I will, Sandry promised.
Lark drew away as Sandry continued to work. Her threads burrowed and twined together. Here, an inch from the original cloth, a double handful rushed into the same area like unruly children, working themselves into a gleeful knot. Sandry concentratred on them, nudging them apart, sending them in their proper direction, at the proper spacing for the weave. They fought at first, tightening their knot, but she refused to accept their rebellion. One at a time, she shooed them into their correct paths, until they were caught up in the overall rush of the weaving.
A distant part of her felt Lark start her own bandage. Later the novices replaced near-empty spools of thread with full ones, and rolled up the finished cloth. Sandry neglected even to thank them. Her attention was locked on the magic that flashed in and around her hands as the bandage grew, and grew, and grew.
4
Tris’s luck, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to call it that, was in. For the first time in days, Rosethorn was at Discipline, not somewhere else, when Tris brought her nestling home. She had to steel herself to enter Rosethorn’s workroom. She wanted to put it off, but her charge picked that moment to renew his frantic begging for food. Little Bear, lying gloomily beside the open door—Lark and Rosethorn had put charms in their shops to keep inquisitive puppies out—raised his head and thumped his tail.
The quiet conversation in the workroom came to a halt. Then Rosethorn said, slowly and awfully, “I hear a baby bird.”
Carefully Tris stepped around the dog and through the open door. “Niko said maybe you could help me?”
Briar was with his teacher. Both of them stared at her. “Four-eyes, what happened on Bit?” asked the boy.
“Let me see,” Rosethorn demanded, holding out a hand. Tris obediently passed over the nest. “I am not looking after birds,” the dedicate continued. “Those twitterpated fidgets at Water tell me that unless I brew more decoctions and oil rubs there will be nothing short of disaster.” Muttering, she shifted the handkerchief to look at the nestling as Briar and Tris rolled their eyes at each other. Rosethorn always talked scornfully of the Water Temple dedicates, just as Lark did at times. Weeks ago the four had decided that Water and Earth in human beings simply didn’t mix that well.
“So talk,” urged Briar as Rosethorn examined the nestling.
Since Niko had given no orders to keep what she had seen to herself, Tris explained about looking at the past and described what they had seen. “I think maybe five people were killed up there, counting the smugglers and that drunk guard,” she finished. “You could tell where the dead had been.”
Rosethorn went to a section of shelves. Reaching high overhead, she got down a slender bottle. Like most things in the room, it gleamed silver-white at the edges of Tris’s vision, casting more light than even the remains of the spells on Bit Island. Tris rubbed her eyes. It was bad enough that the south gate and the tower of Winding Circle’s Hub had nearly blinded her. She hadn’t expected to see so much magic, or such powerful magic, in the simple cottage where she lived.
“So Niko had you call up a vision of the past? That’s a major working,” Rosethorn commented, un-stoppering her bottle. “I need one of the thinnest hollow reeds we keep in that drawer.” She pointed, and Briar obeyed the order.
“Niko did the spell-casting,” replied Tris. “I just gave him my strength. He said I needn’t come to Pirate’s Point—we couldn’t do it twice in one day.”
She watched intently as Rosethorn accepted a short, hollow reed from Briar. Thrusting it into the open bottle, Rosethorn covered the opening in the dry end with a fingertip. She brought it over to the nestling and let a couple of drops fall from it into the bird’s mouth. The youngster closed his beak, wheezing—then sat up straighter and opened his beak again. Rosethorn gave him another two drops.
“I have to be careful with this,” she told her audience, putting the reed aside. “It’s like drugs that give extra vigor, or dull pain—he’d come to need it, and not eat anything else. You have to give nestlings food that’s close to what they get from their parents, or foods that are normal substitutes.”
Rosethorn eyed Tris, delicate brows still knit in a frown. The girl forced herself to meet that very sharp gaze without looking away. “You understand, you might work yourself sick, and he’ll still die,” Rosethorn said at last.
Tris nodded. “Niko told me the same thing. I want to try anyway.”
“He won’t thank you, either, if he lives. Starlings—that’s what this is—starlings are annoying birds. Their fledglings shriek when they’re hungry. If they’re old enough to walk and fly, they peck their parents until they’re fed.”
