Briar's Book (21 page)

“Right,” he said, clenching his shuddery fingers into fists. “What do I do?”

Crane directed him to fill the cups, one for each bottle, with a liquid every bit as magically strong as anything he’d ever seen. Next he added the contents of the cups to the black stone wells. Osprey marked each slab with a glued-on patch of brightly colored cloth. Purple was for old men, lilac for old women.

Red was for men in their middle years, pink for women of that age. Olive-green was young men, yellow for young women, dark blue for boys, light blue for girls. Boy infants were black; girls were white.

“Eight years,” Crane remarked softly as Briar measured and poured. “It took six of us eight years to blend these essences, to reduce the need to experiment on human beings. Xiyun Mountstrider, from Yanjing, died of breakbone fever in the third year. We thought we would never succeed without him. Rosethorn convinced us to press on. Ulra Stormborn went blind in the fifth year. First Dedicate Elmbrook took Ibaru fever and bled to death inside her skin in the seventh year, and we continued the work.”

The thought of that kind of dedication made Briar feel small and untried.
I don’t know if I could do that,
he confessed to Tris through their magic.

Me neither,
she admitted.

“Now the first round of cures,” said Osprey. While Briar poured the human essences, she had blended five different cures from her notes and Crane’s. “Gods willing,” she whispered, adding them to the liquids in the black stone wells. “Gods willing, these will be the ones.”

That night they found Rosethorn’s condition to be the same.

The cures were unsuccessful, as they all saw the next morning. Had they worked, Crane told his staff, the blue pox would have floated to the top of each well as a white oil. The workers scrubbed and boiled the black slabs while he and Osprey created five more cures. Briar once again measured out human essences; Osprey added the new medicines when he finished. Everyone went home, to wait.

Rosethorn was no worse, but no better. Her blue spots had begun to fade. The four young people sent Lark to bed. When she woke late that evening, they made her eat.

Briar wanted to cry when they reached the greenhouse at dawn, to find these cures hadn’t worked either. Tris did cry. When the slabs were clean, they did it all again.

Returning home before sunset for the second day in a row, they found that Frostpine sat with Rosethorn. Lark and Sandry had returned to making protective oils and working them into cloth for masks and gloves. The smith went home around midnight, as Daja sat watch over their patient.

Several hours before dawn, Little Bear’s yapping roused everyone. Briar lurched out of his blankets to see what had set the dog off; Lark, Sandry, and Tris sat up, blinking. Daja stuck her head out of Rosethorn’s room. Opening the front door, Briar found Crane about to knock. The tall dedicate looked as exhausted as a man could look. He clutched a flask in one hand.

“One of the cures worked,” he told the boy in a croak. “I told Osprey to create more and try it on the other volunteers at the infirmaries. I want to administer this dose to Rosethorn myself.” Briar let him in.

Frostpine arrived halfway through the morning and stayed, helping with chores. Crane came and went. He checked the other cure volunteers, all temple people who’d caught the pox while tending the sick, looked in on Osprey and the greenhouse crew, then returned to Discipline to watch over Rosethorn. Once people knew he was at the cottage, runners delivered the latest reports on the progress of the volunteers to him there.

Rosethorn was doing better. Her sleep was more natural; she didn’t babble. She was cool to the touch and dewed with sweat. Lark felt good enough about her progress to draw everyone out of her room after lunch and let her sleep without a guardian nurse.

Fortunately it was Daja, the most even-tempered of them, who looked into Rosethorn’s room late that afternoon. What they heard made them all go still, at the table or seated on the floor, their hands freezing on makework tasks.

“Enough!”
Rosethorn’s voice was a sandpaper-rough growl. “The next one who… who
peers
at me is going to die in a dreadful way. Either come in or stay out!”

Daja blinked, then murmured, “Stay out,” and retreated.

Briar sighed. “Ah, the sweet birds of spring,” he said blissfully. “I hear their glorious song.”

Lark ran to her own room and slammed the door.

Rosethorn began to cough. Crane stood and went into her room.

A few minutes later, Frostpine asked, “Do you think she’s killed him?”

“It’s too quiet for murder,” offered Briar in his best criminal judgment. “And he’d yelp more if she was mauling him.”

“We’d better check,” said Frostpine somberly. He and the four young people looked into the sickroom very cautiously. Crane sat beside Rosethorn’s bed, accepting a cup from her. Rosethorn heaved a shuddering sigh and fought to sit up.

