Briar backed up a step, angry again. “No,” he snapped. “Send a kid to spy in a house where four of your own grown Watchmen have gone missing? Not while I’m her teacher, and not while Dedicate Rosethorn is my teacher. I don’t care if it makes your life easier.” They blinked at the mention of Rosethorn’s name. He’d risked their not knowing who she was, but it seemed like a small risk. If they knew his conversation with Lady Zenadia in the souk, they had to know Rosethorn had talked to Jebilu, and that she’d forced their wonderful stone mage to bow down. He continued, “If you meddle with Evvy, you won’t like what happens. Rosethorn will back me up. Evvy stays with us.”
The mutabir glared at Briar. “I do not like threats.”
“Briar Moss,” Turaba remarked. “I have heard stories of four young pahans in Emelan, one of them named Briar Moss. The stories are — astonishing.”
Briar shrugged. “Stories get stretched when they travel.”
“But you are that pahan, are you not?” Turaba pursued.
“Maybe,” Briar said with another shrug. “Me and the girls always get talked about.”
Turaba looked at her master and made a flickering signal with her hand. Tentatively she asked Briar, “Can we not reach an accommodation?”
“I don’t appreciate people using street kids as pawns,” Briar told them. “Evvy’s scraped to live in this wonderful city for years. You owe her better than sending her into that house, if there’s a chance she’ll be risking her life.”
The mutabir sighed. “There have been poor since the birth of humankind, young pahan. It speaks to the generosity of your heart that you have taken this girl in, but know this: for every girl lifted from poverty, there are twenty more to take her place. No one could save them all.”
Not that you ever bothered, Briar thought, but he kept it to himself. He’d already pushed this man as far as was safe.
The mage inspected the crystal globe she still held. “Will you at least keep your ears open for more information? You have been seen with members of the gangs involved — you may hear something. You may be invited to the lady’s house again.”
“Why bother?” asked Briar. “Her kinfolk will hush it up, no matter what.”
“If she has committed truly serious crimes, her own kin will want an end to her activities,” the mutabir replied. “Even nobles answer to the law. She cannot murder without consequences.”
“I’ll think about it,” Briar said flatly. “Can I go now?”
The mutabir drummed his fingers on a tabletop, then nodded. Briar turned and walked out, the skin on the back of his neck prickling. He was surprised at their restraint. Most law officials he’d known would bruise people first for defying them, then apologize later. He knew that law-keepers tended to walk softly around mages — why risk creating problems they might not be able to fix? — but this was the first time he’d experienced it personally. Which stories about him and the girls had filtered to this far place?
13
The house on the Street of Hares was quiet when he arrived late that afternoon. A lone cat — Briar thought it was the brown tortoiseshell Asa — napped in the middle of the dining room table. Looking at her in decent light, Briar realized she was pregnant.
“Wonderful,” he muttered, dumping his packs and parcels on the table. “Rosethorn?” he called. Asa looked at him, meowed a complaint, then went back to sleep.
“Workroom,” shouted Rosethorn.
“Evvy?” He walked toward the kitchen.
“In my room,” Evvy called. She sounded cross.
Briar reversed course and went to the door of Evvy’s new room. An invisible force halted him at the threshold. He looked down. A thin line of green powder lay across the sill. Touching it with his magic, he found it was the Holdall mixture Rosethorn kept in her stores. There were also lines of it across the windowsills.
Evvy sat against the far wall in the middle of a nest of cats. She was toying with the stones she had brought from home and pouting.
“What did you do?” asked Briar. He fought to keep a grin off his face.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Evvy whined.
“She had her nose in the mouth of a jar of Must-Sleep powder and was about to inhale,” Rosethorn said tartly from the top of the stair. She stood with a jar braced on one hip. “I told her not to go poking in the workroom.”
“I wanted to know how it smelled,” grumbled Evvy.
Briar shook his head. “And if you’d taken a big whiff, you’d be asleep for months,” he informed her as sternly as he could. “You have to obey Rosethorn. She mostly doesn’t give orders without good reason.”
“Mostly?” Rosethorn murmured, coming down the stair. Briar stepped aside to let her pass. “Just mostly?”
“Sometimes you give orders to be crotchety,” Briar whispered as she went by. He watched as she put the jar by the front door. “What’s that?”
Rosethorn stretched, hands pressed against the small of her back. “I’m about set for those farmers,” she explained. “I’ve packed every last seed for the fields. You can help me bring it down here. Her, too.” Bending down, she dragged a finger through the line of powdered herbs across Evvy’s door. “Come make yourself useful,” she told the girl as the freed cats raced out. “And don’t get into anything.”