Trembling, she stared up into his face. “If I hadn’t—” The words caught in her throat. She tried again. “If our ship hadn’t sunk, if I wasn’t trangshi now—”
“Daja—”
She shook her head. “I would have gone all my life thinking I was wrong. Thinking I was dirty to want to do lugsha things. Being a bad Trader. Being a bad Kisubo.”
The man shook his head. Outside, rain whipped the air. “Don’t blame your people. They live hard lives. Their beliefs help your people to stay together, to defend themselves against lords and merchant guilds.”
“I know that,” she admitted. “But how many Trader kids are like me, wanting to learn lugsha work?”
“‘Kids’?” he asked with a smile.
“Something a boy I live with says.”
“Well, ‘kid’“—he winked, drawing a smile from Daja—”after we get well into things like charcoal, coal, different hammers and different tongs, you may think the Traders have the right of it after all.” He put his hands on his hips and looked her over. “We start by finding you a proper apron. And you might consider wearing clothes you don’t mind soiling. You’re going to get very dirty at this.”
A moment ago she would have been glad to reject anything Trader, like her scarlet mourning. Now she blinked with dismay. He was right; she knew he was, but … She smoothed her hand over a sleeve. She would ask Lark. Lark would know what to do.
Frostpine resettled his belt. “Kirel’s aprons and mine are too big. We’re off to the tanners’.” Putting an arm around her shoulders, he steered her out into the rain.
Watching Briar and Tris bicker as they washed the supper dishes, Daja remembered Frostpine’s instructions. It still bothered her to think of putting off her mourning clothes, but she knew the smith was right. Scarlet clothes were too expensive. “Lark?” she asked, hesitant. “I—there’s a smith who’d like me for an assistant.”
Lark had been about to rise from the table. She settled back into her chair instead. “Does he have a name?” she asked.
“Frostpine.”
Lark and Rosethorn shared a look—an odd look, thought Sandry, who watched them with interest.
“Niko was right,” murmured Rosethorn.
“We know Frostpine,” Lark told Daja. “He’s a good man, and a fine smith. You’ll learn a lot from him. He wants to see you in the afternoons?”
Daja nodded. “Are there—do you know where I could find—well, other clothes?” She smoothed a hand over her scarlet tunic. “Nothing fancy, just—leggings, maybe, and some shirts.”
Lark nodded. “That’s sensible—it’s no use getting your mourning all burned and streaked in the forge. I don’t have leggings, but will breeches do?”
Daja nodded, looking at the table in front of her.
A warm brown hand rested on her shoulder. “I can make you a scarlet headband, and a scarlet armband, so you’ll have some colors to wear for your family,” Lark told her. “So people will know of your loss.”
For a moment Daja couldn’t speak past a lump in her throat. Lark had seen her heart. She knew what it cost to put aside the scarlet and had offered a practical way not to. Now the Kisubo spirits would not be angry and take revenge, or think that she hadn’t loved them. “Thank you,” she whispered. “That is kind.”
“Then let’s take care of it right now.” Lark took Daja upstairs, where general stores for the cottage filled boxes in the space between the girls’ rooms. “These should fit you,” she told Daja as she opened a crate. Sorting through folded clothes, she picked out several pairs of breeches—three in different shades of brown, one in leaf green, one in dark blue—and placed them in the girl’s outstretched arms.
“With the weather turning hot, these should be suitable,” Lark said, adding light, sturdy tunics in green, orange, light brown, and blue to Daja’s stack. “Why don’t you try them all on? Those that don’t fit, bring to me. I’ll have the headband and armband for you by tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Daja whispered, clutching an armful of clothes that smelled of cedar chips and sun-drying.
“It’s hard to break traditional ways,” Lark said kindly. “If it helps, the people of Caravan Qurilta wore headbands and armbands one year when they followed the Spice Trails into Aliput. There, all-scarlet clothes means disease in the house.”
Daja frowned. Hadn’t she heard about that somewhere?
