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“Let my friend go,” the youth told Briar. “We’ll be about our business then.”
Sweat came to Briar’s forehead. It was much harder to get miniature trees to reabsorb all that wonderful new growth and return to being small again. Even though he drew away the strength of their sprouting, letting its power spill into the air, he would have to do serious pruning to return them to their original state. The fig, sensing his plan, instantly started to complain.
When the trees let her go, the female Gate Lord scurried off with her friend. Both of them looked back over their shoulders at Briar to make sure he didn’t follow.
“Are you happy?” Evvy demanded, her lips trembling. “This is what happens with gangs. You don’t have to belong to one — just be in the way when they get a notion into their heads. And if you do belong, it’s worse.”
He would have told her she was wrong, but he knew she wasn’t. He remembered the times he and his mates would charge through a market, overturning baskets, scaring donkeys, and pulling down awnings. They would single out a man or woman walking down the street and flock around that person, cutting him or her off from other passersby, tugging on clothes, pinching or patting, giggling as their prey grew more and more frightened. As part of the gang, he’d thought it funny. It didn’t seem amusing just now.
“You don’t understand,” he replied at last. “Your gang’s who you have when you don’t have anyone else.”
“For you, maybe. For me, it’s one more pack of wild dogs looking to tear me apart.” Evvy brushed away something that looked uncomfortably like a tear and smoothed her blouse again.
Rather than defend it, knowing he couldn’t, Briar went for food, leaving Evvy in the stall with the trees. They would keep her safe if anyone else bothered her. Making his purchases, Briar kept his eyes and ears open. The Gate Lords were everywhere, making guards edgy as they searched behind curtains and stalls. The Vipers appeared to have left the souk — Briar didn’t see any of them.
He and Evvy ate their midday in silence. She stayed close for the remainder of the afternoon, while Briar worked on trees and talked to people. A second noble and a wealthy mage both expressed interest in trees, and told Briar they would send word if they chose to buy. He thought the mage would follow through, though he wasn’t sure about the noble.
Finally it was time to go. Evvy retrieved the donkeys he’d rented from the market stables and helped him to load his trees in their special carry-baskets. After making sure they’d left the stall as clean as it had been when Briar arrived that morning, they led the donkeys outside. The sun was already below the western wall, though higher buildings still got plenty of light.
They hadn’t gone far from the souk when a woman in the full-length veil-cocoon worn by the strictest Mohunites walked up to them. ”Pahan Briar, may I walk with you? Just ‘til we’re out of Gate Lord territory?”
He glared at her. “I don’t even know you,” he snapped. He was tired, headachy, and not at all ready for his talk with Rosethorn.
The woman unhooked the section of pale blue cloth that covered all of her face but her eyes to let him see her: Mai. Her eyes were red and puffy from weeping; tears had made tracks down her dirty cheeks. Parts of the veil-cocoon were still wet — she must have stolen it from a drying line. “Please, pahan, don’t send me away. The Gate Lords killed Douna.” She began to weep again. “If they find me, they’ll kill me, too.”
Briar went cold all over. Just a day ago Douna had fetched him to the Camelgut den. He wanted it to be a story, but he knew it wasn’t. He knew the look of someone who’d just lost a mate. “Evvy already got threatened by Gate Lords just for being with you two,” he said, trying to sound cold. “See if your takameri will protect you.”
Mai wiped her eyes on her sleeve, then fastened the face veil again. “I don’t want anything from that —” The word she used was so raw that Evvy yelped and covered her ears. “Just let me come as far as Cedar Lane.”
Briar had been as tough as he could be when a girl he liked stared at him with heartbreak in her eyes. “All right,” he said gruffly. “Walk on the side of that middle donkey. Put a hand on the basket like you’re holding it steady.”
Mai did as she was told. There were Gate Lords everywhere in the crush of people leaving Golden House and the Grand Bazaar. Two of them started toward Briar’s donkeys, but the girl who’d been captured by the willow and the fig stopped them. Briar, Evvy, and the disguised Mai walked away from the gang searchers in safety.
