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A year after leaving Hajra, this is what Briar has learned:
Lark is wonderful. Rosethorn is a goddess.
Trisana Chandler is his best friend, though she’d never admit it.
(“Mates? With a boy?” she’d demanded, pushing up her spectacles and fixing him with a glare after he’d explained what mate actually meant. “I’d rather be best friends with a girl, if it’s all the same to you. Two girls, so I can play with one if I get tired of the other. When I get tired of the other.”
He’d taken it as a compliment—that he was worth any two girls—even though he knew a compliment was not what she had intended. Seeing the sweet behind the sting was an important part of Tris; he’d accepted it when he had decided they were best mates. “Too bad,” he’d said, grinning at her. “You ain’t have any girls to be friends with, so you’re stuck with me, Coppercurls.”
She stuck her tongue out at him, but he knew she’d beamed when he wasn’t looking.)
Eleni still intimidates him, though he’d never admit it.
Above all, there’s only one person who has made his world whole again--who clicked together the shattered pieces he didn’t even know were missing as neatly as picking a lock and turning the key.
Tris has taught him about how the stars work, but as far as Briar is concerned, the world revolves around George.
*
“Alanna,” George whispered, “I’m takin’ advantage of you now, because I may never catch you with your hands full again.”
Trickster, I hope she doesn’t stab me blind, he thought giddily, and kissed her gently on the mouth.
It was like the sunrise.
He could feel her shaking—he didn’t know if it was anger, fear, or desire, though he had his suspicions. Finally, he let her go.
“There,” he said, heart pounding in his throat. “Think over what I said about love.”
“Pigs might fly,” she retorted. He noticed her voice was a little uneven, and tried not to grin. “I could have stabbed you!”
George laughed. He knew it would infuriate her, but there was white-hot joy searing through his veins and he had to let it out somehow. “No, I won’t let you stab me and ruin our friendship.” He paused, his mouth quirking wryly when she refused to meet his gaze. “Will you be afraid to face me again after this?”
That did the trick—furious violet eyes met his as she turned bright red. “I’m afraid of no one, George Cooper,” she yelled. “Especially not you!”
There’s my girl, he thought, as satisfied as her conspicuously absent cat. “Until next time, then,” he drawled, saluting her and sauntering back down to the city.
He was still whistling when he walked in the door of the Dancing Dove, but the tune died on his lips when he saw Solomon’s expression.
“What’s got you lookin’ like a hen in a fox house, Solom?”
Solomon spun at the sound of his voice and sighed with relief.
“Majesty! We have a bit of a…er, a situation in the storage room.”
George raised an eyebrow, sliding onto a barstool and snagging an ale. “Sol, you’re goin’ to have to give me more than that to work with.”
Solomon sighed again. He signaled one of his staff to take over and walked around the bar to sit next to his king, ensuring they could talk quietly.
“A boy tried to pickpocket Scholar today,” Solomon explained, fiddling with a rag. George straightened, his hazel eyes suddenly crackling.
“Our Scholar?” he demanded. “Surely the boy weren’t one of our own.”
“No, no, of course not,” Solomon said hastily. “He says he’s from far away, some city I didn’t even know the name of.”
George made a thoughtful noise. “How old is the lad?”
Solomon shrugged. “I dunno if even he knows, but I’d wager eight or nine. It goes without sayin’ that Scholar didn’t have a copper noble on him, much less a silver one.”
George took a contemplative drink of his beer. Members of the Rouge usually declared fealty around that age, give or take a year. The court didn’t care how old its members were: when a young thief scored a mark of a silver noble or more, they were of age to join the court or leave the city. Regardless, stealing—or even trying to steal—from a member of the Rogue was a serious crime.
“Seemed pretty obvious that you should be dealin’ with him, given his foreignness—and his age,” Solomon continued.
George grinned. As much as he denied it, Solomon was soft-hearted about the younger rogues. The innkeeper ducked his head.
“Not havin’ much in the way of holding cells, we decided that the storage room would be a good fit until you could see him.”
“A fine choice,” George said, “though if I know young uns, this one may have eaten everything in the larder by the time I get there.”
Solomon made a face. “We was worried about that too—and then the ground started growin’ around him.”
*
“Hello, young master.” George kept his voice gentle and even, knowing that the boy needed to stay calm above all else. “I’m George. Rather unfortunate circumstances nonwithstandin’, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
The boy stared at him and didn’t say anything, his gray-green eyes huge in his thin face. Too thin, George noted with an internal frown. Wherever the boy was from, his Rogue Court was not looking after its own. Certainly the branches wrapped around his arms and legs were probably thicker than the limbs they trapped. Looking at the boy’s hands, admiring the wood that twined around his wrists like Alanna’s cat twined around her ankles, George noted the X tattoos and clicked his teeth against his tongue.
“Well, now,” he said. That explained why the boy was so thin. Any rogue leader who didn’t have enough influence to prevent their thieves from getting stamped wasn’t one worth having. “Where’re you from, boy?”
“Hajra,” the captive muttered. “In—“
“Sotat, aye,” George said. “You’ve come a long way, haven’t you?”
“’swas the plan,” said the boy. There was a spark in his eye that George rather liked: it was clear that was as much information as the younger thief was willing to give. While George clearly had the upper hand, if he’d learned anything it was when to push. He would save the lad’s backstory for a later time.