“More?” Crane asked, offering the water pitcher. His manner was as nobly elegant as ever.

“Willowbark, I think,” Rosethorn said in a croak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Please.” Her quick brown eyes caught her audience. “Something for you?”

“No,” replied Frostpine.

“No? Then go away. You too,” she informed Crane.

He rose, poured her a cup of willowbark tea, then swept her an elegant bow. He ruined the effect by adding, “Don’t laze about too long. We must go at the blue pox, find out just how so deadly a variation was made, then write a paper to present in Lightsbridge.”

“I’ll try not to laze,” Rosethorn promised, and drank her tea. “I would like to see Lark, though.”

“Shoo, shoo,” Crane said, sweeping his hands – and Frostpine, and the four – ahead of him until all had left the room. He rapped on Lark’s door. “She wants you,” he called.

“Coming,” Lark replied, her voice nearly as clogged as Rosethorn’s.

Crane looked at Briar and Tris, arms akimbo. “I could use both of you,” he said. “There are problems with the cure’s effect on older and younger patients – we must experiment with those. For that, since time is precious, I would prefer that you sleep nearby, in the Air dormitories.”

“I’ll tell Lark,” Sandry offered. She had been crying, though none of the four could remember when.

“Time to go,” said Crane. “The sooner we begin, the sooner we are done.”

T
here was still a great deal of hard work before they could announce a cure to the frightened city. Teenagers, the very young, and the old did not fare as well as adults of Rosethorn’s age. Adjustments were made. Crane requested – and got – volunteers among the victims in Summersea, those with no magic whatsoever. He and his staff worked around the clock. Briar was vexed not to see Rosethorn, but getting a cure to Summersea was important. Hundreds had died and more were dying in the city; no one wanted those numbers to rise for even an hour longer if they could help it.

At last, five days after Rosethorn began to mend, they gave their cures to the Water Temple, which began to make them in the huge amounts needed in Summersea. Crane sent Briar and Tris home. “There will be a meeting in a week or two,” he explained. “We learn better as we review what happened and what might have been done instead. Some of the discussion will be impossible for you to follow, but your observations will be of use.”

“Which means what?” Briar asked Tris as they plodded home. The day was warm, almost summery. Time to start hoeing, he thought, seeing green shoots in the gardens around the buildings.

“He might learn something and we might learn something,” Tris replied.

“That’s what I thought he meant. Why doesn’t he come out and say so?”

Tris blinked at him. “I thought he did.”

“Oh, you’re no help.”

The minute they entered Discipline, they looked in on Rosethorn. She was drowsing, her cheeks flushed, one hand on the
shakkan.
Someone had placed more pillows at her back, so that she was half sitting. Lark was in the chair beside the bed, worrying her fingernails. When she saw Briar and Tris, she put a finger to her lips for silence and got up.

The rustle of her habit woke Rosethorn, who brushed Lark’s sleeve with her fingertips. “I’m all right,” she murmured, and coughed. The cough went on and on, thin and high; she had no chance to catch her breath. Lark picked a cup off the bedside table and held it to Rosethorn’s lips, steadying her.

Somehow Rosethorn drank what was in the cup. Her coughs faded, slowly. Finally she nodded, and Lark helped her to ease back.

“Pesky thing,” whispered Rosethorn. “The cough, I mean.” She began to hack.

“Rest,” Lark said when Rosethorn was at ease again. “Don’t talk.”

Rosethorn nodded and closed her eyes.

Tris pried Briar’s fingers from her arm. Unknowingly, he’d gripped her tightly enough to bruise.

Lark shooed them out and closed the door behind her. Briar took the cup from her hand, exploring its contents with his magic. He recognized Capchen chestnut and syrup of poppies.

“Poppy?” he whispered, horrified. “How’d she get so bad she needs poppy?” He turned to Daja, who cut designs in metal sheets at the table. “You told us she did fine!”

Daja’s eyes were bloodshot. “You asked yesterday morning. I said she still had that cough.”

“We didn’t know,” Lark told Briar, drawing him away from Rosethorn’s door. “Rosie started to complain she couldn’t breathe lying down, so we raised her and sent for a healer. Grapewell told us to make this up – he said it would ease the cough. And it does, for a while.”

