“Who’ll look after her?” demanded Briar.

“The people who work up here, for now,” said Rosethorn.

“But they aren’t careful. They just poke the sick ones and go.”

Rosethorn frowned. Briar huddled into his clothes, expecting to get the rough side of her tongue. She looked to be in that kind of mood.

Instead she took a breath and resettled the strings that held her mask around her ears, getting her temper in hand. “They’ll look after your friend as well as anyone. There is work for plant mages, and it must be done now.”

Briar put his cups down with a sigh and followed her out. They passed three other large rooms like theirs on the way to the inner staircase. Those wards were filled too. More than half of the people who worked in them wore the blue habits of the Water Temple, a sight that comforted Briar. Though the new healer in their room, Atwater’s daughter, seemed all right, he had never met any of the others who worked in Urda’s House. What he did know, from Rosethorn’s tales of arguments with them over the winter, did not leave him with much confidence in the locals.

“Why serve here, if they don’t like poor people?” he asked Rosethorn as they descended the stairs.

She smiled crookedly. “Some care. Some do it because it’s fashionable these days to take an interest in the Mire,” she explained. “Some because it’s the only work they can get. Between guild charity funds and the duke, they’re paid a decent wage. Some cared once, but they’ve seen so much poverty that their hearts broke.”

There was a sobering thought, Briar reflected, that you could love something and lose that love. Would he ever run out of love for green things? He brushed Rosethorn’s sleeve with his fingertips so lightly that she didn’t feel it.

No, he thought with a smile. I’ll never run out of that.

They passed the second-floor landing and the ground floor, ducking around people who carried supplies upstairs. At last they came to a vast cellar. This floor too was busy: storerooms of all kinds lined one side of a stone-walled corridor. Opposite them were the furnace and pump rooms that got water to the wards.

Rosethorn headed straight to the last storeroom and entered. Briar, following, saw a large, brightly lit chamber lined from ceiling to floor with shelves. More racks of tall, freestanding shelves covered the floor. Jars of medicines sat on them, each container bearing a light coating of dust.

“One of their people—who fled two days ago—sold all the medicines I brought here over the last eighteen months,” said Rosethorn, surveying the jars. “And the medicines I freshened up when I visited. Here’s what’s left, and it’s more than a year old. If I could find her I would … well, never mind. This is what we have. You and I will restore or add as much virtue as we can to every shred and drop.”

Briar’s heart sank as he looked at all the shelves. “Can’t somebody else do it?”

“Not like we can.” Rosethorn took fat pottery jars marked Willowbark from the shelves closest to her and placed them on a workbench at the front of the room.

“Can we just get fresh from home?” asked Briar. This looked to be a long, dull, thankless chore.

“The whole city wants fresh medicines. Do you think Urda’s House is at the top of the Lord Mayor’s list?” Rosethorn shook her head. “Stop dancing, and get to work.”

Picking up a knife from the workbench, Briar used it to break wax seals and pry the stoppers from the jars. The bark inside was dry, brittle, and scentless. “This is more than a year old,” he announced, testing the bark with his magic, trying to judge how long it had been parted from its trees. “Like maybe two years.”

“Of course it is,” Rosethorn said. The sarcasm in her voice was not for him. “Why should this task have anything easy about it?” She yanked two large baskets from under the worktable, one for each of them. “Dump the jars into these—we’ll do more if we go by basket instead of jar.”

Once the baskets were full, Rosethorn lowered herself to the floor in a tailor’s seat. “What we do is become the queen tree, the one from which all other willows are born—”

“Is there such a queen?” Briar asked, intrigued.

Rosethorn gave him a stern look. “The willows believe it, and they’re the ones that matter. May I continue?” Briar nodded. She gave him an extra moment, just to be sure, then resumed. “Our magic will be the queen’s sap that we put into this bark, to make it young and strong again.”

She removed a vial from her pocket. It held the oil he called “Weigh anchor,” because it was used to get a magical working started; Rosethorn named it “Facilitator.” She had taught him to blend carnation, lotus, and myrrh oils in just the right way, so their powers of strength, purification, and the penetration of obstacles were at their height. She had even given him a rare compliment on his most recent batch, telling him she could feel it from across the room. Now, knowing what came next, he offered his hands.

She put a drop at the center of each palm, a third between his eyes. He felt them like tiny suns, their strength mingling with the magic in his blood. Rosethorn did the same to herself, then drew her basket onto her lap, steadying it with her oiled palms. Briar sat on the floor, his legs to either side of his own basket, placed his hands flat on the sides, then closed his eyes.

She towered in his mind’s vision. He’d forgotten how it had taken his breath to see the tree-giant she was inside her pearly skin. He was stunned now, awed and a little frightened.