“Now, how did yonder tree sprout in my storeroom?” asked George, mostly to himself. He knelt down to investigate and whistled, impressed—the branches came from the floor of the room, the ancient oak boards suddenly sprouted to life. George was close enough to the boy that he heard him mutter something.
“What was that, lad?”
“I—I don’t know how I did it,” the boy said, quiet and fierce and more than a little afraid. “But I think it was me.”
George, crouching on his haunches to inspect the newly grown wood, rocked back on his heels to look the boy in the eye. He dipped into his Sight and sucked in his breath. A pearl-green glow suffused the small pickpocket, the magic rippling as plants and vines too numerous to name grew, blossomed, shrank, and grew again under the boy’s skin.
“Aye,” he said slowly, wondrously. He’d never seen anything like it, and it was fair beautiful. “I imagine you just may have.”
While the boy looked slightly mollified that George believed him, there was still more than an air of panic around his thin frame. The ghostly plants of his magic moved faster, picking up on his fear. “I didn’t mean to and I don’t know how to get it off without hurting it!”
George hid a smile behind his hand as he straightened up with a dramatic groan. “Don’t you worry, my boy. I know just the lady for the job. If we’re lucky and cross our toesies—well, I guess you can’t, so I’ll do it for you—she’ll even honor us with a house call.”
The lad stared at him, clearly not sure what to make of this turn of events.
“I’m not your boy,” he said after a moment. It was a statement of fact, without any spite.
“True enough,” George said easily. “What should I call you, then?”
“m’name’s Roach,” Roach said, blushing as George let out a hoot of laughter.
“Roach! That’s either a name and a half or no name at all, by my reckonin’.”
The boy looked like he would shrug if not currently in the embrace of a floorboard tree. “The Thief Lord chose our names. ‘s better than Slug, at least—roaches don’t kill plants.”
“You’re right about that,” said George. “Or, at least, I think you are. Can’t garden to save my life, me, but my mum likes it well enough.”
“Does she have a garden?” Roach asked. “I’ve never known anyone with a garden.”
George smiled. “Well, my dear Roach,” he drawled, signaling Solomon from where the man lurked apprehensively in the doorway, “It may not look it from there, but today’s your lucky day.”
*
“George Cooper, what in the name of the Great Goddess have you gotten yourself into this time?” Eleni asked, sweeping into the storeroom with her hair streaming a war banner behind her—she had clearly been getting ready for bed. She stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of Roach in his living trap, her mouth closing with a snap.
“I know this is nothin’ if not a rare occurrence, but I can honestly say I had very little to do with it,” George said dryly.
Eleni didn’t even look at him, transfixed by Roach. “You know,” she murmured, “I just may have to believe you.”
George crowed. “Look at that, young Roach,” he said to the boy. “If I didn’t think you’d got magic before, I know you’re magic now.”
Roach ripped his gaze away from Eleni and stared at him, desperately confused. “Magic?” he whispered. “The…the Gift?"
Eleni examined him over from head to toe—George knew she was Seeing him with her Sight when she looked slightly poleaxed. He walked over and put his hand on his shoulder, which she covered with a hand of her own.
“I’m not sure about that one, lad,” he said. Eleni was shaking, just a bit. “I’ve never seen the like of your magic afore.”
Roach squeaked and Eleni looked up at her son, her lips quirking. “Now George,” she said, moving away from his grasp so she could approach the boy. “Don’t scare the poor boy. Roach, is it? Mother of mares, what a name.”
For his part, Roach looked at her warily. That un’s got a good head on his shoulders, thought George, amused. He knows who the threat in the room is.
Eleni crouched down in front of Roach the same way George had. “We both have the Sight, you see,” she explained. “He hasn’t Seen this magic before, but I know of it—you’ve got plant magic, plain, pure, and simple.”
Plant magic? Eleni was right, George had never heard of such a thing. He traded a look with Solomon, whose confused expression mirrored his own.
“Plant magic?” asked Roach. “You mean, a Gift that’s good with plants, like the Bag gardeners in the markets?”
“Not quite,” said Eleni, shooting George a glare as he let out a snort. “The Gift is magic inside someone that they can shape to their will. Some folks have Gifts that have a preference for being shaped to do a certain thing—healing, for example, or plants in the case of those, ah, gardeners. Your magic is different: it is power drawn from plants and power that works through plants. That’s why you could make floorboards grow without a second thought. That sort of trick would’ve killed a normal mage your age.”
“Huh,” said Roach faintly, sounding much older than eight or nine. “And t’think I just thought plants liked me.”
“Oh,” Eleni said dryly, “they do at that. Come now, let’s get you out of these branches.”
She held out her hands to the boy, but his grey-green eyes flashed in warning.
“I’m not gonna do anything to hurt it,” he informed her. “It’s not its fault I got--excited."
Eleni didn’t roll her eyes, which George figured was the byproduct of some sort of Goddess priestess training.
“We won’t hurt it,” she told the boy. “We’re just going to help it become floorboards again. It’s been floorboards for a hundred years, and that’s what it wants to keep doing.”
Roach turned his hand to touch the branch wrapped around his arm; George saw a tendril of vine-magic touch the branch with his Sight. Roach looked at Eleni. “You’re right,” he said, and swallowed. “I’m sorry I made it do something it didn’t want to do.”
Eleni smiled gently at him. “Nonsense, boy. It was more than happy to please you—though that backfired a bit when it trapped you, but no one ever said floorboards have sense—and everything’s due some excitement every century or so. Here,” she said imperiously, holding out her hands once more.
