“We got caught by Gate Lords, Mai and me and some of the others,” she told Briar when she could speak clearly. “The Lords beat Mai bad, worse than the boys with us, because of their tesku talking with her. The boys went to tell Ikrum, but I stuck with Mai. She’s really hurt, and she doesn’t trust anyone but you now.” Ayasha grabbed Briar’s hand and kissed it. “Neither do I,” she whispered, looking at him with pleading in her face.
Briar ran upstairs to fetch his mage kit. “There’s meat and bread and cheese in the pantry,” he told Evvy when he returned. “I’ll put a warding on the windows and door so nobody comes in. That means stay put, understand?” He was fairly sure Lady Zenadia and the Vipers had given up on chasing Evvy, but there was no harm in taking precautions. Quickly he drew a protective line around the doors and windows. When he returned to the dining room he told Evvy, “Have the cats do their business in the back hall — they can’t go out. We’ll scrub it before Rosethorn comes home.”
Evvy nodded, eyes wide.
Briar tugged her nose gently. “Stay out of trouble,” he ordered. To Ayasha he said, “Let’s go.” Walking out with her, he stopped to put a final ward on the front door.
Ayasha took Briar’s hand and led him through the streets and up along roofs, into the middle- and lower-class neighborhoods south of the Street of Hares and east of the Hajra Gate. Briar was well and truly lost after the first three or four turnings. “No wonder you were breathless,” he told Ayasha as they climbed down to the street once again.
She glanced at him. “I needed to put her someplace safe,” she explained. “I know the lads had to tell Ikrum, so they could get back at the Gate Lords, but I wish they’d stayed until I fetched you. I couldn’t manage her alone. Here.” She walked through a narrow passageway that pierced yet another blank stucco wall. It led into a dead end courtyard between five houses. There a rickety wooden lean-to stood against the wall on one side of the entrance. Ayasha struggled with the door, finally getting it open.
“In here,” she whispered. Mai lay in the dark inside, on a pile of sacking.
When he got a clear look at Mai, for a moment Briar was speechless with rage. She’d been beaten hard, her nose broken, her arms and legs dappled with bruises.
He knelt beside her and gently felt her arms and legs. Her left leg was broken near the foot. Next he checked her ribs and collarbone. “You need a healer,” he told Mai softly. She shook her head, grunting. Did they break her jaw? He felt it, and the rest of her skull. As far as he could tell, they were whole. “Did you lose teeth?” he asked, gently prying her swollen lips open. Her teeth were coated with blood — he saw cuts in the flesh of her lips — but they didn’t seem broken. “Mai, why can’t you talk?” he asked, tugging on her lower jaw. “Lemme see your tongue.”
When she opened her teeth, he smelled cloves and lavender. That scent — he should know that scent. Her tongue was undamaged. He felt her voice box, but it too was normal. He extracted medicines from his kit to ease the pain of her broken nose and broken leg, and to reduce her lumpiest bruises. While he tended those, memory told him the source of that odd smell. He sat back on his heels.
“Numbtongue?” he whispered, baffled. Numbtongue was only barely legal: a substance that could stop people with broken jaws and teeth from talking could also keep people from shouting for help. “Why in Lakik Trickster’s name —?” He looked around for Ayasha.
She was gone.
Briar smelled something far worse than numbtongue — a trick. He looked at Mai for a moment, wiping his hand over his dry lips. She wrapped her hands around one of his wrists. Her eyes begged him for something; what, he didn’t know.
“Only one way to know,” he muttered grimly.
The back of his mage’s kit seemed to be of a piece with the front. Only someone familiar with it, or someone with sharp eyes, would guess that the apparent back on the inner compartments was secured by tiny buttons. Briar undid them and opened out the secret compartment, revealing a row of small vials, each carefully sealed and labeled. Everything here was hazardous; possession of these substances was limited to recognized mages and healers. With his mage’s credential he was allowed to carry these things, but he hid them from thieves.
He cracked the vial of Loosetongue syrup, and dabbed it on Mai’s tongue. It was good for several uses, including interrogations. Few people remained silent with Loosetongue in their mouths. It was also the antidote to Numbtongue.
Mai swallowed, once, twice, her eyes watering. She gasped and said, “The Vipers did this — not Gate Lords. It was to bring you. They went to take your Evvy!”
Briar straightened with a curse, and bumped his head on the shed’s low roof. He cursed again and lunged for the door. Mai’s yelp as she fought to sit up halted him.
He couldn’t leave her in this place with a broken leg. The Vipers might beat her again, to punish her for telling. If not, there were plenty of people who took advantage of girls who could not run.
But Evvy! his mind shouted. She’ll be scared! She’ll — wait. The cooler Briar took over, the one in control of his thinking, most days. I put wards on the doors and the windows. They won’t be able to get past those.
He’d splinted Mai’s leg with boards from the lean-to and was wrapping a length of bandage around the splits when he saw he’d forgotten something. It was stupid, in this city, and if anything proved he was truly an eknub it was this: he hadn’t warded the roof. Hadn’t even thought of it, not when he was at the house, not even as Ayasha led him across roofs to this place.