Street Magic (19 page)

The lady appeared out of sorts, Briar thought. Too bad. “She’s home, settling in,” he replied, returning to the larch’s roots. “She doesn’t know anything about miniatures, anyway.”

“That is the bunjingi form, is it not?” inquired Jebilu. “The calligraphy form?”

Briar was impressed. Not everyone knew the correct names of different miniature shapes. “Quite right, Master Stoneslicer,” he said. “Do you study miniature trees?”

Jebilu sniffed. “In the imperial court of Yanjing, where I lived for a time, those who did not know the forms were considered untutored barbarians. I was forced to learn, to appear to advantage at tree-viewing parties.”

“This talk of trees is all very well,” the lady remarked sharply, “but I particularly desired to speak of Evumeimei, Pahan Briar. Surely you know that she cannot receive a proper education under the roof of a green mage who is young himself. And surely you have better things to do than instruct a young girl.”

Briar carefully trimmed a few roots. “I don’t understand my lady’s meaning,” he murmured, thinking, She’s like a terrier with a favorite toy. How can I make her let go of all this about Evvy?

“I mean that Chammur must offer many distractions to a handsome young man,” the lady said, delicately peeling an orange. “Unless our young women have gone blind. Bring your Evumeimei to my house. Master Jebilu has agreed that he may have been overhasty in his dealings with her. He has offered to teach her while she is under my protection. I will see to it that she is fed, clothed, and educated properly.”

Briar looked from her to Jebilu. The stone mage busied himself with carefully sipping the contents of his cup, blotting his lips dry after each sip. He refused to look at Briar. She muscled him somehow, Briar realized, and he’s scared of her. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding, my lady,” he said, returning to his inspection of tree roots. “Evvy won’t study with Master Stoneslicer. Her mind is made up.”

Lady Zenadia chuckled warmly, real amusement in her voice. “My dear pahan, if nothing else betrays your youth, this does! Young girls cannot be allowed to order their own fates! They have neither the experience nor the fixedness of purpose of their elders. This is why I would be more fit to undertake her education. I have raised three daughters, and each married well. Once Evumeimei is under my roof, her childish attempts to order her life, rather than to fit obediently into her proper place, will end. She will thank us both for that, one day.”

The bleakness of the vision - of the life - she had just proposed made Briar’s breath catch in his throat. She wants to break Evvy to the rein like a, a horse, he realized, suddenly furious. Battling his temper, knowing he would kick himself for it later if he opened his mouth now, he rested the larch on its original earth and met the woman’s large, dark eyes squarely. “My lady, if you bought this tree because you thought I would force Evvy to live with you in exchange, I’d better take it home,” he said, his voice flat. “She’s settled with my teacher, Pahan Rosethorn, and me. We’re headed to Yanjing in the long run, and we’re going to take Evvy back to her home province when we do.” They’d discussed no such plan, but Briar thought it might give this high-and-mighty pair an excuse to back off before things got truly ugly.

Lady Zenadia sat up straight and planted her feet on the ground. Bracing her hands on her thighs, she asked in a cold, chilly voice, “Do you think to defy me, boy?”

Briar didn’t even blink under her hard stare. “Shall I take the larch home, my lady?” he inquired, rather than answer so foolish a question. Of course he was defying her. He would do it with pleasure and an overturning of all her carefully raked and planted greenery, if it came to that. It was time she learned that people who came from poorer homes were not toys to play with.

Moments that felt endless passed as she silently tried to break his gray-green gaze with her dark one. Jebilu actually shrank back in his chair. Finally the lady flapped a hand in disgust. “No. I have purchased that tree, and I will keep it.”

For a single copper dav he would have taken the larch home anyway, but caution stopped him. Whatever he might think of Lady Zenadia and her dealings with humans, she had very fine gardeners. They would tend his tree well. No doubt she would even hire another miniature tree expert to serve only her. Also, he had made the bargain, and registered the sale with the keepers of the souk. He didn’t want to get a reputation for bad dealing.

A black silk purse had appeared on the wall beside the larch. Briar opened it and counted its contents, aware that Jebilu and Lady Zenadia watched him. All of the money was there. He poured out the coins and put them into his bags, leaving the silk purse empty. He wanted nothing of this female other than his rightful payment. He bowed to the lady and to Jebilu, then walked away.

