Post by rat on Jan 18, 2012 5:43:03 GMT 10
Title: A Nearly Ineradicable Poison
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 10728
Summary (and any Warnings): Tris seeks out a suspected mage and discovers something that impacts her and her foster-siblings in unanticipated ways.
Notes: This story has occupied my brain for the past three days after it jumped into my head from the question, what would make one of the Circle kids break the law? I hope it counts, multiple laws are broken! Also… it didn’t all fit in one post. Um, no max word count, right?
I.
“Does this happen often?” asked Tris, her eyes wide as she looked around the field. She boosted herself up to the tips of her toes to look out over the sea of tents and booths. The sea was wide: Tris could not see to the end. The others carried on as she had her look, and Tris tried to move to keep up to them without dropping down to her heels again.
She stumbled, nearly falling. Strong fingers wrapped around Tris’s arms and set her back on her feet.
“Thank you.”
“Mhm.”
The exchanged passed between the two girls without eye contact. Daja and Tris were mired in another argument, one that had started over who had taken too much milk at the breakfast table and Tris was certain Daja had been making a remark about her weight, and Daja just knew that Tris still had her biases about Traders no matter what she said.
“No,” Niko said, apparently oblivious to everything that had just happened, instead answering Tris’s earlier question. “A Grand Faire happens, oh…”
Niko had only paused to think, but Sandry volunteered, “Between five and ten years, usually. It’s… like the opposite of a Progress.” She hopped out of the moving cart in a less than noble way and said, “Well, we’re nearly there!” to no spoken criticism. Tris chose to walk on a complaint of motion sickness, and Daja without giving a reason but in a stubbornly determined sort of way with which no one wanted to argue. Sandry smoothed her gown and caught up to the other two girls.
Briar, mocking sleep because the chance for six seconds of sleep could not be passed up, rolled over and resettled himself to take up the space Sandry had vacated.
“When was the last one?” Tris wondered. “Were you there?”
“I think it was eight years ago—I was in Janaal. Maybe Daja…?”
Daja shook her head. Her first trip with her family’s caravan had been her last. “I don’t see any Traders here,” she commented.
Sandry suggested, “Maybe they’re not here yet. It’ll last for weeks.”
“Or they’re here, beyond what you can see,” added Tris, who had not been able to see the other edge of the field. They followed a rough path. Over the past days of set-up and preparation for the Faire it had been worn into the grass. By the Faire’s end, it might well be nothing but dirt and ruts the wheels wore in the ground.
Even this early in the morning, the sun beat down hotly. Tris looked around, wondering if there might be something she could do. She knew better than to try anything huge, she was not going to grab a storm and yank it across the sea, but nearer the shore, there were cold winds off the Pebbled Sea. Tris rested her hand on the side of the cart. It would help her keep track of her steps. She took a deep breath, inhaling for a count of seven, holding for a count of seven, exhaling for a count of seven…
Her magic slipped away, but before it could get very far, a firm hand clamped down on her shoulder. Tris’s attention flooded back to her physical body. She blinked. The others were already a few feet ahead, leaving Tris and Niko alone in the middle of the path.
“Trisana.” That tone only meant one thing: trouble. But it was gentle, only a warning that she was at the edge of trouble, not trouble itself. “You’ve made remarkable progress in the past year and I appreciate that much of that progress has been hard-earned. Even so, your magic can be very dangerous and I would prefer you not experiment with it in a public place.”
Spots of red rose on Tris’s cheeks. They would have been easily mistaken for anger, but were actually signs of embarrassment. She had been so long treated as an adult that she found being scolded even more unpleasant than did most children.
She nodded. She wanted to explain, at least to object that she had not hurt anyone. Instead she simply agreed, “I won’t, Niko.”
“Thank you.”
Ahead of them, with the cart, Sandry turned away from Tris and her teacher. “I hope everything’s all right,” she said. Sometimes Tris seemed to draw trouble even more readily than Briar did. Then again, Briar’s trouble rarely bothered him, unlike Tris’s, which left a lot of hurt feelings.
“Leave it,” Daja advised. “No one will thank you for sticking your nose in.”
Sandry frowned. “She is supposed to be your saati—”
“She is my saati,” Daja replied, “and if I thought she were in trouble, I would help her, but nothing is going to happen to her while Niko’s around. You felt her slipping away, too.” The final jab came a moment later, after a tense silence in which both girls clearly disagreed with the other.
Sandry sighed and rubbed her nose in dissatisfaction. She did not like it, but Daja was right. Whatever Niko had to say to Tris about her magic, Tris probably did not like her foster-sisters involving themselves. “You’re right,” she said.
“We’re here.”
Lark stopped the cart, and Rosethorn gave Briar a prod on the shoulder. “Up you get, my lad. Plenty for you to do as well.”
Briar grumbled, but he sat up and rubbed his eyes. The three students and two dedicates began setting up the stall the Temple would run at the Grand Faire. It was fairly simple, and most of them looked around, comparing. Briar thought the flashier stalls more likely to catch people’s attention, Daja simply reminded herself that business was not so much a virtue among ]kaqs, and Tris scowled because she hated feeling poor and lesser than her neighbors. The only one not bothered by the comparison was Sandry. She simply helped set up, even after a year feeling that this was not her world and she could only hope she was helping.
II.
Around noon, Lark gave each of the children a few coins and told them they were welcome to explore the Faire so long as they stayed together. There was a fair amount of pickpocketing at the Faire, naturally there was, so Lark warned the four of them to be careful. The girls assured her they would be. Briar, his street rat’s dignity affronted, objected, “Aw, Lark, y’know I’m no daftie ‘bout to let some kid nick somethin’ offa me!”
Rosethorn shot him a sharp look.
Briar amended, “I’ll be careful, too,” before hurrying off with the girls.
All of them found the Faire exciting, and none of them had seen anything like it before. The markets in the city were nothing in comparison. A fruitful spring after the past difficult year—a year of earthquakes and pirate attacks—had eased the country’s finances some, and the Grand Faire was held to ease them further, encouraging trade and bringing coin into circulation. More than that, it was huge, in the children’s eyes practically its own city.
Daja glanced around, as they went keeping track of their surroundings. She did not want to get lost.
“Why do Lark and Rosethorn need to run a stall, anyway?” Sandry wondered.
“Trust a noble to ask!” Daja said.
“I mean it,” Sandry insisted.
“Even the Living Circle has to make its money somehow,” Tris explained absently. She was looking around as they went, seeking out what she always sought out: books. Even without enough to buy any, she liked looking at them.
Tris was not having much luck, although Briar saw something that interested him, meat cooking. If he had been a thief still, he would have been tempted to steal some. As it was, Briar thought about his coins. Sure, they fed him at Discipline, but he was growing, always hungry, particularly around a smell like that, a hiss of dripping fat...
But the girls moved on, and Briar hurried to keep up. He still moved like a street rat, still had that look in his eyes, not to mention the tattoos on his hands. Sticking with girls like those gave him some respectability, protection—not that Briar Moss would ever admit to needing protection from a bunch of skirts, even if they were his sisters.
Daja stopped in the middle of the path, so suddenly Tris nearly tripped over her. “Look at that,” she said by way of explanation.
Their attention turned. “What, that tanner?” asked Briar. That at least made sense. Daja encountered leather plenty in her work, since a linen apron would scarcely protect her from the showers of sparks that flew when a hammer struck cherry-red metal.
“No—next to that.”
“Girls,” Briar grumbled, seeing that Daja had indicated a booth selling artwork. “Come on, Daj’, usually you got more sense than to gush over pretties.”
