Don’t get quivery on me, Briar replied, trying to put cheer into his mental voice. I’ll have fun—den with folk like I’m used to, and not you sniffer skirts. Bye-bye, now!
Tris, furious that he could joke, was about to reply angrily when Briar ended their connection. Sandry grabbed Tris by the arm. “Don’t,” she said aloud. “He just doesn’t want us to know he’s scared too.” She looked around for Niko and the duke. They had gone inside and were talking urgently at the duke’s writing desk.
“He didn’t have to be mean,” Tris muttered.
“‘Sniffer skirts’ indeed!”
Sandry walked to the balcony rail and stared at the town below. Tris came to join her as rain began to fall.
“He’s frightened,” whispered the young noble, to herself as much as to her friend. “You could be nicer.”
Tris growled, “You’re always defending him.”
“You’re too hard on people,” retorted Sandry. “You pay attention just to words, not how they’re said. Briar’s like you—he talks meaner than he is, and people fall for it. You should know better.”
About to snap a reply, Tris saw the troubled look in her friend’s blue eyes and changed her mind. She put an arm around Sandry’s shoulders gingerly, half afraid Sandry might shrug off the contact. When the other girl leaned her head on Tris’s plump shoulder, Tris relaxed. Without thinking she thrust the rain away, to leave them enclosed in a pillar of dry air. Both stood without speaking and watched as the weather cloaked the city.
When Rosethorn and the soldiers came to Flick’s den, they found their way without a guide. “Your friend Alleypup ran when the duke’s people climbed down the ladder,” Rosethorn told Flick drily.
Briar and Flick eyed the soldiers, who wore long oilcloth robes and cotton masks on their mouths and noses. “I knew Alleypup was smart,” the sick girl murmured. “He’da been locked up while you and your boy ran free.”
“Not so smart, if he gives this to the people he runs into,” Rosethorn replied as the soldiers eased Flick onto a litter.
“You may not care who else gets sick,” snapped a guard. “He’ll just scamper in the sewers, givin’ it to them as works for a living—”
Rosethorn turned on him, dark eyes blazing. “Not another word,” she ordered.
The guard met her eyes and looked away. Briar could see the muscles of the man’s jaw ripple as he clenched his teeth and held his tongue.
Rosethorn took a breath, making herself calm down. At last she shook her head and donned one of the spare oilcloth robes fetched by the guards. “We aren’t running,” she told Flick, handing a robe to Briar. “If this is catching, I won’t risk spreading it. We go into quarantine with you.”
The soldiers brought them out by way of a ladder that led up to a large grating in the market square. They lifted it to emerge inside one of the canvas tents used to cover sewer entrances when repairs were made underground. Now the tent hid them from the view of passersby. Someone had backed a covered wagon up to the flap.
They do this all the time, Briar thought, as the soldiers placed Flick’s litter in the back of the wagon. They have the clothes already made up, and the wagon, and folk see the tent every day, so they don’t guess there’s sickness and run mad. His respect for the duke rose several notches. Twice he’d been caught in mob panic when the news got out that disease was in Hajra’s slums. He’d escaped once to watch through sewer grates as people destroyed their own district out of fear of sickness. The second time, trying a bit of theft during the riot, had earned him a broken arm from a shopkeeper with a club.
He climbed into the wagon behind Rosethorn and settled into the corner. Rosethorn sat next to Flick, bracing her on the floor of the cart as they lurched forward.
Once they were moving, Rosethorn checked Flick’s pulse and temperature. The street girl watched her and Briar, eyes glassy. “Willowbark tea, for a start,” muttered Rosethorn, partly to herself and partly to Briar. “Why willowbark tea, student of mine?”
“To bring down the fever and make the ouches less,” he said promptly. “Maybe aloe balm for her skin? I saw her scratching the bumps.”
“Shouldn’t I wash her first? Give me a suggestion,” ordered Rosethorn. Noting the alarm in Flick’s eyes, Rosethorn smiled reassuringly at her. “Yes, I said the bad word—’wash.’ It won’t hurt, not much. It didn’t kill him.” She jerked a thumb at Briar. “So it shouldn’t kill you.”
Flick grinned. Turning over on the litter, she began to doze.
When they reached Urda’s House in the Mire, they entered the building through a back way built for quarantine: a separate, enclosed staircase with a gate that could be locked. The stair led to the third floor, which was empty when they arrived. Here the guards placed them in one of two large rooms just off the third-floor porch. Briar tried the inner door to the rest of the house and found it locked.
Examining his surroundings with a critical eye, he saw that it was well supplied. Deep, locked cupboards lined the two short walls from ceiling to floor, and cots lined the long walls. The shuttered windows were barred to keep unwilling guests inside. The only unlocked room that they might enter was the washroom, set up with privies in cubicles, showers, troughs for washing clothes, and a great hearth in which a huge kettle of water steamed.