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“They escaped?” he asked, his knees starting to wobble. “They got away?”
Skyfire uttered a barking laugh. “Never had a chance. They’re somewhere under all that. They’re never coming out, if that’s what worries you.” The Dedicate Superior had joined them. To her Skyfire said, “Can we bring up the entire spell-net for the night? Not just the east and west segments?”
Moonstream shook her head. “Hardbottle village—half of their people haven’t made it in. We told them we’d keep the north gate open until dawn for the stragglers. As far as anyone knows, the pirates haven’t gotten around the spell-net in the east. If we had a way to make them stay put once it gets dark, that would help.”
Skyfire looked at the silent cluster of senior mages. Briar realized they must have drawn close to watch him and Rosethorn. “I want a fog around this place so thick I wouldn’t know my mother if I stepped on her foot,” Skyfire ordered. “Those villagers will have the road, and our guards, to guide them in, but anyone in open country had better not dare move, for fear of breaking their necks. And if some of you can’t drum it up, maybe I’ll just get all four of these young people up here. We’ll see what they can do.”
“Unnecessary.” The voice—stiff, haughty, male—belonged to Dedicate Crane. He looked down his very long nose at Briar. “I submit that senior mages are superior in their control. Your children need to work on theirs,” he told Rosethorn, his rival.
Briar just grinned tiredly and gave Crane a careless salute.
Half an hour later, Tris still had not forgiven Aymery for putting Uraelle so vividly in her mind. “I can’t believe you did that to me,” she said for the dozenth time, wrapping trembling hands around the cup of tea that Frostpine had made for the girls. The two men had been going through some books Aymery had brought up from the guesthouse when the girls received Briar’s call. Somehow Frostpine had guessed what the children were up to and insisted on trying to break the link. Aymery had made the first important dent in their union with Uraelle’s voice—Tris knew that as well as her cousin did. “You couldn’t have used someone else?”
“She was the best one I thought of,” he replied with a shrug. “And Asaia Bird-Winged knows I heard her yattering on enough when I was small.” Seeing Tris’s puzzled look, he explained, “We lived with her for two years when I was your age.”
She winced. “I’m sorry. You still didn’t have to—”
Niko stalked in the door in a swirl of robes and steel-colored hair. “What is the matter with you four?” he cried, black eyes flashing.
Daja, Sandry, and Tris drew closer together. Frostpine, brewing a fresh pot of tea, looked at Niko with raised eyebrows. Aymery pretended to inspect the nestling’s box.
“Have you no hold on yourselves?” Niko continued furiously. “Can’t you tell when you’re about to pass your own limits? You could be dead at this very—”
“They were hurting Briar and Rosethorn.” Sandry forced herself to meet Niko’s blazing eyes. “We thought they were killing Rosethorn.”
“She is a senior mage who knows the difference between momentary discomfort and true danger, which none of you seem to understand! Have you not learned that you simply cannot throw yourselves into the great magics as if they were bathtubs?”
“We’re just kids,” snapped Tris, lips trembling as she fought tears. “We haven’t had time to learn hardly anything!”
“We’ve learned some,” Daja added quietly. “But not huge things.”
“At least they did help,” growled Briar. He had followed Niko from the gate, determined to get home under his own power. And he had managed it—just. When Sandry helped him to the table, he couldn’t bring himself to object. Once seated, he glared at Niko. “They didn’t stand there like a bag of bleaters, waiting for mamma’s leave to romp.”
“Those bleaters, as you call them, are mages who know better than to enter a pattern-magic without the primary mage’s permission.” With a sigh, Niko sat on the bench next to Tris. “They wouldn’t have been able to.” Looking at each of the girls, he said wistfully, “You shouldn’t have been able to.”
“That was pattern-magic they interrupted?” Aymery wanted to know, eyes wide. “These—children broke into—”
“If it’s something ‘children’ can’t do then we kids didn’t do it.” Briar glared at Aymery.
“Drink this.” Frostpine pressed a mug into the boy’s hands. “It’ll make you feel more human.”