Roach swallowed again, then carefully leaned forward to link her fingers with his own.
“Good,” Eleni said. “Close your eyes.”
Roach obeyed; Eleni let her eyes shut as well. George watched their magics flare against each other, Eleni’s shaping around the boy’s.
“Now,” Eleni said, “do you remember how it felt when the wood grew?”
“Fizzy,” Roach said quietly. “Itchy, though not in a bad way.”
“Good,” murmured Eleni. “I want you to reach into that feeling and find it in the branches around you.”
George didn’t have to be told when Roach was successful—glowing vines snaked out of his hands, wrapping around the branches.
“Well done,” Eleni said warmly. “Now I want you to remember what being a floorboard is like.”
Roach’s eyes popped open, though the magic-vines remained wrapped around the branches. “I’m no floorboard,” he accused.
George stuffed a knuckle into his mouth as Eleni opened her eyes and raised an eyebrow. “I never said you were. But you made it grow, which means you spoke to it before. You know what that voice felt like then. Use it now.”
Roach bit his lip, but nodded and closed his eyes again.
“Remember,” Eleni said gently, almost hypnotically, “it wants to go back to the way it was. You just need to help it along.”
“Go back,” whispered Roach. “Go back, please.”
“Mithros’ shield,” whispered Solomon from the doorway. Sure enough, the branches were withdrawing from Roach’s arms and legs, sinking back down into the ground. Within minutes, the floor was back to normal.
Roach opened his eyes. “Plant magic?” he asked Eleni, his eyes bright even as he swayed where he stood.
“Plant magic,” she told him, accepting George’s hand and pulling herself upright. “Strong plant magic, at that. Sit there.” She pointed at a barrel nearby, and the boy perched on top. Eleni looked him over once more, tapping a finger against her lips.
“Well, there’s nothing to it,” she informed him. “You’ve got to be taught. Carefully taught,” she added for George’s sake, her mouth twitching. “I can handle it until we find a proper plant mage—they’re unusual, but not impossible to find.”
She turned to Roach, her hands on her hips. “I don’t know where you’re from or what nonsense got you those Xs,” she said, gesturing to the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, “but if you are to stay with me for any time, there will be no thievery or tricks in my household. It’s happened to me once, as that upstart of a son will tell you, but it shan’t again.”
Roach looked at her—then unexpectedly turned to look at George, silently beseeching. George swallowed hard.
Kyprioth, you can be a right bastard when you want to be, he thought. At least the Trickster was less likely to punish him for blaspheming than most gods. Or maybe he’s punishing me right now, George speculated wryly, and cleared his throat.
“Ma, we both know that your respectable house is no place for a young rogue to live.” He traded a dry smile with Eleni. “Let the boy stay here and visit to take lessons from you.”
His mother looked more than a little surprised. Roach looked like the sun had set in the east.
“Are you sure?” Eleni asked him. “Boys can be more than a handful, you know, and you have—well, quite a job already.”
George glanced back at Roach. The boy had his arms wrapped around himself, hands cupping his elbows where the branches had been.
“We’ll make it work,” he said. “They say it takes a village, but a court should do quite nicely.”
Eleni sighed: she knew when her son made up his mind. “Very well,” she said simply. “I only have one request.”
“Name it and it shall be yours, most wondrous dam of mine,” George said with a bow.
She flicked her fingers at him—oh, you—then turned back to Roach.
“You’re going to have to pick a new name,” she informed him, hands settling on her hips again. “Roach is no name for a young lad, even if he’s a rogue.”
Roach swallowed, looking at George again. George shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets. “It’s a fair request, so far as I can tell,” he told the boy. “And it’s not like you like your name, after all.”
That got him a sliver of a smile, which unexpectedly warmed his chest.
“Okay,” the boy said, “I’ll do it.”
“Go on then,” George said dryly. “Pick one.”
The boy frowned, staring at the ground and then at his pockmarked hands. “Briar,” he said finally.
“Briar,” Eleni repeated with approval. “A good name. Now a last one.”
“A last one?” now-Briar asked her. “Whatever for?”
Eleni just looked at him.
Briar thought about it. Then he thought about it some more, bouncing his heels off the side of the barrel. Just when George was going to prod him along, an enormous grin spread across his face.
“Ah,” he said, eyes dancing. “I’ve got one.”
“Well, we haven’t got all night,” George said impatiently. “What is it?”
Briar smiled impishly at him. “Cooper.”
Eleni laughed so hard she had to sit down, but on the whole George was rather flattered.
*
“Well,” George said, “this is it.”
Briar looked at George’s small set of rooms with a totally unreadable expression. George shifted, suddenly a little nervous.
“There’s a room here,” he said, walking past his bedroom to another door, “which isn’t bigger’n a closet, really, but it has a window facin’ the courtyard and I thought we could put a cot in there for you. It’s just for now,” he said hastily, still not getting a fix on Briar’s response as the boy walked over to peer inside. “We can find a more suitable place. Mayhaps on the ground floor, change one of the storage rooms—"
“—this is for me?” Briar interrupted. George looked at him; his eyes were wide and glinting in the twilight.
“Yes, lad,” he said gently. “It’s your room, for now at least. Until we find something better.”
Briar looked at him, looked at the room again, and flung his arms around the older man’s waist before either of them quite knew what was going on. His hug was over nearly as quickly as it began, but both were thankful for the fading light that hid scarlet blushes.
