Street Magic (25 page)

“How strong is her power?” the lady asked the healer.

The healer shook her head. “I feel only a residue, mistress. There are medicines I must give her to offset the magical draining. Did that boy teach you nothing?” the healer asked Evvy. “Young mages must not overextend. The damage could be permanent.”

“I thought they were going to hurt me,” Evvy grumbled. There was no help for it; she would have to drink whatever was in that cup, or the lady would be suspicious. She prayed it wasn’t a drug that would fuzz her mind again. “Is that for my head?”

The healer passed the cup to Evvy, who drank its contents with a prayer. The banging in her temples slowed; the headache eased.

“Would you like to stay?” the lady asked again. “I was told you were unwilling - - “

“Pahan Briar and his teacher were mean to me,” Evvy complained, keeping to her role of greedy thukdak. “They made me do servant work like cooking and cleaning. I want the things you offered, and to live in a nice house. They couldn’t even teach me my own magic!” She thought of the look on her mother’s face when she told the auctioneer to get as much as he could when he sold Evvy, and her eyes filled with tears. It was a trick that never failed. “I think they were going to sell me for a slave!”

“Well, you are safe here,” the lady assured her, once more cupping her cheek with a cool, hennaed hand. “No one has the power to take you from me. Now. You must rest, and take the medicines the healer brings to you, and eat. You will stay here for the night, I think, and tomorrow you may choose your own room in the house.”

Evvy yawned. “I’m tired,” she admitted. “And awful hungry.”

“Very hungry,” the lady corrected her with a kind smile. “Only thukdaks say ‘awful hungry,’ and you are no longer a thukdak, my dear.” She rose from her chair.

Evvy knew what she had to do, and she did it. Rolling from her pallet, she crouched before the lady and kissed her slippered foot. “Thank you, great lady! May Lallan of the Rivers and Rain bless you!”

The lady smiled. “Healer, see that she gets those medicines and food.” She swept out of the room, Ikrum and the maid following her.

The healer remained, staring down at Evvy as the girl crawled back onto the pallet. “Soup, I suppose,” she commented dryly, “and it will take some time to assemble the medicines to restore your strength. Use the chamber pot in the corner for your business - the lady doesn’t like it when people just pee on the floors. You won’t be allowed to leave this room tonight. It’s magically shielded, in case the plant mage comes looking for you.” She walked out. When she closed the door behind her, Evvy heard the jingle of keys, and the clack of a turning lock.

Evvy stood and spat on the floor to get the taste of the lady’s shoe from her lips. A pitcher of water and a cup sat on a table: she drank straight from the pitcher, not caring if water spilled over her face and onto the floor. Then she sat cross-legged on the pallet, and began calling back the power she had hidden in the stone all around her.

This ought to be easy, she thought, smiling tightly. The stone around her was fairly new, not stubborn with ages of sitting in the same place. She would need much less effort to make it move.

As he walked down the side of the house, Briar caught the first ripples of unpleasant scent. Rotten meat, he judged after a sniff. Maybe they used fish as a fertilizer after all.

The walk between the outer wall and the long side of the house showed him the upper half of the wall was buried in green and going to pieces. Chunks of stone dropped off it on either side. In one spot, where a clump of deodar pines stood, the wall was shifting as the pines expanded outward. Briar went over to pat them and tell them they had done well. If the trees had been young girls they would have blushed at his praise; they quivered instead, and continued to grow. A large section of wall beside them collapsed into the alley beyond.

Briar halted: there was a glint of light beside the deodars’ roots. Their earth turned and tumbled with the trees’ swift growth, casting something out. Briar picked up the pale thing that had drawn his eye, and hurriedly dropped it.

It was a skull - a very small skull. A very small, human skull. In his years at Winding Circle, Briar had studied anatomy, animal and human, as backup for his lessons in healing. He knew a human skull, however small, from a monkey’s.

One by one, he picked up other bones thrown to the surface by the deodars’ surge. A thigh bone, an arm bone, ribs and back bones, all child-sized, old enough that no tissue remained to keep them attached to one anther. He also found a ball, and a silk scarf. Who had buried a child’s remains under the deodars? How long had the child been dead? Was this one of the murders which the mutabir had mentioned, or something more ordinary? Cemeteries, particularly the small ones attached to most nobles’ houses, were sometimes dug up for new buildings, the bones placed elsewhere. Or perhaps a servant’s child had died. Briar knew that if he were dead he would rather be buried under trees than in Chammur’s hard sun.