“I see it,” Sandry said. She had looked at one small picture, and found her eyes locked on it. The image was difficult to make out from here. The forms of black and white chased one another in a meaningless pattern. Something about the piece held her interest. It had wormed into her, like a quietness into her mind, dampening the sounds of the other thoughts there. “It… makes you feel peaceful,” she observed. “Briar, look,” since he clearly had not and still wanted to move on.
Briar sighed, but it was mostly for show. He looked where Sandry had pointed and shivered.
“You don’t think it’s nice?” Sandry asked.
“I don’t think it’s natural,” replied Briar.
Tris tilted her head to frown at him. “Not natural?” she echoed his sentiment. “You know as well as any of us that magic is not a choice, it just happens. Oh, what?” The last was in reference to the fact that the others were staring at her.
“Magic?” Sandry said.
“Can’t you see it?”
None of them saw magic as well as Tris did. Looking harder, Sandry found that something did glimmer, if she squinted just right and turned her head away a little bit. “It’s not the picture,” she said, unsure what it was.
The four young people approached the stall. Mostly, it sold small pictures, images maybe twice the size of a child’s hand, but it also sold a number of books. Those interested Tris more. She saw the same silver glow of magic within them, still uncertain of its origin. She reached out to the brightest and opened the book to its first page.
“Good afternoon, miss.”
“Good afternoon. This is beautiful,” Tris said, indicating the book.
The man chuckled. “You’ve a good eye,” he said. “Prize of the ‘ole shop, this ‘un.”
Tris nodded. She could see that from the price asked, and handled the book very carefully. “May I read some of it?” she asked. With permission, she turned to the next page.
A few minutes later the stall-keeper was back, asking, “’Ow’re ye likin’ that book?”
Tris’s eyes flicked between the man and the book, and Sandry knew which would win out. Bothering Tris while she was reading was never a good idea. She did it, all the time, because that was the only way to talk to her sister at all, but Sandry knew that Tris’s reaction to her and to a stranger were very different. Even though a boothkeeper at the Faire was unlikely to cause trouble, Sandry stepped forward. “Good afternoon, sir,” she said. “We were just looking at your wares. You see, we’re mages, too, and—”
“Mages?” asked the man. There was a strange note in his voice—not amusement, but almost alarm. “I’m no mage—no mages ‘ere a’tall.”
Sandry looked the man up and down. He was short for a man, with close-cropped black hair and thin lips. His hands had droplets of discoloration, like ink had dripped there. His clothes were in poor repair, but only to the degree a stitch witch like Sandry would notice.
She also noticed a lack of magic. No, he had told the truth, he was no mage.
“You must work with a partner then,” she persisted. “The mage who crafted all of these,” and she indicated the wares for sale.
The man shook his head. “I’m sorry, miss.”
“Come on, Sandry, no need to bother the man.”
“Briar!” she replied, surprised.
“What’s the matter?” asked Tris, with a slightly disoriented look on her face. She had pulled herself out of her book and still needed to remember reality.
“Nothing’s the matter,” replied Briar, who did not love reading as much as Tris did but respected her love enough not to pull her away from it more than he had to.
“Someone was whimpering.”
Briar shook his head. “You must be hearin’ things, Coppercurls.”
Tris shrugged and returned to her book, leaving Sandry and Briar to resume their argument.
“Look, it ain’t your business what way he’s makin’ a living, is it?”
“But using magic without a license…”
Briar nodded, and Sandry understood. There was no reason to upset the man’s business. He had seemed kind enough, and practicing magic without a license was criminal behavior.
They practically had to pry Tris away from the books. She would have stayed there, but she had promised Lark they would all stick together.
III.
“Hello, Niko! I didn’t think we would see you again today!” Sandry remarked cheerfully. His presence was a surprise: obviously, a good one. Since she had been told there was nothing more to do, and she did not need to run and use the privy (“The privy, boy, not the nearest alley you find!”) or wanted a drink of water, Sandry had been sent to wait with the cart. She sat there now, her mind wandering, one hand clenched around her special string with four evenly-spaced lumps, and she had been feeling almost lonely until Niko showed up.
He had not come to the Faire for the same reasons as Lark, Rosethorn and their students, who had a stall to run. For Niko, it was a chance to experience a less-than-common event and have a look at what his colleagues were up to. He had spent most of the day with other mages.
“Of course you would,” Niko replied, “I’m to head back to Winding Circle with you.”
Well, so he said! Academics were easily distracted if you asked Sandry, so there had always been the chance of Niko getting involved in some debate or another and not finishing until dawn. “Actually,” Sandry continued, “I’m really pleased to see you, because—”
“Is that Niko, back at last?”
Niko had never ignored the children, but he did occasionally treat them that way, like children. It was rare, particularly since he worked closely with Tris, who resented anyone reminding her that she was only twelve years old, but it happened—like right now. “One moment, please.”
“Of course,” Sandry agreed, because she had heard Lark call out Niko’s name, too.
It was evening. Something like a Grand Faire never really slept, but young people did, and Lark and Rosethorn would take the children home as soon as the replacement dedicates arrived, those keeping the stall overnight.
“Wouldn’t’a thought it,” Briar said, appearing beside Sandry, “but it looks like it turned out all right, even with us being the plainest stall around.” They had sold much of their stock that day. It wasn’t hard to find objects with no distinct purpose in the Temple, things to be sold. Some had been prepared specifically for this, and others were things like practice works made by apprentices. There were more than a few carvings for that reason. What else did one do with a carving, after all?
People trusted the Living Circle, though, and knew mage-work came out of Winding Circle, so their things had sold well. Briar began to doubt the Temple could keep up with this selling for weeks business, but that was a good thing, wasn’t it?
Sandry nodded. “I told you that wasn’t the most important thing,” she retorted. Looking out over the Faire, she reflected, “Lark was right about Little Bear, you know. I have missed him today, but he would have been miserable.”
Having little shade was tough enough on the children, most of whom felt the warmth of their sunburns already. Little Bear’s presence would have meant countless trips to the crowded well, and even then Sandry hated to think how the poor creature would have felt with his thick fur, in this weather. Knowing Little Bear was safe back in the Temple kept Sandry happy.
“Sometimes he’s more trouble than he’s worth,” added Daja, and Sandry wondered when she had become so lost in thought that her friends could approach without her noticing. She was probably just tired, she decided. It had been a long day.
Still, the remark about Little Bear surprised her. “I thought you liked him!” she objected.
“I do,” replied Daja, clambering up into the cart beside Sandry, “but remember the time Briar took him on an errand to the Hub—”
“Wasn’t my fault,” interjected Briar.
“Yes, it was.”
“Wasn’t neither!”
“Whose fault was it, then?”
“Ah…” Briar was trapped between a rock and a hard place. Little Bear had not obeyed the command that he stay where he was and instead followed after Briar into the kitchen, and even Dedicate Gorse had his limits. Either it was Briar’s fault for not thinking to tie Little Bear to the fence, or Gorse’s fault for making everything smell so delicious, and everyone knew that Briar loved Gorse almost as much as he loved Lark. “The wind,” Briar announced at last, triumphantly.
“The wind?”
“Sure. ’Cause if there’d been a good wind that day, the Bear wouldn’t’ve smelled all those cooking smells, see? And then he would’ve stayed right outside. The wind,” he repeated, a smirk on his face that made Daja want to whomp him with her staff, just a little bit.
“The wind,” Daja echoed once more, rolling her eyes like it was the most absurd thing she had ever heard. In truth, she lived with Briar: she had heard worse excuses. “Sandry, I do love Little Bear, but I hate to think how he could have gotten himself hurt in a place like this.”