“Thank you,” said Briar quietly.
“You’re welcome,” George replied in the same measured tones. Then he wrinkled his nose, learning something new from the boy’s proximity.
“Oh ho," he said. “There’s just one more thing to do before you go to sleep in your new digs.”
“What?” said Briar, instantly suspicious of George’s hearty tone.
“Well,” George said amiably, draping his arm around the boy’s thin shoulders so he couldn’t get away and herding him towards the door. “It’s time you had your first Tortallan bath.”
*
“Well now,” Alanna said, sitting down at the bar next to Jon and Gary and staring at Briar. “Who’s this?”
“This is Briar,” Gary informed her, winking at the boy. “He’ll be our server tonight.”
“Seems a little young for that,” Alanna grumbled, accepting a carefully-poured lemonade with a nod of thanks.
“George says I have to earn my keep,” Briar informed her gravely. He sighed. “But Eleni yelled the first time I pinched a Bag’s purse, so here I am.”
Jon covered his smile with his ale; Gary coughed into his fist. Alanna frowned at the boy. “Earn your keep?”
“Yessir,” Briar said. “I live here.”
“You live here,” Alanna said flatly. “In the Dancing Dove.”
“Yessir,” Briar repeated, a bit confused. “Moved upstairs about a week ago.”
“Up—in George’s rooms?” Jon was watching Alanna turn pink with some interest.
“Well no one else lives up there, do they?” Briar said tartly, reaching the end of his patience with patrons that repeated his words like they were revelations. “He said it’s just ‘til we find something better, but I like it. It has a window and I can see the courtyard.”
Alanna cleared her throat. “What did you say your name was, again?”
“Briar,” Briar said proudly, relishing the opportunity to share his new name. “Briar Cooper."
He jumped back as Alanna sprayed lemonade across the bar, coughing and yelping when the tart drink went down the wrong pipe. Gary pounded her back while Briar ducked under the bar to grab a rag, shaking his head.
When he resurfaced, Alanna was completely red. He didn’t notice that she stared at him as he cleaned the bar. Jon did, and realized that she was wearing the scowl she reserved for mathematical problems she didn’t like. Which, he reflected with amusement, were all mathematical problems.
“And how old did you say you were?”
“I didn’t,” said Briar, clearly not sure what to make of this strange redheaded lad who couldn’t even handle his lemonade. “I don’t know, myself. Prob’ly eight, maybe nine.”
With that, Alanna clearly reached some sort of conclusion. Her face turned a deeper red, then continued to darken until it was almost purple. Jon and Gary traded looks—while both were well acquainted with her temper, neither of them could remember her acquiring that particular shade of puce.
“Careful, lad,” Gary said to her. “You’ll have a heart attack!”
“I’m not the one whose heart is about to stop,” she growled. Jon snorted. She glared at him. “Briar, is—he upstairs?”
“Yes,” said Briar, fairly oblivious. “He’s working on some accounts.”
“You bet he has some accounts to work out, by the Goddess,” Alanna snapped, pushing away from the bar and stalking away. Gary let out a strangled yelp, his shoulders shaking.
“GEORGE!” they heard her roar as she ascended the stairs.
Briar turned to look at Jon and Gary, who had collapsed against each other in laughter.
“Was it something I said?” he asked, baffled.
Jon was hiccupping, using his handkerchief to dab his eyes. Gary waved a hand at the boy and rested his head on the table.
Alanna came down from George’s rooms some time later, pale and contrite; Briar stepped warily around her the rest of the evening. The next time she came to the Dove, she brought him a dagger she’d made at the forge. Briar, not one to hold a grudge against someone so obviously eager to get in his good graces, was instantly won over.
*
George would tell anyone who asked that he had excellent hearing. In fact, he’d proclaimed the truth to many who didn’t volunteer for the information— “I have so many ears, how could I not?”
Truth be told, while his hearing was quite good, his rooms weren’t very large and eight-maybe-nine-year-olds weren’t particularly skilled at being quiet. Briar was better than most, but George still picked up on the hushed sniffling.
With a sigh, he padded over to the closed door and knocked gently.
“Lad?”
“I’m fine!”
George grinned. “I’m sure you are, but I’m comin’ in anyway.”
“Fine,” said Briar, managing to sound gloomy even when muffled by the door, “but I don’t need you to.”
He looked up when George entered, rubbing a hand across one tear-stained cheek.
“Now what’s this about, then?” George asked, sitting on the floor next to his mattress.
Briar sighed. “It’s silly,” he said.
“If it was silly, you wouldn’t be cryin’,” George told him matter-of-factly, pulling out a handkerchief and drying the boy’s face with it. “Blow.”
Briar gave him a haughty look, but obliged.
“Now, what’s the matter?”
Briar sniffled. “I miss my moss,” he said in a small voice.
“Your moss?” George asked.
“In Hajra, there was always m-moss and mushrooms in my squat. There was moss in the cells they threw me in—that’s how I got out,” he explained to George’s raised eyebrow, “I just asked the moss to move.”
“To move?”
“Yeah,” Briar shrugged, sniffling again. “The moss had growed into the cracks of the stone blocks of the cell, so it just p-pushed it out.”
George whistled. “Remind me not to make you angry, bucko.”
Briar laughed wetly. They were quiet for a moment, while George idly wondered if he was supposed to rub the boy’s back or somesuch.
