First straighten out the mess, Rosethorn’s voice said in his mind. You won’t be able to find your ankles with both hands and a lamp otherwise.

“Here’s how we start,” he called loudly. All conversations stopped. Even those who were moaning fell silent. Urda save me, Briar thought, they are actually listening! He didn’t try to savor the moment, but rattled off instructions. He’d already found with Evvy that if he didn’t give her time to argue, she wouldn’t. He put that knowledge to use with the Camelguts, ordering some to move the pallets into rows and others to clear away the mess of jars, rags, crates, and barrels that littered the floor.

“Why are the doors and windows covered?” he asked one of the Camelguts.

The boy, who was about Briar’s age, shrugged. “We got tired of local kids peeking at us all the time.”

“But it’s not that this is a secret place?” Briar wanted to know. The Camelgut shook his head. “Then uncover them,” Briar ordered. “Let’s get some light and air in here.”

The Camelgut pulled aside the rags that covered the windows and doors and secured them: now some light and fresh air entered the room. A group of three was sent with jars and handfuls of sand to fountains, where they had orders to scour the jars with sand, fill them with water, and bring them back. The fire was built up and trash taken outside. Even with the windows uncovered, the den was still shadowy. Two Camelgut boys made rough torches and thrust them into holders on the walls.

As the gang members cleaned up, Briar inspected each victim. Those whose bruises and cuts didn’t look serious were ordered to clean up or sit on a bench against the wall. Dealing with the less seriously hurt was easy for Briar — growing up in the slums of Hajra, he’d learned about all kinds of injuries and wounds, including the ones that might eventually kill someone. In Summersea’s epidemics he had seen how the healers sorted groups of the sick, treating the worst off first. He found those now, and got to work.

Briar could do little for the boy whose forehead was visibly dented, except make him comfortable. Sometimes people recovered from such injuries; sometimes they didn’t. He moved on to another boy, squinting as he tried to see the extent of his injuries. The nearest torch burned poorly, dumping smoke into the air. Briar’s eyes stung. It was hard to tell if he was looking at a mammoth bruise or dirt on his patient’s shin. His hands told him it was a bruise, but it would have been nice to see the difference.

That gave him an idea. “Evvy,” he said.

“Yep.” The girl crouched beside him, careful not to jar the contents of the basket she carried.

“Put that down.” She obeyed as Briar grubbed in his breeches pocket. He found his worry stone, a small crystal egg he liked to hold whenever he thought he was about to say or do anything stupid. Its coolness seemed to draw the anger from his veins whenever he remembered to use it. Rosethorn said it worked because thinking of the stone instead of the thing that upset him simply broke the chain that fed a rising temper.

He wasn’t angry now, and he could always come by another worry stone. “See this?” He held it up.

“Ooh.” She reached for it with eager fingers. “It’s happy.”

Briar rolled his eyes. Why did girls get honey-sweet over things that weren’t even alive? Sandry would coo like that over a spool of silk thread, Daja over a piece of well worked brass. Even Tris, who was sensible for a skirt, turned silly over a bit of ball lightning, giving the thing a name for as long as it lasted. “I don’t care if it’s the Queen of the Solstice,” he informed Evvy tartly. “But look, it’s a clear stone, you’re a stone mage, right?” He fumbled for the words to guide her to do her first planned magic spell. “I bet if you really, really concentrated, just, oh, poured your whole mind into that stone? I bet if you did, you could make it light up like a lamp. A real lamp, one everybody can see.”

“Oh, that,” Evvy said scornfully. “That’s not work.” She gripped the crystal. Suddenly light blazed through her fingers. She opened her hand. The stone gave off a bright, steady glow.

Briar swallowed. Of his foster-sisters, Daja and Tris had learned to make crystals into lamps, Daja because fire was part of her smith-magic, Tris because lightning was part of hers. They had done it once by accident, making a night light for Sandry. After that it took each of them weeks to get the knack of it so they could do it as they needed. No one he’d known could make stone glow with no effort at all. He’d thought it would be possible, given Evvy’s magic and the fact that he’d already known mages who could get stones to hold light or fire, but it was one thing to think it possible and another to see the results of “Oh, that.”

“Is it hot?” he asked.

“Nope.” Evvy put the stone beside the boy they were supposed to be treating.

Reminded of his patient, Briar went over him again. The leg bruise shrank under his bruise ointment, but Briar could feel a bone chip that remained under the boy’s skin. Cutbane, spread neatly over the splits in his left eyebrow and cheek, drove off infection and worked to close the wounds. Next Briar put an uninjured Camelgut to work cutting the wooden staves to a proper length for splints. As he straightened the arm, Briar said to Evvy, “I thought you never used magic before yesterday.”

“I didn’t,” Evvy said, watching him with interest.

The boy who’d cut the splints gave them to Briar. “How’d you make my stone light, if you never did magic before?” Briar asked as he splinted the broken forearm.