Frostpine caught her. “You two load the pieces of net we’ve found, and bring them inside the walls,” he ordered Kirel. “Don’t dawdle. I’m telling them to close the gates.”
Daja grabbed Frostpine’s arm before he could go. “It’s just one ship—”
He patted her cheek gently. “If his business were honest, youngster, he wouldn’t be hidden, would he? That’s a pirate’s scout vessel, or I’m a dancing girl. Help Kirel, and come in with him.”
“Even if it’s a scout, the main pirate fleet’s nowhere near, surely?” Picking up a stack of net-pieces, she loaded them into one of the mule’s baskets.
“Not yet,” Kirel replied, filling the other basket. “They might be waiting for dark.”
“How long have you been sensing this azigazi?” Frostpine asked.
“Since—I don’t know,” Daja said, genuinely scared. Pirate tales had given her nightmares since she was a ground-pounding baby, too little to sail in the family ships. “It was at least an hour before midday.”
“I’ll wager they don’t know we’ve spotted them. Don’t look so frightened,” Frostpine said with a grin. “You’ve given us warning, that’s all. And next time, pay more attention to your azigazis!”
5
Once they’d eaten midday, Rosethorn gave Briar inside work, filling small bottles with different syrups and muslin bags with blends of dried herbs. While he got to work, Rosethorn showed Tris how to make a paste of the finely ground beef and hardboiled egg yolks Briar had carried up from the kitchens. Rolling the paste into tiny balls, Tris fed them to the nestling at the end of a thin bit of wood. The bird would get those, and a few drops of water, alternately with the milk-and-honey mixture. The dedicate also helped Tris set up a special burner, a metal box that held a candle, to heat small amounts of goat’s milk and honey as they were needed. Once the rest period was over, Rosethorn decided that the nestling could be fed every half hour, instead of every fifteen minutes. Loading a basket with the bottles and bags that Briar had filled, she told him to prepare a bushel basket of willow bark strips for tea, and left.
Once she was gone, Tris went upstairs for some books she was supposed to be reading. She bundled her hair under a kerchief, shed her shoes and stockings, and returned to the workshop, prepared for a long afternoon. Rosethorn had set her up in front of a window that gave a good view of the Hub clock. Briar, tearing small pieces of bark to shreds, was close enough to be company without making Tris feel crowded. She felt relaxed for the first time in hours.
“She’s not so bad, is she?” Briar asked when they’d been silent for a while. “I mean, she’s not sweet, like Lark, but she has her good side.”
“You must be the only person in all Winding Circle who would say that,” remarked Tris drowsily. Taking off her spectacles, she leaned her hand on her chin, gazing out the window through half-lidded eyes. It was a relief not to have light flickering on the edges of her vision.
Did Niko see this way all the time? Didn’t his eyes get tired? There was magic everywhere in Winding Circle, she’d found—in the south gate where it pierced the eight-foot-thick wall, in the stones of the spiral road through the temple community, in windows and doors. It blazed along the entire length of the Hub, and from the Water and Fire temples, and shone from the mages and their students she had passed. Most interesting, to her point of view, it gleamed throughout Discipline and blazed in this workshop—she wondered what she might see in Lark’s workroom. All this time, she hadn’t thought Lark and Rosethorn were as powerful as Niko, an acknowledged great mage. She had assumed that their magics were smaller, because they were centered around such ordinary things.
Maybe she needed to think again.
Soft cheeps came from the nest. Glancing at the clock, the girl realized that it was time to feed her charge. She placed her spectacles on her nose and took the cover from the nest.
“Ugly little peep,” Briar remarked, watching over her shoulder as she dripped liquid into the gaping beak. “What’re those spiky things?”
“Rosethorn says they’re pinfeathers. Once he fledges—once he gets real feathers—he’ll grow up pretty fast.” Turning to find a wet cloth to mop up spilled milk, she was struck by a blaze of silver light that flared out from a fat, leather-bound book. Tris flinched, covering her eyes.
Hands steadied her on the stool. “Careful—you almost fell off. What’s got into you, anyway? You’ve been a-flinch and a-twitch since you got back.”