“It’s not that I don’t like it here,” Briar said suddenly. “I really do. But—”
“Harja’s all you’d ever known,” George finished for him. “Aye, I understand.”
In the end, George wound up sitting in Briar’s rat-nest of a bed, holding the lad as he cried himself to sleep.
*
“What are you doing?”
Briar froze as the sunflower bloomed an inch away from his face. Taking a minute to admire the giant yellow petals, he asked the flower to let him go. It begrudgingly did so.
He turned to face his accuser, raising an eyebrow as he took in her strained woolen dress and frizzy red hair.
“Takin’ in some natural beauty on a gorgeous spring day.” He paused. “Not you, mind—the plants.”
She stuck her tongue out at him; he liked her immediately.
“Well, that’s not right,” she informed him.
“What do you mean?” Briar asked, stung. “It’s a public garden, I’m allowed.”
“No, no,” she said impatiently. “The sunflower. It’s blooming at least three weeks early.”
Briar frowned at her. “Early?”
“Don’t you know about plant seasons?” she asked, reaching past him to stroke the sunflower. He watched carefully, but her hands were gentle. “Different plants come out at different times on the year, based on how they’re built. That’s why harvests are always in the fall, and you see the most flowers in the spring.”
Briar nodded thoughtfully, then felt a little guilty. “Is it bad, then, that the sunflower already bloomed?”
The girl thought about it. “No,” she said finally. “It’s a bit early, but not by much. And it’s a warm spring, besides, so it should be fine.”
He exhaled, relieved. Another thought struck him. “How’d you know that?”
She looked at him with a gentle impatience; the sunflower crooned at her touch. “What do you mean?”
Briar waved a hand to encompass her clothing. “You’re a merchant girl—a city merchant girl, at that. How do you know the faintest thing about when a plant blooms?”
She grinned. “I read. Don’t you?”
It was Briar’s turn to stick his tongue out at her—Eleni had started to teach him, but he hadn’t really seen the point. She was about to retort when she looked over her shoulder and blanched, turning ghost white.
Briar turned and recognized a couple of city boys making their way towards them. He hadn’t tumbled with these boys, but he knew them as the type to knock down smaller kids just because they could.
“There’s Madame Sow,” called one of them. They all made oinking noises. “Looking for truffles in the garden?”
“And look!” said another, hooting. “She’s got a Rat friend! Maybe he helps her find the tastiest rotten food. Ratty, do you want to play?”
Briar bared his teeth in a grin. He did want to play; this was going to be fun. George had just taught him a new knife trick that he’d promised not to try on any of the Rogue, but he’d never said anything about jumped-up nancy boys that made fun of girls who knew when sunflowers bloomed.
“Oh no,” whispered the girl behind him. “Oh no no no—”
Suddenly, a dark cloud passed overhead.
“Ratty, come dance with us,” the first boy called. “I’d invite Madame, but I don’t think she can stand on her hind—”
Suddenly the boy yelped, flinging his arm up to cover his face. Briar squinted. The boys were far enough away that he wasn’t quite sure what was happening, though he could see odd glints of light coming down from the sky. Soon, all of the boys were screaming and cowering, running out of the garden as fast as their legs could carry them.
Briar frowned, then trotted down the path to where they had stood. He kneeled down and picked up one of the clear balls on the ground, whistling when it melted between his fingers.
“Hail,” he said thoughtfully. He looked on either side of him. Though the path was only several feet wide, the plants on either side remained untouched. Briar returned to the girl, who hadn’t moved; when he got closer, he could see that she was pale and trembling. He sighed and helped her to a nearby bench.
“You should come with me,” he said, when some color had returned to her cheeks. “Eleni’s good with strange magic—with my kind of strange magic, anyway, which can only be so much stranger than yours.” He paused. “Actually, your magic is definitely stranger than mine, but Eleni can handle it.”
“I don’t have magic,” she told him tartly. It sounded like an old wound—Briar knew what that felt like. “I’ve been tested. Many times.”
“It’s not normal magic,” Briar explained again. “Magic sniffers don’t know how to test for it.”
She glared. “You’re telling me a tale.”
“Mithros strike me if I lie,” said Briar, using the god he thought she’d be the most impressed by. “What’d you think your—” he wiggled his fingers at her— “was, if not magic?”
The red in her cheeks drained out again. “They said I was cursed,” she whispered.
“That’s bleaters’ talk,” he snapped. “Possessed folk don’t make it hail so the plants on either side of a walkway don’t get damaged.”
She took a moment to think. It was something George did, too—no matter what Briar said, he always gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Finally, she looked hopeful. More than that, she looked like someone that needed hope.
Briar knew what that felt like, too.
“I don’t even know your name,” she informed him.
“It’s Briar,” he told her. “Briar Cooper.”
“I’m Tris,” she whispered. “Trisana Chandler.”
“Well, Tris,” he drawled. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
She grinned, just a little. “I think that remains to be seen.”
*
“What are you doing?”
Briar jumped, then sighed. The bean plant wrapped around his hands and locked him into place.
“You’d think I’d’ve learned that this is no way for a proper thief to go about,” he told the plant. “I’da been thrice dead by now if I were still in Hajra.”
“You’re assuming you’re going to get out of this encounter alive,” replied the dry female voice behind him. Briar squeaked and craned his neck, trying to turn without ripping free of the bean plant’s loving hold.
