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They had come over the roofs, she realized. Pahan Briar had forgotten to magic the rooftop door, not remembering how much Chammurans used the upper roads. I’ll give him a hard time about it when I see him again, she promised herself. She refused to believe she might never see him again. He would get her out of this — if he could.
Is that what I’ve learned in four years? she wondered, gnawing her lower lip. Somebody else will come and help? Nobody helps me.
Except Pahan Briar. She had never known anyone like him, had never heard of anyone like him. He talked like a sensible person, for one thing, not like the pahans of the souks and stories. He knew what it was like to be poor and afraid. She could see it in his eyes.
Am I a lily-footed princess of the imperial court, unable to walk on my own? she thought, remembering the noblest ladies in Yanjing. She had always felt sorry for them because they couldn’t run from trouble. Well, now she couldn’t run away, either, but she hated to think that Pahan Briar would learn she hadn’t done something to fight the Vipers.
Master High-and-Mighty Viper was wrong about her magic. If she felt it working, like the pahan said she could, she might be able to do something. Anything.
She was on bare, pounded earth. No help there. The nearest stone was in the wall, two feet behind her. It was old stone. It had been here for a very long time after it was cut from its bed. It had lasted for three houses built on its foundation, each new building setting it more firmly in its ways. Getting that stone to move, hundreds of years after it had been cut and placed here, would take work, hard work.
It was fizzy, her magic. She’d felt it that morning, during meditation. It fizzed inside her brain, and kept on fizzing when she reached for something, as if it were an arm that had gone to sleep. Evvy sent a stream of magic down into her hands, straining it through her spread fingers. Now she had six cords of her power. She thrust them at the wall, twining each one around a stone. She hoped she didn’t pull the house down on herself, but she had to do something, and this was all she had to work with.
Taking a breath, gripping her power, Evvy pulled on her stones. Within moments she was soaked with sweat, though she hardly noticed it. She pulled again, and again, dragging on her power while the stones in the wall grumbled and groaned. The habit of long years was hard to break. She felt as if she tried to walk down Triumph Road dragging this house and its old, mulish foundation.
“Yoru, look at her.” It was the female’s voice, the girl who had brought water to Evvy. “I think the sleep-stuff made her sick.”
“Fussing over the thukdak again?” The male voice drew closer. Evvy felt air move, and a hand touched her face. “Sweating. What’s the matter, princess, scared?”
Evvy went cold with fury; her grip on her magic slackened. Please, she thought to the stones, believing she had failed. Pretty please? she thought, hating that bit of childish silliness.
In the stone she felt an answer that seemed uncomfortably like, You could have just asked.
Rock grated; Evvy smelled dust. People yelled. A handful of stones exploded from the wall, just over Evvy’s body. One struck the boy in front of her; he grunted and hit the ground with a thump. Evvy drew up her legs and kicked out, shoving him away from her.
Someone was babbling a prayer to Mohun for quiet and peace. A boy cried, “Get me a rag; Yoru’s bleeding.”
“Ikrum?” someone further away cried. “Ikrum, you’d best come!”
“What happened?” The young man’s voice came from outside the room. When he spoke again, Evvy could tell he wasn’t far from her. “Shaihun eat it, what did she do?”
A babble of voices answered him. Evvy heard the boy near her moan. Not dead, she thought savagely. Too bad.
“We thought she couldn’t do magic if she was blindfolded!” cried the girl who’d given her water. “She’ll pull the house down if we keep her here!”
“Yoru?” The young man’s voice sounded now close to Evvy, as if he crouched about three feet away.
“Brained me,” said the cruel boy’s voice, slurred and filled with pain. “Li’l belbun threw stone at … me.”
“Well, your skull’s in one piece.” There was no sympathy in the crisp voice.
Please? Evvy asked the rocks in the wall near those she’d pulled out. Please help?
They thought about it.
Hard fingers grabbed her ear and twisted. She lost her hold on the magic between her and the rocks in a wash of pain. “I think we’d better take you to the lady, Yoru’s belbun,” the crisp voice said. “She’ll know what to do with you, or her mage will. And if I were you,” he added in a whisper, “I’d think of ways to keep the lady happy. If you don’t, you’ll never see daylight again.” To someone else he called, “Gimme the sleepy juice.”
