3

Rosethorn had set the table for midday when Briar came in. She watched, startled, as he took food out of the pantry and set it on a tray: a cooked sausage, several thick slices of cheese, hardboiled eggs, cold slices of fried eggplant, and flatbread. Glancing at the table, he saw she’d been to the souk that morning. Lamb dumplings steamed in a bowl next to mutton-and-barley stew. “Can I have these?” he asked, hooking three dumplings onto his tray, then blowing on his scorched fingers. “I won’t eat any.”

Rosethorn propped her fists on her hips as he grabbed oranges from a bowl. “Boy, what in Mila’s name are you doing?” she demanded.

“Start without me,” Briar said, ignoring her question. “I’ll be right back.” He put a clean drying cloth over his shoulder and carried his tray to the roof.

He glanced at the loomhouse. Again there was a quick flutter on its higher roof, as if someone had just ducked below the rim. Briar grinned again and set tray and cloth on the bench in plain view. The many plants around him craned in, trying to see if there was anything on the tray they would like.

“Stop it,” Briar chided. “That’s people food. Or cat food. You get more than enough food of your own. I need one of you to go back inside with me. I want to know if anyone comes to take this.”

If there was a discussion — he was never sure if the plants talked among themselves — the Yanjing jasmine won. It extended a creeper that grew longer and longer to keep up as he went back inside. It followed him all the way to the table, and busied itself twining between his chair and Rosethorn’s, as if they formed a trellis.

Briar dished up a bowl of stew for himself. “Whatever you feed them to move them along, it sure makes them active,” he commented. “I hope they’re worth all the fuss you’re making over them.”

“Yes.” Rosethorn cleaned her bowl with a piece of bread. Putting so much of her power into so many plants, bringing them through a year’s growing cycle in days, made her eat well at every meal without gaining a pound. “Who else are we feeding, anyway?”

Briar told her about his morning’s adventure as he ate. After they finished, he washed the dishes with no alarm from the jasmine. Rosethorn went to run errands while Briar got the vine to follow him into their workroom.

Rosethorn had said nothing one way or another, but Briar knew she hoped to leave Chammur before the autumn rains began, if that was at all possible. Now seemed to be as good a time as any to start making the protection balls that he and Rosethorn liked to carry, for use in case they were robbed or kidnapped on the road.

As the Yanjing jasmine laid a stem across his shoulders like a friendly arm, Briar took down the jars of seeds he required and began to mix their contents. The original idea for the balls had come during a pirate attack on Winding Circle nearly four years before. To protect the side of the temple city vulnerable to landing parties in the cove, they had put together seed mixes made entirely of thorny plants, and used their magic to make the contents grow explosively, with dreadful results to anyone standing on them.

Since then Briar and Rosethorn had refined the mixture, making variations for people who had no magic, and creating mixtures that would perform different tasks. Some of the balls that Briar put together now simply produced ropes to tie up those close to where they grew. Some grew the kinds of vine that over time destroyed the mortar that held stone and brick together. Others, the deadliest, included the seeds of plants that Rosethorn and Briar had cultivated specially to produce long, viciously sharp thorns.

Laying out squares of cloth already prepared for magical formulas, Briar heaped his seed mixtures at their centers: crimson for the killer thorns, gray for the wall-destroying ivys, and yellow for the rope vines. To each he added a touch of the tonic he and Rosethorn used to speed up a plant’s growth, then tied each ball shut with silk thread. He split the finished balls in half, stowing his in the outer pockets of his mage kit, and leaving Rosethorn’s on her worktable, partly as a hint. He didn’t think he wanted to be stuck in Chammur over the winter either.

Once that was done, Briar turned to his own work. The miniature trees needed attention: his stall at Golden House would be open for him in a few days, and he wanted them to look their best. He and Rosethorn lived on the money they brought in.

One of the miniature figs had become difficult. Briar finally gave it a choice: either it could change the shape of its left-side branches to fit the design he showed it, or he would force them to take the shape by wrapping them with wire. The fig was still arguing when the jasmine vine tapped Briar’s arm urgently. It seemed his stray cat had come to the rooftop to feed.

“You need that bend to draw fertility to the house. One way or another, you’re going to be shaped,” he told the fig. “We can do it my way or your way, but we are going to do it.” He climbed to the roof in silence. His clothes didn’t even rustle: his foster-sister Sandry, who had woven and sewn them for him, had included that in the cloth as a joke about his former life as a thief.

Evvy had watched the food, and watched and watched it, sure there was a trap laid somewhere. She left her post once to make water; as soon as she finished she hurried back. The Karang Gate clock rang the hour twice. No one else came to the roof of the house, and that bounty just sat there, surrounded by plants. What if the jade-eyed boy had left while Evvy had tended to her business in a private corner? He could have, easily. The woman had left before the clock even struck once.