“Only my mates—these girls I know—and Rosethorn.”
The healer looked at him—really looked—for the first time. “Yanna bless me, you’re one of the four, aren’t you? The boy, the plant-mage?” Briar nodded. The healer massaged her temples. “You might do it with those girls and Rosethorn, but we would have been told if any of you could heal.”
“Could I try?” asked Briar as the healer lurched to her feet.
“Try all you like,” she replied. “Nothing will come of it.” She hesitated, then touched Flick’s head. Once again Briar saw magic, but its gleam was just visible—the woman was nearly drained. She pursed her lips.
“Flick’ll be fine,” snapped Briar, annoyed by the healer’s rejection of the idea that he could do this kind of magic.
“I hope so,” she replied, moving on to the next bed.
Sitting beside his friend, Briar held her wrists as the healers did. Magic was magic. It could be lent to other mages; he’d seen that, had done it himself. Let him bleed off some now, when there was some good to be had.
His store of power wasn’t the same as it had been that morning, before he and Rosethorn had gone downstairs, but he still had some. He pictured Flick’s veins like veins in a leaf and urged his magic forward. It was like trying to leap off a cliff, only to find he was still on even ground. There was no place for him to go. Again he tried, imagining her veins as a web of roots. His power moved in him, but went nowhere.
A hand on his shoulder jolted Briar out of a half trance. “It doesn’t work,” Rosethorn said wryly. “I’ve tried. How has she been doing?”
Briar described Flick’s seizures and the shrinking amounts of magic that the healer had fed to his friend. Rosethorn frowned as he spoke. When he was done, she said, “I’ll be back shortly.” She left him there.
“Can I have water?” Orji whispered from the next bed. “My head aches.”
Briar scooped water into a cup and helped raise the man so he could drink. Looking for Rosethorn as Orji gulped the water, Briar saw her arguing softly—but ferociously, from the look on her face—with the healer who’d tended Flick. The healer pointed to other cots and shook her head. Was she telling Rosethorn she’d already helped those people and was drained of magic, or was she saying there were others who needed it more than Flick?
It didn’t matter, decided Briar. She wouldn’t help Flick, if she even could. The healer’s shoulders drooped; she leaned on the table as she argued with Rosethorn—she was nearly played out. Finally Rosethorn left the room. Briar returned to his watch over Flick.
Some time after the Guildhall clock struck one, Flick passed into unmoving sleep. The clock was ringing the half hour after three in the morning when the consumptive man began to cough himself to death, noisily and bloodily. Orji tried to stuff his blanket into his ears to escape the sound. Briar trembled, wishing he could do the same. Suddenly the noise ended. Those in the room who were able to understand made the gods-circle on their chests.
Flick slept through it all, unmoving, her breath rattling in her throat. Briar tried to get her to drink tea or water, but it ran from her loose mouth. “You have to get well,” he told her fiercely. “C’mon, Flick. You’re a fighter. Remember that time we was on the wharf and them Trader boys tried to run us off?” Tris, Sandry, and Daja knew of this adventure, but their teachers did not. “We showed ’em, right? You even got a fine cloth cap out of it. Sky blue, with a peacock feather, and the pump we saw told you it was worth three silver crescents.”
Flick’s breathing slowed, as if she did remember. As if she savored the memory of either the victory or the hat.
Cheered by that, Briar talked on. “Once we’re sprung from here, I’ll ask Sandry to make a cape to go with the hat, same color and everything.” He was breathing along with Flick, though he didn’t realize it at first. Her body clawed for air like a weary fisherman hauling in nets a handful at a time. There was always a halt when Flick stopped inhaling. Each time Briar stopped when she did. Waiting longer and longer for her to start again, he silently begged her to let go of her lungfuls of air. He couldn’t talk as well as breathe with her, to help her, so he shut up and clutched her hand, watching her chest slowly rise—and fall. Rise—and fall.
Rise … and fall.
Rise … rise … fall. Fall.
He emptied his chest and waited. She was about to breathe in, about to at any minute, except, except …
Briar choked and gasped, inhaling frantically to fill starved lungs. He wheezed as spittle went into his airway, then coughed and coughed, until he yanked the mask from his mouth and drank water straight from the jar. When he lowered it, Flick still hadn’t moved, hadn’t filled her lungs.
She had lost so much weight. A skeleton with skin, he thought, taking her hand again. When she got better, he would try to talk Winding Circle into taking her. Gorse, the chief cook, would love to bring her to a proper weight. Gorse lived to feed people.
Someone fumbled with his hands, but he wouldn’t let go of her. After a time they went away. Briar sat, thinking of the mischief they would find once Flick was on her feet.
Fingers of light thrust through a crack in the shutters, telling him it was dawn. Flick would ask for breakfast in a little while.
A finger touched him lightly, between the eyes. In his mind he saw a silver ribbon of magic. His nostrils flared, tickled by a scent of patchouli, lotus, and other things.