She had followed him three blocks when she saw a green-and-yellow ribbon drop onto him from a second-story window: it landed across his shoulders and curled around his neck. Evvy swallowed a gasp, thinking a serpent had dropped onto the boy from the iron-grated window. He stopped and wrapped both hands carefully around the thing, lifting it over his head.
Then Evvy got a better look and almost wished it had been a snake. The thing was a vine, the kind Chammurans called “Traveler’s Joy"; the yellow spots were its whiskered flower petals. It hung from a box under a window grate on which it grew. Unlike any plant Evvy had seen in her life, this one moved, twining and wrapping around the jade-eyed boy’s head and arms, making her think of hungry cats who know when a human has a treat for them.
She couldn’t hear what he said, but his lips moved. Finally he raised his arms toward the window-box. Slowly, chagrin in its drooping leaves and blossoms, the vine retreated to wrap around its grate once more.
Evvy rocked back on her heels. It reached for him, she thought, her mind spinning. Like it was alive. Like it had feelings!
She peered down at the street again, just as the boy turned the corner. In a flash she was up and running, following in earnest. As she did she saw rosebushes in pots lean toward him. Grapes, vines, and bean plants threw runners down from rooftops. His progress slowed; if he could not reach a plant to touch it, he stood beneath it for a moment, until it returned to its proper home. Flowers turned their faces as he passed, and grass sprouted from cracks in the street in his wake.
Always he made his way north, until he turned west on the Street of Hares. He stopped briefly to talk to a cluster of boys and girls wearing the Camelgut green sash. Whatever they said, it had to be funny, because everyone laughed. Eventually the boy walked into the house she had seen him enter the day before. Just before he went in he turned and inspected first the street, then the roofs. Evvy jerked back and down; when she looked again, he was closing the door behind him.
Evvy perched on the roof of a warehouse across the street from the eknub temple and wrapped her arms around her knees. He really was a pahan, a mage. It was the only explanation for what she had seen, though she had never heard of magic that made plants act like animals. Where had he come from, this jade-plant boy? What could he possibly want from her?
“If we grab her here, we’ll reap trouble,” argued Orlana, on a rooftop a street away. The Vipers who had followed Evvy in the street had joined her there when it became clear that the girl was settled for the time being. From their position they could see Evvy clearly. She sat without moving, her gaze intent on something below. “This quarter is full of Camelguts,” Orlana continued. “If we make a noise they’ll be on us, probably worse than they were on Sajiv yesterday.”
“We need to teach them respect,” growled Sajiv, touching his nose. The lady’s healer had fixed the damage the Camelguts had done in tearing out his gang ring, but it would be a moon before his flesh was strong enough to get another, and his nose still hurt.
The third member of their group, the black-skinned boy who had spoken first to Briar the day before, laughed contemptuously. “Why should they respect us? A year ago we were just a bunch of messengers in the Grand Bazaar, and all Chammur knows it.”
“That’s changing, Yoru,” the girl Orlana told him in a hot-voiced whisper. “The lady’s going to get us respect.”
“What a good little lapdog you are, Orlana,” replied Yoru with a sneer. “So we go from message runners to pets without never once standing on our own hind legs!”
Sajiv punched his shoulder. “If it’s so bad, why did you come today?” he wanted to know. “Maybe you’re wasting your time here, too.”
“I ain’t a fool, Sajiv,” retorted Yoru. “If it’s stones, if that kid can make the stones talk? You know how the takamers hide money stuff to keep it safe.” He pointed to Evvy, who’d removed her scarf to scratch her head. “She’ll know where they’re hid. That’s real power for Vipers.”
Orlana and Sajiv traded looks of dawning wonder. Without further debate they settled down to wait Evvy out.
Briar had sensed that he had company just as the Traveler’s Joy vine got emotional enough to drop on him. The poor thing was suffering with a kind of fungus infection. Briar sent his power through every vein the Joy plant had, scorching through every hair on its roots, cooking the fungus to a fine white dust. Normally Briar had nothing against fungi, but when they preyed on other plants, he always sided with the victims.
The sense that he was followed continued after he left the vine. Peeks back down the street as he walked north showed him nothing, until he remembered the roads over the city’s roofs. He couldn’t look up without giving himself away, so he waited until he was at his own door before checking the skyline. There: quick movement back from the edge, a head scarf the nameless color of dirt, across the street. Feeling for the magic vine he’d attached to her, he found it was short and fairly thick. It was Evvy.
Well, well, Briar thought, opening his door. I made kitty curious. He considered ways to deal with her that wouldn’t scare her into running away.
A door across the street opened. One of his young neighbors knelt to place a saucer heaped with chopped meat on the ground. A gray-and-black spotted cat separated itself from the shadows at the base of the wall and trotted over to devour the food. Smiling, the girl petted the cat as it ate.
Briar grinned.