Street Magic

Chapter Fifteen




The stench of rotting meat grew as Briar approached the back of the house. It was particularly strong in the corner where a stand of almond trees grew by the wall. The trees, like every other green thing on the grounds, were doing their best to outrace their proper growth, pitting slender trunks and roots against the wall. It was giving way, pushing into the lane behind the house. Inside the small grove, thrown from the ground by clamoring trees, was a bloated, reeking body. The clothes were blackened rags; a deep cut passed all the way around the neck, separating it into two parts. The swelling was so great that it was impossible even to guess the sex of the body. About a yard from it Briar saw another corpse, this one so far gone in decay that only scraps of skin clung to the bones. A knotted cord hung around the neck.

The stench of rotten flesh was so bad it made his stomach roll. While he hadn't been sure the child's bones were a sign of murder, it was harder to think of legal reasons why these newer bodies would be here, among dainty almond trees, rather than in a proper burial yard. Most gardeners didn't like the thought of walking on the dead when they did their work.

Briar retreated from the six-tree grove. He turned straight into another pocket of stench, wafted into his nostrils by the mild breeze from the east. There were more dead to be found in this largest of Lady Zenadia's gardens, he realized. He wiped his sweaty forehead on his sleeve.

Suddenly he froze. His connection to Evvy pulsed: she was angry, furious. A surge of magic rolled through their bond, leaving Briar without breath in his lungs. He sent his power back, as if she were one of his foster-sisters, but it was no good. She couldn't even feel it, let alone use it. Her magic was too different and not mixed with his. Briar had the feeling that it was only because he had a little earth and metal magic in him that he could sense anything more than where she was.

From inside the house he heard the thunder of falling stone. It went on for a breath, then stopped. A puff of dust rose in the air over the roof like smoke. Briar forced a query to Evvy through their bond. What he got back was savage satisfaction and a calming of her rage. Whatever had taken place, she was pleased.

A fresh series of rumbles began in the house as green voices called a warning to Briar. The lady's mute certainly was silent in his movements, but the grasses on which he walked were not. The mute had come around the house to take Briar from behind. Using his right hand the boy slid a cloth bundle out of his kit, a special mix he had worked on for a long time. In his left he already grasped a wrist knife.

The bowstring settled around his neck, then wrenched cruelly tight, cutting off Briar's air. He tossed his small bundle behind him, where he guessed the mute's feet to be, and slid his knife under the strangler's cord. The knife bit into his neck as it cut the bowstring – Briar didn't mind a little blood if it meant he could breathe again.

He smashed a booted heel into the mute's bare foot, hearing bone crunch, then lunged away. Turning to face his attacker, Briar coughed, his throat aching from the pressure of the cord. Now he gripped knives in both hands.

"How many of 'em did you do that to?" he snarled when he could speak again. "Did you like it? Did you have fun choking them and burying them as fertilizer?"

The mute bent over, trying to massage his foot. He didn't even look at Briar.

The second assailant didn't try to be quiet. Behind him Briar heard the hiss of a drawn sword. With his power he tapped the bundle he'd left between the mute's feet, and faced the swordsman. The man leveled his weapon. Sharp metal gleamed in the scant light cast out here by indoor lamps. Another sullen rumble came from inside the house, drawing closer to them. Neither the man nor Briar risked a look to see what caused it.

Instead the swordsman laughed when he saw Briar's knives. "I have the advantage of you, boy," he told Briar smoothly. "I have reach and expertise."

The mute shrieked, his tongueless mouth freeing a sound more animal than human. He screamed a second time; the third cry broke off in the middle. After that the only sounds were the rattle of branches growing rapidly, tearing flesh, and a slow, wet drip. The swordsman could see it over Briar's shoulder. His eyes widened in horror.

