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“You may examine it later,” Niko said. “Go in. This is Discipline, your new home.”
When they entered, a boy with coarse-cut black hair was sniffing dried herbs that hung in bunches near the hearth. Seeing the girls, he skipped back, as if he’d been caught doing something that he shouldn’t.
“Good morning, Briar,” Niko said. “I’ve brought you some housemates.”
The boy glared at them, his eyes a startling gray-green in his gold-brown face. “Oh, wonderful,” he replied. “More girls.”
“It could be worse.” The quiet, lilting voice came from a room to Tris’s left. “It could be more boys.” A tall, black girl, dressed in a scarlet coat and leggings, emerged, carrying a wooden crate filled with possessions. Her face was round and calm, framed by a headful of short braids. She nodded to Niko, who smiled.
“Daja!” Sandry grinned at her—it was good to see a familiar face. “You live here?”
“Since yesterday,” the other girl replied.
“We’re being punished, all right,” Tris muttered.
How could she live with a Trader?
“You have a problem with me, kaq?” Daja inquired, black eyes flashing.
“Daja!” cried Sandry, shocked. Kaq might be the word that Traders used to mean non-Traders, but it was also a very rude word.
A tall woman in the dark green habit of an Earth dedicate came in through a side door. Like Briar’s, her skin was golden brown. She wore her curly black hair cut short, and her smile was genuinely welcoming. “Niko, more desperate criminals for us? They must be cleaning house down at the Hub!”
“Dedicate Lark,” said Niko, “I’d like you to meet Sandry and Tris.” To the newcomers he added, “Lark and Dedicate Rosethorn are in charge of Discipline.”
“Welcome, both of you,” Lark said, resting a strong hand on each girl’s shoulder. “May you weave happy lives here.”
Sandry dipped a curtsey. Tris attempted to do the same, but wobbled and nearly fell over. The boy snorted, and Tris blushed.
“This is Briar.” Lark pointed to the boy, who scuffed a bare foot across the wood floor. He was taller than the new girls, dressed in sturdy breeches of plain brown cloth and a white shirt. Where his sleeves should have been, there were only ragged holes—he’d cut them off. Lark pointed to the Trader. “And Daja.”
“We’ve met,” Daja and Sandry chorused, and grinned at each other.
“Here’s my room,” Briar announced flatly, going to an open door on Sandry’s right. “I came here first, and I’m keeping it. You kids stay out!” He disappeared inside.
“‘Kids’?” Sandry asked, puzzled. “Why is he talking about goats?”
“Kid is thieves’ cant for child,” Lark said. “Now—there’s another room on this floor.” She glanced at the black girl. “Daja says she prefers one of the upstairs rooms. We have another spare room up there as well.”
“Our own rooms?” Tris asked, startled into speech. “I thought this was a punishment place.”
“It’s for people who are—ill at ease—with the other Winding Circle children,” Lark replied. “Things go better here if our guests have rooms of their own.”
Tris glared at the boy’s closed door. “May I see the room upstairs?” she asked, thinking, I want to be as far from him as possible!
“Come on,” Daja said. “I’ll show you, merchant girl.” Going to the back of the long main room, she climbed a steep and narrow stair. Tris followed her.
Lark started to set the table near the kitchen hearth. Drifting toward the free downstairs room, Sandry kept an eye on Briar and Niko. The boy grabbed Niko, drawing him closer. Sandry entered the empty room and ducked behind the open door, out of sight.
She could hear Briar’s hoarse whisper: “It wasn’t me nicked them things, Niko. If they told you I did—”
“I know you didn’t,” replied the man, just as quietly. “But—knives, Briar?”
“I need—”
“Knives?”
“You don’t know what it’s—”
“Knives?”
Briar gave up.
“I want them,” Niko said flatly.
The boy stuttered, outraged.
“All of them,” insisted the man.
“But it ain’t safe,” protested Briar. “What if I have to defend myself?”
“The knives, Briar. If you have them, you also have the temptation to use them. Now, if you please.”
Slouching, Briar left Niko, and Sandry tugged a braid, thinking about what she’d just heard. At last she shrugged—she didn’t think Niko would put her anyplace where she would be in danger. That decided, she looked around at her new home.
