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“Dunno if that’s good or bad,” he admitted, and trudged on.
Here was a buttercup, its yellow so vivid in all that gray rock that it had the effect of a shout. Here was a clump of moss. He covered it with his palm for a moment, refreshed by that velvet coolness on his skin. He moved on, the ball in his hands the size of a melon.
His feet were bleeding when he found a patch of purple and violet crocuses that had thrust cobblestones from the road. He began to run. Crocuses were Rosethorn’s favorite spring flower: she had talked about their arrival for a month.
Running got harder. The plants were rioting, overturning stones, leaving holes for an unwary boy to wrench his ankle if he didn’t look sharp. The gray buildings shrank as he found more living things. Finally they vanished altogether. So too did the cobblestone road, giving way to a broad carpet of lush grass. It lay before a stretch of wrought-iron fence nearly fifteen feet high.
He put down the ball of thread. Now it moved on its own, rolling itself up as it traveled. It didn’t have far to go: there was an open gate in the fence. Inside stood Rosethorn, looking over her new domain.
Briar hesitated. He couldn’t see her face, but he knew the set of her back, the will in those hands planted so firmly on her hips. Ahead of her lay a vast garden in chaos. Trees, bushes, and flowers did battle with weeds, and lost. A fountain bubbled as if it gasped for life, its spouts clogged with moss, its drains stopped with dead leaves. Some type of climbing vine Briar had never seen before had laid claim to everything to his left. It was a gardener’s dream, a mess that would take months, even years, to return to its proper glory.
His fingers itched, too. Like his teacher, he did enjoy a challenge.
Not this challenge! cried Sandry. She strained to hold onto him. There are challenges back home, for both of you!
The ball of thread rolled to Rosethorn’s feet and vanished into her. Startled, she turned and saw Briar.
Her eyebrows came together with a nearly audible click; her red mouth pursed. She looked better—healthier, more alive—than she had in weeks. “Absolutely not,” she said firmly. “Turn right back around. Girls,” she called, “bring him in!”
“Nope,” he informed her. “Not without you.”
“Don’t be absurd,” she snapped. “You have a long life in store.”
“So do you,” he replied stubbornly.
“I did good work, I did important work, and now it’s over. Perhaps I didn’t want it this way and this soon, but you can see there’s another lifetime’s worth of labor here.” She looked over her shoulder at that garden, which so clearly needed someone very good to look after it. Cleaned up properly, it would be magnificent.
“I don’t care,” Briar said flatly. “We don’t belong here. We belong with the girls and Little Bear. And Niko, and Frostpine,” he added, seeing her flinch at each name, knowing it gave her pain to hear them, and not caring. She wanted to leave him! “—and—yes, Crane! You’d be leaving him behind. What of Lark? Her most of all—tell me that don’t matter to you.”
Rosethorn looked down, her mouth working.
“Come home,” whispered Briar.
She came over and hugged him fiercely, then let him go. Briar trembled. She looked solid enough, but she felt transparent. If a whisper had a body, that was what he’d embraced. “I’m tired,” she told him softly. “Tired to the bone. I want to rest.”
“Rest at home,” he repeated stubbornly.
“Briar, it’s my time, and it isn’t yours. Go back to the girls. You’ll break their hearts if you get lost here.” She turned to pick up a basket and shears he hadn’t seen in the grass before that moment.
“You’re breaking my heart,” he said quietly.
She straightened, her back to him. “I can’t go back,” she said patiently. “It will hurt.”
“’Scuze me for thinking it’s worth it to pick up a few ouches!” he cried. She was not coming back for any street rat. Briar had playmates to look after him. Briar didn’t need a great plant-mage who kept his heart in her pocket. “‘Scuze me for thinking maybe you liked me enough to want to come home!”
“I like you, boy,” she said gruffly. “I love you. And I am dead. That’s that.”
He took a breath. Here was the end of the debate. She wouldn’t change her mind, not now. Already he could feel Sandry’s grip on him fray. They were never supposed to have been able to do this in the first place.
