Briar's Book (4 page)

“We got to wear this stuff?” Briar asked Rosethorn, pointing to his mask and gloves. “If we’re to get these spots, we already got ‘em, right?”

“Wrong. You wear them unless you’re eating or drinking,” Rosethorn told him firmly as Flick took a seat. “No arguments. And
please
stop talking as if we just dragged you out of jail.”

Briar grinned at her and began to eat.

Flick ate a little and drank as much juice as Rosethorn could get into her. Then the sick girl went to bed. Already bored, Briar washed and dried the dishes. Rosethorn made willowbark tea. When it was ready, she woke Flick again. The girl protested drinking the bitter liquid but didn’t have the energy to stand up to Rosethorn at her most insistent. Once Flick had sagged back onto her mattress, Rosethorn covered her, stood, and stretched.

Someone rapped on the door to the outer stair. The screened grate at adult-eye level slid open. “Rosethorn?” It was Niko.

Briar followed his teacher to the door. Standing close, the boy heard her quietly tell Niko, “You
knew.
You
knew
a plague was coming.”

Niko’s reply was a tart, “I didn’t know much.”

“You knew
something.
Green Man keep us, every
minute
healers get to prepare – ”

“When you experience the absolute
welter
of bits and fragments that are the picture of time to come, you may scold. I only knew after midnight yesterday what we might face.
Might.”
The sharp tone in his voice grew sharper. “I also saw fire and riot that may or may not happen, here or elsewhere around the Pebbled Sea – street fights and a rebellion against a king. Shall I take ship and warn every port that something bad will happen this spring?” His voice had risen. He caught himself and fell silent. Taking a breath, he added, “I got most of the things you requested here in the city. Your healer’s oil must come from Winding Circle – why did you not have it with you?”

“I thought all I would be facing was winter colds and pains and a shortage of chilblain salve!” hissed Rosethorn. “Not a brand-new disease! I should be working on a cure at Winding Circle right now!”

“That’s
enough,”
ordered Niko softly. “I am sorry I questioned you.” He fell silent for a moment. When he spoke again, he did so in a whisper. “My dear, I admit that you will be needed desperately for your ability to unravel an illness and find its cure. Unfortunately, the gods placed you here. I know you dislike nursing above all things – but there is nothing we could have done to prevent it. Which do
you
think is more important: immediately isolating the few who were exposed to this child, or letting you go, possibly to bring infection to others?”

“Don’t lecture me on the need for quarantine, Niko,” Rosethorn snapped. “In case you’ve forgotten, I wrote the quarantine instructions for Summersea! I know I have to stay here!”

Niko sighed. “Have courage. There are other experts in this kind of work. I am sure that Dedicate Crane will find a way to identify the ailment and its cure.”

“Yours is a happy nature,” retorted the woman. “Crane will need help. With that lordly manner of his, I doubt he’ll manage to keep anyone else for more than a day.”

Niko shook his head. “You can’t be that worried, if you can take the time to insult your colleagues. I’ll come back with these things as soon as I can.”

Frowning, Briar stepped back as Niko closed the grating and Rosethorn turned away from the door.

Somehow the boy had always known his teacher was uncomfortable with others. She seemed to like him well enough; she adored Lark, and enjoyed the company of Niko, Frostpine, and the duke. He even suspected she’d come to like the girls, but when it came to outsiders, she hid her softer nature and showed only thorns. Watching her handle Flick, he’d been surprised at how gentle she was. To hear she disliked working with people was no surprise. But Rosethorn was frightened?

That frightened
him.

When the duke and his escort came to a halt at the gate of Discipline Cottage, a curly-haired dog two and a half feet tall at the shoulder burst out of the open door, barking wildly. Sandry and Tris dismounted with a splash, hurrying to get to their pet before he could terrify the horses. The soldiers grinned as the big dog raced around both girls, shrieking at the top of his lungs. Behind him came a tall, broad-shouldered girl with mahogany-colored skin – Daja Kisubo, another of Briar’s housemates. Rather than go to tea with the duke or visit the market that day, she had chosen to stay home and assist her teacher Frostpine with a particularly complex piece of metalwork.

“How did it go?” Sandry called over the dog’s noise.

