Street Magic - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,88

In someone less refined, it would have been a gulp. "Ubayid would never betray me."

"How's it betrayal if you can't be touched?" Briar asked pleasantly. "If you can't be harmed, then it isn't betrayal, just – gossip."

She flinched.

Briar continued, merciless. If he couldn't make her sorry for the ruin she had caused, he wanted to make her deeply sorry to be caught. "If I were your family, I'd think you've gone too far. If I were the amir, or the mutabir, I'd think the common people will be angry when they find out nobody cared how many poor folk and slaves you murdered. Lots of the mutabir's Watchfolk come from poor districts, I bet. He can order them to shut up about what they see here, but how many will do it? How long before riots start? How long before your family thinks maybe it's time to wash their hands of you?"

"You'll be the first relative of the amir to see the top of Justice Rock," Evvy put it. The top was where executions were done in Chammur.

"Or maybe they'll just hand you to commoners," Briar remarked. Sound reached his ears: people were shouting inside the house. "That sounds like the Watch." He held Lady Zenadia's eyes with his, showing her no warmth or mercy. She hadn't shown either to anyone – none to those pitiful bodies, shoveled without ceremony into dirt to serve as fertilizer. Normally he approved of fertilizer, but not, it seemed, when it came to human beings. Even the poorest had a right to be mourned by someone.

"Excuse me for a moment," she said, getting to her feet. "Inform the mutabir I will be with him directly." She walked into an inner room.

"Pahan…" Evvy whispered, tugging on his sleeve. "She'll get away!"

"She can't go anywhere," Briar replied softly. "The house is shoulder-deep in plants and the Watch." He knew what he had thought he'd seen in the woman's eyes. If he was right, it would save a great deal of awkwardness. As he waited, as the sound of searchers came nearer in the house, he tinkered with the ebony and sandalwood screens in the room, guiding them to set down roots through the marble floor and sprout. Finally, when he heard approaching feet just outside, he walked into the lady's bedroom.

She lay on an opulent bed that was draped in silks and heaped with damask-covered cushions. Her eyes were closed, her clothes neatly arrayed, as if she had gone to sleep. Briar lifted the simple pottery cup on her bedside table, to sniff its contents. It held the quickest-acting poison money could buy.

Despite Lady Zenadia's attempt to look as if she'd felt no pain, there was a trace of foam at the corner of her mouth. He rested his fingers against her throat. There was no pulse.

He thought for a moment. Then he spat on her, and walked away.

Three days later, the plants around the Karang Gate told Rosethorn where Briar and Evvy could be found: the huge caravansary by the Aliput Gate, outside the city's southern walls. Concerned and confused, she went there rather than home, arriving exhausted, disheveled, and covered with road grime.

Rosethorn glared at her, then at Briar. "Why in the name of the Green Man and scrub pines are you here?" she demanded. "We aren't leaving for three days. While you're gone the house is probably being looted…"

"No, because it's all here," Briar said calmly. He patted cushions next to him and poured out a cup of the tea he'd set to brewing the minute he'd felt her ride through the Aliput Gate.

Rosethorn sat in a puff of dust and accepted the cup. "Everything?" she demanded, suspicious.

"Everything," he replied, voice and eyes firm.

"But rent for this place costs a fortune. We're already paid at the Street of Hares until the full moon." She sipped the tea and, despite her wrath, sighed gratefully. It was her own blend, a morning pick-me-up tea that could help the dead to cast off weariness.

"Actually, the amir's paying the bill," Briar said. "The least he could do, since they kicked us out of town."

Rosethorn sipped her tea and fixed her eyes on him. "Tell me," she ordered.

He did, keeping it brief. She had a second cup of tea while she listened. When he finished, Rosethorn put down her cup and lurched to her feet. "This I have to see," she remarked, and walked out.

It was dark when she returned. At some point she had visited a hammam,