“So are you, I see.” Sandry’s wave took in the other girl’s clothes.
Daja smoothed her crimson tunic. “I—”
“Traders mourn in red?” asked a scornful voice. Briar stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. “What kind of barbarian thing is that?”
“Red is for blood,” explained Daja. She wasn’t offended by his tone. Kaqs were ignorant. She couldn’t expect one to be as courteous as real people. “Even a—” she started to say, and changed her term when she caught Sandry’s glare. “Even a mud-roller like you should know that much.” In Tradertalk, she told the other girl, “And he is a kaq.”
“I haven’t spent my life with my fingers in my ears,” Briar remarked in clumsy, but plain, Tradertalk. “And I’m not stupid.” Switching back to Common, he added, “Beats me how you people don’t break teeth on that gabble.”
Daja showed him all of hers in a big, warning grin. “Our teeth are stronger than yours, is why.”
Sandry interrupted before the boy could answer. “If we’re going to share the same house, shouldn’t we try to get along?”
“Don’t bother with him,” Daja advised. “He’s just rude and ignorant.”
“Not as ignorant as you thought a moment ago,” he teased.
Behind him, Tris announced, “I’m starved. When do we eat?”
“Midday’s on the table!” called Lark from below.
Tris bolted for the stair. Briar raced to catch up, but she beat him to it.
“We’d better watch him,” Daja told Sandry, closing the door of her room as they left it. Sandry frowned at her, puzzled. Daja tapped the web between her right thumb and forefinger. “He wears the double X—twice a thief. He’d best stay clear of my things.”
A dark head appeared in the opening where the stair pierced the floor—Briar had not gone all the way down. “You think I’m a sluggart, kid? Everyone knows Traders curse their boodle, so them that nick it meet a terrible end. I’m smarter’n that.”
“Nick?” Sandry asked, stepping onto the ladder. “What’s that?”
Briar jumped down, out of her way. “Steal. You nick it, you steal it.”
“Wonderful,” Tris drawled. She was already downstairs and cutting slices from a loaf of coarse bread. Lark set food on the wooden table as Niko lifted a pitcher of milk from the cold-box set in the floor. “We’ll learn thief-slang.”
“At least you’ll have learned something, ‘stead of being just another bleater all your life,” retorted the boy.
Lark smiled at him. “Briar, would you tell Rosethorn it’s midday? Keep after her so she won’t forget to come in.”
He backed up a step. Just eating supper and breakfast with Rosethorn had given him a wary respect for her. “What if she bites me?”
Lark glanced at him with gentle impatience, as if he should have known her reply already. “Bite back.”
Reluctantly he went out into Rosethorn’s domain. The path between rows of unnamed green things was neatly swept. He minced down it, careful not to touch a single leaf. Somehow this garden was different from those he’d seen on the way, different even from the other gardens inside these walls. The plants looked more real, more there. Each stood in its own mound of dirt, opening leaves to the sun, like a piece of living magic.
He longed to touch them. Fear made him pause. Rosethorn had said that if he or Daja so much as breathed on a plant, they would spend months suspended by their heels in the well.
He believed her. Rosethorn was very convincing. She was also nowhere to be seen. He stopped, listening. Dedicates in Air-temple yellow walked by on the spiral road, talking quietly. Somewhere a dog barked; a goat blatted. Under it all lay the buzz of countless bees. The great looms in the buildings across the road were silent for once, the weavers having gone to their own midday meal. He would hear if anyone came around.
To his left, someone had run cords overhead. From them, strings reached to stakes embedded in the ground. Twining plants wrapped thin tendrils around each string. Slap-brained, he thought, peering at them. What are those vines going to do, run off?
He looked around again. There was still no sign of Rosethorn. Carefully, gingerly, he stepped into the furrow that lay between two rows of tied plants, bare feet sinking into freshly turned, somewhat damp, earth. Wriggling his toes in the dirt, he wanted to sprout roots like threads, roots to drink from the land and return its greeting. A bee, thick-bodied and vividly striped in black and yellow, buzzed around his head, wondering what had kept him inside for so long.
He didn’t know how to talk to bees, let alone explain a thing as complicated as Dedicate Rosethorn. Instead he knelt to get a closer look at the captive plants. Touching the delicate leaves with careful hands, he felt their pleasure at being in the sun, watered and digging into rich soil, growing proudly with no insects to munch on their tender parts. The cords helped them to show more of themselves to the light. All of the plants nearly sang with happiness, doing the work they were made to do. They welcomed him, reaching out from their cords to wind instead around his fingers, legs, and arms.
“What the—!”
Flinching, Briar looked around and up. Rosethorn stood on the path, her green habit streaked with dirt and stains, a basket full of dead plants on one arm. Her dark brown eyes blazed. Every nerve screeched for him to flee the expected beating, but he locked himself in place. Running would mean tearing the plants that had wrapped themselves around him, maybe stumbling and crushing them.