“I’m gonna touch your eyelids now. Don’t yelp.” Briar gently brushed her eyelids with a sight oil to help those who could not do so to see magic. “Open them. Try to keep your mind clear.”
Evvy slowly opened one eye, then the other. The brilliance of the magic around them made her blink rapidly; her eyes began to tear. Slowly the blaze of her power faded as she lost the contact she had with it.
“What was that?” she wanted to know, rubbing her eyes with her fist.
“That was your magic,” Briar informed her. “We’re going to start you learning to grip all that close, so you don’t leak it every whichway. And if you can’t see it, you’ve got to find a way for you to know it’s about, and what shape it’s in, and what you can do with it. Did you feel anything before I made you open your eyes?”
Evvy yawned. “No,” she said, rubbing her nose. “Am I supposed to?”
“There’s something,” Briar insisted. “Warmth, cold, a tingly feeling. The mage always knows. Now close your eyes and let’s try it again.”
“I don’t want to,” Evvy whined. “I’m bored.” “Sometime I’ll ask you what you want. This isn’t that time,” Briar retorted. Then he bit his lip. I open my mouth and Rosethorn pops out, he thought ruefully. Next thing you know, I’ll threaten to hang her in the well. “Close your eyes,” he told Evvy firmly.
The lady nibbled a fig as she eyed Orlana. “You tried to seize the girl yesterday,” she remarked. “You were burned for your pains, and you fled without taking her.”
Orlana, her nose raw, her eyes bloodshot and puffy, her breath still rattling in her chest, nodded sullenly. She should have ignored her orders to report to the lady if anything happened. Ikrum wouldn’t have made her come here - he was half-terrified of the woman as it was.
“And now you say you left your watcher’s post because of flowers. “The lady’s fingers hovered over a second fig.
“You make it sound like a little thing!” Orlana cried. “I couldn’t breathe, it was so bad!” Silently she cursed Ikrum in Shaihun’s name. The desert winds should scrape him to the bone for having brought the lady into their lives.
“I am sure you thought the inconvenience was serious.” The lady surveyed Orlana from top to toe. “And this pahan told you that it was necessary to court the stone mage?”
“For other gangs. He says he doesn’t want Vipers courting her at all.” She was thirsty, but there was no point to asking for something to drink. The lady would never permit a thukdak to handle her cups.
The lady inspected one of her many rings. “The courtship need not come from Vipers,” she murmured. “As for your tale of giant roses - though I have warned you all that drugs will only keep you in the gutter, it is clear that you at least did not pay heed. Your tale is simply an excuse for drug intoxication, and I refuse to accept it.”
“I don’t care if you do or not, takameri” Orlana spat, fed up. “I wasn’t taking drugs and that’s what happened. Who are you to go questioning me and what I say? You never gave your blood to the gang. You never gave up family for the gang. You - “
The lady raised a finger. The mute walked out of the gallery and dropped his bowstring over Orlana’s head, twisting it deftly. Orlana, fighting wildly, tried to get her fingers under it and failed.
As the mute stepped away from her corpse, the lady beckoned to one of the other galleries on the edges of the garden. Her armsmaster Ubayid came out of the dark room where he’d been waiting and listening. When he was close enough, he knelt on the garden flagstones and bowed his head to her.
Where the mute was big and rounded with fat, Ubayid was rawhide lean and wiry. He wore his black and silver hair combed strictly back, tightly braided. His skin was brown and weathered from hours in the sun. A long mustache framed the top and sides of a thin-lipped mouth; his cheeks were clean-shaven. His lower eyelids sagged a little, giving an emotionless expression to his brown eyes. He wore the clothes of a free man of the city - loose shirt, sleeveless overrobe, baggy trousers, boots, sash - plus a sword on his left and a long dagger on his right. He had been one of her first husband’s guards, but had chosen to make her interests his own.
“Find Ikrum Fazhal and tell him to report to me immediately,” the lady ordered. “Then ask questions about this eknub pahan. Discover where he goes. I desire to make his acquaintance, but subtly. If courtship will pry the girl from him, I shall court them, within limits. I like servants to appreciate their value. Since this pahan has made himself her friend, I shall make the pahan look upon me with favor.”
As the mute slung the dead girl over his shoulder and took her away, Ubayid looked at the mess he had left. “If you keep killing them, lady, you won’t have a gang left.”
