Briar's Book

by Tamora Pierce

  Sleep, like the change from Roach to Briar, came slowly. Somewhere, between thought and dreams, he flowed along the invisible ties that stretched between him and the girls. It turned his dreams to small chunks of their lives.

  He was Daja, bent over a sheet of iron beaten leather-thin as Kirel, Frostpine’s other apprentice, bludgeoned away on a nearby anvil. Heat pressed Daja/Briar from the right, drawing her skin tight on that side while a cold, damp blast made her left side pebble with goosebumps. The grip of a sharp-edged tool she thought of as a “graver” nestled firmly in her right hand.

  Slowly she thrust the sharp point of the graver along the iron, shaping the curves that would form the symbol for protection. Her magic flowed in the graver’s wake. It called the power to shield and to hold out of the metal. She followed a magical trail, Briar realized: there was a design already drawn on the metal in rose geranium oil and Frostpine’s magic. It combined with Daja’s as she cut four half circles into the metal, each combining with the others to shape four petals. Last of all she cut a full circle that passed through the other curves. As she completed it, running into the point where she had begun, the magic faded, power seeping into iron to fill every inch. At last it was just a dimly glowing set of curves in her eyes.

  A hand—large, warm, callused—came down on her shoulder. There was no telling how long Frostpine had been there, watching. She looked up into his proud eyes. “Very good,” he said. “The best yet. One more, and I think we are finished for the day.”

  Briar lost Daja, but magic tugged him still. He found himself in Sandry’s mind as she labored with mortar and pestle in Lark’s workroom.

  Charcoal to filter out the bad, rose geranium for protection, she was thinking—Briar noticed that both Lark and Frostpine liked to use rose geranium. Sandry worked her pestle around the mortar’s bowl in a steady rhythm, thrusting her magic into her ingredients. Granules of frankincense flattened under her rocking pressure, mixing with the liquid in crushed flower petals and rosemary leaves. Protection and purification, Sandry thought; no shadow can enter. She filled the bowl to the brim with her power. Carnation and frankincense oils strengthened and purified what would be a thin paste rather than an oil. In a corner of her mind the noble drew and redrew a protective circle in white fire around those she loved. Peering at those within her circle, Briar recognized himself, Rosethorn, the girls, Lark, Frostpine, Niko, Little Bear, the duke—and Dedicate Crane?

  The surprise of seeing Crane made him wake on his cot at Urda’s House. He blinked at the ceiling. Why in Trickster Lakik’s name did Sandry care what happened to Crane?

  Sitting up, Briar looked around. Henna sat next to one of the new kids’ beds. A silver shimmer marked the flow of magic through her fingers into her patient. It chased a blue tint out of the boy’s unpocked skin.

  Briar went over for a closer look. “What’s the matter with him?” he whispered.

  “He had a seizure—a convulsion—while you were asleep,” she replied. “It happens when a fever runs too long unchecked. He’s blue all over because he didn’t get enough air during the spasms, so I’m trying to change that.”

  Briar watched the flow of her magic, intent. Henna’s power followed the veins between the child’s chest and his head. “How does magic in his blood fix his air?”

  “Haven’t you learned any physiology—how the body works?” asked Henna, startled.

  Briar scowled at the hint that Rosethorn wasn’t teaching him properly. “I do plants,” he said, “not people.”

  Henna shook her head. “I would have thought—never mind,” she added as Briar glared at her. “Veins—blood—carry air from the lungs to the brain. Without air, even for a short time, parts of the brain start to die. It can mean a change as tiny as forgetting how to tie a knot, or it can lead to idiocy, even death. Some who survive the blue pox will live damaged, even crippled.”

  The sick boy opened his eyes, staring at Henna. “I’ll be there, Mama,” he whispered. “Don’t let the camels eat me.” He went back to sleep.

  “He’s got a chance to survive.” Henna released him and got to her feet. Sighing, she turned her head and neck in a circle, trying to relax stiff muscles. “His family came on hard times just recently, so he’s still healthy at bottom. If we keep his brain whole, he may do all right.”

