Briar's Book (3 page)

“I wish you could have gone without bad news, too, Uncle,” she admitted.

The duke got to his feet. “Let’s see from what direction this gale blows,” he remarked, and went out onto the balcony.

Sandry looked up at Trisana Chandler. The redhead had found a book to interest her. Rather than climb down the ladder, she perched on it, her bespectacled nose close to the volume’s open pages.

Someone – the duke or Niko – closed the balcony door. Sandry put down her teacup and went over to the ladder. “Tris,” she whispered. Tris!”

Her friend closed the book, using her finger as a bookmark, and peered at her, gray eyes vexed behind her spectacles. “There’s no sense in asking me what’s wrong. He didn’t say, and I can’t even guess.
I
can’t see the future,” Niko’s student pointed out, her voice tart but quiet. “I was reading.”

“You’re
always
reading,” retorted Sandry. “The only way people can ever talk to you is to interrupt.”

“Then maybe they shouldn’t talk to me,” Tris said.

Sandry looked at her friend with exasperation. “What is it this time?” she asked. “History or biography?”

“Astronomy. Stars,” replied Tris, stroking the book’s leather cover. “The ones in the far south. They don’t have the constellations that we have.”

Sandry had suspected it would be a completely useless area of knowledge. Only Tris and Niko would care about the stars in a part of the world they might never visit.

At least she and her own teacher, Lark, had gotten Tris properly clothed for this visit to Duke’s Citadel. It had taken them all winter to remake Tris’s wardrobe of ugly skirts and dresses, partly because Tris had to be wheedled into fittings. The effort was worth it, thought Sandry. The rust-colored wool gown Tris wore today was embroidered with a pattern of green leaves at the collar and hem and fitted her plump frame perfectly. Normally Tris tucked her mass of wiry copper curls under a kerchief, but to visit the duke she had tied back her hair with a black velvet band.

Of course, color and flattering clothes could not soften Tris’s face. Her stormy eyes were set in pale red lashes under fair brows and normally held the fierce look they did now. Brass-rimmed spectacles on her long nose glinted, as if lightning danced in the metal. Her chin was sharper than Sandry’s, but no less firm.

“Do you think your uncle might lend this to me?” she asked now. “I’d take very good care of it.”

“Ask him,” replied Sandry. “He likes you.”

“He does?” The redhead was baffled. “Why?”

“Niko sends him reports on how we do. Uncle said you’re very clever. He told me you’ve worked hard to control your magic, and that’s impressive in someone our age.”

Tris blushed a fiery red. “We all work hard,” she mumbled. She held the book down to Sandry and descended the ladder.

“Yes, but when
you
go wrong, everybody knows it,” Sandry teased. “It’s not a matter of a weaving flying apart, or – ”

I
want Niko right now.
Rosethorn’s sharp voice spoke deep inside their minds, from the place where they drew their magic.

When she sounded that curt, it was time to do as they were told. Both girls raced for the balcony door and pulled it open.

“Excuse us, Uncle,” Sandry announced, walking out onto the rain-swept stone.

The men turned, frowning. “We needed to speak without interruption,” the duke informed them.

Tris curtsied shyly. “It’s Rosethorn, your grace,” she explained. “She’s talking to us through our magic, and she wants Niko. We don’t dare say no.”

The duke raised his eyebrows. “Who am I to argue with Dedicate Rosethorn?”

Tell him I’m sorry,
Rosethorn ordered in mind-speech.
Say it can’t be helped.

Sandry and Tris obeyed.

Niko sighed, and lay a hand on Tris’s arm.
Rosethorn, what is it?
Now that he was in contact with the girl, he could speak to Rosethorn as easily as if she stood beside him. Sandry remained, listening to the conversation through her own magical ties to Briar.

Have you ever seen this?
Rosethorn asked. They all looked at Flick through Briar’s eyes.

Sandry felt dizzy. Any disease that showed pock-marks reminded her of the epidemic that had killed her family. She stared at Flick queasily as Niko and Rosethorn spoke. Rosethorn was giving Niko instructions and a list of supplies. Why was oiled cloth so important? Why did Rosethorn tell Niko to bring herbs and liquids from Winding Circle?