“Oh, Mila have mercy,” the woman snapped, moving so he could look at her with relative comfort. They looked at each other for a minute, Briar taking in her mannishly-cropped hair, neat green tunic and leggings, and bare feet. Finally, she demanded, “Well?”
“Well, what?” Briar asked, the bean sprout wrapping idly around his index finger.
“Explain yourself,” she said, dark brown eyes impatient.
Briar sighed. “Lightfingers said that a new member of the court had started a garden for the Rogue. I wanted…I wanted to see it.”
He couldn’t stay away, actually. Eleni’s garden was lovely—the best he’d ever seen, in fact—but these plants sang.
The woman’s mouth twitched. He couldn’t tell if she was scowling or smiling. “And did ‘fingers perhaps mention that the most important rule of this new Rogue garden is thieves were not to go wandering nambly-pambly through it?”
“He may have mentioned it,” said Briar. It was also why George had neglected to mention it—that much was obvious. While George had been a bad mood in the weeks since Alan and his friends had left for Fort Drell, the Rouge would never forget such an important piece of information without due cause. “But—“
“But what,” she said, more than a bit dangerously.
Briar gulped. The bean sprout twined around another finger in moral support. “Well, what’s the point of a garden if no one can go in it?”
The woman sighed, her foot tapping the ground. “Briar, I take it?”
Briar looked at her, stunned. The woman’s mouth twitched again, this time definitely in a smile. “There’s only so many nine-year-old green-eyed boys in the Court of the Rogue, my lad.”
Briar shrugged; that made sense. There was a pause during which neither of them quite knew what to say.
The woman sighed and asked, “Are you going to take care of that bean plant, or should I?”
“I’ll do it,” Briar said warily. He was pretty sure this woman was the reason these plants were so happy, but there was no reason to take chances. He reached into his magic the way Eleni had taught him, coaxing the bean sprout back to its trellis.
He looked up at her, dusting his hands. “I don’t think it’s fair that you know my name but I don’t know yours.”
The woman raised her eyebrows. “It’s Rosethorn,” she said simply, “and you’ll come to rue the day you learned it.”
Briar shrank back against the plants a bit, sending them a polite refusal when they reached out for him again—no sense making the same mistake yet again. Rosethorn frowned at him, hands on her hips.
“Not like that,” she said tartly. “I don’t hit boys that have plant magic, it’s bad for garden morale.”
He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he had more important things to focus on. “Then like what?” he asked.
Rosethorn sighed. “Whoever’s teaching you now has done a fine job with the basics, but she’s clearly no plant mage,” she said. “I’d imagine there’s only so many folk in the Rogue Court that can teach you that particular craft.” Her lip quirked again. “In fact, I’d imagine there’s only one.”
“Oh,” he said, then— “oh. You?”
She sighed again. “It’s some sort of prank from the gods, I’d imagine. I hate teaching. I hate children—“
“I’d never have guessed,” he muttered; she ignored him.
“—but you’ve got to be taught. Plant magic can be a tricky business if left unpruned. And Lark would have my head, besides.”
“People keep saying that,” he informed her, walking away from the trellis to join her on the path. “Well, the first bit.”
“If that’s the case,” she said, “I’d imagine it’s true. Let’s go find that king of yours.”
*
“Why can’t I go in my room?” Briar asked for the thousandth time, peering behind George as mysterious banging noises continued to echo in the small chamber. The man laughed, shepherding him down the stairs.
“It’s a surprise.”
Briar scowled at him, though the boy was still clearly excited.
“Rogues don’t like surprises, you told me that that.”
“Rogues don’t like bein’ on the receiving end of surprises,” George explained. He grinned broadly. “But they love givin’ them.”
Briar stuck his tongue out; George tweaked his nose. Just then, the woman who had been in Briar’s room clattered down the stairs, tucking a hammer back into her belt. She stopped in front of George and gave him a slight bow.
“Right and ready, Majesty,” she said. George flipped her a coin. Briar was nearly vibrating with impatience.
“Now can I go in my room?”
George laughed. “It’s your room, ain't it?”
Briar pounded up the stairs, George following at a more sedate pace. By the time he’d caught up, Briar had stopped at the door of his bedroom, staring inside.
George walked over to him and peered over his shoulder. There was a new ledge extension in the room’s small window; the shakkan sat on it.
Briar looked a little helpless. “What—” he began, looking over his shoulder at George.
“I noticed you couldn’t take your eyes off it at the market,” the man said, shrugging easily. “It seemed like a good birthday present.”
“It’s not my birthday,” Briar accused.
“I know,” George said.
“I don't know my birthday,” Briar accused.
“Well,” George said, “all the easier to surprise you with a birthday gift, then.”
Briar beamed at him, then walked into his room, taking the shakkan down with careful hands.
“Rosethorn said it’s not a project she’d pick for a beginner, but I talked her ‘round easily enough,” George explained, watching Briar inspect the tree. “You should probably take it to her, so she can teach you how to trim it and whatnot. Apparently those plants are damn fiddly.”
Briar nodded, his eyes still locked on the tiny pine. He tucked it under one arm and headed to the door. George moved to let him out.
Suddenly, a small arm snaked around George. “Thank you,” said Briar, careful not to bend the shakkan’s needles. “I love it.”
George smiled down at him, ruffling his hair. “It was either that or coal, so I guess I chose well. I know it’s not moss,” he continued, suddenly a little somber, “but I thought it would do the trick.”