The room was plain and clean, its walls covered with a coat of whitewash. The bed, night table, stool, and wardrobe were all roughly made, but sturdy. The desk was slightly better, as was the chair in front of it. The front window gave her a view of the path to the door and the spiral road beyond.
Going to the window in her side wall, she looked out. This view was of the inside of the wooden frame addition, the one with cloth screens. Long poles braced shutters against the ceiling, to open the sides of the place. A workroom, it contained a pair of long tables, a big spinning wheel and a smaller one, and a pair of hanging looms. Baskets on the floor held bundles of dyed and undyed wool, as well as spools and balls of spun wool, flax, cotton, and silk. Near the back wall stood a large floor loom. On its web hung a shimmering cloth, its design not quite visible to her straining eyes.
Lark weaves, she thought, excited. She could teach me to—
Her spirits fell. She was Sandrilene fa Toren, an heiress who was kin to royalty in two countries. No one had ever let her weave, or even handle wool, cotton, or flax. Silks she might touch, but even Pirisi had said that she spent more time at needlework than was proper—ladies were supposed to like embroidery only for a few hours, not all of the time. Dedicate Quail at Pearl Cup dormitory had lectured her on the condition of her fingers from near-constant needlework and sentenced her to three nights of sleeping with hands wrapped in salve and cotton.
Maybe Lark will be different, she thought, with very little hope. Maybe.
Tris stuck her head through the long window of the empty room upstairs. Below, past the solid wood shed at the side of the first story, was a garden that cupped the back and sides of the house. A figure in a green habit knelt between rows of plants. The girl made a face; she hoped that no one was going to expect her to garden. She hated dirt.
Beyond the garden lay grape vines, which meant bees—another thing to avoid. Beyond that—her eyes met the wall that encircled the temple community. Built solidly of gray stone, it rose twenty feet into the air. There were stairs that led to the top—narrow ones, spaced every two hundred yards on the wall. Every four hundred yards, a small and solid tower rose above the upper walkway.
Tris blinked. Someone who climbed to the top of the wall would be inside any storm that passed. The winds would strike purely, coming in from sea or fields, with no streets and buildings to catch them and draw out their strength. A city girl, she had always known that the air she felt, even on rooftops, had its teeth drawn as it passed over encircling walls to pick up all the smells of busy humans, not land, sea, or rock.
Looking down, she smiled. The roof of the shed under her window was easy to reach. The ground wouldn’t be too far below that.
“You want it?” asked the Trader from the door. “The other’s fine for me if you like this one.”
“I don’t mind.” Realizing that she was half out of the window, Tris pulled herself in. “This seems nice.” She flopped onto the bed and lay back to stare at the ceiling.
This is their punishment place, she thought, forgetting Daja was still there. If I’m kicked out, I have nowhere else to go. No one in Capchen wants me.
I’d best try to stay out of trouble, then. If I can. If something doesn’t happen—except something always does.
And what’s Niko doing here again? s
he wondered. I thought he was supposed to be running “special errands” this spring—unless he finished them all. She sighed, her mind still buzzing without letup.
Daja saw that the redhead was lost in daydreams. Kaqs, she thought, returning to her new room. They only look at you when they want something.
She ran an affectionate hand over the box—her suraku—at the foot of her cot. With the Kisubo mark stamped deep into the leather on all sides, no matter where she put it, she knew she was home. It had served her all the way to Winding Circle.
Gently Daja rubbed the Kisubo imprint with a finger. If I fail here, where can I go? she thought, not knowing that Tris asked herself the same thing. I am trangshi, without family, without a place.
Then I must not fail, she told herself, taking a deep breath. Maybe it won’t be so bad. I like Sandry well enough, and she speaks Tradertalk.
“Hello.” Sandry was in the doorway, as if Daja’s thoughts had called her. “Is this your new room?”
“What a silly question!” Daja went to the crate she’d carried upstairs and got out the incense pot, candlesticks, and god-images. Taking them to a small table in the corner, she began to arrange them.
“I am silly, now and then,” Sandry admitted. “My mother said I was, anyway.”
“If you know, you can stop it.” Carefully Daja placed a candle behind Trader Koma’s image.