Briar didn't turn. He and Rosethorn had once defended Winding Circle from pirates, using mixed seeds of thorny plants; the girls had given him use of their magic to make the plants extra lethal. A similar mix of seeds had been in the packet he'd tossed at the mute. Now Briar told the swordsman in a chatty tone, "Four years ago it took me and my three friends to work this bit." He had to raise his voice to be heard over the crunch of falling stone in the house. "The trick is to make this stuff grow so fast it just goes clean through anybody on top of it." He grinned, showing teeth. "I've learned a lot since then. I can do it by myself."

The copper tang of fresh blood drifted on the desert wind. The swordsman stood motionless, eyes bulging at the nightmare behind Briar. The boy sheathed one of his knives. His foe didn't look as if he wanted to attack anymore.

"I can do it to you," Briar said quietly. "In fact, maybe I should." He reached into his kit. The swordsman fled, stumbling and thrashing his way through the rioting garden plants. He ran not for the house, but for a gap the vines had torn in the back wall.

Now Briar made himself look at the mute. He had killed the man, after all; he owed it to him to face his work. There was little of the mute to see. The thorns and vines had covered him completely, gouging him in a thousand places and sprouting through his flesh, holding him in a massive, woody, bloodstained sheath. Briar nodded to his creation, his mouth trembling.

It was him or me, he thought, turning away. I knew he could kill, and he was going for me.

Evvy, he told himself. She's all that matters.

Now he spared a look for the side of the house closest to him. The wall trembled. There seemed to be holes in the roof. Grit rose above them in clouds, given a sulphur-yellow glow by lamps casting light through the gaps.

The wall closest to Briar blew outward, spraying stone fragments in the hip-high grass. A small, dark figure appeared in the opening left by the collapse, petting the stone on either side of the gap like one would pat a trusty dog.

"Evvy?" Briar called softly.

The figure froze, peering at him. Briar stepped into the light that streamed through the hole in the house.

"Pahan Briar!" Evvy croaked. She threw herself across the ground between them and hugged Briar tight, burying her face against his chest. He hugged her back, feeling her thin shoulders quiver under his hands. Wetness that he was fairly sure wasn't sweat dampened his shirt under her face.

"I guess you've learned a way to feel your magic," he said after a few moments.

Evvy nodded against his chest and let go, stepping back. She rubbed eyes that ran with tears. "I'm not crying," she said defensively. "I'm washing out the dust. I don't think I can do any more with stones. I feel all – empty."

"That's all right," he reassured her. "You've done plenty of damage already. And don't rub your eyes – that just grinds dirt in. Let the tears wash it out." He offered her his water bottle. Evvy drank half of the contents and poured the rest over her head.

Briar wiped grit and wet mud from her face with his handkerchief. "Better? We've a bit more to do, here."

Evvy nodded. "I know. I just wish I could help."

Briar grinned. "I think you've done plenty already," he said, tossing a packet of rose seeds at the gap she'd made in the house. They scrambled to life, weaving their stems as they grew to bar the opening. No one would escape that way.

When he looked at her again, she was staring at the huge-thorned tree that had cut its way through the mute. She turned huge eyes to him. "Pahan Briar," she breathed in awe. "What you did."

"It doesn't make up for all the folk he killed for her, but it's a taste," he said grimly.

Evvy nodded. "I can't do anything like that. I wish I could," she said, approval in her voice and eyes.

"That's my girl," he said, giving her a one-armed hug around her shoulders. "Now, let's finish up."

Working through the date palms, aloes, junipers, tamarinds, and fruit trees at the rear of the house, they found eight more dead, all but one fairly recent, all with a bowstring knotted around their necks. Briar was sure that the mutabir's four missing spies were among the bodies he'd found. One dead girl wore the Viper nose ring and garnet; one looked like the boy who had followed Briar from Golden House. A third, the freshest, still wore the black and white of the Gate Lords: their missing tesku. The wind shifted twice as they walked, sending a cloud of dead gases into their faces. Twice they had to stop for Evvy to vomit; when she finished, she walked on with Briar, her face set in hard, angry lines.

