Briar's Book

by Tamora Pierce

  “Crane wants you working up trays.” Osprey pointed to the table at the tiled wall, between the open cabinets. A large slate hung there with a detailed list of instructions written in chalk. On the table was a stepped rack of thin bottles. Each bottle sported a paper label; seven also bore a string from which a numbered paper tag hung.

  “You’ll get your trays here, once the blue pox is added.” She went to the open cabinet at their right, between the table and the doorway to the outer workroom. “Always keep the trays level”—very carefully she lifted one from the shelf—”because if you tilt them, blue pox will drip out. That is bad.”

  “Lakik, yes!” whispered Briar.

  “If any gets into the other wells on the tray, the whole thing’s ruined. If you leak or drip, whatever happens, don’t make a fuss. Bring it quietly to the washers at the tub. If Crane finds out you slipped, you’re out.”

  “A dreadful fate, to be sure,” muttered Briar, startling a chuckle from her. Made bold by that, he added, “I don’t see how you can work with that Bag. You seem all right, but he’s such a pickle-faced cull from an overbred litter—”

  “I don’t know how you work with Rosethorn without bleeding to death,” she said frankly. “She’s that sharp with everyone.” Her eyes met Briar’s over their masks; both of them smiled. “To each his—or her—own, I suppose,” Osprey admitted. “Now. Trays. Put the glass lid aside, gently. Very gently. Follow the instructions on the board, there.”

  Briar read them carefully:

  To Well numbered 1 Add 2 drops liquid from Bottle numbered 1.

  To Well numbered 2 Add 1 drop liquid from Bottle numbered 2.

  To Well numbered 3 Add 1 measure powder from Bottle numbered 3.

  To Well numbered 4 Add 3 drops liquid from Bottle numbered 4.

  To Well numbered 5 Add 2 drops liquid from Bottle numbered 5.

  To Well numbered 6 Add 1 drop liquid from Bottle numbered 6.

  To Well numbered 7 Add 1 drop liquid from Bottle numbered 7.

  Glancing at the tray as Osprey drew liquids or powders from the numbered bottles and slid them into the wells, he saw that a number was cut into the stone beside each well. There were seven in a row, which meant they tried seven possible cures on the pox liquid from three different people, all on one tray.

  “I can do this,” he remarked, surprised.

  “All you need is the ability to pay attention and steady hands,” Osprey remarked. “Once you’re done …” She eased the glass lid onto the tray and secured it. Then she put the tray on a shelf in the cabinet to their left. “You can’t let your mind wander. Once things get started, Crane and whoever is helping him will change the instructions on your board,” she explained. “I’ll help you get any new supplies and change the number tags, at least until you get the hang of things. You’re smart, or Rosenthorn never would have borne with you for a whole year. She—uh-oh.” Osprey had seen something in the outer workroom that she didn’t like. Briar followed her as she hurried through the doorway.

  “Yellowrose, careful!” she told one of the pair handling the blue pox essence. “Your sleeve, your left sleeve—”

  The youth about to dip his measure into the jar froze. The string that gathered his sleeve at one wrist had come undone. The sleeve had escaped the cuff on his glove to hang perilously close to the tray he was filling.

  Crane, Rosethorn, and the Water dedicate had come in, washed and robed. “You.” Crane pointed to Yellowrose, his hand drooping from a rigid, accusing forefinger. “Yellowrose. Out.”

  “I didn’t get it in—” protested the youth.

  “Out,” Crane repeated icily. “Now.”

  Yellowrose put down his measure and did as he was told. As he walked to the washroom, Briar saw a number of gloved hands pat the reject in comfort.

  Crane went to the glass wall behind the large boiling vat, wiped away the steam, and rapped on the glass. A face pressed against it on the outside: a temple runner.

  “Two more helpers,” Crane said loudly. “Two, understand?”

  “Two?” a girl murmured.

  “In case someone else errs,” said Crane. He turned to inspect the room, his weary brown eyes missing nothing. He pointed out things for each worker to correct, then entered the inner workroom.

  “Come on,” Rosethorn murmured to Briar. “Time to get your feet wet.”

