He touched her knee with his foot and mind-spoke: You’re like a giant shakkan, with all that power in you.
Tend your bark, she ordered him, not unamused.
Briar drew away and thought about his own magic. So he was a queen willow now, was he? Better to be a king willow, he thought privately, trying to see it. Inch by inch he shaped himself: pale heartwood, gray bark riddled with fissures, long and wistful branches, lancepoint leaves. His power shaped him and made the veins in his leaves shimmer. The basket turned as clear as fine glass to his power; he settled himself in its contents, feeding the dry, weak bark as if it were his own.
Enough. Rosethorn had touched his arm to speak to him. Hold the tree in your mind, but release this load of bark. We have more to feed.
He drew himself in, opened his eyes, and checked the basket. Its contents shimmered in his vision as they would have had they just been cut from strong trees.
Not too shabby, he told himself. Careful to hold the king willow in his mind, not letting its image break apart, he filled the jars he had emptied. I can do this, easy.
He and Rosethorn worked on four baskets each, renewing the bark’s power to banish fever and pain, then returning it to the jars for use. When they had revived it all, Briar examined the king willow. For a moment he’d wondered how it would be to sink roots and sprout leaves. The idea was tempting, a way to escape this house, with its smells and cross people and the dying. A way to sit alone and love the sun.
Fighting the willow’s pull, Briar looked around. Someone had left them a tray with a teapot, cups, bread, and a thick wedge of cheese.
“Food!” he said gleefully. The king willow’s temptation evaporated. “Ain’t soup neither!”
“It isn’t soup either,” Rosethorn corrected him wearily. She struggled to her feet. “I hope there’s honey somewhere. I need it.”
There was honey. Briar added plenty to the tea and watched sharp-eyed as she drank it, then gave her bread and cheese. Satisfied that she was eating, he gulped down his share of everything. When they’d finished, he felt just as fine as rubies.
“Say, Rosethorn?”
She stared at the bread in her fingers as if it were sawdust. “What?”
“When’s your birthday?” It had come to him between willow baskets. To have the same birthday as Rosethorn—that would satisfy even Lady Sandrilene.
Rosethorn smiled crookedly. “Longnight.”
He blinked at her. That couldn’t be. “Longnight?” It was the hammer of winter, the night when all fires were doused and everyone prayed for the sun to rise.
She nodded, her smile twisted. “Doesn’t that put paid to those who claim our birthdates determine our lives? What kind of plant mage has a birthday on the longest night of the year?” Rosethorn sighed. “I celebrate at Midsummer instead—though not too much, as I get older. Who wants to be reminded of birthdays?” Raising her slender brows, she asked wickedly, “Still haven’t picked one, boy?”
Briar shook his head gloomily.
“Well, don’t look to me for help. Mine was the gods’ own little joke. Now, where were we?”
Next came wild cherry bark, as dried up and stale as the willow. After three baskets each of that, Briar felt a little tired, but not enough to stop, not when he saw the shadows under Rosethorn’s eyes. Instead he kept at it and gave lost vigor to coltsfoot, catnip, and plantain, all remedies for coughs or fever. Coming out of his trance after waking a basketful of red clover, he discovered Rosethorn was missing. He found her in the farthest corner of the room, her back to him and her hands over her face. Rosethorn—who terrified most of those with sense and everyone without it—was crying. Worse, she wept in the soft, dull way that meant she’d been at it for a while.
He wrapped his arms fiercely around her waist, resting his cheek on her back. “I’ll find that light-fingered woman if I have to turn over every rock between here and the Bight of Fire,” he whispered passionately. “Wherever she took the coin she got from selling your medicines, it ain’t far enough to dodge me. I’ll cut her in bitty chunks for you, would you like that? You could grill her over a fire and then feed her to sharks, like you always threaten me. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“I’m sorry,” Rosethorn whispered. “I didn’t mean to do this.”
To hear her apologize for a fit of weeps just as the girls did nearly broke his heart. He’d never guessed how much of himself he’d tacked to Rosethorn, who feared nothing and nobody. “I’ll give you her skin for a drape,” he offered. “Just tell me, and I’ll do it, I’ll bring you her nicking fingers in pickle juice. I—”
“No,” she said, trying to smile as she turned to face him. “It’s not this—chore. Though I hate being down here without even a window, among all this, this mast.” The word meant the litter of leaves, bark, and twigs that lay on the ground in the forest; it startled him that she used it to refer to the contents of these jars. She wiped her face on her arm, smearing the dust on her cheeks.
“Where’s your handkerchief?” Briar asked.
Rosethorn shrugged.
He undid the strings that held her mask and wiped her cheeks with it. Her skin was dry and slack, he noted. Even her lips were pale. She looked—the best word he could think of was “shadowed.”
Shadowed, he thought again, an idea tickling his brain. She feels like a plant in the shade.