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“No!” Briar cried, going to her. “No, it can’t be. It can’t! The spot would’ve turned color right then—wouldn’t it?” he asked Crane, trying not to plead. “Our dots ain’t fresh. We got ’em more’n a week ago, so they went stale, that’s all.”
Crane handed a piece of brightly polished metal to Rosethorn, who could then see for herself that her diagnosis spot had changed color. “Your magic?” he asked her, his voice emotionless. Briar wanted to kick him. Didn’t he care, after all she’d done?
“I’d run low,” Rosethorn said quietly. “My power kept it at bay—until now.”
“Until now,” Crane said. “So long as your body fought, and could fight, the oil would not react to the disease. I knew I should have refined that diagnosis oil, but we were pressed for time….”
“Can’t I stay?” Rosethorn asked him. “Surely I have at least a day’s more work in me. The tea got rid of my headache.”
Crane sighed. “My dear,” he said, his voice regretful, “shall I get the orders with regard to a researcher who succumbs to a disease? They are in your writing.”
“I hate it when you’re right,” she replied.
“I know,” Crane told her. “If it makes you feel better, Lark will kill me for allowing this to happen.”
“An accident,” growled Tris. Like Briar she had come to stand near Rosethorn. “Just a stupid, stupid—” Her voice cracked. She was crimson behind her mask.
“Let me take her home,” Briar said to Crane. “She ought to be in bed.”
“She cannot go home—surely you are aware of this.”
Briar stared up at the man, furious. Was that kindness in Crane’s eyes? Who was he to go being kind to anybody, particularly to him or to Rosethorn?
The true betrayal came in her quiet, clear voice. “No matter where I end up, you will stay here.”
“I won’t!” snapped Briar. “Let them whiffenpoof Water Temple slushbrains have the care of you? Stay here putting a drip of this and a drab of that into a hundred stupid trays on maybe the side chance one of ’em’ll creep us along a hair to a cure?”
“Yes,” Rosethorn said firmly.
“I need you here.”
He was hearing things, surely. He could have sworn Crane said he needed him.
The lanky dedicate sighed, and leaned against Rosethorn’s worktable. “Your hands are steady. Your discipline over your power is such that no shadow of it changes the essence of the blue pox or of the additives. You keep your head in an emergency, for all that you speak wildly enough.”
“I can’t,” Briar told Rosethorn softly, pleading. “Don’t make me stay.”
“What is more important, tending me—when the best nurses around the Pebbled Sea are here—or helping to find the cure?” she asked gravely. “If you go, they must train someone else for your job—and someone after that, and someone after that, since Crane will get rid of anyone new who looks at him cross-eyed.”
“Unjust,” drawled Crane.
“Absolutely right,” said Osprey.
“He will lose time,” Rosethorn continued, ignoring them. “Osprey will lose time. The best you can do for me is to keep working.”
Tris sighed abruptly. She had been so quiet they had forgotten she was standing there. “Rosethorn, Lark says you’re to wait until she comes. She and Sandry are going to Moonstream to see if they can take you home.”
Briar wanted to hug the redhead. He kept himself from doing it, but just barely. Of course Tris would see that Lark would not want Rosethorn anywhere but home.
Anywhere but home, he thought again. There was something in the idea that grabbed his attention.
Of course. “You have to go home,” he told Rosethorn firmly. “You have to be near your plants and your garden, even if the garden’s asleep. Remember Urda’s House? Tris brought the shakkan and the ivy and herbs to make you feel better? Tris, tell Sandry to tell Lark that Rosethorn needs her plants.”
Rosethorn looked at him sharply, then at Crane. “I forgot that living plants help.”
“Join with ours, then,” he said quietly. “You’ll need as much strength as you can gather to fight this.”
Rosethorn closed her eyes briefly. Briar felt tendrils of her power spread at lightning speed, weaving themselves in with the thousand lives on the other side of the tiled wall. He’d heard Rosethorn express dislike for Crane’s greenhouse so often that it was almost funny to know she was getting strength from it now.
“It’s still not the same as plants living and fading in their normal season,” Rosethorn muttered, as if she had read Briar’s mind.
