Briar chewed his lip. He knew what Sandry and Tris would say. He even knew what Daja, who was more practical, would say: “What’s the matter, thief boy? Lost your nerve?”
“I have plenty of nerve,” he muttered to his smith-mage sister. He hesitated for a moment longer, then realized that Evvy was throwing her power into the marble block again. She wasn’t waiting for him to decide.
Growling softly, he cast his magic around to see if there were vine seeds in the earth. The gardeners had cut back the local vines, but if he could get their seeds to grow, there was no risk of examiners later finding bits of foreign ones he might have to grow from the seeds in his mage kit. It was in that casting that he felt the ghost of once-living plants at the level of his face. How could that be possible? The only thing in front of him was the marble wall.
He shook his hands as if to clear them of the last magic he had used, a habit Rosethorn teased him for, and let more of his power flow out directly in front of him. Now the entire wall responded with that shadow of life that had once been green.
“Evvy, stop,” he whispered. “What’s in the mortar?”
“Mostly limestone,” she replied, her voice as soft as his. “There are other things in it that I don’t feel, though. It clings like the marble is going to run away.”
Briar ran his finger over the cracks between blocks. Suddenly he grinned. “And you think plant magic is useless.” He crouched on the ground and opened his kit.
“You mean it isn’t?” Evvy inquired, being difficult on purpose.
“Apparently the thing you can’t feel is rice,” Briar informed her. “And that I can manage.”
“Rice?” she demanded, outraged.
“I know rice in my bowl and I know it in the mortar. It’s the rice in the mortar that makes it cling so, I’ll bet. Tell me, were you going to pull the wall down?”
“Nope. I was going to pull out just enough blocks to climb in.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do. But we should make that enough blocks to let Parahan out.”
“Three blocks by two blocks?”
“That should do. Let me get rid of your mortar first.” Briar ran his hands over the cracks between the blocks, pouring his magic into them and to the openings around their neighbors. He wouldn’t have thought the rice would have remained so strong compared to the stone, but it had. When he called it to him it even brought small chunks of the limestone in the mortar with it.
“I should have put down a cloth,” he said with dismay, looking at the small heaps of white powder on the ground.
“Should have, would have,” Evvy muttered. She reached for a block that sat two feet above the ground. It slid from the wall and dropped.
“Careful!” Briar whispered. He called to vine seeds as Evvy called the next block. This time, as she called it slowly forward, fat, strong vines were there to wrap themselves around the block and steady it as Briar and Evvy put it to one side of the opening. The vines released it and were at the opening, sliding under the next block, before Evvy had so much as a chance to turn around.
As soon as they had finished their opening, Evvy stuck her head inside. Briar heard her whisper something. Then she wriggled into the building. He slung his pack in after her, feeling her — he hoped it was her — take it from him. Then he slid through the opening in the wall. To his surprise, there was a lamp burning inside one cage over. In the cage directly in front of him, Parahan sat cross-legged on its floor.
“Is anyone in this building?” Briar asked softly. Evvy had gone around to the far side of the cage. From the jingle of metal, he guessed that she was using his stolen picks to open the lock.
“No. They usually leave us prisoners alone at night. Who would be boneheaded enough to help us escape? Why are you letting her do this?” Parahan demanded.
“You must think I knew all about it before she did it,” Briar whispered. “They let you have a lamp?”
“I’m allowed to read.” Parahan lifted a scroll. He glanced at Evvy. “I’d offer to help, but I never learned to pick a lock.”
Briar went around the cage. Evvy was scowling at the lock set down beside the bottom of the cage. “I don’t understand.”
Briar took the picks from her. “Because you’ve only studied for a year.” He reached into his kit and removed a small bottle of specially prepared oil. He let three drops fall into the opening of the lock. While he waited for the cage door’s lock to soak, he added oil to those on Parahan’s chains: neck, wrists, and feet. Then he turned his attention to the cage lock. It was tricky, but he was far more patient with locks than he was with many human beings. As soon as it popped open Parahan slid out of the cage.
“Close it,” he said. “It will lock itself.”
Briar handed Evvy the flask of water he always carried with his kit. “Pour some of that into the lock,” he told her. “I don’t want their mages to get any sniff of my magic from it.”
“I doubt they would,” Evvy said as she obeyed. “I don’t think they even believe in our magic, except for Jia Jui.”
Briar had started with Parahan’s throat collar. “I try never to count on what strangers do or don’t know.” The lock was strange — not as simple as the cage lock. He didn’t want to spend the rest of the night here. Muttering to himself, he dug through his kit and found another set of picks, one he liked better than the set he used for teaching Evvy. The collar lock popped open after a moment’s work.