“Fine,” Daja shouted. She bore no sign of time spent in the forge, but wore a clean russet tunic and dark leggings. “The shield will be grand, once it’s cleaned and polished.” Her dozen braids were still wet from the bath; her round face was freshly scrubbed.

Out of patience at last, a scarlet-faced Tris yelled, “Little Bear,
down!”

The dog Little Bear dropped to the ground and rolled onto his back, pawing the air.

“I’m not washing him this time,” Daja informed Tris calmly.

“Young ladies,” said the duke. The girls looked up at him. “Tell only Dedicate Lark what Rosethorn said – no one else. Once rumors get started…”

“We understand, Uncle,” replied Sandry. Tris dipped a small curtsey. Daja looked from them to the duke, frowning.

“Aren’t you coming in, your grace?” asked Lark from the cottage door. Like Rosethorn, she wore a green habit to show she served the gods of the earth. Unlike Rosethorn, Lark was tall and willowy, graceful rather than crisp. Her dark bronze face was catlike, with its small chin and wide cheekbones, and was framed with short-cropped black curls. The girls saw worry in her dark eyes as she glanced from them to their escort.

The duke shook his head. “I need to speak with Honored Moonstream on a matter of some importance. Good day to you, Dedicate.” He bowed slightly in the saddle, then urged his horse forward. His guards followed.

“You’re getting soaked, all of you,” Lark said, watching the duke go. “Come inside. Where are Briar and Rosethorn and Niko?”

“In Summersea,” replied Tris shortly as the girls passed Lark. Little Bear would have followed, but Lark shook her head at him.

“You stay and get wet some more,” she told him firmly. “Rinse that mud out before you come in!” She closed the door in his face.

Once Sandry and Tris had shed their rain gear, they sat at the table with Lark and Daja. Sandry told them what she knew of the day’s events. Tris watched Lark, not liking what she saw. The laugh lines around the woman’s eyes and mouth had deepened; her lips were tight. She looked weary.

“I don’t like this,” Daja said quietly when Sandry had finished. “Not at all.” Getting up, she went to the cottage’s shrine in the corner by the front door. With a hand that trembled, she lit the candles for health and luck and set a pinch of incense to burn.

“I knew they had read omens for an epidemic,” Lark commented, watching Daja. “Moonstream summoned the full temple council and all the healers while you were gone and told us. Ah, I was being silly.” She scrubbed her face with her hands.

“Silly how?” asked Sandry, putting an arm around her teacher.

“It’s been three years since our last epidemic. I’d hoped it might stay that way forever. I don’t know how Crane’s going to manage without Rosethorn,” Lark said, getting up to make tea. “He’ll say she got herself thrown into quarantine on purpose.”

“What has Crane to do with anything?” Tris inquired. None of the young people at Discipline Cottage liked Crane, the mage who was also first, or head, dedicate of Winding Circle’s Air Temple.

“He and Rosethorn are always set to finding the nature of any new illness and creating a remedy,” explained Lark.

“He and Rosethorn
work
together?” asked Daja, shocked. “They
hate
each other.”

“I didn’t say they liked it,” replied Lark with a tiny smile.

Little Bear crept in the back door, looking as meek as a thoroughly soaked large dog could look. His ears were down; his tail gave the tiniest of wags. Since the mud had been rinsed from his coat, no one told him to go. As Lark poured out tea, the dog trotted over to them. Something made him rock back on his haunches and whine deep in his throat.

“What?” Tris demanded, wiping her lenses with her handkerchief.

Little Bear circled the table, sniffing each girl. He whined again.

“You don’t get fed until this evening,” Daja said curtly.

The dog trotted into Briar’s room; a moment later they heard him whimper. Coming to the door of the main room, Little Bear barked sharply.

“Briar’s not coming,” Sandry told him, her mouth quivering. “Now stop it.”

“I don’t see how he can know Briar’s not coming back,” remarked Daja impatiently. Frightened by the other meaning of what she’d just said, she added hurriedly, “Not right away. He’s not coming back
right away.”

Sandry and Lark made the gods-circle on their chests.

Tris thrust herself away from the table so hard that she knocked over the bench on which she sat. Struggling to pick it up, she cried, “It’s their own fault! What were they doing mucking about the Mire anyway? Everyone knows the poor breed disease!”

