“Carefully,” Tris heard Moonstream order. “We don’t want accidents at this point.”
Daja leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. Tears of exhaustion and relief trickled down her cheeks.
Blinking, the children shaded their eyes against the flickering torchlight behind the ring of faces that looked down at them. They were in the heartfire chamber of the Hub. Moonstream was there, hands tucked into her wide sleeves. So too were Niko, Lark, Rosethorn, and Frostpine. The children knew few of the other initiates who had helped bring them from the earth, except for one.
“Dedicate Gorse!” croaked Briar. “Have you got anything to eat?”
None of the four made an easy recovery from the earthquake. In addition to the same weakness that had kept Tris in bed after her experiment with tides, they were bruised from head to toe. Sandry’s hands were crossed by red welts, as if she had tried to spin a hot wire.
At first they slept an entire day in one of the temple’s infirmaries. Waking briefly, they swallowed clear soup, then slept. It was night when they woke for the second time. The healers gave them fruit juices and herbal teas, making them drink every drop before allowing them to sleep again.
Tris woke around dawn. Niko helped her into a chair, while Lark placed her spectacles on her nose. By the time she had eaten a bowl of thin gruel, Briar, Sandry, and Daja were awake. Even Briar didn’t object to the gruel. It tasted wonderful. None of them left as much as a spoonful for Little Bear, whose ivory curls had been washed and combed while they slept.
“We took damage,” Lark explained, once all four had eaten. “It would be a miracle if we hadn’t. Most of our people are in Summersea, though—that’s where it hit hardest. Rosethorn and Frostpine are bringing survivors out of the ruins still, and it’s been three days.”
“Someone tried to stop the quake in Ragat, didn’t they?” Tris’s voice was little more than a croak.
“No, no, they didn’t try to stop it,” Niko protested, his voice very dry. “They knew it was folly to stop a quake. Honored Huath and the Wave Circle mages wanted to trap it. They thought they could store it, as you might store power in a crystal, or a shakkan, for use later.”
Little Bear yapped, sensing Briar’s sudden anger.
Sandry blinked several times. “I could have sworn you just said they wanted to trap an earthquake.”
“It gets better,” Lark said, brushing the tangles from Sandry’s hair. “As it bounced around the crystals they used to trap it, the quake got stronger. Finally it broke out of the holding spells and went in every direction.”
“Is this Huath going to get in trouble?” Sandry wanted to know, eyes blazing. “If the temples don’t do something—”
“Huath is dead,” Niko told her. “Him, and all of Wave Circle Temple.”
Tris and Sandry made the gods-circle on their chest. Daja, about to spit on the floor with contempt, saw Lark watching and changed her mind. Briar thought, Better that Huath than us.
Yes, chorused the girls, without realizing they’d all spoken magically.
They felt well enough to visit the privy, though afterward all of them felt like a fresh nap. “Is this going to happen every time we use big magic?” Briar demanded, collapsing onto his cot.
Niko smiled. “The better you get, the less tiring any exercise of magic will be. I should mention, though, that it will be a long time before you can recover easily from the sort of magic you worked down there. I wouldn’t have thought it possible with beginners.”
“Sandry spun us, to make us stronger,” Daja explained.
Niko shook his head. “When you feel better, we must sit down and get your story in full. You’ve already given a number of people much food for thought.”
“My favorite activity,” grumbled Tris, pulling her blankets over her shoulders.
“We’ll have you home soon,” Lark told the four. “At least you can look at walls you know.” She kissed each of them on the forehead and left with Niko.
We did do pretty good for ourselves, didn’t we? Briar flopped back onto his pillow.
And if we’re very, very lucky, we won’t do so well for ourselves again, Daja retorted.
They were released the next day and given a cart ride to Discipline. They made it through the front door, but only barely. Tris and Daja were grateful to see that cots had been set up for them in the main room. Dosed with Rosethorn’s herbs, breathing summer garden smells wafting through every door and window, the four felt much better. Within a day or so they began to straighten up the cottage. It had received a shaking, and while nearly everything was in one piece, few of the pieces were where they were supposed to be.
The moment that she could manage it, Daja climbed the stairs to her room. As she had thought, her altar had fallen over, scattering incense and images across the floor. Her box stood at the foot of her bed, looking as it always had. The first thing the Trader did was tend the suraku, polishing its metal and oiling the leather until it gleamed.
“It saved me twice,” she explained to her gods and ancestors as she set up her altar again. “I had to repay the debt.” If they were displeased that she had tended it before them, they showed no sign of it. She didn’t think they would be.
Sandry’s first act, once home, was to put her green drop spindle on a shelf. Beside it she placed the thread with four lumps in it. It had somehow woven its loose ends together as she had spun it underground, and now it formed a ring. There was no way even to tell where the loose ends had met: the circle was complete, the four lumps equally spaced.