Briar nodded, his eyes shining. “It does.”
“Good,” said George, pleased that he was pleased. Briar beamed again, that smile like parting clouds and sunshine, and went off to find Rosethorn.
After that, George got him a present every year on the same day. While neither of them called it his birthday, everyone else eventually followed suit. Briar didn’t mind. He liked that George had picked it for him; it something all parents did, after all.
*
“Why’re you wearing black?” Briar said, dropping into Tris’s room with cat-paw grace. He’d mostly come because he hadn’t seen her for three days and it had been raining unseasonably hard for two of them, but he’d long since learned the best way to get an answer out of Tris was to take a less direct route. “You hate black.”
Tris rolled over—she’d been lying on her stomach on her bed in a black wool dress that made Briar itchy just to look at—and glared up at him with red-rimmed eyes.
“You’ve no right being here,” she told him. “It isn’t proper.”
Briar shoved his hands in his pockets, leaned against the window frame, and waited. If she hadn’t wanted his company, she wouldn’t have left the window unlocked.
Tris sighed, a stray sob hitching her throat.
“Aunt Uraelle died,” she said bleakly, reaching for her spectacles and jamming them on her nose.
“I’m sorry,” Briar murmured, having learned it was what people said when someone croaked. “But I hated her. You did, too,” he reminded her.
Tris choked out a laugh. “I did,” she admitted shakily, sitting up on the bed. “But—” she swallowed. “I’ll have to leave. Again.”
“What?” Briar demanded, straightening off the windowsill. “Leave? You can’t leave, what about Eleni and Faithful and the garden—”
“I don’t want to,” Tris snapped, her eyes filling up. “They’re selling the house. They’ll send me to Uncle Murris and Aunt Emine, I heard them talking.” She sighed, a tear slipping down one puffy cheek. “Emine thinks she can beat it out of me.”
Briar growled. “There’s nothin’ to beat out, how many times do we have to tell ‘em?”
Tris gave him a watery smile that broke his heart. “We Chandlers have always been stubborn.”
He held out his hand. “C’mon, Coppercurls,” he demanded.
She rolled her eyes at him, but she was already moving off the bed. “Where’re we going?”
“Where else?” he drawled, imitating George as best he knew how. “To Eleni. She’ll fix it, because she fixes everything.”
*
Briar and Tris were never quite sure what Eleni and George said to the Chandlers. Eleni, wise to Tris’ tricks, left the doors and windows firmly closed—all they could hear was muffled yelling.
But, when the time came and Uraelle’s house was sold, Tris moved into the quiet house with the healer’s sign on the gate.
*
Eleni sighed. Lark smiled, eyes sympathetic.
“You look worn, dear,” she said, clasping the older woman briefly on the shoulder as she went into the kitchen.
Eleni ran her hand through her hair, watching Briar, Tris, and Rosethorn in her garden through the kitchen window. Briar was making her lavender plants tickle Tris as she weeded; Eleni just hoped that he didn’t get them too worked up.
“I am worn,” she admitted, accepting a cup of tea with a murmur of thanks. “I love the girl—she’s a delight to have in my home. But her magic is getting stronger every day, and it’s getting harder and harder for her to control it.” She shrugged a bit helplessly. “We just don’t know enough about it.”
Lark nodded, sipping her own cup of tea. “I think I may know someone, actually.”
Eleni looked at her. “May?”
Lark smiled. “Well, he’s a bit of a character. Rosie and I know him from Summersea, where we studied.”
“Summersea’s a bit far for a friendly visit,” Eleni pointed out.
“It is,” Lark agreed, her mouth in a slightly bitter line. “We chose Corus for that reason, you know. But he’s a good sort, tends to travel. He was learned enough already, mind, but he likes to study new things wherever he goes.”
“Well,” Eleni sighed, “that sounds like our Tris.” She gestured at the books that neatly and apologetically crowded almost every available surface of the sitting room. “It’s worth a try, at any rate. I’ve been thinking that she’s getting close to puberty.”
The two women shared a wince. They’d seen what unchecked magic did in a changing body. “I’ll get a hold of him,” Lark promised, “though I’ll warn that he’s a bit—untraditional.”
Eleni laughed, then gestured out the window. Tris had grown tired of the lavender’s assault and had correctly identified the mastermind of the attack. A small thundercloud hovered above Briar’s head, pouring rain on him wherever he went. He was scowling like a half-drowned cat, and Rosethorn was sitting on the ground, fanning herself as she laughed.
“I don’t think untraditional will be a problem.”
*
“Trisana—“
Niko—though no Niko she’d met had a tunic of red-gold silk that was at least six silver bits a yard—looked at her with far more understanding than she had ever seen on an adult’s face. It made her uncharacteristically shy, and she stared down at her dust-scuffed shoes.
“Tris,” she mumbled, watching a breeze sweep the dirt off her hose.
“Tris, then,” he said, with a gentleness in his voice that made her glace back up. He still had that all-knowing look, but he was smiling; she smiled back, tremulously, and his grin grew broader. “Tris, Eleni tells me that she has been teaching you how to meditate.”
“Yes,” she said cautiously. “It helps.”
“Helps?” he asked.
“Helps with—” she swallowed, suddenly defiant, and gave him a mulish look. “Well, you know, don’t you? It’s why you’re here, after all.”
That surprised a laugh out of him. “You are correct, Miss Chandler, but it helps if you explain it in your own words,” he informed her.