Briar is in the sewers! thought Tris to herself, her skin prickling. Only Niko’s bony hand kept her in place. Briar and Rosethorn and street rats, no better than animals themselves, in the worst kind of filth: the thought made her stomach roll. She hoped – she prayed – that Briar and Rosethorn would burn their clothes before they came home.

We won’t be coming home,
Rosethorn said. She had finished her talk with Niko in time to hear Tris’s last thought.
Not for a while.

Quarantine,
Briar added glumly.
I knew it. We’re to be cribbed up till we die or whatever.
He sounded like the thief he’d been when Tris had first met him.

But aren’t there spells you can work?
Sandry asked Niko unhappily. The four younger mages hadn’t been separated overnight since they had first met almost a year before.
Spells that let healers see if people are sick or not?

I don’t think there are diagnosis-spells for this,
Niko replied through their magic.
It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. We need time to watch how it develops.

Time to prepare,
added Rosethorn.

I must speak with the duke,
Niko told her.
Expect me and those helping us at the Guildhall clock at
– He turned his head to look at the duke’s own clock tower.
One. We should be there at one.

Niko let go of Tris; Rosethorn did the same with Briar.
Coppercurls,
the boy continued, using his nickname for Tris,
bring my
shakkan
in tonight?
Briar loved his
shakkan,
a miniature pine tree, as much as he did their dog, Little Bear.
And close the shutters in Rosethorn’s workshop? Tell Daja I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to buy that chunk of copper like she asked me to.

I’ll tell her, Tris promised.

It’s my turn to feed Little Bear,
added the boy.
And walk him.

I’ll do that. Will you be all right?
Sandry wanted to know. The two girls could sense that Briar was nervous and upset.
How do you feel?

Don’t get quivery on me,
Briar replied, trying to put cheer into his mental voice.
I’ll have fun
–
den with folk
like I’m used to, and not you sniffer skirts. Bye-bye, now.

Tris, furious that he could joke, was about to reply angrily when Briar ended their connection. Sandry grabbed Tris by the arm. “Don’t,” she said aloud. “He just doesn’t want us to know he’s scared too.” She looked around for Niko and the duke. They had gone inside and were talking urgently at the duke’s writing desk.

“He didn’t have to be mean,” Tris muttered. “‘Sniffer skirts indeed!”

Sandry walked to the balcony rail and stared at the town below. Tris came to join her as rain began to fall.

“He’s frightened,” whispered the young noble, to herself as much as to her friend. “You could be nicer.”

Tris growled, “You’re always defending him.”

“You’re too hard on people,” retorted Sandry. “You pay attention just to words, not how they’re said. Briar’s like you – he talks meaner than he is, and people fall for it.
You
should know better.”

About to snap a reply, Tris saw the troubled look in her friend’s blue eyes and changed her mind. She put an arm around Sandry’s shoulders gingerly, half afraid Sandry might shrug off the contact. When the other girl leaned her head on Tris’s plump shoulder, Tris relaxed. Without thinking she thrust the rain away, to leave them enclosed in a pillar of dry air. Both stood without speaking and watched as the weather cloaked the city.

When Rosethorn and the soldiers came to Flick’s den, they found their way without a guide. “Your friend Alleypup ran when the duke’s people climbed down the ladder,” Rosethorn told Flick drily.

Briar and Flick eyed the soldiers, who wore long oilcloth robes and cotton masks on their mouths and noses. “I knew Alleypup was smart,” the sick girl murmured. “He’da been locked up while you and your boy ran free.”

“Not so smart, if he gives this to the people he runs into,” Rosethorn replied as the soldiers eased Flick onto a litter.

“You
may not care who else gets sick,” snapped a guard. “He’ll just scamper in the sewers, givin’ it to them as works for a living – ”

Rosethorn turned on him, dark eyes blazing. “Not
another word,”
she ordered.

The guard met her eyes and looked away. Briar could see the muscles of the man’s jaw ripple as he clenched his teeth and held his tongue.

Rosethorn took a breath, making herself calm down. At last she shook her head and donned one of the spare oilcloth robes fetched by the guards. “We aren’t running,” she told Flick, handing a robe to Briar. “If this is catching, I won’t risk spreading it. We go into quarantine with you.”

The soldiers brought them out by way of a ladder that led up to a large grating in the market square. They lifted it to emerge inside one of the canvas tents used to cover sewer entrances when repairs were made underground. Now the tent hid them from the view of passersby. Someone had backed a covered wagon up to the flap.

