Briar's Book (7 page)

“Thirteen dead we know of,” was Henna’s soft reply. “Only sixty-five sick when I came in. I suspect more are hiding or telling themselves it’s just a rash, so there’s no way to judge how many are truly ill. I’m guessing from the counts I’ve seen that probably there are at least a hundred more cases today. If we’re lucky.”

Rosethorn chewed on her lower lip, thinking. “Where are they finding the sick?”

“North Mire,” replied Henna promptly. “From the buildings near the city wall.”

Rosethorn sighed. “Yanna willing, this is the worst of it.”

“If it doesn’t break out of the Mire, we’ll avoid a deal of heartache. The guards have orders to stop any Mire dwellers from entering the city.” Henna looked at Briar. “Now, my lad, get rid of that long face and dish up the broth for you two.” She pointed to a large, wax-sealed crock.

He did as he was told. Sipping his – no matter how hard he worked, he remembered to eat – he watched as Rosethorn drank her broth. When she finished, he followed her to her cot. “Thank the gods for Honored Moonstream,” Rosethorn commented softly as she slid under her blanket. “She’s no coin-pincher, unlike the people who run this place. With Henna in here we’ll get the supplies we need from Winding Circle.”

What we needed most was help, Briar thought, watching as Rosethorn went right to sleep. And we got it.

He went to bed. Lying down was one thing, he found; sleeping was something else. Had he given Flick willowbark tea that morning? In the last three days Rosethorn had taught him a slavish love for willowbark. It was the only thing that lowered the fever, which fretted her more than the spots and the sores that developed when the spots cracked open. The tea also soothed her other worry, that Flick was drying out, though Rosethorn used a different word: dehydration.

Perhaps he should check the slate at the foot of Flick’s cot. He would have marked it if he’d given his friend willowbark tea that morning.

Henna sat on Orji’s cot, holding the sick man’s wrists. Running from her fingers was a tracery of silver – magic. Briar closed his eyes for a moment, then looked again. The tracery was clearer, threading from dedicate to man like rootlets. Fascinated, Briar walked over to watch.

The magic streamed along Orji’s arms and into his body, as if Henna ran it through his veins. For a long, long moment Henna’s power bathed Orji from top to toe. At last it retreated, trickling out of his body the way it had come in. Once Henna got her magic back, she released the dozing man and folded her hands in her lap, head bowed.

Briar was about to creep away when she spoke.
“You
are supposed to be sleeping.” Her voice had the trained quiet of someone who spends her time with the sick: Briar heard clearly, but neither Orji nor Flick in the next bed stirred.

“I couldn’t. What magic was that, what you did?”

Henna swiveled to look up at him. “You know I was doing magic?”

“It’s a thing I picked up from Tris,” he replied. Not long after Sandry had spun their magics together, Niko had written a spell on Tris’s spectacles, helping her to see magic as he did. The skill then spread to Daja, Sandry, and Briar through their bond with Tris, just as Tris learned a little of their magics. “I see power when it’s moving or working,” Briar explained to Henna, “but I don’t know what it’s doing.”

Henna moved over to Flick’s cot, sat, and took Flick’s hands. The street girl stirred, opening heavy-lidded eyes. “I just want to see how you are,” Henna reassured her.

Flick glanced up at Briar, who nodded. “I’m fine,” she whispered, licking dry lips.

Briar fetched a cup of water and held Flick up so she could drink. When she turned her face away, he lowered her to the pillow again. As Flick’s eyes closed, Henna closed her own.

“It’s a thing healers learn to do,” she murmured. Around her hands sprouted a web of light-strands that sank into Flick’s dark-spotted arms and raced through her body. “Before we start work, we must first know what is wrong. It may be that the treatment we put to a fever will hurt the patient’s diseased kidneys, or the foxglove we give to strengthen a heartbeat may cause a weakened heart to fail.”

“Then you can see what the blue pox is,” Briar said eagerly.

Henna shook her head. “If it were a disease I had fought before, perhaps I could sense it, but only then. This isn’t even
related
to the diseases I know. But I can see the flow of her blood, the strength of her heart and kidneys and bowels. I can feel her muscles, brain, and bones. I can see weak blood, if she has it, or fluid in the lungs. Bad eating habits, certainly.” Henna wrinkled her nose. “And worms, and flukes.”

