Rosethorn sighed. “With a few words on it so it will prosper with you, Crane. Though once you force it to harvest out of season, the fruits won’t taste the same.”
“So you say,” was the angry retort. “One plant in exchange for a shakkan? You insult me.”
“Why don’t we talk inside?” Lark suggested. Glancing at the crowd of onlookers, she said, “I know that service at the dining hall will be over soon”—instantly a few dedicates and all of the novices hurried away—“and some of us here would like to prepare our own meal.”
Briar and the girls were sent to their rooms as the dedicates talked. Strain his ears though he might, Briar could hear none of the conversation. He gave up trying to listen and put the tree on his windowsill. It was a pine, he knew that much. But how did it stay this small? With a finger, he traced the curve of the trunk; it grew sharply to the right. The branches had a kind of poetry about them, as if they had been made to grow in just that way.
“I’ll say this for you—”
He gasped, flinched, and almost knocked his prize over. Grabbing it, he faced Rosethorn. She lounged against his door, which she had closed.
“—you don’t pick the easy path. Calm down, I’m not going to arrest you.”
“Are you going to make me give it back?”
“That depends. Who’ll take care of that thing? Shakkans—particularly sick shakkans—require work. Even a healthy one demands attention—they’re as vain as a plant can be, after decades of being tended. I’m a busy woman.”
Carefully, gently, Briar placed the tree on his sill once more. “If—if someone could tell me what to do, I—I’d like—” He gulped. “There’s no way it can be a hundred and thirty years old!”
Rosethorn sighed. “Yanjing gardeners took a thousand years to develop the art of miniature trees,” she explained. “If a seed or clipping agrees to it—and it must agree—the gardeners trim the roots and branches, and wire the trunks and limbs. It’s all to make them grow in a shape that concentrates each plant’s strength.” She walked over and cupped the shakkan’s bowl in her palms. “However it’s done, they’re works of art, as much as a tapestry or a statue. And this one is not a hundred and thirty. It’s a hundred and forty-six—ask it yourself.”
Briar scowled, thinking she was teasing him—except that, come to think of it, she didn’t tease anyone.
“I’ll teach you how to care for it,” Rosethorn told him. “It’s not the kind of project I would select for a beginner, but since the tree chose you—”
“How could it choose me? It doesn’t even know me.”
Rosethorn shook her head. “One reason there are shakkans—apart from their being so beautiful—is because they can store magic. They become magic. It enables them to call to those who will do them the most good.”
Briar looked at the tree with new respect. “I hope you don’t end up sorry for calling me,” he told it. “I don’t know from anything. Ask her.”
“As for this room,” Rosethorn said, “this is not what I would call properly cleaned. Your blankets and pillow belong on their proper place—the bed.”
“I don’t sleep there,” complained Briar. “It’s too high up. What if there are rats under it? They’ll chew through them leather straps holding it up and they’ll get me when I fall.”
“Oh, for—” Rosethorn snapped, impatient. She stopped, took a breath, and said more gently, “No rat would dare show itself here. If this worries you, though, we’ll get rid of the bedstead. You can have the mattress on the floor. And that bed you will make up properly, starting right now.”
“But—” he protested as she went to the door. “My tree—and—breakfast—”
“That tree waited the months Crane had it to come to you; it can wait until this afternoon for us to work on it.”
As she went out, Briar started to gather his bedclothes.
The residents of Discipline were eating breakfast when Tris said, “I’d’ve thought you’d wait till no one was around before you stole something.”
The boy gulped his plum juice. “I thought they were still in bed,” he explained, blushing. “Instead they were sitting in the middle of that greenhouse thing where I couldn’t see them, chanting.”
“Renewing the quake spells on the glass,” guessed Lark. “With all the earth-tremors, it stands to reason.”
Briar shrugged. “I was quiet, and I kept out of sight, but—”
Rosethorn lifted an eyebrow. “You’ve never heard of alarm spells?”
“Bags have ’em, sure, but this wasn’t no Baghouse.”
Lark coughed and scratched at her plate with her fork. “Dedicate Crane—Dedicate Initiate Crane—is a former Bag,” she explained. “Perhaps that is why he is so mistrustful as to place alarm spells in a temple city. Who’s he related to, Rosethorn?”
“Count Albannon fer Yorvan,” the other woman replied. “It’s in Olart,” she added when the four looked at her.
“Bags,” grumbled the boy in disgust. “They’re all alike.”
“Probably,” Rosethorn agreed. “But listen well, Briar Moss. If you had tried to take a plant from me, I would have known—and I don’t need alarm spells.”