Inside the inn’s public room, I found Azaze folding blankets as she supervised the maids sealing food in crocks.
“Not that one, the lid is cracked! The first bump and we’ll have fish brine all over us! Firouze, pack that basket tighter—we aren’t going on a picnic.” Azaze cast a quick dark eye my way. “Evvy, you were supposed to be helping Oswin’s children.”
“They’re on their way, with Jayat and two of your stable boys and Luvo,” I told her. “If they have any more help they won’t get here at all. Have you seen Rosethorn?”
Azaze looked down that beak of a nose at me. “Do I hear snippiness from you, girl?” She inspected me and sniffed. “Sit down.” She began to pull things from jars and baskets onto a plate. “One thing I have learned about mages in my years, you have to eat when you are working. What did you do out there?”
I scowled at her. “What makes you think I did any work? And I had two and a half turnovers.”
Azaze set the plate on a table with one hand. She thrust me onto the bench in front of it with the other. “You’re trembling, you’re pale, and your mouth is pinched. Whatever magic you worked, those turnovers weren’t enough to bring you back.”
“They weren’t very big,” I admitted. She’d given me bread stuffed with ground lamb and cheese—travel food. I began to eat while she poured me a cup of mint tea.
“No one has seen your Rosethorn,” Azaze said. “Myrrhtide is still in the lake. He’s working magic, too. I’ve had a lad taking food out to him, for all the boy thinks I’m crackbrained to do it. He hasn’t seen as many mages collapse as I have. I hope whatever you did was important.”
“I thought so.” I waited to say it until my mouth wasn’t full.
“That’s what matters. I’m getting back to work—I have my account books to pack up—but if you need anything, Firouze over there will get it for you.” The maid she pointed to nodded at me. I waved and kept eating. Maybe I was still hungry. I cleaned the plate.
I was right about the map. It was still on the table where we’d left it last night. Once I was done, I knelt on the bench and studied it. I memorized the old paths for the land’s strength. They followed the cracks that led to that huge chamber under the mountain. The old paths might have been erased in the earthquakes, but only so new ones could open up.
If I was to build my power again, I had to find those new cracks and tap their strength. Or, better yet, I could find one of the big veins that fed the small ones. I touched a thick red line that showed a main fault. I doubted the local mages had dared to tap these. One of them ran straight under the Makray River, all the way up to Lake Hobin. I could reach the place where the river poured out of the lake easily. Why bother with little cracks when I could go to a stronger source?
Somebody plopped down next to me. “What’s that?”
It was Meryem. Oswin’s children had arrived at last. “It’s a map,” I said. “Leave it alone. Oswin will cook you in a stew if you touch it.”
She actually laughed at me.
Rosethorn leaned over my shoulder and inspected the map. “Luvo says you and he trapped those two would-be volcano creatures in a bed of quartz.” Her pale skin was smutched, and so was her robe. She looked like she had been working hard. She slid onto the bench with a sigh.
I picked up Meryem and pushed her toward the door. “Shoo,” I told her. Once she was out of the inn, I looked at Rosethorn. “Yes. I got them to break themselves up into a lot of tiny pieces, really tiny ones, and put each into a quartz crystal. There’s a big vein of them under the dead tree canyon. And Luvo turned the whole vein into some weird circle. Carnelian and Flare will think they’re traveling in a straight line, getting stronger, when they’re just going around and around.”
“But the solution is only a temporary one?” Rosethorn could always sense a flaw in my plans. A kitchen maid set a plate of food down in front of her. “Thank you. Mila and the Green Man bless you and yours.”
The maid curtsied and hurried away.
I sighed. “Yes. They’ll escape sooner or later, and get back to volcano-making.” I stopped. Rosethorn was too polite to talk with her mouth full. Instead she raised her eyebrows, waiting for me to go on. I leaned closer so she would be the only one to hear me. “Bouncing around in the quartz…If they can pull themselves together, they’ll be a lot stronger. I should have worked it out, but Rosethorn, I thought they were going to pop out of the pond right by Oswin’s house. Luvo made it harder for them to escape the quartz, but that’s all he could do. We’ve just bought a little more time. Myrrhtide has to tell the ships and the mages to get people off the neighboring islands, too. Now.”
Rosethorn swallowed. “You and Luvo made it worse.” She said it very quietly.
I was sweating. “Maybe. Kanzan the Merciful smile on me, I hope not.”
“Don’t waste a plea on your Kanzan now,” said Rosethorn. “You might require her more later, when they’re about to hang us all. What are you going to do?”
“I’ll collect all the power I can hold,” I promised. “Luvo can get some of the people outside started on their way to the ships. He was really inspiring for Oswin’s boys.”
Rosethorn’s mouth quivered. She had seen Luvo inspire people before. “Then go collect more power,” she told me. “I shall be inspiring the slow movers, too. I want to be on the road out of here at dawn tomorrow.”