Flick’s mouth dropped open. Her breath rattled in her dry mouth and nose. She was asleep.

“Worms and flukes?” asked Briar, not sure he’d heard right.

“Parasites, in her body. They live on her. I would imagine, before Rosethorn cleaned her up, she had lice and fleas as well.”

Briar was about to ask, “Don’t everybody?” when he remembered that he had not since his arrival at Winding Circle. Who am I? he wondered for a moment, shocked. Who am I really? It’s like I shucked being Roach the street rat like worn-out clothes – but Roach is who I was for years. I can’t just strip away
years,
can I?

“Where is this girl from?” Henna was asking. “Where did she live?”

Briar frowned at her. “The sewer,” he said irritably. He didn’t like the disapproval in Henna’s face and voice. Where else could Flick live and be safe? he wanted to ask, but did not. Instead he thought, Henna acts like I’m one of her kind, one of the citizens. And I’m not. I can’t be.

Henna shook her head and reclaimed her magic. Gently she drew the blanket over Flick’s thin arms. “She will have a battle of it, I’m afraid.”

“We’ll pull her through,” Briar said confidently. “I’ve heard them at the Circle – they say you’re one of the best. I’ll do whatever you say. I was thinking maybe Flick could do with more willowbark tea.”

“I’ll take care of that,” said Henna, regarding him with an odd expression in her eyes. “You should rest.”

“I don’t mind – ”

“All our patients are asleep now, so I don’t mind either. Bed.”

Briar turned to go. He was halfway across the floor when her soft yet clear voice reached his ears. “Sometimes there’s nothing you can do, boy – Briar. Sometimes they don’t have enough to fight with.”

He looked back at her. “Flick’ll fight. You’ll see.” He fell on his bed and rolled the blanket around him. Maybe for a birthday I should pick the day when Roach of Deadman’s District kicked the bucket and left this kid Briar in his place, he thought tiredly. Except I don’t even know when that was. It all happened in bits and pieces, like.

Maybe the girls know when it was.

Sleep, like the change from Roach to Briar, came slowly. Somewhere, between thought and dreams, he flowed along the invisible ties that stretched between him and the girls. It turned his dreams to small chunks of their lives.

He was Daja, bent over a sheet of iron beaten leather-thin as Kirel, Frostpine’s other apprentice, bludgeoned away on a nearby anvil. Heat pressed Daja/Briar from the right, drawing her skin tight on that side while a cold, damp blast made her left side pebble with goosebumps. The grip of a sharp-edged tool she thought of as a “graver” nestled firmly in her right hand.

Slowly she thrust the sharp point of the graver along the iron, shaping the curves that would form the symbol for protection. Her magic flowed in the graver’s wake. It called the power to shield and to hold out of the metal. She followed a magical trail, Briar realized: there was a design already drawn on the metal in rose geranium oil and Frostpine’s magic. It combined with Daja’s as she cut four half circles into the metal, each combining with the others to shape four petals. Last of all she cut a full circle that passed through the other curves. As she completed it, running into the point where she had begun, the magic faded, power seeping into iron to fill every inch. At last it was just a dimly glowing set of curves in her eyes.

A hand – large, warm, callused – came down on her shoulder. There was no telling how long Frostpine had been there, watching. She looked up into his proud eyes. “Very good,” he said. “The best yet. One more, and I think we are finished for the day.”

Briar lost Daja, but magic tugged him still. He found himself in Sandry’s mind as she labored with mortar and pestle in Lark’s workroom.

Charcoal to filter out the bad, rose geranium for protection, she was thinking – Briar noticed that both Lark and Frostpine liked to use rose geranium. Sandry worked her pestle around the mortar’s bowl in a steady rhythm, thrusting her magic into her ingredients. Granules of frankincense flattened under her rocking pressure, mixing with the liquid in crushed flower petals and rosemary leaves. Protection and purification, Sandry thought; no shadow can enter. She filled the bowl to the brim with her power. Carnation and frankincense oils strengthened and purified what would be a thin paste rather than an oil. In a corner of her mind the noble drew and redrew a protective circle in white fire around those she loved. Peering at those within her circle, Briar recognized himself, Rosethorn, the girls, Lark, Frostpine, Niko, Little Bear, the duke – and Dedicate Crane?

The surprise of seeing Crane made him wake on his cot at Urda’s House. He blinked at the ceiling. Why in Trickster Lakik’s name did Sandry care what happened to Crane?