Tris sighed. Finding the cloth, she wiped away her mess and covered her charge. “Niko did this thing to my specs,” she told him, and explained about her new ability to see magic. “It takes getting used to. I suppose I will, eventually. Niko doesn’t twitch all the time.”
“So—if you see this—light, is it?”
“Mostly it’s like there’s a silver veil over things, or they have silver marks. Then there are the ones that shine like lamps. Big ones. Like the Hub—and not just the seeing and hearing places. The whole tower, clock to kitchens.”
“And all of that light’s magic.”
“That’s what Niko told me.”
Briar thought about this, tapping the countertop with a reed.
“You’ll wake my bird.” Tris took the reed away.
“We heard what you heard last night,” Briar remarked abruptly.
“Yes.” She looked up at him, waiting. He scowled, not liking the direction his thoughts took him in.
“So maybe, because Her Highness spun us together, we pick up each other’s magic. And we don’t always have to be close together for it to spread.”
“Maybe.” Tris realized what he was getting at. “You’re seeing the lights, too? And you think it’s my magic crossing over?”
“I see glitter all over the house, and some on my way back from the Hub,” he explained. “Not strong like it is for you. But—” He hesitated, scratching his head.
“Will you make me wait all day?” demanded Tris. “I have reading to do.”
He shrugged and told her about the figure in the Hub stairwell. “I figured it was just one of the students, trying out a new spell. I’d want to play with an invisibility spell, if I had one.”
Tris’s smile was only a bit sour. “Even you couldn’t eat all the food you’d steal from Gorse with a spell like that.”
“I don’t think I’d get away with it. Gorse knows whenever anybody’s in that kitchen, no matter how mad it gets in there. Still, it’d be worth a try.” After a moment he added, “It was just weird to be seeing anyone using that kind of spell at all. At least now I know what I saw.”
“Sorry,” replied Tris. “How was I to know Niko’s spell was catching? Listen—you want to work on reading while you shred that bark?” She had begun to teach him how to read a few days before and was surprised to find how much she liked it.
Briar’s response was good for her vanity. He promptly dragged his stool and his willow bark over, then fetched a big slate and a piece of chalk. “First letter,” he said, perching on his stool.
She wrote A on the black slate.
“A. Air, all-heal, Astrel, alder, animal. Followed by B.”
Tris chalked the letter in.
He grinned. “Briar! Also Bit, berry, balm, bayberry, basil. Next letter’s C—”
“Sandry.” A cup touched her lips; she drank, tasting water flavored with lemon peel. Taking a breath, she tried to blink away the spell-pattern, feeling giddy. She and Lark had eaten at midday and gone right back to work.
The cup pressed against her lips again. This time she took it in her hands and drank the water in quick sips. When it was empty, she placed it on the table among heaped billows of thin cloth.
Looking at her work, Sandry frowned. She could see what Lark meant about this kind of weaving. It was too loose in some places and too thick in others. There were gaps. She thrust her fingers through two of them and sighed.
“It won’t matter, with bandages.” Lark stood beside the girl. It had been she who had
called Sandry from her weaving trance. “There’s always a layer on top or under, to catch leaks. You need to rest now, though. You’re scaring our helpers.” Sandry looked around, but the novices were missing. “They just took a load to the storerooms.”
Sandry’s blue eyes met Lark’s smiling brown ones. “Do I scare them?” she whispered, rusty-voiced.
“A little. It’s not that important—novices always need toughening up before they take their vows. They have to get used to powerful workings sometime. And you have company.” She pointed to the open door.
A man in a somber brown tunic and breeches stood there, stripping off riding gloves. The sun gleamed on his shaved head, throwing his fleshy face partly into shadow. His brown eyes were set deep over a hawklike nose and wide, firm mouth. Broad-shouldered, heavily muscled, he wore command like a cloak. Meeting Sandry’s eyes, he moved into the room and smiled. The shadow was gone; from a powerful and threatening figure, he changed into a pleasant, middle-aged man.