“It is for those that flower all year in hotter climes,” retorted Crane. “They are not even aware they are not in their home jungles.”
Rosethorn rested her head on her hands. Now that she wasn’t trying to pretend she felt normal, Briar could see how worn she was. For a moment a terrible fear rose in his heart. Quickly he thrust it into the very darkest corner of his mind.
Appealing to Rosethorn’s own Green Man and Mila of the Grain, he thought, Please, gods, keep her safe.
Crane and Tris returned to their work and Briar to his, though the boy kept one eye on Rosethorn. She sat at her own table, writing notes and tinkering with the tray she had been working on. She seemed determined to finish it, and Crane would not protest an activity that kept her quiet as they waited for word from Lark.
The Hub clock was chiming one in the afternoon when the word came in the form of Lark herself. Briar sighed with relief as she walked past him. Lark glanced at him and winked, then took Rosethorn’s hand. “I have special passes signed by Moonstream and permission to take you back to Discipline, as long as you’re freshly robed and masked after we leave here,” she said briskly. To Crane she added, “It’s not as if this thing goes easily from person to person. We’ll have gloves, and masks, and Daja’s coming—Frostpine said they were about done in any case. If you want to see my passes, you’ll have to come out to look at them—I couldn’t bring them through your washroom.”
“I trust you, Lark,” he said. “If you will now take her away, so we may get some real work done—?”
Onini bless me, thought Briar, calling on the goddess of flower sellers, I think he’s teasing Rosethorn. No, he can’t be!
Rosethorn stiffly got to her feet. “Just one thing, Crane,” she said, an impish look in her eyes. She put a drop from an amber-colored vial on the tip of one gloved finger and drew a straight line down the cover on the first well in each row on her tray. They began to shimmer green at their bottoms. Slowly the light expanded and rose, until it filled each well, and flowed together on the spaces between them. “Here’s your third key.” Lark tried to put an arm around her friend’s waist, but Rosethorn shook her head. “I can walk—I’m just a bit achy.” To Briar she said, “Will you do as I asked? Will you stay here?”
Briar looked from her to Crane and Tris. If she’s got Sandry and Lark and Daja tending her, she’ll be all right, he realized. I can do her more good with Crane, helping him track down the cure.
Reluctantly he nodded.
“That’s my boy,” said Rosethorn. With Lark, she walked out of the workroom.
“Well,” Crane remarked, and sighed. “We’ll need to change things. Osprey,” he called, raising his voice so she could hear it from the other workroom. “Who among your crew of professional jesters would you trust to run things in your place?”
Osprey stuck her head through the doorway. “In my place? Sir?”
“I think I really must have you in here,” Crane told her. “You will do research during this crisis after all. Who will be effective in the outer workroom?”
Osprey turned. “Dedicate Acacia?”
Crane sighed gustily. Osprey looked back at him. “Trust me, he’ll do fine.”
Her teacher flapped a limp hand. “He had better. Give him your instructions, and then let us get busy. There is much to do.”
12
As the Hub clock struck nine, Ded
icate Acacia, a young man whose blue-black skin was accented by the pale, undyed material of his mask, robe, and cap, came to the doorway. He shifted from one foot to the other nervously.
“Honored Dedicate, we must close,” said Acacia. “Actually, we are an hour late to close. I—”
“No,” protested Briar fiercely. “We can’t stop now! Rosethorn’s sick—we have to keep working!”
“You can’t,” Acacia said gently. “No living thing could survive the cleansing steam. And everyone is weary.”
“Tired people make mistakes,” Crane informed him. “If you have not learned that before now, commit it to memory.”
Briar put stoppers in jars, furious. All the others could think of was supper and bed. Rosethorn was in trouble, might die, because they didn’t care enough to really bear down and do the job.
A hand gripped his wrist as he was about to slam the door to the additives cupboard. “Stop it,” Osprey told him very quietly, green eyes blazing over her mask. “You think Rosethorn’s the only one in danger? Crane needs rest, what little he takes. He’s up till all hours, reading those blasted notes and thinking of new ideas, and then he’s here at dawn. So calm down and tell everyone good night.”
