Page 14 of Sandry's Book (Circle of Magic 1)

The pup whimpered, and thrust his nose into the crook of Sandry’s arm. With a sigh, the girl sat down. “But only for you,” she murmured to him. Digging a handkerchief from her pocket, she tried to clean his bleeding cuts.

“Maybe we need a truthsayer,” Rosethorn suggested. “Question the boys and our charges, to get the whole story.”

“I’m sure Master Niko would act as truthsayer.” Two men rode out of a lane between stalls, followed by soldiers in the brown leather jerkins, blue shirts, and breeches of the Provost’s Guard. “That is part of your skills, isn’t it, Niko?” Duke Vedris asked his companion. The duke was nearly as plainly dressed as his soldiers, in a plain, wine-red shirt, leather breeches, and a leather jerkin studded with metal rings. A heavy gold ring gleamed in one of his ears.

All around them, adults and children bowed deep, saying, “Your grace.”

Briar looked at Daja, then Sandry. “Who’s the Bag?”

“Duke Vedris,” Sandry replied, as Daja glanced at her, startled. “The ruler of Emelan.”

“I often work as a truthsayer, your grace,” Niko told the duke. “If it will simplify things, I can do so here.” He rode over until he could lean down and press a hand briefly to Tris’s cheek. She grabbed his fingers and hung on.

“Your grace,” cried Green Tunic’s mother, “my boy was attacked with magic! Look at him!”

“Look at our sons,” someone else shouted. “They too were attacked!”

“One of them called up a waterspout,” said a wealthy-looking man in the leggings and long coat-tunic of the Traders. “What if it had turned on ships? It nearly struck the market. You can see where it dug cobbles from the street.”

Sandry passed the dog to Briar and stood with hands folded neatly in front of her. “Your grace, may I have leave to speak?” Her voice, polite and clear, rang through the air. If no one could have seen her torn and muddied clothes, they might have thought she was a queen in her throne room. “It is my right.”

The duke leaned on his saddle horn. “As one accused, you may speak, Lady Sandrilene fa Toren.” His voice was soft, but clear. “Proceed.”

“A noble?” asked someone, clearly surprised.

“You never said she was a lady,” Green Tunic’s mother accused.

“She bit me, Ma! And she’s dressed like normal folk!”

Sandry waited until everyone was quiet. “Your grace, my friends and I were visiting the market when I heard an animal cry.” Her small face was pale and set; she kept her chin up. “Six boys were hurting it, in an alley back there.” She pointed. “If you assign blame for the fight, give it to me, please. I attacked them. My friends came to help me—just as the boys’ friends came to help them. And I still think they were very, very wrong to harm a helpless animal.”

“Did you inflict all these injuries, Lady Sandrilene?” Her uncle’s voice was stern, but the corner of his mouth quivered.

Daja rose, leaning on her staff. “Some of that was me, your grace.”

The Trader who had spoken glanced at her. “Trangshi,” he muttered. Sandry glared at him. He met her furious eyes once, then looked away.

Ashamed, Daja bit the inside of her cheek, then went on. “San—Lady Sandry is saati—a true friend. They knocked her down, and I went after them.”

“Don’t be greedy,” said Briar, getting to his feet. He passed the dog to Sandry. “Some of these poor sniffers’ ouches are mine, your worship, sir.”

“But this is a quarrel of children,” objected the duke, looking with confusion at the townspeople.

“There was magic!” cried the Trader. “A waterspout attacked the boys!”

“It was an accident!” Tris lurched to her feet. “I meant to dump water on them, and only water!” She broke off, crimson, then swallowed, and went on. “I lifted it out of the sea, and—somebody spun me around.” She wiped her sweaty face on a sleeve. “When I looked again, the water was spinning. I couldn’t—it got away from me!”

The duke straightened, his eyes now cold. The chatter going on under the main discussion stopped. Everyone watched Vedris IV.

“Two cases are before me,” he said in that clear, quiet voice. “In the matter of injuries done to these youths, the healer’s bills shall come to me, to be paid by funds held in trust for these young people. But—those bills must be for legitimate wounds, and they must be sworn to before a truthsayer.”

