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.”
Ikrum, getting up, glared jealously at the still-kneeling Sajiv. His mouth worked briefly as he considered a protest. Something in the lady’s face, a trace of iron in her dark eyes, made him change his mind. Instead he bowed and followed Orlana and Yoru out.
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.”
Evvy, about to protest, noticed a steaming teapot as well as figs, dates, bread, cheese, and honey on the sideboard. She snatched up the clothes and dashed into the pantry, closing the door behind her.
“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.”
He filled her cup with tea. He set out a knife for the bread and a spoon for the honey, then moved the remaining food to the table. When she put the fruit, cheese, and the remainder of her bread on the plate, Briar looked at that neat layer of pink cloth over her bony chest and realized he’d forgotten something important. Before she could protest, he had a linen napkin tucked firmly into the tunic.
“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 unc
orked 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 skewy 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.
“Sit,” he ordered Douna, pushing her toward the table. He pulled off his overrobe and folded it neatly, putting it on the sideboard. “Have some tea and something to eat. I’ll need to get some things. Evvy, grab that basket and come with me.” They’d have to argue about her schooling later. Right now he would use the healer’s trick of putting every idle pair of hands to work.
Evvy stuffed the rest of a large slice of cheese into her mouth and grabbed the basket he’d pointed to. He led her upstairs to the workroom. It wasn’t as elaborate as the one at home at Winding Circle, but there were still plenty of lotions, balms, teas, and syrups, some of them his, some Rosethorn’s. He’d replenished his kit the night before out of habit, but he would need as much extra as he and Evvy could carry. He fully subscribed to Rosethorn’s belief: sometimes thinking ahead was just as good as magic.
Quickly Briar filled small jars from the large ones, wrote down contents on the corks that stopped the jars, and tucked them into Evvy’s basket. Next he stopped at the linen chest and cushioned the jars with pads which could be made into bandages. From the roof he fetched a number of thin, flat boards used for gardening: they made good splints. Another length of bandage was converted into a sling for the boards, which he hung on his own back.
“What’s all this for? And why are you letting some Camelgut order you around?” Evvy wanted to know.
“Because I can help and they won’t get anyone who can help better,” retorted Briar, trying to think if he’d missed anything. Suddenly he noticed a flaw in his plan to put Evvy to use. “What gang are you with?” he asked. Some gangs had treaties, allowing members to cross territories. If her gang had a treaty with the Camelguts …
She interrupted his thoughts with her abrupt reply. “I’m not in a gang.”
Briar made a face. “Evvy, this is serious.”
“So am I,” she insisted. “I didn’t belong, I don’t belong, and I’ll never belong.”
“Because if the Camelguts are at war with your gang,” he began.
“Is ‘I’m not in a gang’ just too big an idea for you?” she cried.
Briar shook his head. He’d get the truth out of her later. Right now he needed an extra pair of hands. Not only had Evvy shown she was inclined to obey him — within limits — but she was also too young and too little to try to fight him if he vexed her with an order. He couldn’t say the same of any Camelgut.
He walked into the dining room. “Douna, is there a decent pot at the den? A clean one?” Douna, who had stuffed her mouth as rapidly as Evvy had, shook her head. Briar marched into the pantry and came out with a cauldron that was roughly as large as Evvy’s basket. Boiled water was safer if the pot it got boiled in was clean. He grabbed Evvy’s napkin from the front of her tunic, where it still rested, and tossed it to Douna. “Wrap some food in that and let’s go,” he ordered.
5
The Camelgut den was in chaos. Gang members lay on pallets as others tended them. Apparently there had been fights throughout the night. Very few Camelguts sported no bruises at all, and there were eight fresh victims, not five.
Briar took a deep breath. For some reason he remembered a talk he’d had during one of Summersea’s medical crises, one of the many times he’d been pressed into work with the sick. “Why do they obey you?” he’d asked the woman as those who were well enough to work carried out her orders.
“It’s no mystery,” she’d said then. “I act as if they should. And they’re frightened enough to turn instinctively even to those who only know a bit more than they do.”
Act as if they should obey, Briar thought now. And they did send for me again, after all. They must trust me some. He turned to Douna. “Get that pot filled with water and put it on to boil,” he ordered. “Evvy, stick close to me.”
“Oh, I will,” she muttered, watching the Camelguts from the corners of her eyes.
Briar unslung the staves from his back and leaned them against the wall
. Then he scratched his head and considered the room. Since his arrival at Winding Circle, he had worked in sickrooms in three epidemics and a border war, but he’d always been under the guidance of Rosethorn and experienced healers. What would they do?
First straighten out the mess, Rosethorn’s voice said in his mind. You won’t be able to find your ankles with both hands and a lamp otherwise.
“Here’s how we start,” he called loudly. All conversations stopped. Even those who were moaning fell silent. Urda save me, Briar thought, they are actually listening! He didn’t try to savor the moment, but rattled off instructions. He’d already found with Evvy that if he didn’t give her time to argue, she wouldn’t. He put that knowledge to use with the Camelguts, ordering some to move the pallets into rows and others to clear away the mess of jars, rags, crates, and barrels that littered the floor.
“Why are the doors and windows covered?” he asked one of the Camelguts.
The boy, who was about Briar’s age, shrugged. “We got tired of local kids peeking at us all the time.”
“But it’s not that this is a secret place?” Briar wanted to know. The Camelgut shook his head. “Then uncover them,” Briar ordered. “Let’s get some light and air in here.”
The Camelgut pulled aside the rags that covered the windows and doors and secured them: now some light and fresh air entered the room. A group of three was sent with jars and handfuls of sand to fountains, where they had orders to scour the jars with sand, fill them with water, and bring them back. The fire was built up and trash taken outside. Even with the windows uncovered, the den was still shadowy. Two Camelgut boys made rough torches and thrust them into holders on the walls.
As the gang members cleaned up, Briar inspected each victim. Those whose bruises and cuts didn’t look serious were ordered to clean up or sit on a bench against the wall. Dealing with the less seriously hurt was easy for Briar — growing up in the slums of Hajra, he’d learned about all kinds of injuries and wounds, including the ones that might eventually kill someone. In Summersea’s epidemics he had seen how the healers sorted groups of the sick, treating the worst off first. He found those now, and got to work.