The crack of stone nearby made Briar look up. The outer wall was coming to pieces along its length, assaulted by vines outside and trees within. Earth shifted and writhed as the plants surged, bringing down the last of the stone structure that had hemmed them in. There were torches outside. In the distance someone shouted, "Halt for the Watch! In the amir's name, halt!"

Another voice cried, "We're slaves! We didn't know!"

"Halt for the Watch!" the first voice ordered again. "Or we will shoot you where you stand! Hands in the air!"

"Should we go?" Evvy inquired, worried. "I don't want to tangle with the Watch."

"Don't fret," Briar assured her. "They're on our side, mostly."

They came to the rear of the house. The courtyard gardens had rebelled, tearing chunks from the walls that separated them from the living quarters. Vines and shrubs had combined to block every window and door on this side of the building: the slaves had to be escaping from the front of the house.

"Stop that man!" someone behind Briar and Evvy cried. "Stop him!"

Briar rubbed his mouth with his thumb, thinking. There was no way out through the rear of the house: his plants had blocked those exits. The front windows and doors were easier to escape from – few large or tough plants had been planted on that side of the house. If he knew anything about Lady Zenadia, though, she would not run with the slaves, and she could not escape out the back without some hidden tunnel he didn't know about. Reaching with his power, he made a request of the trees. They thrust their roots as widely and as deeply as they could, sifting through the ground. There were no tunnels.

She would be inside, then.

They walked forward. Plants moved aside to admit them to a passageway. Once they went by the plants drew together to create a living wall.

He led Evvy down a stone gallery now soft with grasses, moss, and flowers that grew from seeds blown into cracks and corners. It led to an inner garden that had become an impassable thicket of shrubs and short trees. Even the tiles that paved the ground had vanished, thrust aside by rioting plants. When he saw the larch on the other side, Briar realized that he'd talked with the lady and Jebilu here. The larch, freed at his bidding to become its normal-sized self, blocked the door into the main house.

Creaking anxiously – it knew it wasn't supposed to be this big – the larch moved just enough to let Briar and Evvy pass. He stopped for a moment to pet it, to assure it he still loved it, even if it had lost its bunjingi form and gotten huge. He gave it his blessing, then walked on.

The house was no longer cool and elegant. There was greenery everywhere; he frankly thought it was an improvement. Tiles, flagstones, and walls had been knocked out of place, chipped, even cracked by an explosion of growth.

"Do you know where she is?" Evvy inquired, worry on her dust and tear-streaked face. "She won't get away?"

"She won't." Briar reached throughout the house, asking its plants where he might find Lady Zenadia.

The lady was to his right, they reported. He and Evvy followed their directions, walking toward a door painted with the image of a burning lamp.

Halfway down they crossed an intersection with another hall. The Viper tesku Ikrum leaped from its shadows, daggers in both hands.

Briar ducked and rammed sideways, catching the older boy in the gut. He thrust up with his back and shoulder, tossing Ikrum into the air. The older youth landed with a thud and lurched to his feet. Like him, Briar wobbled, trying to get his balance as the hall floor rippled. Ikrum staggered and went down on one knee.

Briar realized what was happening and darted toward Evvy, getting onto solid ground. With a grating rumble the floor under Ikrum collapsed, dropping the Viper into the cellar below. He screamed curses up at them for only a short moment. Then the ceiling above the hole in the floor collapsed. Stone and wood rained into the cellar, knocking Ikrum down, then burying him, until there was no trace of him to be seen.

When Briar looked at Evvy, she shrugged. "I guess I had a bit left after all," she told him. She walked to the hole in the floor to spit on Ikrum's wood-and-stone tomb. "And that's for kidnapping me," she snapped.

Briar put an arm around her bony shoulders. "You do good work," he said with approval. "Come on, now. We have one more thing to settle."

