Several hours before dawn, Little Bear’s yapping roused everyone. Briar lurched out of his blankets to see what had set the dog off; Lark, Sandry, and Tris sat up, blinking. Daja stuck her head out of Rosethorn’s room. Opening the front door, Briar found Crane about to knock. The tall dedicate looked as exhausted as a man could look. He clutched a flask in one hand.
“One of the cures worked,” he told the boy in a croak. “I told Osprey to create more and try it on the other volunteers at the infirmaries. I want to administer this dose to Rosethorn myself.”
Briar let him in.
Frostpine arrived halfway through the morning and stayed, helping with chores. Crane came and went. He checked the other cure volunteers, all temple people who’d caught the pox while tending the sick, looked in on Osprey and the greenhouse crew, then returned to Discipline to watch over Rosethorn. Once people knew he was at the cottage, runners delivered the latest reports on the progress of the volunteers to him there.
Rosethorn was doing better. Her sleep was more natural; she didn’t babble. She was cool to the touch and dewed with sweat. Lark felt good enough about her progress to draw everyone out of her room after lunch and let her sleep without a guardian nurse.
Fortunately it was Daja, the most even-tempered of them, who looked into Rosethorn’s room late that afternoon. What they heard made them all go still, at the table or seated on the floor, their hands freezing on makework tasks.
“Enough!” Rosethorn’s voice was a sandpaper-rough growl. “The next one who … who peers at me is going to die in a dreadful way! Either come in or stay out!”
Daja blinked, then murmured, “Stay out,” and retreated.
Briar sighed. “Ah, the sweet birds of spring,” he said blissfully. “I hear their glorious song.”
Lark ran to her own room and slammed the door.
Rosethorn began to cough. Crane stood and went into her room.
A few minutes later, Frostpine asked, “Do you think she’s killed him?”
“It’s too quiet for murder,” offered Briar in his best criminal judgment. “And he’d yelp more if she was mauling him.”
“We’d better check,” said Frostpine somberly. He and the four young people looked into the sickroom very cautiously. Crane sat beside Rosethorn’s bed, accepting a cup from her. Rosethorn heaved a shuddering sigh and fought to sit up.
“More?” Crane asked, offering the water pitcher. His manner was as nobly elegant as ever.
“Willowbark, I think,” Rosethorn said in a croak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Please.” Her quick brown eyes caught her audience. “Something for you?”
“No,” replied Frostpine.
“No? Then go away. You too,” she informed Crane.
He rose, poured her a cup of willowbark tea, then swept her an elegant bow. He ruined the effect by adding, “Don’t laze about too long. We must go at the blue pox, find out just how so deadly a variation was made, then write a paper to present in Lightsbridge.”
“I’ll try not to laze,” Rosethorn promised, and drank her tea. “I would like to see Lark, though.”
“Shoo, shoo,” Crane said, sweeping his hands—and Frostpine, and the four—ahead of him until all had left the room. He rapped on Lark’s door. “She wants you,” he called.
“Coming,” Lark replied, her voice nearly as clogged as Rosethorn’s.
Crane looked at Briar and Tris, arms akimbo. “I could use both of you,” he said. “There are problems with the cure’s effect on older and younger patients—we must experiment with those. For that, since time is precious, I would prefer that you sleep nearby, in the Air dormitories.”
“I’ll tell Lark,” Sandry offered. She had been crying, though none of the four could remember when.
“Time to go,” said Crane. “The sooner we begin, the sooner we are done.”
13
There was still a great deal of hard work before they could announce a cure to the frightened city. Teenagers, the very young, and the old did not fare as well as adults of Rosethorn’s age. Adjustments were made. Crane requested—and got—volunteers among the victims in Summersea, those with no magic whatsoever. He and his staff worked around the clock. Briar was vexed not to see Rosethorn, but getting a cure to Summersea was important. Hundreds had died and more were dying in the city; no one wanted those numbers to rise for even an hour longer if they could help it.
At last, five days after Rosethorn began to mend, they gave their cures to the Water Temple, which began to make them in the huge amounts needed in Summersea. Crane sent Briar and Tris home. “There will be a meeting in a week or two,” he explained. “We learn better as we review what happened and what might have been done instead. Some of the discussion will be impossible for you to follow, but your observations will be of use.”
“Which means what?” Briar asked Tris as they plodded home. The day was warm, almost summery. Time to start hoeing, he thought, seeing green shoots in the gardens around the buildings.
“He might learn something and we might learn something,” Tris replied.
“That’s what I thought he meant. Why doesn’t he come out and say so?”
Tris blinked at him. “I thought he did.”
“Oh, you’re no help.”
The minute they entered Discipline, they looked in on Rosethorn. She was drowsing, her cheeks flushed, one hand on the shakkan. Someone had placed more pillows at her back, so that she was half sitting. Lark was in the chair beside the bed, worrying her fingernails. When she saw Briar and Tris, she put a finger to her lips for silence and got up.