Briar's Book

by Tamora Pierce

  Who can’t use a little endurance in times like these? she asked as she resealed that jar. No one, that’s who. Taking the dish to the hearth, she poured the contents into the teapot strainer. Once the kettle boiled, she added water to the pot and carried it over to the table.

  Tris had returned and was seated across from Crane, slicing a loaf of fruit bread. Sandry wanted to sigh. Tris’s blue wool gown was rumpled; her wiry copper hair strained at the scarf she used to tie it away from her face. Sandry reached out and brushed her fingertips against Tris’s skirt. A touch of light skipped through the weave as the wrinkles dropped out, leaving the cloth as neat as if it had been pressed.

  “I would have thought you’d be in your workroom, Crane, not paying calls,” Lark said, emerging from her bedroom. She had combed her glossy curls and donned a green habit. The shadows under her eyes were untouched. “Who’s helping you?”

  “Some novices, a few Water Temple initiates.” Crane flapped his long fingers as if shooing the Water dedicates out of his presence. “This is not a social visit.”

  “You need to talk to Rosethorn?” inquired Lark as she sat at the table. “We could arrange it through Sandry or Tris and Briar—”

  Crane shook his head. “This is—I mean, I—I would like to request—”

  Lark sighed and picked up a piece of bread. “Crane, it’s too early for you to dance like a kitten. You know I’ll help you if I can.”

  Sandry passed a slice of bread to Crane, who began to pick it apart. “It’s the masks, and the gloves,” he said at last, without looking up.

  “Don’t tell me Water Temple’s short on those too,” Lark said crossly. “I swear, I’ll go to Moonstream herself—” She stopped abruptly; Crane was shaking his head.

  “They have plenty, all with protective signs woven into them, as is standard,” he replied. “To deal with normal contagion they are perfect. My work is somewhat different. I must refine the disease into its essence, then experiment until we can develop a method of magical diagnosis. Manipulating pox samples, finding those substances to which it reacts—the risks are great that my staff and I will be exposed before we are able to fight the disease. Water Temple healers at least have enough raw power to burn it from their own bodies if they must, but we are not all healers. I want my people to be safe. As things stand, we feel as if we dance on a fire in paper shoes.”

  Lark reached across the table, holding a hand out to him. After a moment’s hesitation, Crane slid his elegant fingers into her palm. “You’d like us to add a layer to your protections,” she said, her dark eyes grave.

  Tris, listening hard, poured the tea into cups. Sandry kept very still, though her blue eyes were wide with interest.

  Crane nodded, a blush creeping under his pallid skin. “I know it is difficult,” he said apologetically. “I realize that the general supply of masks and gloves may run low and you will be called on to help supply all of our healers.”

  “Actually, you’ve given me the solution to a problem,” Lark told him with a smile, giving his hand a pat before she released it. She accepted her teacup from Sandry as Tris gave the guest’s cup to Crane. “I wanted to teach Sandry how spells are laid in cloth after it’s woven.” To Sandry she explained, “We make up a spelled oil and work it into the fiber. The most powerful kind, the oil we shall need for Crane, must be made up fresh every few days. That means the pace of our work is steady. I won’t tell you to do this, but I hope you’ll want to help.”

  “As if I’d say no!” Sandry replied, eager to have something to do.

  “Thank you,” Crane said with feeling. He drank his tea in tiny sips, to keep from burning his mouth. Sandry noticed that as he drank, his color improved and he sat a little straighter. She smiled to herself and added cream to her own tea.

  “Have you had word from”—they all knew Crane was about to say “Rosethorn,” but at the last moment he changed it to—“the city?”

  “Flick got worse,” both girls said at once, and made faces at each other. Briar had once said they sounded like a Ragat chorus when they spoke the same words.

  “She is the child found”—Crane’s long nose wrinkled; it seemed he was too elegant to use the word “sewer”—“underground?”

  “In the sewer,” replied Tris wickedly.

  Crane began to eat the fruit bread he had shredded. “Messenger birds arrived from the city just before I came here,” he commented between bites. “Two derelicts who sleep in Mummer’s Close have been found with the disease and taken to Urda’s House. In addition, a body covered with blue spots was found last night in an empty lot on Spice Walk. The ailment is definitely contagious, and the mage who examined the body says that it surely caused the man’s death.”