“Fine,” he said. He turned, wrapping Sandry’s ties to him around his waist. A knife had appeared in the grass by his feet. Had the garden appeared for Rosethorn in this same convenient way? the boy wondered. He scooped the knife up one-handed and began to gather the threads into a rope he could cut.
Rosethorn was always suspicious when he agreed with her. She turned. “What’s fine?”
“This. Here.” It was harder to gather the threads of his connection to Sandry than he’d expected. She fought, commanding the hair-fine strands to twitch from his grasp. Briar struggled with them—with her. With Daja, feeding the strength of stone to her, and Tris, adding lightning, and the shakkan its terrible, unmoving calm, an old tree’s patience. “I’ll stay here and help.” He cast a look at the overgrown park. The vine that covered that side of the garden had the nasty look of something that would throw out new shoots as the old ones were clipped off. “You’ll need it.”
“Absolutely not!” cried Rosethorn. “You are going home. The girls—”
“They’ll miss me, and I’m sorry for that, but they got their teachers, and Lark to make a home. They’ll manage. I can’t. I’m staying.” He began to saw at the fibers, cutting them handful by handful.
The girls argued furiously, refusing to accept his choice. Daja and Tris passed still more of their strength to Sandry. The shakkan did not argue. It could only wait.
“Stop fussing!” Briar ordered his friends. “You know why I’m doing this, so let me do it!”
A surge of fresh magic boiled down the tie that bound him to them as he fought to cut the last of it. It wrapped around him like a loop of rope and held him fast.
“Idiots,” Rosethorn said, pale and frightened now. “You’ll all die—”
Briar gave up trying to reason with them. He sat. The final loop of magic popped over his head as if he’d been oiled. Sandry shrieked in fury and hurled a fine thread around his wrist before they lost him. The thread strained.
“I stay,” Briar told Rosethorn. “With you.”
With a sigh, Rosethorn dropped the shears and basket, then knelt, folding her arms around him. “You will regret this for the rest of your life,” she whispered. “I’m going to see to it.”
He wrapped his hands firmly around her wrists, in case she changed her mind abruptly. “I know,” he said cheerfully. To the girls he said, “Reel us in.”
“Don’t you ever do that again!”
That was Lark, he thought sleepily. Only why was Lark upset? She was shouting.
He yawned and sat up. His right hand was cramping fiercely. He looked for the answer and saw that he still clutched Rosethorn’s hand.
“Rosethorn!” he cried, trying to get up. He was on the floor, and the bed was in his way. “Rosethorn!”
Somehow he got his legs under him and rose to his knees, all the while still gripping her fingers. If he let go, he would lose her. He was a little fuzzy just now, but he remembered that much perfectly.
Rosethorn opened her eyes and coughed. She continued to cough, trying to yank her hand free so she might cover her mouth. On the other side of her bed a woman in a gold-bordered blue habit helped Rosethorn to sit and gave her something to drink. Rosethorn gulped frantically, spraying water from the sides of her mouth. Her coughing eased; she lay back, gasping.
She was alive, then. He could let go.
That was easier thought than done. The cramps in his fingers made it necessary to pry them open, one at a time. When he finally let Rosethorn go, she drew her hand away.
Moonstream—the wo
man in the gold-bordered habit—regarded Briar, an odd look in her dark eyes. She reached across the bed, cupping his cheek in a hand that smelled faintly like cinnamon, and pursed her plum-colored lips. Magic flowed like cool mist through him, spreading to fill his corners. In the wake of that mist he felt calmer, more solid. More alive.
At last the Dedicate Superior of Winding Circle drew her hand away. Briar looked around. The girls sat between him and the door, looking as rumpled and shocked as he felt. Lark was on her knees beside Sandry, holding the girl tight.
“I am very upset with all of you!” she said, glaring at Briar. “You deliberately disobeyed me!” Her words notwithstanding, she kissed the top of Sandry’s head.
“Your eyes are all wet,” murmured Tris, reaching up to brush the damp from Lark’s cheeks. The distance between them was too great, and Tris seemed too weak to get up.
Niko stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. His eyes were huge with shock. When he smoothed his mustache, Briar could see he was trembling.
“We’re all right, Niko,” Sandry assured him. “We’re just a little tired.”