“That’ll stop the fakers,” Briar muttered in Daja’s ear. She nodded.

The duke folded his hands on his saddle horn. “There is also the matter of cruelty to an animal.” Daja and Briar saw people’s eyes widen. “The law is plain. Here in Emelan, where the Living Circle is honored”—he nodded to Lark and Rosethorn, who bowed—”we no more harm animals for sport than we do human beings. The fine, for those who have forgotten, is twenty silver astrels.

“Those who wish repayment for the healer’s fees will tell the truthsayers if they are also liable for damage to the animal. If they are, the fine for that must be paid first. All parties will pay the truthsayer’s fee.”

For a moment no one made a sound. Twenty silver astrels was three months’ income for a poor man, a month’s income for a craftsman. Truthsayers were even more expensive than the fine.

The woman who had been eager to proclaim Green Tunic’s innocence was the first to reply. “We need no truthsayer or healer,” she told the duke, bobbing a curtsey. She gripped her son by one ear and dragged him away. Other youths and their families thought the better of involving truthsayers and left as well.

To those who remained—some merchants, a handful of Traders, and the group from Winding Circle—the duke said, “Penalties for the unlicensed use of magic are high. This must also be addressed.” Heads nodded everywhere.

“Your grace, if I may,” Niko said. “Trisana did not know she is a mage. The law does make allowance for the—accidents—caused by young mages, without proper teaching.”

“Poppycock!” yelled a baker in a floury apron. “How could she not know? This was a ship-killer, not milk curdling in the churn!”

“If she’s ignorant of it, why is she with Lark and Rosethorn?” a woman snapped. “Everyone knows the mageborn are placed in their care!”

Briar, Sandry, and Daja looked at each other, startled.

“So that’s why nobody nicked the cart and horse,” Briar muttered.

“My kinfolk told me I was crazy!” Tris cried, her voice cracking. “The tester said I had no magic, and they got rid of me!”

Lark climbed into the back of the wagon and drew Tris close. “She’s exhausted,” Lark told the duke. “She needs food, and she needs to go to bed. If you mean to punish her, may we wait until she knows what’s happening?”

People left, shaking their heads. A sick girl wasn’t nearly as worrisome as a mage who deliberately used her magic for harm.

“Are you satisfied?” the duke asked the three who stayed: the baker, a man with a goldsmith’s badge on his hat, and the Trader who had called Daja trangshi.

“Until we hear of another such incident,” said the goldsmith. “She’s a danger to everyone as she is.”

“And if I confine her to Winding Circle until Master Niko says that she has control over her power?” the duke wanted to know. “Is that agreeable?”

“If they leave the city as soon as possible, I will be satisfied,” replied the baker. The goldsmith nodded.

The Trader said nothing, only turned and walked away. Daja watched him go, her hand tightening on her staff until her knuckles were white.

The duke looked the children over. “What of that animal?” he asked Sandry.

Rosethorn started to protest, then sighed. “The dog stays with us,” she said.

“There, you heard that?” Sandry asked her new friend. “You belong to us now.” The pup whimpered and licked her face.

Instead of leaving the city immediately and getting caught in the after-market jam of horses and carts, they accepted the duke’s offer of

supper at a nearby eating-house and a guard to accompany them home. Throughout the meal, Lark concentrated on Tris, cajoling the exhausted girl into eating.

Once their bellies were full, the other children were allowed to bathe their new pet in the tiny yard behind the eating-house. Rosethorn anointed his cuts with a sharp-smelling balm. “You four get to train this fierce, wolflike creature to take his business out-of-doors,” she told them as she worked. “And clean up after him, and stop him from chewing everything in sight.” When the dog snapped at her touch on a particularly ugly wound, she gripped him gently by the muzzle. “Enough,” she said. “I don’t like dogs any more than I like children.”

Sheepish, the pup wagged his tail and whined at her. He didn’t snap again.

As Sandry and Daja took the cleaned-up dog out to show Niko, Lark, and the Duke, Briar helped Rosethorn to gather her medicines. “I’m no mage,” he said abruptly.

