Only as long as I stay, Roach thought. Still, the Bag was right. Roach had never liked his name, but no one argued with the title the Thief-Lord gave.
“Choose, boy, and hurry up,” snapped the judge. “I’ve other cases besides yours.”
The docks were too close to risk annoying these people. What name would temple folk like? Plant and animal names, that was it. He imagined robed men and women smiling at him and giving up the key to the temple gate.
Plant and animal names. A picture flashed into his mind: a green, velvet corner—but that wouldn’t do. He needed a tough name, one that would tell folk he was not to be trifled with. He studied his hands, trying to think—and noticed scarred welts across his right palm, a souvenir of a vine that grew on a merchant’s garden wall.
“What’s them vines with needles on them? Big, sharp ones, that rip chunks out when you grab ’em?”
The Bag smiled. “Roses. Briars.”
He liked the sound of that second one. “Briar, then.”
“You need a last name,” the clerk said, rolling his eyes.
A last name? wondered Roach. Whatever for?
The judge tapped the desk impatiently.
“Moss,” he said. No one would think he was moss-soft if he just didn’t use it.
“Briar Moss,” said the clerk, and filled in the blank space on his paper. “Master Niko, I’ll need your signature.”
Briar frowned. “Master” was a word for professors, judges, and wizards. The temples called women and men “dedicate.” Who was this man, anyway?
“Cut him loose,” the Bag—Master Niklaren—ordered the guards.
“Your pardon, sir, but you don’t know what he’s like!” growled one of them. “He’s born and bred to vice—”
Niklaren straightened and caught the man with those black, powerful eyes. “Are these remarks addressed to me?”
Roach shivered—was the room suddenly colder? The judge drew a circle of protection on the front of her robe. The guard’s face went as white as milk. His partner cut Roach free.
“Briar won’t run—will you, lad?” Niklaren bent to sign the clerk’s paper.
Briar/Roach sensed that the Bag was right. Something about this man made escape seem like a bad idea.
I’ll stick till we get to this temple place, he told himself. I can get lost there, easy.
In the city of Ninver, in Capchen:
In the darkness of the temple dormitory, when she was trying to cry herself to sleep with the least amount of noise, Trisana Chandler heard voices. It wasn’t the first time that she’d done so, but these voices were different. This time she could identify the speakers. They sounded exactly like the girls who shared the dormitory with her.
“I heard her very own parents brought her here, and dropped her off, and said they never wanted to see her again.”
Tris was sure about that one: it was the girl in the bed on her right, the one who had tried to shove ahead of her in the line for the dining hall. Tris had raised a fuss, and a dedicate had sent the girl to the back of the line.
“I heard they passed her from relative to relative, until there weren’t any who wanted her anymore.”
Tris yanked at one of the coppery curls that had jumped out of her nighttime braid. She was fairly certain about this speaker, too: the girl whose bed was across the room and two more beds to her left. She had tried to copy Tris’s answers to a mathematics question just that morning. The moment Tris had realized what was going on, she had covered her slate. She despised people who copied.
“Have you seen her clothes? Those ugly dresses! That black wool’s so old it’s turning brown!”
“And they strain at the seams. Fat as she is, you’d think she’d eat more at table!”
She wasn’t completely sure about the last speakers, but did it matter? The voices seemed to come from every bed in the dormitory, to cut at her like razors. Why did they do this, the ones she’d never even spoken to? Because it felt good to be mean with no one to see and blame them? Because it felt good to sneer as the group did, go after the targets that their leaders pointed out? Her cousins were the same; they followed those who loved to make fun of the outcast among them like ducklings chasing their mother.
When her parents had given her to the Dedicate Superior of Stone Circle, she had thought she’d run out of hurt feelings. It seemed that she hadn’t, after all.
Tris clenched her hands in her sheets. Leave me alone, she thought, speechless with fury and shame. I never did anything to most of you, don’t even know most of you….
No one noticed that the wind had picked up, jerking at the shutters on the windows, making them clack against their fittings.
