Street Magic

Chapter Fourteen




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."

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 own 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 listen 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.

He found his larch and woke it to its full strength, feeling it crash out of its shallow dish. Its growing roots lanced through tiles, grasping at the earth beneath. On the far side of the house he felt vines rip the service gates from their hinges. In the kitchens dill seed, fennel, pepper, star anise, and cardamom forgot their dried existence as spices. They sprouted and groped with new roots for a bit of earth. Sensing it beneath the kitchen flagstones, fueled by Briar and his shakkan, their roots burrowed into cracks between the flags and shot into cool dirt. All around the walls his ivy climbed, webbing them in green, sending tendrils into each and every crack, anchoring itself firmly. As it grew, stucco began to flake from the walls in patches, baring pale orange stone and mortar. The ground quivered under Briar's feet. His plants were shaking things up.

"Hey, boy!" someone inside the main gate yelled. "Your sort doesn't loiter here! Move on your own, or we'll move you along!"

Briar ignored the guard and sat cross-legged before the gate as he continued to pour strength into all the green life within the walls. Nearby something cracked, and grated. He glanced toward the sound as a piece of the wall's upper rim dropped off. The vines swarmed through the gap it left, now attacking the wall from both sides.

He heard the rattle of keys and looked up. A guard was opening the main gate to come after him. Briar reached into his mage kit, found a rose-seed cluster, and tossed it at the guard as he approached. The cluster leaped into growth in midair, sinking roots as it twined around the man's legs. It gripped him, biting in with its thorns. The guard struggled and went deathly still as the plant wrapped his thighs and hips.

"Good decision," Briar told him softly. "I hate to think of all the tender places that thing will hook if you move."

The guard turned white and began to sweat. Briar stood and walked toward the open gate. As he went by, he patted the man on the shoulder. "Don't go away, now."

"You'll regret the day you were born," the guard snapped. He shouted, "Filyen, Osazi, alert! Get Ubayid!"

"Over a boy?” someone called. "You take care of it!"

Briar looked in the direction the voice had come from: a watchman's box just inside the gate on his left. A lamp shone through the lone window. The men inside couldn't see he had walked through the open gate.

The watchbox was made of wood. Briar started to let his magic go, then called it back. I'd best save this, he thought – waking dead wood used power he might need. Instead he called on the vines that had come over the wall and the jasmine that grew inside of it, both running riot under the magic he'd already put in. They twined into ropes, then reached out. Some grabbed the flat wooden roof of the watchbox, some went lower to grip two of the walls. At an unspoken command, the vines yanked hard. The walls flew out, the roof dropped. The men inside yelled. The lamp went out; when no flames came after, Briar drew a breath in relief.

The quickest way to Evvy was around the house, by his reckoning. If he went inside, there would be fewer big plants to help him, and more of the lady's men-at-arms. Already a fistful of them came running from the side nearest the tradesmen's entrance, buckling on swords, some with napkins tucked into their collars. Their attention was on the men yelling in the ruined watchbox and the man at the gate, not on the boy strolling to the left of the house. Noise had started to come from inside the main building as glass shattered and voices cried out.

Briar walked as if he had the right to be there, hands in his pockets, following the large garden around the house. Grasses sprouted in his wake, the burst of soaring green life rustling like the sweep of an imperial cloak. As he enjoyed the growing cool of the evening, Briar roused every plant and seed around him. People rarely crossed mages; it was his duty to remind the lady why tonight.



Evvy stirred, her head banging. She lay on some kind of mattress. When she sat up, she discovered that her hands and legs were free; the blindfold was gone. She was in a dark room, but the door had a panel in it that was carved. Flickering light shone in from outside.

She heard footsteps in the distance. "… don't know how much juice she's got." It was crisp-voice; Ikrum, the Vipers had called him. "She was shaking and all over sweat after she pulled those stones out of the wall."

"If she is strong, we must keep her drugged, until she sees reason. She will destroy no walls here"

Evvy would never mistake this lovely female voice. It was Lady Zenadia's, and she was not far from the door.

Life as a slave and a thukdak meant learning to think fast at bad moments. She wanted her power for later; she did not want to be drugged again. Evvy thrust her magic away, into the stone of the floor, the wall and the ceiling of her room, into stone walls above her room. She saw her power in her mind's eye, fizzing its way through marble and slate: it built a picture of the house above for her. She thrust and thrust at her magic, sending away as much as she could, leaving her body with just a trickle of it while voices murmured outside, and keys jingled, and the door swung open.

Evvy shaded her eyes against fresh lamplight. When she could see past the glare in her vision, she saw the lamps were carried by a tall, thin Viper and a servant woman who bore hers on a tray. They followed Lady Zenadia and a pale white woman whose clothes were styled like those worn by the eknubs west of Chammur.

Evvy moaned and collapsed onto her pallet again, keeping her eyes covered. "My lady, I'm sorry," she said in a tiny voice. "My head hurts."

A billow of some unusual scent washed over her; expensive silk rustled. Evvy uncovered her eyes. The lady sat on a low chair she had drawn up. She watched the girl over her veil with concerned eyes.

"Ikrum, you may have given too much potion the second time," the lady said, resting a cool hand on Evvy's cheek. "My dear child, welcome to my home."