  They had put the man with the cough in a distant corner, away from the old people and the children. Now he sat up, hacking loudly.

  “What about him?” asked Briar.

  Henna shook her head. “He’s in the last stages of consumption—lung-rot. Catching the blue pox just means he’ll die sooner rather than later.”

  “But you could heal him,” protested Briar in a whisper, following her to the cupboards as she hunted for something. “I’ve seen you people do healings. Why aren’t you at it now?”

  Henna pulled a basin from the cupboard. “I have the power to heal four of the people in this room completely,” she said, her voice tight. “Old people and children and those already ill, like that man, are the hardest to bring back—I’d have to go to Death’s kingdom to get them. That will drain me for a month or more—that means I’d be useless, bedridden, too weak even to care for the sick without my magic. If healers use themselves up to save a handful, what happens to the sick brought in tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after?” She searched through the medicines on the table, taking a brown glass bottle. “Get a cup.”

  Briar obeyed.

  As Henna poured liquid from the bottle into the cup, she continued, “A touch of my power given to one person at a time might help fifty to win free of the disease, and leave me with enough magic to fight the blue pox in my own body. I may have to let some die, if they’re too far gone, and keep my power to save others.”

  “I’m sorry,” Briar whispered as she thrust the stopper into the bottle.

  “So am I,” replied Henna. “It’s the single worst thing about being a healer-mage.” She took the cup and basin to the coughing man.

  One of the old people sat up. “Get that oar in the water, ye sluggard,” she cried. “We’re bringin’ home a full boat if we fish till midnight!” She gasped and choked.

  Rosethorn was beside her before Briar knew his teacher was awake, thrusting a cloth between the old woman’s teeth. The woman bucked hard, convulsing, and threw Rosethorn off the bed. Briar ran to help.

  There was no quiet moment after that. Both the old woman and the boy had seizures all afternoon. When they were quiet, Henna, Rosethorn, and Briar cleaned everyone up and tried to get liquids into them. The man with consumption coughed long and often, fighting to breathe. By sunset he was spitting blood into the basin Henna had brought to him.

  Flick dozed lightly at times or blinked at the ceiling. She was still too weak to sit. Briar helped the girl up, desperately trying to get her to drink more.

  The thin gray daylight was fading when Briar heard the clank of metal. He dropped the bowl he was scrubbing and looked for the source. Was it the outside door again?

  There was the sound of a bolt being drawn: clack. The inner door, the one that opened into Urda’s House, swung open.

  Rosethorn and Henna got to their feet. Jokubas Atwater, the mean old man who had told Rosethorn that Urda’s House was not made of money, stood in the open door. “This entire building is now a pest-house,” he said acidly, eyes bitter. “The sick must keep to their own floors, but healers”—he looked around until he found Briar—”and apprentices, you may move freely about the house.”

  “We could use another pair of hands,” remarked Henna.

  “You’ll get them,” Jokubas said crisply. “My daughter is coming up here now, with ten more sick.”

  5

  The news that Briar and Rosethorn had been joined by Dedicate Henna was greeted with relief at Discipline Cottage. Everyone went to bed early that night, tired by worry and their own labors. Tris woke sometime after midnight to the sound of rain tapping the thatch overhead. She put on her spectacles,
a wool gown, and a shawl, sending her power out. The familiar sense of hot metal in the room across from hers was missing—she frowned, then remembered that Daja was at Frostpine’s, working and sleeping at his forge. With a sigh Tris let her magic seep through the boards and plaster between her and the ground floor. Lark slept heavily, the warmth of her magic lower than Tris had ever felt it. Sandry was in the same shape. They had worked hard, putting their strength into the masks and gloves for Crane and his staff.

  Tris found Little Bear’s life force, that of a dozing animal with unhappy dreams. He had to be sleeping in Briar’s room again: her sense of him was nearly overpowered by the magic that radiated from Briar’s shakkan. Over its one-hundred-forty-six-year existence, the miniature tree had been used to store and build upon the magic of its earlier owners; its green strength pressed on her own power. There was a curiously similar feel to the shakkan and to Little Bear, a kind of sadness. They missed Briar.

