part of a wheat roll and a few insects for breakfast, perched on one of the vine’s branches and chattered to local starlings as they flew by.
    As he placed his basket of charcoal near the others, Briar sighed with relief. Looking the vine over, he said, “I think you have to plant it in metal-bearing earth, if it’s to grow. It has to get new metal from somewhere.”
    â€œAll I want is to keep it in good condition until I get every copper crescent out of Tenth Caravan Idaram that I can,” Daja replied. Drawing a heated rod from her fire, she slid it into the nail header. “After that it can wilt, for all of me.” Twisting