Ever deliberate, Tris thought through this explanation: she wasn’t sure if it made sense, but it had a certain rightness to it. He waited patiently, and she shrugged at him.
“Strange things happen when I get angry, or mad, or happy—mostly angry,” she admitted wryly. “Like hail in gardens, wind slamming doors shut, sparks of lightning where lightning oughtn’t to be. Sometimes—“ Tris gulped. Eleni had said it was nothing to be ashamed of, but it was hard to overcome years of fear— “sometimes I hear voices.”
“Voices?” Niko asked. “What do they talk about?"
She sighed. At least he didn’t sound afraid, or like he thought her mad. “All manner of thing. Buyers complaining about market prices going up, merchants complaining about market prices going down, drunks singing songs I shouldn’t know the words to, lovers saying silly things in dark corners—“
Niko laughed again. Tris was used to being laughed at, but she knew this was different. She liked making him laugh.
“Once we noticed—well, once Briar noticed that most of the things only happened when I was out of sorts, Eleni started teaching me how to meditate,” Tris continued. “It doesn’t fix everything, mind, but it helps.”
“I see,” Niko said. “Well, Tris, by this point you know you have some sort of unusual magic.”
“Yes,” she admitted. While Briar had planted the idea, it had taken Eleni some time to fully talk her around. She had seen the logic in the end. “Like Briar’s, not a normal Gift—magic in things, like his and Rosethorn’s is in plants. I’m not quite sure what my thing is, though. Eleni said she Sees it change fairly often.”
“Yes,” Niko repeated, steeping his fingers together. “I imagine she would. Let me guess: sometimes lightning, sometimes clouds, sometimes water ripples?”
Tris looked at him like he had grown a second head. “Breezes, not clouds,” she said, surprise making her tart. “But yes, that’s right.”
Niko smiled, as smug as Faithful when the cat convinced Tris to sneak him some sausage—never a difficult task, as the girl was enamored with his purple eyes. “I have quite the letter to write,” he said cheerfully.
Tris looked at him like he had grown a third head.
“I bet Salmalín of Carthak I could find a multi-elemental ambient mage before he could find a wild magic one,” he explained. “He owes me his first edition of Phyr’s Translations.”
Tris squeaked. It was Niko’s turn to look at her curiously. “Salmalín of Car—Numair Salmalín?”
“Yes,” Niko said, pleased. “You know of him?”
“Know of him—Chandler trades saffron and myrrh in Carthak, it’s our job to know of him. He’s a Black robe!"
“He is,” Niko agreed.
“Maybe the most powerful mage in the world!”
Niko’s mustache twitched. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I did win the bet, after all.”
Tris opened her mouth to inform him that a bet was hardly a test of magical prowess, but thought better of it. “Just who are you, anyway?”
Niko’s mustache twitched again. “Niklaren Goldeye, traveler, learner, collector of first edition texts. Mostly, I look for different types of magic, just to see what I can find.”
Tris raised a nearly invisible eyebrow. It was a trick she’d learned from Briar, who’d stolen it from George; Eleni complained that she was surrounded by a growing horde of tiny thief-kings. “And my magic is one to be found?”
He gave her a nod. “Lark said you were sharp.”
She blushed with the praise.
“But more than that, Tris,” he continued, “I think I can help you. I don’t have your magic, but I can teach you to keep it under control. You’ve got to be taught, you know.”
She looked at him, eyes practical behind her spectacles. “I know,” she said.
*
Niko’s original plan—for Tris to accompany him to Galla and then wherever he decided to go next—was rejected out of hand. “This is my home,” Tris said, lightning sparking in her hair and her lip trembling. “I don’t know you, Niklaren Goldeye.”
The mage sighed, grumbled, and rented out a small house near the Dancing Dove.
“The things I do for the next generation,” Niko complained to Lark. Lark smiled, pleased that Tris had found the help she—and Eleni—desperately needed. “It’ll be good for you, old man,” she teased. “It’ll get you outside. Really outside, not just staring at those scrying bowls on horseback all day.”
“I am so misunderstood,” Niko said in a tone that would be a wail in a less dignified man, and went to find Tris for their next lesson.
*
George tried to avoid habits, but he also knew habits were generally unavoidable. That was his excuse, anyway.
Every evening he could manage, he’d go to the parlor in the back of the Dancing Dove. It had been a storeroom, once, but he thought this was a better use for it.
Every evening—whether George managed it or not—Briar, Tris, Rosethorn, and Niko gathered in the cozy den. Tris and Briar would murmur to each other as they worked through lessons, or show each other passages from their books. Lark taught them all to weave; Eleni taught them some thread magic, with various levels of success; Alanna showed them a pattern dance, which they practiced with staffs.
George would join them or just watch, leaning on the wall and luxuriating in the peaceful scene.
He knew that, more often than not, he was a man that chose a rockier path. He didn’t mind, most days; he loved the harder things. He loved his court, loved being king, but he knew the toll it took on his body and mind. He loved Alanna, loved her like fire and steel, but he knew that she wasn’t his and could very well never be.
But this—he loved this, the tiny school that had blossomed in his court. He loved his boy, who always knew when he was around. Whenever he entered the classroom, Briar would turn and find him. They would wink at each other and Briar would return to his task, a tiny smile on his lips.
He loved his boy. He tended to love the harder things, George Cooper did, but he loved his adopted son, his Briar Cooper, and it was as easy as breathing.