“I bet her parents tried to sell her to Traders.”
“Maybe, but even Traders wouldn’t take her. They wouldn’t think she has value!”
Everyone found this hilarious.
One of the shutters hadn’t been securely locked. It burst open, letting in a swirl of cold wind. The girls nearest to it screamed and jumped to close it. A gust of wind bowled them onto their rumps before it whipped around the room, pulling covers off beds, scouring belongings off the small shelves. By the time it roared out of the room, all of the girls but Tris were screaming.
Two dedicates, their habits thrown on over their nightgowns, rushed into the room carrying lamps. Everywhere they looked, there was a chaos of girls, bedding, and knickknacks—except at Tris’s bed. It was untouched. The girl in it stared at them with tear-reddened, defiant eyes behind the brass-rimmed spectacles that she had just finished jamming onto her long nose.
The next morning, after breakfast, they brought her down to the office of Stone Circle’s Dedicate Superior and left her in the waiting room. Beside her they placed her few bags, completely packed. She had not said a word. There was no point in it, and by now she knew how stupid it was to try to talk to someone who was determined to get rid of her.
As she waited, staring fixedly at those battered leather satchels, she realized that the Honored Dedicate’s door was not quite closed.
“—I know that you’re already on your way to Winding Circle, and I need you to take this girl with you. Is that such a hard request to grant, Master Niko?”
“Send her later in the spring, when the trade caravans leave for Emelan.” The light, crisp, male voice sounded annoyed. “I’m on a very special task these days. If I have to change my plans suddenly, this child will only get in my way.”
“We can’t keep her. Her parents swore that she was tested for magic and found to have none, but …” The Dedicate Superior’s voice trailed off. Briskly she continued, “I don’t know if she’s possessed by a spirit, or part elemental, or carrying a ghost, to be at the center of such uproar, and I don’t care. Winding Circle is far better equipped to handle a case like hers. They have the learning, and dedicates who are more open-minded with regard to unique cases. They have the best mages south of your own university. They will know what to do with her.”
Hearing all this, Tris felt sick. Spirit, elemental, or ghost-burdened, was she? And what kind of fate awaited her? Some people learned to manage such creatures within themselves; others got rid of them. Far too many ended up homeless and crazy, wandering the streets, or locked up in an attic or cellar, or even dead. She swayed, feeling ill—and then clenched her fists. She was sick of it! Sick of being gotten rid of, sick of being discussed, sick of not being helped!
With a thundering roar, hailstones battered the roof and walls around her, hitting wood and stone like a multitude of hammers. They shattered the glass panes of the window in the outer office to spray across the floor like icy diamonds. Clumsily she knelt to pick up a handful.
The door of the Dedicate Superior’s office swung open, revealing a slender man in his middle fifties. He stood there, hands on hips, black eyes under thick black brows fixed on Tris.
From the floor she glared at him, hailstones trickling from her fingers. “It’s rude to stare,” she snapped, not
over her fury.
“You were tested for magic?” he asked, his clipped voice abrupt.
Why did this stranger taunt her? Her family would have put up with her oddities, if only she’d been proved to have magic, which might be turned to the profit of House Chandler. “By the most expensive mage in Ninver, if you must know. And he said I haven’t a speck of it.”
The stranger turned and looked at the woman in the yellow habit behind him. “Honored Wrenswing, I’ve changed my mind. I will be very happy to escort Trisana to Winding Circle Temple in Emelan.” He smiled thinly and reached a hand to Tris. “I am pleased to meet you, young lady.”
She ignored the outstretched hand. Getting up, she shook out her skirts. “You’ll change your mind before long,” she retorted. “Everyone does.”
In the storeroom:
Carefully Sandry eyed her right-most thread. There was the knot that she’d tied close to the end. “Time to put in something new,” she told the waiting darkness with a sigh. She was all out of green now. It had given her good service, glowing with a clearer light than either the gray or the red. She would miss it.
