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.