Niko rested a hand on Tris’s shoulder. She yanked away and turned her back to him, still fighting tears. She had been scolded so rarely at Discipline that it hurt twice as much as it had before, when it had happened so often.
“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” Niko murmured. “You frightened me. I didn’t know if you would be alive when I got here.”
Tris shook her head, refusing to look at him.
“I think the bird wants supper,” Frostpine said.
It was true; the nestling was screaming. “You’re not supposed to yell or be loud around him,” Tris said to no one in particular. “It upsets him.” Picking up the nest, she carried it into Rosethorn’s workshop.
“I’ll help.” Sandry collected milk and honey from the coldbox and followed Tris.
Frostpine stared at the door to Rosethorn’s bedroom, rubbing his bald spot. “Will she stay with Moonstream or at the Water Temple tonight? I don’t think she ought to sleep on a pallet in her shop—she’ll be drained—but she won’t let me sleep in there. I could go back to my forge.”
“She’s coming here,” replied Niko. “Some of Skyfire’s people are carrying her up. Lark’s with them. It’s just taking them more time than it did me.”
Briar slumped forward against the table, resting his head on his arms. “She hates being carried, even when she can’t walk,” he mumbled. “Sleep in my room, Frostpine. She won’t mind if I’m in her shop. Just let me neaten up.” Getting to his feet, he stumbled into his room.
Frostpine raised his arms over his head with a groan. “I’ll make Rosethorn’s bed.” He went into her room. Aymery started to brew more tea with the water Frostpine had set to boil.
Niko said nothing for a while. When he spoke, it was to Daja. “I thought you were depleted—exhausted—from this morning.”
The black girl shrugged. “I had Rosethorn’s green stuff to drink,” she replied. “Same as Frostpine. It did a lot of good.”
“But the basic dose of tonic can restore only so much. Where did you find the strength to help Briar so—dramatically?”
Daja shrugged again, looking at the table.
“I must know, for your own sake. Did you drink more tonic than you were supposed to?”
Daja shook her head. “It’s the string we spun in the earthquake,” she told Niko. “It made Sandry feel better this morning, and it made me feel stronger when she had me touch my lump.”
“A lump?” Aymery inquired, then winced. “Sorry, Master Niko. Must I leave?”
“No, that’s all right,” said Niko, holding up a hand to silence him. “Your lump?” he asked Daja.
“There’s a lump in the thread circle for each of us. I touched mine, and I felt better. Not as strong as the rest, when Briar called for help, but lots better than when I got up.”
When Sandry returned, Niko said, “I wish to see this string of yours.”
She put her hands on her hips, glaring at him. “Tris is crying. She’s never been under catapult attack before. She’s frightened.”
“So are we all,” Niko said. “I will go to her, but in a moment. The string, Lady Sandrilene.” He held out one long, thin hand.
Her little nostrils flared, as if she scented trouble. “It’s ours.”
“It could have gotten you into trouble that all of your teachers combined could not have saved you from. I will have it, if you please.”
His black eyes met her blue ones and held them. Watching, Daja and Aymery held their breaths.
It was Sandry who looked away. She
fished the circle of thread from a small pouch that hung around her neck, inside her dress. She hesitated, then gave it to Niko.
The moment he touched it, he jerked, dropping it on the floor. “Gods above!” he whispered.
“What is it?” Aymery inquired. “A magical artifact?”
“It’s a bijili, isn’t it?” Daja wanted to know.
Aymery looked at her.
“The mimanders use them. They keep things in bijili—winds, or strength for when the jishen come and they’re worn out, or even just for light. A bijili can be a crystal, or a glass bubble—” She stooped, and picked up the circlet of thread. “Or knots in a string.”
Niko opened his handkerchief on the table and pointed to it. Daja reluctantly put the circle onto the linen square. He folded up the cloth and put it into his shirt pocket. “Until the four of you learn control, I’d rather see you play with coals from the fire than something like this, even if you did create it yourselves.”
