Crane approached to make a change to Briar’s slate. The boy considered mentioning his worries and decided against it. Crane would simply look down his long nose and say that Rosethorn was perfectly able to look after herself.
And don’t that show what he knows, thought Briar grimly, fetching a new tray.
Some time later he heard Osprey utter the welcome phrase, “Lunch.” He was putting things away when Rosethorn said, “No, thanks, Osprey. I’m not hungry.”
“You know better,” Crane announced sternly. “You—gods defend us.”
Briar looked to see what made Crane speak as he had. Rosethorn had turned to face the room, bracing herself on her counter with one hand. For a moment Briar knew only that something was wrong, though he wasn’t sure what it was.
“Rosethorn, no,” Tris wailed softly.
“Why is everyone staring?” demanded the woman.
Briar shut his eyes, then opened them. Immediately he saw the thing that had changed. The red thumbprint on her forehead had turned white.
Rosethorn saw it in their faces. “Oh, my,” she said weakly. “It was that spill, I suppose. I wish we could make these clothes skintight!”
“No!” Briar cried, going to her. “No, it can’t be. It can’t! The spot would’ve turned color right then—wouldn’t it?” he asked Crane, trying not to plead. “Our dots ain’t fresh. We got ’em more’n a week ago, so they went stale, that’s all.”
Crane handed a piece of brightly polished metal to Rosethorn, who could then see for herself that her diagnosis spot had changed color. “Your magic?” he asked her, his voice emotionless. Briar wanted to kick him. Didn’t he care, after all she’d done?
“I’d run low,” Rosethorn said quietly. “My power kept it at bay—until now.”
“Until now,” Crane said. “So long as your body fought, and could fight, the oil would not react to the disease. I knew I should have refined that diagnosis oil, but we were pressed for time….”
“Can’t I stay?” Rosethorn asked him. “Surely I have at least a day’s more work in me. The tea got rid of my headache.”
Crane sighed. “My dear,” he said, his voice regretful, “shall I get the orders with regard to a researcher who succumbs to a disease? They are in your writing.”
“I hate it when you’re right,” she replied.
“I know,” Crane told her. “If it makes you feel better, Lark will kill me for allowing this to happen.”
“An accident,” growled Tris. Like Briar she had come to stand near Rosethorn. “Just a stupid, stupid—” Her voice cracked. She was crimson behind her mask.
“Let me take her home,” Briar said to Crane. “She ought to be in bed.”
“She cannot go home—surely you are aware of this.”
Briar stared up at the man, furious. Was that kindness in Crane’s eyes? Who was he to go being kind to anybody, particularly to him or to Rosethorn?
The true betrayal came in her quiet, clear voice. “No matter where I end up, you will stay here.”
“I won’t!” snapped Briar. “Let them whiffenpoof Water Temple slushbrains have the care of you? Stay here putting a drip of this and a drab of that into a hundred stupid trays on maybe the side chance one of ’em’ll creep us along a hair to a cure?”
“Yes,” Rosethorn said firmly.
“I need you here.”
He was hearing things, surely. He could have sworn Crane said he needed him.
The lanky dedicate sighed, and leaned against Rosethorn’s worktable. “Your hands are steady. Your discipline over your power is such that no shadow of it changes the essence of the blue pox or of the additives. You keep your head in an emergency, for all that you speak wildly enough.”
“I can’t,” Briar told Rosethorn softly, pleading. “Don’t make me stay.”
“What is more important, tending me—when the best nurses around the Pebbled Sea are here—or helping to find the cure?” she asked gravely. “If you go, they must train someone else for your job—and someone after that, and someone after that, since Crane will get rid of anyone new who looks at him cross-eyed.”
“Unjust,” drawled Crane.
“Absolutely right,” said Osprey.
“He will lose time,” Rosethorn continued, ignoring them. “Osprey will lose time. The best you can do for me is to keep working.”
Tris sighed abruptly. She had been so quiet they had forgotten she was standing there. “Rosethorn, Lark says you’re to wait until she comes. She and Sandry are going to Moonstream to see if they can take you home.”
Briar wanted to hug the redhead. He kept himself from doing it, but just barely. Of course Tris would see that Lark would not want Rosethorn anywhere but home.
Anywhere but home, he thought again. There was something in the idea that grabbed his attention.
Of course. “You have to go home,” he told Rosethorn firmly. “You have to be near your plants and your garden, even if the garden’s asleep. Remember Urda’s House? Tris brought the shakkan and the ivy and herbs to make you feel better? Tris, tell Sandry to tell Lark that Rosethorn needs her plants.”
Rosethorn looked at him sharply, then at Crane. “I forgot that living plants help.”
“Join with ours, then,” he said quietly. “You’ll need as much strength as you can gather to fight this.”