Briar's Book Page 12

  Briar shook his head, writing his labels neatly. Some people might stand up to Crane, he guessed, but Peachleaf wasn’t one of them.

  Collecting a new tray, Briar checked it as he had the other two. This time he was almost certain magic was there. He might fare better if he looked into the jars where the essence of the disease was brewed, but the thought of doing so made his scalp creep. He wasn’t sick yet—he’d checked his reflection in the glass wall after lunch—and he planned not to be, ever.

  Crane returned. Briar had the chance to work up three trays before he heard Crane say, “That—is—it.”

  Briar looked around. Peachleaf had spilled a bottle of ink.

  The lordly forefinger pointed. “Out,” Crane ordered.

  Peachleaf sighed. “Thank you,” she said, gripping the pointing hand and giving it two hearty shakes. “I won’t take a moment more of your time. Come see me if you ever want a baby delivered.” She trotted out of the room with a wave to Briar.

  The Hub clock chimed the half hour. Drat, thought the boy glumly. I lost the bet. He risked a peek at Crane.

  The man surveyed Peachleaf’s notes. “Now what am I to do?” he demanded, forgetting perhaps that he was not alone. “Today has been virtually a complete waste.”

  Rosethorn faced him, leaning against her counter. “You could always take your own notes,” she said mockingly.

  Crane sighed. “Have you forgotten I need my hands free to work?”

  “You just like having someone to order around.” Crane glared at Rosethorn. When he didn’t speak she continued, “Why not Osprey? She’s sharp enough, and she puts up with you.”

  “I require her where she is,” replied Crane, sagging against his own counter. “I can trust her to watch those flibbertigibbets out there and make sure they do nothing to kill us all. I told you, I will not risk those who show an aptitude for this in a mad scramble for a cure. She must learn to take each step carefully before moving on to the next—such lessons are impossible under these conditions.”

  “You may have to make allowances,” Rosethorn pointed out. “You may have to take a risk.”

  “I have put five years’ training into Osprey alone—” Crane began.

  Briar croaked, “Tris.”

  Crane’s head swiveled in his direction. “I beg your pardon?” he asked coolly.

  Rosethorn silently adjusted the strings of her mask.

  “My—my mate, Tris,” Briar said. “The redhead.”

  “You are too young to have a mate,” drawled Crane.

  “It’s street slang for best friend,” Rosethorn explained scornfully. “As you’d know if you ever dropped out of your alabaster tower and dealt with real people in real places.”

  Crane sighed. “Had I wished to do so, I never would have taken vows.” He turned back to Briar. “Recording notes is more demanding than preparing trays.”

  “She reads and writes good,” returned Briar, thickening his street accent out of perversity. “And she remembers the first time you tell her how a thing’s spelt, because she hates bein’ ignorant. She reads books, thick ones, all the time.”

  “She also has nothing to do,” added Rosethorn thoughtfully, “and she hates that.”

  Briar stared at her, amazed. He’d never thought Rosethorn had noticed.

  “She is a child,” Crane replied stiffly, turning away.

  Silence fell once more as Rosethorn got back to work. Crane muttered to himself as he tried both to do his spells and to write out what he’d done. Briar shut his ears to the distraction. Half an hour passed before Crane went to the doorway. “Osprey.”

  Osprey walked over. “Sir?”

  “Tell the runners I want the girl Trisana from Discipline called over here—”

  “Tsk, tsk,” Rosethorn said mockingly from her station. “I can’t imagine you would have forgotten that our four charges speak mind-to-mind without physical contact.”

  “I think the tea’s boiling over,” muttered Osprey, darting away.

  “Rosethorn,” Crane said ominously.

  Tris? Briar mind-called. Would you come to the greenhouse? We’ve something for you to do—taking notes for Old Picklepuss Crane.

  Finally! was her elated reponse. Just let me tell Lark! Thank you!

  Don’t thank me, Briar thought. Crane rides folk hard.

  I don’t care if he rides me with a bit and spurs. At least I’ll be doing something! Now, how do I get in there?

