Briar's Book (11 page)

Just after the Guildhall clock struck midnight, Flick went stiff, her body turning into a bow. Just her head and feet touched the bed. She collapsed as Briar and a blue-robed healer ran to her cot, then arched again, unbreathing, eyes rolled up in her head.

“Get her feet!” snapped the healer. She threw her body across Flick, grabbing her wrists. While Briar hung on to the girl’s feet, the healer took a breath and exhaled. Her magic surged like fast-growing vines through Flick’s arms and into her straining chest. Flick collapsed, gasping as she tried to suck air into her dry throat.

“Breathe,” the healer urged Flick. “Breathe as hard as you – ”

Flick whined. Her back arched as her eyes rolled up. Now the healer sent power racing through her, filling the girl’s skin with magic only Briar could see. The magic’s light fluttered; in Flick’s arms and legs it receded, trickling back into her body almost as quickly as it had filled her limbs.

This time Flick’s convulsion was shorter. “Breathe,” chanted the healer softly when she went limp. “Breathe, breathe – ”

Briar was confused. Why was it important for Flick to breathe? Wasn’t it Henna –? Yes. She’d said that in long moments without air, parts of the brain died. People with seizures forgot to breathe. Urda, no, thought Briar, scowling at his friend. Don’t leave her an idiot.

Flick tensed again. Two more seizures followed, the healer never once loosening her grip. Each time it took her more effort to thrust her magic into Flick’s body, and it never lasted as long inside the girl’s skin as it had the first time.

When Flick had lain quiet for a while, the healer let go. Briar, who’d been knocked repeatedly into the bedstead, was happy to release the girl’s feet.

“Could I do that?” he asked the healer as she gulped down cold water. “Put my magic in them to keep them going?”

“Are you a healer?” the woman asked tiredly. “Can you run your power through another human being?”

“Only my mates – these girls I know – and Rosethorn.”

The healer looked at him – really looked – for the first time. “Yanna bless me, you’re one of the four, aren’t you? The boy, the plant-mage?” Briar nodded. The healer massaged her temples. “You might do it with those girls and Rosethorn, but we would have been told if any of you could heal.”

“Could I try?” asked Briar as the healer lurched to her feet.

“Try all you like,” she replied. “Nothing will come of it.” She hesitated, then touched Flick’s head. Once again Briar saw magic, but its gleam was just visible – the woman was nearly drained. She pursed her lips.

“Flick’ll be fine,” snapped Briar, annoyed by the healer’s rejection of the idea that he could do this kind of magic.

“I hope so,” she replied, moving on to the next bed.

Sitting beside his friend, Briar held her wrists as the healers did. Magic was magic. It could be lent to other mages; he’d seen that, had done it himself. Let him bleed off some now, when there was some good to be had.

His store of power wasn’t the same as it had been that morning, before he and Rosethorn had gone downstairs, but he still had some. He pictured Flick’s veins like veins in a leaf and urged his magic forward. It was like trying to leap off a cliff, only to find he was still on even ground. There was no place for him to go. Again he tried, imagining her veins as a web of roots. His power moved in him, but went nowhere.

A hand on his shoulder jolted Briar out of a half trance. “It doesn’t work,” Rosethorn said wryly. “I’ve tried. How has she been doing?”

Briar described Flick’s seizures and the shrinking amounts of magic that the healer had fed to his friend. Rosethorn frowned as he spoke. When he was done, she said, “I’ll be back shortly.” She left him there.

“Can I have water?” Orji whispered from the next bed. “My head aches.”

Briar scooped water into a cup and helped raise the man so he could drink. Looking for Rosethorn as Orji gulped the water, Briar saw her arguing softly – but ferociously, from the look on her face – with the healer who’d tended Flick. The healer pointed to other cots and shook her head. Was she telling Rosethorn she’d already helped those people and was drained of magic, or was she saying there were others who needed it more than Flick?

It didn’t matter, decided Briar. She wouldn’t help Flick, if she even could. The healer’s shoulders drooped; she leaned on the table as she argued with Rosethorn – she was nearly played out. Finally Rosethorn left the room. Briar returned to his watch over Flick.

Some time after the Guildhall clock struck one, Flick passed into unmoving sleep. The clock was ringing the half hour after three in the morning when the consumptive man began to cough himself to death, noisily and bloodily. Orji tried to stuff his blanket into his ears to escape the sound. Briar trembled, wishing he could do the same. Suddenly the noise ended. Those in the room who were able to understand made the gods-circle on their chests.