“I saw it with my own eyes,” Lark said in Tradertalk, framing her eyes with two fingers. Among Daja’s people that sign was as holy as a vow to Koma and Oti. “I rode with them when it happened. They’d lost the caravan-master and three of the guards in a rockslide.”
“You lived with Traders?” Daja blushed; she hadn’t meant to sound shocked.
“I wasn’t always a house bird.” Lark’s eyes twinkled. “I belonged to a company of acrobats. We traveled to Yanjing to work and to learn their acrobats’ tricks.” Gently she pinched Daja’s upper and lower lips with her fingers, to get the girl to close her mouth. “Have I shocked you with my disreputable past?”
Daja gasped. “Oh—Lark, no, no, I was just—” Looking at the woman’s dancing eyes, Daja realized Lark had been joking.
“Your family won’t hate you if you relax a bit, you know,” the woman told her softly. “I think they’d want you to really live your life, trangshi or no.”
Daja turned to take the clothes into her room, thinking about what Lark had said. A flicker of green—a cartwheel?—caught her eye. She looked back, to see Lark turn a second cartwheel before she went down the stairs.
The woman looked back and up at her. “And I’m not completely a house bird yet,” she said, and winked.
Smiling, Daja went into her room to try on her new things.
8
That night Tris slept deeply, without dreams. When the voices got her attention just after dawn, she was already awake, feeling more rested than she had in a long time. For a moment she cringed, afraid of still more evidence that she was losing her mind. Then she remembered what Niko had told her. The voices weren’t signs of insanity—he wanted to know what they said to her.
“Quick! There he—”
“No, that way! Circle him!”
“It’s that cursed thief-boy!”
Tris rolled off the bed and thumped her knees. She scrabbled under the bed for her shoes.
“Be careful of that tree!” the voice cried. “It’s a Yanjing shakkan, and priceless, priceless!”
Tris lurched out the door and headed for the stair. Banging her ankle on a crate, she yelped.
Daja opened her door, yawning. “I didn’t hear Lark call. What are you doing?”
“Collecting bruises,” Tris muttered, and limped down the stair.
Sandry too was up and dressed, clumsily slicing bread at the table. “What is it?”
Tris ran out the front door. Once she was in the open, the clamor of distant voices reached her ears clearly.
“Will you please tell me what it is?” Sandry had followed her.
Looking for the sources, Tris pointed them out. Dedicates in yellow and novices in white approached at the run, along the spiral road and between the loomhouses across from the cottage. Racing toward Discipline, something cradled against his chest, was Briar.
Sandry ran to the low gate and opened it. Waving frantically, she beckoned to him.
“Stop, thief!” A lean dedicate, his yellow habit hemmed in black, led the group on the spiral road. “You, girl,” he cried, panting and red-faced from the effort of running, “don’t you dare help him!”
“Why are we helping you?” Tris inquired as Briar stumbled past her.
“Stuff yourself,” he snapped. “I never asked for help!”
Sandry closed the gate and latched it firmly. It wasn’t much of a barrier, but it was better than nothing. Deliberately she stepped into the middle of the path, putting herself squarely between hunters and prey. A breeze caught her black gown and veil, making them wave like banners.
/> “Admit me instantly!” cried the dedicate who appeared to be the leader, when he reached the gate. The order lost its force as he braced his hands on his knees and gasped for breath.
A novice reached over the gate to feel for the latch. He jumped back when the girl slapped his hand. “I did not give you permission to come onto my home ground,” Sandry cried, eyes blazing. “I forbid you to enter!”
Tris’s jaw dropped as she thought, She is either crazy, or the bravest person I’ve ever met.
“Little girl, rank means nothing here!” snapped the novice. He tried to reach the latch again. Sandry doubled her fists and stepped up to the gate.
“What is going on?”
Tris hadn’t thought a time might come when she would be glad to see Rosethorn, but she was now. The dedicate had clearly been at work in the gardens. Her green, dew-soaked habit was kilted up, showing legs streaked with dirt; a broad-brimmed straw hat sat on her cropped auburn hair. She kept Briar at her side with an arm wrapped firmly around his shoulders. Daja and Lark brought up the rear, Daja carrying her staff.