  He explained about the washroom, then let her go. He had thought to mention his suspicions, but in the end he chose to keep quiet. If there was magic to be seen, Tris would notice without prompting. If he mentioned it beforehand, it might plant the idea in her head, making her see its flicker if it was there or not.

  It was half an hour before Osprey came to the workroom door. “Sir, the girl Trisana from Discipline is here.” Tris walked in, robed, masked, gloved, capped, and shod as they all were. Her wiry hair fought the cap, forcing red curls out from under the cloth. In one hand she carried her wooden writing-case.

  Crane gestured to it. “You should not have fetched that. We have writing materials enough, and you won’t be able to take it out of here until we have a cure for the disease—if we find one.”

  Tris looked at her case, then shrugged. “I still would have brought this,” she told Crane. “Everything’s how I like it.” She squared her shoulders. “Where do I sit?”

  Crane pointed to Peachleaf’s chair and even managed to wait until Tris was settled before he began to explain how he wanted things done. Briar returned to work, trying not to feel restless. Had she seen it? Or had the other magics in these rooms blinded her to any ghostly shimmer in the trays?

  There was no more time to think. First Rosethorn, then Crane made changes to the additives for the trays. Putting old blends away and making up new ones kept Briar occupied for some time. Once that was done, he started a new tray.

  “I asked, could you wait a moment, please?” That was Tris, ominously patient.

  “My dear young woman, if you cannot keep up with me—” Crane began.

  “You just gave me a list of numbers, Dedicate. Which would you prefer, that I get them down as you gave them to me, or that I hurry and make mistakes?”

  Briar waited, but Crane did not reply. Risking a glance, Briar saw that Crane drummed his worktable with his fingers as he glared at Tris. The girl wrote something carefully, then said, “All right.”

  Crane resumed his dictation. Briar worked on as tension ebbed from the air. That’s one, he thought, dripping mullein oil into three wells. Just let her keep him happy till she sees the magic in the pox, that’s all I ask. He wasn’t sure who he asked it of. Lakik the Trickster was a bad god to ask for anything but ill luck to enemies, and Onini had no interest in medicine things. Urda, perhaps. She was the goddess with a stake in all this.

  Crane and Rosethorn continued to change the ingredients Briar used, marking some trays to be kept overnight, telling him to get rid of others. That job alone was scary: the trays had to be carried into the outer workroom to be emptied and boiled. He did not want to spill anything.

  The clock struck, though Briar wasn’t sure of the hour, just before he heard Tris say, “Just a moment—you said three drops of elecampane essence?”

  “Rather clearly, as I recall,” Crane replied.

  “But you added three drops not so long ago.”

  “I did not.”

  “Yes, you did, around two o’clock,” replied Tris. She flipped through a sheaf of notes. “Right here. See?”

  Crane looked over Tris’s shoulder. “Those are not your notes.”

  “They’re your last scribe’s. I looked through while you were getting supplies.”

  “You just happened to remember.” Briar couldn’t tell if Crane was sarcastic or thoughtful.

  “I remembered,” drawled Tris, much like Crane, “because I memorized the spelling of elecampane, in case you needed it again.”

  Crane looked up and
saw that not only was Briar watching, but Rosethorn as well. “Do I afford you amusement?” he wanted to know.

  “Yes,” Rosethorn told him immediately.

  Briar ducked his head and acted busy.

  There had been no fresh changes to his slate for over an hour when he stopped for a stretch. Looking up, he was startled to find the sky overhead was turning dark. Rosethorn had chosen this moment to rest too: she watched Crane and Tris as she leaned against her table.

  As if Crane felt the change in the air, he straightened and braced his hands against the small of his back, twisting to loosen it. “Put your brush down,” he advised Tris. “Move a little.”

  Tris slid off the chair, making a face when her stiff legs hit the floor. Slowly she walked over to examine Briar’s work area. He waited until she squinted at the tray he was about to start, then said quietly, “That yellow stuff, that’s the blue pox. They render it in there—” He pointed to the outer workroom. “Then they put it in these rock trays, and I drip things in each pocket with the blue pox.”

