Daja Kisubo
Daja Kisubo is a character in the Circle of Magic and The Circle Opens quartets and the standalone novel The Will of the Empress by Tamora Pierce. She has ambient magic with metal and fire.
Daja is a black Trader, described as being tall, broad-shouldered and muscular. She wears her hair in a varying number of braids.
Background
Daja is a Trader, a group of people who travel by caravan or ship and buy and sell things; she was fascinated with blacksmiths. She was orphaned at ten due to the sinking of the Third Ship Kisubo, its only survivor. Because of the bad luck associated with a lone survivor, Daja was made trangshi, an outcast from all Traders. In Daja's Book, the third book in the Circle of Magic quartet, she is reinstated as a Trader in gratitude for rescuing a Trader caravan from a forest fire.
Her family includes an unnamed father and mother as well as an older brother Uneny, all of whom were on the Third Ship Kisubo. In Tris's Book there is mention of a Fifth Ship Kisubo, its crew including her Uncle Tiwolu and Aunt Zayda (deceased). After her arrival at the Winding Circle temple community, orphaned Daja is informally adopted into a group of mage misfits with Dedicates Lark and Rosethorn as the authority figures and Briar, Tris, and Sandry as her brother and sisters.
In The Will of the Empress, Daja reunites with her three foster-siblings to protect Sandry from the powerful Empress Berenene of Namorn. She comes out as a nisamohi (lesbian) and falls in love with the Empress's Mistress of Wardrobe, Rizuka fa Dalach in the primary romantic subplot in the book. While this is the first clearly stated homosexual romance in the Emelan canon, the novel Battle Magic confirms that the close relationship between Dedicates Lark and Rosethorn is in fact a homosexual relationship.
Magic
Daja is an ambient smith mage. This means she draws on the power of the metal or the fire instead of from inside of herself. After Daja is rescued from the ocean, Niklaren Goldeye (known familiarly as "Niko" to his friends), a powerful mage, takes her to Winding Circle Temple, where she later discovers her gift in metalworking. Daja's teacher while she is at Winding Circle, and later when she is a fully accredited mage, is Dedicate Frostpine, another smith-mage. Her mage medallion (which proves her completion of training) shows a picture of a hammer over flames as a symbol of her magic, and a spiral representing Winding Circle on the reverse, to show where she studied.
Fire
Daja can weave fire, call it to her and hold it in her bare hands. If she has to walk into a burning building, she has clothes, made by her friend Sandry, that are fire resistant. She can also breathe smoke without it killing her but too much can hurt her throat.
Metals
Daja can shape metal expertly both with and without magic; she is both a blacksmith and a whitesmith. She can identify metal by touch and smell and sense metals at a distance with concentration. By accident in Daja's Book, she created a metal tree out of iron that was supposed to be used for nails. It absorbed other metals, like copper and iron, to grow.
Living metal
As a result of her magic and a forest fire in Daja's Book, the brass from the cap of her signature staff melted on her left hand, creating a "living metal" glove. This living metal grows on her hand like a second skin, and must be removed every so often or it would grow to cover her body; Daja can then use it for her trade. Living metal is something entirely unique to Daja and so a lot of her research and time is devoted to the properties of living metal and what she can do/make with it. Most of the living metal used is harvested off her hand, but she once created a living metal rose plant from iron and copper while her magic was still mixed with Briar, Sandry, and Tris. The plant absorbed anything metallic in order to grow. When it absorbed iron, the trunk and branches would grow, while copper made leaves and flower buds.
In Daja's Book she creates a leg for a Trader who lost her natural leg with an iron frame covered with living metal. In Cold Fire, she created gloves covered with living metal for use in fire fighting, and drew up plans for a full suit which was never created. She also created a mirror of living metal in which it had shown the Bancanor daughters magic type. In The Will of the Empress, she made spectacles and ear buds for a mage to dampen the visions he saw on the wind.
She can also make more living metal by adding some of her blood to regular metal. Her living metal creations are how she makes the majority of her income.
Students
In Cold Fire, Daja discovers ambient magic in twins Niamara Bancanor (Nia) and Jorality Bancanor (Jory): carpentry in Nia, and cooking in Jory. Daja finds experienced mages in each field to teach the two girls their magic, though, so she only has to teach and hold meditation sessions. She teaches Nia meditation the regular way (sitting and relaxing), because she's calmer, but teaches Jory by fighting with staves due to her restlessness.
Other skills
Daja is highly proficient in fighting with the Trader staff, often using it to defend herself and others. She speaks three languages—Trader, Common, and Namornese.