Briar waited until he hadn’t seen a Gate Lord for five blocks before he walked up beside Mai. “Why’d they kill Douna?” he wanted to know. “Didn’t you tell them you had nothing to do with their tesku?”
Mai looked away.
“Lakik Trickster take you both!” he snapped. “You did it, didn’t you? You snatched the head of another gang! Nobody does that!”
“It wasn’t us that took him,” Mai replied sullenly. “We just lured him to Ikrum and the others. They said we had to, to prove we were worthy to be Vipers. If you’d ever been in a gang, you’d know.”
Briar did know. But the gang hadn’t saved Douna, had it? The Vipers had let her and Mai wander off alone, outside the safety of the group. They’d let them go, knowing the Gate Lords would remember who had been seen last with their leader.
Evvy, on the lead donkey, glanced back at them. Suddenly she asked, “So Pahan Briar, if I get ganged up, I could end like Douna someday, right?”
“You aren’t in a gang?” Mai inquired, startled. “Where do you live, in the palace?”
Briar, who’d gotten the point of Evvy’s artless question, glared at her. “Enough,” he told her. “You made your point.”
“I hope so,” Evvy retorted.
When they reached the Cedar Lane fountain, Mai let the Mohunite cocoon slide off her hair. “I’ve got to tell Douna’s granddam,” she said grimly, her eyes hard. “And then I’m going back to the Vipers. Gate Lords killed Douna. We’ll make them bleed.”
“Mai, don’t.” Briar reached for her. “What good —”
“Blood for blood.” She turned down Cedar Lane, walking away from them without a backward glance.
“That’s gangs for you.” Evvy’s voice was bitter in the growing dark. “Good at hating.”
“Evvy,” Briar started to say warningly. He stopped himself. She was right.
They finished their ride in silence as Briar tried hard to think of nothing at all. He wanted Sandry, and Daja, and Tris. He wanted to be in Discipline Cottage at Winding Circle, with his own garden, his dog, his foster-sisters, and Lark. He wanted to hear Rosethorn and Crane squabble. He wanted to eat Dedicate Gorse’s cooking again. Chammur was a hard place, with no love for the people that lived among all this stone. He wanted the rains to come and wash the city right out.
When he saw the night-lantern hanging over his door, he remembered he hadn’t planned what he would say to Rosethorn about Evvy’s refusal to study with Jebilu. “Oh, pox,” he whispered as he led Evvy and the donkeys to the Earth temple stable. It was not a good idea to say just anything to Rosethorn. Desperately he planned as they helped the hostlers to care for the horses and donkeys, and promised to return for most of the miniatures in the morning.
He and Evvy carried the shakkan, the fig, the willow, and Briar’s kit home while his mind raced. He’d tell her he’d rent a house. That would blunt the worst of her anger; even Rosethorn could live with Evvy for a few days. He had to remember to say that it would just be for a few days, before he mentioned the cats. But first he should tell her about Jebilu, then give her his plan for the new house.
What had Jebilu said to make it so clear that Evvy would be miserable with him? Or was it something that Evvy had said? Briar was too tired and too depressed about Douna to remember the conversation word for word.
He and Evvy walked into the dining room, where they put the trees and the saddlebags on the table. Evvy collapsed into a chair. Briar stood with his hands in his pockets, gat
hering his wits for battle. He could sense Rosethorn as she came down the stairs from the workroom.
The direct approach — Evvy’s going to be my headache, not yours — was a mistake. It would just spark Rosethorn’s temper. He had to come at things sidelong when she was involved. When a disruption of her routine was involved. She —
Rosethorn walked in, carrying three fat, leather-bound books. She dumped them on the table between Briar and Evvy with a sigh of relief. “You’ll need these,” she said breathlessly. “To start with, anyway.”
Briar read the lettering on the spine of the topmost book. He was so tired it was hard to focus. It took three trials before the title made sense: Of Stones and Their Magic, Inherent and Retained.
When he finally understood, he gaped at Rosethorn. She had gone to fetch covered pots from the warming oven under the kitchen fire. “I cleaned out the front room and bought a pallet. The cats can do their business in the backyard, and you get to clean it up,” she added, looking at Evvy. “Start earning your keep. Dishes and bowls in that cupboard.” She pointed, and went back to the kitchen.
