Hands shaking, Tris put one end of the reed into the milk, closed the free end with a fingertip, and raised it. Taking her finger off the opening, she watched as all of the milk poured out. Trying again, she lifted her finger quickly, then closed the opening again. Now she controlled how much liquid came out, and could deliver it as drops, instead of a flood. Filling the reed a third time, she peered into the nest.
The youngster was cheeping. Was he louder? She prayed to Asaia, goddess of air and birds, and let two drops fall into the open beak. Startled, the nestling closed its mouth and swayed. He lifted his head and cheeped for more.
As Tris fed the nestling, Rosethorn said, "Gardeners - farmers - learn about birds, if only so they can tell which ones eat the crops, and which don't. I started with nestlings when I was your age, on my da's farm. All right, that's enough. He'll sleep for a while, but you'd better get ready to heat another batch of milk."
"Every fifteen minutes?" Tris wondered how she could do anything else if she had to see to her charge.
"Until he's stronger. If he improves, we can go to every half-hour this afternoon. If he keeps improving, in a day or so, you can wait a whole hour."
Tris gulped. "How will I sleep?"
"Goose! Do sparrows and crows race everywhere at night? Chicks sleep with the sun. Come here." She went to the door that opened on the garden, and beckoned to Tris. "See that bird sitting on the roof of the well?"
Tris saw him, a handsome brown-black fellow who ruffled his chin feathers as he whistled loudly. He looked to be about the length of her hand, with yellow legs and a sharp-looking beak. When he turned, his feathers gleamed in the sun, and showed off a multitude of tiny specks.
"Starlings. They're called that because they look like a field of stars. Insect-eaters - clowns. They imitate other birds - a lot of the local ones cry like seagulls. They form the big flocks you see swirling around at day's end. I have a soft spot for starlings."
The starling on the well said "Gaak," and flew away.
"Come on," said Rosethorn. "We have to fix things so you can keep this youngster warm at night."
When he left Dedicate Gorse's kitchen realm in the Hub tower, Briar carried a loaded basket on one arm, and a meat turnover to help him survive the long minutes until midday. If Rosethorn hadn't been willing to teach him the mysteries of plants, he would have been perfectly content to labour for Gorse - hot as the kitchens were in the summer - for the rest of his life.
When he was thinking of other things - the Bit Island tower, Tris's bird - he forgot that it was no longer important to hide when he had food. It had only been two months since he was a half-starved street boy. Looking for a dark corner in which to eat his turnover safely, he found a niche in the round chamber at the centre of the Hub. The room was a plain, shadowy circle wrapped around a beautifully-carved wooden screen that reached through the ceiling. Inside that wooden tube, a stair ran up as high as the great clock at the Hub's peak, and down to the secret room called Heartfire, far underground. The wooden screen also enclosed a dumbwaiter, shelves on rope cables that carried messages from the seers in the far-seeing and far-hearing rooms in the upper levels down to this level. When he'd come through on his way to the kitchens, two runners had been sitting on the floor, ready to carry any messages from the upper storeys. They were gone now. Briar tucked himself into his niche and happily bit into his snack.
Something rustled in the wooden stairwell. Rats, he thought, putting a hand on a little dagger tucked inside his shirt. Back in Hajra, his old home, rats would try to take a meal, if a kid didn't look like he could hang on to it.
Wood clacked. Gears moved, and Briar heard the rumble of the dumbwaiter. Just messages coming down, he thought, scornful of his jumpiness. As if Gorse would let rats near his kitchen!
There was another sound, under the rattle. Briar knew the scuff of a foot on wooden floors. He drew even further into the shadows.
The door in the screen opened a hair at a time. Briar caught a noseful of cinnamon scent, and bit down a sneeze. Though he doubted any thief would have the sauce to operate here in Winding Circle, he knew professional thieves used cinnamon oil to baffle tracker-mages. It was expensive stuff. Beneath the cinnamon's peppery tickle he found another scent, one that was honeyed and slow: poppy.
Three weeks ago, Rosethorn had started to teach him magical uses for the oils in her workshop. "If you want to waste poppy oil, don't use it for medicine," she'd said then. "Use it for invisibility. It does more good as medicine, though."
Silvery light flickered. Someone drifted out of the stairwell, closing its door without a sound. Briar squinted; the light glimmered all over a blur that passed between the stair and the outer door. It traced a man's shape.
Rich man, he thought as the blur left the tower. Rich enough to afford cinnamon and poppy oils. Unless it's a student, raiding his master's oil stores. Two months wasn't long enough to erase his old ways, but it had taught him student mages were always trying something they shouldn't. Winding Circle had more than its share of mage students, too, of every nationality.
Putting down his basket, he went to the stairwell and opened it, eyeing the steps and the dumbwaiter ropes. The cinnamon odour was stronger here; he found spots of oil on the inner doorknob, and on the wheels that raised and lowered the wooden boxes for messages. Shaking his head, he closed the door and fetched his basket from the corner where he'd left it. Students playing with their magic, he decided. Who would try invisibility spells in the Hub in the middle of the day?