Sitting up, Briar looked around. Henna sat next to one of the new kids’ beds. A silver shimmer marked the flow of magic through her fingers into her patient. It chased a blue tint out of the boy’s unpocked skin.

Briar went over for a closer look. “What’s the matter with him?” he whispered.

“He had a seizure – a convulsion – while you were asleep,” she replied. “It happens when a fever runs too long unchecked. He’s blue all over because he didn’t get enough air during the spasms, so I’m trying to change that.”

Briar watched the flow of her magic, intent. Henna’s power followed the veins between the child’s chest and his head. “How does magic in his blood fix his air?”

“Haven’t you learned
any
physiology – how the body works?” asked Henna, startled.

Briar scowled at the hint that Rosethorn wasn’t teaching him properly. “I do plants,” he said, “not people.”

Henna shook her head. “I would have thought – never mind,” she added as Briar glared at her. ‘Veins – blood – carry air from the lungs to the brain. Without air, even for a short time, parts of the brain start to die. It can mean a change as tiny as forgetting how to tie a knot, or it can lead to idiocy, even death. Some who survive the blue pox will live damaged, even crippled.”

The sick boy opened his eyes, staring at Henna. “I’ll be there, Mama,” he whispered. “Don’t let the camels eat me.” He went back to sleep.

“He’s got a chance to survive.” Henna released him and got to her feet. Sighing, she turned her head and neck in a circle, trying to relax stiff muscles. “His family came on hard times just recently, so he’s still healthy at bottom. If we keep his brain whole, he may do all right.”

They had put the man with the cough in a distant corner, away from the old people and the children. Now he sat up, hacking loudly.

“What about him?” asked Briar.

Henna shook her head. “He’s in the last stages of consumption – lung-rot. Catching the blue pox just means he’ll die sooner rather than later.”

“But you could heal him,” protested Briar in a whisper, following her to the cupboards as she hunted for something. “I’ve seen you people do healings. Why aren’t you at it now?”

Henna pulled a basin from the cupboard. “I have the power to heal four of the people in this room completely,” she said, her voice tight. “Old people and children and those already ill, like that man, are the hardest to bring back – I’d have to go to Death’s kingdom to get them. That will drain me for a month or more – that means I’d be useless, bedridden, too weak even to care for the sick without my magic. If healers use themselves up to save a handful, what happens to the sick brought in tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after?” She searched through the medicines on the table, taking a brown glass bottle. “Get a cup.”

Briar obeyed.

As Henna poured liquid from the bottle into the cup, she continued, “A touch of my power given to one person at a time might help fifty to win free of the disease, and leave me with enough magic to fight the blue pox in my own body. I may have to let some die, if they’re too far gone, and keep my power to save others.”

“I’m sorry,” Briar whispered as she thrust the stopper into the bottle.

“So am I,” replied Henna. “It’s the single worst thing about being a healer-mage.” She took the cup and basin to the coughing man.

One of the old people sat up. “Get that oar in the water, ye sluggard,” she cried. “We’re bringin’ home a full boat if we fish till midnight!” She gasped and choked.

Rosethorn was beside her before Briar knew his teacher was awake, thrusting a cloth between the old woman’s teeth. The woman bucked hard, convulsing, and threw Rosethorn off the bed. Briar ran to help.

There was no quiet moment after that. Both the old woman and the boy had seizures all afternoon. When they were quiet, Henna, Rosethorn, and Briar cleaned everyone up and tried to get liquids into them. The man with consumption coughed long and often, fighting to breathe. By sunset he was spitting blood into the basin Henna had brought to him.

Hick dozed lightly at times or blinked at the ceiling. She was still too weak to sit. Briar helped the girl up, desperately trying to get her to drink more.

The thin gray daylight was fading when Briar heard the clank of metal. He dropped the bowl he was scrubbing and looked for the source. Was it the outside door again?

There was the sound of a bolt being drawn:
clack.

The inner door, the one that opened into Urda’s House, swung open.

Rosethorn and Henna got to their feet. Jokubas Atwater, the mean old man who had told Rosethorn that Urda’s House was not made of money, stood in the open door. “This entire building is now a pest-house,” he said acidly, eyes bitter. “The sick must keep to their own floors, but healers” – he looked around until he found Briar – “and apprentices, you may move freely about the house.”