Street Magic - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,86

mud from her face with his handkerchief. "Better? We've a bit more to do, here."

Evvy nodded. "I know. I just wish I could help."

Briar grinned. "I think you've done plenty already," he said, tossing a packet of rose seeds at the gap she'd made in the house. They scrambled to life, weaving their stems as they grew to bar the opening. No one would escape that way.

When he looked at her again, she was staring at the huge-thorned tree that had cut its way through the mute. She turned huge eyes to him. "Pahan Briar," she breathed in awe. "What you did."

"It doesn't make up for all the folk he killed for her, but it's a taste," he said grimly.

Evvy nodded. "I can't do anything like that. I wish I could," she said, approval in her voice and eyes.

"That's my girl," he said, giving her a one-armed hug around her shoulders. "Now, let's finish up."

Working through the date palms, aloes, junipers, tamarinds, and fruit trees at the rear of the house, they found eight more dead, all but one fairly recent, all with a bowstring knotted around their necks. Briar was sure that the mutabir's four missing spies were among the bodies he'd found. One dead girl wore the Viper nose ring and garnet; one looked like the boy who had followed Briar from Golden House. A third, the freshest, still wore the black and white of the Gate Lords: their missing tesku. The wind shifted twice as they walked, sending a cloud of dead gases into their faces. Twice they had to stop for Evvy to vomit; when she finished, she walked on with Briar, her face set in hard, angry lines.

The crack of stone nearby made Briar look up. The outer wall was coming to pieces along its length, assaulted by vines outside and trees within. Earth shifted and writhed as the plants surged, bringing down the last of the stone structure that had hemmed them in. There were torches outside. In the distance someone shouted, "Halt for the Watch! In the amir's name, halt!"

Another voice cried, "We're slaves! We didn't know!"

"Halt for the Watch!" the first voice ordered again. "Or we will shoot you where you stand! Hands in the air!"

"Should we go?" Evvy inquired, worried. "I don't want to tangle with the Watch."

"Don't fret," Briar assured her. "They're on our side, mostly."

They came to the rear of the house. The courtyard gardens had rebelled, tearing chunks from the walls that separated them from the living quarters. Vines and shrubs had combined to block every window and door on this side of the building: the slaves had to be escaping from the front of the house.

"Stop that man!" someone behind Briar and Evvy cried. "Stop him!"

Briar rubbed his mouth with his thumb, thinking. There was no way out through the rear of the house: his plants had blocked those exits. The front windows and doors were easier to escape from – few large or tough plants had been planted on that side of the house. If he knew anything about Lady Zenadia, though, she would not run with the slaves, and she could not escape out the back without some hidden tunnel he didn't know about. Reaching with his power, he made a request of the trees. They thrust their roots as widely and as deeply as they could, sifting through the ground. There were no tunnels.

She would be inside, then.

They walked forward. Plants moved aside to admit them to a passageway. Once they went by the plants drew together to create a living wall.

He led Evvy down a stone gallery now soft with grasses, moss, and flowers that grew from seeds blown into cracks and corners. It led to an inner garden that had become an impassable thicket of shrubs and short trees. Even the tiles that paved the ground had vanished, thrust aside by rioting plants. When he saw the larch on the other side, Briar realized that he'd talked with the lady and Jebilu here. The larch, freed at his bidding to become its normal-sized self, blocked the door into the main house.

Creaking anxiously – it knew it wasn't supposed to be this big – the larch moved just enough to let Briar and Evvy pass. He stopped for a moment to pet it, to assure it he still loved it, even if it had lost its bunjingi form and gotten huge. He gave it his blessing, then walked on.

The house was no longer