“Plants need to die?” asked Briar, startled.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” snapped Rosethorn. “They need to rest. It’s not the same thing.” Taking his empty bowl, she ladled in more porridge. “Well, he’s underfed,” she said defensively to Lark, who watched her with a knowing smile.
After breakfast, all of them set about doing their scheduled chores. Briar was saved from having to admit he couldn’t read the marks Lark had made on the big slate by Lark herself, who showed him how to scrub the cottage’s small privy. For a change Briar had no thought of abandoning the work or even of doing it badly. He had plenty to think about that morning. Chief in his thoughts was the small tree he had seen not only the day before, but in his dreams as well.
When he returned to the cottage, the girls were finishing up their own chores. Rosethorn had gone into her workshop and closed the door—Briar could hear the sound of a sweeping broom in there. Lark was reading a message-slate that had been brought to her by one of the temple’s runners.
“As soon as you’re finished, you’re all to meet Niko at the Hub,” Lark told the four. “Go straight there, mind—no side trips along the way.” Digging in her pocket, she produced one of the round iron tokens that indicated they were supposed to be roaming and tied four short threads around the hole at the top of it. She handed it to Daja. “Stay together. Remind Niko that you’re to come back here for midday.”
Daja raced upstairs to get her staff. “I like carrying it,” she told Sandry, who eyed it with distaste. “It prevents misunderstandings.”
“Walking with girls,” Briar grumbled as the four ambled down the spiral road. “Respectable girls. I can’t never show my face in Sotat again.”
“You’re just complaining to be complaining,” Sandry pointed out. “We haven’t done anything to you.”
“Yet,” he retorted, and fell silent.
Five boys from his old dormitory approached them on the road. One of them was the youth who’d claimed Briar had stolen his cloak-pin. Inside his pockets, Briar’s hands doubled into fists.
“It’s the thief,” sneered one boy.
“A thief and a Trader,” added another, holding his nose. “Which is the lowest, do you think?”
Daja shifted her staff until she gripped it with both hands. She wouldn’t start a fight, but she wouldn’t put up with nonsense, either.
“A thief’s a thief,” said Cloak-Pin icily. “It doesn’t matter if you call it that or ‘Trader.’”
Sandry grabbed Briar and Daja by the elbow. “Don’t do anything!” she hissed. “They’re not worth the trouble it takes to blow them from your noses.”
“I don’t need a keeper,” hissed Briar, yanking away from her.
“Who’s your play-pretty, thief-boy?” Cloak-Pin demanded.
“Who’s the fatty?” muttered one of the others. Tris went pale.
“They let just anyone into the Circles, don’t they?” jeered the boy who disliked Traders. He threw the core of an apple he’d been eating at Tris and made oinking sounds.
Suddenly the air went cold. Something tightened around and inside the children in the blink of an eye. A faint crackling filled their ears.
“That’s what this is!” cried Cloak-Pin, his eyes bright and gleeful. He didn’t seem to feel anything odd. “A herd of pigs! A small herd, maybe, though Fatty and the Trader show promise—”
The hair rose on Sandry’s arms. “Tris, no!” she hissed, feeling somehow that Tris was the source of the weirdness in the air.
“Let’s get out of here.” Daja grabbed one of Tris’s arms, holding her staff up as a warning for the boys to keep their distance.
Briar grinned savagely and put a hand under each arm, where he’d once carried two knives. Niko had taken them all, but these bleaters couldn’t know that.
The youths backed off nervously. Quickly the four from Discipline took a path that cut across the loops of the road. Sandry and Briar stayed close to Tris, who was now pouring sweat. Only when they’d put two gardens between them and the boys did they slow down.
“Why did we do that?” Briar came to a halt in front of the girls, hands on hips. “We could’ve had a nice tumble, taught them some respect.”
“I don’t know why we did it.” Daja leaned on her staff and wiped her own sweating face on her sleeve. “I just had an idea that we had to.”
Sandry dug in her belt-purse until she found a small glass vial with a silver filigree cap. Opening it, she thrust it under Tris’s nose.
Until that moment, the other girl had been staring into space, her pupils shrunk to pinpoints, her face sickly white. When the fumes from the smelling salts burned her nose, she gasped and sneezed. As she groped for her handkerchief, the feeling of something stretched much too tight faded from the air.
“I—I got mad, didn’t I?” she whispered.
“We all got mad,” said Briar.
Tris looked at each of them frantically. “Did anything happen? Hail, or wind, or—”
“No,” retorted Briar, shoving his hands into his pockets. “And I’da felt better for a proper tumble. Girls,”
“Nothing?” whispered Tris, clutching Sandry’s arm. “Nothing happened?”
Sandry shook her head and returned the smelling salts to her pouch. She’d forgotten she had them, until just now. I’d better keep them handy—just in case, she told herself. In case of what, she refused to think.