“How about we play with boom-stones?” asked Briar, leaning against his door frame. “I wouldn’t mind getting a look at one of those—before it went boom, anyway. Long before.”
“As would most of us,” Niko said grimly. “I’ve been watching them all afternoon, and can’t for the life of me tell what’s inside their containers. They’re even better spelled against magic than battlefire. If we knew how they were made, we—”
“Why can’t you put me down?” demanded a cross voice outside. “People will think I’m dying if they see me carried in by two hulking lads—”
Briar smiled dreamily. “She’s home.”
Lark entered first, looking as tired as everyone else. Then two armored warriors, a dedicate and a novice, eased through the door sideways. They had made a chair of their arms and were carrying Rosethorn between them. She was soot-streaked, her hair black with sweat. Despite the irritated vigor in her voice, she had so little strength that she couldn’t sit up, only lean again the novice.
It was Kirel; he looked positively harassed. “We brought her,” he told Niko. “And believe me, it wasn’t easy.”
10
Exhaustion rolled in with the fog that Skyfire had ordered. Once he’d made his peace with Tris, Niko tried to meditate with the children, to work on their grip on their emotions while working magic, but gave up after first Briar, then Daja, then he himself nodded off. Supper came up from the Hub, but no one wanted the trouble of setting the table or of cleanup later. Those with the strength nibbled on bread, cheese, fresh garden vegetables, and smoked fish from the coldbox; everyone but Aymery seemed half-asleep.
No one wanted to go to the Earth Temple baths after supper, either, but in the end the need to get clean was stronger than weariness. The children, Aymery, Lark, Frostpine, and Niko managed the trip to the baths.
Briar made certain that he was bathed and out well before the men; the girls and Lark, he knew from past experience, would take a while to finish. Bone-weary as he felt, he still managed a weak trot back to Discipline, Little Bear at his heels.
Rosethorn was sound asleep when he crept by her open door. He doubted that she would waken for some time yet, which was all to the good. If she caught him going through Aymery’s belongings, she would make his life a misery.
That he had to do so, he was sure of. He liked Tris’s cousin, but in Deadman’s District he had liked a great many people who he couldn’t trust as far as he could throw them. Aymery made him feel untrusting. He tried to tell himself he wasn’t jealous of the way Tris looked at her family-approved mage cousin, the one who’d been kind to her, but living with Rosethorn tended to strip the illusions from a boy. Briar was jealous, a bit, but he told himself that had little to do with it. Something about Aymery was not right.
Before they’d left, the boy had prepared a bowl of the uneaten chicken stew, carefully going through it for any bones. Now he put the bowl on the floor for Little Bear. As fast an eater as the pup was, it would still take him a while to devour so much. Eating, he would care about nothing else, such as where Briar was, until he was done.
Before he got to work in Sandry’s room, Briar made sure that its front window was open. The rest of Discipline’s residents would come in the back. If he left the room through the front window and walked around to reenter the cottage through Rosethorn’s workshop, no one should guess where he’d actually been.
Aymery hadn’t brought as much as Briar had expected: a small chest with plenty of brass fittings and a large, impressive-looking lock; a larger chest that stood open in the middle of the floor; two saddlebags. The larger chest was a third full of books; the rest was clothing. He could find no hidden compartments. A look into the saddlebags revealed necessaries like shaving gear, money, jewelry, a traveling writing desk, a few more books. Now, here was Tris’s cousin, liking to dress well—too well for a student, thought Briar, who had seen many young scholars when they came to Deadman’s District for rough fun—who’d mentioned a stay of some weeks the night before. He didn’t have enough pretty clothes for that. If he were a poor student, as most were, then he’d have a reason for a small wardrobe—a small, cheap wardrobe. But he wasn’t poor, was he? If he were, then why did he buy a shaving mirror of the finest Hataran glass, and silver-backed brushes and combs? If he were poor, how did he pay for the small pouch of earrings, and a collection of gods-amulets in precious metals? The trunk with his books and his saddlebags were all serviceable enough and had seen plenty of wear. They looked like normal student gear. He might well have brought those to the university from Capchen.