“Then you’ve never been silly, or you’d know it just creeps up without any warning.”
Startled, Daja looked at the other girl and saw that her blue eyes were dancing. “Oh, you,” she said, flapping a hand. “Come in, then. Sit down.”
“Thank you.” Sandry went to the open window and sat on the ledge. “Is this house a nice place?”
“I’ve only been here for a day, but—well, Lark is kind.” Daja lit a stick of incense in front of the wooden plaque engraved with her family’s names. “You’ll like her. Rosethorn, the other dedicate? She is like—well, they are called porcupines—”
“I’ve seen them. They’re like pigs or woodchucks with backs full of long pins.”
“You saw them in a menagerie?”
“No, in Bihan, three years ago. In the forest. My parents—” She stopped, then went on, determinedly cheerful. “They loved to travel.”
“So how did you come here, if you were in Bihan?”
“Oh—my great-uncle lives in Summersea.” She looked out of the window. “My parents died last fall, when there was smallpox in Hatar, and he was the closest relative. The rest of my family’s in Namorn.”
As if she heard it afresh, Daja remembered what Sandry had told those girls just two weeks ago: … the great-niece of his grace, Duke Vedris of this realm of Emelan, and cousin of her Imperial Highness, Empress Berenene of the Namorn Empire. If Sandry now spoke of her relatives as if they were just normal people, she must not want it generally known that she was almost royalty. “So that’s why you wear all that black,” Daja remarked. “Somebody told me onc that ka—landsmen wear black for mourning.”
“So are you, I see.” Sandry’s wave took in the other girl’s clothes.
Daja smoothed her crimson tunic. “I—”
“Traders mourn in red?” asked a scornful voice. Briar stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. “What kind of barbarian thing is that?”
“Red is for blood,” explained Daja. She wasn’t offended by his tone. Kaqs were ignorant. She couldn’t expect one to be as courteous as real people. “Even a—” she started to say, and changed her term when she caught Sandry’s glare. “Even a mud-roller like you should know that much.” In Tradertalk, she told the other girl, “And he is a kaq.”
“I haven’t spent my life with my fingers in my ears,” Briar remarked in clumsy, but plain, Tradertalk. “And I’m not stupid.” Switching back to Common, he added, “Beats me how you people don’t break teeth on that gabble.”
Daja showed him all of hers in a big, warning grin. “Our teeth are stronger than yours, is why.”
Sandry interrupted before the boy could answer. “If we’re going to share the same house, shouldn’t we try to get along?”
“Don’t bother with him,” Daja advised. “He’s just rude and ignorant.”
“Not as ignorant as you thought a moment ago,” he teased.
Behind him, Tris announced, “I’m starved. When do we eat?”
“Midday’s on the table!” called Lark from below.
Tris bolted for the stair. Briar raced to catch up, but she beat him to it.
“We’d better watch him,” Daja told Sandry, closing the door of her room as they left it. Sandry frowned at her, puzzled. Daja tapped the web between her right thumb and forefinger. “He wears the double X—twice a thief. He’d best stay clear of my things.”
A dark head appeared in the opening where the stair pierced the floor—Briar had not gone all the way down. “You think I’m a sluggart, kid? Everyone knows Traders curse their boodle, so them that nick it meet a terrible end. I’m smarter’n that.”
“Nick?” Sandry asked, stepping onto the ladder. “What’s that?”
Briar jumped down, out of her way. “Steal. You nick it, you steal it.”
“Wonderful,” Tris drawled. She was already downstairs and cutting slices from a loaf of coarse bread. Lark set food on the wooden table as Niko lifted a pitcher of milk from the cold-box set in the floor. “We’ll learn thief-slang.”
“At least you’ll have learned something, ‘stead of being just another bleater all your life,” retorted the boy.
Lark smiled at him. “Briar, would you tell Rosethorn it’s midday? Keep after her so she won’t forget to come in.”
He backed up a step. Just eating supper and breakfast with Rosethorn had given him a wary respect for her. “What if she bites me?”
Lark glanced at him with gentle impatience, as if he should have known her reply already. “Bite back.”
