Briar's Book Page 4

  “Whatever you see here is spelled to keep every influence out but the samples that go into these bags,” Rosethorn told Flick. “Nothing is dyed, the materials are all the most basic. The only thing the mages who work with this stuff should collect is the disease, mixed with the body fluids of the people we get samples from.”

  The woman lifted out the top tray to show an inner compartment. It held a second, smaller metal box, spelled just as strongly as the one in which it sat. “We send this back to Winding Circle with the samples. It’s magicked to keep those who carry it from getting sick.” This box she placed on the table. “They’ll send us a new one every day.”

  Rosethorn then took square and bag pairs from the top part of the box, holding them by the edges as she placed five on a black stone plate. Handing the plate to Briar, she returned the top tray and its contents to the large metal box. “Don’t touch anything,” she warned Flick as the girl looked inside the metal container.

  Flick blinked heavy-lidded eyes. “No, Dedicate,” she said obediently. “How does all this work?”

  “To craft spells that unlock the nature of this disease, a mage needs samples of matter from the sick person. It’s drawn from the inside of the mouth, sores or sweat, blood, dung, and urine.” Rosethorn sat next to Flick. “For you, the blood part is easy.” She pressed a cloth square to Flick’s mouth, where a crack in her lower lip bled sluggishly. “Bag,” Rosethorn told Briar.

  He took the small bag that came with the square by the edges and held it open. When Rosethorn dropped the square in, he pulled the drawstring tight. “Stick out your tongue,” Rosethorn ordered Flick.

  Briar watched, holding and closing the bags, as Rosethorn pressed a square to Flick’s coated tongue and made her blow her nose into another. She helped the street rat into the privy for dung and urine. Once the last sample had been gathered, Rosethorn placed all of Flick’s bags on the table and lifted the ink and brushes from the box. “You can do this,” she told Briar. “Write the name of the person who gave the sample on the tags, and the date. Be neat.” She picked up another stack of bags on a stone tray. “I’ll get my samples now.”

  As she went into the washroom, Briar began to fill out the labels, grinning. All winter, as he struggled to learn to write clearly, Rosethorn had insisted on doing her own labels. That she wanted him to do them now meant his work finally pleased her. Carefully he inscribed Flick, Fifth Day, Sap Moon, KF—for after the fall of the Kurchal Empire, the calendar used by all residents of the Pebbled Sea—1036 on each scrap of parchment. Flick, her head on her arms, watched Briar with sleepy fascination.

  “Ain’t you never seen a market scribe do this?” Briar wanted to know.

  “Everybody expects them to write. I never knew anybody myself that could.”

  Briar grinned. “It ain’t easy, but it’s fun,” he replied, unable to resist a small boast.

  Rosethorn watched as he labeled her samples, then gave him more squares, bags, and a tray. “Your turn,” she ordered. “Use the thorn to get blood, do your best with your dung and urine. Don’t take forever. I want these to reach Winding Circle before dark.”

  Briar frowned at the tray. “What about them soldiers in the other quarantine?” he wanted to know. “Do we get theirs?”

  Rosethorn shook her head. “They’ve been trained specially for times like this. They do their own. Now hop to it.”

  When he returned, Rosethorn placed all the samples in the smaller box, then replaced the lid. It clicked into place as she slid it onto the bottom half of the container. When she tested the lid, it refused to come off. The box shone bright silver in Briar’s eyes, a sign that the strong protection spells had gone to work.

  “How will they get at the samples?” he asked as Rosethorn carried the box to the inside door.

  She rapped on it hard. “It’s a lock-spell,” she replied. “When this is delivered to Winding Circle, those who study the disease have the counter-spell to open it.”

  “Scorching,” murmured Flick. “Wish we’d had a lock-spell when the Mudrunners raided our den.”

  There was a rattling on the other side of the door, and the lower flap opened. Rosethorn put the small box on the floor and gave it a shove. Once it had gone through the opening, the flap closed. The bolt slid into place as the door was locked again.

  “Scorching?” asked Rosethorn, lifting one graceful eyebrow. “Mudrunners?”