Evvy fought to concentrate on the stones, tried to grip her magic through the pain in her ear, but she couldn’t do it. She tried to thrash out of crisp-voice’s hold, but that just made her ear hurt more. In a moment smothering, smelly cloth covered her mouth and nose. She fell into shadows, without even dreams for company.
14
By taking Mai to the Water temple, Briar had dealt himself a bit of luck. The street on which the Vipers laired was close to the temple. Better still, the turning onto the Vipers’ street, Oleander Way, was clearly marked. He had not gone far down that twisted road when he saw that other visitors had come to call. Ten Gate Lords clustered around a blank doorway over which a snake was painted. The gang members were armed with clubs and daggers.
Briar looked at the Gate Lords coldly. If they attacked the den, Evvy might get hurt. That was unacceptable. He had to deal with the Gate Lords first.
As soon as he had made the seed balls he and Rosethorn used for protection on the road, Briar had stowed his share in his mage kit. Reaching into an outer pocket, he slid out two wrapped in yellow cloth. He sprinkled them with a few drops from the kit’s water bottle.
A Gate Lord looking around noticed he was there. He pointed a club a Briar. “Stop gawping and take off, if you know what’s good for you!”
Briar glanced at the club: it sprouted leafy twigs and sent roots searching for the ground. As the Gate Lord yelped and dropped it, Briar hurled a ball into the midst of the gang. It opened when it hit, scattering seeds. Briar followed it with a surge of power. The seeds he had so carefully prepared exploded in frantic growth.
Vines shot from the ground in all directions, as if they meant to do twenty years’ worth of growing in an afternoon. They were a mixture of grape and five-finger plants, tough, flexible and strong, spelled to twine rope-like around the target Briar chose. He directed them to the Gate Lords. The vines obeyed, whipping around gang members, trapping arms, legs, and weapons. Three went sprawling, to be bound where they lay. The remaining seven were dragged back by their green captors, away from the Vipers’ door. Some vines shot across the street. They wrapped long stems around door handles and window gratings, tying four Gate Lords to it. Some plants reached out to one another, yanking the remaining three captives into one green bundle.
Once the Gate Lords were secure and yelling curses in voices that shook with terror, Briar plucked weapons from helpless fingers, placing them in a heap out of harm’s way. “Be good, children,” he told his captives. “I won’t be but a minute.”
He rested his palms on the wooden door to the Vipers’ den and called to a memory deep inside it, one of growth and strength, not dead endurance. It wrenched itself off its hinges, falling to one side as it groaned, creaked, protested, and sank new roots deep in the ground. Branches forced their way out of planed boards. The Vipers might find another den one day, but it would not be this one, not when Briar was finished.
Just before he passed through the open frame, he threw his second damp packet into the room beyond. With it he sent another surge of magic.
Vipers charged as he walked out of the bright street and into the lamplit shadows of the den. They’d been preparing for the Gate Lords’ attack. They had their o
wn weapons in hand, including lead-weighted blackjacks. The contents of Briar’s seed packet dug into the bare dirt floor unnoticed as the Vipers closed on him.
Mind the lamps, he ordered silently as his seeds began to grow. They burn.
Vines wriggled around and past the lamps like green snakes, reaching with eager tendrils to snare human beings. Briar ducked a swinging punch from the nearest Viper and called three vines to trap the youth’s arms: it wasn’t that he couldn’t or didn’t want to punch back, but that Evvy came first. The smoky, garbage-scented air of the cellar changed as more vines sprouted and threw out leaves. Briar took a deep breath of cleaner air and faced the boy who had tried to punch him. It was Yoru, the short black Viper. He was now bound in a web of green ropes, gasping for breath. A bloodstained rag was wrapped around his forehead.
Briar pulled away the stem that clutched Yoru’s throat, letting him breathe. “Sorry to interrupt that war you started with the Gate Lords,” he said with false good manners. “Tell me where Evvy is and I’ll let you get back to it.”
