Street Magic - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,5
and turned into the house next door.
Overhead, Evumeimei Dingzai, useless daughter and runaway slave, watched as the jade-eyed boy she had followed from Golden House went home. She was interested to see he knew three Camelguts well enough to call on them to rid him of his Viper shadow. Still, he couldn't be that clever. He's never once looked up at the rooftops, or he might have seen that she, too, followed him.
That, more than even his accent, said he was an eknub, a foreigner. Everyone in Chammur knew there were two sets of streets, one on the ground, one over the flat roofs where many houses and buildings were snugged against each other. On these streets, ladders were set to reach higher rooftops, and the bridges jumped streets on the ground. Anyone who was not clearly a thief or an outsider could use the roof paths and did: no nasty-tempered camels and mules up here, no chair-bearers and lords on horseback.
Evvy knew the higher streets like she knew the cliff warrens where she lived, in Chammur Oldtown. She was accepted here, rags and all, as long as she kept moving and took nothing. Dogs might watch until she was gone, women might keep an eye on her as they worked their tiny gardens or hung up their washing, but they were used to all kinds of people up here.
She crouched, staring at the small house beside the foreign temple. Who was the jade-eyed boy? Why did he ask about magic? If she'd had any, her parents would not have sold her to a Chammuran innkeeper before continuing west. If she were a mage, she wouldn't have to live in Princes' Heights as a street rat who scraped to feed herself and her cats.
Her cats! Evvy sighed. Without coppers from Nahim today, she couldn't buy dried fish for them as she'd planned. She'd better get back to Oldtown. If she had enough time before dark, she might be able to catch some lizards on the rocks atop the Heights. That would satisfy the cats at least, and she could eat bread she'd hidden away.
Below her the Camelguts were pounding the lone Viper. The jade-eyed boy had a mean streak, it seemed, setting them against the Viper like that. Crazy eknub, Evvy thought. Don't go pawing at my life! Straightening, she trotted down the rooftop road.
In the cool hours of the evening, Lady Zenadia doa Attaneh reclined on the sofa that was placed for her comfort in her garden. She was the picture of a Chammuran noblewoman in wide skirts, head veil, and draped sari, all made of expensive maroon silk embroidered in gold at the hems. Her short gold blouse, baring a midriff as lean and supple in her fifties as it had been when she was a girl, was hemmed with teardrop-shaped pearls, its neckline and sleeves with tiny seed pearls. Obedient to custom, she wore a silk veil before her male guests, but the gold fabric was so sheer that her gold nose ring and the fine gold chain that hung between it and her earring were visible, as was her crimson lip paint. The veil only covered her nose and the lower part of her face, leaving her large, dark eyes with their strong black brows bare. Between her eyes glimmered the unfaceted emerald that marked her status as a widow.
As if they had been placed to form the rudest possible contrast to her elegance, the Vipers who had talked to Briar in the souk knelt three feet from her couch, palms and foreheads pressed to the blue patio tiles. The rough shirts and breeches that she had bought for them were clean – no one went dirty into her presence – but cloth and make were no better than what she gave to her lowliest servants.
Only brass nose rings, with a garnet drop hanging from them, set them apart from rag peddlers and camel drovers. The boys had told her about the foreign lad who had marked a street girl as a mage, then turned into trouble for the youth who had followed him. Now they awaited the lady's verdict.
"I have no interest in eknub pahans," she commented at last, staring into the distance. Her voice was deep and musical, almost hypnotic in its effect on her guests. "They are troublesome, and they are not of Chammur. They are beneath my attention. But he told this girl she might have stone magic?"
The tallest Viper, the lean,