As Evvy brought out plates and bowls for the three of them, Briar sat heavily on a chair. She had known. Rosethorn had known, and she’d made her own decision.
“You could have said something,” he called to Rosethorn, vexed.
She emerged from the kitchen, hands on hips. “For all I knew, he would see it was time to do the right thing, and act like a man instead of an egg gone bad. I’m too hard on people — Lark’s always telling me so. I had to give him the chance to act properly.”
“He did,” Evvy remarked, setting plates on the table. “I said no. He was going to be a pig about it anyway.”
Rosethorn smiled crookedly. “I admit, I did also think you might take that attitude.”
“So I guess I was the last to know,” Briar grumbled.
“Of course you are. You’re a man, aren’t you?” Rosethorn asked evilly, ladling lamb and rice pilaf onto the plates. Evvy giggled, and Briar rested his head on his hands.
Not only am I doomed, but they’re going to laugh at me while doom happens, he thought, contentedly morose. Whyever did I leave Summersea?
11
The next morning Briar and Evvy went to Princes’ Heights to fetch her cats. Wearing racks that supported covered straw baskets, Briar and Evvy passed through the entrance to her part of the Heights, a black stone arch that some wit had named Sunrise Gate. It opened onto a broad tunnel into the rock. Briar looked around as Evvy led the way: he could see wood and stone shoring everywhere. Part of the tunnel roof was covered by a wooden ceiling. In places the wooden planks had fallen; heaps of stone and dirt lay under them.
“Don’t you worry about cave-ins?” he asked.
Evvy shrugged. “They happen all the time. Nobody thinks much about it.”
Briar shuddered and decided he wouldn’t ask any more questions.
In the wider tunnels the air was reasonably fresh. Shafts cut through into open air above, creating a breeze. It carried a rich bouquet of scents: wood smoke, burned food, rancid oil, burning fat, mildew, and rot.
Leaving the large tunnel, they turned into a smaller one, then a third. Now serious odors flooded Briar’s sensitive nose. The jelly-thick reek of too many people in a space for much too long a time made his eyes water. The stone itself had absorbed years of old urine and dung, cookfires, blood, cheap food, and death.
Briar was gasping as they entered their fifth tunnel. His nose had stopped up completely. Tears flooded down his cheeks. The light thrown off by a few torches and burning knots of wood or manure showed air filled with a gray haze.
He stopped to rearrange his burden, settling the rack lower on his shoulders. The roof was not very high in the depths. “How can you bear it?” he asked Evvy.
She frowned, confused. “Bear what?”
“The smell!”
Evvy shrugged. “I don’t smell anything.” She raised her flat-ended nose and sniffed. “Oh, all right, somebody was cooking goat last night. Don’t you like goat?”
A heap of rags by the wall cackled and turned into an old woman who struggled to sit up. “You live here long enough, my lad, and you won’t smell nothin’ either. Got anything for an old lady, Evumeimei?”
Evvy knelt by the old woman. “Maybe I do.” She pulled two rolls from her pocket: they looked suspiciously like some of the ones Rosethorn had bought for breakfast. “Qinling, chew careful,” she cautioned.
“Don’t go worrying about me,” Qinling replied. She gnawed a roll eagerly.
Evvy walked on. “I’ll miss Qinling,” she murmured just loud enough for Briar to hear. “She’s the only one who speaks Zhanzou with me.”
“What’s za — what you said?” he asked, wiping his dripping eyes on his sleeve.
“Zhanzou. The language we spoke in my province. Qinling tells me stories in it sometimes, if she’s not too drunk. This is Lambing Tunnel, what we’re on.” She led him around a turn.
Briar stopped and looked back for a moment, trying to tell if they were followed. They had passed doors and windows on the way, openings barred with wood, rags, or even bead curtains. He’d sensed people behind those barriers, peering at them, sizing them up. He half-expected them to follow, like starving rats. Flexing his hands, he realized his wrist daggers had dropped out of their sheaths and into his palms. He kept them there. All along he’d felt less and less plant life as roots on the ground overhead reached their limits. There would be no calling on plants for help in this sunless place. Only mold grew down here, and mold wasn’t much good in a fight, though he supposed he could use it to make attackers sneeze themselves blind. He hadn’t felt so naked of friends in years.