Her eyes widened with fury. “I give you too much license, Ubayid. They will stop offending me, and I will no longer have to punish them. These urchins simply need to learn I will not accept failure.”
When Ikrum arrived, he was brought to the lady’s sitting room, not the garden. The servants had not yet finished retiling the spot where Orlana had died. The lady heard the boy arrive, but did not look up from her book until well after the time he had dropped to his knees and laid his face on the floor.
Finally she closed her book, keeping her place with her finger. “Ikrum, you must inform your people I will not tolerate disrespect. Look at me.”
He raised his face. Both of his eyes were black, one so badly bruised that it had swollen shut. His nose had been broken; his lips split. A crude bloodstained bandage was wrapped around his head.
The lady’s book slid from her lap. She swung her legs to the floor and straightened to sit on her couch, leaning down to tuck her fingers under his chin. He let her turn his face this way and that as she inspected his wounds.
“How did this happen?” she wanted to know, her eyes flashing. “Who has done this to you?”
He tried to lick his lips and winced.
“No, wait,” she ordered. To the servant who responded to the bell she rang she said, “My healer, coffee, food, and a footstool, at once.” The servant ran to obey. “Say nothing until you are cared for,” the lady ordered Ikrum.
The healer was there within minutes. A mage, she was soon able to reduce the swellings that covered Ikrum’s face and arms, heal his broken nose and cracked ribs, and dull the ache of what she told the lady was “a truly thorough beating.”
When the healer was finished, the lady dismissed her.
Ikrum carefully sipped his hot, bitter coffee. When he had emptied a cup, the lady poured a second for him with her own hands. “Who?” she asked.
“Gate Lords.” Ikrum started to slide off the stool on which he sat, only to see the lady shake her head. “I - you remember, the sister of their tesku, I like her. Maybe she likes me. Her brother caught us together and had his mates teach me a lesson.” Ikrum smiled bitterly. “He said he’d geld me next time.”
“This must not be tolerated!” The lady stood and paced, her green silk draperies and veils fluttering around her. “This disrespect - that they would assault you!” She gripped Ikrum’s shoulder as he began to rise from his stool. “Now do you see?” she demanded fiercely. “You did not want to deal with the Gate Lords, but do you not see we must? They heard of your recruitment of those others. They are frightened. Anyone at the top of the tree must concern himself with those below. They beat you to make you lose respect with your Vipers, so you are no danger to them.”
“Tell me what to do,” Ikrum whispered, head bowed. He wondered if Shaihun, the god of desert winds and the madness of crackling heat, ever wore a woman’s face. Was he looking at Shaihun right now? Was it Shaihun’s henna-tinted claws that bit into his shoulders, and Shaihun who breathed spices into his face? “I will do it, I swear.”
“Orlana is dead,” the lady whispered, her dark eyes holding Ikrum’s as surely as her hands gripped his shoulders.
“She failed me twice. She let the eknub pahan send her scurrying. There are only two courses for us, Ikrum. Victory or death. I will not live halfway in this world. Neither will my Vipers. Here is what you will do.” She spoke quietly, making sure that he understood every word. At last she let go of him. “Crush our foes, Ikrum. Give me victories.”
Golden House echoed as market keepers opened the giant shutters, allowing sunlight to enter the building. Flinching as the sound battered his sleepy ears, Briar inhaled the steam from his tea and tried not to hate himself for having been fool enough to rent a stall. He knew it was a good idea - people had to see his miniature trees before they would pay plenty of money for them - but his body longed passionately for bed. His work with Evvy the afternoon before had tired him more than he had thought.
The last hour in particular had been a trial, he thought, and sipped his tea. No doubt he’d asked too much of her first real stab at meditation, but how could he know what was too much? He was somewhere around fourteen, just a student himself, as Rosethorn often reminded him. He would definitely be relieved when Jebilu took over.
Evvy had been surprised - Briar had not - when Rosethorn came home to say Jebilu would meet his new student at Golden House. “Don’t expect him much before noon,” Rosethorn cautioned, a grim twist to her mouth. “But he’ll come, or I’ll know the reason why.” She had looked at Evvy. “Did you give my boy a hard time?”
“Your boy?” Evvy had asked with a grin. “He’s no boy, he’s old.”