  9

  Rosethorn strode to the counter at the far side of Crane’s room, placing a satchel on it. She began to empty the bag, placing its contents—her own blends of oils, infusions, and herbs—in neat ranks against the glass wall. The Water dedicate, who someone had greeted as Peachleaf, dragged a tall clerk’s chair to the end of Crane’s worktable and began to take pens, paper, and ink from the cabinet underneath. Crane himself arranged things on the counter at his end: vials, lenses of all kinds and colors, sheets of paper, and a priceless Yanjing porcelain teacup tinted celestial blue. Briar’s fingers itched, not just because that cup was worth a fortune. It was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.

  Crane walked over to Briar’s station. “If it goes missing, I will know where to look,” he said ominously. “You are here to work.” Raising his voice so it would carry, he told Rosethorn, “I will treat him as I would any other novice. If he cannot be relied upon, he goes. I cannot do my own work and watch his too. He really is too young for this.”

  Rosethorn’s only reply was an absentminded, “Where are the notes to date?”

  “Peachleaf?” asked Crane drily. “Did you make a second copy as I requested?”

  The Water dedicate looked around frantically, then rummaged in the cabinet where she kept her supplies. Crane went over to complain and to supervise.

  Waiting for him, Briar read the instructions on the slate with care. He then picked up the numbered vials and matched them to the wells with the same number on the tray before him.

  You’d have a real mess if you jumbled the notes for it all, he thought. No wonder Crane gets testy. Not, added Briar with a grim eye on the man, that I mean to be lambkin-meek if he gets testy with me. In a box next to the rack of additives he found measuring tools, pens, ink, and squares of parchment for labels. A note was stuck to the inside of the lid, with the instructions: Give everything to washers at end of day!

  “Finally!” Crane announced as Peachleaf held up a sheaf of papers. He passed them to Rosethorn and came back to Briar. “Attend,” he began.

  “Osprey showed me. I just follow the slate,” Briar said, cutting off the lecture before Crane could give it. He got to work, adding liquids and powders in the proper wells as he kept hands and arms clear of the tray itself. Though he’d never had to do this particular job before, Rosenthorn’s demands for her medicines and herbal mixtures were every bit as precise as Crane’s. Briar moved from bottle or jar to tray steadily, barely hearing Crane’s fusses about being careful and watching where his fingers went. Once he finished the entire tray, he opened an inkwell, took a reed pen, and carefully noted the date on parchment labels glued to the edge of the tray.

  “Well?” he said, looking up.

  Crane’s eyebrows went down. Briar figured the dedicate was scowling under his mask. At last Crane pointed to a final note on the slate: Variation L. Briar wrote that under the date on the labels.

  “Cover it,” Crane said tartly, “then shelve it.”

  Briar slid the tray into a space on the left-hand shelves. He grinned evilly at Crane, who couldn’t see beneath the boy’s mask. “I learnt steadiness picking locks in Baghouses,” Briar said airily.

  Someone—he suspected it was Peachleaf—snickered. Crane only raised an eyebrow at him and said, “Next tray.”

  He stood over Briar for three more trays, watching every step. When Osprey brought supplies from the outer workroom, Crane made Briar refill his bottles and jars, then slip the numbered labels back on. Finally he went to his own table and got to work.

  Off and on Briar would peer at him, amazed at the variety of the mag
ics Crane used. The man treated the contents of the trays with his own liquids and powders, each of them so powerful that their containers shone like miniature suns when Briar looked at them for very long. He could see magic glint on the surface of the many different lenses that Crane used to examine the trays. Even the air around Crane was filled with traces and sprinkles of silvery magic that flared whenever he spoke a fresh spell.

  At midmorning Briar placed a finished tray on the shelf. Feeling he’d earned a short halt, the boy stretched and looked around. Peachleaf sorted through a sheaf of parchments, her hands trembling. Rosethorn continued to read Crane’s notes with the kind of concentration she normally kept for mildews and plant lice. In the outer workroom Briar could hear the soft murmur of conversation over the clink of glass and metal.