They sidled around the hole in what was left of the floor, and continued on to the door with the painting of the lamp. Briar opened it. Inside was a sitting room, part of what Briar guessed was the lady's personal chambers. Ornately carved sandalwood screens perfumed the air. Carved ebony screens covered two small windows. Sprigs of greenery poked through as the plants outside looked for a way in. They clamored their welcome to Briar.

The lady did not. She sat on a backless chair, as regal as a queen in red-and-bronze silks. She gleamed with gold jewelry: ankle cuffs hung with bells, armlets and bracelets, heavy earrings studded with rubies, a nose ring and a jeweled chain to connect it to her earring under her semi-sheer veil. Lamps had been lit and placed around the room as if she were prepared for a night spent reading at home. There was a pitcher beside her, and a cup. To all appearances she could have been welcoming guests. Briar saw past that, to the blank rage in her eyes, the trembling hands posed gracefully in her lap, and the brittle way she held her head.

"You disappoint me, Pahan Briar," she said, her lovely voice tight. "You have played the destructive child here. What did you hope to accomplish beyond the ruin of my house? Will you dare to harm me? My family will avenge all that you have done. You should never have set yourself up to oppose me."

Briar shook his head, amazed. To Evvy he said, "You wouldn't think she did anything worse than borrow my student without permission." Evvy nodded.

"I don't think you understand," Briar told Lady Zenadia slowly. He knew an explanation was probably a waste of time, but he had to try. "Your family won't protect you, not after they see your garden."

Her smile was tiny, but a smile all the same. "Do you think they will care about dead thukdaks? The children of the streets are without value to anyone."

Evvy growled. Briar stilled her with a hand on her shoulder. "The mutabir will care about his dead spies. We had a nice talk about that yesterday, him and his pahan and me. Ask him yourself – he's outside with the Watch. And I bet some of those other bodies aren't as unimportant to him as they were to you."

Lady Zenadia blinked. "He would not dare," she whispered, but the tremor in her hands got worse.

"Your mute's dead." Briar inspected a scratch on his hand. "So's Ikrum. I don't know about your swordsman. I think maybe the mutabir's people picked him up when he made a run for it."

This time the lady swallowed hard. In someone less refined, it would have been a gulp. "Ubayid would never betray me."

"How's it betrayal if you can't be touched?" Briar asked pleasantly. "If you can't be harmed, then it isn't betrayal, just – gossip."

She flinched.

Briar continued, merciless. If he couldn't make her sorry for the ruin she had caused, he wanted to make her deeply sorry to be caught. "If I were your family, I'd think you've gone too far. If I were the amir, or the mutabir, I'd think the common people will be angry when they find out nobody cared how many poor folk and slaves you murdered. Lots of the mutabir's Watchfolk come from poor districts, I bet. He can order them to shut up about what they see here, but how many will do it? How long before riots start? How long before your family thinks maybe it's time to wash their hands of you?"

"You'll be the first relative of the amir to see the top of Justice Rock," Evvy put it. The top was where executions were done in Chammur.

"Or maybe they'll just hand you to commoners," Briar remarked. Sound reached his ears: people were shouting inside the house. "That sounds like the Watch." He held Lady Zenadia's eyes with his, showing her no warmth or mercy. She hadn't shown either to anyone – none to those pitiful bodies, shoveled without ceremony into dirt to serve as fertilizer. Normally he approved of fertilizer, but not, it seemed, when it came to human beings. Even the poorest had a right to be mourned by someone.

"Excuse me for a moment," she said, getting to her feet. "Inform the mutabir I will be with him directly." She walked into an inner room.

"Pahan…" Evvy whispered, tugging on his sleeve. "She'll get away!"

"She can't go anywhere," Briar replied softly. "The house is shoulder-deep in plants and the Watch." He knew what he had thought he'd seen in the woman's eyes. If he was right, it would save a great deal of awkwardness. As he waited, as the sound of searchers came nearer in the house, he tinkered with the ebony and sandalwood screens in the room, guiding them to set down roots through the marble floor and sprout. Finally, when he heard approaching feet just outside, he walked into the lady's bedroom.