The other boy spat in his face. Briar grimaced, wiped the spittle on his sleeve, and ordered the vines to hang the Viper upside down. They grew, anchoring themselves on the posts that supported the building above, taking Yoru with them. Briar went to the next Viper, and the next. Those who didn’t spit on him cursed him. By the time he’d reached the far door, the vines had borne fruit: a crop of dangling, trapped Vipers.
Briar stepped across the doorsill into the next cellar. It looked to be the room where they slept: mattresses and sacking beds lay on the floor. The front room vines were already here, snaring the feet of any Vipers present. Briar, tired of being polite, took a crimson packet out, wet it, and tossed it onto the floor. Thin, whippy vines punctuated with hooked thorns jumped from the seeds as they sank roots in the dirt floor.
A Viper rushed Briar from the side. Briar dropped to his knees and grabbed the gang youth’s arm, using his leverage to toss his foe into the wall. The Viper hit with a grunt, the wind knocked out of him. Before he could sit up, Briar was on his chest. His knees dug into the fallen youth’s ribcage as he held a knife to his throat.
“You people took Evvy. I want her back,” Briar told the youth softly. He sent a command to the nearest rose. A thorny vine lashed out to furl itself around one of the Viper’s hands, forcing him to drop the knife he’d meant to stick into Briar’s ribs. “You didn’t answer,” Briar chided. “Stabbing isn’t an answer.” The youth looked at the room beyond them, his eyes wide at the sight of his friends battling with vines and roses. Briar gripped his chin and forced his captive to look at him. “Now harken to me. She’s ten, skinny, has Yanjing blood in her, and she’s my student. Where is she?”
“Threaten all you like,” the youth retorted breathlessly. “Torture us, kill us —”
“Why would I do any such thing?” Briar inquired. “What I will do is leave you Vipers wrapped up tight. That way you just stay here until the locals come to laugh at you. If laughing’s what they feel like. They might just want to get back at you for every bruise, broken jar, and free meal you took from them.”
The youth glared at him and clamped his lips shut.
With a sigh Briar left him for the roses and walked into the third room of the den, which filled the cellars of several houses. Its cook-fires were already hemmed by tall green weeds that had felt his magic and sprouted from the dirt floor. The room was empty of Vipers. He saw a pot of boiling water, overturned teacups and bowls, and oddly enough, a tumble of stones that appeared to have exploded from the wall. He smiled grimly at the stones: it had to be Evvy’s work. She was a fighter. She wouldn’t let these idiots treat her like a helpless kitten.
This was the final room in the hideout. The only other door in here opened to the world outside. Briar frowned and groped for his connection to Evvy. It led through the door and — southeast? Southeast. Toward Justice Rock or Fortress Rock.
Or toward Lady Zenadia.
Sheer spite made him waken the back door, helping the dead oak to return to life. By the time its growth slowed to normal, both it and the front door tree would be large enough to bar the entrances permanently. As long as the vines planted here could get runners into the sun, the den would be filled with a thorny tangle of greenery that would not take kindly to any attempt to clear it out. He and Rosethorn had thought that was fair, when they crafted plants that would be in danger of hurt from the moment they put out runners. They had given them a strong hold on life, to thank their creations for defending them first.
He left the Vipers and Gate Lords as they were, trapped by his plants. If they were not cut loose first, the plants would free them at dawn. Then the new growth would search underground until it found yards, courtyards, and other open spaces to grow.
Briar followed his connection to Evvy into the afternoon light and up onto a roof. Keeping to the upper road, he began to trot, laying his plans as he followed her captors.
Only once did he change course, when he spotted a team of Watchmen in the street below. He climbed halfway down a ladder to the street and waved to get their attention. “I have a message for your mutabir,” he called when they looked up. “Tell him Pahan Briar Moss says if he still wants a look inside the house of Lady Zenadia doa Attaneh, he’ll be able to see anything he wants in a couple of hours. Tell him she’s kidnapped my student, and say I asked, ‘Now will you act?’”
“Mind your manners!” banked a Watchman.