“Didn’t he do anything? Didn’t he have magic? Didn’t you tell them it was for her?” demanded Briar. Something in Lark’s eyes scared him badly.

“The healers are at the last of their strength, I bet,” said Tris. “They’ve got to be careful with how they spend it. And maybe her body resists whatever they do. Osprey says that happens a lot, when people keep getting treated with magic.”

Lark nodded.

Briar stared at Tris. How could she be so cold? This was Rosethorn in trouble, not a street rat, not some pampered lady who thought she was dying when she sneezed.

Tris’s gray eyes met his, and Briar stepped back. There was something in them that made even him a little afraid. She had learned to grip her feelings: that didn’t mean she had no feelings at all.

“Sandry’s looking for a healer,” Lark told Briar. “Someone with more juice in him than Dedicate Grapewell.” She didn’t even smile at the almost-pun. “Rosie’s fever’s up again – that willowbark tea might as well be water.” Her fingers trembled. “She may have pneumonia. Grapewell listened to her chest, and I know he didn’t like the sound. I listened early this morning. It’s crackling, like bacon on the stove.”

“Where’s the willowbark?” asked Briar. “I’ll give it a boost.”

“On her windowsill,” Lark replied.

Briar went into Rosethorn’s room and found the teapot. He was so intent on pouring magic into its contents, raising the willow’s power as much as he could, that he didn’t hear Rosethorn at first. It was only when he poured the tea into a cup and turned around that he realized she’d been calling, her voice hardly more than a squeak.

“Sorry,” she apologized when he came to her. “If I talk louder, I cough.”

“So don’t talk,” he ordered sternly. “Drink this.” He helped her to sit up as Lark had done. The hard knobs of her spine pressed into his shoulder. She was too thin! What did she have to fight pneumonia with?

Rosethorn pushed the cup away. “Tired,” she squeaked. “But sleep doesn’t rest me much.” She pressed against his shoulder, letting him know she wanted to lean back. “Crane?” she asked when she was comfortable.

“Stupid me,” he muttered, taking her hand.
This way we don’t have to risk you coughing,
he began, and stopped, horrified. Her power, vastly greater than his, was down to embers, and fading.

Out,
she said firmly, and tugged her hand from his. “You don’t want to be tangled with me, if… you just don’t,” she squeaked, her fever-bright eyes holding his. “Go. Let me rest.”

Briar ran from the room to find Sandry talking to Lark, hanging on her teacher’s arm as she panted. She’d been running.” – two to three healers each, and they won’t budge,” she said, gasping. “They’re brewing cures and watching whole wards and everyone else is in Summersea.
Everyone.
I told them how sick she is, but they said unless we bring her in they can’t see her. And Lark, it’s all second-raters here, I checked. They figure most of our people are mages to start with, so – ” Daja pushed a cup of water at Sandry. The noble released Lark and grabbed it, gulping the contents.

“The strongest healer-mages have gone to Summersea,” Lark finished grimly. “Well, she’s too badly off – second-raters won’t do.”

“She’s dying,” Briar announced, his voice shaking. “I looked inside her. She needs the best they got, Lark.”

“But you have to be wrong – she was fine yesterday morning,” argued Daja.

“Except she never lost the cough. There’s people in the infirmaries who are all better – they’re going home,” Sandry reminded Daja.

Tris protested, “Briar’s not a healer, you could be wrong – ”

“Almost all her magic is gone,” he said flatly. “Clean gone.”

Lark held up a hand for silence. They gave it, letting her think. Sandry watched her, knowing how dire the situation was. Only yesterday she had seen Lark work her most powerful charms to keep Rosethorn safe. Not two hours before Tris and Briar had returned, when Sandry had brought fresh linens to the sickroom, she had discovered Lark weeping, her charms in her lap. All of them had fallen to pieces, unable to work in the face of Rosethorn’s disease.

“Well,” Lark said at last. “I’ll have to find Moonstream, that’s all.”

“Moonstream?” asked Daja. “She’ll order a healer to come?”

Lark shook her head. “She
started
as a healer. I bet she’s at full strength. I’ll track her down. That may be difficult.” She looked at the four. “One of you will stay with her at all times? Alert, and on guard?” They nodded. “Fetch one of our healers if she gets worse.” Her face hardened. “I don’t care what you do to persuade them to come.”