  “Yanna Pain-Taker defend us,” said Lark, calling on the goddess of medicine and healers. All of them made the gods-circle on their chests.

  Shortly after dawn on Briar’s second day of quarantine, a pair of homeless men were brought into the room by masked soldiers of the Duke’s Guard. Once the sick men had been washed, dressed in the nightshirts, and put to bed—they were both too feverish to object to the soldiers’ handling—the guards joined their fellows in the room next door.

  With the addition of the newcomers, Briar soon found that quarantine for anyone involved in healing meant work. Now there were three patients to be cared for in what seemed to be an endless round of washing, balm rubs, chamber pots, and cups of every liquid under the sun. The sharp scent of willowbark tea felt burned into his nostrils. The older of the two men, Yuvosh, was hardly any trouble and did whatever he was told. His friend, Orji, was not so cooperative. He was too hot, too cold, headachy or hungry for real food, not broth or juice. His skin itched; his bones ached; he couldn’t sleep for so much as five minutes at a time. He was convinced that every new thing they made him drink was poison. Given the taste of some of the brews Rosethorn created, Briar couldn’t exactly blame him.

  Flick weakened. What frightened Briar the most was that each time he helped her to sit up for more tea or juice, she felt thinner. The fever that came with the pox was eating the little fat she had. Yuvosh also worried him, but in a less personal way; he was too weak and too obedient. A respectable street rat, even a grown one, should put up more of a fuss, or so it seemed to Briar.

  Then there was Rosethorn. Briar worked on her as hard as he did their patients, trying to get her to eat and sleep so that she would stay well. At least she was extra-careful to protect Briar and herself from contagion. She continued to insist they wear masks and gloves unless they ate or cleaned themselves. Tableware and the cloths they used to tend their sick were washed, then immersed in boiling water. She and Briar scrubbed all over once a day, in very hot water, using soaps made to strip the skin of infection. The smell of the soap lingered around them both like an invisible cloud.

  Rosethorn would dictate notes or lists of supplies to Briar as she worked on their patients or on the medicines she made from oils and herbs. The supplies of those items passed to them through the big flap on the inner door were never right. When she argued with the people who brought them, they summoned the man who ran Urda’s House, Jokubas Atwater. Talking through the speaking-window, Atwater told Rosethorn impatiently that the house was not made of money and she would have to make do, as they did.

  The notes Briar wrote for Rosethorn went to Winding Circle, sealed in the metal boxes of samples that were taken every day from all five of them. Notes and samples alike were needed by the healers if they were to see how the disease worked, and Rosethorn’s notes were thorough. Her experience of other epidemics meant she knew what to look for in this one. She taught some of her knowledge to Briar, to explain things and as a break from the dull chores of the sickroom.

  They had been in quarantine for three days when guards sheathed from head to toe in oilcloth carried in five more patients, all covered with blue spots. Two were younger than Flick; two were old; and the fifth man, who looked to be Orji’s age, coughed deep in his c
hest. With them came a dedicate in the blue Water Temple habit, a plump, wide-hipped woman with dark brown hair and eyes, and skin the color of newly minted bronze. She carried a large basket of supplies on her back.

  “Henna,” Rosethorn greeted the new arrival. “It’s about time.”

  “I would have come sooner, but they locked me in with that lunatic Crane, until he decided he couldn’t stand me. I don’t know how you work with him,” replied Dedicate Henna, unslinging the basket and its supporting frame. “I decided quarantine is better.”

  Rosethorn laughed for the first time in days. “You know, I was wondering what I missed about times like this,” she commented, throwing back the sailcloth cover on Henna’s basket. “It was Crane, hovering and telling me I wouldn’t get anywhere with whatever I was doing. You’re right—quarantine is preferable.”

  All three of them—Henna, Rosethorn, and Briar—settled the new patients in, cleaning them up and sending their old clothes down the washroom chute that led straight to a furnace. While they brewed fresh willowbark tea from Henna’s supplies, they also took samples from the new patients, sending them out with their own samples for the day. Tea came next; everyone got some. The old people were nearly too weak to sip, which Briar could tell worried the women. Next came balm rubs to soothe their patients’ itchy skins.

