Tamora Pierce - Street Magic

Vines wriggled around and past the lamps like green snakes, reaching with eager tendrils to snare human beings. Briar ducked a swinging punch from the nearest Viper and called three vines to trap the youth’s arms: it wasn’t that he couldn’t or didn’t want to punch back, but that Evvy came first. The smoky, garbage-scented air of the cellar changed as more vines sprouted and threw out leaves. Briar took a deep breath of cleaner air and faced the boy who had tried to punch him. It was Yoru, the short black Viper. He was now bound in a web of green ropes, gasping for breath. A bloodstained rag was wrapped around his forehead.

Briar pulled away the stem that clutched Yoru’s throat, letting him breathe. “Sorry to interrupt that war you started with the Gate Lords,” he said with false good manners. “Tell me where Evvy is and I’ll let you get back to it.”

The other boy spat in his face. Briar grimaced, wiped the spittle on his sleeve, and ordered the vines to hang the Viper upside down. They grew, anchoring themselves on the posts that supported the building above, taking Yoru with them. Briar went to the next Viper, and the next. Those who didn’t spit on him cursed him. By the time he’d reached the far door, the vines had borne fruit: a crop of dangling, trapped Vipers.

Briar stepped across the doorsill into the next cellar. It looked to be the room where they slept: mattresses and sacking beds lay on the floor. The front room vines were already here, snaring the feet of any Vipers present. Briar, tired of being polite, took a crimson packet out, wet it, and tossed it onto the floor. Thin, whippy vines punctuated with hooked thorns jumped from the seeds as they sank roots in the dirt floor.

A Viper rushed Briar from the side. Briar dropped to his knees and grabbed the gang youth’s arm, using his leverage to toss his foe into the wall. The Viper hit with a grunt, the wind knocked out of him. Before he could sit up, Briar was on his chest. His knees dug into the fallen youth’s ribcage as he held a knife to his throat.

“You people took Evvy. I want her back,” Briar told the youth softly. He sent a command to the nearest rose. A thorny vine lashed out to furl itself around one of the Viper’s hands, forcing him to drop the knife he’d meant to stick into Briar’s ribs. “You didn’t answer,” Briar chided. “Stabbing isn’t an answer.” The youth looked at the room beyond them, his eyes wide at the sight of his friends battling with vines and roses. Briar gripped his chin and forced his captive to look at him. “Now harken to me. She’s ten, skinny, has Yanjing blood in her, and she’s my student. Where is she?”

“Threaten all you like,” the youth retorted breathlessly. “Torture us, kill us—”

“Why would I do any such thing?” Briar inquired. “What I will do is leave you Vipers wrapped up tight. That way you just stay here until the locals come to laugh at you. If laughing’s what they feel like. They might just want to get back at you for every bruise, broken jar, and free meal you took from them.”

The youth glared at him and clamped his lips shut.

With a sigh Briar left him for the roses and walked into the third room of the den, which filled the cellars of several houses. Its cook-fires were already hemmed by tall green weeds that had felt his magic and sprouted from the dirt floor. The room was empty of Vipers. He saw a pot of boiling water, overturned teacups and bowls, and oddly enough, a tumble of stones that appeared to have exploded from the wall. He smiled grimly at the stones: it had to be Evvy’s work. She was a fighter. She wouldn’t let these idiots treat her like a helpless kitten.

This was the final room in the hideout. The only other door in here opened to the world outside. Briar frowned and groped for his connection to Evvy. It led through the door and—southeast? Southeast. Toward Justice Rock or Fortress Rock.

Or toward Lady Zenadia.

Sheer spite made him waken the back door, helping the dead oak to return to life. By the time its growth slowed to normal, both it and the front door tree would be large enough to bar the entrances permanently. As long as the vines planted here could get runners into the sun, the den would be filled with a thorny tangle of greenery that would not take kindly to any attempt to clear it out. He and Rosethorn had thought that was fair, when they crafted plants that would be in danger of hurt from the moment they put out runners. They had given them a strong hold on life, to thank their creations for defending them first.

He left the Vipers and Gate Lords as they were, trapped by his plants. If they were not cut loose first, the plants would free them at dawn. Then the new growth would search underground until it found yards, courtyards, and other open spaces to grow.

Briar followed his connection to Evvy into the afternoon light and up onto a roof. Keeping to the upper road, he began to trot, laying his plans as he followed her captors.

Only once did he change course, when he spotted a team of Watchmen in the street below. He climbed halfway down a ladder to the street and waved to get their attention. “I have a message for your mutabir” he called when they looked up. “Tell him Pahan Briar Moss says if he still wants a look inside the house of Lady Zenadia doa Attaneh, he’ll be able to see anything he wants in a couple of hours. Tell him she’s kidnapped my student, and say I asked, ‘Now will you act?’”

“Mind your manners!” banked a Watchman.

“We’re supposed to believe you’re a pahan?” asked one of them, a woman in the short, sheer, yellow face-veil worn by some nomad tribes to the south.

Briar was done with manners and patience—look where they had gotten him! A seed that had escaped his packets clung damply to his hand. He flicked it out, feeling—rather than seeing—it drop onto the street before the squad. “Believe what you like,” he said. Two cobbles went flying in advance of a stout, woody-trunked grapevine that leaped from the ground.

Briar climbed back up to the rooftop road, too angry to care if they were so vexed that they tried to shoot him full of arrows. They didn’t. He looked down from the roof. Most of the squad had gathered around the vine, caressing its trunk in wonder and awe. Two others raced up the street toward Justice Rock.

Before he moved on, Briar strengthened the vine he’d just planted, stopping its absurd growth in time for it to fit in with the cycle of winter rains to come. If the city didn’t cut it down, it would remind people he’d been there.

The trip to the Jeweled Crescent and Attaneh Road took a long two hours afoot. As he made his way through the city, the sun dropped lower in the west, casting long shadows along the roofs. It was autumn; the days were shorter. Luckily for him, the seeds of his arsenal didn’t require sunlight to do what he asked of them.

His connection to Evvy stretched, then firmed: she had settled. He still felt only anger in the bond, which reassured him. She didn’t seem hurt or frightened. Did she know he was on her trail? He hoped she did.

Finally he reached Crescent Rim, the broad street that was the inner edge of the Jeweled Crescent. Beyond this point there were no rooftop roads. The houses of the Crescent lay smugly behind ten-foot-tall stone walls and guardian spells, protected from the likes of common folk.

Even the Crescent Rim shops were proof that things changed here. They offered custom-made jewelry, delicate porcelains, and fragile cloth the rival of anything sold in the Grand Bazaar. Dropping into the street, Briar noted discreet signs that advertised mages and upper servants for hire, pawnbrokers, shoemakers, and healers. He felt watched, but no one tried to stop him.