Rosethorn walked in, carrying three fat, leather-bound books. She dumped them on the table between Briar and Evvy with a sigh of relief. “You’ll need these,” she said breathlessly. “To start with, anyway.”
Briar read the lettering on the spine of the topmost book. He was so tired it was hard to focus. It took three trials before the title made sense: Of Stones and Their Magic, Inherent and Retained.
When he finally understood, he gaped at Rosethorn. She had gone to fetch covered pots from the warming oven under the kitchen fire. “I cleaned out the front room and bought a pallet. The cats can do their business in the backyard, and you get to clean it up,” she added, looking at Evvy. “Start earning your keep. Dishes and bowls in that cupboard.” She pointed, and went back to the kitchen.
As Evvy brought out plates and bowls for the three of them, Briar sat heavily on a chair. She had known. Rosethorn had known, and she’d made her own decision.
“You could have said something,” he called to Rosethorn, vexed.
She emerged from the kitchen, hands on hips. “For all I knew, he would see it was time to do the right thing, and act like a man instead of an egg gone bad. I’m too hard on people — Lark’s always telling me so. I had to give him the chance to act properly.”
“He did,” Evvy remarked, setting plates on the table. “I said no. He was going to be a pig about it anyway.”
Rosethorn smiled crookedly. “I admit, I did also think you might take that attitude.”
“So I guess I was the last to know,” Briar grumbled.
“Of course you are. You’re a man, aren’t you?” Rosethorn asked evilly, ladling lamb and rice pilaf onto the plates. Evvy giggled, and Briar rested his head on his hands.
Not only am I doomed, but they’re going to laugh at me while doom happens, he thought, contentedly morose. Whyever did I leave Summersea?
11
The next morning Briar and Evvy went to Princes’ Heights to fetch her cats. Wearing racks that supported covered straw baskets, Briar and Evvy passed through the entrance to her part of the Heights, a black stone arch that some wit had named Sunrise Gate. It opened onto a broad tunnel into the rock. Briar looked around as Evvy led the way: he could see wood and stone shoring everywhere. Part of the tunnel roof was covered by a wooden ceiling. In places the wooden planks had fallen; heaps of stone and dirt lay under them.
“Don’t you worry about cave-ins?” he asked.
Evvy shrugged. “They happen all the time. Nobody thinks much about it.”
Briar shuddered and decided he wouldn’t ask any more questions.
In the wider tunnels the air was reasonably fresh. Shafts cut through into open air above, creating a breeze. It carried a rich bouquet of scents: wood smoke, burned food, rancid oil, burning fat, mildew, and rot.
Leaving the large tunnel, they turned into a smaller one, then a third. Now serious odors flooded Briar’s sensitive nose. The jelly-thick reek of too many people in a space for much too long a time made his eyes water. The stone itself had absorbed years of old urine and dung, cookfires, blood, cheap food, and death.
Briar was gasping as they entered their fifth tunnel. His nose had stopped up completely. Tears flooded down his cheeks. The light thrown off by a few torches and burning knots of wood or manure showed air filled with a gray haze.
He stopped to rearrange his burden, settling the rack lower on his shoulders. The roof was not very high in the depths. “How can you bear it?” he asked Evvy.
She frowned, confused. “Bear what?”
“The smell!”
Evvy shrugged. “I don’t smell anything.” She raised her flat-ended nose and sniffed. “Oh, all right, somebody was cooking goat last night. Don’t you like goat?”
A heap of rags by the wall cackled and turned into an old woman who struggled to sit up. “You live here long enough, my lad, and you won’t smell nothin’ either. Got anything for an old lady, Evumeimei?”
Evvy knelt by the old woman. “Maybe I do.” She pulled two rolls from her pocket: they looked suspiciously like some of the ones Rosethorn had bought for breakfast. “Qinling, chew careful,” she cautioned.
“Don’t go worrying about me,” Qinling replied. She gnawed a roll eagerly.
Evvy walked on. “I’ll miss Qinling,” she murmured just loud enough for Briar to hear. “She’s the only one who speaks Zhanzou with me.”
“What’s za — what you said?” he asked, wiping his dripping eyes on his sleeve.
“Zhanzou. The language we spoke in my province. Qinling tells me stories in it sometimes, if she’s not too drunk. This is Lambing Tunnel, what we’re on.” She led him around a turn.
Briar stopped and looked back for a moment, trying to tell if they were followed. They had passed doors and windows on the way, openings barred with wood, rags, or even bead curtains. He’d sensed people behind those barriers, peering at them, sizing them up. He half-expected them to follow, like starving rats. Flexing his hands, he realized his wrist daggers had dropped out of their sheaths and into his palms. He kept them there. All along he’d felt less and less plant life as roots on the ground overhead reached their limits. There would be no calling on plants for help in this sunless place. Only mold grew down here, and mold wasn’t much good in a fight, though he supposed he could use it to make attackers sneeze themselves blind. He hadn’t felt so naked of friends in years.