“There’s gratitude for you,” Briar commented with a grin.
“What must I do?” Tris wanted to know. “Tell me, and I’ll do it.”
“Hm. For now, feed him every fifteen minutes, until I tell you to change. Briar, you’re going to see Dedicate Gorse—”
He clapped his hands. Next to Lark and Rosethorn, Winding Circle’s chief cook was his favorite dedicate, a reliable source of both meals and treats.
“Come right back,” Rosethorn added sternly. “Slate and chalk, please.”
Briar found both and gave them to her.
“Warm goat’s milk—goat, mind; cow’s milk is too hard for them to digest—with a dab of honey for sweetening, at first—you can get those from our coldbox,” Rosethorn told Tris. “Heat the milk in a small pan. Get it warm enough that a drop on your wrist feels warm, not hot. If it burns you, it’ll burn him.”
Tris ran to do it.
“Get one of the cup-shaped baskets and clean straw,” Rosethorn ordered Briar. “Put them on the counter.” She finished writing to Gorse as the boy found the things she needed. Giving him the slate, she said, “Don’t run in this heat, but don’t dawdle.”
Briar nodded and left.
Tris was quick to put goat’s milk and honey on to warm on the hearth. Unlike the other three children, who made a big job and a mess out of basic tasks, Tris had been doing household chores since she was tall enough to see over tables. Each family member with whom she had lived had made it clear that she was to earn her keep. She would never admit it, but these days, with lessons in magic and meditation to fill her time, she rather liked the quiet routines of dusting, washing, and even the mild amount of cooking done in the cottage.
When the goat’s milk was just warm, she carried it into Rosethorn’s workshop.
“Put it there,” she was ordered. “There” was a woven straw pad. Rosethorn was tucking clean straw into a basket with a rounded bottom. It sat in a wooden frame that kept it from rolling onto its side. “I made these a few years ago, when I saw that even if I found no birds, someone else would bring orphan nestlings to me. They need support on their chests and legs—a basket with a flat bottom and straight sides is no good.”
Tris only stared at the woman. Since coming to Discipline she had feared Rosethorn’s sharp temper and sharper tongue. Lark and Rosethorn were good friends, and Briar loved his teacher, but Tris couldn’t begin to guess why. Was this the face of Rosethorn that Lark and Briar saw, when no one else was looking?
“H-how do you know so much about birds?” she stammered. “Do—do you have magic with them?”
Rosethorn eased her fingers under the nestling, who shrieked at the invasion, then lowered him into the fresh nest. “Don’t ever squeeze them. Their bones, even their beaks, are very soft yet.”
“I’ll remember.”
“Not everyone who loves a thing has magic with it, you know,” Rosethorn said, dipping a finger in the milk. “Very good—exactly the right heat. Get that clean reed. Do what I did with the potion. Give him just a drop or two at a time.”
Hands shaking, Tris put one end of the reed into the milk, closed the free end with a fingertip, and raised it. Taking her finger off the opening, she watched as all of the milk poured out. Trying again, she lifted her finger quickly, then closed the opening again. Now s
he controlled how much liquid came out and could deliver it as drops, instead of a flood. Filling the reed a third time, she peered into the nest.
The youngster was cheeping. Was he louder? She prayed to Asaia, goddess of air and birds, and let two drops fall into the open beak. Startled, the nestling closed its mouth and swayed. He lifted his head and cheeped for more.
As Tris fed the youngster, Rosethorn said, “Gardeners—farmers—learn about birds, if only so they can tell which ones eat the crops and which don’t. I started with nestlings when I was your age, on my papa’s farm. All right, that’s enough. He’ll sleep for a while, but you’d better get ready to heat another batch of milk.”
“Every fifteen minutes?” Tris wondered how she could do anything else if she had to see to her charge.
“Until he’s stronger. If he improves, we can go to every half hour this afternoon. If he keeps improving, in a day or so, you can wait a whole hour.”
Tris gulped. “How will I sleep?”
