He began to count, Evvy to inhale, hold, exhale. For a little while nothing happened. Briar continued to count as first her fingers, then her nose twitched. Suddenly she relaxed, and brilliant white light flared all around her, half-blinding Briar.

“Stop!” he cried. “Stop it right there!”

“Now what?” she demanded, opening her eyes. “I almost had it!”

“You did have it,” he reassured her, breaking his protective circle. “I just wasn’t ready. Wait here.”

“I want a drink of water,” she complained.

“Go get it, then.” I’m no good at this stuff, he thought as he fetched his mage’s kit and she got her drink. If I was, I’d be prepared for all these problems instead of hopping in and out of my circle. “Now look,” he said when they resumed their places and he’d closed the circle again, “I want you to do it exactly like you did it before I yelled, all right? Only first —” He drew a bottle from his kit and poured a drop onto his index finger. The moment he dabbed it on each eyelid, the scene before him went darker, as if he’d put clear brown glass over each eye. Even the hard silver-white flare of the protective circle and the bubble of power around them faded to the lightest of sparkles.

“What’s that for?” she asked.

“It helps me see,” he replied absently. “Now, do the breathing. Try to go to that same place in your head.”

Evvy closed her eyes obediently as Briar began to count. For a short while the only sounds came from outside as women talked, children shouted, and an unhappy donkey brayed somewhere in the distance. Briar watched Evvy.

First she hitched and scratched her hip. Then she sneezed. He could tell she was thinking as her eyes shuttled rapidly behind closed lids. Suddenly she went still. Her power blazed out to fill their protective bubble.

“I’m gonna touch your eyelids now. Don’t yelp.” Briar gently brushed her eyelids with a sight oil to help those who could not do so to see magic. “Open them. Try to keep your mind clear.”

Evvy slowly opened one eye, then the other. The brilliance of the magic around them made her blink rapidly; her eyes began to tear. Slowly the blaze of her power faded as she lost the contact she had with it.

“What was that?” she wanted to know, rubbing her eyes with her fist.

“That was your magic,” Briar informed her. “We’re going to start you learning to grip all that close, so you don’t leak it every whichway. And if you can’t see it, you’ve got to find a way for you to know it’s about, and what shape it’s in, and what you can do with it. Did you feel anything before I made you open your eyes?”

Evvy yawned. “No,” she said, rubbing her nose. “Am I supposed to?”

“There’s something,” Briar insisted. “Warmth, cold, a tingly feeling. The mage always knows. Now close your eyes and let’s try it again.”

“I don’t want to,” Evvy whined. “I’m bored.”

“Sometime I’ll ask you what you want. This isn’t that time,” Briar retorted. Then he bit his lip. I open my mouth and Rosethorn pops out, he thought ruefully. Next thing you know, I’ll threaten to hang her in the well. “Close your eyes,” he told Evvy firmly.

The lady nibbled a fig as she eyed Orlana. “You tried to seize the girl yesterday,” she remarked. “You were burned for your pains, and you fled without taking her.”

Orlana, her nose raw, her eyes bloodshot and puffy, her breath still rattling in her chest, nodded sullenly. She should have ignored her orders to report to the lady if anything happened. Ikrum wouldn’t have made her come here — he was half-terrified of the woman as it was.

“And now you say you left your watcher’s post because of flowers.” The lady’s fingers hovered over a second fig.

“You make it sound like a little thing!” Orlana cried. “I couldn’t breathe, it was so bad!” Silently she cursed Ikrum in Shaihun’s name. The desert winds should scrape him to the bone for having brought the lady into their lives.

“I am sure you thought the inconvenience was serious.” The lady surveyed Orlana from top to toe. “And this pahan told you that it was necessary to court the stone mage?”

“For other gangs. He says he doesn’t want Vipers courting her at all.” She was thirsty, but there was no point to asking for something to drink. The lady would never permit a thukdak to handle her cups.

The lady inspected one of her many rings. “The courtship need not come from Vipers,” she murmured. “As for your tale of giant roses — though I have warned you all that drugs will only keep you in the gutter, it is clear that you at least did not pay heed. Your tale is simply an excuse for drug intoxication, and I refuse to accept it.”

“I don’t care if you do or not, takameri,” Orlana spat, fed up. “I wasn’t taking drugs and that’s what happened. Who are you to go questioning me and what I say? You never gave your blood to the gang. You never gave up family for the gang. You —”

The lady raised a finger. The mute walked out of the gallery and dropped his bowstring over Orlana’s head, twisting it deftly. Orlana, fighting wildly, tried to get her fingers under it and failed.

As the mute stepped away from her corpse, the lady beckoned to one of the other galleries on the edges of the garden. Her armsmaster Ubayid came out of the dark room where he’d been waiting and listening. When he was close enough, he knelt on the garden flagstones and bowed his head to her.