Street Magic - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,19

you name it, it gets washed between now and tomorrow morning. Understand?" Evvy nodded, and Briar gave her the coin. "Have you any other clothes?"

There again was that too-patient, don't-you-know-anything? expression on her face. "This is my best thing," she replied, and looked at the front of her tunic. It was covered with grease from the food she carried. "Maybe I can wash it at the hammam."

"Don't bother," said Briar. He hadn't lived with Sandry for years without gaining some knowledge of cloth and grease stains. "I'll find something." All the Living Circle temples kept clothing for the poor. If the Earth temple wouldn't give him any, Briar would find a secondhand clothes dealer. Until he could hand the girl off to Jebilu Stoneslicer, he stood in the place of her teacher, which meant he was responsible for her needs. At least, that was how Rosethorn and the girls' teachers had always acted.

"It would be nice to have something good," Evvy remarked wistfully.

"All right. My house, tomorrow, third hour of the morning. And Evvy," he said as she turned to go. She looked back at him. "I found you today. I can find you whenever I want. Don't go thinking you can disappear and keep that coin. If I have to track you, you won't like what comes of it."

Evvy spat on the ground, to remind him that she'd already promised, and trotted up the path to Princes' Heights. A hundred yards away she turned around. Cupping her hand around her mouth she yelled, "Who are you, anyway?"

Briar grinned. "Briar Moss," he called back.

"Tomorrow, Briar Moss," the girl yelled. She raced on up the path.

Chapter Four

Briar was just two blocks from home, the Earth temple and his house in plain sight, when someone whistled shrilly, making the narrow street ring. He looked for the source and saw a stocky girl in a Camelgut green sash trotting toward him.

"Pahan, we need help," she said when she reached him. "It's Hammit, that you gave the medicine for." Briar remembered the boy whose facial burn he had treated and nodded. "We can't wake him up," the girl continued, her brown eyes worried. "Looks like he was jumped and hit on the head, but nobody saw who done it. This way." She led him down the Street of Wrens.

When she turned into a dark gap between the houses, Briar halted. "I can't take my horse down there, and I must look plain silly if you think I'll leave him out here."

The girl undid her green sash and used it to tie the horse to a nearly dry fountain. She opened a cock in the stone over the spout, filling the basin with enough water for the animal to drink before she closed it. "Nobody will dare touch him, tied up with my sash," she assured Briar.

He dismounted, using his motion to hide the fact that he was checking the placement of his knives. Then he took his mage's kit from his saddlebag. "After you, Duchess," he said with a gallant bow. Girls usually giggled and blushed when he teased them, but not this one. She gave him a half-smile, her mind clearly elsewhere, and led him down the narrow passageway, into a small alley, and down a stair into a basement.

From the weapons on the walls and the bedrolls around the room, Briar guessed that this was that gang's main den. Either they trusted him or they were desperate. When the cluster of Camelguts near one wall gave way, revealing his patient, Briar knew he'd been called in desperation. Hammit's face was swollen and black with bruises.

"Light," Briar said, dropping to his knees next to Hammit's mattress. Someone passed over a lamp that filled the air with the scent of burning fat.

Some healing was the lot of every plant mage, since they not only grew many ingredients for medicines, but they made up the medicines themselves. In the last three years, Briar had acquired a great deal of medical knowledge. First he pried open each of Hammit's eyes to look at his pupils. Both were completely dilated and remained that way as Briar moved the lamp to and fro. Normal pupils would have grown or shrunk depending on how much light fell on them.

Briar turned Hammit's head. One side of his face drooped, as if he'd had apoplexy. Gently he felt through the fallen boy's hair, ignoring the bugs – lice or fleas – that ran over his hands as he checked the skull.