“We’re supposed to believe you’re a pahan?” asked one of them, a woman in the short, sheer, yellow face-veil worn by some nomad tribes to the south.
Briar was done with manners and patience — look where they had gotten him! A seed that had escaped his packets clung damply to his hand. He flicked it out, feeling — rather than seeing — it drop onto the street before the squad. “Believe what you like,” he said. Two cobbles went flying in advance of a stout, woody-trunked grapevine that leaped from the ground.
Briar climbed back up to the rooftop road, too angry to care if they were so vexed that they tried to shoot him full of arrows. They didn’t. He looked down from the roof. Most of the squad had gathered around the vine, caressing its trunk in wonder and awe. Two others raced up the street toward Justice Rock.
Before he moved on, Briar strengthened the vine he’d just planted, stopping its absurd growth in time for it to fit in with the cycle of winter rains to come. If the city didn’t cut it down, it would remind people he’d been there.
The trip to the Jeweled Crescent and Attaneh Road took a long two hours afoot. As he made his way through the city, the sun dropped lower in the west, casting long shadows along the roofs. It was autumn; the days were shorter. Luckily for him, the seeds of his arsenal didn’t require sunlight to do what he asked of them.
His connection to Evvy stretched, then firmed: she had settled. He still felt only anger in the bond, which reassured him. She didn’t seem hurt or frightened. Did she know he was on her trail? He hoped she did.
Finally he reached Crescent Rim, the broad street that was the inner edge of the Jeweled Crescent. Beyond this point there were no rooftop roads. The houses of the Crescent lay smugly behind ten-foot-tall stone walls and guardian spells, protected from the likes of common folk. Even the Crescent Rim shops were proof that things changed here. They offered custom-made jewelry, delicate porcelains, and fragile cloth the rival of anything sold in the Grand Bazaar. Dropping into the street, Briar noted discreet signs that advertised mages and upper servants for hire, pawnbrokers, shoemakers, and healers. He felt watched, but no one tried to stop him.
It was a long trudge to find Attaneh Road, since he hadn’t gone there from this part of Chammur. His tie to Evvy was of little help — it simply passed through buildings he had to go around. At last he reached familiar surroundings, and made the turn into House Attaneh’s personal street. The shadows were deepening, granting him cover as he followed the road’s turns. At last he reached Lady Zenadia’s home.
> An alley circled the lady’s house outside the ten-foot wall. Smiling grimly, Briar drew a thick gray packet from an external pocket in his kit. With the opened packet in one hand and his water bottle in the other, Briar walked the circuit of the wall, first laying a thin line of seeds at its base, then wetting them with a trickle of water. He left no breaks in his sowing, placing a steady line across the one-man gates used by the gardeners when they carried out trash, across the tradesman’s gate he’d used on his last visit, and across the bay that ended in the wrought-iron main gate, until he reached his starting point. As the short autumn day began to end, he could see spells in the walls, from the dimmest hint of the oldest ones to the deep silver sheen of the newest. They looked beautiful as they shifted under the wall’s creamy stucco, forming patterns and ripples of magic. Of course, they would be useless now. They kept away thieves and baffled spy or curse magic. Plants were real, common physical things. The magics in the wall were not made to treat plants or green magic as a threat.
This seed mixture was different from that used in the Vipers’ lair. Its plants were those kinds of green life that grew into cracks in stone and looked for a place to cling. They were destructive if left to grow for too long, weakening walls and loosening mortar. Rosethorn and Briar just speeded — and strengthened — what they did naturally.
Briar rubbed his hands together and woke the seeds up. As vines popped out of the ground, he felt through his magic until he grasped a connection stronger than any of the others. It went straight to his shakkan, his storehouse of extra power. The tree was elated to be called on: it often complained that too much magic in its trunk, roots, branches, and needles was not comfortable. The best word to describe the tree when it had not been tapped for a while was “itchy.”
“Let’s scratch your itch,” he said. He drew on that pent-up magic, hurling it into the trees, bushes, and grasses inside the wall. The sheer strength of his power, added to the inability of protective magics to recognize green magic as a threat, meant that the spells on the wall didn’t slow him.