  “Scorching means ‘good,’” Briar translated. “Mudrunners is a Mire gang.”

  “Charming,” Rosethorn said drily. “The language I speak is so drab by comparison.” Pouring a cup of fruit juice, she gave it to Flick.

  Flick scowled. “Why do I have to keep drinking this muck?” she demanded.

  “You’re feverish,” Rosethorn told her, more patient than she had ever been with Briar. “You’re drying out. Get too dry, and you won’t be able to keep fighting the sickness. Look at it this way, it’s better than willowbark tea.” Coaxing, joking, and being firm by turns, she got the sick girl to finish the juice, then helped her back to bed. Once she had lain down, Rosethorn produced a jar of aloe balm and began to smooth it into Flick’s pox-mottled skin.

  Briar had seen Rosethorn be gentle as she tied up bean plants, coaxed grapevines to wind more firmly around a trellis, or patched a tree that had lost a limb in a storm. This was the first time he’d seen her use that delicate touch on a human. She could have been the girl’s mother, had Flick’s mother loved her kid, he thought.

  Flick dozed, lulled by silence and Rosethorn’s kind touch.

  “Niko said you don’t like people,” Briar remarked softly when Rosethorn came back to the table.

  “I don’t like nursing them,” was her quiet reply.

  “But you go to Urda’s House and the healers at the City Temple every month,” he pointed out. “Every month, rain or no. And you always take stuff—”

  “I check medicines and replenish them if they are running low,” Rosethorn told him. “Especially here, where their goods are the cheapest money can buy, I spell their medicines to the greatest strength magic can give. I don’t go near the sick.”

  “If you’re magicking stuff, why didn’t you make me stay and watch?”

  She smiled crookedly. “Boy, I teach you six and seven days a week at times. Every now and then we both need a rest.”

  He turned that over in his mind. He did like their days in the city, when he was free to go with Flick and her friends, if he wasn’t visiting the market with the girls. “You’re being nice to Flick,” he said at last.

  “You needn’t adore humanity to feel bad for someone in this fix,” she replied. “Street rat or no, she’s sick and frightened. There’s a difference between people like her and adults who think they know more about your life, and their illness, than you do. If you’ve nothing better to do than chatter, you can help take inventory of these cupboards. If we get more patients in here, I don’t want to run out of anything important.”

  By the time the clock on top of the Winding Circle tower known as the Hub rang three in the afternoon, Daja had come to work at the big table. Before her lay a spool of thick iron wire, cutters, a thin-tipped punch, and a small hammer and pliers, the tools needed to make chain mail. She was threading a link through its neighbors when she heard a familiar voice in the road that ran past the cottage.

  “Don’t whine at me, woman! A lack of planning in the Water Temple should not be an emergency for me!”

  The pliers slipped from Daja’s fingers. Frostpine yelling? He was usually the most easygoing of men. When she’d left him earlier that day, he had been lazy with good humor over the success of the morning’s work.

  She ran to the door and threw it open. The rain had stopped. Her teacher, Dedicate Frostpine of the Fire Temple, was striding through the front gate. He looked like a thundercloud about to spit lightning.

  A thin, fluttery, pale-skinned woman in the blue habit of the Water Temple followed him. “Your language is intemperate!” she
cried.

  Frostpine whirled to glare down at her. His brown skin was flushed; his eyes blazed. His wild mane of side-hair and beard gave him the look of a bald lion. His bright red habit, scarred with burns and soot, made him an even more vivid figure. He pointed at the Water dedicate with a finger that trembled with frustration. “‘Intemperate’?” he repeated. “Gods bless me, you people would make the moon intemperate. Last year you ran out of bandages on the eve of a pirate attack, and now, now this—”

  “How could we have known?” wailed the dedicate. “We have enough for normal diseases. Who would have dreamed a new one could appear and we might need ten times our supply!”

  By this time Lark and Sandry had come to see what was going on. Little Bear thrust his big head between Daja’s knees for a better view, rocking her. Daja could sense Tris overhead as the redhead watched from an attic window.

  “Who would have dreamed?” demanded Frostpine. “Who would—! You’re supposed to dream, of anything, of everything. Now scat!”