On the way out, he stopped once more at the arch that offered the best view of the big garden, looking at its plants and trees with a careful eye. There was freshly turned earth near the bases of two trees, a prickly juniper and a short-leafed cedar, he saw.

What do they feed you? he asked them silently. What makes you grow so well in such tired ground?

They still had no words for it. Briar shook his head wearily and followed his guide to the servants’ gate.

As he loaded the donkey and mounted his horse, all Briar could think of was home. Visions of soup, fruit, maybe a roasted cook-shop chicken floated before his mind’s eye. A bath would be good, too. He wanted the scent of the lady’s house off his skin. He didn’t know why, but the place had given him the crawls. It was as if he’d been asked an important question while he wasn’t listening.

I don’t want to know the answer, he told himself as he nudged his horse through the gate. I’m no Sandry, forever wanting to solve the world’s troubles, or Tris, poking about for secrets. Daja has the right of it: keep business to yourself and your clan, and get on with life. There’s no point in sticking my neb in things around here.

He held to that policy of godlike detachment right up to the moment when the gates closed behind him. It was then that he saw five Vipers squatted in the small, unsheltered bay in front of the tradesman’s entrance. One of them was the dimpled girl Ayasha he had flirted with the day the Camelguts joined the Vipers.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, scowling.

She got up and came over, smiling to show her dimples. “Pahan Briar, you certainly get about.” She lifted her skirt above her knee, showing him a round, tanned and ruddy leg free of blemishes. “See what good work you do?”

Briar looked - she had very pretty legs, particularly without sores from scratched flea bites - but his heart wasn’t in it. He also didn’t like the silver ring and garnet in her nose. Did that mean she was expendable to the Vipers, like Douna?

“Why are you here?” he asked again. “This isn’t Viper ground.”

Ayasha shrugged. “She sent for us and we came, wagging our tails like good puppies. Will you be here for the Festival of First Rains? It’s at the next full moon, and I haven’t got a partner for the dancing.”

Briar didn’t hear her invitation. The knowledge that the lady had summoned the Vipers in broad daylight - and they had come - burned him like acid. Would she step in if they were picked up by the Watch? Would she care if any of them rotted in the prisons of Justice Rock for being in a part of town where gangs were not welcome?

Fury raced through Briar’s veins. He dismounted, wrapping the horse’s reins in one hand. The donkey, its lead rein tied to the horse, grumbled and dropped a pancake of dung on the dirt before the lady’s gate. The horse did the same.

Briar glared at the Vipers. “What kind of gang are you?” he demanded. Ayasha sighed and went to sit with the others. Briar paid her no attention as he went on, “You come in daylight and sit on your heels out here like so many tame dogs. How stupid can you be? It’s folk like her that keep folk like us poor. She - “

“Folk like us?” repeated the short, black-skinned youth Briar had seen before. “What do you know of being poor? Who are you to talk to us of gangs?”

“I spent ten years in Deadman’s District in Hajra,” Briar said tightly. “Six of them in a gang, the Lightnings. I fought rats for bread and stole to keep the Thief-Lord from whipping the skin off my back. Once I had a chance to get out, I took it. All I have, I earned. I didn’t get it waiting for the scraps from a takameri’s table! She’s the enemy, her and all the nobles like her - “

“She is Shaihun’s creation,” interrupted one of them as he stood. He was tall, lean, and familiar, the youth who had told Briar that something that talked and walked like a dog was probably a dog. Fading bruises circled his eyes. “No eknub can understand submission to Shaihun.”

“Besides, she’s going to make us the top gang in the city,” added the short, black Viper. “Gate Lords are already milling like scared sheep. They don’t know who’s next since their tesku went missing.”

“If you had any weight as a gang, you wouldn’t need anyone but your mates,” Briar informed them bitterly. “Doesn’t it shame you, taking orders from the likes of her?”

He’d allowed himself to be distracted from the tall Viper, who had drifted closer. Now he leaped on Briar, seized him by the shirt, threw him to the ground and landed on top of him, hands around Briar’s throat. At least Briar’s hands had not been napping, unlike his brain. He dug the points of his unsheathed wrist knives into the Viper’s sides. The taller boy ignored them, despite the tiny rounds of blood that flowered on his shirt.

“She has graced us with her attention,” he snarled at Briar. “Don’t talk about something you don’t understand.” He relaxed his grip on Briar’s neck.