  At last everyone had been tended. Briar and Rosethorn sat at the table as Henna poured cups of a more ordinary rosehip orange tea for them. “I don’t know about you, but I have a headache,” the Water dedicate informed Rosethorn. “You must be tired.”

  Rosethorn smiled crookedly and drank her tea down.

  Briar looked at Henna beseechingly. To say anything in front of Rosethorn was to invite a flailing with the rough edge of her tongue. He could only pray that Henna would see the message in his eyes.

  She did. “I’ll take over for now,” she told Rosethorn briskly. “I want you to drink this broth Dedicate Gorse sent with me, then go to bed. I’ll wake you at dusk.” Henna rested a hand on Rosethorn’s shoulder. “Shame on you for not taking better care of yourself! You’re worn to the bone, and your boy here isn’t much better off. Same orders for you, my lad,” she told Briar sternly. “Broth and bed.”

  “There’s yarrow balm in the yellow jar,” Rosethorn said with a yawn. “We made it up fresh yesterday. Aloe balm in the green one, and—”

  “I know how you mark your medicines,” Henna said tartly. “Broth, bed! Now!”

  Rosethorn leaned closer, and kept her voice low. “Why is there only one of you?”

  Henna rested a hand on Rosethorn’s shoulder. “Because we knew you and Briar here were fine and able to care for this lot, if you had someone else good to help. The others are needed elsewhere. The Duke’s Guard started a house-to-house search of the Mire today, and they keep finding new cases. Two of the other three rooms on this floor are starting to fill up. They’re calling it the blue pox, you know. The spots show up blue on all but the darkest skins.”

  Briar saw Rosethorn’s fingers tighten on Henna’s shoulder, making the cloth dimple. “How many new cases?” she whispered. “How many dead?”

  “Thirteen dead we know of,” was Henna’s soft reply. “Only sixty-five sick when I came in. I suspect more are hiding or telling themselves it’s just a rash, so there’s no way to judge how many are truly ill. I’m guessing from the counts I’ve seen that probably there are at least a hundred more cases today. If we’re lucky.”

  Rosethorn chewed on her lower lip, thinking. “Where are they finding the sick?”

  “North Mire,” replied Henna promptly. “From the buildings near the city wall.”

  Rosethorn sighed. “Yanna willing, this is the worst of it.”

  “If it doesn’t break out of the Mire, we’ll avoid a deal of heartache. The guards have orders to stop any Mire dwellers from entering the city.” Henna looked at Briar. “Now, my lad, get rid of that long face and dish up the broth for you two.” She pointed to a large, wax-sealed crock.

  He did as he was told. Sipping his—no matter how hard he worked, he remembered to eat—he watched as Rosethorn drank her broth. When she finished, he followed her to her cot. “Thank the gods for Honored Moonstream,” Rosethorn commented softly as she slid under her blanket. “She’s no coin-pincher, unlike the people who run this place. With Henna in here we’ll get the supplies we need from Winding Circle.”

  What we needed most was help, Briar thought, watching as Rosethorn went right to sleep. And we got it.

  He went to bed. Lying down was one thing, he found; sleeping was something else. Had he given Flick willowbark tea that morning? In the last three days Rosethorn had taught him a slavish love for willowbark. It was the only thing that lowered the fever, which fretted her more than the spots and the sores that developed when the spots cracked open. The tea also soothed her other worry, that Flick was drying out, though Rosethorn used a different word: dehydration.

  Perhaps he should check the slate at the foot of Flick’s cot. He would have marked it if he’d given his friend willowbark tea that morning.

  Henna sat on Orji’s cot, holding the sick man’s wrists. Running from her fingers was a tracery of silver—magic. Briar closed his eyes for a moment, then looked again. The tracery was clearer, threading from dedicate to man like rootlets. Fascinated, Briar walked over to watch.

