Stoneslicer wasn’t even looking at him, but at Evvy. “Come forward, girl,” he ordered. Fumbling in his belt-purse, he produced a round piece of obsidian. He raised it in his hand. Evvy backed up. “I need to see if you are truly gifted and how far your talents extend,” he said coldly. “I cannot rely on the testimony of two green mages as to your power.” The look he gave Briar would have curdled milk.

Once more Briar locked his hands behind his back. He was very unhappy to realize he didn’t want to give Evvy up to this man. Jebilu didn’t know who Evvy was or where she’d come from. If he had a kinder side, Briar had yet to see it. While none of his or the girls’ teachers had ever laid a hand on them — Rosethorn’s threats to the contrary — Briar knew some teachers believed that beatings made lessons stick. Could he trust Jebilu not to hurt Evvy in body or spirit?

If he beats her, I’ll kill him, Briar promised himself, trying not to remember that in all likelihood he would be gone. And a real stone mage has to be a better teacher for her than a kid green mage. Doesn’t he?

Jebilu pressed the obsidian circle to Evvy’s forehead. For a moment nothing happened: then the stone blazed white. Its glare was as intense as the light Briar had seen Evvy give off the day before.

Jebilu muttered something and the light faded. He tucked the circle into his belt-purse and drew out an egg-shaped clear crystal. “Bring light to this,” he ordered, holding it out to Evvy.

She didn’t say “Oh, that” — she simply touched it. A seed of light appeared in the crystal’s depths, growing until the whole stone gave off a steady glow.

Jebilu closed his hand around the crystal. By the time he returned it to his belt-purse, it had gone dark again. He offered her a small brownish-gold globe stippled with black marks. “Bring heat to this,” he ordered.

Evvy took it, then handed it back. “That isn’t real stone,” she objected. “It’s hard, but it isn’t stone.”

Jebilu snorted. “Petrified wood,” he grumbled.

“May I see?” Briar asked. Coal, he knew, was made of plants, but he hadn’t realized that wood could be made stone.

Jebilu scowled at him. “This is a delicate magical tool, Pahan Moss,” he snapped. “Not a toy for curiosity seekers.”

Briar bit the inside of his cheek. He counted silently to fifty in Imperial, to keep from telling this man to put the globe someplace uncomfortable.

Jebilu put the petrified wood in his purse and pulled out a dirty white stone. “Use this. What is your name?”

“Evumeimei,” the girl replied, taking the stone. “Evumeimei Dingzai, of Yanjing.” She turned the stone over in her fingers. “There’s cracks in this. I might break it.”

“No one can break diamond stones, Evumeimei Dingzai of Yanjing.” Jebilu made her name sound like an insult. “Heat it up. Pahan Moss told me you can do it.”

Evvy sighed, and closed her eyes. Briar saw the pale brilliance of her magic appear at the center of her forehead, lancing into the diamond stone in a tight stream. She had practiced last night, he realized. She went home and practiced, and got better. And she was still alive, so she had been able to keep her power under control. He felt an absurd sense of pride in her flower in his chest.

Her magic entered the stone. To Briar’s eyes the heart of the stone shimmered with it. The light began to ricochet inside the rock, bouncing through an internal network of cracks and faces. Slowly real, visible white light began to pour from it. “It’s not heating up,” Evvy said. Sweat gathered at her temples.

“Try harder,” ordered Jebilu crossly.

Scowling first at him, then at the stone in her hand, Evvy increased the flow of her power. Briar watched uneasily as her magic ricocheted faster through the stone’s heart. “Evvy, maybe you should let this go —” he began.

“Silence!” barked Jebilu. “You are not to teach her, so let me test her as I see fit!”

Evvy flinched and lost control of her power. It flooded the stone. The crystal blazed, then shattered. Evvy cried out and dropped the pieces on the floor. She was hurt: blood welled from a cut in her palm.

Briar ducked into his stall. He yanked a bandage and a bottle of cutbane from his kit. Grasping her bleeding hand by the wrist, Briar bit into the cork that sealed his lotion and yanked it free. He poured the liquid over her wound.

Though she was trembling, she still found the nerve to quip, “Don’t you make anything that doesn’t stink?” The flow of blood thinned, the slashed skin in her hand closing under the Cutbane’s influence.

“I like aloe, and I’ll thank you not to insult my stuff.” Briar wrapped the bandage firmly around her hand. When he felt he had enough layers of cloth around her palm, he ordered the linen to part, and the loose threads to weave themselves into the rest of the bandage. It wouldn’t come off now unless cut.

Finishing, he saw Jebilu on his knees, holding the three diamond fragments up to the sun that streamed from a nearby window. One was smeared with blood. The other two glittered with fire like a faceted crystal, only more intensely. Jebilu’s face was gray under its sallow tone. He wrapped the three pieces in a handkerchief, and stowed them in his purse.

She’s stronger than he is, Briar realized, uneasy. And he knows it.

What would Rosethorn have done if he’d been stronger when he came to her? Briar double-checked the fastening of the bandage, stifling a snort. No one was stronger than Rosethorn. Even if Briar had been stronger than his teacher, he didn’t have Rosethorn’s years of study and practice.