Flick slept through it all, unmoving, her breath rattling in her throat. Briar tried to get her to drink tea or water, but it ran from her loose mouth. “You have to get well,” he told her fiercely. “C’mon, Flick. You’re a
fighter.
Remember that time we was on the wharf and them Trader boys tried to run us off?” Tris, Sandry, and Daja knew of this adventure, but their teachers did not. “We showed ‘em, right? You even got a fine cloth cap out of it. Sky blue, with a peacock feather, and the pump we saw told you it was worth three silver crescents.”

Flick’s breathing slowed, as if she
did
remember. As if she savored the memory of either the victory or the hat.

Cheered by that, Briar talked on. “Once we’re sprung from here, I’ll ask Sandry to make a cape to go with the hat, same color and everything.” He was breathing along with Flick, though he didn’t realize it at first. Her body clawed for air like a weary fisherman hauling in nets a handful at a time. There was always a halt when Flick stopped inhaling. Each time Briar stopped when she did. Waiting longer and longer for her to start again, he silently begged her to let go of her lungfuls of air. He couldn’t talk as well as breathe with her, to help her, so he shut up and clutched her hand, watching her chest slowly rise – and fall. Rise – and fall.

Rise… and fall.

Rise… rise… fall. Fall.

He emptied his chest and waited. She was about to breathe in, about to at any minute, except, except…

Briar choked and gasped, inhaling frantically to fill starved lungs. He wheezed as spittle went into his airway, then coughed and coughed, until he yanked the mask from his mouth and drank water straight from the jar. When he lowered it, Flick still hadn’t moved, hadn’t filled her lungs.

She had lost so much weight. A skeleton with skin, he thought, taking her hand again. When she got better, he would try to talk Winding Circle into taking her. Gorse, the chief cook, would love to bring her to a proper weight. Gorse
lived
to feed people.

Someone fumbled with his hands, but he wouldn’t let go of her. After a time they went away. Briar sat, thinking of the mischief they would find once Flick was on her feet.

Fingers of light thrust through a crack in the shutters, telling him it was dawn. Flick would ask for breakfast in a little while.

A finger touched him lightly, between the eyes. In his mind he saw a silver ribbon of magic. His nostrils flared, tickled by a scent of patchouli, lotus, and other things.

“Red as blood,” a man remarked. “You can take him home, Dedicate.”

“Briar.” Hands cupped his cheeks and turned his head. His eyes met Rosethorn’s.

“Why is there a red thumbprint on your face?” he asked.

“It’s Crane’s detection oil. If you have the blue pox, it turns white on your skin. If not, it turns red. Yours is red, mine is red, and we’re going home.” She seemed to be pleading with him; her tone was gentle.

“If I get up I’ll wake Flick,” he pointed out, not unreasonably, he thought.

“My dear, you know better,” Rosethorn said. Her brown eyes were level, serious. There was no pity in them. He was glad. Pity would have hurt.

Briar looked at his friend. Her fingers were limp in his, her mouth was slack. No pulse beat in the thin skin over her temple. She was just a shell, lying there.

Silently Briar pulled his hand away. He picked up his
shakkan,
then followed Rosethorn out of the ward.

Quarantine had lifted, but no one was taking chances. Once they were out of Urda’s House, they entered the tent that Niko had mentioned, the one beside the road to Winding Circle. There the clothes they’d worn were taken away while they scrubbed with medicinal soap, rinsed in hot water, and rubbed themselves in disinfectant oil. When they emerged, they were handed fresh clothing. Briar examined the folded garments and realized these were his own, from Discipline. His eyes blurred; he opened them wide, so no one might see rinse water on his face and mistake it for tears. He dressed, pulling on his second favorite boots. His favorites, he remembered, were gone, destroyed on his first day at Urda’s House as part of the useless attempt to keep the disease from spreading.

A squad of the Duke’s Guard mounted on horses awaited them in front of the tent.

“We’re to give you a ride to Winding Circle,” their corporal told Rosethorn. “Honored Moonstream asked us, if you turned out to be well.”

“I don’t have the blue pox,” Rosethorn said bleakly. “I don’t know if I’m well.”

