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Before Evvy could reply, Briar stepped between her and Lady Zenadia with a bow. “Excuse me, my lady, but that’s not possible. I mentioned Evvy is a stone mage? She is to start lessons with Master Jebilu Stoneslicer. He comes here today, in fact.” Now he sounded like Daja the Trader. She could hide all of her feelings as she turned a bargain that would send away a buyer she despised while his coin stayed in her pocket. And I thought I could never learn from girls, he told himself wryly. Aloud he added, “But Evvy is grateful for the honor you do her.” He turned so Evvy could see the lady, without Briar stepping out from between them.
“That’s very nice,” Evvy agreed, “but I have to learn magic. My lady.”
Briar glanced at her again, startled. From Evvy’s tone, he might think she didn’t care about the money or a decent place to live. See that! he told his absent foster-sisters. She isn’t even looking at that coin!
He wished he could rub his temples — they had started to ache — but he didn’t want the lady to notice. Sometimes he wished he didn’t have to listen to all these people between his own ears, and think so many different things at once. It was tiring and confusing.
“Well.” The lady didn’t seem angry, only thoughtful. “I do not withdraw my offer — think it over. You may wish to ask Master Stoneslicer if he will teach you while you are under my roof. A stone mage in my household is no small thing, particularly not in Chammur. Pahan Moss, would you be so good as to show me the larch again?”
She purchased the larch after another half hour of inspection and chatter, always trying to draw Evvy into the conversation. Once she had bought the tree, and given Briar the instructions he would need to deliver it, she smiled at Evvy one last time. “When the pahan brings my tree, I hope you will come,” she said, cupping Evvy’s face in one hand. “You might feel differently once you see my home.” With another smile at Briar, she and her guards left.
10
The moment they were alone, Briar rounded on Evvy. “Are you daft?” he wanted to know. “You aren’t stupid, so why did I see you parade through Golden House with two Vipers? Did you forget they tried to kidnap you?”
“But they aren’t Vipers,” argued Evvy. “It was Mai and Douna from Camelgut.”
“Not anymore,” Briar said. “They’re Vipers now.”
“Mai and Douna are still the same as they ever were.” Evvy’s face was as stubborn as his. “Anyway, what difference does it make? You were talking with their takameri.”
“Their takameri?” Briar felt confused, a normal state when he conversed with her. “What are you talking about?”
Evvy shook her head, saddened by his ignorance. “Their takameri. The rich woman who gives them weapons and things. That was her, the one that bought your tree.”
Briar looked at the tracery of vines under the skin of his left hand, following one stem with his right finger as he thought. Lady Zenadia was the woman who had bought the Vipers their blackjacks?
She tried to hire Evvy, he remembered. Maybe the Vipers still wanted Evvy, even though he’d told the girl yesterday that he would never let her join them. Maybe they — or their wealthy sponsor — had decided to try other ways to get her. Was that so bad, if Lady Zenadia wanted to educate her? A woman of money and power could protect Evvy if Jebilu Stoneslicer turned nasty.
No. If the Vipers didn’t know how to act like a proper gang, then the Money-Bag female who sponsored them knew even less. He couldn’t forget the feeling that she had tried to buy Evvy for her house, just as she had bought the miniature larch.
But she could give Evvy so many things he could not — if only she could be trusted to treat Evvy like a human being. “Do you want to live with her?” he asked, curious. “You’d eat well, get a proper education, living with someone like that.”
They were interrupted as six panting slaves carrying a litter came down the aisle to halt in front of Briar’s stall. The litter was elegant, every inch of wood beautifully carved. The curtains were brocade, the cushions silk. As the bearers waited, their muscles straining, Master Jebilu Stoneslicer climbed out. The stone mage wore brown satin today, a long, high-collared tunic coat crusted on every hem with gold embroidery. White lawn shirt cuffs showed under the coat sleeves. He wore black satin trousers and pointed slippers studded with jewels. All of those colors combined to make him look more sallow than ever. The bearers, relieved of their burden, sank to the ground with the litter.
Jebilu glared at Briar. “Well?” he demanded. “Where is she?”