All the same, he didn’t order the plants to cover the bones, or the trees to open a hole so they could be tucked back into the earth. Some instinct made him place them a little way from the still-growing pines and draw a cypress oil protective circle around them. Only then did he wipe his fingers on his handkerchief and continue his walk.

The stench of rotting meat grew as Briar approached the back of the house. It was particularly strong in the corner where a stand of almond trees grew by the wall. The trees, like every other green thing on the grounds, were doing their best to outrace their proper growth, pitting slender trunks and roots against the wall. It was giving way, pushing into the lane behind the house. Inside the small grove, thrown from the ground by clamoring trees, was a bloated, reeking body. The clothes were blackened rags; a deep cut passed all the way around the neck, separating it into two parts. The swelling was so great that it was impossible even to guess the sex of the body. About a yard from it Briar saw another corpse, this one so far gone in decay that only scraps of skin clung to the bones. A knotted cord hung around the neck.

The stench of rotten flesh was so bad it made his stomach roll. While he hadn’t been sure the child’s bones were a sign of murder, it was harder to think of legal reasons why these newer bodies would be here, among dainty almond trees, rather than in a proper burial yard. Most gardeners didn’t like the thought of walking on the dead when they did their work.

Briar retreated from the six-tree grove. He turned straight into another pocket of stench, wafted into his nostrils by the mild breeze from the east. There were more dead to be found in this largest of Lady Zenadia’s gardens, he realized. He wiped his sweaty forehead on his sleeve.

Suddenly he froze. His connection to Evvy pulsed: she was angry, furious. A surge of magic rolled through their bond, leaving Briar without breath in his lungs. He sent his power back, as if she were one of his foster-sisters, but it was no good. She couldn’t even feel it, let alone use it. Her magic was too different and not mixed with his. Briar had the feeling that it was only because he had a little earth and metal magic in him that he could sense anything more than where she was.

From inside the house he heard the thunder of falling stone. It went on for a breath, then stopped. A puff of dust rose in the air over the roof like smoke. Briar forced a query to Evvy through their bond. What he got back was savage satisfaction and a calming of her rage. Whatever had taken place, she was pleased.

A fresh series of rumbles began in the house as green voices called a warning to Briar. The lady’s mute certainly was silent in his movements, but the grasses on which he walked were not. The mute had come around the house to take Briar from behind. Using his right hand the boy slid a cloth bundle out of his kit, a special mix he had worked on for a long time. In his left he already grasped a wrist knife.

The bowstring settled around his neck, then wrenched cruelly tight, cutting off Briar’s air. He tossed his small bundle behind him, where he guessed the mute’s feet to be, and slid his knife under the strangler’s cord. The knife bit into his neck as it cut the bowstring - Briar didn’t mind a little blood if it meant he could breathe again.

He smashed a booted heel into the mute’s bare foot, hearing bone crunch, then lunged away. Turning to face his attacker, Briar coughed, his throat aching from the pressure of the cord. Now he gripped knives in both hands.

“How many of ‘em did you do that to?” he snarled when he could speak again. “Did you like it? Did you have fun choking them and burying them as fertilizer?”

The mute bent over, trying to massage his foot. He didn’t even look at Briar.

The second assailant didn’t try to be quiet. Behind him Briar heard the hiss of a drawn sword. With his power he tapped the bundle he’d left between the mute’s feet, and faced the swordsman. The man leveled his weapon. Sharp metal gleamed in the scant light cast out here by indoor lamps. Another sullen rumble came from inside the house, drawing closer to them. Neither the man nor Briar risked a look to see what caused it.

Instead the swordsman laughed when he saw Briar’s knives. “I have the advantage of you, boy,” he told Briar smoothly. “I have reach and expertise.”

The mute shrieked, his tongueless mouth freeing a sound more animal than human. He screamed a second time; the third cry broke off in the middle. After that the only sounds were the rattle of branches growing rapidly, tearing flesh, and a slow, wet drip. The swordsman could see it over Briar’s shoulder. His eyes widened in horror.

