Mistress Winora, the manager of the Merota Society, stood beside the door with her hands crossed at her waist; her face was expressionless.

Winora was fifty, the widow of a merchant from Erdin who'd been killed in the chaos that followed the Change. She'd kept the books and managed the Erdin end of the business while her husband traveled, so she-unlike Ilna-had the skills required to run the day to day operations of the Society. Carisa and Bovea were among the many other women who'd lost their spouses recently. There were even more orphans than there were widows, so it'd seemed perfectly obvious to Ilna to put the two together to the advantage of both, paying each pair of nurses a competence sufficient to care for a handful of children.

She'd done so in the name of Merota, who'd been an orphan also until Ilna and Chalcus took charge of her. Ilna's fingers knotted, forming a very complex pattern. It calmed her to knot and weave, but she had a specific purpose this time. She wasvery angry. Merota and Chalcus had died during the Change. If you believed in souls, then Ilna's soul had died with them-with her family. Ilna didn't believe in souls or gods or anything, really, except craftsmanship. And she believed in the death that would come to all things, though perhaps not as soon as she would like. "Look, I'm sorry," Heismat snarled. He glared at his knotted hands. He'd been a laborer before the Change and had come to Pandah to work in the building trade. "Isaid I was sorry, didn't I? I didn't mean to do it!" "Mistress," blubbered Carisa. Heismat was her boyfriend. "It was only because he was drinking, you know. He's a good man, agood man, really." "Mistress Winora, how is the kit?" Ilna asked. Her voice was thin and as cold as the wind from the Ice Capes.