Street Magic (7 page)

“You’re a pahan - fix him!” cried the girl who had fetched Briar.

He clenched trembling hands. He’d seen this often enough to know it for what it was. Hammit collapsed. The air blew from his lungs in a last escape, bubbling through his nose and bloody mouth, until his lungs were empty. The Camelguts drew close as Briar checked the pulse in Hammit’s big neck vein. There was none.

“He was dead hours ago,” Briar said softly. “His heart and lungs kept going for a while, that’s all. That’s why one side of his face was all funny. His head was bleeding inside somewhere.” He closed Hammit’s staring eyes. Before they could pop open again, he drew two copper davs from his purse and placed them on the eyelids to keep them shut. He’d wanted to use silver - he’d liked Hammit - but that would have been asking too much of the Camelguts. This gang didn’t have enough money that they could afford to bury silver with their dead.

For the thousandth time Briar wished he’d been a healer rather than a green mage. Medicines only did so much. Sometimes it took a magically gifted healer to turn the tide. Briar was there too often when such times came around, and the only mage in sight was him. It was Lakik the Trickster’s favorite joke on him.

Two more Camelguts, a boy and a girl, lurched through the door. The girl’s face was bruised, the eye on that side puffed completely shut. To Briar it looked as if she had been clipped hard on the cheekbone.

“Vipers,” wheezed the boy, helping the girl to sit. “They was on her when I got there.”

“Will you try to help this time?” demanded the girl who had summoned Briar.

“He’s a pahan, Mai, not a god.” Briar’s defender was the one who’d said where Hammit had been found. “You do medicines, but you can’t heal, am I right?”

Briar nodded and went over to the injured girl. At least he could do something for her. With the balms in his kit Briar lowered the swelling and eased the pain of a shattered cheekbone. That was something, and it was more than the Camelguts would get from any local healers. Only the Living Circle Water temples offered free medical care to the poor, but Chammurans mistrusted foreign temples as well as foreigners.

No sooner had Briar finished with the girl than a third victim lurched into the room, one broken arm dangling. He, too, identified his attackers as Vipers. He’d also seen the weapons they had used, small, rounded batons that were far heavier than they looked. “Sounds like blackjacks,” Briar commented as he examined the newcomer’s arm.

“Since when could they afford those?” demanded the fiery Mai. “This is more of that takameri’s doing, I bet!”

“They won’t have hands to hold their new toys when we’re done with them,” snarled another member of the gang. They clustered together to lay battle plans as Briar finished his examination of the newest victim. His request for two long, straight pieces of wood for splints only distracted one Camelgut from the conference. As soon as he gave them to Briar, he went back to planning.

When the splint was secure, Briar told his patient and the girl with the broken cheekbone, “Look, I know the Living Circle Water temple is an eknub place, but the healers work for free and I’ve done all their medicines. You won’t have to pay so much as a copper dav. They’ll have someone who can do broken bones. It’s on the Street of Wells - let them know you talked to Briar Moss.”

He knew they wouldn’t go right away. By dawn, though, the painkilling balm he’d put on their hurts would wear off. They might decide even a visit to an eknub who was mad-brained enough to work free of charge was better than the ache of broken bones.

It was nearly midnight when the Viper tesku Ikrum and the three who had tried to capture Evvy made their reports to Lady Zenadia, who had returned late from a family supper. She heard them out in silence, though she smiled briefly when Ikrum described the first attacks on the Camelguts. Of the four Vipers, he was the only one unmarked by the day. Orlana’s, Sajiv’s, and Yoru’s faces glistened with burn salve. They still wore the clothes that Evvy had decorated with burn holes.

“An exciting day,” remarked the lady when Ikrum finished. “I hope that my other Vipers continue to harry the Camelguts.”

Ikrum bobbed his head. “Just as my lady ordered, cutting them out of the pack and giving them glory with these.” He stroked the blackjack thrust into his sash. “We haven’t talked to them yet about joining, though.”

“You must judge when the time is right to make an offer,” the lady replied. “With only a few down, they are most likely of a mind to fight. They will have to take more casualties before they will see where their best interests lie. Now, these two.” She pointed to Orlana and Yoru. “You will find the girl-child Evvy again. Follow her - do not try to take her now. In due time, we shall find a way to make her eager to join us. You two and Ikrum have my leave to go. Sajiv, I desire a private word.”