She lay on an opulent bed that was draped in silks and heaped with damask-covered cushions. Her eyes were closed, her clothes neatly arrayed, as if she had gone to sleep. Briar lifted the simple pottery cup on her bedside table, to sniff its contents. It held the quickest-acting poison money could buy.

Despite Lady Zenadia's attempt to look as if she'd felt no pain, there was a trace of foam at the corner of her mouth. He rested his fingers against her throat. There was no pulse.

He thought for a moment. Then he spat on her, and walked away.



Three days later, the plants around the Karang Gate told Rosethorn where Briar and Evvy could be found: the huge caravansary by the Aliput Gate, outside the city's southern walls. Concerned and confused, she went there rather than home, arriving exhausted, disheveled, and covered with road grime.

Rosethorn glared at her, then at Briar. "Why in the name of the Green Man and scrub pines are you here?" she demanded. "We aren't leaving for three days. While you're gone the house is probably being looted…"

"No, because it's all here," Briar said calmly. He patted cushions next to him and poured out a cup of the tea he'd set to brewing the minute he'd felt her ride through the Aliput Gate.

Rosethorn sat in a puff of dust and accepted the cup. "Everything?" she demanded, suspicious.

"Everything," he replied, voice and eyes firm.

"But rent for this place costs a fortune. We're already paid at the Street of Hares until the full moon." She sipped the tea and, despite her wrath, sighed gratefully. It was her own blend, a morning pick-me-up tea that could help the dead to cast off weariness.

"Actually, the amir's paying the bill," Briar said. "The least he could do, since they kicked us out of town."

Rosethorn sipped her tea and fixed her eyes on him. "Tell me," she ordered.

He did, keeping it brief. She had a second cup of tea while she listened. When he finished, Rosethorn put down her cup and lurched to her feet. "This I have to see," she remarked, and walked out.

It was dark when she returned. At some point she had visited a hammam, bathed, and dressed in a clean habit from her saddlebags. From the way she settled on the cushions, Briar knew she must have eaten as well. He still had pomegranate juice, bread, olive oil in which herbs and garlic had been steeped, and cheese set out for her. Rosethorn tore a piece off the bread and dipped it in the oil, then put it in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully, her eyes on Evvy. Asa had finished producing four kittens, a first litter. She and her newcomers were asleep in the basket bed Evvy had made for them, while Evvy herself curled up beside it, as soundly asleep as they.

"Well," Rosethorn said quietly, after swallowing and drinking some juice, "I'm impressed. They'll never clear the grounds, you realize. You put too much of your power into it. The Watch pahan says for every bramble they cut, four more sprout. They fight the people who try to cut them back. It looks like the Watch actually tried to burn it all, but the plants won't catch fire."

"Maybe next time they'll think of that, when they ignore a murderess." Briar knew he sounded cold. He felt cold when it came to Lady Zenadia. "The rich folk here sure don't care about what's right. Just like Jooba-hooba saying how far away Lightsbridge and Winding Circle are. They think they're in the middle of nowhere, so they can do things civilized folk can't. Now they know different."

Rosethorn smiled thinly. "I forgot to tell you, I wrote to Lightsbridge and Winding Circle. They'll be sending harrier mages to Chammur, to explain to Master Stoneslicer why he can't chase other mages out of town. To remind him of the vows he took in exchange for their learning."

"Good," Briar said. "Let them sweat him a while." He fiddled with a piece of flatbread.

A cool hand cupped his cheek, lifting his head so he met her level brown eyes. "What is it, Briar?" she asked in their native Imperial, her voice kind. She stroked the skin under one of his eyes with a thumb. "You haven't been sleeping. I can see it. Tell me what's wrong, and we'll weed it out." She drew her hand away.