“Just a bit,” Daja mumbled. She dragged her knees up so she could rest her head on them.
Briar remembered something important. “Pneumonia,” he told Moonstream hurriedly. “She has pneumonia and she’s gonna die—”
“Calm down,” Moonstream told him. “I’ll see to it.” She laid one of her palms on the pulse in Rosethorn’s neck.
Silver glimmered and faded. Moonstream looked at Rosethorn, whose eyes met hers. “Well,” the Dedicate Superior remarked, taking her hand from Rosethorn’s throat. “You had pneumonia. Your lungs are perfectly clear now.”
“Maybe we burned it out?” Tris inquired, her voice rasping. “Things were—complicated.” She removed her spectacles and rubbed her eyes.
“What happened to Sealwort?” Daja asked, furious. “He never came!”
“Leave Sealwort to me,” replied Lark, her eyes cold. “He probably said he’d come just to get rid of me.”
“I will talk to Sealwort,” Moonstream said firmly. “I’d prefer if everything that happened today were kept as quiet as possible, if you don’t mind.”
Rosethorn tugged weakly at Moonstream’s sleeve and opened her mouth. No sound came out. She gasped, and tried again. Only garbled sounds without sense emerged. Scrambling, the three girls crowded around the bed.
“She can’t talk?” demanded Briar, frightened. “Why can’t she? Did we do something? Did I do something?” She had a seizure—how long had she gone without breathing? Was she to spend her life unable to speak?
Rosethorn gripped his arm.
Calm down, she said, her magic every bit as weak as her arms. I choked, didn’t I?
“She choked,” Briar said pleadingly to Moonstream. “She turned blue.”
Once again Moonstream rested a hand against the pulse in Rosethorn’s throat. Since Rosethorn still held onto him, Briar felt that drift of mist that was Moonstream’s power in motion. It spread into Rosethorn’s brain, idly questing as a real fog might hunt for a door to fit into.
“A small part of her mind died when she stopped breathing,” Moonstream told her audience. “Very small. She only needs to learn how to speak again, and she will be her old self.” The mist drew back into Moonstream, and she lowered her hand. “They must have grabbed you at the very moment you passed on.”
Rosethorn tugged at Moonstream’s arm and pointed firmly at Briar.
“Briar grabbed you,” Moonstream said, understanding. She held Briar’s eyes with hers. “You were warned about what could happen. What should have happened.”
All four young people nodded. Sandry, an obedient girl, was shamefaced. Daja shrugged; Tris fiddled with her spectacles. Briar met Moonstream’s calm brown gaze with defiance. He would do it again.
Moonstream shook her head, then looked at Niko and Lark. “It would be a very good idea if no one ever talked about this,” she said quietly. “A very good idea. This—” She motioned to Rosethorn, who nodded. “This has never happened. I don’t know how it did happen, and I don’t want to know.”
Briar and the girls exchanged looks. They knew.
Two months later, after the noon meal, the four retired to their favorite lounging place, the roof of Discipline. Cushioned by fragrant thatch they’d all helped to replace three weeks before, they draped themselves around the chimney and watched clouds. Around them was the great bowl that encompassed the temple city, with the Hub tower as its axle. Shriek the starling perched on top of the cold chimney, taunting other starlings as they flew by. If the four glanced into the hatchway that led into the house, they could see Little Bear curled up on the attic floor, mournfully awaiting their return. Lark was in her workroom. They’d left Rosethorn at the table, writing a letter.
Steps sounded on wood; the ladder creaked. Briar and Daja, just on the other side of the peak of the roof, crawled up to see who was coming.
A gray-and-black head poked up through the opening in the thatch. “Bless me, I don’t see how you keep from breaking your necks,” remarked Niko. “I would be scared to death.” Climbing a little more, he sat on the edge of the opening, trying not to look over the roof’s edge. Clothed with his usual elegance, he was out of place on the thatch. Briar chuckled, looking at him.
“The view is good from up here,” Daja explained drowsily as she folded herself over the peak. “And it’s nice and warm.”
“I’m getting freckles,” commented Tris, leaning on the chimney.