  Tris frowned. Silently she asked, What did you put in this tray? She looked at the racks of containers from which Briar made his additions to the pox essence. None of this is magicked, but I keep glimpsing it.

  Briar felt the back of his neck tingle. Did she see it! There’s only blue pox in that tray. I ain’t done nothing to it yet.

  Tris gripped Briar’s arm. Just the disease? Are the trays magicked?

  Briar shook his head.

  Can I see the blue pox? she asked. Just the blue pox?

  Briar led Tris into the outer workroom. Osprey was lifting crystal trays from the boiling vat and setting them to dry. “Tris, here’s Osprey—she’s Crane’s apprentice.”

  Osprey nodded cheerfully at Tris. “He must like you. I haven’t heard him deliver a lordly denunciation yet.”

  Tris shrugged. “He’ll get to it soon enough.”

  “I wanted to show Tris the blue pox,” explained Briar. “She ought to see how it’s brewed up, since she’s to be a scholar one day.”

  Osprey shed the special mitts that led her handle the hot crystal slabs without burning herself and donned treated gloves again. As she led Tris to the counter where workers handled the blue pox essence, she explained how it was made.

  As carefully as if she handled feather-thin glass, Osprey opened the metal catches that locked a jar and raised the lid. Tris leaned close to look; Briar did the same. Inside the jar was glazed white. It was half full of the yellowish, oily-looking blue pox essence.

  Briar saw an assortment of silver glints, a shimmer that faded. Slipping through their magical connection, he gazed at the essence through Tris’s eyes. To her the silver was no rapidly fading glimpse, but a steady, pale gleam.

  “The stuff used to make the essence, it’s magicked, isn’t it?” Tris asked Osprey.

  “Well, yes,” replied the young woman, “but the clarifying wash—that’s what it’s called—the wash is made to evaporate once the disease is pulled from the samples. There can’t be any magic left in the essence. If it is, all our results will be wrong. The cures won’t work, or they’ll go really awry. May I close the jar?”

  “I did not mean for you go on holiday,” announced Crane meaningfully from the inner workroom.

  “One moment,” Tris said to Osprey. She leaned over the jar, squinting at its contents. Briar, looking again through her eyes, saw the wash of silver.

  This is why you suggested me, isn’t it? demanded Tris. You weren’t sure, and you thought if you told me what you thought you saw, you might make me see it.

  That’s about right, Briar acknowledged, and braced himself for her wrath.

  Smart thinking, she told him instead.

  Briar drew out of her magic, startled. He could have sworn she’d be vexed.

  Tris returned to Crane without a word to Osprey. “She gets distracted,” Briar said apologetically to the apprentice. “Thanks for showing it to her.”

  “It’s all right,” Osprey assured Briar. “Working for Crane, you get used to people who forget the niceties when they’re caught up.”

  Briar snorted. “I guess you would.” He followed Tris.

  “If we are ready?” Crane asked Tris. “Now that playtime is over?”

  Tris took a deep breath. “You should send for Niko. There’s magic in the pox.”

  Crane stared at her, unmoving. Fascinated, Briar counted as the man blinked—once. Twice. Three times.

  He heard a click as Rosethorn put something down on her own counter, hard. “You see magic?” she asked sharply. “Are you sure?”

  Tris nodded.

  “We have substances that tell us if magic is in use,” Crane pointed out. “We employed those first.”

  “Does it work if it’s only a sneeze-worth of magic?” Briar wanted to know. “I mean, it was so teeny I wasn’t even sure I saw it.”

  “And thus you suggested Niklaren Goldeye’s student,” Crane said.

  “I don’t know what kind of measure a sneeze-worth is,” Tris remarked. “But the amount is very small.”

  Rosethorn came over. “Do you think it’s possible?” she asked Crane. “That it could be missed?”

  “Or it may have been lost among all our other magics,” he admitted. “We cannot do any of this without a monumental use of power, but—there are drawbacks. We could have overlooked an infinitesimal amount of magic. Osprey!” He raised his voice so abruptly that Tris, Briar, and Rosethorn were all caught by surprise and jumped.