He swallowed hard. Picking up his cup of juice, he turned it in his hands while he thought. She ate a bit, and lay flat on the floor, propping her head on a cushion. He knew better than to think she had forgotten her question. She was simply waiting for him to grow into the answer.

Finally he had it. "I thought Tris was a baby, waking up with nightmares all the time, squalling about those drowned slaves," he said haltingly in Imperial. "I couldn't see why she fussed so. They would have died in a normal battle anyway. I mean, I hugged her, but I thought she was just carrying on."

"But she's not like that," Rosethorn commented softly.

"No. I know she isn't." He put down the cup without drinking from it. "I've been dreaming. I'm back in the garden again, only this time it's day. All those dead people are out in the sun, just rotting. I keep trying to bury them, so they can be decently under ground, but I can't empty a big enough hole. And whenever I turn, they're staring at me. I didn't even kill them. I never dream about the mute, and he's the one I did for." He swallowed hard, rubbing his eyes to stop their burning. "They were the saddest thing I ever saw in my whole life."

She reached over and gripped his arm firmly. "No," she told him gently. "The saddest thing would have been if you and Evvy had joined them."

"I know that," Briar admitted. "I do. But I keep waking from the dreams. I want to scream, but I don't." He put his free hand over the one that held his arm, golden brown hand over ivory wrist. "Will I dream about them forever?" he asked, his voice cracking.

"I don't know," she replied. "I have such dreams of my own."

He let her go finally. She sat up, twisting her head from side to side with a crackle of neck bones.

"They never tell you some things," Briar said bitterly. "They tell you mages have wonderful power and they learn all kinds of secrets. Nobody ever mentions that some secrets you don't ever want to learn."

"All you can do is learn good to balance the bad," Rosethorn told him. "Learn and do all the good within your reach. Then, if you wake in a sweat, you have something to set against the dream."



Two days later the caravan to Laenpa rolled out of sight of the flame-colored cliffs of Chammur. They had entered a mountain pass where the stone colors were tan and gray, without so much as a hint of orange. When he realized he'd seen the last of the ancient city, Briar felt as if a weight had fallen from his shoulders.

"Let's take another route home," he called to Rosethorn as she rode ahead. "South or north, I don't care."

She nodded without looking back. Her attention was on the tumble of dirt and gravel to her right. She was seeking plants she might not know.

Briar's own search for new growth in ground frequently scoured by floods and avalanches was interrupted by Evvy's giggle of delight. He dropped back to where she rode, a scruffy student queen on camelback. She reigned from the top of her beast's hump, Asa and the kittens in an open basket on her right, where she could keep an eye on them, and a traveling desk on her lap. Her stone alphabet was open on it. She showed the slate to Briar. On it she had written the large and small Q shakily.

"Q is for quartz!" she cried gleefully as her camel gave her a reproachful glare. In her other hand she held the surprise Briar had left her for when she got that far: not a single stone but a cloth strip to which six small quartz stones were fixed. "Crystal, blue, rose, green, smoky, and roo-rootle – rutilated!"

Briar grinned up at her. It was fun to make her happy. "You are easily amused," he informed his student.

"I'm learning to read," she replied gleefully, fingering her quartzes. "And I'm going to be a pahan of stones. Who wouldn't be amused?"

"Your camel, for one, if you keep bouncing," Briar reminded her. "Do you know what things you can do with quartz, young pahan?”

"Nahim Zineer told me some. You can see, you can have peace, it can help for love spells…" She continued to recite. Briar listened contentedly. Listening to his student, he felt as if life were an adventure for the first time since he'd left Chammur. The only drawback was that with Evvy, there was no way of telling what the adventure would be – but that wasn't such a bad thing. It would put some interest into those long hours on the road east.

He couldn't wait to introduce her to his foster-sisters. He'd finally met another girl who was every bit as difficult as they were.

The End