Street Magic

Chapter Three




Rosethorn had set the table for midday when Briar came in. She watched, startled, as he took food out of the pantry and set it on a tray: a cooked sausage, several thick slices of cheese, hardboiled eggs, cold slices of fried eggplant, and flatbread. Glancing at the table, he saw she'd been to the souk that morning. Lamb dumplings steamed in a bowl next to mutton-and-barley stew. "Can I have these?" he asked, hooking three dumplings onto his tray, then blowing on his scorched fingers. "I won't eat any."

Rosethorn propped her fists on her hips as he grabbed oranges from a bowl. "Boy, what in Mila's name are you doing?" she demanded.

"Start without me," Briar said, ignoring her question. "I'll be right back." He put a clean drying cloth over his shoulder and carried his tray to the roof.

He glanced at the loomhouse. Again there was a quick flutter on its higher roof, as if someone had just ducked below the rim. Briar grinned again and set tray and cloth on the bench in plain view. The many plants around him craned in, trying to see if there was anything on the tray they would like.

"Stop it," Briar chided. "That's people food. Or cat food. You get more than enough food of your own. I need one of you to go back inside with me. I want to know if anyone comes to take this."

If there was a discussion – he was never sure if the plants talked among themselves – the Yanjing jasmine won. It extended a creeper that grew longer and longer to keep up as he went back inside. It followed him all the way to the table, and busied itself twining between his chair and Rosethorn's, as if they formed a trellis.

Briar dished up a bowl of stew for himself. "Whatever you feed them to move them along, it sure makes them active," he commented. "I hope they're worth all the fuss you're making over them."

"Yes." Rosethorn cleaned her bowl with a piece of bread. Putting so much of her power into so many plants, bringing them through a year's growing cycle in days, made her eat well at every meal without gaining a pound. "Who else are we feeding, anyway?"

Briar told her about his morning's adventure as he ate. After they finished, he washed the dishes with no alarm from the jasmine. Rosethorn went to run errands while Briar got the vine to follow him into their workroom.

Rosethorn had said nothing one way or another, but Briar knew she hoped to leave Chammur before the autumn rains began, if that was at all possible. Now seemed to be as good a time as any to start making the protection balls that he and Rosethorn liked to carry, for use in case they were robbed or kidnapped on the road.

As the Yanjing jasmine laid a stem across his shoulders like a friendly arm, Briar took down the jars of seeds he required and began to mix their contents. The original idea for the balls had come during a pirate attack on Winding Circle nearly four years before. To protect the side of the temple city vulnerable to landing parties in the cove, they had put together seed mixes made entirely of thorny plants, and used their magic to make the contents grow explosively, with dreadful results to anyone standing on them.

Since then Briar and Rosethorn had refined the mixture, making variations for people who had no magic, and creating mixtures that would perform different tasks. Some of the balls that Briar put together now simply produced ropes to tie up those close to where they grew. Some grew the kinds of vine that over time destroyed the mortar that held stone and brick together. Others, the deadliest, included the seeds of plants that Rosethorn and Briar had cultivated specially to produce long, viciously sharp thorns.

Laying out squares of cloth already prepared for magical formulas, Briar heaped his seed mixtures at their centers: crimson for the killer thorns, gray for the wall-destroying ivys, and yellow for the rope vines. To each he added a touch of the tonic he and Rosethorn used to speed up a plant's growth, then tied each ball shut with silk thread. He split the finished balls in half, stowing his in the outer pockets of his mage kit, and leaving Rosethorn's on her worktable, partly as a hint. He didn't think he wanted to be stuck in Chammur over the winter either.

Once that was done, Briar turned to his own work. The miniature trees needed attention: his stall at Golden House would be open for him in a few days, and he wanted them to look their best. He and Rosethorn lived on the money they brought in.

One of the miniature figs had become difficult. Briar finally gave it a choice: either it could change the shape of its left-side branches to fit the design he showed it, or he would force them to take the shape by wrapping them with wire. The fig was still arguing when the jasmine vine tapped Briar's arm urgently. It seemed his stray cat had come to the rooftop to feed.

"You need that bend to draw fertility to the house. One way or another, you're going to be shaped," he told the fig. "We can do it my way or your way, but we are going to do it." He climbed to the roof in silence. His clothes didn't even rustle: his foster-sister Sandry, who had woven and sewn them for him, had included that in the cloth as a joke about his former life as a thief.



