Lark held up a hand for silence. They gave it, letting her think. Sandry watched her, knowing how dire the situation was. Only yesterday she had seen Lark work her most powerful charms to keep Rosethorn safe. Not two hours before Tris and Briar had returned, when Sandry had brought fresh linens to the sickroom, she had discovered Lark weeping, her charms in her lap. All of them had fallen to pieces, unable to work in the face of Rosethorn’s disease.
“Well,” Lark said at last, “I’ll have to find Moonstream, that’s all.”
“Moonstream?” asked Daja. “She’ll order a healer to come?”
Lark shook her head. “She started as a healer. I bet she’s at full strength. I’ll track her down. That may be difficult.” She looked at the four. “One of you will stay with her at all times? Alert, and on guard?” They nodded. “Fetch one of our healers if she gets worse.” Her face hardened. “I don’t care what you do to persuade them to come.”
That, more than anything, told them how frightened Lark was. To threaten a healer …
We’ll just hope it doesn’t come to that, Sandry remarked through their magic. Hope really hard—
Because if it does come to that, we will get one here, Daja said with grim promise.
Lark shook out her habit. “Whatever happens, if she—” The woman swallowed, her mouth trembling. “If she actually goes, don’t put your magic in her. Under any circumstances. You can’t come back from that. No power can bring you back. Do you hear me?”
The girls all nodded vigorously.
“Moonstream,” Lark said firmly, and left the house.
Briar’s tea brought Rosethorn’s fever down briefly. It never touched her cough. She continued to doze. He sat with her first, watching intently, praying to any gods that might listen. He would not fail Rosethorn as he had Flick.
An hour and a half after her departure, Lark returned, leading a horse. “Moonstream’s in the city. We sent a messenger bird to Duke’s Citadel, just in case, but her assistant doesn’t believe she’s there. I’m going to look. Crane’s with me, and Frostpine and Kirel. We’ll split up once we reach the Mire.” Tris looked outside and saw the men waiting there, all on horseback. Lark continued, “I found Dedicate Sealwort at the main infirmary. He’ll be here as soon as he can, to sit with her.”
“Go,” Sandry urged. “Go, go.”
“Start praying,” whispered Daja as Lark and the men rode off.
Sandry was on watch the first hour after Lark went to the city; Tris was next. Rosethorn dozed. Her fever began to rise during Tris’s hour, but Briar was afraid to give her more willowbark. Too much could normally irritate the stomach; he had no way to know if willow laden with all the power he could call to it might not do more serious harm.
The day went from warm to hot, an early hint of summer. Sandry went into her room, keeping the door open. At first she embroidered—later she napped. Daja was up and down the attic stairs, tending both the house altar and the incense and candles on her own small family shrine. Each time she checked her candles, she prayed, asking the spirits of her drowned parents and siblings not to let Rosethorn into the ships that carried the dead to paradise. Briar dozed at the table and checked on Rosethorn every few minutes. He knew he irritated Tris, who was officially on duty, but for once the hot-tempered girl kept her silence.
At last Tris came out of Rosethorn’s room and poked Briar’s shoulder. He woke.
“Now it’s your turn,” she informed him.
“Thanks,” he muttered. “That Sealwort—he still ain’t here.” Before he went in, he poured a dipper of water over his head and face. It helped to wake him. The warm day had acted almost like poppy syrup on a boy who was short of sleep.
Rosethorn looked no better. When her lips parted, he could hear the crackle of her lungs. Her pulse was rapid and thin under Briar’s fingers, her breaths slow and draggy. She stirred as he took her pulse and looked at him.
“Something to drink? Water or juice?” he asked, hopeful.
She shook her head.
“Come on,” he insisted. He raised her and put a cup of water to her lips.
She sipped, then turned her face away. “I just want to sleep,” she said in that scary, breathless voice. “So tired.”
The chair was not a comfortable piece of furniture; he suspected Lark chose it for that reason. The back rungs pressed his spine. The wooden edge of the seat dug into the tender muscles behind his knees. There was nothing to read, and he’d brought nothing to work on.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t so much as stuck his head into Rosethorn’s workroom in weeks. Rising quietly, he went to the window. Before the workshop had been built, that window would have granted him a view of the road and the loomhouses. Now he viewed shelves and counters in disorder. Briar winced and turned away. There was plenty for him to do there, once things calmed down.
He padded back to the chair and sat for a while more. With no window to the outdoors, the room was stuffy. He should open the workshop windows when he finished here, to get a breeze going….
He dozed, then jerked awake. How could he sleep in that chair? Wrapping his fingers lightly around Rosethorn’s hand for comfort, Briar fought with his eyelids. They drooped. He yanked them open. They fell shut as if weighted. He ought to ask Daja to take over.
No. Rosethorn was his teacher. His sister, his friend …