“Do you know what today is?” Sandry asked them.
“My birthday?” asked Briar drily. She pestered him about that still.
“If you want it,” Sandry replied. “But I was actually thinking it was our birthday, in a manner of speaking.”
They all looked at her, even Niko, unsure of what she meant.
“A year ago today, Tris and I came to Discipline.” Sandry beamed at them all. “It was the first time the four of us were together.”
Briar whistled. “Doesn’t seem that long ago.”
“It does and it doesn’t,” remarked Daja. Looking at her three friends, she shook her head. “I never expected things to turn out as they have.”
“Who could?” Tris inquired. “We didn’t know we had magic, for one thing.”
“Niko did,” replied Daja with a glance at the man. “Just like you knew where we were, when no one else did—”
“Or no one else cared,” murmured Briar.
Niko surveyed each of them. “Things didn’t turn out as I expected, either,” he admitted.
“What did you expect?” Sandry asked, curious.
Niko’s smile was wry. “I expected to pick up some young mages, find them teachers, and go on my way. I never thought to endure earthquakes, pirates, forest fires, and plagues with them, or to be forced to revise my knowledge of how magic is shaped. I had forgotten that there is never a point at which we stop learning, or needing to learn. You remind me of that every day—whether I wish such a reminder or not.”
Sandry reached over to pat his hand. “You’re doing very well,” she said in her most Larkish manner. She glanced below and got to her feet. “Oh, look,” she cried, pointing toward the north gate. “It’s Uncle. We’re going riding, and I haven’t changed yet!” She waved gleefully to a distant company of riders. Their leader waved back to her.
Niko shuddered. “Don’t jump around like that,” he said, shifting so he could climb down the ladder into the house. “It makes me nervous. Coming, Tris?”
“Coming,” she replied, getting up. She followed Sandry inside.
“Got to go,” Daja said, glancing at the Hub clock. “Frostpine wants to clean the forge this afternoon.”
Briar smirked. “Better wash before you come home,” he advised.
“I mean to,” she said, and left him in possession of the roof.
The Hub clock banged out the second hour of the afternoon. The midday rest period was over. Briar
stared at clouds and thought of birthdays. He really ought to decide on one. After long meditation, he’d decided he looked forward to having a birthday. For one thing, it would mean a cake. How could he turn down extra food?
Today?
No. Like she’d said, today was a birthday for them, for that lumpy circle of thread Sandry was forever carrying about.
He’d decided against Midsummer. That was Rosethorn’s, even if she did hide it in the templewide celebration of the summer solstice. It had occurred to him that he ought to have a day that was his, to mark how far he’d come, and who he had been. It should be a day with meaning for both Roach and Briar, for the street rat and the mage. It ought to be a green day: one of Roach’s calmest memories was of a patch of moss in a dank jail cell, a bit of comfort where he’d expected none. It wasn’t the day that a Bag calling himself Niklaren Goldeye bought Roach free of the Hajra docks; Niko had then dragged Roach all the way to Emelan and Winding Circle, even if he called that boy the brand-new name of Briar Moss. Briar had also considered the day he stole the shakkan, and discarded it, as well as a handful of others.
The day that had changed him for all time, that had marked the turning from Roach to Briar, had been a day he’d come to this same roof. He’d been lazing, watching clouds, and thinking of nothing, when his contemplation had been interrupted….
“Come on, boy!” a gleeful voice cried from the garden below. “You’re wasting daylight!”
It was the same voice that called to him now. He got to his feet with a sigh, but the truth was, he didn’t want to waste the light either. You never knew when you’d need it and not have it.
“What’s the chore today?” he yelled down to Rosethorn.
“Weeding!” she called back. “It’s summer, isn’t it? So it’s always weeding!”
Her speech was a little slurred and might always be. Still, she could speak clearly. Better yet, her mind was as sharp as ever.
She had called to him to come down and work in her garden the day after his arrival at Discipline, the twentieth day of Goose Moon—which was tomorrow. The girls would be vexed at getting so little time to prepare, but they would adjust. They would know, as he did, that his life began when Rosethorn had invited him into her world.