A little ashamed, Sandry agreed, “I suppose that’s so.” She had not thought about Little Bear actually being hurt, only being uncomfortable, although now that Daja mentioned it there were quite a few people here. There were booths and stalls that were temporary workplaces and had fires set within them, or rotten people who would do who-knows-what to a defenseless puppy. She should have thought of that.
“…should have known better than to trust a couple of Water dedicates!”
The children traded looks. Rosethorn had used that tone a few times, and they all knew what it meant. “Someone’s going to be strung up inside the well,” Daja muttered, and Sandry and Briar pressed their hands to their mouths to keep from laughing.
They could not make out the words, but heard tones of Lark soothing Rosethorn. It was Niko who came to talk to the children, though. “The dedicates meant to relieve Lark and Rosethorn were late,” he explained, “but we’ll be heading home soon.” He glanced around. Later, Sandry would wonder why she had not asked herself earlier the question Nico asked now.
“Where’s Tris?”
IV.
Briar’s had an influence on me, thought Tris, but she knew it was more than that. It was Winding Circle. It was Daja and Sandry and Lark and Rosethorn and Niko.
There had been a time when Trisana Chandler was not a girl who left her post. If she had been sent to haul water, she hauled water; if she had been told to clean the floor, she cleaned the floor. As a little girl, the last thing on her mind was leaving. No, even if whatever relative had taken her in worked her like a dog, what Tris wanted was to know she would wake up in the same place tomorrow.
But they were not going to get rid of her. Briar, Daja, Sandry, Lark, Rosethorn and Niko—and even Frostpine a little, though she did not know him well it seemed unfair not to include him—were never going to think Tris was crazy or cursed and make her leave.
She hoped.
Normally all of this made Tris so grateful, tears pricked at the back of her eyes, just as they had during her birthday party earlier this year. Tonight it made her bold. They might get angry, but they would not get rid of her, and that was a risk she was willing to take.
Earlier, at the stall with the pictures and books, she had not allowed herself to show how much Briar’s words upset her.
“You must be hearin’ things, Coppercurls.”
Hearing things indeed! It was true that Tris sometimes heard things. She had heard things all her life. It was a part of her magic, she knew that now—and she knew the difference! Tris knew perfectly well when she heard things on the wind and when she heard things from right nearby. This sound had come from right nearby, and she would prove it! She would show him!
Actually, Tris knew she probably wouldn’t. But then, this was not really about Briar, was it? This was about her. Briar had never thought she was crazy. Briar had never questioned her sanity. HE had only joked. Words are like poison, though, a nearly ineradicable poison, and they had settled inside of Tris and seeped out, seeped into her blood, had even reached her heart.
Briar had never question Tris’s sanity. Tris had.
His words had sparked this need for her to prove to herself that she was not crazy and that she knew the difference between her senses and her magic.
Wandering away from the stall had not been difficult. She waited until things were busy, then asked Briar to tell Rosethorn she needed the privy and simply walked away. She might be in trouble later, almost certainly would, but Tris tried not to think about later.
She found the stall easily enough. The same man stood there, and when he saw Tris, he greeted her, “Couldn’t keep ‘way from it, eh, lass?”
She might have been offended, but she knew exactly what he meant. On the way over, her thoughts had bounced between, I’ll show that boy who’s hearing things! and Perhaps just one more look…
“I was hoping I might have one more look—unless you’ve sold it?”
“No, no, it’s still ‘ere. I’m closin’ up th’ shop soon—onny me runnin’ it, y’see—but ‘ave a quick peek, eh?”
He grinned, and Tris found herself grinning back.
She told herself she would only read the first couple of pages. They were the same pages she had read earlier, but earlier, they had been deeply moving. It was a fictional story, not Tris’s usual fare, but there was something utterly engaging about, something about the words that made it so real, when she looked at the illustrations she felt her heart wrung.
Tris read until the man behind the stall asked, almost apologetically, to have his book back, and Tris returned it, with a reluctant but grateful smile.
It was not until a minute later, when the stall was closed up for the night and the man gone into the quickly-raised tent that was clearly his temporary home, that Tris realized her mistake. She had been distracted by that book! Now how would she find out about the noise she had heard?
Dozens of scenarios popped up in her mind. The man’s wife was here, but sick, lying down in the tent. He had a pet. That had only been the sound of a wooden crate of supplies resettling itself. There had to be an explanation… and the only way for Tris to find it was to see inside that tent.
Annoyed with herself for throwing away one opportunity, Tris resolved that she would not lose another. The man had walked around the tent to enter it, which meant the way in and out was at the back. Tris headed around to the side of the tent, until she could just see the entry flap, and she waited. He had said he ran the stall alone. Eventually, the man would have to leave. He would fetch water, or use the privy, or perhaps visit one of the stalls selling prepared foods for his supper, and then she would look into the tent.
Just look, that was all Tris wanted to do.
Her absence would be noticed soon, if it had not already been. The longer she stayed here, the likelier it was they would see her gone, the more she would be in trouble. Tris knew that. She had to look. She had to know that there was an explanation for the sounds she had heard earlier!
She waited a long time. It was still hot out and beads of sweat gathered on her neck and under her arms. The sun crept lower and lower on the horizon. Tris began to fidget, not out of impatience, but because she knew Lark would be much more worried—and Rosethorn much angrier—if she returned after dark.
She was beginning to think about heading back when the stallkeeper stepped out of his tent and headed down the row, toward the well. Tris wasted no more time. As soon as the man was out of sight, she darted over and drew back the tent flap. It seemed a little too easy to be true, that she needed only to grip the heavy cloth and pull it aside, yet it moved smoothly. Tris opened the door and peered inside.
Immediately, magic flared. She felt it more than saw it, a solid slate of magic mimicking the cloth. Tris thought a very rude word that she would not have said in front of Niko. She should have expected that the man would have some sort of protection charm in place, and she did not feel very good about breaking it, breaking into the man’s home. And she should have turned and gone. Instead she sent tendrils of her magic into the spell. She felt them latch into the other magic and whirled them, whirled her magic like a cyclone, holding tight to it.
The cyclone twisted and twisted. Tris pulled magic from the protection spell. There had to be something here. Why put such a strong protection otherwise?
She made her cyclone melt to the floor. It left a bare doorway. Tris risked one more glance up the path to ensure that she was alone before peeking inside.
V.
The trip back to Discipline Cottage was tense and quiet.
The cart was empty now and none of the students wanted to make a fuss. Their teachers were upset enough already. So Daja sat in the cart, even though she had not wanted to do that, had not wanted to be in anything like a vessel. She had been having those dreams again. Unlike Sandry, Daja found trauma not in the ends of things but in the things that ended. She knew Sandry had nightmares about the storeroom and the earthquake. As she sat in the rocking cart, staring absently ahead, she remembered.
She remembered the first night on the ship. She remembered her stomach roiling, remembered biting her lip and pressing her nails into her palms because she wanted to be the daughter who didn’t throw up, like she had been born for the sea.
She remembered the city where she lived throughout her early life, remembered the people there. It had only been a few years. Was Gran still alive, still complaining about the pain in her joints and making the best stuffed apricots this side of the Endless Ocean? Did she ever think about the granddaughter who still lived, or did she think of Daja as custom dictated, as lost, not knowing she had been written into the books of Tenth Caravan Idaram?
Daja had been having the dreams again and they made her ache with how a cart was so similar to a ship, was nothing like a ship at all. She glanced at Sandry. Sandry had dreams, too, but Daja did not want a lamp to help the dreams go away. Good memories hurt her terribly, but for all the pain, she could not bear the thought of losing them.
While Daja watched Sandry, Briar watched Tris. He tried not to be obvious about it, not wanting to get on the wrong side of her temper, but he wondered where Tris had gone. It was just like her to wander off, and obviously she had found something, because she had been bothered since returning.
