Street Magic - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,36

felt unsettled now, even with the city's heights rising ahead, lit a flaming color by the late-afternoon sun. Always before the sight of those towering stone reefs calmed her, made her feel safe: it was why she had come here after running from her master. Let others complain of smells and crumbling walls and ceilings in warrens that had been inhabited for a thousand years. Inside those rock halls and corridors Evvy was safe.

But now she knew why she'd always been safe, and the knowing shook her. She really had magic, and could learn how to make stone like her even more. That couldn't be bad. Stone, unlike people, was constant. It was everywhere, in all its varieties. Who knew what she might be able to do with it, if she knew proper stone magic?

The only problem was that to learn more about stone, she would have to deal with more people on a steady basis than she had in years. Pahan Briar seemed all right, for a plant person, but he wasn't going to teach her. A stranger, one who lived in the palace, would teach her. Evvy wasn't sure that she liked that. What if a real stone mage scorned her for what she didn't know? Pahan Briar just told her what to do, and if she didn't know how, he showed her. He assumed she would keep up. And hadn't she done just that all day? Even when keeping up had meant such strange things, like heating stones, new clothes, and food. She wasn't sure that she liked the sandals, which had blistered the tops of her feet, but the clean cloth had felt so good against her skin, and the food in her belly felt even better.

She pulled her rolled-up headcloth from the front of her tunic, and checked its contents – an entire meat dumpling, and halves of others. She hadn't been able to finish all the food he'd bought. With the salt fish and the leftovers from yesterday's feast, she and the cats would eat well tonight.

Would this stranger mage feed her as Pahan Briar did? Pahan Briar had been a thukdak. He understood about meals. How would a palace man know anything about going hungry and eating scraps until a whole dumpling was a feast?

She clambered down and trotted through the Market of the Lost. Her thoughts absorbed her so much that she never realized a Viper was following her, keeping well back in case she chanced to turn and look around.

Chapter Seven

Briar gathered his horse's reins. "You'll be careful how you talk to her, if she comes before I get back?" he asked Rosethorn, worried. "You know you scare people."

"I won't scare her," Rosethorn told him. "I'll be as kind as her own mother."

"Don't do that," Briar said. "Her mother sold her." He clucked to the horse and set it forward, up the Street of Hares. Perhaps he shouldn't worry if Evvy would arrive before he returned, but whether she would come at all. If she didn't, he would have to root her out of those stone tunnels, a chore he didn't even want to think about. He would just hope that she would come for the free food.

His route took him through the Market of the Lost. Only a few stalls were open so early, but the signs of illegal business were everywhere. Lookouts whistled alarms when the Watch was in view; there were furtive glances and even more furtive pocketings of goods, and the few customers included the well-to-do in addition to the poor. He'd have loved to look around, but common sense stopped him. Dressed as he was, riding a good mount, he would only draw robbers and thieves. That they might get more than they realized would do Briar little good if the whole neighborhood decided to pluck him.

Instead he followed Triumph Road south, watching the stony heights on his left. They were the real Chammur, its twelve-hundred-year-old heart. So much age should have impressed Briar. Instead it made his skin creep. The city breathed exhaustion from its pores. The stone was tired; Rosethorn had said the land was tired. How long did tired places endure? On the day they had toured the city, just after their arrival, Rosethorn had commented that one good earthquake would finish the place. The Earth Dedicate who was their guide had gone dead white, and begged her not to repeat it.

Shaking his head, Briar nudged his horse into a trot. The sooner