She had seen people around the nobility often enough to know how to act like one. She grabbed the lady's hand and kissed it, struggling to sit up. "Thank you! I thought the Vipers would kill me, and Pahan Briar wouldn't let me come live with you! If I'd known they were bringing me to you I wouldn't have been so bad…" She kissed the lady's hand again, and promised she would scrub every part of her that touched the lady with strong soap when she was free.

The lady gave a small gasp of polite surprise. "Do you mean to say you wished to accept my offer?"

Evvy nodded briskly, then clutched her temples. That was no show for the lady: her head banged like a drum.

"Something for her headache, if you please?" The warmth fled the lady's voice as she looked at the healer, a mistress giving an order to a servant. The healer took a cup from the tray held by the maid, looked at Evvy, then added something to it from a vial on the tray. She swirled the contents of the cup, then crouched beside Evvy.

"How strong is her power?" the lady asked the healer.

The healer shook her head. "I feel only a residue, mistress. There are medicines I must give her to offset the magical draining. Did that boy teach you nothing?" the healer asked Evvy. "Young mages must not overextend. The damage could be permanent."

"I thought they were going to hurt me," Evvy grumbled. There was no help for it; she would have to drink whatever was in that cup, or the lady would be suspicious. She prayed it wasn't a drug that would fuzz her mind again. "Is that for my head?"

The healer passed the cup to Evvy, who drank its contents with a prayer. The banging in her temples slowed; the headache eased.

"Would you like to stay?" the lady asked again. "I was told you were unwilling – – "

"Pahan Briar and his teacher were mean to me," Evvy complained, keeping to her role of greedy thukdak. "They made me do servant work like cooking and cleaning. I want the things you offered, and to live in a nice house. They couldn't even teach me my own magic!" She thought of the look on her mother's face when she told the auctioneer to get as much as he could when he sold Evvy, and her eyes filled with tears. It was a trick that never failed. "I think they were going to sell me for a slave!"

"Well, you are safe here," the lady assured her, once more cupping her cheek with a cool, hennaed hand. "No one has the power to take you from me. Now. You must rest, and take the medicines the healer brings to you, and eat. You will stay here for the night, I think, and tomorrow you may choose your own room in the house."

Evvy yawned. "I'm tired," she admitted. "And awful hungry."

"Very hungry," the lady corrected her with a kind smile. "Only thukdaks say 'awful hungry,' and you are no longer a thukdak, my dear." She rose from her chair.

Evvy knew what she had to do, and she did it. Rolling from her pallet, she crouched before the lady and kissed her slippered foot. "Thank you, great lady! May Lallan of the Rivers and Rain bless you!"

The lady smiled. "Healer, see that she gets those medicines and food." She swept out of the room, Ikrum and the maid following her.

The healer remained, staring down at Evvy as the girl crawled back onto the pallet. "Soup, I suppose," she commented dryly, "and it will take some time to assemble the medicines to restore your strength. Use the chamber pot in the corner for your business – the lady doesn't like it when people just pee on the floors. You won't be allowed to leave this room tonight. It's magically shielded, in case the plant mage comes looking for you." She walked out. When she closed the door behind her, Evvy heard the jingle of keys, and the clack of a turning lock.

Evvy stood and spat on the floor to get the taste of the lady's shoe from her lips. A pitcher of water and a cup sat on a table: she drank straight from the pitcher, not caring if water spilled over her face and onto the floor. Then she sat cross-legged on the pallet, and began calling back the power she had hidden in the stone all around her.

This ought to be easy, she thought, smiling tightly. The stone around her was fairly new, not stubborn with ages of sitting in the same place. She would need much less effort to make it move.



As he walked down the side of the house, Briar caught the first ripples of unpleasant scent. Rotten meat, he judged after a sniff. Maybe they used fish as a fertilizer after all.

The walk between the outer wall and the long side of the house showed him the upper half of the wall was buried in green and going to pieces. Chunks of stone dropped off it on either side. In one spot, where a clump of deodar pines stood, the wall was shifting as the pines expanded outward. Briar went over to pat them and tell them they had done well. If the trees had been young girls they would have blushed at his praise; they quivered instead, and continued to grow. A large section of wall beside them collapsed into the alley beyond.

Briar halted: there was a glint of light beside the deodars' roots. Their earth turned and tumbled with the trees' swift growth, casting something out. Briar picked up the pale thing that had drawn his eye, and hurriedly dropped it.

It was a skull – a very small skull. A very small, human skull. In his years at Winding Circle, Briar had studied anatomy, animal and human, as backup for his lessons in healing. He knew a human skull, however small, from a monkey's.

One by one, he picked up other bones thrown to the surface by the deodars' surge. A thigh bone, an arm bone, ribs and back bones, all child-sized, old enough that no tissue remained to keep them attached to one anther. He also found a ball, and a silk scarf. Who had buried a child's remains under the deodars? How long had the child been dead? Was this one of the murders which the mutabir had mentioned, or something more ordinary? Cemeteries, particularly the small ones attached to most nobles' houses, were sometimes dug up for new buildings, the bones placed elsewhere. Or perhaps a servant's child had died. Briar knew that if he were dead he would rather be buried under trees than in Chammur's hard sun.

All the same, he didn't order the plants to cover the bones, or the trees to open a hole so they could be tucked back into the earth. Some instinct made him place them a little way from the still-growing pines and draw a cypress oil protective circle around them. Only then did he wipe his fingers on his handkerchief and continue his walk.