The mounts picked their way along Nosegay Strut, the street that ran past Urda’s House to Temple Road and the fishing village on the harbor. Briar looked around dully. The day he’d come here with nothing more on his mind than unloading medicines and running about with Flick, the street had been muddy but clear. Now it was strewn with the remains of bonfires, pieces of wood, liquor bottles, and trash. There were heaps of rags: the dead, left to be picked up by the big vehicles mockingly called lumber wagons. Three buildings showed signs of fire; another had burned to the ground. Drunkards and beggars leaned on buildings and watched as the guards passed. Doors and window shutters slammed all around.

It began to rain as they turned onto Temple Road. On the north edge of the way, several houses had burned; on the south edge, the fishing village had built a wall of barrels and wagons to keep rioters from their boats. As the road climbed into rocky ground, he saw men and women in street clothes and habits already hard at work. They were putting down plank floors and raising large canvas tents. Three or four giant tents were already taking in the sick: the guards had to swing around a line of wagons carrying fresh victims to the makeshift hospitals.

A heavy, cooked-meat smell drifted into his nose as the wind whipped around. From Bit Island a thick black trunk of smoke rose to mark where the dead were burned.

The guards watched their surroundings, though nothing lay now to their right except the bluffs and, below them, the slate-gray waters of the harbor. To their left rose tumbled earth, giant slabs of rock, and whatever plants could get a foothold on such unpromising ground. The greenery drew Briar’s eyes; he touched the
shakkan
he carried in the crook of one arm.

“I forgot the plants at Urda’s Housel” he gasped suddenly. “Rosethorn – ”

“They need them more than we do,” she replied. “Don’t worry about it.”

He dozed, tucked so firmly behind his guard that he couldn’t fall. He woke suddenly: an animal was screaming. Leaning to look around the guard, he saw that they had reached a Y in the road, where it split to either side of a well and a shrine. He knew both. Higher on the rising ground soared gray stone walls. Atop them, warriors in red habits and broad-brimmed hats against the rain leaned through notches to stare at them.

Down the road that led to Winding Circle’s north gate raced the screeching animal: a big white dog nearly out of his mind with joy. Behind him came Daja, walking sensibly on the firm ground at the road’s edge, using her staff to keep herself out of the mud. Tris followed her, raising her skirts as she picked her way past the worst ruts and dips in the road itself. Last came Lark and Sandry under a big umbrella the same earth-green shade as Lark’s habit.

Briar’s guard commented, amused, “I see there’s a welcoming committee.”

Little Bear reached them first, sending up gouts of muddy water as he raced from Briar’s horse to Rosethorn’s. No one tried to speak; none of them could have heard anything but the dog.

Daja stopped by Rosethorn, looking up at her. After a moment she smiled, carefully, as if she were unsure Rosethorn would like it. Briar saw his teacher reach down and wrap her fingers around the Trader’s dark hand where she clutched her staff. Daja’s smile broadened, and Rosethorn let go.

Daja came over to Briar, staying clear of Little Bear. Briar looked at her, seeing that she was still tired after long hours in the forge. She gazed up at him for a long moment, then said, “You took your time coming home, thief-boy.”

Briar felt his guard stiffen. He tried to smile. “I woulda been home sooner, if I’d had my druthers.”

Tris only glanced up at Rosethorn and nodded, turning pink as she did. Rosethorn nodded back. When the redheaded girl reached Briar, she said frankly, “You look like you were eaten by wolves.”

“Nothing so nice,” he replied, and carefully handed the
shakkan
down to her.

Half turning in the saddle, his guard asked, “You’re leaving me already?”

Briar nodded. “I must. These girls will just get weepy and embarrass me if you stay.” He slid into the road, landing to one side of a puddle. Daja steadied him.

Sandry closed the distance between them at a run.

Colliding with him, she wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. “You dreadful boy!” she cried. “Don’t you
ever
do that again!”

He patted her awkwardly and growled, “You’re making my shirt wet, crying on it.”

Sandry laughed and stood back, wiping her eyes. “It’s already soaked through. Tris, can’t you deal with all this rain?” She fumbled in her pockets until she found her handkerchief.

“Why is it always me?” asked the redhead without expecting a reply. A circle of dry air opened around the entire group, rain streaming to all sides as if she’d covered them with a glass bowl. The guards glanced at each other sidelong, unnerved by the display of magic. Tris didn’t even notice.