Yards of braid lay in a coil from which she continued to work. She fixed her mind on it and on light completely, except for the times that she ate, or slept, or used the stinking barrel that was her chamber pot. Keeping light in her threads took all of her attention, leaving her without time or energy for panic.
She groped behind her for her workbasket and froze. Muffled voices cried out on the other side of the wall. The girl swallowed hard. Had things gotten this bad? Was she going to start imagining people when they were not there?
“This way, dolts!” a voice cried.
“—don’t see anything!” someone, a man, growled in the distance.
The light in her braid paled. “Don’t you dare,” she ordered in a whisper. She couldn’t keep her mind on it. The glow died.
Breathless, she waited in the dark. If this was a dream, she wished it would stop!
“You won’t see anything,” a crisp, educated voice snapped. Its owner might have been in the same room with her—or on the other side of the door. “It was spelled for concealment.”
She clapped her hands over her mouth and started to rock. This is it, she thought. I’ve gone mad at last.
Something entered the room, a wash of cool air that wasn’t really air, more a feeling of water than a breeze. Most of it circled over the empty sacks she used for a bed. A lone thread spun out of that cool mass. Drifting across the room, it twined around her shoulders.
“Now do you see it?” the educated voice demanded. “I want the locksmith.”
“You’ve got ‘im, Master Niko.” That deep voice also sounded very close.
Metal scraped on metal. Air moved. She didn’t know that the door was opening until it bumped her.
“Urda bless me, what a stink!” the deep voice said.
“Move aside, man,” the crisp voice ordered. Its owner, a light-colored shadow, stepped into the room. “My child? My name is Niklaren Goldeye. I’ve been looking for you.” He raised a lamp that someone had passed to him.
The light struck her eyes, which had been in the dark so long. Pain made her scream and cover them. She would see almost nothing for quite some time.
2
Summersea, in Emelan:
Sandry’s great-uncle, Duke Vedris IV, the ruler of Emelan, watched the rain fall outside the library window as first Niko, then Sandry, told the tale of the last four months, of Sandry’s rescue, healing, and the long trip north. If he had opinions about their tale, they were locked behind his deep-set brown eyes and heavy features. Stocky, broad-shouldered, and commanding, the duke preferred simple clothes like those he had on: a white lawn shirt, brown wool breeches, a brown wool tunic, and calf-high boots. Only the flash of gold braid at his tunic collar and hems and the signet ring on his left forefinger hinted that he might be wealthy. With his shaved head, hooked nose, and fleshy visage, the duke looked like one of his own pirate-chasing captains rather than a nobleman whose line had ruled from this castle for eight hundred years.
When they finished, he turned to look at them. “Master Niko, it was good of you to bring Sandrilene to me, particularly at this time of year.”
“The land roads weren’t so bad, your Grace,” replied Niko, stirring his tea. “And certainly I couldn’t abandon Sandry at that point.”
“I know I should have waited till spring, Uncle,” the girl added, “but I just couldn’t. Hatar—it’s a giant graveyard now. I couldn’t stay an hour more.” She was still pale and thin after her ordeal in the storeroom and weeks of recovery. Dressed in black from head to toe, she had become a small ghost. Niko’s suggestion, to bring her north to her father’s favorite relative, had been welcome.
Vedris smiled. “I understand, my dear. You don’t have to apologize.”
Sandry returned the smile with a small, trembling one of her own.
The duke sighed and rubbed his shaved scalp. “You have presented me with a dilemma, however, if you want to stay,” he said regretfully. His voice was the most elegant thing about him, smooth and velvet-soft, the kind of voice that others fell silent to hear. “Do you wish to remain? Or do you want to head north in the spring?”
Sandry shook her head, making her twin braids fly. “I don’t want to go to my Namornese relatives, if you please, Uncle.”
The duke sat in the window seat. “After my lady wife died, I let court functions go. My nobles socialize with one another at their homes. With no hostess, and my children all grown and married, there is no lady here I would ask to take you under her wing. You are welcome to stay as long as you desire, but this castle is a grim place for a young girl.”
