“Thukdaks have no honor, everybody knows that,” she retorted.

“What a thukdak?

“Me. I’m a thukdak. Those beggars over there, they’re thukdaks. Don’t you know anything?” Evvy shook her head at Briar’s ignorance.

“Ah,” he said, enlightened. “Back home we’re called ‘street rats.’” He gave the name first in Imperial, then translated it awkwardly into Chammuri.

“Belbun’s good eating,” Evvy said, using the Chammuri word for rat. “Nobody wastes a belbun meal on thukdaks.”

Briar opened his mouth to ask if she always thought and talked of food, then closed it. How could he have forgotten what it was like, to always have an empty belly? What else had he ever thought of, besides just staying alive, until his arrival at Winding Circle?

“Do you think you have no honor?” he asked Evvy. “You’d better find something to swear by, because I won’t let you go till you do.”

Evvy rolled her eyes. “I swear by my cats and by Kanzan the Merciful, Lady of Healing, goddess of Yanjing,” she told him, face and voice overly patient. “I’d spit on it, too, but it would just go all over my face.

Briar looked at her for a moment, trying to see if she meant to trick him. It occurred to him, suddenly, how nearly impossible it was to tell if someone lied or not by looking into the person’s eyes. He would have to trust his instincts after all.

He released his hold on the reeds and madder plants. The reeds unwound from the madder stems, then wove themselves into their basket frames, the leaves and stems they had grown dropping away. Most were grateful to return to their former, unliving state. They had forgotten how much effort sprouting things and sinking roots took. The madder plants, firmly rooted and determined to stay that way, drew away from Evvy.

She sat up, rubbing circulation back into her arms and legs. “Third hour after dawn,” she told Briar wearily, and spat on the ground next to her to seal the promise. The madders instantly drew her wet spittle into their roots, buying more green time above the ground, even in the market shadows.

“Here.” Grubbing in his pocket, Briar found a silver dav coin, worth three of the copper ones. “Find a hammam and clean up,” he ordered, holding the coin out. Evvy grabbed it, but Briar didn’t let go. “Hair, ears, neck, you name it, it gets washed between now and tomorrow morning. Understand?” Evvy nodded, and Briar gave her the coin. “Have you any other clothes?”

There again was that too-patient, don’t-you-know-anything? expression on her face. “This is my best thing,” she replied, and looked at the front of her tunic. It was covered with grease from the food she carried. “Maybe I can wash it at the hammam.”

“Don’t bother,” said Briar. He hadn’t lived with Sandry for years without gaining some knowledge of cloth and grease stains. “I’ll find something.” All the Living Circle temples kept clothing for the poor. If the Earth temple wouldn’t give him any, Briar would find a secondhand clothes dealer. Until he could hand the girl off to Jebilu Stoneslicer, he stood in the place of her teacher, which meant he was responsible for her needs. At least, that was how Rosethorn and the girls’ teachers had always acted.

“It would be nice to have something good,” Evvy remarked wistfully.

“All right. My house, tomorrow, third hour of the morning. And Evvy,” he said as she turned to go. She looked back at him. “I found you today. I can find you whenever I want. Don’t go thinking you can disappear and keep that coin. If I have to track you, you won’t like what comes of it.”

Evvy spat on the ground, to remind him that she’d already promised, and trotted up the path to Princes’ Heights. A hundred yards away she turned around. Cupping her hand around her mouth she yelled, “Who are you, anyway?”

Briar grinned. “Briar Moss,” he called back.

“Tomorrow, Briar Moss,” the girl yelled. She raced on up the path.

4

Briar was just two blocks from home, the Earth temple and his house in plain sight, when someone whistled shrilly, making the narrow street ring. He looked for the source and saw a stocky girl in a Camelgut green sash trotting toward him.

“Pahan, we need help,” she said when she reached him. “It’s Hammit, that you gave the medicine for.” Briar remembered the boy whose facial burn he had treated and nodded. “We can’t wake him up,” the girl continued, her brown eyes worried. “Looks like he was jumped and hit on the head, but nobody saw who done it. This way.” She led him down the Street of Wrens.

When she turned into a dark gap between the houses, Briar halted. “I can’t take my horse down there, and I must look plain silly if you think I’ll leave him out here.”

The girl undid her green sash and used it to tie the horse to a nearly dry fountain. She opened a cock in the stone over the spout, filling the basin with enough water for the animal to drink before she closed it. “Nobody will dare touch him, tied up with my sash,” she assured Briar.

He dismounted, using his motion to hide the fact that he was checking the placement of his knives. Then he took his mage’s kit from his saddlebag. “After you, Duchess,” he said with a gallant bow. Girls usually giggled and blushed when he teased them, but not this one. She gave him a half-smile, her mind clearly elsewhere, and led him down the narrow passageway, into a small alley, and down a stair into a basement.