  The dedicate ran. Frostpine watched her briefly, then stormed into the house. Everyone got out of his way.

  “You shouldn’t yell at her,” Lark said reproachfully.

  “Of course I should,” Frostpine barked. “Gods bless us all, Lark, but our Water dedicates would try the patience of a stone!”

  “Well, yes,” admitted Lark, sitting at the table. “What did they forget this time?”

  “The warded boxes, the ones for samples of body fluids from the sick,” he said, sinking down on the bench across from her. “They have five.”

  Lark put a hand to her mouth. “That’s not even enough for a disease we know, where all that’s needed is to see if it’s changed.”

  “Crane threw a fit—I don’t blame him—and sent them to me,” Frostpine said bitterly. “If I were Moonstream, I’d scatter the whole lot to the four winds.” He looked at Daja. “Bundle up everything you’ll need for two or three days,” he said with regret. “I can’t turn out enough of these boxes on my own. We’re going to work till we drop, I’m afraid.”

  Daja raced upstairs.

  “She’s leaving too?” asked Sandry. She stood by the household shrine, a bit of forgotten needlework in one hand. Her eyes were huge. “Three of us gone?”

  “What do you mean, ‘three of us’?” Frostpine asked.

  Sandry vanished into her room as Lark explained. When Daja came downstairs, Tris in her wake, Frostpine was leaning against Sandry’s open door. “So you see, Rosethorn has plenty of experience,” he was telling the young noble. “Even if she doesn’t know what causes a disease, she’s been known to hold them off with sheer force of will.” He turned to Daja. “Ready?”

  Daja nodded. She gave Little Bear a final scratch around the ears and followed her teacher out of the house.

  Sandry ran into her room, to the front window. She waved her handkerchief at Daja and Frostpine as if they were on parade and kept waving until they had gone from view.

  “Lark?” she heard Tris say out in the main room. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know, dear,” murmured Lark. “Just remember—your sharp tongue cuts.”

  Sandry reached into the leather pouch she always wore around her neck and drew out a thread circle. It was thick, undyed wool marked by four lumps, each spaced equally apart, with no way to tell where the thread began or ended. It was the first thing she had ever spun, lumps and all, except that originally it had been just a thread, its two ends separate. It had become a circle when, trapped underground in an earthquake, she had spun the four young people’s magics together to make all of them stronger. As far as Sandrilene fa Toren was concerned, that thread was the four of them.

  As long as this is together, we’re together, she told herself. Even if we aren’t in the same house, we’re still one.

  Briar spent the rest of his first afternoon in quarantine boiling, then hanging up to dry, the cloths used to tend Flick. She was less alert as the afternoon wore on, dozing more or just staring at the ceiling. By sunset Briar almost missed the chores he would have had at Discipline Cottage—they would have been a way to pass time. In Sotat, those of Deadman’s District who’d been unfortunate enough to be healthy and quarantined in an epidemic had said it was the most boring part of their lives. As far as Briar could see by that first day’s end, they had told the absolute truth. Only the thought of Rosethorn’s wrath kept him from finding a way to escape Urda’s House.

  Before he went to bed, he mind-spoke with all three of the girls. Sandry and Tris were not happy that he and Daja were gone. When Briar complained of boredom, Sandry rapped back, Good. Pick a birthday.

  Will you stop this birthday folly? he demanded. There’s other stuff on my mind just now!

  You said you were bored, Daja said. Either you’re bored and need something to think about, or you’re too busy to be bored.

  Vexed with them, he went to sleep and dreamed of the last plague to hit Hajra. It was cholera, “the dung disease,” as they called it. People danced wildly in the street. In the dream he didn’t want to dance, but was about to join in anyway, when a bright, steady light shone on his face, waking him.

  Rosethorn was seated at Flick’s bed, next to his: she had placed her light-stone on the shelf that ran along the wall behind the cots. When Briar sat up, she said quietly, “Get all the sleep you can. You’ll need it.”

  Instead Briar swung his legs out from under the blanket. “What’s the gab?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

  “I wish you would go back to talking like a real person.” Rosethorn blotted Flick’s face with a wet cloth.