She’s right, Tris said through their magic. Briar had thought she was busy tidying up. He should have known she would hear so intense a discussion. Did you stop to think what happens if Crane gets sick?
Briar froze.
You didn’t, Tris commented. She had turned to look at him. Think about it now, and let’s go wash. My eyeballs are dancing.
Briar gave his work area a last check to ensure that everything was stowed in watertight cabinets, safe from the cleansing steam. Osprey had gone to speak to the outer workroom crew. Crane was lost in thought, gazing blankly through the glass wall at the fog that rose in the night air.
It all depended on Crane now, didn’t it? He had plenty of help, it was true, but the experience and the skull work would be his.
I don’t even like this man, Briar thought, dismayed. I respect him, but I don’t like him. And he don’t like me.
The things I do for her, he told himself, and walked over to Crane. “You can stare and blink as well outside as in here,” he reminded the dedicate. “And I want my supper, even if you don’t.”
Crane looked at him as if he had forgotten who Briar was. Then he shook his head as if to clear it. “True. Let us be off, then. We shall return all too soon.”
It had been in Briar’s mind to sit with Rosethorn. Lark would hear nothing of it. “Visit after you eat,” she said firmly, thrusting Briar and Tris toward the table. “But not for long—you’re going to bed. You cannot be muzzy when you work like this, you know. Some of the worst disasters in history came about because people were too weary to know they made errors.” She brought covered supper plates that she’d kept warm on the hearth, while Daja poured out juice. “She’s done nothing but scribble ever since I brought her home.”
Briar, listlessly picking up a napkin, felt interest course through his veins like tonic. “She’s doing notes?”
Symbols of health and protection gleamed silver on Rosethorn’s doorway, to keep sickness inside. They didn’t capture sound, because Rosethorn called loudly, “You thought I would come home to languish? I have some things Crane should try. Come in after you finish.”
Tris grinned at Briar.
He started to eat. He bet Crane would be glad of Rosethorn’s notes for as long as she could make them. And as long as she did make them, Briar knew her thinking was still sharp, not fever-muddled. The blue pox might have fooled the diagnosis oil for a time, but it had a serious battle to fight if it wanted to munch up Rosethorn.
Once finished, he got his shakkan and took it to Rosethorn. “It’s glad of company,” he said cheerfully as she glared at him. She sat propped up on pillows as she wrote on a lap-desk. “It moped the whole time we went north last fall and lost a couple of twigs. I’ll feel better if you’d just watch it.”
“Of course,” Rosethorn said tiredly. “I can see it’s moping. If we’re not careful, it could shed a needle. I don’t need a nursemaid, young man, not even a green one.”
Briar grinned. “You got one anyway.”
“I have one anyway. Take this.” She held out a waxed paper tube, spelled like the doorway to keep out disease. Briar accepted it with a gloved hand: at Lark’s command, anyone who saw Rosethorn dressed as they might for Crane’s workroom.
“Now go to bed,” Rosethorn ordered. “I bet two silver astrels that Crane finds a cure before I show spots. That means you need to rest and help him win me money.”
“Even if he don’t approve of gambling?” Briar shook his head, glad she could joke.
Rosethorn grinned. “Particularly because he doesn’t approve of gambling.”
If Crane was glad to see Rosethorn’s notes once they were carried through the washroom in their waxed tube, he hid it well. He read them, Briar noticed, but he directed Osprey to do the suggested work. Briar tried to watch Osprey, until he ruined a tray by losing track of what he’d added. After that, he kept his mind on his work.
The pace in the greenhouse changed. Acacia often came to ask Osprey things, while Crane spent more time advising Osprey than he ever had with Rosethorn. Osprey always had questions and needed to check almost every step with Crane, which maddened Briar. He wanted to order Acacia to show some backbone and Osprey to let Crane work. One day went by, then two, then three: every minute that Crane was distracted was a minute taken from Rosethorn’s life. They had found no more keys since her last discovery. Each night, when the crew left the greenhouse, Briar looked for a steady bright glow over the wall between them and Bit Island, hoping not to see it. It was the fires in the vast pit where the dead were burned, and it was always there.
