Street Magic

Chapter Ten




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.

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, arid closed her eyes. Briar saw the pale brilliance of her magic appear at the center of her forehead, dancing 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 chest.

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.

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 up. 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."

"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 teskut" 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.

"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.

@seems something missing here

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 Corse'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, gathering 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. Why ever did I leave Summersea?