Personally, Briar felt that Niko could have asked. Sure, Tris did some daft things, but she always had her reasons. Niko had only shaken his head and said, “I’m very disappointed, Trisana,” and now on top of everything else, Briar was never going to find out what had happened, not for a long while, anyway. Why did Niko have to go and do a thing like that? Look how upset Tris was now! She would go back to her room and cry.
Briar did not like his sister crying and did not like that there was nothing he could do about it. And he wanted answers, but with Tris in this state, he knew better than to think he would get them.
He had been the one to reach through their connection first. Tris felt him in her mind immediately, of course. Briar had expected that. That she hurried to block her vision had surprised him. He had vaguely noticed shapes, flashes of color, but Tris had looked away quickly and most of what Briar saw was Tris’s shoes.
Something had happened. Something had happened that Tris felt needed to be kept from Briar, and generally when someone kept things from him, Briar felt the only logical response was to seek out the things being kept.
Coppercurls?
Tris made no reply. She continued looking away, like Daja focusing on some fixed, distant point.
Well, it had been worth a shot.
Briar sighed. He was not sure why this needed to spill over from Niko and Tris to everybody else. Rosethorn was annoyed with those Water Temple dedicates, but normally Lark could calm her down. No, this had nothing to do with Water Temple and everything to do with adults. Briar knew how adults acted. They loved scolding a child for a tantrum, but when they pitched tantrums of their own, best thing to do was avoid it like a tidal wave.
When they reached Discipline Cottage, Daja, Briar and Tris all headed for their rooms. Only Sandry lingered. “Lark?” she asked.
Lark smiled tiredly. “Not tired, Sandry?”
“I am,” Sandry replied honestly. She twisted a package in her hands, wondering how to introduce the subject after what had happened with Tris. “I… I wanted to ask Niko something…”
From Lark’s expression, she knew why Sandry chose not to ask. Niko’s mood had hardly been subtle, and Sandry was not like Lark or Rosethorn. She did not know how to approach someone like that, not without a life-or-death matter. “Niko was afraid when Tris disappeared. Give him a day or two to calm down. Is it something I can help with?”
Sandry hesitated, then shook her head. “No, it can wait a few days.” She thought Lark probably could help her, if she asked, but she did not want to ask right now. Lark’s eyes were lined and glassy. For all her efforts, Sandry saw that Lark was as tired as the rest of them. She had probably been afraid when Tris disappeared, too. The last thing Sandry wanted right now was to add to her teacher’s worries.
Instead, she smiled and said, “Good night, Lark.”
Alone in her room, Sandry lay in bed with her hands folded on top of the covers. She waited until she no longer heard sounds of movement from Briar or Daja. Lark and Rosethorn murmured softly and their voices soon fell silent. The last to quiet down was Tris. When at last the cottage seemed to be asleep, Sandry slipped out of bed. She lit her lamp and sat down at the desk.
Sandry carefully untied the twine, then unfolded the canvas. Inside it all was a small painting. She had not wanted to show the others. She did not like reminding them that she had more money than they did, but it was more than that. Something about the painting made her want to keep it, to look at it. It made her feel calm, made her mind blank in a lovely way.
She would show Lark tomorrow. There was magic here. There had to be.
VI.
Three days after the Faire, Tris remained withdrawn. She had her lessons with Niko, who claimed he was no longer cross with her and seemed to mean it, and sat at the table with her siblings and Rosethorn and Lark, who said she had been so worried and seemed to mean it, and she never said a word beyond what was necessary. Her attention remained, always, somewhere else.
On the third day, she nearly crossed the main room of the cottage without noticing someone else there.
“Tris?”
Tris paused. Although she recognized the voice, she did not realize who had spoken until she looked around and saw her foster-mother sitting at the table. “Oh. Good evening, Lark.”
Lark offered a cup of tea, which Tris did not want, but did not know how to politely refuse, either. She sat at the opposite side of the table and brought the cup to her lips. Tempted as she was to drink the entire thing in one gulp, or excuse herself to use the privy, Tris sat patiently, waiting for Lark to speak.
“Is everything all right?” Lark asked after too long a moment.
“Yes, Lark.”
Gently, Lark pointed out, “You haven’t been the same since the Grand Faire.”
“I’m all right,” Tris insisted.
Lark nodded. “If something happened—”
“It didn’t,” Tris interrupted. She looked at Lark for a moment, then lowered her head to look at the table. “I’m sorry for interrupting, but nothing happened, I swear. I know what you mean.” The solemnity of her tone more than her words carried the truth that she did understand. Tris knew the sorts of dangers faced by young girls alone.
“All right,” Lark agreed, in a tone that meant nothing was all right at all. “And Niko didn’t…”
Tris nearly dropped her cup of tea. Her eyes bulged in surprise and anger, though she said nothing. How could Lark even suggest that Niko would hurt her? He was one of the few people in her life who had done nothing of the sort!
“He is not used to young people,” Lark explained, “not for long spans of time, not… not like this. He has never taken a student before. Sometimes he speaks more sharply than he means to.”
“It wouldn’t be anything new to me,” Tris replied.
Lark nodded sadly.
They finished their tea without saying much. Tris rinsed out her teacup, said good night, and went upstairs.
She did not have much time to herself there. Only a few minutes later, a voice from the doorway told her, “That may have been enough for Lark…” The implicit conclusion, but not for me, needed not be stated, and Tris knew that Briar would stay until he had an answer. She turned another page in the book propped open on her knees, a book that left her feeling slightly empty for what it wasn’t.
“We’re not asking, merchant girl.”
The voice told her that Daja stood in the doorway with Briar, but Tris looked up, anyway, just as she had with Lark. All three of her siblings had come to see her. A part of Tis was glad. She wanted to discuss it, really she did, but she also had the instinct that had made her turn her head when she felt the first touches of green reaching her. Some things were better left unknown, filed away with the memories of the searing emptiness she felt when her family left her over and over again.
She sat up. “It’s… private,” she murmured, with a glance at the floor to indicate she meant private from the people downstairs, from Lark and Rosethorn. They would not be angry with her or anything of the sort, Tris knew that, but telling her siblings was like telling herself. She did not want to do that, either, but the memories were not going to go away just because she wanted them to.
Briar, Daja and Sandry stepped into the room and shut the door behind them. Sandry sat beside Tris on the bed, Daja sat at the desk, and Briar, who would always be a street kid deep down, plunked down on the floor.
Tris opened her mouth, could not find the words, and closed it again. She tried once more, then shook her head and instead reached out. Briar took one hand, Sandry the other, and Daja, who was still a little stung by the harsh words they had exchanged a few days ago, settled herself between Briar and Sandry.
She made her cyclone melt to the floor. It left a bare doorway. Tris risked one more glance up the path to ensure that she was alone before peeking inside. Much of the tent looked about as any tent would, with a person living in it. He had a pallet on the floor, a clothes chest, a clay pitcher and cups. None of it was of the highest quality, but none of it was poorly made, either. The clary pitcher and cups had matching designs painted onto them, bright, shining with the same half-hidden magical light they had noticed from the paintings at the front of the stall.
The man had a work area, too, a low table with well-sealed pots of paint, pens, inks and papers and the small canvases for the pictures he sold at the front of his stall.
Tris took in all of this in the space of a second, scanned the room—and what she saw in the corner made her freeze, made her stomach twist in revulsion.
Magic glimmered from a girl in the corner of the tent. Her dark hair was unkempt, her clothes dirty and ill-fitting. She crouched, rocking, with her head in her hands, her face hidden. A keening, whimpering noise seemed to surround her more than come from her. And before she turned away, the moment before she felt those hints of green, she noticed the reddened skin on the girl’s leg, chafed by the shackle locked around her ankle.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 10728
Summary (and any Warnings): Tris seeks out a suspected mage and discovers something that impacts her and her foster-siblings in unanticipated ways.