Evvy had watched the food, and watched and watched it, sure there was a trap laid somewhere. She left her post once to make water; as soon as she finished she hurried back. The Karang Gate clock rang the hour twice. No one else came to the roof of the house, and that bounty just sat there, surrounded by plants. What if the jade-eyed boy had left while Evvy had tended to her business in a private corner? He could have, easily. The woman had left before the clock even struck once.

Sausage was better for cats than salted fish. She was very partial to sausage herself. Asa and Monster loved cheese.

Finally Evvy retreated to a bridge that crossed to the far side of the street. Working her way cautiously along the roofs, she reached the closest house to the boy's. From there it was a piddling two-foot drop to her destination.

No one was in sight among the horde of plants that grew here. Some looked quite strange, but then, she knew nothing of plants. One vine even trailed through the open door to the house. Evvy shook her head, thinking that green things around the jade-eyed boy were much too lively. Then she crouched beside the tray. She opened the folded cloth that lay beside it and began to load it with food to take home.

Like most Chammurans, Evvy thought eggplant was the queen of vegetables. She stuffed a slice into her mouth, savoring the taste. Eating only needed one hand: she grabbed another slice and took a huge bite while she continued to put food onto her cloth.

She didn't hear the boy come onto the roof. She saw him, though: he raised his hands in the air, holding them palm-out to show he came peacefully. Evvy nearly choked on her eggplant. She dropped the rest of the slice and scrabbled for the corners of the cloth, bundling her food.

"I won't come a step closer," he said in calm Chammuri. "I just want to talk." He knelt beside the entrance to the house and lowered his hands. The plants around him leaned in, forming a green roof over his head.

She eyed him for a moment more. He seemed to be settled. No matter how fast he was, by the time he could actually lunge forward and grab her, she would be gone.

She opened the cloth and dumped the rest of the tray's contents onto it. One eye on the boy, she retrieved her dropped slice of eggplant, wiped off the rooftop dirt, and stuffed it into her mouth.

"You have to know about your magic," he went on. "Maybe you can't see it – most mages can't. But you must feel something, when you handle stones."

Evvy hesitated. So the stones that morning – all right, every day at Nahim's – felt warm in her hands, nice-warm, like kittens, so what? And her den in Princes' Heights, with all the stones she liked pressed into the rock of the entrance way, had never been invaded, unlike every other squat she knew of. What of it?

He's a mage. Wouldn't he know argued half of her. Mages know things!

He's a boy, not a man, so he's a student, not a mage, her street-self replied. Students mess up all the time.

He's awfully sure, replied her good-girl self.

So are students, the street girl snapped. Right before they mess up.

Quickly Evvy tied up her bundle. She wasn't about to leave all this food behind. If the boy wanted it for himself, he shouldn't have left it out here.

"You can't go on as you have," the mage-boy continued. "You have to learn how to control your magic, or you'll get into trouble. Once people know you're a mage – "

Evvy tucked her bundle into the front of her tunic. Gripping the edge of the next door roof, she swung herself up and over.



"If you come tomorrow, I'll have more food," the mage-boy called as she fled.

"Do you think she listened?" asked a quiet voice in Imperial. Briar looked down, into the house. Rosethorn had come back: she stood on the floor below.

"Dunno," he said in the same language. "She ate. That's something. She'll probably perch close by all night to see if I put more food up and lay a trap for her."

Rosethorn shook her head. "She's even more feral than you were," she remarked. "At least you had that gang."

The look she gave him was half-vexed, half-amused. "There are plenty of people in Chammur who don't belong to gangs," she pointed out.

Briar gently removed the jasmine from his arm. "Not if you're a kid from Oldtown, I bet," he replied. "Only way to be safe is with a gang. When people fool with you, they know they're fooling with your mates, too." He thanked the vine and sent it to its trellis.

"You manage without a gang now," argued Rosethorn.

"I'm a mage now," he pointed out. "Besides, I have a gang. If the girls aren't my mates, who is? And you and Lark and Niko, Frostpine, Crane – that's my gang," he explained, naming the adults who had taught him and his foster-sisters at Winding Circle.

"So what symbol – no," Rosethorn said, cutting herself off. "I am not going to encourage you in thinking like that. What's your next move with the girl?"

Briar sighed. "Earth Dedicates say the only stone mage in town is this Jebilu Stoneslicer, up at the palace. I guess I better talk to him about teaching her."

"Good idea." Rosethorn reached into the pocket of her habit and produced a metal token. "It'll take you forever to walk there and back. You remember where we stabled our horses? Get one of them."

