Tamora Pierce - Street Magic

“She is Shaihun’s creation,” interrupted one of them as he stood. He was tall, lean, and familiar, the youth who had told Briar that something that talked and walked like a dog was probably a dog. Fading bruises circled his eyes. “No eknub can understand submission to Shaihun.”

“Besides, she’s going to make us the top gang in the city,” added the short, black Viper. “Gate Lords are already milling like scared sheep. They don’t know who’s next since their tesku went missing.”

“If you had any weight as a gang, you wouldn’t need anyone but your mates,” Briar informed them bitterly. “Doesn’t it shame you, taking orders from the likes of her?”

He’d allowed himself to be distracted from the tall Viper, who had drifted closer. Now he leaped on Briar, seized him by the shirt, threw him to the ground and landed on top of him, hands around Briar’s throat. At least Briar’s hands had not been napping, unlike his brain. He dug the points of his unsheathed wrist knives into the Viper’s sides. The taller boy ignored them, despite the tiny rounds of blood that flowered on his shirt.

“She has graced us with her attention,” he snarled at Briar. “Don’t talk about something you don’t understand.” He relaxed his grip on Briar’s neck.

“What I understand is that you’re a sworn member of the daftie guild,” retorted Briar. Mentally he kicked himself for letting this fellow get so close. “Don’t you see you’re in a tight place, tighter maybe than you can escape?”

“Ikrum, no.” Ayasha wrapped her hands around the thin Viper’s arm. “The pahan’s all right. He just don’t understand.” She tugged Ikrum’s arm. “He’s a friend in a pinch, though. Yoru, help me,” she told the short black youth.

“He don’t have to. He isn’t sworn to her.” Yoru took Ikrum’s other arm. Carefully he and Ayasha pried their tesku’s hands off Briar’s neck. To Briar, Yoru said, “Sheath your knives. He didn’t even bruise you.”

“Get him off me first,” snapped Briar. “Before I teach him a lesson none of you will forget.” Yoru and Ayasha pulled Ikrum to his feet.

Briar wiped the bloody points of his knives in the dust as he sat up, then resheathed them. He looked up at Ikrum, still in the grip of his two followers.

“If you want my opinion, you’ll get away from her” He nodded toward the gate. “She’s no goddess, just a takameri who’s mad with power. She’ll eat you all if she gets the chance.” Briskly he removed his over robe and shook the dust from its folds.

“He’s a good tesku” snapped another Viper, a golden-skinned boy. “We’ve done better with him than any other.”

“If he’s done you so much good,” Briar replied, slapping the dirt from the seat of his breeches, “why are you out here in the sun like a pack of hounds?”

“I’m all right,” Ikrum snapped, jerking himself away from his keepers. He strode over to Briar, pressing his hands against the small wounds in his sides. Holding up his blood-marked fingers, he licked them clean. “You stuck me,” he said casually, and gave a toothy smile. “You won’t do that twice.”

Briar stood on tiptoe to glare into his eyes. “You won’t get another chance at me, play-toy boy,” he said quietly. “Now, rethink your life, before she takes it from you and leaves you on a garbage heap.” He thrust a foot into one stirrup and mounted his horse. “Because you aren’t one of hers, no matter what she says, and unless you’re one of hers, you’re just a thing to be used.” Briar surveyed the other Vipers. “And you’re a bunch of sheep if you let him do it.” He urged his horse into a walk.

An image of his past had come into his mind at the mention of garbage heaps. He’d been five or six, perhaps, when he stole a fine scarf. Two older boys had taken it, leaving Briar to grub in the garbage behind an inn, hoping to find a morsel of food. The Thief-Lord had met him there. He’d offered food, and a gang, and mates who wouldn’t beat him up and take his prizes. By the time Briar learned that the two older boys belonged to another of the Thief-Lord’s gangs and that they often set things up so street kids would be grateful to the Thief-Lord, he was being trained as an all-around thief.

So what makes me different from the Vipers? he wondered gloomily, studying one of his palms. The inked green vines had not managed to conquer his right hand entirely. The scarred welt that crossed his palm would not take the dyes, forcing the vines to twine around the three deep pockmarks where thorns had marked him for life.

Long before Niko had taken him to Winding Circle, Briar had scaled a rich man’s wall. When he touched a thick, woody stem on top, the thing had wrapped around his hand, snake-like. Its thorns had clung to his flesh well after Briar cut the stem free. The Thief-Lord had sent him up there, to steal a white stone statue that he wanted for himself. It hadn’t put food in the mouths of Briar’s gang. Not only that, but he’d suffered for days after prying out those thorns, until the Thief-Lord had grudgingly paid a cheap healer to see to the wounds.

Only difference between the lady and him was that she’s born noble, Briar thought gloomily as he came to the intersection of the Attaneh Road and the Karang Road. I was just as stupid as these Vipers. As all of us in kid gangs. There’s always someone older around, telling us what to do, who to rob, beating us when we don’t do or say or think what they want. We put up with it because they tell us we mean something—but we don’t. Not to them. All we are to them is a tool for making them important.

And I wanted that for Evvy?

So preoccupied was he that he didn’t realize he had company until his horse shied. Briar fumbled to get a better grip on the reins and brought the horse up with a firm hand. Five horsemen waited ahead, blocking his advance. They wore the orange shirts and trousers and the black turban of the Watch, the city’s law enforcers. All had weighted batons tucked into their black sashes. One carried a tall lance with a flag at the tip: an orange sun on a black field, the badge of the Watch and of its commander, the mutabir. He was the amir’s right hand and the law inside Chammur’s walls.

Briar looked behind him. Five more horsemen of the Watch rode out of a blind alley to cut off his retreat.

One of the men ahead rode forward until he was a yard from Briar. “Pahan Briar Moss of Winding Circle temple and Summersea in Emelan,” he intoned in a wooden voice. “You are invited to speak with Mutabir Kemit doen Polumri. At once.”

Old instinct and new learning fought bitterly in his head. Instinct told him to leap from his horse’s back and run, as far and as fast as he could. He clenched his teeth and fought it, sweating. He wasn’t a thief anymore, wasn’t a street kid, wasn’t meat for the Watch to grind up and spit out. He was a citizen, a pahan, not a criminal. Citizens didn’t run from the Watch.

Still, what did he do to get the notice of a mutabir, who governed the Watch and courts of Sotat? Unless they thought he was stirring up the gangs?

“Why?” Briar demanded. “I’m an eknub, just passing through.”

“The mutabir will explain, when you are presented to him,” replied the one who had spoken first. The pale white wall on either side of Attaneh Road now sported green crowns, as trees and vines stretched and grew over the top.

Rosevines snaked down the street side of the wall. Had the Watchmen noticed them?

Stop it, he told the plants, putting all of his will into the command. I’m fine. “Very well,” he said, wanting to get these men away before they noticed the greenery’s odd behavior and tried to do something about it. “But this had better be important.”