“Don’t play innocent,” snapped the dedicate who had bent over. He straightened, his long face the color of a ripe plum. “Since you are barred from my greenhouse, you sent this young rodent—”
“Roach,” muttered Briar.
“Shut up, boy,” Rosethorn said through clenched teeth.
Briar’s accuser crossed his arms. “Your spy stole a one-hundred-and-thirty-year-old shakkan tree, and I demand its return!”
“I do not have spies, Crane, you idiot. And you couldn’t tend a shakkan properly if your life depended on it. You set plants in that glass monstrosity of yours and expect them to skip the pattern of seasons because you ask it—”
“Please, everyone, disharmony upsets the balance of the Circle.” Lark came forward, dark eyes grave. “Dedicate Crane, Rosethorn would no more steal a plant from you than you would steal one of hers. I know that, if you do not.”
Tris noticed Crane’s instant blush and wondered if he hadn’t tried to take something of Rosethorn’s once or twice.
Lark continued, “If she did want to steal anything of yours, we also know that she would take it herself, not send a deputy.”
“Thanks, Lark,” Rosethorn said with a one-sided grin.
Crane was not to be silenced. “He is a thief! He stole from a lad at the boys’ dormitory—”
“I never!” cried Briar. “That brooch was junk—”
“Hush,” Lark ordered.
“Anybody could see that!” finished Briar. To Lark he whispered, “I got my pride.”
“He was found innocent by the Air temple’s own truthsayer,” Rosethorn snapped. “In the presence of Moonstream herself.”
“Is he innocent now?” demanded Crane. More dedicates and novices who should have been at the dining hall joined the group behind him, listening with interest. “Tell me he didn’t steal my shakkan!”
“It’s sick,” Briar told Lark and Rosethorn. “Whatever he’s doing, it’s not helping!”
“I want my shakkan, and I want that thief cast out!” snapped Crane. “He doesn’t belong here! As soon you return my property, Moonstream will hear my complaint!”
“Shame on you!” cried Lark, gold-brown cheeks flushed. “Who are you to judge who is fit to stay or go? This lad is here for a reason!”
Briar rubbed the bowl in which the tree was planted with shaky fingers. If they threw him out, he would go dry and dead himself.
Rosethorn tapped his shoulder. Looking up, he met her brown eyes squarely. Please, he thought, praying that she could read his mind. Please.
Rosethorn faced her rival. “A tomato plant,” she said abruptly. “Let the boy—and the shakkan—go, and you can have one of my tomato plants.”
“With a few words on it so it will die once I transplant it?” Dedicate Crane flapped a scornful hand. “Thank you, no!”
Rosethorn sighed. “With a few words on it so it will prosper with you, Crane. Though once you force it to harvest out of season, the fruits won’t taste the same.”
“So you say,” was the angry retort. “One plant in exchange for a shakkan? You insult me.”
“Why don’t we talk inside?” Lark suggested. Glancing at the crowd of onlookers, she said, “I know that service at the dining hall will be over soon”—instantly a few dedicates and all of the novices hurried away—“and some of us here would like to prepare our own meal.”
Briar and the girls were sent to their rooms as the dedicates talked. Strain his ears though he might, Briar could hear none of the conversation. He gave up trying to listen and put the tree on his windowsill. It was a pine, he knew that much. But how did it stay this small? With a finger, he traced the curve of the trunk; it grew sharply to the right. The branches had a kind of poetry about them, as if they had been made to grow in just that way.
“I’ll say this for you—”
He gasped, flinched, and almost knocked his prize over. Grabbing it, he faced Rosethorn. She lounged against his door, which she had closed.
“—you don’t pick the easy path. Calm down, I’m not going to arrest you.”
“Are you going to make me give it back?”
“That depends. Who’ll take care of that thing? Shakkans—particularly sick shakkans—require work. Even a healthy one demands attention—they’re as vain as a plant can be, after decades of being tended. I’m a busy woman.”
Carefully, gently, Briar placed the tree on his sill once more. “If—if someone could tell me what to do, I—I’d like—” He gulped. “There’s no way it can be a hundred and thirty years old!”
