“Will the enemy be able to cut through the vines?” Kanbab wanted to know.

“With a sharp enough sword or halberd,” Rosethorn said absently.

Briar grinned. “And then the stems will grow back three times as fast. And they will look for the one that chopped them, and grow straight through him.”

“Or around,” Rosethorn murmured.

“Or around,” Briar agreed. “And around, and around.”

“And the emperor will know you did this,” Kanbab said.

Rosethorn and Briar looked at each other. “Let him,” Rosethorn said.

The barrier was now two feet thick and three feet high. Thorns pulled themselves up the hillside, drawing stems with them. Roots shot down from the stems, lancing deep into the stony earth. More blossoms gave up seed that filtered to the ground among the thickly woven stems.

Briar waited for word from Rosethorn. She watched until the barrier was four feet tall and five feet wide on the road, and had climbed ten feet up along the hillside. No horse, mule, camel, yak, or human would be able to pass between the barrier and the river without losing skin, or between the river and the cliffs that edged it on the far side. They both knew the thorns would continue to grow for days, leaving the flanks of the hills on the north side of the road impassable by mount or by foot. No one would be crossing into or out of Gyongxe until Dokyi, Sayrugo, or those with whom they had trusted the opening spell came to clear the pass again.

Briar glanced at Jimut, who had turned gray under his dark brown skin.

“Jimut, mount up,” he told the rider. “And have a swallow of something, before you faint.”

“I never faint,” Jimut said, but he wobbled as he walked to his horse.

One of the other soldiers held the mount’s reins. It took Jimut two tries to get into the saddle.

“This will do, I think,” Rosethorn said, turning away from what they had set in motion.

“Good,” Briar said. “I want my breakfast.”

By midday, General Sayrugo and two hundred of her troops were gone, on their way northeast to warn the villages and get the people to safety in the temple fortresses. Briar, Rosethorn, and Evvy spent the afternoon with Parahan and Soudamini, playing with the cats, watching their troops exercise, reading maps of the Gyongxe basin, and refusing to speak of anything gloomy. Supper was a grand feast in the style of the Realms of the Sun. Captain Rana and his squad were invited as thanks for bringing Parahan to Gyongxe and his sister. There was juggling, sword and fire dancing, and music from the Realms and Gyongxe. In the end, Parahan carried Evvy back to her room in the fort. She had fallen asleep by the fire. The cats, used to these things, followed them.

Evvy woke as Parahan set her down to open her door. Since she was leaving at dawn, Rosethorn had moved her things down to the camp. Evvy now had the room to herself. Parahan held her up with one hand as he walked her inside.

“Are you coming to say good-bye to us in the morning?” he asked as she fumbled to feed the meowing cats.

Evvy shook her head. “I don’t like good-byes. They’re bad luck. I feel small enough about not going to fight.” She sat cross-legged on her bed.

“You helped fight all the way here,” Parahan told her. “And Rana may need you to help defend this place. Just take care of yourself and the cats, so I have my friends to come back to. Will you promise me?”

“All right. I promise.” Evvy grabbed Parahan’s sleeve. “And you look after Briar and Rosethorn? As much as they’ll let you.” She felt a bad quivering in her lip and in her eyelids.

Evvy turned over and buried her face in the pillows. She only looked up, and wiped her wet eyes on her sleeve, when she heard the door close.

That afternoon she had placed her small statue of Yanjing’s god of luck, Heibei, on the room’s shrine. Now she used one of the coals in the hearth to light a stick of incense. Applying that, she lit two more sticks in the jar that already stood on the shrine, then left hers with them. Putting her palms together, she bowed and prayed silently to the plump, grinning god. She knew that Parahan, Souda, Dokyi, and Rosethorn didn’t pray to Heibei, but she didn’t think the god would mind, and Briar always said he would take help from wherever he would get it. She wasn’t sure about General Sayrugo’s gods, but she included her as well. She’d heard Captain Rana’s warriors say that soldiers could always use a friendly god’s attention.

Once she had finished praying to Heibei, Evvy turned in the direction of the Sun Queen’s husbands. She knew exactly where each mountain’s peak rose behind the fort. Now, in the quiet of the room, with the cats settled on the bed without fuss, she even thought she could hear their voices. One of them especially had a kind and musical voice, a low, burring hum. She tried to copy it low in her chest, reaching for that magical sound. On and on she hummed, making a kind of prayer of it, a prayer to the Sun Queen’s husbands to look after her friends.

THE PLAIN OF GNAM RUNGA

SOUTH AND WEST, ALONG THE FOOT OF

THE DRIMBAKANG LHO

Jimut roused Briar at a painfully early hour to help him put on his new half armor. Briar donned the sling with his seed balls and other odds and ends himself, not wanting his helper to get in the habit of handling his mage’s gear. Breakfast was hot bread stuffed with spiced meat and rice, something he could eat as the soldiers dismantled and packed up his tent. He drank hot tea with Rosethorn, Parahan, and Soudamini, none of whom seemed to believe in chatter before sunrise. He was drinking a second cup of tea when Rosethorn bent down and lifted the strange pack she had gotten from Dokyi two days before: the thing she had to take someplace that Briar was not allowed to go. She slung it on her chest in place of her own bundle of deadly plant magics and ran her fingers over it, her face thoughtful.