Flick blinked heavy-lidded eyes. “No, Dedicate,” she said obediently. “How does all this work?”

“To craft spells that unlock the nature of this disease, a mage needs samples of matter from the sick person. It’s drawn from the inside of the mouth, sores or sweat, blood, dung, and urine.” Rosethorn sat next to Flick. “For you, the blood part is easy.” She pressed a cloth square to Flick’s mouth, where a crack in her lower lip bled sluggishly. “Bag,” Rosethorn told Briar.

He took the small bag that came with the square by the edges and held it open. When Rosethorn dropped the square in, he pulled the drawstring tight. “Stick out your tongue,” Rosethorn ordered Flick.

Briar watched, holding and closing the bags, as Rosethorn pressed a square to Flick’s coated tongue and made her blow her nose into another. She helped the street rat into the privy for dung and urine. Once the last sample had been gathered, Rosethorn placed all of Flick’s bags on the table and lifted the ink and brushes from the box. “You can do this,” she told Briar. “Write the name of the person who gave the sample on the tags, and the date. Be neat.” She picked up another stack of bags on a stone tray. “I’ll get my samples now.”

As she went into the washroom, Briar began to fill out the labels, grinning. All winter, as he struggled to learn to write clearly, Rosethorn had insisted on doing her own labels. That she wanted him to do them now meant his work finally pleased her. Carefully he inscribed Flick, Fifth Day, Sap Moon, KF—for after the fall of the Kurchal Empire, the calendar used by all residents of the Pebbled Sea—1036 on each scrap of parchment. Flick, her head on her arms, watched Briar with sleepy fascination.

“Ain’t you never seen a market scribe do this?” Briar wanted to know.

“Everybody expects them to write. I never knew anybody myself that could.”

Briar grinned. “It ain’t easy, but it’s fun,” he replied, unable to resist a small boast.

Rosethorn watched as he labeled her samples, then gave him more squares, bags, and a tray. “Your turn,” she ordered. “Use the thorn to get blood, do your best with your dung and urine. Don’t take forever. I want these to reach Winding Circle before dark.”

Briar frowned at the tray. “What about them soldiers in the other quarantine?” he wanted to know. “Do we get theirs?”

Rosethorn shook her head. “They’ve been trained specially for times like this. They do their own. Now hop to it.”

When he returned, Rosethorn placed all the samples in the smaller box, then replaced the lid. It clicked into place as she slid it onto the bottom half of the container. When she tested the lid, it refused to come off. The box shone bright silver in Briar’s eyes, a sign that the strong protection spells had gone to work.

“How will they get at the samples?” he asked as Rosethorn carried the box to the inside door.

She rapped on it hard. “It’s a lock-spell,” she replied. “When this is delivered to Winding Circle, those who study the disease have the counter-spell to open it.”

“Scorching,” murmured Flick. “Wish we’d had a lock-spell when the Mudrunners raided our den.”

There was a rattling on the other side of the door, and the lower flap opened. Rosethorn put the small box on the floor and gave it a shove. Once it had gone through the opening, the flap closed. The bolt slid into place as the door was locked again.

“Scorching?” asked Rosethorn, lifting one graceful eyebrow. “Mudrunners?”

“Scorching means ‘good,’” Briar translated. “Mudrunners is a Mire gang.”

“Charming,” Rosethorn said drily. “The language I speak is so drab by comparison.” Pouring a cup of fruit juice, she gave it to Flick.

Flick scowled. “Why do I have to keep drinking this muck?” she demanded.

“You’re feverish,” Rosethorn told her, more patient than she had ever been with Briar. “You’re drying out. Get too dry, and you won’t be able to keep fighting the sickness. Look at it this way, it’s better than willowbark tea.” Coaxing, joking, and being firm by turns, she got the sick girl to finish the juice, then helped her back to bed. Once she had lain down, Rosethorn produced a jar of aloe balm and began to smooth it into Flick’s pox-mottled skin.

Briar had seen Rosethorn be gentle as she tied up bean plants, coaxed grapevines to wind more firmly around a trellis, or patched a tree that had lost a limb in a storm. This was the first time he’d seen her use that delicate touch on a human. She could have been the girl’s mother, had Flick’s mother loved her kid, he thought.

Flick dozed, lulled by silence and Rosethorn’s kind touch.

“Niko said you don’t like people,” Briar remarked softly when Rosethorn came back to the table.

“I don’t like nursing them,” was her quiet reply.

“But you go to Urda’s House and the healers at the City Temple every month,” he pointed out. “Every month, rain or no. And you always take stuff—”

“I check medicines and replenish them if they are running low,” Rosethorn told him. “Especially here, where their goods are the cheapest money can buy, I spell their medicines to the greatest strength magic can give. I don’t go near the sick.”

“If you’re magicking stuff, why didn’t you make me stay and watch?”

She smiled crookedly. “Boy, I teach you six and seven days a week at times. Every now and then we both need a rest.”