Rosethorn sighed. “Yanjing gardeners took a thousand years to develop the art of miniature trees,” she explained. “If a seed or clipping agrees to it—and it must agree—the gardeners trim the roots and branches, and wire the trunks and limbs. It’s all to make them grow in a shape that concentrates each plant’s strength.” She walked over and cupped the shakkan’s bowl in her palms. “However it’s done, they’re works of art, as much as a tapestry or a statue. And this one is not a hundred and thirty. It’s a hundred and forty-six—ask it yourself.”
Briar scowled, thinking she was teasing him—except that, come to think of it, she didn’t tease anyone.
“I’ll teach you how to care for it,” Rosethorn told him. “It’s not the kind of project I would select for a beginner, but since the tree chose you—”
“How could it choose me? It doesn’t even know me.”
Rosethorn shook her head. “One reason there are shakkans—apart from their being so beautiful—is because they can store magic. They become magic. It enables them to call to those who will do them the most good.”
Briar looked at the tree with new respect. “I hope you don’t end up sorry for calling me,” he told it. “I don’t know from anything. Ask her.”
“As for this room,” Rosethorn said, “this is not what I would call properly cleaned. Your blankets and pillow belong on their proper place—the bed.”
“I don’t sleep there,” complained Briar. “It’s too high up. What if there are rats under it? They’ll chew through them leather straps holding it up and they’ll get me when I fall.”
“Oh, for—” Rosethorn snapped, impatient. She stopped, took a breath, and said more gently, “No rat would dare show itself here. If this worries you, though, we’ll get rid of the bedstead. You can have the mattress on the floor. And that bed you will make up properly, starting right now.”
“But—” he protested as she went to the door. “My tree—and—breakfast—”
“That tree waited the months Crane had it to come to you; it can wait until this afternoon for us to work on it.”
As she went out, Briar started to gather his bedclothes.
The residents of Discipline were eating breakfast when Tris said, “I’d’ve thought you’d wait till no one was around before you stole something.”
The boy gulped his plum juice. “I thought
they were still in bed,” he explained, blushing. “Instead they were sitting in the middle of that greenhouse thing where I couldn’t see them, chanting.”
“Renewing the quake spells on the glass,” guessed Lark. “With all the earth-tremors, it stands to reason.”
Briar shrugged. “I was quiet, and I kept out of sight, but—”
Rosethorn lifted an eyebrow. “You’ve never heard of alarm spells?”
“Bags have ’em, sure, but this wasn’t no Baghouse.”
Lark coughed and scratched at her plate with her fork. “Dedicate Crane—Dedicate Initiate Crane—is a former Bag,” she explained. “Perhaps that is why he is so mistrustful as to place alarm spells in a temple city. Who’s he related to, Rosethorn?”
“Count Albannon fer Yorvan,” the other woman replied. “It’s in Olart,” she added when the four looked at her.
“Bags,” grumbled the boy in disgust. “They’re all alike.”
“Probably,” Rosethorn agreed. “But listen well, Briar Moss. If you had tried to take a plant from me, I would have known—and I don’t need alarm spells.”
He looked at her, dismayed. “I never would!” he protested. “Never, ever!”
“Oh, you,” grumbled the woman. “Eat. When rest period’s over, we’ll have a look at that bush you stole.” She got up and went into her workroom.
Only when he was sure that she was out of hearing did Briar mutter, “It’s a tree. A shakkan tree. Not a bush.”
9
Lark pointed to the slate on the wall. “Chores. Do a good job today—there won’t be time for it tomorrow. Daja, after you scrub the privy, ask Rosethorn for herbs to sweeten the air. Briar, don’t neglect corners when you dust and sweep.”
Everyone got to work. Even the dedicates swept out their workrooms and cleaned the altar tucked in the corner between Sandry’s room and the front door. Once they were finished, they vanished into their workrooms.
Pouring hot water into the tub where dishes awaited Sandry, Tris saw that Briar scratched at the floor with a broom. “No, no!” she called. “Dust first, then sweep. That way you get the dust you knock to the floor.”