Evvy stopped in front of a shallow niche formed by one chunk of stone overlapping another. She rested her forehead against the stone, her back to Briar. “I know he’s a stranger, but he’s a good stranger,” she murmured to the stone. “He’d never hurt me. He’s my teacher. He’s safe.”
Briar shook his head — his foster-sisters would laugh themselves sick to hear him called a teacher. He still felt not like someone who deserved the title, but an imposter. Once we get her a proper teacher, she’ll know I’m not one at all, he told himself. If that idea pinched him a little, it was overtaken by shock. What he’d thought was a shallow niche was really a passage. How had he seen a wall there?
I’m starting to think the rock hides my squat, she’d said yesterday.
She was right.
Briar followed her into the narrow passage. It was just wide enough to admit them and the baskets they carried on their backs, though Briar had to crouch to keep from banging his head. Ten yards down they began to climb steps so old they were worn like bowls in the middle.
“I think there was a cave-in, long ago,” Evvy remarked quietly. “It sealed off my place in front. This was the back way, originally.” She passed through an opening at the top of the stair to be greeted with a chorus of yowls. Briar sneezed: the aroma of cat urine blended with the funk of the passage. He didn’t even try to blow his nose. The worst thing he could imagine just now was a nose clear enough to smell everything afresh.
Evvy’s home was a two-room chamber carved in orange stone. The light was better than it had been in any of the tunnels. It shone steadily from five opaque or cloudy white crystals that were sunk into the stone of the walls.
At first it seemed as if the floor crawled with cats. They meowed and twitched their tails as they mobbed the girl, who knelt to pet each one. A second look sorted them out. There were indeed seven, all as thin as Evvy. They came in a mixed bag of colors: blue-gray with apricot patches, brown-black with orange patches, two brown masks and feet with gold fur, two cinnamon masks and feet with gold fur, black-and-white. Evvy crooned and handed out the contents of a cloth bag she’d pulled from the front of her tunic: chunks of beef and what looked very much like half of the breakfast ham.
Briar inspected their surroundings while Evvy tended her frien
ds. A pile of rags in the corner seemed to be her bed. Directly under a hole in the ceiling was a rough fire pit, with a bucket and a battered pot beside it. A collection of cracked and chipped pottery was stacked by the wall. In a niche he saw a much-battered god figure: a smiling fat man with shriveled flowers at his feet. A thick coat of cat hair covered everything. A ripe drift of scent from the other room told him it served Evvy and her cats as a privy.
The most remarkable thing about the place was the walls. In some areas the rock had been planed smooth, though enough chunks had fallen out that the effect was irregular. That he expected. What he hadn’t expected was the stones embedded everywhere, small ones the size of a dav, others the size of his palm, even some polished rounds and eggs that were probably stolen. Their color and texture varied. One thing was the same for all: They had been pressed into the wall as if it were soft butter, not stone. Briar tried to pry one out, and couldn’t.
“You put these in?” he asked Evvy as the chorus of yowls quieted and the cats ate.
She nodded. “Ria, let Mystery have that. You have your own,” she chided the black-and-white cat. “I thought maybe it’s just dirt, the walls, and that’s why I could push them in.”
Briar rapped the wall around one stone and grimaced. “It’s rock, Evvy. You made the rock act squishy.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t think it was anything special when I did it.” She ducked her head suddenly. When she spoke, her voice was wry. “Though I stopped after I kept getting headaches. I think the Heights were telling me, enough, please.”
Briar surveyed the room again, hands in his pockets. “Can we take some of these back with us?” he asked. “Including your light-stones. We’ll look them up in the books, find out what they are and what-all you can do with them.”
Evvy scratched her head. “Right.” She scrabbled in the rags of her bed, drawing out a large section of cloth. Once she had laid it flat, she began to pry various stones from the walls. They came easily for her. When Briar tried it, they remained stuck fast.