Notes: This story has occupied my brain for the past three days after it jumped into my head from the question, what would make one of the Circle kids break the law? I hope it counts, multiple laws are broken! Also… it didn’t all fit in one post. Um, no max word count, right?
I.
“Does this happen often?” asked Tris, her eyes wide as she looked around the field. She boosted herself up to the tips of her toes to look out over the sea of tents and booths. The sea was wide: Tris could not see to the end. The others carried on as she had her look, and Tris tried to move to keep up to them without dropping down to her heels again.
She stumbled, nearly falling. Strong fingers wrapped around Tris’s arms and set her back on her feet.
“Thank you.”
“Mhm.”
The exchanged passed between the two girls without eye contact. Daja and Tris were mired in another argument, one that had started over who had taken too much milk at the breakfast table and Tris was certain Daja had been making a remark about her weight, and Daja just knew that Tris still had her biases about Traders no matter what she said.
“No,” Niko said, apparently oblivious to everything that had just happened, instead answering Tris’s earlier question. “A Grand Faire happens, oh…”
Niko had only paused to think, but Sandry volunteered, “Between five and ten years, usually. It’s… like the opposite of a Progress.” She hopped out of the moving cart in a less than noble way and said, “Well, we’re nearly there!” to no spoken criticism. Tris chose to walk on a complaint of motion sickness, and Daja without giving a reason but in a stubbornly determined sort of way with which no one wanted to argue. Sandry smoothed her gown and caught up to the other two girls.
Briar, mocking sleep because the chance for six seconds of sleep could not be passed up, rolled over and resettled himself to take up the space Sandry had vacated.
“When was the last one?” Tris wondered. “Were you there?”
“I think it was eight years ago—I was in Janaal. Maybe Daja…?”
Daja shook her head. Her first trip with her family’s caravan had been her last. “I don’t see any Traders here,” she commented.
Sandry suggested, “Maybe they’re not here yet. It’ll last for weeks.”
“Or they’re here, beyond what you can see,” added Tris, who had not been able to see the other edge of the field. They followed a rough path. Over the past days of set-up and preparation for the Faire it had been worn into the grass. By the Faire’s end, it might well be nothing but dirt and ruts the wheels wore in the ground.
Even this early in the morning, the sun beat down hotly. Tris looked around, wondering if there might be something she could do. She knew better than to try anything huge, she was not going to grab a storm and yank it across the sea, but nearer the shore, there were cold winds off the Pebbled Sea. Tris rested her hand on the side of the cart. It would help her keep track of her steps. She took a deep breath, inhaling for a count of seven, holding for a count of seven, exhaling for a count of seven…
Her magic slipped away, but before it could get very far, a firm hand clamped down on her shoulder. Tris’s attention flooded back to her physical body. She blinked. The others were already a few feet ahead, leaving Tris and Niko alone in the middle of the path.
“Trisana.” That tone only meant one thing: trouble. But it was gentle, only a warning that she was at the edge of trouble, not trouble itself. “You’ve made remarkable progress in the past year and I appreciate that much of that progress has been hard-earned. Even so, your magic can be very dangerous and I would prefer you not experiment with it in a public place.”
Spots of red rose on Tris’s cheeks. They would have been easily mistaken for anger, but were actually signs of embarrassment. She had been so long treated as an adult that she found being scolded even more unpleasant than did most children.
She nodded. She wanted to explain, at least to object that she had not hurt anyone. Instead she simply agreed, “I won’t, Niko.”
“Thank you.”
Ahead of them, with the cart, Sandry turned away from Tris and her teacher. “I hope everything’s all right,” she said. Sometimes Tris seemed to draw trouble even more readily than Briar did. Then again, Briar’s trouble rarely bothered him, unlike Tris’s, which left a lot of hurt feelings.
“Leave it,” Daja advised. “No one will thank you for sticking your nose in.”
Sandry frowned. “She is supposed to be your saati—”
“She is my saati,” Daja replied, “and if I thought she were in trouble, I would help her, but nothing is going to happen to her while Niko’s around. You felt her slipping away, too.” The final jab came a moment later, after a tense silence in which both girls clearly disagreed with the other.
Sandry sighed and rubbed her nose in dissatisfaction. She did not like it, but Daja was right. Whatever Niko had to say to Tris about her magic, Tris probably did not like her foster-sisters involving themselves. “You’re right,” she said.
“We’re here.”
Lark stopped the cart, and Rosethorn gave Briar a prod on the shoulder. “Up you get, my lad. Plenty for you to do as well.”
Briar grumbled, but he sat up and rubbed his eyes. The three students and two dedicates began setting up the stall the Temple would run at the Grand Faire. It was fairly simple, and most of them looked around, comparing. Briar thought the flashier stalls more likely to catch people’s attention, Daja simply reminded herself that business was not so much a virtue among ]kaqs, and Tris scowled because she hated feeling poor and lesser than her neighbors. The only one not bothered by the comparison was Sandry. She simply helped set up, even after a year feeling that this was not her world and she could only hope she was helping.
II.
Around noon, Lark gave each of the children a few coins and told them they were welcome to explore the Faire so long as they stayed together. There was a fair amount of pickpocketing at the Faire, naturally there was, so Lark warned the four of them to be careful. The girls assured her they would be. Briar, his street rat’s dignity affronted, objected, “Aw, Lark, y’know I’m no daftie ‘bout to let some kid nick somethin’ offa me!”
Rosethorn shot him a sharp look.
Briar amended, “I’ll be careful, too,” before hurrying off with the girls.
All of them found the Faire exciting, and none of them had seen anything like it before. The markets in the city were nothing in comparison. A fruitful spring after the past difficult year—a year of earthquakes and pirate attacks—had eased the country’s finances some, and the Grand Faire was held to ease them further, encouraging trade and bringing coin into circulation. More than that, it was huge, in the children’s eyes practically its own city.
Daja glanced around, as they went keeping track of their surroundings. She did not want to get lost.
“Why do Lark and Rosethorn need to run a stall, anyway?” Sandry wondered.
“Trust a noble to ask!” Daja said.
“I mean it,” Sandry insisted.
“Even the Living Circle has to make its money somehow,” Tris explained absently. She was looking around as they went, seeking out what she always sought out: books. Even without enough to buy any, she liked looking at them.
Tris was not having much luck, although Briar saw something that interested him, meat cooking. If he had been a thief still, he would have been tempted to steal some. As it was, Briar thought about his coins. Sure, they fed him at Discipline, but he was growing, always hungry, particularly around a smell like that, a hiss of dripping fat...
But the girls moved on, and Briar hurried to keep up. He still moved like a street rat, still had that look in his eyes, not to mention the tattoos on his hands. Sticking with girls like those gave him some respectability, protection—not that Briar Moss would ever admit to needing protection from a bunch of skirts, even if they were his sisters.
Daja stopped in the middle of the path, so suddenly Tris nearly tripped over her. “Look at that,” she said by way of explanation.
Their attention turned. “What, that tanner?” asked Briar. That at least made sense. Daja encountered leather plenty in her work, since a linen apron would scarcely protect her from the showers of sparks that flew when a hammer struck cherry-red metal.
“No—next to that.”
“Girls,” Briar grumbled, seeing that Daja had indicated a booth selling artwork. “Come on, Daj’, usually you got more sense than to gush over pretties.”
