A billow of some unusual scent washed over her; expensive silk rustled. Evvy uncovered her eyes. The lady sat on a low chair she had drawn up. She watched the girl over her veil with concerned eyes.

“Ikrum, you may have given too much potion the second time,” the lady said, resting a cool hand on Evvy’s cheek. “My dear child, welcome to my home.”

She had seen people around the nobility often enough to know how to act like one. She grabbed the lady’s hand and kissed it, struggling to sit up. “Thank you! I thought the Vipers would kill me, and Pahan Briar wouldn’t let me come live with you! If I’d known they were bringing me to you I wouldn’t have been so bad …” She kissed the lady’s hand again, and promised she would scrub every part of her that touched the lady with strong soap when she was free.

The lady gave a small gasp of polite surprise. “Do you mean to say you wished to accept my offer?”

Evvy nodded briskly, then clutched her temples. That was no show for the lady: her head banged like a drum.

“Something for her headache, if you please?” The warmth fled the lady’s voice as she looked at the healer, a mistress giving an order to a servant. The healer took a cup from the tray held by the maid, looked at Evvy, then added something to it from a vial on the tray. She swirled the contents of the cup, then crouched beside Evvy.

“How strong is her power?” the lady asked the healer.

The healer shook her head. “I feel only a residue, mistress. There are medicines I must give her to offset the magical draining. Did that boy teach you nothing?” the healer asked Evvy. “Young mages must not overextend. The damage could be permanent.”

“I thought they were going to hurt me,” Evvy grumbled. There was no help for it; she would have to drink whatever was in that cup, or the lady would be suspicious. She prayed it wasn’t a drug that would fuzz her mind again. “Is that for my head?”

The healer passed the cup to Evvy, who drank its contents with a prayer. The banging in her temples slowed; the headache eased.

“Would you like to stay?” the lady asked again. “I was told you were unwilling —”

“Pahan Briar and his teacher were mean to me,” Evvy complained, keeping to her role of greedy thukdak. “They made me do servant work like cooking and cleaning. I want the things you offered, and to live in a nice house. They couldn’t even teach me my own magic!” She thought of the look on her mother’s face when she told the auctioneer to get as much as he could when he sold Evvy, and her eyes filled with tears. It was a trick that never failed. “I think they were going to sell me for a slave!”

“Well, you are safe here,” the lady assured her, once more cupping her cheek with a cool, hennaed hand. “No one has the power to take you from me. Now. You must rest, and take the medicines the healer brings to you, and eat. You will stay here for the night, I think, and tomorrow you may choose your own room in the house.”

Evvy yawned. “I’m tired,” she admitted. “And awful hungry.”

“Very hungry,” the lady corrected her with a kind smile. “Only thukdaks say ‘awful hungry,’ and you are no longer a thukdak, my dear.” She rose from her chair.

Evvy knew what she had to do, and she did it. Rolling from her pallet, she crouched before the lady and kissed her slippered foot. “Thank you, great lady! May Lailan of the Rivers and Rain bless you!”

The lady smiled. “Healer, see that she gets those medicines and food.” She swept out of the room, Ikrum and the maid following her.

The healer remained, staring down at Evvy as the girl crawled back onto the pallet. “Soup, I suppose,” she commented dryly, “and it will take some time to assemble the medicines to restore your strength. Use the chamber pot in the corner for your business — the lady doesn’t like it when people just pee on the floors. You won’t be allowed to leave this room tonight. It’s magically shielded, in case the plant mage comes looking for you.” She walked out. When she closed the door behind her, Evvy heard the jingle of keys, and the clack of a turning lock.

Evvy stood and spat on the floor to get the taste of the lady’s shoe from her lips. A pitcher of water and a cup sat on a table: she drank straight from the pitcher, not caring if water spilled over her face and onto the floor. Then she sat cross-legged on the pallet, and began calling back the power she had hidden in the stone all around her.

This ought to be easy, she thought, smiling tightly. The stone around her was fairly new, not stubborn with ages of sitting in the same place. She would need much less effort to make it move.

As he walked down the side of the house, Briar caught the first ripples of unpleasant scent. Rotten meat, he judged after a sniff. Maybe they used fish as a fertilizer after all.

The walk between the outer wall and the long side of the house showed him the upper half of the wall was buried in green and going to pieces. Chunks of stone dropped off it on either side. In one spot, where a clump of deodar pines stood, the wall was shifting as the pines expanded outward. Briar went over to pat them and tell them they had done well. If the trees had been young girls they would have blushed at his praise; they quivered instead, and continued to grow. A large section of wall beside them collapsed into the alley beyond.

Briar halted: there was a glint of light beside the deodars’ roots. Their earth turned and tumbled with the trees’ swift growth, casting something out. Briar picked up the pale thing that had drawn his eye, and hurriedly dropped it.