Tris frowned. Silently she asked, What did you put in this tray? She looked at the racks of containers from which Briar made his additions to the pox essence. None of this is magicked, but I keep glimpsing it.
Briar felt the back of his neck tingle. Did she see it! There’s only blue pox in that tray. I ain’t done nothing to it yet.
Tris gripped Briar’s arm. Just the disease? Are the trays magicked?
Briar shook his head.
Can I see the blue pox? she asked. Just the blue pox?
Briar led Tris into the outer workroom. Osprey was lifting crystal trays from the boiling vat and setting them to dry. “Tris, here’s Osprey—she’s Crane’s apprentice.”
Osprey nodded cheerfully at Tris. “He must like you. I haven’t heard him deliver a lordly denunciation yet.”
Tris shrugged. “He’ll get to it soon enough.”
“I wanted to show Tris the blue pox,” explained Briar. “She ought to see how it’s brewed up, since she’s to be a scholar one day.”
Osprey shed the special mitts that led her handle the hot crystal slabs without burning herself and donned treated gloves again. As she led Tris to the counter where workers handled the blue pox essence, she explained how it was made.
As carefully as if she handled feather-thin glass, Osprey opened the metal catches that locked a jar and raised the lid. Tris leaned close to look; Briar did the same. Inside the jar was glazed white. It was half full of the yellowish, oily-looking blue pox essence.
Briar saw an assortment of silver glints, a shimmer that faded. Slipping through their magical connection, he gazed at the essence through Tris’s eyes. To her the silver was no rapidly fading glimpse, but a steady, pale gleam.
“The stuff used to make the essence, it’s magicked, isn’t it?” Tris asked Osprey.
“Well, yes,” replied the young woman, “but the clarifying wash—that’s what it’s called—the wash is made to evaporate once the disease is pulled from the samples. There can’t be any magic left in the essence. If it is, all our results will be wrong. The cures won’t work, or they’ll go really awry. May I close the jar?”
“I did not mean for you go on holiday,” announced Crane meaningfully from the inner workroom.
“One moment,” Tris said to Osprey. She leaned over the jar, squinting at its contents. Briar, looking again through her eyes, saw the wash of silver.
This is why you suggested me, isn’t it? demanded Tris. You weren’t sure, and you thought if you told me what you thought you saw, you might make me see it.
That’s about right, Briar acknowledged, and braced himself for her wrath.
Smart thinking, she told him instead.
Briar drew out of her magic, startled. He could have sworn she’d be vexed.
Tris returned to Crane without a word to Osprey. “She gets distracted,” Briar said apologetically to the apprentice. “Thanks for showing it to her.”
“It’s all right,” Osprey assured Briar. “Working for Crane, you get used to people who forget the niceties when they’re caught up.”
Briar snorted. “I guess you would.” He followed Tris.
“If we are ready?” Crane asked Tris. “Now that playtime is over?”
Tris took a deep breath. “You should send for Niko. There’s magic in the pox.”
Crane stared at her, unmoving. Fascinated, Briar counted as the man blinked—once. Twice. Three times.
He heard a click as Rosethorn put something down on her own counter, hard. “You see magic?” she asked sharply. “Are you sure?”
Tris nodded.
“We have substances that tell us if magic is in use,” Crane pointed out. “We employed those first.”
“Does it work if it’s only a sneeze-worth of magic?” Briar wanted to know. “I mean, it was so teeny I wasn’t even sure I saw it.”
“And thus you suggested Niklaren Goldeye’s student,” Crane said.
“I don’t know what kind of measure a sneeze-worth is,” Tris remarked. “But the amount is very small.”
Rosethorn came over. “Do you think it’s possible?” she asked Crane. “That it could be missed?”
“Or it may have been lost among all our other magics,” he admitted. “We cannot do any of this without a monumental use of power, but—there are drawbacks. We could have overlooked an infinitesimal amount of magic. Osprey!” He raised his voice so abruptly that Tris, Briar, and Rosethorn were all caught by surprise and jumped.
Osprey came in at a run. “Sir?” she gasped.
“We require Niklaren Goldeye. Wherever he is, here or in Summersea, find him at once.”
10
Niko was in the city. Messengers rode there to find him while the workroom was closed for its nightly cleaning. Briar, Tris, and Rosethorn returned to Discipline.
Crane came too. He and Rosenthorn were involved in a long debate, trying to create a new course of action. They had talked as they scrubbed, shouting to be heard in the washroom. They’d continued all the way to Discipline, squinting in moonlight to read their notes, and debated while nearly everyone else had supper and went to bed.
The dawn bell woke the sleepers. As they emerged from their rooms, they discovered that Niko had come. He sat with Crane and Rosethorn, who appeared not to have gone to bed at all.
“Tris,” Niko said, “eat breakfast quickly, please. We’re riding to Summersea.”