  “He is talking like a real person,” croaked Flick. “Nobody in the Mire talks like you.”

  “Briar, go to bed,” insisted Rosethorn. “We’ll have plenty to do in the morning. Have some more willowbark tea, Flick.”

  Briar lay down again, wrapping himself in his blanket. We don’t know this pox is a killer, he told himself firmly. Plenty get smallpox or measles and live. Maybe this pox is just a weak measle.

  Even if it is a killer, Flick will make it. Rosethorn can save anybody.

  4

  Dawn was a bare gleam in the sky when Tris stumped downstairs. Lark was still abed, her door closed. Sandry was coming in from the well with a full bucket, her sleep-tousled brown hair at all angles. Little Bear, sprawled across the threshold to Briar’s room, lifted his head and whined at Tris.

  “Just how I feel,” replied Tris, her voice low. “Do you want to go out?”

  The dog got to his feet and went to the front door, sniffing it as Tris crossed the big room. To her surprise, Little Bear started to growl.

  “Now what?” she demanded, flinging the door wide. A tall, lanky man in a black-bordered yellow habit stumbled over the sill: it seemed he had been leaning on the door. Tris and Little Bear jumped out of the way as the dedicate went sprawling. The dog barked hysterically, the fur along his shoulders standing upright. Sandry looked up drowsily, shook her head, and continued the exacting work of pouring water from bucket to kettle.

  “I hate dogs.” The newcomer rolled onto his back and half sat, bracing himself on his elbows.

  “What in Mila’s name—?” demanded Lark, coming out in her nightgown. She looked at the man and sighed, combing her fingers through her short curls. “Hello, Crane,” she said wryly. “Just in time for breakfast.” She returned to her room, closing the door.

  The first dedicate and chief mage of the Air Temple arched dark, thin brows at Tris. “Will you control the animal?” he asked, his voice wintry. “I should hate to rise and instigate a bout of fierceness.”

  Tris sighed and gripped Little Bear’s collar. “Down,” she said firmly.

  Little Bear sat. He continued to growl deep in his throat as Dedicate Crane pulled his long arms and legs together and got to his feet. He was the kind of man who never just stood, but draped himself on air. His expressive hands always dangled from the wrists, as if they were too elegant to disappear into his pocket
s. Crane had a long face and a long nose, a small, pursed mouth, and weary brown eyes. Even his black hair, cut earlobe-length and brushed back, drooped.

  Tris rubbed her nose, eyeing the man suspiciously. Briar’s shakkan had belonged to Crane originally—the boy had stolen it from Crane’s greenhouse. It meant the first meeting between Crane and the four had been unpleasant. Later they had discovered that Rosethorn and Crane were rivals in plant magic. “What were you doing?” asked the redhead. “Leaning on the door?”

  Up went the eyebrows; Crane’s eyes ran over her chubby form. “One does expect a modicum of manners in the young,” he remarked drily.

  “Good for one,” retorted Tris. “If you wanted manners, you should have come after I had my tea.”

  “I’m brewing as fast as I can,” Sandry informed her with a yawn, placing the kettle on the fire. “Why don’t you take Little Bear out?”

  Tris obeyed while Sandry fetched cream and honey and placed them on the table. Crane had seated himself there without a word. Unaware of Sandry’s gaze, he had lowered his face into his hands and was rubbing his eyes. The young noble suddenly wondered when he had slept that night, or even if he had.

  The brows, and bloodshot eyes, rose over the screen of fingers. “You are staring,” he said, voice muffled by his hands.

  Sandry made a face and turned to get the cups. Something twinged near her heart as she gathered Lark’s, Tris’s, and her own cup and passed over those that belonged to the missing three. Last she grabbed one of the spares and placed them all on the table, then entered Rosethorn’s workroom. In a corner near the kitchen were the jars with their teas, each mixed by Rosethorn to her exacting taste. Using a dish, Sandry ladled out the morning blend, a sunny tea heavy with rosehips and bits of lemon peel. She resealed that jar and hesitated, her eyes going to the jar labeled Endurance. Finally she removed a spoonful, dusting it over the mound of morning blend.