  Crane drifted to Briar’s post, frowning over a sheaf of notes. When Briar turned back to his counter, Crane held up a hand, meaning for him to wait. The lanky dedicate mixed three oils from Briar’s supplies into a new bottle. The boy frowned. He could see that Crane had used marshmallow and holly oils, but he couldn’t identify the third ingredient. Reaching into the new bottle with his power, he choked.

  “Mustard?” he asked, shocked. “What good will that do?”

  “Are you a healer as well as a plant mage?” was the acid reply. Crane briskly tied the Number Four label to the new oil’s bottle. “You haven’t the training to understand, nor have I time to instruct you.”

  Be that way, Briar thought irritably. As Crane changed the slate to read one drop instead of three for Number Four, Briar took out a clean measure. He noticed that Crane had also changed the letter of variation on the blackboard.

  “I have amended—” Crane began.

  “I see,” Briar interrupted, too peeved to mind his manners. “Variation M.” What’ll we do when we run out of letters? he wondered.

  As the boy fetched a new tray, Crane said grudgingly, “It is my thought that essence of mustard will act to flush the disease, as the marshmallow soothes the harsh action of the mustard. The holly—”

  “Fever,” Briar said promptly.

  “It won’t work,” called Rosethorn. Crane twitched. Rosethorn went on, “Check your notes on the combinations you tried two days ago.”

  Crane went over to her, and Briar tended his tray. The sound of rising voices broke his concentration soon afterward: Crane and Rosethorn were fighting. Peachleaf, seated too close to them for her own comfort, shrank back, face pale. Briar, noting the healthy blush in Rosethorn’s cheeks, decided she was having a good time and ignored the battle. He had completed half of the waiting trays about an hour before noon, but someone from the outer room carried in fresh ones.

  “Use the old trays first,” Crane said. Briar nodded. He hated to admit it and would never say it aloud, but Crane seemed to have good reasons to do things as he did.

  He was measuring out infused aloe from jar Number Seven when Rosethorn asked, “Crane, why did we create broad diagnosis powders three years ago if you aren’t going to use them?”

  “What are you talking about?” demanded Crane. “Of course I used them on the day we began. I had to give them up—it is in your very first section of notes.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Crane went to Rosethorn’s table and plucked the notes from her fingers. “I detailed the results thoroughly,” he muttered, leafing through the sheets. “The blue pox caused our general diagnosis additives to break up. I know very well you are to have everything … Ah.” With a glare for Peachleaf, he pulled three sheets from the stack and put them on top. The healer shrank in her chair. “They appear to have been placed behind the section on the disease’s response to neutral substances. Why, no one can know, because these notes are supposed to be in chronological order.” He thrust the papers at Rosethorn.

  She took them and muttered, “Bully.”

  Crane ignored her. “Even the most basic compound additives we are accustomed to using break up when brought into contact with the blue pox essence. I was forced to go to the simplest oils, chemicals, and herbs. It slowed me to a crawl.”

  Rosethorn frowned as she read. “That makes no sense,” she remarked.

  Crane saw that Briar was watching. His eyebrows rose, and Briar quickly got back to his work.

  When the Hub clock chimed the half hour after noon, Osprey and another of the outer-room workers arrived with a tray of covered dishes. Once her companion had set up a small table at the empty center of the room, Osprey began to lay out the dishes and eating utensils she carried. Briar, who had just finished a tray, went to help.

  “Take off the gloves and mask—I’ll give you a fresh set when you’re ready to start again,” Osprey murmured to Briar. “Don’t go near the worktables while you’re eating. You just cost Ibis and Nomi a copper astrel apiece. They were sure you wouldn’t last till noon. Fill yourself a plate and eat—you need it to stay fresh.”

  Briar was happy to do as he was bid. He also filled a plate for Rosethorn. “You betting?” he asked, his voice audible only to Osprey.

  She grinned at him. Briar liked her grin; it was wide and cheerful and sunny. “I have three copper crescents on you getting the gate between two and three. He hates interrupting to eat, even though he knows he must, so he’s testy for hours after.”

  “Put me down for two copper creses around four,” Briar replied, straight-faced. “I’ll be tired of his fussing by then.”

  “Can’t do it,” Osprey said. “The one that’s bet on can’t wager on himself.”

