Tamora Pierce - Street Magic

Finally Evvy retreated to a bridge that crossed to the far side of the street. Working her way cautiously along the roofs, she reached the closest house to the boy’s. From there it was a piddling two-foot drop to her destination.

No one was in sight among the horde of plants that grew here. Some looked quite strange, but then, she knew nothing of plants. One vine even trailed through the open door to the house. Evvy shook her head, thinking that green things around the jade-eyed boy were much too lively. Then she crouched beside the tray. She opened the folded cloth that lay beside it and began to load it with food to take home.

Like most Chammurans, Evvy thought eggplant was the queen of vegetables. She stuffed a slice into her mouth, savoring the taste. Eating only needed one hand: she grabbed another slice and took a huge bite while she continued to put food onto her cloth.

She didn’t hear the boy come onto the roof. She saw him, though: he raised his hands in the air, holding them palm-out to show he came peacefully. Evvy nearly choked on her eggplant. She dropped the rest of the slice and scrabbled for the corners of the cloth, bundling her food.

“I won’t come a step closer,” he said in calm Chammuri. “I just want to talk.” He knelt beside the entrance to the house and lowered his hands. The plants around him leaned in, forming a green roof over his head.

She eyed him for a moment more. He seemed to be settled. No matter how fast he was, by the time he could actually lunge forward and grab her, she would be gone.

She opened the cloth and dumped the rest of the tray’s contents onto it. One eye on the boy, she retrieved her dropped slice of eggplant, wiped off the rooftop dirt, and stuffed it into her mouth.

“You have to know about your magic,” he went on. “Maybe you can’t see it—most mages can’t. But you must feel something, when you handle stones.”

Evvy hesitated. So the stones that morning—all right, every day at Nahim’s—felt warm in her hands, nice-warm, like kittens, so what? And her den in Princes’ Heights, with all the stones she liked pressed into the rock of the entrance way, had never been invaded, unlike every other squat she knew of. What of it?

He’s a mage. Wouldn’t he know argued half of her. Mages know things!

He’s a boy, not a man, so he’s a student, not a mage, her street-self replied. Students mess up all the time.

He’s awfully sure, replied her good-girl self.

So are students, the street girl snapped. Right before they mess up.

Quickly Evvy tied up her bundle. She wasn’t about to leave all this food behind. If the boy wanted it for himself, he shouldn’t have left it out here.

“You can’t go on as you have,” the mage-boy continued. “You have to learn how to control your magic, or you’ll get into trouble. Once people know you’re a mage—”

Evvy tucked her bundle into the front of her tunic. Gripping the edge of the next door roof, she swung herself up and over.

“If you come tomorrow, I’ll have more food,” the mage-boy called as she fled.

“Do you think she listened?” asked a quiet voice in Imperial. Briar looked down, into the house. Rosethorn had come back: she stood on the floor below.

“Dunno,” he said in the same language. “She ate. That’s something. She’ll probably perch close by all night to see if I put more food up and lay a trap for her.”

Rosethorn shook her head. “She’s even more feral than you were,” she remarked. “At least you had that gang.”

The look she gave him was half-vexed, half-amused. “There are plenty of people in Chammur who don’t belong to gangs,” she pointed out.

Briar gently removed the jasmine from his arm. “Not if you’re a kid from Oldtown, I bet,” he replied. “Only way to be safe is with a gang. When people fool with you, they know they’re fooling with your mates, too.” He thanked the vine and sent it to its trellis.

“You manage without a gang now,” argued Rosethorn.

“I’m a mage now,” he pointed out. “Besides, I have a gang. If the girls aren’t my mates, who is? And you and Lark and Niko, Frostpine, Crane—that’s my gang,” he explained, naming the adults who had taught him and his foster-sisters at Winding Circle.

“So what symbol—no,” Rosethorn said, cutting herself off. “I am not going to encourage you in thinking like that. What’s your next move with the girl?”

Briar sighed. “Earth Dedicates say the only stone mage in town is this Jebilu Stoneslicer, up at the palace. I guess I better talk to him about teaching her.”

“Good idea.” Rosethorn reached into the pocket of her habit and produced a metal token. “It’ll take you forever to walk there and back. You remember where we stabled our horses? Get one of them.”

Briar nodded, and accepted the token to show the stablemen. “Thanks, Rosethorn.” He walked by her, then stopped. Not sure why he did so, he turned back and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

“Oh, stop that!” she said irritably, as he’d known she would. “People will start to think I like you if you pull that kind of nonsense!”

Briar grinned. “They already know you do,” he said reasonably. “I’m still alive after years in your company.” He walked away before she could think of a cutting reply.

The Newtown roofs stopped well short of the rocky skirts of Princes’ Heights, where Evvy made her home. She climbed down from the last of them and looked around warily. Then she crossed the Street of Victories, where clusters of ragtag and furtive stalls housed the Market of the Lost. Behind every facade of respectable merchandise—rags, spices, cheap food and liquor, secondhand clothes, used pottery, and furnishings—lay much less respectable items. Drugs and weapons could be bought, as could ill wishes, outright curses, poisons, and healing services for those who dared not go to, or could not afford, more respectable healers.

Evvy scanned the stalls. If soldiers of the Watch were about, long-timers would vanish, warning locals that the law was around. If they hadn’t been in their usual spots, Evvy would have lingered in Newtown a while longer. The Watch wasn’t always precise in who they hauled to Justice Rock’s prisons when they conducted a sweep in Oldtown.

Everyone who should be there was. Feeling safe, Evvy trotted through the mazes of stalls until she reached the tumble of gravel, dirt, and loose rock at the foot of the heights. The stone cliff towered above her, riddled with paths, streets, windows, doors, and the arches that led to the tunnels. Evvy smiled at those orange-flame heights. She was almost home.

Three Vipers encircled her, putting the treacherous gravel pile at Evvy’s back. She scrambled a few steps up onto it anyway, feeling the loose tumble of dirt and stone slide under her feet. She pinwheeled her arms to remain standing.

“Hello, kid,” the girl Viper said with a smile on her face. “We’re your mates. We’d like to buy you supper.” As she talked, the two boy Vipers closed in.

“All real friendly,” said the light-brown boy with a painful-looking red weal on one nostril. He was the only one of the three who wore no nose ring. “Nobody gets hurt.”

It was the third, a black-skinned boy, who grabbed for her. The other two came on as Evvy scrabbled up and back two more steps. She stumbled and sat down hard as the ground slid under her. Panicked, she seized two fistfuls of gravel and hurled them at her attackers, crying

The stones flared with light and heat as they struck the Vipers’ faces. Both Evvy and the Vipers were blaze-blinded; the brown-skinned boy screamed. All three Vipers clapped their hands to their faces. Staggering, they lost their footing and rolled to the foot of the slope. Their clothes smoldered in a handful of places, as if Evvy had thrown burning embers on them. Their faces were speckled with small, red burns.