Tamora Pierce - Street Magic

“I won’t leave my cats,” Evvy announced nervously.

“I’m not asking you to,” Rosethorn informed the girl. “They’ll have to go in baskets, and we’ll need two camels, I suppose, for all our gear, but that can be done.”

“What about at night?” Briar asked. “And won’t the cats fight, or get sick, being in baskets all the time?”

Rosethorn looked at him as if she wanted to ask if he’d been drinking stupid tea. “We draw a circle around them at night,” she explained patiently. “They don’t go out, only Evvy goes in. They’ll be safer than we will. And it’s not a long haul, only about a week. I spoke to the man who runs the last eastern caravan of the season. They leave in six days. He must have some weather magic, because market gossip is that he’s never been caught on the road by the rains.”

“You mean it?” Evvy asked, her chin and voice wobbly. “You won’t leave me and the cats here?”

Rosethorn took the napkin from her lap and folded it precisely. “I won’t leave the scrawniest, most vicious of those troublemakers in this bloodless, dying place, let alone you,” she said quietly without looking at Briar or Evvy. “I can’t wait until I can scrub the dust of Chammur from my skin.” She rose and broke the circle on the table. The cats remained where they were, keeping an eye on her. “I’m off. Keep things quiet down here—I need to be up well before dawn, so I’m going to bed soon.” She walked out of the room and climbed the stairs.

Briar scrubbed his tired face with his hands. This was the second time that she had anticipated a problem he wanted to discuss and settled it before he could speak. Relief flooded his mind. Laenpa was further east, another land entirely. They would all be safe from the lady, the Vipers, and perhaps even the mutabir. When he looked at it that way, even the fun of carting seven cats in wicker baskets for a week didn’t seem too high a price to pay.

After he and Evvy cleaned up and washed dishes, Briar settled her at the table once more. After some thought he’d decided to teach her to read and write in Imperial. The books that Rosethorn had borrowed from the Earth temple were in that language, since the Pebbled Sea and the lands around it were the center of the Living Circle faith. Evvy already knew a number of words in Imperial, as she did in a handful of other languages, to get along in Chammur’s marketplaces. Moreover, the three of them wouldn’t be staying so long that a knowledge of how to read and write Chammuri would do Evvy any good.

On the way to the lady’s house, wondering how he could teach Evvy in a way she would like, Briar had been struck with inspiration. Now he put out a slate and chalk, a dampened cloth, and one of the books of stones and crystals Rosethorn had brought. He added a sheet of notes he’d made during a long visit with the crystal merchant Nahim Zineer. Last of all he put down the heavy roll of cloth he’d purchased, undid the ties, and opened it until it lay flat on the table. Its white inner surface was covered with a number of small pockets. He’d put a stone or crystal in each as he bought them from Nahim.

“This is yours,” Briar told Evvy as she bounced in her chair, staring at the cloth with bright eyes. “None of these stones have any magic. I made sure of that. You want to start with something that’s never known magic, so any changes or spells you put in will be yours, and nobody else’s. Don’t let anyone else handle these, either. And you’re not to do any magic with these stones at first. Keep your magic in your skin, understand?”

“All right, all right” Evvy said impatiently. “But what are they? What will we do with them? Are they really mine?”

Suddenly it was worth the time he’d taken after his meeting with the mutabir to purchase all of this at Golden House. “They’re really yours, but they’re for you to learn with. And the first thing you’ll learn with them is how to read and write. You—”

Evvy threw herself across the gap between her chair and his and hugged him fiercely. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she cried. “Nobody ever bought me anything so nice!”

Getting up on her knees on the seat of the chair, Evvy reached out and slowly, carefully, drew a purple crystal from the cloth. She put it on top of its rightful pocket. “This is amethyst,” she breathed.

“Yes. A—see here, that’s this letter, big A and little a—A is for amethyst.” Briar opened the book and leafed through to the proper entry. “According to this, it’s good to ward off nightmares and calm people down. Seers use it because it makes visions clearer. Now, take the chalk, and draw both As.”

As Evvy slowly copied the letters on the slate, Briar read on. “It gives folk courage and keeps travelers safe on the road. Guess we’ll need that soon, eh? Now, tell me the uses for amethysts.”

Evvy recited them solemnly. Briar inspected her A’s and asked her to draw them several more times. He read out even more uses for the stone and had her repeat them. Rosethorn had done this same kind of teaching with plants during formal lessons in the first winter they’d spent as teacher and student. That was purely magical learning, Tris had already taught Briar how to read.

“All right,” he said when he got thoroughly bored with amethysts, “put the stone back and wipe the slate clean.” He looked at the paper Nahim Zineer had given to him. “Next pocket over. B is for bloodstone.” As Evvy drew out her bloodstone, Briar wrote the letter on the slate. “Big B, little b,” he said, making sure that she looked at the slate before he continued. “They’re supposed to help stop bleeding. Also good for physical strength…”

They got as far as G for garnet. Once Briar saw Evvy was struggling to concentrate, he ended the lesson and ordered her to bed. She replaced the garnet in its pocket and slowly, carefully rolled up the cloth kit. Once the ties were secured, she hugged it to her thin chest.

When she looked at Briar, there were tears in her almond-shaped eyes. “I never knew anyone with anything as fine as this,” she whispered. “You won’t be sorry you got me as a student, Pahan Briar. I promise you won’t. Good night.” She walked into her room. Her cats left their various watch-and-nap places in the dining room to follow her.

Briar closed and locked the doors, banked the kitchen fire, and blew out the few lamps burning downstairs. He stopped for one final look into Evvy’s room. She was already asleep, her cats distributed around her. She still clutched the roll of cloth with her stones to her chest.

The orange-patched blue-gray Mystery left the group of cats and trotted upstairs ahead of Briar, squeezing through Rosethorn’s barely open door. In his own room he found one of the cinnamon-masked golden cats, the one with a crooked tail. Apricot, Evvy had called her. Apricot had curled herself up on Briar’s pillow. Briar put on his nightshirt, cleaned his teeth, and got between the sheets.

“You’d better not snore,” he told Apricot. Just before he drifted off to dreams of stones of all colors, he heard her start to purr.

In the morning, Briar rose when Rosethorn did. Together they loaded her things onto the camels brought by the farmers she was helping: the sky was just barely pink over the cliffs of Chammur Oldtown. He watched her go, then went back inside to put on water for porridge and tea. There was no sense in returning to bed; better to tough out the day and return to normal sleeping hours that night. As he stirred porridge, he made lists in his head. He would start packing while Rosethorn was gone. If they were to leave in less than a week, they didn’t have much time.

While the porridge finished cooking, he brought his shakkan down from his room to the dining room table. It needed attention, and working with it soothed his last uneasiness over the sale of the larch. He always needed time with his shakkan after parting with another miniature. Reaching for the larch with his power, touching it on its ledge in the lady’s house, he could feel contentment. He knew he hadn’t given it to a bad home, at least not for trees. Still, the shakkan soothed him. It reminded him that the trees were not simple creatures, but as complex in their ways as the humans who shaped them. He wasn’t their creator, only their caretaker, one who was expected to pass them on in time.