The moment he closed his eyes, the image of the ailing greenhouse tree entered his mind. Rosethorn had wanted to see it, but he had a feeling Crane would not want to show it to her. Rosethorn might not even want to look at the tree if she knew it was one of Crane’s.
Nap, he told himself firmly. Them that know plants are looking after the tree.
Something crunched nearby. He looked: the merchant girl was climbing onto his roof. He scowled. “Just because we live together doesn’t mean I like you. Go away.”
“I have the right to be here,” Tris snapped. “More, because my room’s just below.”
“I didn’t come out to be hearing girl bibble-babble,” he warned.
“I’m not bothering you. Go back to whatever you’re doing, and let me be!” She clambered over the roof’s peak and settled on the other side, where he couldn’t see her. Briar leaned back too hard and fast, and banged his spine on the rocks of the chimney. Wincing, he sat up. Any moment she would chatter, that was certain. He’d be drifting into a little nap, and she’d start asking questions about where he came from and what he did to get here.
Silence.
He fidgeted. Why didn’t she say something? Was there ever a girl who didn’t talk her teeth out? Certainly that Sandry had a mouth that ran on fiddlesticks.
Silence.
She had to be asleep. The moment she woke, she’d start bothering him.
Briar leaned back against the chimney, with more respect for its bumps than the last time, and closed his eyes. There, in his mind, clear as anything, was that sick tree. He opened his eyes with a muttered curse and returned to worrying about the merchant girl.
Time passed, in silence.
The suspense was killing him. He crawled to the peak of the roof and looked over. There she lay, hands behind her head, staring at the sky.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Tris blinked. All through the meal and cleanup, she’d been thinking of deep breaths like sea waves, and of pulling her mind into one small spot. Once she was settled on the thatch, her lungs fell into the breath pattern easily. When Briar interrupted her this time, she was so deeply calm that she didn’t mind.
“Watching a storm get born,” she told him.
The boy frowned. He’d seen folk hypnotized at a fair, made to do silly things by the mage who put them in a trance. When they spoke, they sounded just like her. “Storms don’t get born,” he scoffed. “They’re just there.”
“You aren’t looking right,” she replied, still peaceful. “See? We’re in a spot where you can watch clouds grow.”
He looked up, but it was hard on his neck. “They just look like clouds.”
“Wait. Pick a small one, and keep an eye on it. It helps if you do that breathing thing Niko taught us.”
He squinted, but his neck refused to bend at that angle. Directing a scowl her way—not that she saw anything but the view overhead—he lay down on his side of the roof, just over the peak, and did as she suggested. Slowly he drew breath in, counting, then held it, then let it go. The sound of air moving through his lungs made him think of the breezes that ran over the thatch. He focused on the thickening clouds.
Briefly they looked as they always did, scudding across the sky like fat guild leaders who were late for important appointments. Then he saw a wisp put out a small bloom of gray, then another, and a third. Before it left the range of his vision, the wisp had blown itself into a medium-sized cloud and was working on turning itself into a tall thunderhead.
“How do they do that?” He picked a new cloud. “It’s like they create themselves.”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Maybe Niko will tell me.”
“Why are they gray?”
“They have rain in them. We’ll have a storm in another hour or so.”
“How do you know?”
There was no answer.
“I don’t see how a girl can know about storms.”
She didn’t reply, but neither did she get up and leave. He was startled to realize that he didn’t want her to. She actually wasn’t much trouble—for a merchant girl.
From its room atop the Hub, the clock sounded a deep note. The midday rest was over.
“Boy!” an imperious voice called from below.
There was a rustle of thatch. Tris crawled over the peak in the roof, bound for the trapdoor. “I was just getting comfortable,” she complained.
“Then why leave?” he asked sensibly.
“Because I’m supposed to see Niko, remember?”
“Boy, I know you’re up there!” Briar peered over the roof’s edge. Rosethorn stood in the path, where she could see him. Raising a hand, she beckoned with an evil grin. “Come down. You’re going to help me prepare for this storm!”
He blinked. But that was work—
Maybe she’ll tell me the names of things, he thought.
He paused, not wanting to seem too eager, and thought of a grievance. “Briar!” he yelled at her.
“What?” called Rosethorn.
“My name is Briar! Not ‘boy,’ Briar!”
“I know perfectly well what your name is, boy. Come on—I want to finish before it starts to rain!”
“It’s Briar,” he muttered, and followed Tris down into the house.
7
For a moment, Sandry thought she would cry. The wool that she started to card after lunch was now a snarled mess. The process was simple. She’d done it as recently as a year ago: lay a clump of fleece on each card, then drag the teeth on one card through the wool on the other. The metal teeth groomed the clumps into fine, even strips of wool, to be coiled into rolags. Instead, her fiber escaped the cards, or yanked free of the teeth, or decided to cling to her. Had it still been attached to sheep, she would have suspected them of frisking. Worse, the air was close, hot, and sticky—everywhere that wool touched her skin, she itched.