Once they were gone, the lady sat up on her couch, resting her sandaled feet on the courtyard tiles. “Sajiv,” she murmured, her voice soft and musical. “How you have disappointed me! Two errors in as many days - am I supposed to accept this?”

His forehead still pressed to the tiles, Sajiv muttered, “Not my fault.”

“But surely you can see that it is hard to assign blame elsewhere,” she said reasonably. “First you allow your nose ring, which I gave to you, to be taken by three mere thukdaks. Then you and two others who have never disappointed me fail to capture a girl I wish to meet. Do you see where I might be forced to wonder at your contribution?”

Sajiv forgot himself and glared up at her. “The astrologer said this week was not a good one for me.”

The lady clenched her hands. “Do not talk to me of astrologers!” she said sharply. “Only dirt-people who will be useless all their lives heed their babble. It serves as an excuse to avoid trying to better oneself, and I have no patience with it!”

Sajiv sat up on his knees, pale with rage. “Toss you and toss your patience!” he snarled. “You with your airs and jewels, telling us how to be a gang when you was never bound in your life!” He thrust out his right arm, pointing to a pair of deep puncture scars through the back of his hand and his palm. “I paid in blood to be a Viper - you never paid, you never will! We’re your festering toy whilst your own kids chase gold and power for themselves! You got Ikrum believing you’ll make us kings of Chammur, but you don’t fool me, and you don’t fool some of the others!”

The lady folded her hands in her lap, listening as closely as a student might listen to a favorite teacher. When Sajiv stopped for breath, panting, she undid the veil over the lower half of her face. The smile on her lips was thin and icy. “I see the inner truth of what you fumble to say,” she told Sajiv. “You present me with a situation I must remedy, and carefully. A generous person would give you a fresh chance, to err a new.” She raised her hand. “Or perhaps it is only a weak person who would do so.”

Sajiv had no sense that someone had come up behind him until the silk cord dropped over his head and around his neck. He barely had the chance to gasp before the tall, hairless, fat man at his back yanked it tight. Thick muscles flexed under dark brown skin as the eunuch applied his strength; the cord bit deep, closing off the youth’s windpipe. Sajiv weakened slowly, his burn-marked face passing from scarlet to blue to purple. His bowels let go at the end, filling the air with stench as their contents dripped through his trousers.

Through it all the lady sat gravely, unveiled, her eyes solemn. She did not even wrinkle her nose at the smell. When the eunuch let the boy’s corpse drop to the tiles, she stood. “Dispose of that,” she ordered. “Have these tiles taken up and new ones laid down. A different color would be nice - red, I think.”

The man bowed to her. The traders who had made him a eunuch had also cut out his tongue, to get a higher price from wealthy people with secrets.

The lady patted his shoulder as if he were a dog. “You did well. Wash yourself before you enter my presence again.” She walked into the house.

Evvy surprised Briar when she arrived in the morning. Not only was she clean from top to toe, but she had found another garment somewhere. It looked as if it had once been a well made linen shift: it had no sleeves, and there were tiny holes where thread would have held lace on the garment. It may have been white at one time, before too many washings in hard water with bad or no soap had turned it gray.

“Better?” Evvy demanded, glaring up into his face. She was bareheaded, her clean black hair sticking out at all angles. Briar suspected that she cut it herself, with a knife and no mirror.

“It’s a start,” he said, and drew her into the house. He pointed to the dining room table. Despite having only four hours’ sleep after his late return from the Camelgut lair - two more victims had come as he’d been about to leave - Briar rose an hour after dawn. He’d gone to the local souk for secondhand clothes. They lay neatly folded on the table, beside a pair of sandals he’d guessed would fit her. “Go try that stuff on.” He indicated the little pantry. “If you hurry, you can eat when you come out.”

“Don’t eat anything in there!” Briar called. Perhaps he should have asked her to change in a room where there were no jellies, preserved fruits and vegetables, onions, loaves of bread, and cheeses on the shelves.

“I’m not!” she yelled back.

She was back shortly, dressed in a clean, faded, pink cotton tunic that fit her perfectly, and beige leggings that were a bit too large. Briar blessed Sandry, Daja, and Tris, who had taught him about female clothing whether he wanted the lessons or not. When he saw that Evvy struggled to tie the pink and lavender headscarf properly, Briar took over, making sure her dreadful haircut was covered before he twisted the sides and tied the scarf in a proper Janaal knot in back. The scarf, being cotton, understood what he wanted. It settled easily into a snug grip on the girl’s head.