  Osprey came in at a run. “Sir?” she gasped.

  “We require Niklaren Goldeye. Wherever he is, here or in Summersea, find him at once.”

  10

  Niko was in the city. Messengers rode there to find him while the workroom was closed for its nightly cleaning. Briar, Tris, and Rosethorn returned to Discipline.

  Crane came too. He and Rosenthorn were involved in a long debate, trying to create a new course of action. They had talked as they scrubbed, shouting to be heard in the washroom. They’d continued all the way to Discipline, squinting in moonlight to read their notes, and debated while nearly everyone else had supper and went to bed.

  The dawn bell woke the sleepers. As they emerged from their rooms, they discovered that Niko had come. He sat with Crane and Rosethorn, who appeared not to have gone to bed at all.

  “Tris,” Niko said, “eat breakfast quickly, please. We’re riding to Summersea.”

  “One moment.” Crane looked as if he’d been caught by surprise. “Why her? Her vision-skills aren’t as strong as yours—”

  “Thanks ever so,” Tris mumbled, pouring tea for herself.

  “I can make far better use of her,” persisted Crane. “There is work to do as we await your results.”

  “You cannot make better use of her,” Niko said sharply, dark eyes glittering. “I will have to do a past-visualization working at some point. For it I require her strength and stubbornness. An extra pair of eyes will not come amiss, nor her ability to control water.”

  “She is a clear and accurate note-taker,” protested Crane. “She thinks about the notes she is given. I made infinitely more progress yesterday, with her and Rosethorn and the boy, than I had until then.”

  Rosethorn flapped a hand as if she fanned herself. “Spare my blushes,” she murmured. Briar snorted.

  “I do not begrudge the acknowledgment of credit where it is due,” replied Crane loftily. “We have a good team. Breaking it up now is most ill-advised.”

  “Find another scribe,” Niko snapped. “I’ll have the duke send his, if necessary—”

  “Is this what it’ll be like when I’m older and boys are fighting for the chance to kiss my hand?” Tris murmured to Sandry. The noble giggled.

  “I do not want a ducal scribe; I want this girl. May I remind you—”

  “I will not go into the sewers without her!” Niko barked.

  Everyone stared at him. Tris turned white. “Sewers?” she squeaked.

  “
The disease spreads as the water level in the sewers rises and damaged pipes leak into wells. It’s plain the two are connected,” Niko said. “If we are to go there without drowning, I need Tris. If I am to have power to work the spells that reveal the past and to follow the trail to whatever mage concocted this—horror—I will need Tris. No one else will do.”

  “Not the sewers,” whispered the redhead, trembling. “They’re dirty.”

  “I know,” replied Niko, his voice sharp.

  For a long moment, no one said a word. Finally Crane sighed. “May she return to me when you are done?”

  “I don’t want to go,” complained Tris. “Can’t I stay with Crane and Rosethorn?”

  “We must,” Niko retorted. “Eat your breakfast.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Then change into old clothes. We need to do this now. “

  Tris walked to the stair, her feet dragging. Sandry followed her friend upstairs. “It’ll be all right,” those seated below heard her say.

  “I hope so,” murmured Niko, rubbing his temples.

  Just after Tris and Niko left, Frostpine arrived at Discipline. “More work for us,” he told Daja as she ate breakfast. “Protective talismans for the duke’s soldiers, to keep a rain of chamber pots and rocks from banging them on the head in the East District. I’d hoped they’d forgotten I can do such things, but someone apparently remembered.”

  Crane raised her eyebrows. “How can you object to the protection of those who keep the duke’s peace?”

  Frostpine sat next to Daja, plucking morsels from a muffin and popping them into his mouth. “A proper fear of such things keeps soldiers polite,” he observed. “Otherwise they might be tempted to push common folk around. Orders to enter people’s homes uninvited are a sore temptation for peacekeepers, I’ve found.”

  “Have you any respect for proper order?” asked Crane.

  “Depends on whose idea of order it is,” said Frostpine. “Daja, are you about done?”

  She nodded, eating quickly.

  Crane shook his head. “Rosethorn? Briar? We should go.”