“Goose! Do sparrows and crows race everywhere at night? Chicks sleep with the sun. Come here.” She went to the door that opened on the garden, and beckoned to Tris. “See that bird sitting on the roof of the well?”
Tris saw him, a handsome brown-black fellow who ruffled his chin feathers as he whistled loudly. He looked to be about the length of her hand, with yellow legs and a sharp-looking beak. When he turned, his feathers gleamed in the sun and showed off a multitude of tiny specks.
“Starlings. They’re called that because they look like a field of stars. Insect-eaters—clowns. They imitate other birds—a lot of the local ones cry like seagulls. They form the big flocks you see swirling around at day’s end. I have a soft spot for starlings.”
The starling on the well said, “Gaak,” and flew away.
“Come on,” said Rosethorn. “We have to fix things so you can keep this youngster warm at night.”
When he left Dedicate Gorse’s kitchen realm in the Hub, Briar carried a loaded basket as well as a meat turnover to help him survive the long minutes until midday. If Rosethorn hadn’t been willing to teach him the mysteries of plants, he would have been perfectly content to labor for Gorse—hot as the kitchens were in the summer—for the rest of his life.
When he was thinking of other things—the Bit Island tower, Tris’s bird—he forgot that it was no longer important to hide when he had food. It had only been two months since he was a half-starved street boy. Looking for a dark corner in which to eat his turnover safely, he found a niche in the round chamber at the center of the Hub. The room was a plain, shadowy circle wrapped around a beautifully carved wooden screen that reached through the ceiling. Inside that wooden tube, a stair ran up as high as the great clock at the Hub’s peak and down to the secret room called Heartfire, far underground. The wooden screen also enclosed a dumbwaiter, shelves on rope cables that carried messages from the seers in the far-seeing and far-hearing rooms in the upper levels down to this floor. When he’d come through on his way to the kitchens, two runners had been sitting on the floor, ready to carry any messages from the upper floors. They were gone now. Briar tucked himself into his niche and happily bit into his snack.
Something rustled in the wooden stairwell. Rats, he thought, putting a hand on a little dagger tucked inside his shirt. Back in Hajra, his old home, rats would try to take a meal if a kid didn’t look like he could hang onto it.
Wood clacked. Gears moved, and Briar heard the rumble of the dumbwaiter. Just messages coming down, he thought, scornful of his jumpiness. As if Gorse would let rats near his kitchen!
There was another sound, under the rattle. Briar knew the scuff of a bare foot on wooden floors. He drew even further into the shadows.
The door in the screen opened a hair at a time. Briar caught a noseful of cinnamon scent and bit down a sneeze. Though he doubted any thief would have the sauce to operate here in Winding Circle, he knew professional thieves used cinnamon oil to baffle tracker-mages. It was expensive stuff. Beneath the cinnamon’s peppery tickle he found another scent, one that was honeyed and slow: poppy.
Three weeks ago, Rosethorn had started to teach him magical uses for the oils in her workshop. “If you want to waste poppy oil, don’t use it for medicine,” she’d said then. “Use it for invisibility. It does more good as medicine, though.”
Silvery light flickered. Someone drifted out of the stairwell, closing its door without a sound. Briar squinted. The light glimmered all over a blur that passed between the stair and the outer door. It traced a man’s shape.
Rich man, he thought as the blur left the tower. Rich enough to afford cinnamon and poppy oils. Unless it’s a student, raiding his master’s oil stores. Two months wasn’t long enough to erase his old ways, but it had taught him student-mages were always trying something they shouldn’t. Winding Circle had more than its share of students, too, of every sort.
Putting down his basket, he went to the stairwell and opened it, eyeing the steps and the dumbwaiter ropes. The cinnamon odor was stronger here; he found spots of oil on the inner doorknob and on the wheels that raised and lowered the wooden boxes for messages. Shaking his head, he closed the door and fetched his basket from the corner where he’d left it. Students playing with their magic, he decided. Who else would try invisibility spells in the Hub in the middle of the day?
And how else could he have seen the person within the spell, unless it was a student who didn’t quite have it right? Back in Deadman’s District, he’d never seen the Thief-Lord pass invisible among his subjects, listening to their secrets and their plots against him. The Thief-Lord had always worked with the best spells money could buy.