“Nonsense,” was the tart reply. “You’re as much a mage as I am. It’s just that your magic—the girls’ too, if it comes to that—shows itself in unusual ways.”

He put a hand on her arm. “Niko has it wrong. I’m no mage.”

Rosethorn looked meaningfully at the hand on her sleeve until he withdrew it, a blush staining his gold-brown cheeks. “It’s no accident that Niko was at your sentencing—he’d had a premonition of a boy with the green magic in him. I knew he was right when I heard my bean plants welcome you. You got them all excited, my buck. They wanted to throw out seed pods a month early. I had to be stern with them.”

“That ain’t magic,” he protested.

“Of course it is, and important magic at that. The most important, to my way of thinking. You don’t need to share that with Lark or Niko.”

“I’m a thief,” he protested.

“I bet you had a lot of plants like moss and mushrooms in whatever hole you lived in,” she said, dark eyes sharp. “I bet strange things happened to you in rich men’s gardens.”

The boy hung his head, rubbing a thumb over the deep scars in his palm. Rosethorn touched the hand. Her fingertips found each large, dimpled pock left by the vine whose name he had taken.

“They grow big-thorned briars to protect the tops of garden walls,” she remarked. “This one must have loved you, to leave so deep a scar.”

“With mates like that plant, I don’t need constables,” he mumbled. Something cool poured into the old wounds and up his arm. Scented with turning leaves and wet stone, it was the thing he’d smelled in her shop the day they’d worked on the shakkan. Looking into her face, he saw the glint of green and gold in her eyes and felt the pull of life that flowed through her stocky frame: the kind of power that could sink tendrils into rock and split it open, given time.

“Magic?” he whispered.

“Go tell Niko it’s time to leave,” she ordered. “We need to be home before the Earth temple’s midnight worship.”

Once they returned to the cart, Tris was bundled up in blankets fetched from the guards’ barracks. She went to sleep almost immediately. The other three children made themselves comfortable among the empty sacks as Rosethorn took the reins. Lark rode double with Niko for the moment, behind the cart; they were talking quietly. The duke and his soldiers came as well, the squad breaking in two so that five guards marched ahead of the cart, five behind. The duke rode beside the cart, talking to Rosethorn about the summer crops.

Sandry put the pup down, smiling as he tried to steady himself against the cart’s lurch. Clumsily he tottered over to each of them, even the sleeping Tris, and gave them a good sniff.

“He probably has fleas,” Briar remarked. The pup wagged his tail.

“He likes you,” said Daja tiredly. “No accounting for taste.”

“Can we call him Little Bear?” asked Sandry. “He looks like a bear, when he’s standing. His feet stick out in that flat bear way.”

“Enough of this we,” snapped Briar. “Just because we had a tumble, it don’t turn us into mates. What happened back there don’t mean a thing!”

“Touchy!” retorted Daja, throwing up her hands. “I’m sorry they’ve got us in the same cart!”

Sandry put a hand on her arm. “It’s too hot to fight, Daja.”

The puppy whined at Briar.

“You don’t know these girls yet,” Briar told him. “They’d drive a tortoise to a frenzy.”

“Did you know?” Sandry asked. “About—magic?”

He went still, staring at her. After a moment, he looked away. “No,” he whispered.

Sandry tugged first on her left braid, then on her right. “I sort of did, back in Hatar, after my parents died.” Quietly she told them about the hidden room, back when smallpox had ravaged all Hatar, and a mob had killed the only person who knew where she was. “I didn’t think the light was real, for a long time,” she told them. “It’s only been in the last two days that I thought maybe I was wrong.”

“We aren’t allowed to talk to lugsha—people who make things,” Daja replied softly. “I was kept away from smiths. I never guessed—Kirel acted so odd—”

“You aren’t making a word of sense,” Briar growled.

Daja took a deep breath and explained what had taken place when Frostpine’s apprentice dropped a piece of red-hot iron. She looked at her hands. “It felt like my friend. And Kirel was scared of me.”

Briar whistled softly. “What about the redhead?” he asked, pointing at Tris.