Evvy had ducked behind Briar. Feeling like a traitor, he stepped aside. “Evvy, this is Master — Pahan — Jebilu Stoneslicer. The only trained stone mage in all Chammur, it so happens.” He challenged the older man with his eyes, daring him to admit he’d driven off the other stone mages.
Stoneslicer wasn’t even looking at him, but at Evvy. “Come forward, girl,” he ordered. Fumbling in his belt-purse, he produced a round piece of obsidian. He raised it in his hand. Evvy backed up. “I need to see if you are truly gifted and how far your talents extend,” he said coldly. “I cannot rely on the testimony of two green mages as to your power.” The look he gave Briar would have curdled milk.
Once more Briar locked his hands behind his back. He was very unhappy to realize he didn’t want to give Evvy up to this man. Jebilu didn’t know who Evvy was or where she’d come from. If he had a kinder side, Briar had yet to see it. While none of his or the girls’ teachers had ever laid a hand on them — Rosethorn’s threats to the contrary — Briar knew some teachers believed that beatings made lessons stick. Could he trust Jebilu not to hurt Evvy in body or spirit?
If he beats her, I’ll kill him, Briar promised himself, trying not to remember that in all likelihood he would be gone. And a real stone mage has to be a better teacher for her than a kid green mage. Doesn’t he?
Jebilu pressed the obsidian circle to Evvy’s forehead. For a moment nothing happened: then the stone blazed white. Its glare was as intense as the light Briar had seen Evvy give off the day before.
Jebilu muttered something and the light faded. He tucked the circle into his belt-purse and drew out an egg-shaped clear crystal. “Bring light to this,” he ordered, holding it out to Evvy.
She didn’t say “Oh, that” — she simply touched it. A seed of light appeared in the crystal’s depths, growing until the whole stone gave off a steady glow.
Jebilu closed his hand around the crystal. By the time he returned it to his belt-purse, it had gone dark again. He offered her a small brownish-gold globe stippled with black marks. “Bring heat to this,” he ordered.
Evvy took it, then handed it back. “That isn’t real stone,” she objected. “It’s hard, but it isn’t stone.”
Jebilu snorted. “Petrified wood,” he grumbled.
“May I see?” Briar asked. Coal, he knew, was made of plants, but he hadn’t realized that wood could be made stone.
Jebilu scowled at him. “This is a delicate magical tool, Pahan Moss,” he snapped. “Not a toy for curiosity seekers.”
Briar bit the inside of his cheek. He counted silently to fifty in Imperial, to keep from telling this man to put the globe someplace uncomfortable.
Jebilu put the petrified wood in his purse and pulled out a dirty white stone. “Use this. What is your name?”
“Evumeimei,” the girl replied, taking the stone. “Evumeimei Dingzai, of Yanjing.” She turned the stone over in her fingers. “There’s cracks in this. I might break it.”
“No one can break diamond stones, Evumeimei Dingzai of Yanjing.” Jebilu made her name sound like an insult. “Heat it up. Pahan Moss told me you can do it.”
Evvy sighed, and closed her eyes. Briar saw the pale brilliance of her magic appear at the center of her forehead, lancing into the diamond stone in a tight stream. She had practiced last night, he realized. She went home and practiced, and got better. And she was still alive, so she had been able to keep her power under control. He felt an absurd sense of pride in her flower in his ches
t.
Her magic entered the stone. To Briar’s eyes the heart of the stone shimmered with it. The light began to ricochet inside the rock, bouncing through an internal network of cracks and faces. Slowly real, visible white light began to pour from it. “It’s not heating up,” Evvy said. Sweat gathered at her temples.
“Try harder,” ordered Jebilu crossly.
Scowling first at him, then at the stone in her hand, Evvy increased the flow of her power. Briar watched uneasily as her magic ricocheted faster through the stone’s heart. “Evvy, maybe you should let this go —” he began.
“Silence!” barked Jebilu. “You are not to teach her, so let me test her as I see fit!”
Evvy flinched and lost control of her power. It flooded the stone. The crystal blazed, then shattered. Evvy cried out and dropped the pieces on the floor. She was hurt: blood welled from a cut in her palm.