Half stumbling—how long had she been working?—she curtsied and smiled back. “Uncle, I’m sorry!” she greeted Duke Vedris, ruler of Emelan. “I didn’t know you were here.”
He walked over and kissed her cheeks, as she kissed his. “A brief visit only, to meet with Honored Moonstream about the watchtowers that exploded.” His voice was soft and elegant, the kind that people would strain to hear. He nodded toward the heaps of linen. “You’ve been very busy.”
“I’m helping Lark.” She offered him a chair. “We have tea, or fruit juice, if you’d like some.”
Smiling, he shook his head. “I’m full of tea from the Hub. In any case, I can only stay briefly—I must return home by dark. Dedicate, please, sit,” he told Lark.
“Actually, I’m going to let you and Sandry visit in private,” Lark said, going to the door. “I hope you don’t mind.”
The duke nodded. Lark bowed—dedicates weren’t required to kneel or curtsy to nobles—and left them.
Vedris reached over and tugged one of Sandry’s braids lightly, teasing her. “I’m glad to see you’ve recovered from your experiences during the earthquake. From what you and Niko said in your letters, it was quite dramatic.”
“It was dramatic enough, I suppose.” Sandry shuddered. “I’m lucky my friends were with me.”
“As they were fortunate that you were there,” pointed out the duke. “And what kind of work is this you’re doing?”
She explained, showing him the finished rolls of cloth waiting for transportation to a storeroom. The sheer amount still in the workshop startled her—and she knew that more had already been taken to storage. A little awed, she stared at her fingers. It was so easy. That didn’t seem right: Since she was new to this, shouldn’t it cost more, to order thread to weave itself? She glanced at Lark’s work. Even done this way, Lark’s cloth was tighter and finer than hers.
“What strange turns life takes,” the duke murmured, rubbing his naked scalp as he examined Sandry’s bandages. “My nephew and his wife were sweet, but I cannot deny they were totally useless.” He held up a hand to cut off her protest. “My dear, they lived for their own pleasure, doing nothing to help those whose work gave them the money to do so. You, on the other hand—I have a feeling that you may achieve enough in your lifetime to make up for the emptiness of theirs.”
She agreed—that was the worst part. She just couldn’t bring herself to say as much aloud. “Aren’t you being awfully hard on them?”
“Of course I am,” he replied, brown eyes gleaming with amusement. “I’m a mean old pirate chaser whose life’s work is to be hard on others.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “I’m getting too old for this, Sandrilene.”
She stared at him. Since she was little, she’d viewed her father’s favorite uncle as a marble man who never aged or tired. It was unsettling to hear him admit to weariness. “Is everything all right? Apart from pulling things together after the quake?”
“We have more pirates about than usual. I’d have thought the merchants’ screams would be audible all the way up here.”
She smiled and was glad to see that he smiled back. “Have they reason to scream?”
“Only if they hear the same news as I do. The worst of the Battle Islands raiders, Pauha—she calls herself Queen Pauha—has talked a number of the lesser chiefs into sailing under her command. That’s bad enough—she can muster quite a fleet that way. Worse, her brother Enahar has joined her. He is a mage, educated at the university where Niko studied. Enahar might complicate things, if Pauha turns her eyes our way.”
“Is she going to?” The thought of a pirate fleet—not just a handful of ships—with a really good mage along made her skin prickle.
“I hope not.” He got to his feet and stretched. Sandry also rose. “I’m doing my best to make them go elsewhere. Most of Emelan’s fleet is at sea, guarding the coast.” He gave her a strong hug. “Not that you need to worry. Winding Circle has its own way to discourage unwelcome visitors—no one has breached these walls in four hundred years.”
“And Summersea?” she asked, walking with him to the door. Outside, a mounted company of the Duke’s Guard waited under some shady trees.
His eyes glinted frostily. “They’d do better to swallow a crested porcupine. That’s why our port is the most popular in the Pebbled Sea—we are the safest of all.” He kissed her cheeks. “Be well, Sandrilene. Once things calm down, we’ll have you and your friends up to Duke’s Citadel, and you can show them around.”