“I feel old,” Briar mumbled as the first rays of light hit the shelves of miniature trees behind him. They chorused a welcome to the sun, their leaves eager for even tidbits of light. Only his own tree, a pine in the shape called shakkan, did not call. Briar had positioned it so the sun would touch it first. It was his companion and friend, a one-hundred-fifty-year-old work of art, every bit of it filled to near-bursting with magic. It was not for sale.
Others were. Five he had started from trees found in and around Chammur. Like Rosethorn building supplies of seed for the local farmers, Briar had used his power to bring those trees to perfect miniature form, careful not to weaken them as magic filled their veins. Another six were miniatures he’d bought on the way, shaping them to the point where they could be sold for ten times what he had paid. Others he had brought from home. Some he wouldn’t sell unless the offered price were very good. They were samples of his expertise in the varied classical forms of miniature tree, and insurance against a need for money further down the road.
Once he finished his tea, he rearranged his charges on the shelves to take advantage of the light. He was trying to ignore a nagging voice in his mind, one that sounded like Sandry, his foster-sister. The voice tugged at his thought constantly, asking a question he didn’t want asked or answered: what good will a resentful teacher do her? Or worse: what if he waits for you and Rosethorn to leave, then treats her badly?
I stank as her teacher yesterday, he argued. A teacher who knows little about stone magic and less about teaching is just as bad.
The ghost-Sandry ignored him. He knew what that meant: she thought he was dead wrong.
Just like a noble, he told her when she got too insistent, as the real Sandry did so often. Always worrying about future things, when right now is hard enough.
“I still say they’re rock-killers.”
He’d been so deep in thought that he hadn’t seen Evvy arrive. Briar jumped and glared at her. “Don’t sneak up on me and don’t call them rock-killers,” he told the girl. “They have to live, same as your precious rocks.”
“My rocks don’t break up your plants,” she retorted, laughter in her eyes. “It’s the other way around.” She was clean for the third day in a row, and dressed in clean clothes. Now she let herself into the stall and perched on the tall stool. “You got anything to eat?”
He sighed. Reaching into his satchel, he found a dumpling he’d brought as a snack for later. “Didn’t you stop at the house and beg something off Rosethorn?” he asked, passing her the dumpling and a clean cloth. “You’re wearing your new clothes.”
“I stopped and changed.” Evvy tucked the cloth into the neck of her orange tunic.
You never have to tell her to do a thing twice, Briar thought, watching her settle the napkin. Maybe I did push too hard yesterday. “So didn’t she feed you?”
Evvy pinched off some dumpling and stuck it in her mouth. Chewing vigorously, she said, “She had a pair of shears in her hand when I asked. She said if I bothered her today she’d snip my nose off, so I should pester you for something to eat when I got here,” she added, taking another bite.
“She wouldn’t’ve really cut your nose off,” Briar said. He realized with a feeling of destiny that he would probably buy her a larger breakfast shortly. “Just bloodied it a bit.”
“She’s fierce,” Evvy said admiringly. “I bet she scared Jooba-hooba plenty, to make him leave the palace.”
“If he’s going to be your teacher, you ought to say his proper name,” Briar informed her sternly, thinking of how the stone mage might react to being called “Jooba-hooba”. “Or call him Master Stoneslicer.”
“I still don’t see why you can’t teach me,” Evvy replied, jaw set. “We were learning fine yesterday, right?”
Briar rested his head in his hands. It was going to be a long morning.
Evvy finished her dumpling as Golden House came to life. Briar placed his tree-working kit on the stall’s counter, and put his willow next to it. He was training it to the spiral form, which it liked far better than the cascade form it had when he’d bought it. Working gently, assuring the tree it wouldn’t feel a thing when he took off the brown leaves, he lost himself in his work for a time. So absorbed was he that when Evvy did speak again, he jumped. The willow dragged some of its branches over his hands, telling him that he ought to calm down.
“Now if you want a gang, that’s the one to belong to,” Evvy remarked. Briar looked where she did, and saw three people a year or two older than he was walk past their stall. One was a girl; the other two were boys. All three wore white, sleeveless tunics, black brocade sashes, and black trousers.
“What’s the sign - the tunic or the sash and breeches?” he asked, absently checking to make sure the willow’s earth was just damp enough.