Briar didn’t turn. He and Rosethorn had once defended Winding Circle from pirates, using mixed seeds of thorny plants; the girls had given him use of their magic to make the plants extra lethal. A similar mix of seeds had been in the packet he’d tossed at the mute. Now Briar told the swordsman in a chatty tone, “Four years ago it took me and my three friends to work this bit.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the crunch of falling stone in the house. “The trick is to make this stuff grow so fast it just goes clean through anybody on top of it.” He grinned, showing teeth. “I’ve learned a lot since then. I can do it by myself.”

The copper tang of fresh blood drifted on the desert wind. The swordsman stood motionless, eyes bulging at the nightmare behind Briar. The boy sheathed one of his knives. His foe didn’t look as if he wanted to attack anymore.

“I can do it to you,” Briar said quietly. “In fact, maybe I should.” He reached into his kit. The swordsman fled, stumbling and thrashing his way through the rioting garden plants. He ran not for the house, but for a gap the vines had torn in the back wall.

Now Briar made himself look at the mute. He had killed the man, after all; he owed it to him to face his work. There was little of the mute to see. The thorns and vines had covered him completely, gouging him in a thousand places and sprouting through his flesh, holding him in a massive, woody, bloodstained sheath. Briar nodded to his creation, his mouth trembling.

It was him or me, he thought, turning away. I knew he could kill, and he was going for me.

Evvy, he told himself. She’s all that matters.

Now he spared a look for the side of the house closest to him. The wall trembled. There seemed to be holes in the roof. Grit rose above them in clouds, given a sulphur-yellow glow by lamps casting light through the gaps.

The wall closest to Briar blew outward, spraying stone fragments in the hip-high grass. A small, dark figure appeared in the opening left by the collapse, petting the stone on either side of the gap like one would pat a trusty dog.

“Evvy?” Briar called softly.

The figure froze, peering at him. Briar stepped into the light that streamed through the hole in the house.

“Pahan Briar!” Evvy croaked. She threw herself across the ground between them and hugged Briar tight, burying her face against his chest. He hugged her back, feeling her thin shoulders quiver under his hands. Wetness that he was fairly sure wasn’t sweat dampened his shirt under her face.

“I guess you’ve learned a way to feel your magic,” he said after a few moments.

Evvy nodded against his chest and let go, stepping back. She rubbed eyes that ran with tears. “I’m not crying,” she said defensively. “I’m washing out the dust. I don’t think I can do any more with stones. I feel all - empty.”

“That’s all right,” he reassured her. “You’ve done plenty of damage already. And don’t rub your eyes - that just grinds dirt in. Let the tears wash it out.” He offered her his water bottle. Evvy drank half of the contents and poured the rest over her head.

Briar wiped grit and wet mud from her face with his handkerchief. “Better? We’ve a bit more to do, here.”

Evvy nodded. “I know. I just wish I could help.”

Briar grinned. “I think you’ve done plenty already,” he said, tossing a packet of rose seeds at the gap she’d made in the house. They scrambled to life, weaving their stems as they grew to bar the opening. No one would escape that way.

When he looked at her again, she was staring at the huge-thorned tree that had cut its way through the mute. She turned huge eyes to him. “Pahan Briar,” she breathed in awe. “What you did.”

“It doesn’t make up for all the folk he killed for her, but it’s a taste,” he said grimly.

Evvy nodded. “I can’t do anything like that. I wish I could,” she said, approval in her voice and eyes.

“That’s my girl,” he said, giving her a one-armed hug around her shoulders. “Now, let’s finish up.”

Working through the date palms, aloes, junipers, tamarinds, and fruit trees at the rear of the house, they found eight more dead, all but one fairly recent, all with a bowstring knotted around their necks. Briar was sure that the mutabir’s four missing spies were among the bodies he’d found. One dead girl wore the Viper nose ring and garnet; one looked like the boy who had followed Briar from Golden House. A third, the freshest, still wore the black and white of the Gate Lords: their missing tesku. The wind shifted twice as they walked, sending a cloud of dead gases into their faces. Twice they had to stop for Evvy to vomit; when she finished, she walked on with Briar, her face set in hard, angry lines.