The minute he finished, Evvy grabbed some food. “Sit,” Briar ordered her. Evvy obeyed, figs in one hand, a piece of cheese in the other, and a slice of bread half in her mouth. Briar sighed. “We use plates,” he informed her, putting one in front of her. “And cups, and knives.”

“You’ll spill,” he said firmly when she squeaked. “I’d as soon you didn’t do it on clean clothes, if it’s all the same.”

A stifled noise from the hall made him turn. Rosethorn, leaving for her next farmers’ meeting, leaned against the door’s frame. Her face was crimson from the effort it took to hold in sounds; she had stuffed her arm into her mouth to smother them. When he glared at her, she uncorked her mouth and straightened her sleeve.

“What’s so funny?” Briar demanded crossly.

“You,” Rosethorn said, snorting. “Teaching table manners. You!” She gasped and said, “Please - don’t let me interrupt! I’ll see you tonight!” Cackling, she left the house.

“Who was that?” Evvy asked through a bite of fig.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Briar ordered as he picked up a sandal. “Left foot.”

She thrust out the required bare foot, already coated with grime from the street. Briar dusted it with his handkerchief, making her giggle. He then slid the sandal on and tightened the laces to see if it fit. It was large, but he’d chosen ones that would stay on if tightly laced. He did that briskly, then commanded, “Right foot.”

Evvy dropped her newly shod foot and let Briar take the bare one. “Where are we going?” she asked as he dusted the worst of the street dirt away. “Why I have to be shopkeeper-neat when I’m no shopkeeper’s get? Why are you all prettied up?”

Briar glanced at his own clothes. Knowing servants and nobles judged people by their looks, he’d worn a clean white cotton shirt, full-legged brown linen trousers tied with a golden brown sash, and a green silk overrobe with an embroidered design of colorful autumn leaves. The robe was his favorite of the things Sandry had made him. He’d even polished his boots. “Because the only other stone mage in the city lives in the amir’s palace,” he explained as he secured her right sandal. “They won’t let us through the gates if we look like we did yesterday.” They would have admitted him - he’d worn good clothes for the trip that had ended at the Market of the Lost - but he included himself to spare her feelings.

Evvy had been enjoying the sight of this elegantly clad young man waiting on the likes of her almost as much as she did the food she was stuffing into her face. Now she jerked her foot out of his hold. “Palace?”

Briar sighed. “The mage who is to teach you is Jebilu Stoneslicer. He lives in the amir’s palace. We’d never see him if we dressed like street people.”

Had he been bitten by a foam-mouthed rat last night, to come up with such a scary idea? She folded her arms over her chest. This had to be stepped on fast. “No.”

Briar frowned up at her. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I won’t go there and you can’t make me.”

Briar scowled. “You have to be taught,” he told her. “Even you know that now.”

Evvy shook her head, her chin thrust forward stubbornly. She might not know much, but she knew this: palaces and the people in them were a cobra’s kiss for any thukdak. Yes, all right, she had to be schooled, but not by some palace takamer. “Why can’t you teach me?” she demanded. “You’re a pahan.”

“Absolutely not!” snapped Briar. “I’m a plant mage, not a stone mage. You need to learn from a stone mage.”

“Not one that lives in a palace,” she replied flatly. “I - “

“Pahan Briar! Pahan!” Someone pounded on the door.

Briar scowled at Evvy once more and went to see who had come. The visitor, a small, monkey-faced girl of fifteen years or so, wore the green sash of the Camelguts. This one, Douna, had assisted him late the night before. “What do you want, Douna?” asked Briar.

“Pahan Briar, you have to come,” the older girl said, bracing her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. “They got five more with their blackjacks - we didn’t even find ‘em till this morning. They’re a mess.”

“Can’t you get a real healer?” Briar demanded, feeling pulled in two by Evvy and the Camelguts. “I just make medicines!”

The look in Douna’s small brown eyes made him ashamed that he’d asked. What could a poor gang offer a healer to make it worth the risk to visit them? Even if they had enough coin for one of the locals, what kind of healing could they get? Up until he reached Winding Circle, Briar himself would have found the idea of getting a healer for his gang’s wounds hilarious. Street kids, whether they were called rats or thukdaks, learned to fend for themselves.