  The magic streamed along Orji’s arms and into his body, as if Henna ran it through his veins. For a long, long moment Henna’s power bathed Orji from top to toe. At last it retreated, trickling out of his body the way it had come in. Once Henna got her magic back, she released the dozing man and folded her hands in her lap, head bowed.

  Briar was about to creep away when she spoke. “You are supposed to be sleeping.” Her voice had the trained quiet of someone who spends her time with the sick: Briar heard clearly, but neither Orji nor Flick in the next bed stirred.

  “I couldn’t. What magic was that, what you did?”

  Henna swiveled to look up at him. “You know I was doing magic?”

  “It’s a thing I picked up from Tris,” he replied. Not long after Sandry had spun their magics together, Niko had written a spell on Tris’s spectacles, helping her to see magic as he did. The skill then spread to Daja, Sandry, and Briar through their bond with Tris, just as Tris learned a little of their magics. “I see power when it’s moving or working,” Briar explained to Henna, “but I don’t know what it’s doing.”

  Henna moved over to Flick’s cot, sat, and took Flick’s hands. The street girl stirred, opening heavy-lidded eyes. “I just want to see how you are,” Henna reassured her.

  Flick glanced up at Briar, who nodded. “I’m fine,” she whispered, licking dry lips.

  Briar fetched a cup of water and held Flick up so she could drink. When she turned her face away, he lowered her to the pillow again. As Flick’s eyes closed, Henna closed her own.

  “It’s a thing healers learn to do,” she murmured. Around her hands sprouted a web of light-strands that sank into Flick’s dark-spotted arms and raced through her body. “Before we start work, we must first know what is wrong. It may be that the treatment we put to a fever will hurt the patient’s diseased kidneys, or the foxglove we give to strengthen a heartbeat may cause a weakened heart to fail.”

  “Then you can see what the blue pox is,” Briar said eagerly.

  Henna shook her head. “If it were a disease I had fought before, perhaps I could sense it, but only then. This isn’t even related to the diseases I know. But I can see the flow of her blood, the strength of her heart and kidneys and bowels. I can feel her muscles, brain, and bones. I can see weak blood, if she has it, or fluid in the lungs. Bad eating habits, certainly.” Henna wrinkled her nose. “And worms, and flukes.”

  Flick’s mouth dropped open. Her breath rattled in her dry mouth and nose. She was asleep.

  “Worms and flukes?” asked Briar, not sure he’d heard right.

  “Parasites, in her body. They live on her. I would imagi
ne, before Rosethorn cleaned her up, she had lice and fleas as well.”

  Briar was about to ask, “Don’t everybody?” when he remembered that he had not since his arrival at Winding Circle. Who am I? he wondered for a moment, shocked. Who am I really? It’s like I shucked being Roach the street rat like worn-out clothes—but Roach is who I was for years. I can’t just strip away years, can I?

  “Where is this girl from?” Henna was asking. “Where did she live?”

  Briar frowned at her. “The sewer,” he said irritably. He didn’t like the disapproval in Henna’s face and voice. Where else could Flick live and be safe? he wanted to ask, but did not. Instead he thought, Henna acts like I’m one of her kind, one of the citizens. And I’m not. I can’t be.

  Henna shook her head and reclaimed her magic. Gently she drew the blanket over Flick’s thin arms. “She will have a battle of it, I’m afraid.”

  “We’ll pull her through,” Briar said confidently. “I’ve heard them at the Circle—they say you’re one of the best. I’ll do whatever you say. I was thinking maybe Flick could do with more willowbark tea.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” said Henna, regarding him with an odd expression in her eyes. “You should rest.”

  “I don’t mind—”

  “All our patients are asleep now, so I don’t mind either. Bed.”

  Briar turned to go. He was halfway across the floor when her soft yet clear voice reached his ears. “Sometimes there’s nothing you can do, boy—Briar. Sometimes they don’t have enough to fight with.”

  He looked back at her. “Flick’ll fight. You’ll see.” He fell on his bed and rolled the blanket around him. Maybe for a birthday I should pick the day when Roach of Deadman’s District kicked the bucket and left this kid Briar in his place, he thought tiredly. Except I don’t even know when that was. It all happened in bits and pieces, like.

  Maybe the girls know when it was.