They do this all the time, Briar thought, as the soldiers placed Flick’s litter in the back of the wagon. They have the clothes already made up, and the wagon, and folk see the tent every day, so they don’t guess there’s sickness and run mad. His respect for the duke rose several notches. Twice he’d been caught in mob panic when the news got out that disease was in Hajra’s slums. He’d escaped once to watch through sewer grates as people destroyed their own district out of fear of sickness. The second time, trying a bit of theft during the riot, had earned him a broken arm from a shopkeeper with a club.

He climbed into the wagon behind Rosethorn and settled into the corner. Rosethorn sat next to Flick, bracing her on the floor of the cart as they lurched forward.

Once they were moving, Rosethorn checked Flick’s pulse and temperature. The street girl watched her and Briar, eyes glassy. “Willowbark tea, for a start,” muttered Rosethorn, partly to herself and partly to Briar. “Why willowbark tea, student of mine?”

“To bring down the fever and make the ouches less,” he said promptly. “Maybe aloe balm for her skin? I saw her scratching the bumps.”

“Shouldn’t I wash her first? Give me a suggestion,”

ordered Rosethorn. Noting the alarm in Flick’s eyes, Rosethorn smiled reassuringly at her. “Yes, I said the bad word – ‘wash.’ It won’t hurt, not much. It didn’t kill him.” She jerked a thumb at Briar. “So it shouldn’t kill you.”

Flick grinned. Turning over on the litter, she began to doze.

When they reached Urda’s House in the Mire, they entered the building through a back way built for quarantine: a separate, enclosed staircase with a gate that could be locked. The stair led to the third floor, which was empty when they arrived. Here the guards placed them in one of two large rooms just off the third-floor porch. Briar tried the inner door to the rest of the house and found it locked.

Examining his surroundings with a critical eye, he saw that it was well supplied. Deep, locked cupboards lined the two short walls from ceiling to floor, and cots lined the long walls. The shuttered windows were barred to keep unwilling guests inside. The only unlocked room that they might enter was the washroom, set up with privies in cubicles, showers, troughs for washing clothes, and a great hearth in which a huge kettle of water steamed.

Flick got off her litter and sat on a cot, looking around. The guards spoke briefly to Rosethorn, then left. Briar listened as they first barred the outer door behind them, then walked into the second room that opened on the porch. He could hear them moving in the next room, settling in. He realized that in taking care of them the guards had already exposed themselves to disease and would have to place themselves in quarantine.

Going to the door that led outside, Briar opened a small speaking-window set in the wood at adult-eye level. It was covered by two lengths of finely woven sheer cloth, one fixed to the inside of the opening, the other to the outside. Both screens radiated a touch of magic. Holding his hand palm-out to the closer one, Briar found that someone had written magical figures on the cloth, the signs for health and purity. Smart, he thought. This way folk that’re cooped up here can talk to outsiders without making them sick. He drifted over to the door that led to the inside of the house. It too had a smaller speaking-window, as well as a large sliding door set into the base. When he tried the sliding door, he found it locked from the other side.

“Bath time,” said Rosethorn, gripping him by an ear and gently tugging him to his feet. “In there.” She pointed to the washroom. “Get soap from the cupboards, wet down, lather up, stand under the grate, pull the rope. Clothes go into that.” She pointed to a closed chute in the wall. “You’ll find fresh new robes on the bench inside. Flick, I know you don’t feel well, but cleaning up will help.” She guided Flick to the other side of the partition that separated one of the rough overhead showers from the other.

Once he had scrubbed thoroughly and rinsed, Briar found the new clothes Rosethorn had mentioned. The chief item was a loose garment like a robe secured by a cloth belt. He also found a fresh belly-wrap, a pair of gloves, and a cloth mask. Holding gloves and mask, he went into the main room and made a happy discovery: while they were washing, someone had slid food trays through the big lower flap on the door.

He carried the trays to a table. There were warm flatbreads, hardboiled eggs, and a pot of lentils stewed with onions and bay leaves. There was also a pitcher of fruit juice. Plates and eating utensils he found in a cupboard beside the table. He was just serving the food when Rosethorn and Flick emerged from the washroom, dressed as he was. They already wore their gloves, and their masks were tied around their necks.