At midmorning of the third day, the clamor of tolling bells in Summersea got louder, making the glass on his counter wobble. Then Briar realized it wasn’t city bells, but the Hub bell, that clanged so mournfully.
“What is it?” asked Tris. “What happened?”
“One of our own died,” Osprey replied, making the gods-circle on her chest.
“Who?” asked Tris. No one knew. Neither Sandry nor Daja, caring for Rosethorn, had any idea of who it was.
That night, when Briar and Tris came home and looked in on Rosethorn, they found Lark with her. The women clasped each other’s gloved hands; both had reddened, puffy eyes, as if they’d been weeping.
“Henna,” Rosethorn said to Briar. “The fever. That cursed fever!”
“Her magic,” Briar whispered numbly. “She said she always kept enough back to burn it out—”
“Except she didn’t,” Lark said bitterly. “Willow-water told me she was helping a couple of sick novices.”
Briar stared at Rosethorn, frightened. Rosethorn’s eyes were glassy; her lips were dry and peeling. She was feverish. It was as if death circled his teacher.
Quietly he poured a cupful of willowbark tea and brought it to her.
“I am so sick of this rubbish!” cried Rosethorn, glaring at him. “I swear, I’m going to float away in a sea of horse urine!”
“Oh, no, love,” said Lark, taking the cup from Briar. “I assure you, horse urine is much more strongly flavored.”
Rosethorn, Briar, and Tris stared at her in horror. “How—?” began Rosethorn.
“You don’t want to know,” Lark replied solemnly. “It’s better to drink this.”
Rosethorn stared at her, then drank the tea down.
Lark winked at Tris and Briar. “You just have to know how to talk to her.”
Normally Rosethorn would have groaned and thrown a pillow at Lark. Tonight she only smiled and lay back. Lark nodded to the door with her head; Tris and Briar left.
It was the first time since her return from the greenhouse that Rosethorn had no notes to send back to Crane.
In bed that night, Briar dreamed he searched for Rosethorn in a foggy place, knowing she was there bu
t unable to see her. The fear that she was lost—that she might be hurt, or worse—made it impossible to breathe.
He woke with a start, facedown in his pillow. His room smelled like night terrors and sweat without the shakkan to sweeten the air. Disgusted, he walked out into the main room, dragging his blanket, and lay it on the floor next to the dog. Tris was curled in a knot before the gods’ shrine in the corner, clutching her blanket to her chest. Briar covered her more thoroughly.
Sandry joined them a few minutes later with her own covers. Daja thumped down the stairs with hers. Hearing Daja, Lark came from Rosethorn’s room and looked them over. “I’ll get pallets in here tomorrow, if you want to do this,” she said quietly. Daja, Briar, and Sandry—Tris had not woken—nodded.
Briar was just setting up the next morning when he saw white light shimmering in the shiny surfaces around him. Tris yipped with glee, clapping her hands. The boy turned.
Crane was removing a pair of trays from his personal cabinet, where he kept his experiments. They blazed hotly, marking the first breakthroughs since Rosethorn had gone. Once he’d put them on his worktable, Crane turned to Tris. “There is hardly a need for such enthusiasm,” he drawled. “It was bound to happen at some point.”
“But two of them!” Tris pointed out, refusing to be deflated. “Two!” Looking at Crane’s drooping frame, the girl shook her head. “I’ll be happy for both of us,” she said, uncovering her inks.
The more emotional he feels, the limper he acts, thought Briar. Remembering his first encounters with Crane he added, Unless he’s so furious he forgets he’s nobility. It’s like somebody taught him it’s wrong to be excited.
He reached for Sandry, who sat with Rosethorn that morning. Two? repeated Sandry, once Briar had explained the good news. That’s splendid.
Briar frowned. There was a shadow in Sandry’s mind.
No, don’t! she cried, feeling him shift to look through her eyes. She covered her face, but it was too late: Briar had seen. Rosethorn was covered with dark spots.
