Jebilu lurched to his feet. “Where are your things?” he demanded, sweat rolling down his cheeks. “I will house you with the chief palace scribe, since you refuse to live in the palace. His wife is a firm parent who knows to keep an eye on you. We have time to settle you among them —”
“No,” Evvy said flatly. She ran her fingers over her freshly-bandaged hand, then looked at Jebilu and Briar. “I’m not going.”
“I am the only one who can teach you, girl,” Jebilu began, his face stained orange with anger. “Do not take that tone with me!”
“I don’t like you and I’m not studying with you,” Evvy retorted, glaring up into his face. “And nobody in the world can make me do it. I figured I’d look at you because Pahan Briar thought it was important. Now that I’ve seen you, though, I can tell it was just another of his strange notions, like belonging to a gang.”
Jebilu glared at Briar. “This is what comes of dealing with guttersnipes,” he snapped, trembling with fury. “They have no sense of the honor being done them, or of gratitude.”
“Why should she feel grateful?” Briar inquired, curious. “You’ve treated her like a slave since you got here.”
“I know your kind,” Evvy told Jebilu. “You’ll treat me like dirt and kiss the bum of anyone with money. I may be a guttersnipe, but you’re a zernamus. Any learning you dish out will be as rancid as month-old butter.”
Jebilu pointed a quivering finger at Briar. “This is not my fault!” he cried. “Tell that — female I was prepared to do my duty and was refused!” He crawled into his litter and yanked the curtains around him. The slaves picked the litter up with a grunt of effort and carried the stone mage out of Golden House.
Briar looked at Evvy with the same kind of awe as he gave to Rosethorn when the woman’s temper got the better of her. If Evvy had planned every word, she could not have chosen a speech better calculated to burn Jebilu twelve ways from midday.
I’d say the guttersnipe won this game, he thought. And my problem is the same as it was before Rosethorn went to talk to old Jooba-hooba. Somebody has to teach this kid the basics, and I suppose that somebody is me. “So what’s a zernamus?” he asked mildly.
Evvy had been watching him, one shoulder hitched up defensively, as if she expected him to hit her. Down came the shoulder; she grinned. “Someone who lives off the rich, like a tick that sucks money instead of blood.”
Briar shook his head. “He would have been a rotten teacher anyway.”
“I thought so. Can we eat?” asked Evvy cheerfully.
“You don’t understand,” Briar said, trying to make her see it as he did. “The only rocks I ever studied were the kinds that could be spelled to make plants grow better, like malachite. Even that way it’s easier to lay magic on the fertilizer or the seed, because the stone fights me.”
“Well, malachite’s a lesson,” Evvy said, perching on Briar’s high stool. “You’ll think of something, Pahan Briar. You’re awful smart. And you don’t think you’re better than people just because there’s silver in your pocket.”
She doesn’t know, Briar thought, bewildered and scared. She thinks I’m an adult who knows things. She sees a pahan, not a fourteen-year-old kid who’s spent the last four years with his nose in the dirt.
Had Rosethorn ever felt this way? As if he thought her perfect, and might be disappointed if he found she was human after all?
Talk Evvy around, argued a cooler part of himself. Talk her around and talk Jooba-hooba around. You could maybe do it. You talk a fair stitch when you want to.
Did he want to?
She needs to learn to read and write, he thought; I can teach her that. I remember how Tris taught me. Same with sums, and learning the stars, and how to use paper and ink. I can teach the meditating. Earth temple has to have some books about stones and stone magic, and we can find her a stone mage once we leave Chammur.
It could be done. But how was he to tell Rosethorn? He knew it was good for the student to live close to or even with the teacher. Rosethorn definitely would not like it, if he brought another resident into their home. She might say he should have made Evvy listen to Jebilu.
“We ought to live in the same place,” he remarked quietly.
She had remained silent on her perch for as long as he’d been thinking, not distracting him with chatter. Now he saw worry in her eyes. “I can’t leave my cats,” she replied. “I just can’t. Please don’t ask me.”
He and the girls had all agreed that their dog Little Bear should go with Tris, who would have missed him the most. Still, it had hurt Briar to see Little Bear walk onto a ship without him, and Little Bear was a shared dog, not his alone. What would it be like, to be forced to give up a pet?
He chewed on a thumbnail. I could find another house, maybe near Rosethorn, he decided, reviewing the amount of cash he’d left with the Earth temple treasurer. He had plenty, but he always liked a plump money cushion, just in case. It was a good thing Lady Zenadia had bought the larch, or at least, it would be good once Briar had the coin in hand. Nobles often changed their minds when they got home and added up their accounts.
“You’re more trouble than you’re worth,” he informed Evvy tartly.
She shrugged. “I’m a girl. That’s my job.”
He grinned at that — it fit the girls he knew — then sobered. “I didn’t mean that,” he apologized. “About you being trouble. I’m just not sure I’d be a very good teacher.”