Reluctantly he went out into Rosethorn’s domain. The path between rows of unnamed green things was neatly swept. He minced down it, careful not to touch a single leaf. Somehow this garden was different from those he’d seen on the way, different even from the other gardens inside these walls. The plants looked more real, more there. Each stood in its own mound of dirt, opening leaves to the sun, like a piece of living magic.
He longed to touch them. Fear made him pause. Rosethorn had said that if he or Daja so much as breathed on a plant, they would spend months suspended by their heels in the well.
He believed her. Rosethorn was very convincing. She was also nowhere to be seen. He stopped, listening. Dedicates in Air-temple yellow walked by on the spiral road, talking quietly. Somewhere a dog barked; a goat blatted. Under it all lay the buzz of countless bees. The great looms in the buildings across the road were silent for once, the weavers having gone to their own midday meal. He would hear if anyone came around.
To his left, someone had run cords overhead. From them, strings reached to stakes embedded in the ground. Twining plants wrapped thin tendrils around each string. Slap-brained, he thought, peering at them. What are those vines going to do, run off?
He looked around again. There was still no sign of Rosethorn. Carefully, gingerly, he stepped into the furrow that lay between two rows of tied plants, bare feet sinking into freshly turned, somewhat damp, earth. Wriggling his toes in the dirt, he wanted to sprout roots like threads, roots to drink from the land and return its greeting. A bee, thick-bodied and vividly striped in black and yellow, buzzed around his head, wondering what had kept him inside for so long.
He didn’t know how to talk to bees, let alone explain a thing as complicated as Dedicate Rosethorn. Instead he knelt to get a closer look at the captive plants. Touching the delicate leaves with careful hands, he felt their pleasure at being in the sun, watered and digging into rich soil, growing proudly with no insects to munch on their tender parts. The cords helped them to show more of themselves to the light. All of the plants nearly sang with happiness, doing the work t
hey were made to do. They welcomed him, reaching out from their cords to wind instead around his fingers, legs, and arms.
“What the—!”
Flinching, Briar looked around and up. Rosethorn stood on the path, her green habit streaked with dirt and stains, a basket full of dead plants on one arm. Her dark brown eyes blazed. Every nerve screeched for him to flee the expected beating, but he locked himself in place. Running would mean tearing the plants that had wrapped themselves around him, maybe stumbling and crushing them.
She might see that and wait to get him away from them before she hit him. That he was in for a beating he took for granted; every other adult that he’d met, except Niko, hit every kid he knew. The cause might be different—drink, rage, drugs, the kid was in the way—but the result was always the same. He waited for the cuff or the order to get out of there, now!
Neither came. After a moment or two, he risked a look at her.
She frowned still, now more puzzled than angry. Her eyes were on him, not her plants. One foot gently tapped on the flat earth of the path, as if she were thinking.
She worked barefoot.
Rosethorn’s eyes followed his. When she saw her own bare toes, she smiled crookedly.
“Do I send a messenger for both of you, now?” Lark called from the back door.
Rosethorn extended a dirty hand to him. “Come on out of there.”
“Not if you’re going to hit me,” he retorted. “I’m no daftie.”
She raised her free hand. “Mila strike me if I lie.”
His faith in gods was not strong, but Mila was her goddess, after all, the one she’d given up a normal life for. Just as he was about to stand, he saw the trick. “You’ll hang me in the well.”
Rosethorn sighed. That foot tapped again, impatient now. “No, I won’t. I water this garden with what’s in there—I’m not about to poison it.”
This made sense. Carefully Briar tried to rise. The plants tightened their hold on their new friend.
“Stop that, you!” Rosethorn muttered, waving her hand at the vines. “You know better. Behave!”
Tendrils released his arms and ankles, returning to the strings that guided them to the sun. When Briar was free, he stepped onto the path, cringing when the dedicate reached out and gripped his chin in a firm and dirty hold. This close, he saw that she was a hand’s length taller than his own five feet of height. About thirty, she had broad shoulders, long legs, and a square, firm jaw. Her auburn hair was trimmed close to her head on the sides, and parted neatly on the left. She’d said little the day before to him or to Daja, except to threaten them with regard to her garden. Now she searched his eyes for something; he wasn’t sure what.