But the smaller trunk … The smaller trunk was new, and it had cost Aymery something.
Here were contradictions, then. Being poor was the only excuse for a small wardrobe for several weeks’ stay—but everything about the goods he did have screamed of money. If he were a rich student, then he would have packed enough for a lengthy stay, and he hadn’t. Aymery was lying about something, that was plain.
Briar knelt to examine the smaller chest. Merchants, he thought, shaking his head. Only a merchant would buy such an expensive-looking piece of trash. The pricey wood inlays were veneer, thin sheets of costly wood laid over cheap stuff. There were cracks in them already. He could pop the wide straps off with a chisel and his own hands; the nails that bolted them to the wood were no sturdier than the veneer. And the lock! The only reason to buy this item would be for so large and ominous-looking a lock. It was the kind of lock that screamed “safe”—and it was no safer than a bread box.
Briar appreciated a merchant’s son’s trust in craftsmen. It had made his life easier back in his thieving days. It would make it easier now.
Reaching into his waistband, he drew out the slim packet of lock picks he’d made since his arrival at Winding Circle. Normally he kept the packet under a loose board in his floor. Niko frowned on him so much as carrying a hide-out knife for protection—which he did anyway, because there were plenty of respectable uses for a knife. There were none for lock picks.
He chose two and delicately inserted them in the keyhole. Immediately he felt the burn of ordinary protection-spells running through his fingers. Softly he whispered the words of the standard canceling-spell that he’d had to learn by heart when he was four. The burning stopped. A nudge of one pick, a tickle of the other, and the lock opened as smoothly as butter.
“I love me,” he whispered.
The box was divided into velvet-lined compartments under a velvet-covered top tray. He recognized items in the tray: a deck of fortune-telling cards in a silk bag, sticks of chalk for drawing magical circles, shallow bowls for things like herbs, water, oil, and salt, a handful of talismans for the working of spells. Here were ink-sticks in various colors, stone trays for mixing ink, drawing brushes, and reed pens. All of these things would be used for the working of magic; it was the basic kit. He lifted out the tray.
Light blazed, so bright that it nearly blinded him. Briar sat back on his heels, knowing that if he stuck a hand into that light, it would burn like a
cid. The funny thing was that he knew how to break this spell—the secret was expensive, but not at all hard to learn. Spells to foil common protection-magic could be bought and used by anyone, whether they had magic or not, which didn’t exactly make him respect Aymery’s judgment. True, he’d said he was specializing in illusion-magic, but what was Briar supposed to think of a man who couldn’t be bothered to put his own spells on his treasures?
He never looked for any kind of search, a voice whispered in Briar’s mind. He expected everyone to believe in what he claimed to be. He expected to deal only with his own kind, not with someone used to thieves and nasty folk who talk one way and do another.
Briar made the signs of the more costly charm and blew on the light. It vanished. In the compartments were some bottles, packets, and something square, in a velvet bag. Picking up one of the bottles, Briar sniffed and nearly sneezed. Cinnamon oil and poppy. The container was half-empty.
“Bad, Aymery,” he murmured. “Very, very bad.”
One vial contained a gray powder. He glanced at the label. While he could only read individual letters, and not even all of those, he wasn’t stupid. Rosethorn had a bottle labeled with most of these same marks. She’d said it held a sleeping mixture. She had also taught him the meaning of a number of signs commonly put on labels. One of two on the bottle full of gray powder meant “extremely strong.” He didn’t know the other but memorized it. Perhaps one of the girls would know what it was.
The other bottles had no meaning for him at all. Opening the bag, he drew out the flat thing inside. It was a mirror, set in a glass frame shot with bubbles of gold. The mirror itself was black and glossy.
Inside it, shadowy forms moved. A voice in it said, “My dear sister, you worry too much. Things are nearly in place.”
Briar dropped the mirror back into its container and thrust it into its compartment. Hurriedly he began to put everything back: he could hear Aymery and Niko approaching as they talked about some book or other.