  “We all do,” she muttered crossly, stuffing her feet into thin leather slippers. “Can’t you keep it to yourselves?”

  With the stealth of months of practice she left the house, though she wondered why she bothered to be quiet. From the feel of Sandry and Lark, Tris thought that she might bang kettle lids in their ears and they wouldn’t twitch.

  Through the back gate she passed, then between the fence and the vineyard. Over the winter she had worn a path in the grass, one that led across a band of open ground. It went straight to the closest stair on the inside of Winding Circle’s thick wall. The rain fell steadily as she climbed, hoisting her skirts to keep from tripping, panting with effort. At least these days no one who saw her puffing was silly enough to yell at her to lose weight. Before she had learned to control her power—and the way it produced hail or lightning when she was vexed—some had teased her, with interesting results.

  Learning to control her magic had meant she had to give up rewarding those people who gave cruel advice. She hadn’t liked that, even when Niko pointed out that those she frightened became enemies. Niko is a spoilsport, thought Tris, trying to catch her breath as she stepped onto the top of the wall.

  Most nights when she came up here, she walked south to get a view of the harbor islands and the Pebbled Sea beyond. There was no glimpse of the sea tonight; the rain cloaked it. Below and to her right lay the joining of the roads that wrapped around Winding Circle and the granite ridge between the temple and the Mire. The slum and even walled Summersea were gone from view; no light cut through the rain, not even that of the harbor beacons.

  “One day—” a quiet voice began.

  Tris gasped and jumped. Niko’s approach had taken her by surprise. He steadied the girl with a hand on her shoulder. She could barely see his craggy face under the wide-brimmed hat he’d worn to keep off the wet.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said.

  “Well, you did,” muttered Tris. “What were you going to say?”

  “Only that if you ever get a home of your own, you ought to consider a nice tower, preferably on a cliff. You seem to prefer lookout spots.”

  “I’m a weather mage, aren’t I?” she asked. “Of course I like heights.”

  “Tell me, weather mage, how long you do expect this storm to last?”

  Tris sent her power rolling into the clouds. “A day, maybe two,” she replied, testing the feel of water, heat, and cold in the air. “Hard rain toward dawn, mistylike until ten in the morning, light rain after.”

  “Can you make it end? Usher the storm away from here?”

  Tris stared at him. “You just asked me to meddle with the weather.”

  “Yes.” He evaded her eyes, staring out at the dark landscape.

  “But you threatened dire things if I used my power like that. I’m not allowed to muck with nature.”

  “This is different.”

  “How do you know your telling me to do it won’t turn out as badly as if I did it on my own?” she demanded.

  “I don’t,” was the flat reply. “I feel it’s important enough to try, though, or I never would have brought it up.”

  That made her nervous. “Please explain,” she said, unusually meek.

  Niko sighed. “It seems this disease isn’t carried in the air, which is the only good news we’ve had all week. That leaves human contact, insects or animals, or water. If animals were carriers, we would have noticed sick ones. There are no flies or mosquitoes at this time of year, though we can’t rule out fleas and lice. I believe this thing spreads too quickly to be simply a matter of human contact, though Crane won’t rule that out. The only thing we can try to change—”

  “Is water,” said Tris.

  “The water in the sewers rises by the hour,” said Niko. “It may already be leaking into the city’s wells. It certainly will do so if the water continues to rise. If we can move this rain along, our outlook would be improved.”

  Tris removed her shoes, spectacles, and shawl, handing them to Niko. She climbed into one of the flat-bottomed notches in the top of the wall and turned away from the wind. The storm was at her back, coming from the southeast, bound for the northern mountains. She spread herself in it and let its motion thrust her to its leading edge. The hills around Summersea rolled under her. Rivers, streams, towns, she felt them all as she flowed overhead, bound for the great mountains beyond.

  An opposing wind in her face brought her to a halt. Here was a pressure to counter the storm she rode, a whirling mass of air entrenched nearly thirty miles to the north. It would go nowhere; if she insisted, she would regret it. She had met such things before and wouldn’t have cared if she’d had no storm at her back to move along.