“I see it,” Sandry said. She had looked at one small picture, and found her eyes locked on it. The image was difficult to make out from here. The forms of black and white chased one another in a meaningless pattern. Something about the piece held her interest. It had wormed into her, like a quietness into her mind, dampening the sounds of the other thoughts there. “It… makes you feel peaceful,” she observed. “Briar, look,” since he clearly had not and still wanted to move on.
Briar sighed, but it was mostly for show. He looked where Sandry had pointed and shivered.
“You don’t think it’s nice?” Sandry asked.
“I don’t think it’s natural,” replied Briar.
Tris tilted her head to frown at him. “Not natural?” she echoed his sentiment. “You know as well as any of us that magic is not a choice, it just happens. Oh, what?” The last was in reference to the fact that the others were staring at her.
“Magic?” Sandry said.
“Can’t you see it?”
None of them saw magic as well as Tris did. Looking harder, Sandry found that something did glimmer, if she squinted just right and turned her head away a little bit. “It’s not the picture,” she said, unsure what it was.
The four young people approached the stall. Mostly, it sold small pictures, images maybe twice the size of a child’s hand, but it also sold a number of books. Those interested Tris more. She saw the same silver glow of magic within them, still uncertain of its origin. She reached out to the brightest and opened the book to its first page.
“Good afternoon, miss.”
“Good afternoon. This is beautiful,” Tris said, indicating the book.
The man chuckled. “You’ve a good eye,” he said. “Prize of the ‘ole shop, this ‘un.”
Tris nodded. She could see that from the price asked, and handled the book very carefully. “May I read some of it?” she asked. With permission, she turned to the next page.
A few minutes later the stall-keeper was back, asking, “’Ow’re ye likin’ that book?”
Tris’s eyes flicked between the man and the book, and Sandry knew which would win out. Bothering Tris while she was reading was never a good idea. She did it, all the time, because that was the only way to talk to her sister at all, but Sandry knew that Tris’s reaction to her and to a stranger were very different. Even though a boothkeeper at the Faire was unlikely to cause trouble, Sandry stepped forward. “Good afternoon, sir,” she said. “We were just looking at your wares. You see, we’re mages, too, and—”
“Mages?” asked the man. There was a strange note in his voice—not amusement, but almost alarm. “I’m no mage—no mages ‘ere a’tall.”
Sandry looked the man up and down. He was short for a man, with close-cropped black hair and thin lips. His hands had droplets of discoloration, like ink had dripped there. His clothes were in poor repair, but only to the degree a stitch witch like Sandry would notice.
She also noticed a lack of magic. No, he had told the truth, he was no mage.
“You must work with a partner then,” she persisted. “The mage who crafted all of these,” and she indicated the wares for sale.
The man shook his head. “I’m sorry, miss.”
“Come on, Sandry, no need to bother the man.”
“Briar!” she replied, surprised.
“What’s the matter?” asked Tris, with a slightly disoriented look on her face. She had pulled herself out of her book and still needed to remember reality.
“Nothing’s the matter,” replied Briar, who did not love reading as much as Tris did but respected her love enough not to pull her away from it more than he had to.
“Someone was whimpering.”
Briar shook his head. “You must be hearin’ things, Coppercurls.”
Tris shrugged and returned to her book, leaving Sandry and Briar to resume their argument.
“Look, it ain’t your business what way he’s makin’ a living, is it?”
“But using magic without a license…”
Briar nodded, and Sandry understood. There was no reason to upset the man’s business. He had seemed kind enough, and practicing magic without a license was criminal behavior.
They practically had to pry Tris away from the books. She would have stayed there, but she had promised Lark they would all stick together.
III.
“Hello, Niko! I didn’t think we would see you again today!” Sandry remarked cheerfully. His presence was a surprise: obviously, a good one. Since she had been told there was nothing more to do, and she did not need to run and use the privy (“The privy, boy, not the nearest alley you find!”) or wanted a drink of water, Sandry had been sent to wait with the cart. She sat there now, her mind wandering, one hand clenched around her special string with four evenly-spaced lumps, and she had been feeling almost lonely until Niko showed up.
He had not come to the Faire for the same reasons as Lark, Rosethorn and their students, who had a stall to run. For Niko, it was a chance to experience a less-than-common event and have a look at what his colleagues were up to. He had spent most of the day with other mages.
“Of course you would,” Niko replied, “I’m to head back to Winding Circle with you.”
Well, so he said! Academics were easily distracted if you asked Sandry, so there had always been the chance of Niko getting involved in some debate or another and not finishing until dawn. “Actually,” Sandry continued, “I’m really pleased to see you, because—”
“Is that Niko, back at last?”
Niko had never ignored the children, but he did occasionally treat them that way, like children. It was rare, particularly since he worked closely with Tris, who resented anyone reminding her that she was only twelve years old, but it happened—like right now. “One moment, please.”
“Of course,” Sandry agreed, because she had heard Lark call out Niko’s name, too.
It was evening. Something like a Grand Faire never really slept, but young people did, and Lark and Rosethorn would take the children home as soon as the replacement dedicates arrived, those keeping the stall overnight.
“Wouldn’t’a thought it,” Briar said, appearing beside Sandry, “but it looks like it turned out all right, even with us being the plainest stall around.” They had sold much of their stock that day. It wasn’t hard to find objects with no distinct purpose in the Temple, things to be sold. Some had been prepared specifically for this, and others were things like practice works made by apprentices. There were more than a few carvings for that reason. What else did one do with a carving, after all?
People trusted the Living Circle, though, and knew mage-work came out of Winding Circle, so their things had sold well. Briar began to doubt the Temple could keep up with this selling for weeks business, but that was a good thing, wasn’t it?
Sandry nodded. “I told you that wasn’t the most important thing,” she retorted. Looking out over the Faire, she reflected, “Lark was right about Little Bear, you know. I have missed him today, but he would have been miserable.”
Having little shade was tough enough on the children, most of whom felt the warmth of their sunburns already. Little Bear’s presence would have meant countless trips to the crowded well, and even then Sandry hated to think how the poor creature would have felt with his thick fur, in this weather. Knowing Little Bear was safe back in the Temple kept Sandry happy.
“Sometimes he’s more trouble than he’s worth,” added Daja, and Sandry wondered when she had become so lost in thought that her friends could approach without her noticing. She was probably just tired, she decided. It had been a long day.
Still, the remark about Little Bear surprised her. “I thought you liked him!” she objected.
“I do,” replied Daja, clambering up into the cart beside Sandry, “but remember the time Briar took him on an errand to the Hub—”
“Wasn’t my fault,” interjected Briar.
“Yes, it was.”
“Wasn’t neither!”
“Whose fault was it, then?”
“Ah…” Briar was trapped between a rock and a hard place. Little Bear had not obeyed the command that he stay where he was and instead followed after Briar into the kitchen, and even Dedicate Gorse had his limits. Either it was Briar’s fault for not thinking to tie Little Bear to the fence, or Gorse’s fault for making everything smell so delicious, and everyone knew that Briar loved Gorse almost as much as he loved Lark. “The wind,” Briar announced at last, triumphantly.
“The wind?”
“Sure. ’Cause if there’d been a good wind that day, the Bear wouldn’t’ve smelled all those cooking smells, see? And then he would’ve stayed right outside. The wind,” he repeated, a smirk on his face that made Daja want to whomp him with her staff, just a little bit.
“The wind,” Daja echoed once more, rolling her eyes like it was the most absurd thing she had ever heard. In truth, she lived with Briar: she had heard worse excuses. “Sandry, I do love Little Bear, but I hate to think how he could have gotten himself hurt in a place like this.”
A little ashamed, Sandry agreed, “I suppose that’s so.” She had not thought about Little Bear actually being hurt, only being uncomfortable, although now that Daja mentioned it there were quite a few people here. There were booths and stalls that were temporary workplaces and had fires set within them, or rotten people who would do who-knows-what to a defenseless puppy. She should have thought of that.