Sandry and Daja held their breath as Lark gazed soberly at Tris, raising her eyebrows. Even Tris knew she had gone too far. Her face was beet red with embarrassment and fury, but she met Lark’s brown eyes squarely.

“If they could afford decent places to live, and expensive health spells, they would not be poor, then, would they?” asked Lark.

That made Tris look down. She scuffed her foot along the wooden floor.

“I know you are upset,” Lark continued in that quiet, disappointed tone that made the girls wish they could hide. “You four have not spent a night apart since you came to us, and the spinning of your magics has made you closer than siblings. But you must not let distress make you cruel. Rosethorn is there because it is the way of the Circle to help all, not just those who can pay. Briar went there because that is the soil in which he grew.”

With each word Tris seemed to shrink a little more. Lark never scolded them.

“She didn’t mean it,” offered Sandry, hoping to make peace.

“Whether she did or not is beside the point. No one asks to live in squalor, Tris. It is just that squalor is all that is left to them by those with money.” Lark stood, her shoulders drooping. “When I got the wheezes, what the healers call asthma, I couldn’t work as a tumbler anymore. The only place I could afford to live was the Mire.”

She walked into her workroom and closed the door. Tris ran upstairs, sniffling. Sandry went into her groundfloor room as Daja walked over to Briar’s open door. Little Bear looked up at her, tail fluttering. Daja sat next to him and let the dog put his head in her lap. Outside she could hear the light patter of rain deepen as it fell harder than ever.

Steepling her hands before her face, Daja whispered the prayer her people spoke each night before they went to sleep: “Trader, watch over those of our kindred, in port or at sea. Send them fair winds to speed them home.”

S
ome time after Niko had left, Briar heard the inside door rattle. Someone was pushing things through the lower flap: a large metal box with straps to hold it closed, jars of liquids and salves, a second water kettle in addition to the one that had already been in the room.

Flick had woken from her doze and seemed restless. “What’s all that?” she asked as Rosethorn and Briar carried the new supplies to the table.

“Things to help me care for you and to help others unravel what your pox is,” said Rosethorn.

Curious, Flick got out of bed and came to sit with them. She propped her chin on her elbows and scratched one of the raised bumps on her cheek.

“Stop that,” Rosethorn ordered. “If you feel well enough to walk around, you’re well enough to have some juice.”

As Rosethorn poured a cupful for their patient, Briar ran his fingers over the metal box. Like the gauze screens on the outer door, it was written over with signs for health and purity, pressed into the metal and worked into the leather straps.

“Sickness is a real thing, as real as air or insects,” Rosethorn explained to Flick, taking the box and undoing the straps. “We can’t see it without help, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. With the right magics and tools, you can uncover what disease has tainted.” Some of this she’d taught Briar over the last year. “That means we take samples not only from those with the disease but also from the ones close to them. We hope to get a look at the early stages of the sickness, before it turns mean. I wish I’d thought to keep a grip on your friend Alleypup. We need him for this.”

Rosethorn worked off the box’s tight-fitting lid. Inside lay stacks of square white cloth pads. Each was paired with an undyed bag that sported a paper tag on its drawstring. Beside those were flat plates made of glassy black rock and another stack of cloth masks. Briar also noted a tightly stoppered and wax-sealed bottle of liquid ink and a pair of writing brushes.

All of these things were in a tray that fitted inside the box.

“Whatever you see here is spelled to keep every influence out but the samples that go into these bags,” Rosethorn told Flick. “Nothing is dyed, the materials are all the most basic. The only thing the mages who work with this stuff should collect is the disease, mixed with the body fluids of the people we get samples from.”

The woman lifted out the top tray to show an inner compartment. It held a second, smaller metal box, spelled just as strongly as the one in which it sat. “We send this back to Winding Circle with the samples. It’s magicked to keep those who carry it from getting sick.” This box she placed on the table. “They’ll send us a new one every day.”

Rosethorn then took square and bag pairs from the top part of the box, holding them by the edges as she placed five on a black stone plate. Handing the plate to Briar, she returned the top tray and its contents to the large metal box. “Don’t touch anything,” she warned Flick as the girl looked inside the metal container.