Briar nodded, and accepted the token to show the stablemen. "Thanks, Rosethorn." He walked by her, then stopped. Not sure why he did so, he turned back and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

"Oh, stop that!" she said irritably, as he'd known she would. "People will start to think I like you if you pull that kind of nonsense!"

Briar grinned. "They already know you do," he said reasonably. "I'm still alive after years in your company." He walked away before she could think of a cutting reply.



The Newtown roofs stopped well short of the rocky skirts of Princes' Heights, where Evvy made her home. She climbed down from the last of them and looked around warily. Then she crossed the Street of Victories, where clusters of ragtag and furtive stalls housed the Market of the Lost. Behind every facade of respectable merchandise – rags, spices, cheap food and liquor, secondhand clothes, used pottery, and furnishings – lay much less respectable items. Drugs and weapons could be bought, as could ill wishes, outright curses, poisons, and healing services for those who dared not go to, or could not afford, more respectable healers.

Evvy scanned the stalls. If soldiers of the Watch were about, long-timers would vanish, warning locals that the law was around. If they hadn't been in their usual spots, Evvy would have lingered in Newtown a while longer. The Watch wasn't always precise in who they hauled to Justice Rock's prisons when they conducted a sweep in Oldtown.

Everyone who should be there was. Feeling safe, Evvy trotted through the mazes of stalls until she reached the tumble of gravel, dirt, and loose rock at the foot of the heights. The stone cliff towered above her, riddled with paths, streets, windows, doors, and the arches that led to the tunnels. Evvy smiled at those orange-flame heights. She was almost home.

Three Vipers encircled her, putting the treacherous gravel pile at Evvy's back. She scrambled a few steps up onto it anyway, feeling the loose tumble of dirt and stone slide under her feet. She pinwheeled her arms to remain standing.

"Hello, kid," the girl Viper said with a smile on her face. "We're your mates. We'd like to buy you supper." As she talked, the two boy Vipers closed in.

"All real friendly," said the light-brown boy with a painful-looking red weal on one nostril. He was the only one of the three who wore no nose ring. "Nobody gets hurt."

It was the third, a black-skinned boy, who grabbed for her. The other two came on as Evvy scrabbled up and back two more steps. She stumbled and sat down hard as the ground slid under her. Panicked, she seized two fistfuls of gravel and hurled them at her attackers, crying.

The stones flared with light and heat as they struck the Vipers' faces. Both Evvy and the Vipers were blaze-blinded; the brown-skinned boy screamed. All three Vipers clapped their hands to their faces. Staggering, they lost their footing and rolled to the foot of the slope. Their clothes smoldered in a handful of places, as if Evvy had thrown burning embers on them. Their faces were speckled with small, red burns.

Evvy pushed herself up the slope on her backside, her heart galloping. The Vipers started at the noise she made and struggled to their feet. Bobbing and weaving, hanging onto each other, they fled into the marketplace.

Evvy rubbed her eyes: light-spots still danced through her vision, half-blinding her. The Market of the Lost and Oldtown were not places where it was wise to let others see her handicapped in any way. She was in no condition to find her way among the maze of trails between here and home, and the locals would be after her in a moment. She needed a hiding place until she could see clearly again. Lurching to her feet, Evvy walked-skidded down the slope and found her way to the back of Sulya's herb and charm stall. Sulya kept the large baskets she used to tote her wares tied to a post there. Evvy groped her way between them and settled, whispering "It's Evvy, Sulya," through the cracked wood of the stall's back.

"Don't break nothin', strangers' child," Sulya warned.

She had the sharp ears of a desert fox, and a large cudgel that she used on those who touched her property.

"Not me," Evvy assured her. She rested her head on her knees, praying to Kanzan, goddess of healing, for her sight to return. What had she done?



Briar had been riding east on Triumph Road, winding around pedestrians, riders, flocks, and camels, when he felt a surge of fright come down the magic-vine that connected him to Evvy. He couldn't sense thoughts through it, unless the tie was to another plant mage or his foster-sisters, but feelings came easily. He was about to ride on – Evvy wouldn't be as old as she was if she couldn't take care of herself – but the next big surge of fright slammed him. He felt her magic flare, wildly out of control.

Briar wheeled his mount and rode back the way he had come, ignoring the people who dodged out of his way. The closer he came to the intersection of the Street of Victories and Triumph Road, the steadier his connection to Evvy felt. Her fright was there but under control. What could have happened?