The Hub clock struck the midday hour. He’d best get back home, so Tris could give her bird a little solid food.
The hide-and-seek ship was making Daja crazy. There it was at the corner of her eye whenever she looked up from her work, but if she looked straight at it, she saw only the Pebbled Sea, glassy and hazy with the day’s heat. Ever since Tris had passed by on her way home, the ship seemed to hang out there, teasing Daja to look quick and catch it. By the time the Hub clock chimed the end of the midday rest period, she felt as if she’d looked up as often as she felt through the ground for more pieces of spell-net.
“Is something wrong?” asked Kirel. Frostpine had left them, questing for more of the net further down the cove. “You twitch like sand fleas are eating you.”
“I’ve got an azigazi at the corner of my eye,” she told him crossly, wiping her forehead. “It’s as bad as sand fleas!”
“A—what did you say?”
“I’m sorry.” He couldn’t help being a kaq—a non-Trader, ignorant by birth—though she often forgot he was, because she liked him so much. “Azigazi. It’s a vision, a false sighting. Out at sea they come when it’s hot. White Traders say they get them in snow and sand fields. You see things that aren’t real.”
“A mirage, or a vision. Azigazi.” He turned the word over in his mouth, as if he tasted it. “Could it be a mage thing?” He brought the water flask to her.
Daja drank gratefully. “Thank you. I don’t know. There’s plenty of mage things I never heard of.”
“Where do you see it?”
She pointed to the open sea. “I keep thinking there’s a ship out there, a plain old felucca—”
“ ‘A plain old’—what?”
Poor Kirel was a landsman. “A felucca. A small sailing ship with lateen—triangle—sails. There’s plenty in the harbor—the commonest ships around, for fishing or courier service or small cargo loads. But whenever I look straight at this felucca, there’s nothing.”
“Are you sure you see it in the first place?” He shaded his eyes, examining the water between Summersea’s islands and the hills of the Emel Peninsula.
“It’s clear enough I know what kind of ship it is,” she reminded him.
“Oh.” For a moment Kirel gazed out to sea, thinking. Suddenly he looked around for their teacher. “Frostpine!”
The man waved and jogged back to them. “What is it?”
“I’ve been seeing an azigazi all day,” Daja explained. “At least, I don’t think it’s real. It’s a plain felucca, after all, no reason for me not to see one if it really exists. They’re common to these waters. But every time I look straight at the thing, it’s gone.”
Frostpine’s dark eyes flashed. “Sense for it, as you sense for the metal in the net. Cast your magic out to sea. If it’s a real ship, it’s got metal on it.”
She tried. Closing her eyes, she listened, and smelled. All that came to her mind was seawater, restless, treacherous stuff ready to grab the unwary.
“It’s just water,” she told Frostpine, almost whining. She knew she sounded like a baby, but really, what did he expect? The sea was the sea, not metal!
“Ack,” he muttered, “you’re being difficult.” Standing behind her, he reached around and clasped her hands in his. “Remember how Sandry was able to spin a magic cord from your inner self? Well, throw one out to me.”
She tried to find the thread, but his touch was distracting her. It was easy to hand a cord to Sandry, who was giving and soft, like well-woven cloth. Frostpine, though, was metal from top to toe. His metal rang where it touched hers, or rattled. Not cord, then, but wire, she thought. Taking a deep breath, reaching inside, she drew out a shimmering wire and passed it to him.
“Good enough,” he said. She felt his power bend, and spring. He towed her magic forward, intertwined with his. Now she felt metal pass under and beside her as their power flew outward: pieces of chain, a metal-bound chest, a discarded anchor, all of it rusting on the ocean floor. They slowed; Frostpine sprang forward again. Their power swept further out—
It had to be a ship. What else held nails and metal straps in quite that way, as if she saw a vessel stripped of its wood? Wincing, she realized that she saw weapons, too: a number of swords and knives that no innocent fishing boat should carry, and clusters of metal arrowheads.
Exhaling the breath in his own lungs, Frostpine ran back to the shore, taking Daja gently along. When she opened her eyes, she staggered.