  “All right.” Briar glanced at Peachleaf, who scribbled madly, trying to keep up with the murmured instructions Crane gave as he worked. “Two copper creses on Peachleaf by three. He keeps having to spell words for her when he’s giving her notes.”

  “Two creses on Peachleaf at three. Right.” Osprey and her companion left.

  Lunch reassured Briar a little. It gave him the crawls to think of the blue pox all around him, but the food was very good. Maybe even working for Crane was better than quarantine.

  He made sure that Rosethorn ate. She had finished reading Crane’s notes and had arranged her counter the way she liked. Many of the articles—lenses, glass bottles, herbal pastes, a set of crystals—were things he’d never seen before. Briar had been so positive he’d inspected all she had, over the winter. If he’d missed these items, she was trickier than he’d ever suspected.

  Briar returned to his desk, glad for the time away, and found that more trays had been added to the stack of those awaiting his attentions.

  After his return, he saw that Crane was looking over his shoulder again. Several times Briar nearly told the man that if he’d wanted to be minded by a fidget, he’d have stayed at Urda’s House. Thinking about Ibis’s and Nomi’s bets, he held his tongue. He’d hate to make money for anyone who’d bet on his departure that day.

  Perhaps it was relief, once Crane returned to his own labors. Perhaps it was the break for lunch. He might simply have adjusted to all the magic in his surroundings. Whatever the cause, soon after Crane’s retreat Briar saw a wink of silver in the wells on the tray in his hands.

  Don’t get excited, he ordered himself, closing his eyes to rest them. It’s reflected magic or something. There’s glass enough here to blind a kid with reflections. He opened his eyes. If he’d seen magic in this tray, it was gone. Shaking his head, he added oils and powders, wrote out labels, clipped the lid to the tray, and then shelved it. When he went for the next tray, he stopped before the cabinet where they were stacked, his back to the glass walls, and took the lid from the topmost one. Gently he lowered the tray into his body’s shadow and looked down into it. A ghost of silver glided across the liquid in the third well; hints of it shone in several more. They faded. Briar whistled and carried the tray to his worktable.

  Was he seeing magic in the blue pox?

  “Asaia Bird-Winged, give me patience and give me strength,” announced Crane. “How often must I spell so common a term as ‘antipyretic�
�?”

  “Couldn’t I just write ‘fever reducer’? squeaked Peachleaf.

  “Whatever term will stop your inane questions,” Crane told her icily as the Hub clock chimed two. “Read back that last sentence.”

  As Peachleaf read, Briar added oil from the Number One bottle to the three Number One wells on his tray. His two copper crescents on Peachleaf’s three o’clock dismissal were safe for now.

  When he fetched the next tray, he again put his body between it and the light sources. He thought he may have seen a glimmer, but it was gone on second look. What he needed was Niko, or more likely, Tris. Niko was busy in the city. While Briar, Daja, and Sandry had caught the ability to see magic from Tris, back when their powers were seeping into each other, Tris was still the best at it. She claimed it was because Niko had bespelled her eyeglasses to help her to see power. Briar suspected that Niko had just taken the easy way to teach her the skill.

  Whatever the reason, Briar was sure that if magic were part of the blue pox, Tris would see it. But how was she to get the chance? People did not come and go in these workrooms. Anyone who entered had business here, and they had to scrub coming and going. He couldn’t just ask Tris to ramble by and peer in.

  Glass shattered noisily in the outer workroom. Immediately Osprey shouted, “Don’t worry, it’s not the pox—just some clean glassware. Not a problem!”

  Crane floated through the door like a god of swans, red flags of rage riding high on his sallow cheeks. Stiff-necked old piece of codfish bait, thought Briar, carrying his newest tray to his counter.

  “You, and you.” Crane’s voice was almost gentle. “Out. Tell them to send more workers, and quickly.”

  “Write the words you have trouble with on a scrap of paper and keep it nearby,” Rosethorn whispered to Peachleaf.

  “I do,” sniffed the Water dedicate, “but they fall off the table!”

  “Put them where your sleeves won’t knock them off,” Rosethorn hissed. “Honestly, Peachleaf, you’re the best midwife at Winding Circle—try to be more confident. Stand up to him.”