She was nearby. He slowed his mount, looking around the part of the Market of the Lost at the base of Princes' Heights, hoping to spot her. Someone blundered into his horse. Briar, shaken from his concentration, yelled, "Watch where you're going, bleater!" in Imperial.

A girl wearing the nose ring and garnet of a Viper braced herself against his mount. Her face and clothes were marked with small burns; she peered at him as if she were nearly blind. Two youths swayed beside her, speckled with burns just as she was. They pulled her away.

"Mind your manners, eknub scum!" snarled the black youth in Chammuri. He was one of the Vipers who'd stopped Briar in Golden House. The trio stumbled on down the street, cursing.

Briar watched them with a frown. What were they doing halfway across the city?

He shook his head and picked up the invisible vine of his magic, following it behind a cluster of stalls. In the shadows his power gleamed as it threaded through a heap of large baskets.

Briar dismounted and walked over to them, the horse's reins in one hand. He pushed two aside, uncovering Evvy. She stared up at him, her eyes watering, terror in her face and in the magic between them. Then she whipped around and clawed at the baskets behind her, trying to escape.

Briar was in no mood to be kind. He called to the reeds woven into the baskets, waking them from their dead slumber, sparking them into new growth. He also called to the madder seeds that lay in the ground under Evvy. The madder surged gleefully in his magic, tough stems erupting from the ground; reeds unwove themselves to wind around the madder stems and grow with them. Together the combined plants wrapped around the girl's limbs and waist, binding her tight. Evvy shuddered and went still, closing teary eyes.

"It's just me," Briar said, remembering to speak in Chammuri this time. "What did you do, Evvy? You used your magic, didn't you?"

Her eyes flew open: she gave him her best glare. The bundle of food she'd stashed in her tunic leaked, painting grease stains in the cloth across her chest and belly.

"I won't hurt you," Briar continued patiently. "I'm trying to help."

"Then let me go," she snapped.

"So you can scramble off again?" he asked, not unreasonably, in his mind. "I don't feel like teasing you out any more today, thanks all the same. Why are you blinking?"

"Let me go," she insisted.

"No," he said, his voice flat. He waited.

At last Evvy growled, "I threw rocks at them and told the magic to do something." She wiggled, trying to break free. The ropes only tightened their grip. "It made some rocks light up and go hot enough to burn, and now I'm seeing spots, and it's all your fault for telling me about the magic, so there. I hate you. You ruined my life."

"No, magic ruined it," Briar pointed out sympathetically. "It ruined mine, too, for a while. You'll survive." He went to his horse and drew his mage's kit from a saddlebag. Like his clothes, the cloth of his kit had been woven, sewn, and treated by his foster-sister Sandry, which meant that when he touched the knot that closed it, the knot came undone. The kit unfolded itself. Briar looked through it until he found the small jar labeled EYEBRIGHT. "Did your magic touch you at all?" he asked.

She squinted, trying to see him through the bright, dancing globes that covered her vision. "No," she said, unhappy with the situation and his question. "I threw it at them, not at me. I'm fire-blind, is all. And tangled up in your magic." She tugged at her bonds, but the reeds and madder had used the time they'd been talking to wrap still more stems around her. "My nose itches."

"That's nice." Briar opened the eyebright jar and dabbed the tip of his index finger in the salve. "So who were they? How many were there? Hold still and close your eyes."

Evvy jerked her head as far back from him as her bonds would let her. "You're going to do something awful."

Briar growled, exasperated. "Now, look, youngster, I'm just going to help you see. It won't hurt. I happen to be pretty good at this, so stop arguing and close them. If you're good, I'll let you loose."

Evvy flinched as he dabbed salve first on one eyelid, then the other. "It's cold," she complained.

"No, it's an aromatic, or some of it is," he retorted. "It just feels cold. Stop fussing and open your eyes."

Evvy obeyed. "The spots are gone!"

"Told you I knew what I was doing." Briar wiped the extra salve into the jar and closed it, then did up his kit again. "So who did you throw magicked stones at?"

Evvy shrugged. "Vipers. Three of them. They were trying to grab me!" she cried, misreading his frown. "I had to protect myself!"

"Of course you did," Briar replied absently. "Two boys and a girl, right? But this isn't Viper ground, is it?"

"Market of the Lost is open ground, same as any other souk. Anybody can come here," explained his captive. "But they followed me through Camelgut and Snake Sniffer territory." She frowned, trying to remember her route from the Street of Hares. "Rockhead, too. That's bat-dung crazy, that is. Rockhead's are too stupid to know they're killed, so they never lay down."