Briar ducked into his stall. He yanked a bandage and a bottle of cutbane from his kit. Grasping her bleeding hand by the wrist, Briar bit into the cork that sealed his lotion and yanked it free. He poured the liquid over her wound.
Though she was trembling, she still found the nerve to quip, “Don’t you make anything that doesn’t stink?” The flow of blood thinned, the slashed skin in her hand closing under the Cutbane’s influence.
“I like aloe, and I’ll thank you not to insult my stuff.” Briar wrapped the bandage firmly around her hand. When he felt he had enough layers of cloth around her palm, he ordered the linen to part, and the loose threads to weave themselves into the rest of the bandage. It wouldn’t come off now unless cut.
Finishing, he saw Jebilu on his knees, holding the three diamond fragments up to the sun that streamed from a nearby window. One was smeared with blood. The other two glittered with fire like a faceted crystal, only more intensely. Jebilu’s face was gray under its sallow tone. He wrapped the three pieces in a handkerchief, and stowed them in his purse.
She’s stronger than he is, Briar realized, uneasy. And he knows it.
What would Rosethorn have done if he’d been stronger when he came to her? Briar double-checked the fastening of the bandage, stifling a snort. No one was stronger than Rosethorn. Even if Briar had been stronger than his teacher, he didn’t have Rosethorn’s years of study and practice.
Jebilu lurched to his feet. “Where are your things?” he demanded, sweat rolling down his cheeks. “I will house you with the chief palace scribe, since you refuse to live in the palace. His wife is a firm parent who knows to keep an eye on you. We have time to settle you among them —”
“No,” Evvy said flatly. She ran her fingers over her freshly-bandaged hand, then looked at Jebilu and Briar. “I’m not going.”
“I am the only one who can teach you, girl,” Jebilu began, his face stained orange with anger. “Do not take that tone with me!”
“I don’t like you and I’m not studying with you,” Evvy retorted, glaring up into his face. “And nobody in the world can make me do it. I figured I’d look at you because Pahan Briar thought it was important. Now that I’ve seen you, though, I can tell it was just another of his strange notions, like belonging to a gang.”
Jebilu glared at Briar. “This is what comes of dealing with guttersnipes,” he snapped, trembling with fury. “They have no sense of the honor being done them, or of gratitude.”
“Why should she feel grateful?” Briar inquired, curious. “You’ve treated her like a slave since you got here.”
“I know your kind,” Evvy told Jebilu. “You’ll treat me like dirt and kiss the bum of anyone with money. I may be a guttersnipe, but you’re a zernamus. Any learning you dish out will be as rancid as month-old butter.”
Jebilu pointed a quivering finger at Briar. “This is not my fault!” he cried. “Tell that — female I was prepared to do my duty and was refused!” He crawled into his litter and yanked the curtains around him. The slaves picked the litter up with a grunt of effort and carried the stone mage out of Golden House.
Briar looked at Evvy with the same kind of awe as he gave to Rosethorn when the woman’s temper got the better of her. If Evvy had planned every word, she could not have chosen a speech better calculated to burn Jebilu twelve ways from midday.
I’d say the guttersnipe won this game, he thought. And my problem is the same as it was before Rosethorn went to talk to old Jooba-hooba. Somebody has to teach this kid the basics, and I suppose that somebody is me. “So what’s a zernamus?” he asked mildly.
Evvy had been watching him, one shoulder hitched up defensively, as if she expected him to hit her. Down came the shoulder; she grinned. “Someone who lives off the rich, like a tick that sucks money instead of blood.”
Briar shook his head. “He would have been a rotten teacher anyway.”
“I thought so. Can we eat?” asked Evvy cheerfully.
“You don’t understand,” Briar said, trying to make her see it as he did. “The only rocks I ever studied were the kinds that could be spelled to make plants grow better, like malachite. Even that way it’s easier to lay magic on the fertilizer or the seed, because the stone fights me.”
“Well, malachite’s a lesson,” Evvy said, perching on Briar’s high stool. “You’ll think of something, Pahan Briar. You’re awful smart. And you don’t think you’re better than people just because there’s silver in your pocket.”
She doesn’t know, Briar thought, bewildered and scared. She thinks I’m an adult who knows things. She sees a pahan, not a fourteen-year-old kid who’s spent the last four years with his nose in the dirt.