“The redhead will keep her sad story to herself,” replied Tris coldly, without opening her eyes. “And she’ll be very happy if you keep your ‘neb’ out of her business!” Rolling over, she turned her back to them.

“Sweet as ever,” muttered Briar. He tugged a few empty sacks around to make a nest for himself, curled up, and closed his eyes.

In Tradertalk Daja murmured, “I told you,” to Sandry. “She’s plain mean.”

The other girl shook her head. Tris could growl and snap all she liked. During their brawl, when the waterspout had tried to attack Daja, Tris had clearly been terrified—and had dealt with her creation in spite of her fear, to keep it from hurting the Trader. To Sandry, that act counted more than anything that a worn-out Tris might say.

At the city gates, Lark climbed into the back of the cart with the children and settled herself for a nap. The squad of soldiers from the Provost Guard, whose authority ended at the city wall, was replaced by a squad of the Duke’s Guard. They and the duke accompanied the cart through the Mire and its resident criminals, and up the long road to Winding Circle. By then Briar and Daja were asleep, as Tris pretended to be. Sandry climbed up to sit beside Rosethorn to admire the view of the harbor islands lit by the two great lighthouses that guarded Summersea’s port.

Once they were well past the Mire, the duke got Rosethorn’s attention. “May I drive for a time?” he asked. “Even if you are not accustomed to riding, you will find Ladylove a comfortable mount.”

Briar opened a sleepy eye when Rosethorn laughed and accepted the offer. As calmly as if he drove carts for a living, the duke settled into her place and took up the reins.

“I hope I didn’t put you on the spot back in the market,” Sandry remarked quietly. “I didn’t think you would favor me just because you’re my great-uncle.”

Unnoticed by Sandry or the duke, Briar sat up, furious. Her uncle! Wasn’t that a Bag for you? Of course she could be brave about standing up for them—she must have known he wouldn’t punish her!

“Nor did I favor you.” The duke put his arm around Sandry. “I would have delivered the same judgment had total strangers been involved.” If he heard Briar’s unbelieving snort, he ignored it. “I would like to say now that your father and mother would have been proud of you.”

She ducked her head, glad that the darkness hid her blush. “Truly?”

“Truly. I am proud of you in their place.”

For a moment they listened to the footsteps of horses and soldiers and the distant boom of the sea. When Vedris took

his arm away, Sandry asked, “Did you know, Uncle? About the magic?”

For a moment she thought he would not answer. Then she heard his velvet-soft voice: “Your parents lived in such an odd way. I must believe it never occurred to them that new oddities might have their child at the source. Your own life with them was one oddity after another—what did you have to compare it to?”

She yawned. “It complicates things, doesn’t it?”

Though it was too dark to see his face, she heard a smile in his voice. “My dear Sandrilene, you have a talent for—”

“I’m going to be sick,” Tris interrupted, voice high. She lurched to her feet, gripping the sides of the cart. Briar steadied her. “I—”

“Tris?” Niko urged his mount over to her. “What is it?”

“A wave—there’s a wave in the ground!” she gasped, eyes wide. “Tide’s coming in!”

“Impossible.” The duke halted the cart. “My dear, you are dreaming—”

“I feel dizzy,” Sandry whispered. The pup whined, then barked frantically. Daja awoke. The cart was shuddering.

Lark sat up, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “Are we on a boat?” asked the dedicate sleepily.

The guards before and behind them lurched, barely keeping on their feet. A handful of small rocks tumbled across the road as it shivered, and went still.

“Earthquake summer,” whispered a soldier.

“No earthquakes for me.” Tris wiped her sweaty face. “I’ve had enough fun so far, thanks all the same.”

Briar released her as some of the guards laughed nervously.

“You feel any more such waves coming, missy, you let us know,” their sergeant directed Tris. “We’ll appreciate it.”

Once they reached Winding Circle, they parted company with the duke and his guardsmen. Seeing that Niko was about to ride on to help Lark as she took cart and mule back to the temple stables, Tris muttered, “I wish we could talk to him.”

Sandry heard. “Niko?” she called. “Might we—the four of us and you—have a word?”

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