You done good, Coppercurls, Briar called out silently to Tris, who was climbing into the wagon for the trip home. I owe you.
Piffle, she replied, warmly pleased. Like I said, I’m not exactly busy.
Briar carried the basket downstairs very carefully. Without rousing his teacher, he arranged the plants around her curled-up form and waited.
After a minute or two color returned to her skin, changing ashen to cream. Her lips bloomed from white to pink. Her hair, which had looked brown over the last few days, developed a chestnut glow.
It was like she was dead, he realized with a shudder. Like she was dead, and somehow brought back to life.
Her eyes opened. They were slightly bloodshot yet, but their shine was back. She yawned widely. “Strike me for a ninny,” she remarked, sitting up. She slid one hand around the shakkan’s trunk and cupped the ivy’s bowl in the other. “It never once occurred to me that this was the problem.”
“Me neither, till you said that about you not being a plant that needs sun,” he said. “You never been in quarantine before, right?”
“I have never been in quarantine, yes,” she said tartly.
Briar grinned, unrepentant. This was the Rosethorn he knew. She’d threaten a horrible death for someone any minute now.
“I’m always shut in with Crane, developing a cure. I never thought there’d come a day when I’d wish for that.” She sighed. “We should get back to work.”
Briar nodded and fetched more stale medicines for them to tend. Rosethorn sat for another moment, cradling each plant in her hands and tickling her face with the fronds.
As a plant mage, Rosethorn could tap the shakkan’s magical reserves, once Briar talked the tree into allowing it. For reasons that baffled the boy, the shakkan preferred his touch to Rosethorn’s. With its help, and with Rosethorn’s and even Briar’s energies renewed by contact with living plants, they finished the job.
When done, they carried the potted plants upstairs in a basket.
“Let’s share the wealth,” Rosethorn suggested. “Give people something to look at.” They left all of the plants but the shakkan on windowsills in the first- and second-floor wards. While Briar was glad to bring cheer to those rooms, he was unpleasantly surprised by how many people were in them. Each first-floor ward held thirty people, like their own upstairs. The three second-floor infirmaries were full, with a hundred patients in each. Adding in the first-and third-floor wards, he realized that Urda’s House contained nearly five hundred sick.
“Where are they coming from?” he asked Rosethorn as they took the empty basket to the first floor to be reused. He carried his shakkan in his arms; it would stay with him. “Are they all from the Mire?”
Rosethorn shook her head. A pile of empty crates and baskets lay beside the front door: she placed theirs on it. “We’ve been getting people from East District since yesterday. There’s talk of emptying the houses on either side of this one to use them for quarantine.”
“Not necessary,” said a familiar voice. Both Rosethorn and Briar gasped as Niko walked out of a nearby office with Dedicate Henna and Jokubas Atwater. Niko wore not only gloves and mask, but also a long overrobe spelled so powerfully against disease that it made Briar’s eyes smart to look at him. “With the plague now loose in the city, the Water Temple there has opened its normal hospital wards to take in those with blue pox.”
“There’s plague outside the East District?” asked Rosethorn.
“Ten cases this morning in Fountain Square,” Niko replied, “and seven in Emerald Triangle.”
Briar bit his lip. Niko had just named the two wealthiest districts inside the walls, where rich merchants and nobles lived. If the Money-Bags have it, everyone does, thought the boy.
“The duke is clearing an Arsenal warehouse for use as a hospital,” Henna added. “I’m leaving to get things set up there.”
“What about the quarantine?” asked Briar.
“It’s over, isn’t it?” Rosethorn asked Niko and Jokubas. “There’s no point anymore, not with cases throughout Summersea.”
Both men nodded.
Briar yipped with glee. “Then we can go home!”
“No,” said all four adults at once, startling him.
“Why not?” he demanded, suddenly furious. What good was he doing here, and why shouldn’t he leave? They had plenty of healers now. He wanted his own room, in his own house, and food cooked by the peerless Gorse in temple kitchens. He wanted Lark to say how brave he’d been and to hear the Hub clock sound the hours. Open air would be nice, and proper sun, and a roll on the grass with his dog. He could settle back among the girls, where he belonged.
Who would look after Flick? asked a quiet voice within him. Does anyone care about her but you?
Rosethorn put an arm around Briar’s shoulder. “There’s no disease at Winding Circle,” she explained softly. “Is there?” She put the question directly to Niko, who shook his head. “Until we know how this plague is carried, we can’t risk taking the blue pox uphill to our friends.”
“But you’re going back, ain’t you?” Briar demanded of Niko.
“Yes, I am,” snapped the mage. “I also have to stop at a tent outside the Mire, get rid of my clothes, scrub every inch with a vile soap that makes me itch, then rub in an even more vile-smelling oil before I can leave. If I thought you did more good at Winding Circle than here, I would be quite pleased to suggest that you get the same.”