Had Rosethorn ever felt this way? As if he thought her perfect, and might be disappointed if he found she was human after all?
Talk Evvy around, argued a cooler part of himself. Talk her around and talk Jooba-hooba around. You could maybe do it. You talk a fair stitch when you want to.
Did he want to?
She needs to learn to read and write, he thought; I can teach her that. I remember how Tris taught me. Same with sums, and learning the stars, and how to use paper and ink. I can teach the meditating. Earth temple has to have some books about stones and stone magic, and we can find her a stone mage once we leave Chammur.
It could be done. But how was he to tell Rosethorn? He knew it was good for the student to live close to or even with the teacher. Rosethorn definitely would not like it, if he brought another resident into their home. She might say he should have made Evvy listen to Jebilu.
“We ought to live in the same place,” he remarked quietly.
She had remained silent on her perch for as long as he’d been thinking, not distracting him with chatter. Now he saw worry in her eyes. “I can’t leave my cats,” she replied. “I just can’t. Please don’t ask me.”
He and the girls had all agreed that their dog Little Bear should go with Tris, who would have missed him the most. Still, it had hurt Briar to see Little Bear walk onto a ship without him, and Little Bear was a shared dog, not his alone. What would it be like, to be forced to give up a pet?
He chewed on a thumbnail. I could find another house, maybe near Rosethorn, he decided, reviewing the amount of cash he’d left with the Earth temple treasurer. He had plenty, but he always liked a plump money cushion, just in case. It was a good thing Lady Zenadia had bought the larch, or at least, it would be good once Briar had the coin in hand. Nobles often changed their minds when they got home and added up their accounts.
“You’re more trouble than you’re worth,” he informed Evvy tartly.
She shrugged. “I’m a girl. That’s my job.”
He grinned at that — it fit the girls he knew — then sobered. “I didn’t mean that,” he apologized. “About you being trouble. I’m just not sure I’d be a very good teacher.”
“You have to be better than Jooba-hooba,” she said.
“Not like that’s saying much,” he retorted. “That —”
“Hey — tree people!” someone said sharply, interrupting.
Briar and Evvy looked u
p. Two of the three Gate Lords who had passed by earlier had returned. Their morning’s good mood had vanished: they looked hot and cross as they walked up to the booth.
The female, a black girl of Briar’s age, pointed to Evvy. “What did they do with him?” she demanded sharply. “Your two friends? We saw him talking with them, and that’s the last we saw of him.”
“They’re just people I know,” Evvy protested. “And who’s ‘him'?”
“Our tesku, brat,” said the male Gate Lord, a brown-skinned youth of seventeen. He reached over the counter and grabbed Evvy’s shirt-front, dragging her toward him. “And if you’re friends with Vipers, you’re a Viper —” He looked to the side, to the dagger Briar had gently laid against his face.
“She isn’t a Viper and you just annoyed me,” Briar told him softly. “If you don’t want a third nostril, let her go.”
“She runs with Vipers,” objected the girl. “Or gutter slime that let go their true gang to join Vipers.”
Briar saw the girl was moving to the side, ready to grab Evvy’s arm when her mate let Evvy go. Briar woke the willow and the fig trees, releasing years’ worth of growth into their branches. As soon as the Gate Lord girl was within reach of the miniature, he turned them loose.
Wire-thin branches twined around her arm and neck as Briar called on the essence of the full-sized tree at the heart of each miniature. Though the girl’s bonds were flexible, slender branches, she felt as if she were locked in the limbs of a full-grown willow and a full-grown fig. “Pahan,” whispered the girl, her dusky skin gone ashy with fright.
“Now back off,” Briar told the male Gate Lord. “I get any more vexed and I can’t promise what I will and won’t do.”
The youth released Evvy, held up his hands to show they were empty, and waited for Briar to lower his knife. When Briar did, the Gate Lord took three slow steps back. “If she ain’t a Viper, does she know what those two done with our tesku?” he asked. “He was talking to them, and no one’s seen him since.”
Evvy shook her head. She smoothed her blouse with a shaking hand. “They just wanted to say hello to Pahan Briar,” she mumbled.