“…should have known better than to trust a couple of Water dedicates!”
The children traded looks. Rosethorn had used that tone a few times, and they all knew what it meant. “Someone’s going to be strung up inside the well,” Daja muttered, and Sandry and Briar pressed their hands to their mouths to keep from laughing.
They could not make out the words, but heard tones of Lark soothing Rosethorn. It was Niko who came to talk to the children, though. “The dedicates meant to relieve Lark and Rosethorn were late,” he explained, “but we’ll be heading home soon.” He glanced around. Later, Sandry would wonder why she had not asked herself earlier the question Nico asked now.
“Where’s Tris?”
IV.
Briar’s had an influence on me, thought Tris, but she knew it was more than that. It was Winding Circle. It was Daja and Sandry and Lark and Rosethorn and Niko.
There had been a time when Trisana Chandler was not a girl who left her post. If she had been sent to haul water, she hauled water; if she had been told to clean the floor, she cleaned the floor. As a little girl, the last thing on her mind was leaving. No, even if whatever relative had taken her in worked her like a dog, what Tris wanted was to know she would wake up in the same place tomorrow.
But they were not going to get rid of her. Briar, Daja, Sandry, Lark, Rosethorn and Niko—and even Frostpine a little, though she did not know him well it seemed unfair not to include him—were never going to think Tris was crazy or cursed and make her leave.
She hoped.
Normally all of this made Tris so grateful, tears pricked at the back of her eyes, just as they had during her birthday party earlier this year. Tonight it made her bold. They might get angry, but they would not get rid of her, and that was a risk she was willing to take.
Earlier, at the stall with the pictures and books, she had not allowed herself to show how much Briar’s words upset her.
“You must be hearin’ things, Coppercurls.”
Hearing things indeed! It was true that Tris sometimes heard things. She had heard things all her life. It was a part of her magic, she knew that now—and she knew the difference! Tris knew perfectly well when she heard things on the wind and when she heard things from right nearby. This sound had come from right nearby, and she would prove it! She would show him!
Actually, Tris knew she probably wouldn’t. But then, this was not really about Briar, was it? This was about her. Briar had never thought she was crazy. Briar had never questioned her sanity. HE had only joked. Words are like poison, though, a nearly ineradicable poison, and they had settled inside of Tris and seeped out, seeped into her blood, had even reached her heart.
Briar had never question Tris’s sanity. Tris had.
His words had sparked this need for her to prove to herself that she was not crazy and that she knew the difference between her senses and her magic.
Wandering away from the stall had not been difficult. She waited until things were busy, then asked Briar to tell Rosethorn she needed the privy and simply walked away. She might be in trouble later, almost certainly would, but Tris tried not to think about later.
She found the stall easily enough. The same man stood there, and when he saw Tris, he greeted her, “Couldn’t keep ‘way from it, eh, lass?”
She might have been offended, but she knew exactly what he meant. On the way over, her thoughts had bounced between, I’ll show that boy who’s hearing things! and Perhaps just one more look…
“I was hoping I might have one more look—unless you’ve sold it?”
“No, no, it’s still ‘ere. I’m closin’ up th’ shop soon—onny me runnin’ it, y’see—but ‘ave a quick peek, eh?”
He grinned, and Tris found herself grinning back.
She told herself she would only read the first couple of pages. They were the same pages she had read earlier, but earlier, they had been deeply moving. It was a fictional story, not Tris’s usual fare, but there was something utterly engaging about, something about the words that made it so real, when she looked at the illustrations she felt her heart wrung.
Tris read until the man behind the stall asked, almost apologetically, to have his book back, and Tris returned it, with a reluctant but grateful smile.
It was not until a minute later, when the stall was closed up for the night and the man gone into the quickly-raised tent that was clearly his temporary home, that Tris realized her mistake. She had been distracted by that book! Now how would she find out about the noise she had heard?
Dozens of scenarios popped up in her mind. The man’s wife was here, but sick, lying down in the tent. He had a pet. That had only been the sound of a wooden crate of supplies resettling itself. There had to be an explanation… and the only way for Tris to find it was to see inside that tent.
Annoyed with herself for throwing away one opportunity, Tris resolved that she would not lose another. The man had walked around the tent to enter it, which meant the way in and out was at the back. Tris headed around to the side of the tent, until she could just see the entry flap, and she waited. He had said he ran the stall alone. Eventually, the man would have to leave. He would fetch water, or use the privy, or perhaps visit one of the stalls selling prepared foods for his supper, and then she would look into the tent.
Just look, that was all Tris wanted to do.
Her absence would be noticed soon, if it had not already been. The longer she stayed here, the likelier it was they would see her gone, the more she would be in trouble. Tris knew that. She had to look. She had to know that there was an explanation for the sounds she had heard earlier!
She waited a long time. It was still hot out and beads of sweat gathered on her neck and under her arms. The sun crept lower and lower on the horizon. Tris began to fidget, not out of impatience, but because she knew Lark would be much more worried—and Rosethorn much angrier—if she returned after dark.
She was beginning to think about heading back when the stallkeeper stepped out of his tent and headed down the row, toward the well. Tris wasted no more time. As soon as the man was out of sight, she darted over and drew back the tent flap. It seemed a little too easy to be true, that she needed only to grip the heavy cloth and pull it aside, yet it moved smoothly. Tris opened the door and peered inside.
Immediately, magic flared. She felt it more than saw it, a solid slate of magic mimicking the cloth. Tris thought a very rude word that she would not have said in front of Niko. She should have expected that the man would have some sort of protection charm in place, and she did not feel very good about breaking it, breaking into the man’s home. And she should have turned and gone. Instead she sent tendrils of her magic into the spell. She felt them latch into the other magic and whirled them, whirled her magic like a cyclone, holding tight to it.
The cyclone twisted and twisted. Tris pulled magic from the protection spell. There had to be something here. Why put such a strong protection otherwise?
She made her cyclone melt to the floor. It left a bare doorway. Tris risked one more glance up the path to ensure that she was alone before peeking inside.
V.
The trip back to Discipline Cottage was tense and quiet.
The cart was empty now and none of the students wanted to make a fuss. Their teachers were upset enough already. So Daja sat in the cart, even though she had not wanted to do that, had not wanted to be in anything like a vessel. She had been having those dreams again. Unlike Sandry, Daja found trauma not in the ends of things but in the things that ended. She knew Sandry had nightmares about the storeroom and the earthquake. As she sat in the rocking cart, staring absently ahead, she remembered.
She remembered the first night on the ship. She remembered her stomach roiling, remembered biting her lip and pressing her nails into her palms because she wanted to be the daughter who didn’t throw up, like she had been born for the sea.
She remembered the city where she lived throughout her early life, remembered the people there. It had only been a few years. Was Gran still alive, still complaining about the pain in her joints and making the best stuffed apricots this side of the Endless Ocean? Did she ever think about the granddaughter who still lived, or did she think of Daja as custom dictated, as lost, not knowing she had been written into the books of Tenth Caravan Idaram?
Daja had been having the dreams again and they made her ache with how a cart was so similar to a ship, was nothing like a ship at all. She glanced at Sandry. Sandry had dreams, too, but Daja did not want a lamp to help the dreams go away. Good memories hurt her terribly, but for all the pain, she could not bear the thought of losing them.
While Daja watched Sandry, Briar watched Tris. He tried not to be obvious about it, not wanting to get on the wrong side of her temper, but he wondered where Tris had gone. It was just like her to wander off, and obviously she had found something, because she had been bothered since returning.