Sandry looked down at her lap. The picture he painted was not appealing. The thought of days in these plain stone halls was a lonely one. The idea of packing and traveling to distant Namorn, at any season of the year, sounded far worse. She hadn’t liked her Namornese kinfolk.
“Then I have the solution,” Niko said cheerfully. “I’m surprised you didn’t see it yourself, your grace. Lady Sandrilene can live at Winding Circle Temple. Your nobles send their own children there. She can learn the things that she will need to move in society, and she will get an education worth having.” Looking at Sandry, he explained, “Winding Circle is known throughout the Pebbled Sea as a center of learning and magic.”
Magic? Sandry thought wistfully. She had thought the magic in the world died with Pirisi. “I’d like to see magic again,” she whispered.
“It is the obvious solution,” Niko told the duke, who looked at him sharply. “She will be close by, as safe behind those walls as she might be here. The two of you can visit whenever you like.”
“Sandrilene?” asked the duke.
She smiled tiredly. “I don’t know, Uncle, but—surely it’s worth a try?”
Nidra Island, off the shore of Sotat:
It had taken so little time for her to tell the Trader Council of the fate of Third Ship Kisubo. Out early to get in a fast cargo, it sank in a late winter storm. The five judges—two land-Traders, two sea-Traders, and a mimander, a mage—retired when she finished, to discuss her fate. In the judging-room, Daja and her rescuer waited for their verdict.
Daja was sick with hope. They might let her live among those of her relatives who were too old or too young for the hard life at sea, at one of the Traders’ handful of hidden cities. They might give her a new name, send her to a new family. People had gotten second chances like that—rarely, but it happened.
“Prepare yourself for the worst,” advised Niko, his eyes kind. “You know they regard lone survivors as the worst kind of luck.”
Daja shook her head. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him. She simply didn’t want to admit that he might be right.
The door opened; the members of the Council filed in. One, a woman, carried the bulky logbook in which the names of all Trader families, vessels, and companies were recorded. Placing it on t
he judges’ table, she opened it, leafing through the pages until she reached the one she sought.
Over his—or her—arms (Daja couldn’t tell the sex of the person in those bulky robes and veils), the mimander carried a staff. Like any Trader’s staff, it was five feet long and made of ebony, a symbol of pride and of a Trader’s right to protect himself. Brass caps on both ends guarded them from wear and tear. The cap on every other staff in the room bore designs of engravings, bumps, and inlaid wire. On this staff, the cap was unmarked.
Seeing it, Daja began to shiver. An unmarked staff meant only one thing.
“As in the days when our people first carried fire, weaving, and metal-work to the non-Traders, the kaqs,” said the chief judge, a man, “so it is now. Daja Kisubo, lone survivor of disaster, we declare you to be outcast, the worst kind of bad luck, trangshi. As trangshi you must bear this staff always—”
The mimander held the staff out to Daja. The girl stared at it. What was the design on her staff that had sunk with her ship? Dancing monkeys, each grasping the tail of the one before it, with a wire spiral on her cap, to mark her as a brand-new member of the crew. This cap had no mark; it was polished mirror-bright. As trangshi, she would never be permitted to add the signs of her own deeds to it.
Numb, she gripped the wood and took it from the mimander.
“Your name is marked in the books of our people,” the chief judge continued. “You are forbidden to speak, touch, or write to Traders. This is to protect them from you. If you do not wish others to catch your bad luck, do the right thing. Stay away from them.”
The woman with the logbook inked the tip of her brush and began to write, putting down Daja’s new status for all Traders to know.
“You don’t have to do this,” Niko protested to the judges. “You have rites to cleanse her luck, rites to make an orphan new-born to a new family, blameless of everything that has gone before.”
The mimander tucked yellow-gloved hands into wide yellow sleeves. Daja could just barely see eyes behind the thin saffron veil. “We made this choice after taking the omens. I placed sacred oil and my own blood on a hot brass dish and read the signs for her future. Her fate is to be trangshi. There is nothing you can say to change that, Niklaren Goldeye.”