Tamora Pierce - Street Magic

“Our tesku, brat,” said the male Gate Lord, a brown-skinned youth of seventeen. He reached over the counter and grabbed Evvy’s shirt-front, dragging her toward him. “And if you’re friends with Vipers, you’re a Viper—” He looked to the side, to the dagger Briar had gently laid against his face.

“She isn’t a Viper and you just annoyed me,” Briar told him softly. “If you don’t want a third nostril, let her go.”

“She runs with Vipers,” objected the girl. “Or gutter slime that let go their true gang to join Vipers.”

Briar saw the girl was moving to the side, ready to grab Evvy’s arm when her mate let Evvy go. Briar woke the willow and the fig trees, releasing years’ worth of growth into their branches. As soon as the Gate Lord girl was within reach of the miniature, he turned them loose.

Wire-thin branches twined around her arm and neck as Briar called on the essence of the full-sized tree at the heart of each miniature. Though the girl’s bonds were flexible, slender branches, she felt as if she were locked in the limbs of a full-grown willow and a full-grown fig. “ Pahan,” whispered the girl, her dusky skin gone ashy with fright.

“Now back off,” Briar told the male Gate Lord. “I get any more vexed and I can’t promise what I will and won’t do.”

The youth released Evvy, held up his hands to show they were empty, and waited for Briar to lower his knife. When Briar did, the Gate Lord took three slow steps back. “If she ain’t a Viper, does she know what those two done with our teskut” he asked. “He was talking to them, and no one’s seen him since.”

Evvy shook her head. She smoothed her blouse with a shaking hand. “They just wanted to say hello to Pahan Briar,” she mumbled.

“Let my friend go,” the youth told Briar. “We’ll be about our business then.”

Sweat came to Briar’s forehead. It was much harder to get miniature trees to reabsorb all that wonderful new growth and return to being small again. Even though he drew away the strength of their sprouting, letting its power spill into the air, he would have to do serious pruning to return them to their original state. The fig, sensing his plan, instantly started to complain.

When the trees let her go, the female Gate Lord scurried off with her friend. Both of them looked back over their shoulders at Briar to make sure he didn’t follow.

“Are you happy?” Evvy demanded, her lips trembling. “This is what happens with gangs. You don’t have to belong to one—just be in the way when they get a notion into their heads. And if you do belong, it’s worse.”

He would have told her she was wrong, but he knew she wasn’t. He remembered the times he and his mates would charge through a market, overturning baskets, scaring donkeys, and pulling down awnings. They would single out a man or woman walking down the street and flock around that person, cutting him or her off from other passersby, tugging on clothes, pinching or patting, giggling as their prey grew more and more frightened. As part of the gang, he’d thought it funny. It didn’t seem amusing just now.

“You don’t understand,” he replied at last. “Your gang’s who you have when you don’t have anyone else.”

“For you, maybe. For me, it’s one more pack of wild dogs looking to tear me apart.” Evvy brushed away something that looked uncomfortably like a tear and smoothed her blouse again.

Rather than defend it, knowing he couldn’t, Briar went for food, leaving Evvy in the stall with the trees. They would keep her safe if anyone else bothered her. Making his purchases, Briar kept his eyes and ears open. The Gate Lords were everywhere, making guards edgy as they searched behind curtains and stalls. The Vipers appeared to have left the souk —Briar didn’t see any of them.

He and Evvy ate their midday in silence. She stayed close for the remainder of the afternoon, while Briar worked on trees and talked to people. A second noble and a wealthy mage both expressed interest in trees, and told Briar they would send word if they chose to buy. He thought the mage would follow through, though he wasn’t sure about the noble.

Finally it was time to go. Evvy retrieved the donkeys he’d rented from the market stables and helped him to load his trees in their special carry-baskets. After making sure they’d left the stall as clean as it had been when Briar arrived that morning, they led the donkeys outside. The sun was already below the western wall, though higher buildings still got plenty of light.

He glared at her. “I don’t even know you,” he snapped. He was tired, headachy, and not at all ready for his talk with Rosethorn.

The woman unhooked the section of pale blue cloth that covered all of her face but her eyes to let him see her: Mai. Her eyes were red and puffy from weeping; tears had made tracks down her dirty cheeks. Parts of the veil-cocoon were still wet—she must have stolen it from a drying line. “Please, pahan, don’t send me away. The Gate Lords killed Douna.” She began to weep again. “If they find me, they’ll kill me, too.”

Briar went cold all over. Just a day ago Douna had fetched him to the Camelgut den. He wanted it to be a story, but he knew it wasn’t. He knew the look of someone who’d just lost a mate. “Evvy already got threatened by Gate Lords just for being with you two,” he said, trying to sound cold. “See if your takameri will protect you.”

Mai wiped her eyes on her sleeve, then fastened the face veil again. “I don’t want anything from that—” The word she used was so raw that Evvy yelped and covered her ears. “Just let me come as far as Cedar Lane.”

Briar had been as tough as he could be when a girl he liked stared at him with heartbreak in her eyes. “All right,” he said gruffly. “Walk on the side of that middle donkey. Put a hand on the basket like you’re holding it steady.”

Mai did as she was told. There were Gate Lords everywhere in the crush of people leaving Golden House and the Grand Bazaar. Two of them started toward Briar’s donkeys, but the girl who’d been captured by the willow and the fig stopped them. Briar, Evvy, and the disguised Mai walked away from the gang searchers in safety.

Briar waited until he hadn’t seen a Gate Lord for five blocks before he walked up beside Mai. “Why’d they kill Douna?” he wanted to know. “Didn’t you tell them you had nothing to do with their tesku? ”

Mai looked away.

“Lakik Trickster take you both!” he snapped. “You did it, didn’t you? You snatched the head of another gang! Nobody does that!”

“It wasn’t us that took him,” Mai replied sullenly. “We just lured him to Ikrum and the others. They said we had to, to prove we were worthy to be Vipers. If you’d ever been in a gang, you’d know.”

Briar did know. But the gang hadn’t saved Douna, had it? The Vipers had let her and Mai wander off alone, outside the safety of the group. They’d let them go, knowing the Gate Lords would remember who had been seen last with their leader.

Evvy, on the lead donkey, glanced back at them. Suddenly she asked, “So Pahan Briar, if I get ganged up, I could end like Douna someday, right?”

“You aren’t in a gang?” Mai inquired, startled. “Where do you live, in the palace?”

Briar, who’d gotten the point of Evvy’s artless question, glared at her. “Enough,” he told her. “You made your point.”

“I hope so,” Evvy retorted.

When they reached the Cedar Lane fountain, Mai let the Mohunite cocoon slide off her hair. “I’ve got to tell Douna’s granddam,” she said grimly, her eyes hard. “And then I’m going back to the Vipers. Gate Lords killed Douna. We’ll make them bleed.”