“I do not know by what secrets and rituals blacksmiths protect themselves from the backlash of fire, but I do know there is a way for cold mages to protect fire mages. If they trust each other.”

Several of the old men laughed, as if this were the greatest joke they had heard in an age.

The blacksmith’s frown made me think he might melt into white-hot slag just from anger. “Ye’s a tale-teller, lad, is that it? A wanderer trying to taste a piece of bread with what words ye have to spend. The two lasses’ pretty looks are a better lure than yer blasphemous promises.”

The old men gestured for the villagers to move away as from a fight.

Vai did not budge. “You know better than to speak insultingly of another man’s wife to his face, much less to hers, so I will let that pass for this once. This is what I know: Cold magic feeds me, but the backlash of fire magic devours itself. Yet I can teach you how to pour the backlash of fire through the threads of my magic and thus harmlessly into the bush—the spirit world—where it cannot harm you. This is the truth. I swear it on my mother’s honor.”

By no other vow could he have so forcibly impressed them. The blacksmith looked startled, but the outright hostility drained from his face.

“I will talk to ye in the forecourt of the temple of Three-Headed Lugus,” he said at length, “if ye are willing to enter the god’s sanctuary.”

“I am a carpenter’s son. My father and uncle made offerings to thrice-skilled Lugus, whom they called Shining Komo with three hands and three birds.”

The man indicated me. “This one? She is truly yer wife?”

“She is. And the other is her cousin.”

“My apologies,” he said as politely as anyone could please. He beckoned Vai over and spoke in a whisper, but of course I could hear them perfectly well. “To enter the forecourt of the god, ye must abjure the touch of woman.”

“For how long?” Vai asked with perfect seriousness, as if the request were not at all unreasonable.

I knew that hunters held various proscriptions, as well as hanging amulets about their bodies before they entered the bush to hunt, so I felt it prudent not to listen to their secret business. Instead, Bee and I introduced ourselves to the women.

In a village like this, still fixed in the traditional ways, women and men kept most aspects of their lives separate. The women took Bee and me to a little temple dedicated to Mother Faro, the name they gave the deity of the river, where we poured libations over the stone altar. Afterward we settled into a common room lined with pots made by the most prestigious woman in the village, a potter who had married the blacksmith. The potter was black in complexion, a woman of renown married in from another prosperous village. Food and drink she offered in plenty, although no beef, as that was reserved for the men at this time of year. Women and children wandered in and out to observe us. I brought out my sewing kit, and they exclaimed over my steel needles, commonplace in Expedition but precious here. I sewed while Bee talked.