Sandry shook her head. As if I would believe they would have a fistfight over Briar’s right to wear the mage medallion. They must think I drink stupid potion for my morning pick-me-up.
She walked briskly over to Briar. “I didn’t make those clothes for brawls,” she told him irritably. “I didn’t think even you could find a fight at the court of Namorn.” She set her hand on the ripped seam that had once joined sleeve to shirt. A rough tear over Briar’s knee was already starting to weave itself back together as grass and dirt stains trickled off his clothes.
“Well, you’re forever underestimating me,” Briar told her. “If there’s a fight about, it’s nearly guaranteed I’ll be in it.”
Sandry looked over at Olfeon. “You were lucky,” she said sharply. “He could have ripped you to pieces with thorns if he wanted.”
“No, no,” protested Briar, his eyes warning Sandry to be silent. “Blood’s horrible for grass, and there’s always some thorns left after. Don’t mind her,” he told Olfeon. “Girls have no appreciation for the rules of combat.”
Olfeon spat on the ground in disgust, then winced as Quenaill set to work healing his wounds. “Hold still and be silent,” Quenaill said, frowning. “The quicker this is done the better, unless you want to spend the winter in a log cabin on the Sea of Grass.”
“She says if we have that much spirit we can use it to fight the Yanjing emperor,” Shan explained to Sandry. No one doubted that “she” was the empress. “Where did you learn to fight like that?” he asked Briar.
“Everywhere,” Briar replied, grinning at the tall huntsman. “And isn’t it a good thing for me?”
A tap on the back made Daja turn. Some of the men who had bet against her waited to pay their wagers.
They spent the rest of that week riding between Sablaliz and Landreg, attending social occasions with the imperial court. Finally, one night after a late supper at Landreg, Sandry looked at Ambros and Ealaga, then at her exhausted companions and guards, who wearily picked through their meals. “I’m sorry,” she told her cousin and his wife. “But she’s going to kill us at this rate, or our horses, at the very least. The court is returning to the palace in Dancruan. We must go with them, I think. Her Imperial Majesty has invited us to stay at the palace. I don’t believe I can refuse politely.”
“No,” Ambros replied, shaking his head. “She would be much offended if you did.”
“Gudruny will require maid’s clothes fit for the palace,” Ealaga said. “I’ll make certain she has some.”
Sandry drummed her fingers on the table. “If I only had time, between estate matters and the empress keeping me hopping, I could make her clothes myself!”
Gudruny looked up from her spot at the table, next to Tris. “My children?” she asked, her voice strained.
“They can stay at Landreg House in town,” Ambrose said. “Along with Zhegorz. Your cousin Wenoura is our chief cook there, remember?”
“Truthfully, you won’t have to wait on me,” Sandry told Gudruny. “You can stay with the children—” She halted abruptly. There was a decidedly militant look in Gudruny’s eye.
“And have them say you don’t know how to get on as a proper noble?” the maid asked. “Their servants already turn up their noses because you have only one maid, and your friends have no servants at all. I heard them gossiping when they were here, spiteful creatures. I wouldn’t think of leaving you in the palace to be talked about! I’m waiting on you, and that’s that!”
Ambros’s mouth twitched in a smile. Briar looked from Gudruny to Sandry. “Who works for who?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.
Tris excused herself quietly. When the other three went upstairs to bed, Briar found her in his room, talking quietly to Zhegorz as she hung onto the man’s bony hands. She looked up at Briar. “He’s afraid to go so close to court.”
Briar sighed. “It’s terrible, when a man has no faith. Did you tell him what you did, that first day at the palace? What you did to the pirate fleet?”
“Pirates?” Zhegorz asked with a wild start that jerked his hands from Tris’s hold. His eyes were so wide with terror that the white showed all the way around. “There are pirates coming?”
Now look what you did, Tris thought at Briar, forgetting his mind was closed to her. I’d just gotten him calmed down.
“Here you go, old man,” Briar said, pouring out a tiny cupful of the soothing cordial he gave Zhegorz for his bad moments. “These pirates were seven years ago, and they are most seriously dead. She did it.”
“You helped,” snapped Tris. “And Sandry, and Daja, and our teachers, and every mage in Winding Circle. And you know I don’t like that story repeated.”
Briar ignored her. “She did it with lightning,” he told his guest, putting the cork back in the bottle. “And when we first got to Dancruan? Some fishing boats were in danger of a storm on the Syth, but Coppercurls here sent a wind to blow them home and another to eat the storm. She likes rescuing folk. So don’t you get yourself all worked up. You’ll hurt her feelings, letting her think she can’t protect you.”
“She didn’t protect you, wherever you were, in the bad place you dream about,” Zhegorz pointed out. He had bolted the cordial as if it were a glass of very nasty tea.
And here I thought I made that stuff taste nice! thought Briar in disgust, trying to ignore what their madman had said. I should’ve given him nasty tea instead of something I worked cursed hard over.
“You dream about it all the time,” Zhegorz insisted. “You toss and turn and yell about blood and Rosethorn and Evvy and Luvo.”
Tris raised her pale brows at him.
Briar was about to tell them both that his dreams were no cider of theirs, but there was something about the way Tris looked at him. He’d forgotten that side of her, that he had always been able to tell her the most horrific things, and she would never laugh, be shocked, or withdraw from him.
Briar slumped to the floor, leaning back against the stone that framed the hearth. The stone was warm, the fire a comforting crackle in his ear. “The emperor of Yanjing tried to conquer Gyongxe,” he muttered at last. “We were at the emperor’s court when we heard, and then we ran for it, Rosethorn and Evvy and me. That’s when we met Luvo, on our way to warn Gyongxe. Luvo’s this ... creature, Zhegorz. He lives with Evvy now.”
“The Mother Temple of the Living Circle,” breathed Tris. “It’s in Gyongxe. The one all the other Circle temples look to. Their first and oldest Circle temple.”
Briar nodded. Zhegorz slid down the side of the bed so he, too, could sit on the floor and lean against the bed. It seemed to be his way to comfort Briar. Chime, who had spent suppertime around Tris’s neck, now glided over and settled into Briar’s lap. He stroked the little creature, feeling her cool surfaces against his palms.
“So we fought our way into Gyongxe, and then we fought the emperor, and then we came home,” Briar whispered, closing his eyes. “The pirates was nothin’ to it, Coppercurls.” In his distress he had slipped back into the language of the streets he had left seven years before. “The whole countryside was afire, or so it seemed. The dead ... everywhere. The emperor’s army filled the roads for miles, and they didn’t care what they did to folk in the lands they marched through. So sure, I dream about it all the time. I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll be seeing a mind healer when we get home,” Tris said firmly. “I’ve heard of this. People who have been through some terrible thing, it leaves scars where no one can see. The scars hurt, so they dream, and they snap at people for doing things that seem silly compared to the horrors. Sometimes they see and smell the thing all over again.”