“What I understand is that you’re a sworn member of the daftie guild,” retorted Briar. Mentally he kicked himself for letting this fellow get so close. “Don’t you see you’re in a tight place, tighter maybe than you can escape?”

“Ikrum, no.” Ayasha wrapped her hands around the thin Viper’s arm. “The pahan’s all right. He just don’t understand.” She tugged Ikrum’s arm. “He’s a friend in a pinch, though. Yoru, help me,” she told the short black youth.

“He don’t have to. He isn’t sworn to her.” Yoru took Ikrum’s other arm. Carefully he and Ayasha pried their tesku’s hands off Briar’s neck. To Briar, Yoru said, “Sheath your knives. He didn’t even bruise you.”

“Get him off me first,” snapped Briar. “Before I teach him a lesson none of you will forget.” Yoru and Ayasha pulled Ikrum to his feet.

Briar wiped the bloody points of his knives in the dust as he sat up, then resheathed them. He looked up at Ikrum, still in the grip of his two followers.

“If you want my opinion, you’ll get away from her” He nodded toward the gate. “She’s no goddess, just a takameri who’s mad with power. She’ll eat you all if she gets the chance.” Briskly he removed his over robe and shook the dust from its folds.

“He’s a good tesku” snapped another Viper, a golden-skinned boy. “We’ve done better with him than any other.”

“If he’s done you so much good,” Briar replied, slapping the dirt from the seat of his breeches, “why are you out here in the sun like a pack of hounds?”

“I’m all right,” Ikrum snapped, jerking himself away from his keepers. He strode over to Briar, pressing his hands against the small wounds in his sides. Holding up his blood-marked fingers, he licked them clean. “You stuck me,” he said casually, and gave a toothy smile. “You won’t do that twice.”

Briar stood on tiptoe to glare into his eyes. “You won’t get another chance at me, play-toy boy,” he said quietly. “Now, rethink your life, before she takes it from you and leaves you on a garbage heap.” He thrust a foot into one stirrup and mounted his horse. “Because you aren’t one of hers, no matter what she says, and unless you’re one of hers, you’re just a thing to be used.” Briar surveyed the other Vipers. “And you’re a bunch of sheep if you let him do it.” He urged his horse into a walk.

An image of his past had come into his mind at the mention of garbage heaps. He’d been five or six, perhaps, when he stole a fine scarf. Two older boys had taken it, leaving Briar to grub in the garbage behind an inn, hoping to find a morsel of food. The Thief-Lord had met him there. He’d offered food, and a gang, and mates who wouldn’t beat him up and take his prizes. By the time Briar learned that the two older boys belonged to another of the Thief-Lord’s gangs and that they often set things up so street kids would be grateful to the Thief-Lord, he was being trained as an all-around thief.

So what makes me different from the Vipers? he wondered gloomily, studying one of his palms. The inked green vines had not managed to conquer his right hand entirely. The scarred welt that crossed his palm would not take the dyes, forcing the vines to twine around the three deep pockmarks where thorns had marked him for life.

Long before Niko had taken him to Winding Circle, Briar had scaled a rich man’s wall. When he touched a thick, woody stem on top, the thing had wrapped around his hand, snake-like. Its thorns had clung to his flesh well after Briar cut the stem free. The Thief-Lord had sent him up there, to steal a white stone statue that he wanted for himself. It hadn’t put food in the mouths of Briar’s gang. Not only that, but he’d suffered for days after prying out those thorns, until the Thief-Lord had grudgingly paid a cheap healer to see to the wounds.

Only difference between the lady and him was that she’s born noble, Briar thought gloomily as he came to the intersection of the Attaneh Road and the Karang Road. I was just as stupid as these Vipers. As all of us in kid gangs. There’s always someone older around, telling us what to do, who to rob, beating us when we don’t do or say or think what they want. We put up with it because they tell us we mean something - but we don’t. Not to them. All we are to them is a tool for making them important.

And I wanted that for Evvy?

So preoccupied was he that he didn’t realize he had company until his horse shied. Briar fumbled to get a better grip on the reins and brought the horse up with a firm hand. Five horsemen waited ahead, blocking his advance. They wore the orange shirts and trousers and the black turban of the Watch, the city’s law enforcers. All had weighted batons tucked into their black sashes. One carried a tall lance with a flag at the tip: an orange sun on a black field, the badge of the Watch and of its commander, the mutabir. He was the amir’s right hand and the law inside Chammur’s walls.