Personally, Briar felt that Niko could have asked. Sure, Tris did some daft things, but she always had her reasons. Niko had only shaken his head and said, “I’m very disappointed, Trisana,” and now on top of everything else, Briar was never going to find out what had happened, not for a long while, anyway. Why did Niko have to go and do a thing like that? Look how upset Tris was now! She would go back to her room and cry.
Briar did not like his sister crying and did not like that there was nothing he could do about it. And he wanted answers, but with Tris in this state, he knew better than to think he would get them.
He had been the one to reach through their connection first. Tris felt him in her mind immediately, of course. Briar had expected that. That she hurried to block her vision had surprised him. He had vaguely noticed shapes, flashes of color, but Tris had looked away quickly and most of what Briar saw was Tris’s shoes.
Something had happened. Something had happened that Tris felt needed to be kept from Briar, and generally when someone kept things from him, Briar felt the only logical response was to seek out the things being kept.
Coppercurls?
Tris made no reply. She continued looking away, like Daja focusing on some fixed, distant point.
Well, it had been worth a shot.
Briar sighed. He was not sure why this needed to spill over from Niko and Tris to everybody else. Rosethorn was annoyed with those Water Temple dedicates, but normally Lark could calm her down. No, this had nothing to do with Water Temple and everything to do with adults. Briar knew how adults acted. They loved scolding a child for a tantrum, but when they pitched tantrums of their own, best thing to do was avoid it like a tidal wave.
When they reached Discipline Cottage, Daja, Briar and Tris all headed for their rooms. Only Sandry lingered. “Lark?” she asked.
Lark smiled tiredly. “Not tired, Sandry?”
“I am,” Sandry replied honestly. She twisted a package in her hands, wondering how to introduce the subject after what had happened with Tris. “I… I wanted to ask Niko something…”
From Lark’s expression, she knew why Sandry chose not to ask. Niko’s mood had hardly been subtle, and Sandry was not like Lark or Rosethorn. She did not know how to approach someone like that, not without a life-or-death matter. “Niko was afraid when Tris disappeared. Give him a day or two to calm down. Is it something I can help with?”
Sandry hesitated, then shook her head. “No, it can wait a few days.” She thought Lark probably could help her, if she asked, but she did not want to ask right now. Lark’s eyes were lined and glassy. For all her efforts, Sandry saw that Lark was as tired as the rest of them. She had probably been afraid when Tris disappeared, too. The last thing Sandry wanted right now was to add to her teacher’s worries.
Instead, she smiled and said, “Good night, Lark.”
Alone in her room, Sandry lay in bed with her hands folded on top of the covers. She waited until she no longer heard sounds of movement from Briar or Daja. Lark and Rosethorn murmured softly and their voices soon fell silent. The last to quiet down was Tris. When at last the cottage seemed to be asleep, Sandry slipped out of bed. She lit her lamp and sat down at the desk.
Sandry carefully untied the twine, then unfolded the canvas. Inside it all was a small painting. She had not wanted to show the others. She did not like reminding them that she had more money than they did, but it was more than that. Something about the painting made her want to keep it, to look at it. It made her feel calm, made her mind blank in a lovely way.
She would show Lark tomorrow. There was magic here. There had to be.
VI.
Three days after the Faire, Tris remained withdrawn. She had her lessons with Niko, who claimed he was no longer cross with her and seemed to mean it, and sat at the table with her siblings and Rosethorn and Lark, who said she had been so worried and seemed to mean it, and she never said a word beyond what was necessary. Her attention remained, always, somewhere else.
On the third day, she nearly crossed the main room of the cottage without noticing someone else there.
“Tris?”
Tris paused. Although she recognized the voice, she did not realize who had spoken until she looked around and saw her foster-mother sitting at the table. “Oh. Good evening, Lark.”
Lark offered a cup of tea, which Tris did not want, but did not know how to politely refuse, either. She sat at the opposite side of the table and brought the cup to her lips. Tempted as she was to drink the entire thing in one gulp, or excuse herself to use the privy, Tris sat patiently, waiting for Lark to speak.
“Is everything all right?” Lark asked after too long a moment.
“Yes, Lark.”
Gently, Lark pointed out, “You haven’t been the same since the Grand Faire.”
“I’m all right,” Tris insisted.
Lark nodded. “If something happened—”
“It didn’t,” Tris interrupted. She looked at Lark for a moment, then lowered her head to look at the table. “I’m sorry for interrupting, but nothing happened, I swear. I know what you mean.” The solemnity of her tone more than her words carried the truth that she did understand. Tris knew the sorts of dangers faced by young girls alone.
“All right,” Lark agreed, in a tone that meant nothing was all right at all. “And Niko didn’t…”
Tris nearly dropped her cup of tea. Her eyes bulged in surprise and anger, though she said nothing. How could Lark even suggest that Niko would hurt her? He was one of the few people in her life who had done nothing of the sort!
“He is not used to young people,” Lark explained, “not for long spans of time, not… not like this. He has never taken a student before. Sometimes he speaks more sharply than he means to.”
“It wouldn’t be anything new to me,” Tris replied.
Lark nodded sadly.
They finished their tea without saying much. Tris rinsed out her teacup, said good night, and went upstairs.
She did not have much time to herself there. Only a few minutes later, a voice from the doorway told her, “That may have been enough for Lark…” The implicit conclusion, but not for me, needed not be stated, and Tris knew that Briar would stay until he had an answer. She turned another page in the book propped open on her knees, a book that left her feeling slightly empty for what it wasn’t.
“We’re not asking, merchant girl.”
The voice told her that Daja stood in the doorway with Briar, but Tris looked up, anyway, just as she had with Lark. All three of her siblings had come to see her. A part of Tis was glad. She wanted to discuss it, really she did, but she also had the instinct that had made her turn her head when she felt the first touches of green reaching her. Some things were better left unknown, filed away with the memories of the searing emptiness she felt when her family left her over and over again.
She sat up. “It’s… private,” she murmured, with a glance at the floor to indicate she meant private from the people downstairs, from Lark and Rosethorn. They would not be angry with her or anything of the sort, Tris knew that, but telling her siblings was like telling herself. She did not want to do that, either, but the memories were not going to go away just because she wanted them to.
Briar, Daja and Sandry stepped into the room and shut the door behind them. Sandry sat beside Tris on the bed, Daja sat at the desk, and Briar, who would always be a street kid deep down, plunked down on the floor.
Tris opened her mouth, could not find the words, and closed it again. She tried once more, then shook her head and instead reached out. Briar took one hand, Sandry the other, and Daja, who was still a little stung by the harsh words they had exchanged a few days ago, settled herself between Briar and Sandry.
She made her cyclone melt to the floor. It left a bare doorway. Tris risked one more glance up the path to ensure that she was alone before peeking inside. Much of the tent looked about as any tent would, with a person living in it. He had a pallet on the floor, a clothes chest, a clay pitcher and cups. None of it was of the highest quality, but none of it was poorly made, either. The clary pitcher and cups had matching designs painted onto them, bright, shining with the same half-hidden magical light they had noticed from the paintings at the front of the stall.
The man had a work area, too, a low table with well-sealed pots of paint, pens, inks and papers and the small canvases for the pictures he sold at the front of his stall.
Tris took in all of this in the space of a second, scanned the room—and what she saw in the corner made her freeze, made her stomach twist in revulsion.
Magic glimmered from a girl in the corner of the tent. Her dark hair was unkempt, her clothes dirty and ill-fitting. She crouched, rocking, with her head in her hands, her face hidden. A keening, whimpering noise seemed to surround her more than come from her. And before she turned away, the moment before she felt those hints of green, she noticed the reddened skin on the girl’s leg, chafed by the shackle locked around her ankle.
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!