  She jumped onto the edge of the unmoving northern system. Following its edge west as she sought a gap where she could put her storm, she found none. At last she gave up. Returning to the storm over Winding Circle, she used its power to send her shooting high above the clouds into open air. Safe from her storm’s pull, she turned west again, still looking for a space to move it to. There was nothing she would not have to fight other weather to clear.

  Cat dirt, thought Tris, using a favorite expression of Sandry’s.

  Curious, she sank until she was caught up in her storm’s counterclockwise spin. She let it drag her south and east, saving her own strength for the return trip. At the storm’s southernmost point she yanked free. A fresh storm caught her almost instantly. She let it pull her even farther south and jumped free—straight into a third storm.

  When at last she opened her body’s eyes, she found that the sky showed barely pink through a small break in the eastern clouds. A fine drizzle fell on Winding Circle.

  Her body had gone stiff in her absence. She lurched and saw there was but an inch between her feet and the edge of the wall. She’d forgotten she stood in a notch, with nothing to keep her from walking into thin air.

  A wiry arm circled her waist and yanked her back. Tris and Niko both tumbled to the walkway in an undignified pile.

  When she rolled off him, Niko sat up, gasping for air. “Don’t ever do that by yourself!” he scolded when he caught his breath. “You might have been killed!”

  “I noticed,” replied Tris, shuddering.

  Niko fumbled at his belt, producing a flask. He opened it and put it to her lips. Tris drank obediently, trying not to let the sweet tea leak between her chattering teeth. It was a mixture she didn’t recognize, flavored with dates, citron, and plums.

  “That isn’t one of Rosethorn’s,” she gasped when she was done. She didn’t need to see the magic that infused the tea; she felt it in her veins. Her head cleared, and her chilled body warmed quickly.

  “Moonstream fixed it,” replied Niko, returning the flask to his belt. “I assume you were gone so long for a reason—have you good news for me?”

  Tris lurched to her feet, wringing her very wet skirts. Niko remained on the walkway, staring up at her, eyes bright under his broad-brimmed hat.

  Taking a deep breath, Tris said, “I can mov
e this storm, but it won’t mean anything. There are storms behind it for hundreds of miles. They’re dumping rain over the whole east half of the Pebbled Sea. Whatever I send off will be replaced in a day, even less.”

  Niko’s heavy brows snapped together in a frown. “Why now, O Gods?” he demanded. “Why give us all this rain now? We don’t need—”

  “Hoy!” someone yelled from below, inside Winding Circle. “I was told Niklaren Goldeye is up there!”

  “How could anyone know that?” asked Tris as Niko got up.

  “While you were—busy,” he said drily, “I had several chats with the guards. They must have told him.” He leaned over the edge of the walkway. “One moment,” he called. Walking briskly to the stair, Tris behind him, he descended.

  Their summoner looked happy to wait: he was bracing himself on spread knees as he fought to catch his breath. Tris was interested to see he wore the uniform not of the Duke’s Guard—which looked after the Mire and everything else outside Summersea’s wall—but of the Provost’s Guard, which patrolled inside it.

  “They said you was to know right off,” the man wheezed when they reached him. “Someone told our cap’n, and she ordered us to search the house, and we found three of ’em. And then she ordered us, do the flanking houses, and we got three more in one and five in t’other. Cap’n’s turning out all Cobbler’s Lane now. You’re wanted in town.”

  Niko held up a hand, his expression bleak. “Three, three, and five what?” he asked, his light voice slightly husky.

  The guard took a deep breath, and straightened. “It’s the blue pox, Master Goldeye,” he said, his eyes haunted. “Inside the city wall.”

  6

  After a long night in which more time was spent caring for the sick than sleeping, Briar, Rosethorn, Henna, and the new healer were treated to gruel, tea, and the prospect of a busy day. No sooner had they finished breakfast than the women were called to a meeting of all the healers in Urda’s House. “Stay put,” Rosethorn murmured to Briar. “There will be a lot of quarreling before anything useful is discussed. Your time is better spent here.”