"I don't know anyone like that," Briar said drily. "Now, what do I do with you?" It wasn't really a question. He already knew her well enough to expect that anything she suggested would not help him.

"You said you'd let me go," Evvy pointed out.

Briar looked at her, checked the angle of the sun, and eyed her again. Had they enough time to go to the amir's palace together?

"I can't pay for lessons, you know," she added after a moment. "I haven't two davs to my name. And I want to go home. My cats are hungry."

Briar raised his eyebrows. "Cats, is it? Why am I not surprised? One, you don't pay your magic teacher except with chores. That's to help you learn the tools and some discipline. Two, I won't be your teacher. You need a stone mage. I'm a plant mage." They would never reach the amir's palace before dark. Even if they could, the guards wouldn't admit a ragamuffin like Evvy. "If I let you go, you have to swear on your honor and your soul you'll come to my house by the time the clocks ring the third hour after dawn," he told her sternly.

"Thukdaks have no honor, everybody knows that," she retorted.

"What a thukdak?”

"Me. I'm a thukdak. Those beggars over there, they're thukdaks. Don't you know anything?" Evvy shook her head at Briar's ignorance.

"Ah," he said, enlightened. "Back home we're called 'street rats'." He gave the name first in Imperial, then translated it awkwardly into Chammuri.

"Belburis good eating," Evvy said, using the Chammuri word for rat. "Nobody wastes a belbun meal on thukdaks"

Briar opened his mouth to ask if she always thought and talked of food, then closed it. How could he have forgotten what it was like, to always have an empty belly? What else had he ever thought of, besides just staying alive, until his arrival at Winding Circle?

"Do you think you have no honor?" he asked Evvy. "You'd better find something to swear by, because I won't let you go till you do."

Evvy rolled her eyes. "I swear by my cats and by Kanzan the Merciful, Lady of Healing, goddess of Yanjing," she told him, face and voice overly patient. "I'd spit on it, too, but it would just go all over my face.

Briar looked at her for a moment, trying to see if she meant to trick him. It occurred to him, suddenly, how nearly impossible it was to tell if someone lied or not by looking into the person's eyes. He would have to trust his instincts after all.

He released his hold on the reeds and madder plants. The reeds unwound from the madder stems, then wove themselves into their basket frames, the leaves and stems they had grown dropping away. Most were grateful to return to their former, unliving state. They had forgotten how much effort sprouting things and sinking roots took. The madder plants, firmly rooted and determined to stay that way, drew away from Evvy.

She sat up, rubbing circulation back into her arms and legs. "Third hour after dawn," she told Briar wearily, and spat on the ground next to her to seal the promise. The madders instantly drew her wet spittle into their roots, buying more green time above the ground, even in the market shadows.

"Here." Grubbing in his pocket, Briar found a silver dav coin, worth three of the copper ones. "Find a hammam and clean up," he ordered, holding the coin out. Evvy grabbed it, but Briar didn't let go. "Hair, ears, neck, you name it, it gets washed between now and tomorrow morning. Understand?" Evvy nodded, and Briar gave her the coin. "Have you any other clothes?"

There again was that too-patient, don't-you-know-anything? expression on her face. "This is my best thing," she replied, and looked at the front of her tunic. It was covered with grease from the food she carried. "Maybe I can wash it at the hammam."

"Don't bother," said Briar. He hadn't lived with Sandry for years without gaining some knowledge of cloth and grease stains. "I'll find something." All the Living Circle temples kept clothing for the poor. If the Earth temple wouldn't give him any, Briar would find a secondhand clothes dealer. Until he could hand the girl off to Jebilu Stoneslicer, he stood in the place of her teacher, which meant he was responsible for her needs. At least, that was how Rosethorn and the girls' teachers had always acted.

"It would be nice to have something good," Evvy remarked wistfully.

"All right. My house, tomorrow, third hour of the morning. And Evvy," he said as she turned to go. She looked back at him. "I found you today. I can find you whenever I want. Don't go thinking you can disappear and keep that coin. If I have to track you, you won't like what comes of it."

Evvy spat on the ground, to remind him that she'd already promised, and trotted up the path to Princes' Heights. A hundred yards away she turned around. Cupping her hand around her mouth she yelled, "Who are you, anyway?"

Briar grinned. "Briar Moss," he called back.

"Tomorrow, Briar Moss," the girl yelled. She raced on up the path.