She caught his sleeve as a young guardsman brought over his horse. “Take care of yourself, Uncle. Let your merchants scream in a courtyard where you can’t hear them. The exercise will keep them young.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “That’s my favorite niece!”
His guardsmen grinned as the duke mounted up. He saluted her and led the company up the spiral road. Sandry waved for as long as she could see him.
“I’m impressed,” Lark said quietly. She came up to put a comforting arm around Sandry’s shoulders. “The word is that he doesn’t really like many people, and I can see he loves you.”
“He works so hard,” whispered Sandry. “I wonder if they appreciate him.” She sighed, and looked into Lark’s kind face. “And are we back to work?”
“For a while longer,” the dedicate replied. “We’ll stop at suppertime. You don’t feel the effect of spending all this magic now, but you will tomorrow.”
Five minutes later, as they were about to start their magical weaving again, a winded novice half fell through their door.
“Excuse me,” she gasped, “but has Duke Vedris come here yet? Moonstream wants him back right away!”
Lark frowned. “He’s gone. He may be through the north gate by now.”
“Oh, cowpox!” cried the runner. She raced off.
Sandry fiddled uneasily with her spools of linen thread.
“It may be nothing,” Lark said. “If it’s bad news, we’ll hear soon enough.”
She was right. Taking a breath, Sandry eased into her magic, and the weaving resumed.
By suppertime, Sandry and Tris were half-asleep, worn out. Briar focused on eating, silently going over the letters Tris had taught him. Daja was restless, thinking of that hidden ship and what it could mean. Her clan had lost people and ships to pirates. Lark, Niko, and Rosethorn, together at supper for the first time since the earthquake, discussed the gossip that Rosethorn had picked up while working at the Water Temple.
“Niko, this spell is giving me a headache,” Tris complained when the adults fell silent. “Do I need to see magic all the time? Doesn’t it give you a headache?”
For a moment Niko caught her eyes with his and held them. Tris’s vision doubled, then tripled as her teacher glowed, then blazed. “Ow!” she cried, breaking free to cover her eyes with her arm. “Stop it! That’s worse than the flicker!”
“That is what I see,” he explained, smoothing his mustache as he often did when thinking. “You’re ad
apting to the spell quite nicely. It’s not just the edges of your vision anymore, is it? You’re starting to see magic when you look directly at it.”
“You almost blinded me,” she grumbled, rubbing her eyes with her fists.
“If you don’t like it, alter the spell. Try to change the intensity of what you see. Dim the magic’s glow.” The edges of his eyes crinkled in a hidden smile.
“But I don’t know what you did to my specs,” she argued. “I have to know what you did to fool with your spell.”
“Probe it with magic. You have to start learning how to pick apart the spells cast by strangers anyway—think of this as a necessary exercise.”
“Something in your eyes is flickering?” asked Daja.
“At the edges,” Briar said, a spoonful of rice halfway to his mouth. “Like ghosts, only when—”
“Or azigazis,” murmured Daja. When they all looked at her, she told them not just what the word meant, but what she had seen that afternoon.
“They’re sniffing around,” Rosethorn said grimly when Daja finished. “Scavengers. Parasites.”
“At least we’ll be safe,” Lark replied. “Better they should blunt their teeth on us, or on Summersea—again—than go after a village still digging itself out.”
“The duke’s got patrols all up and down the coasts,” Sandry pointed out. “They’ll run off any pirates.”
The dedicates, Sandry, and Tris made the gods-circle on their chests to ward off trouble. Daja placed one fist on top of the other as if she climbed a rope, the way to ask help of the Trader god. Briar, about to spit on the floor to scare off luck-eaters, caught Rosethorn’s eye on him and cleared his throat instead.
They were about to get up from the table when Little Bear started to bark. Someone knocked on the door frame as the pup ran forward to challenge him.
Rosethorn shaded her eyes, trying to see the visitor’s face through the open door. With the light just beginning to fade, he was only a shadow. “Not Frostpine—too short,” she muttered, and got up to greet the stranger. Briar grabbed Little Bear, who was sometimes over-enthusiastic in his welcomes.