The copper tang of fresh blood drifted on the desert wind. The swordsman stood motionless, eyes bulging at the nightmare behind Briar. The boy sheathed one of his knives. His foe didn’t look as if he wanted to attack anymore.
“I can do it to you,” Briar said quietly. “In fact, maybe I should.” He reached into his kit. The swordsman fled, stumbling and thrashing his way through the rioting garden plants. He ran not for the house, but for a gap the vines had torn in the back wall.
Now Briar made himself look at the mute. He had killed the man, after all; he owed it to him to face his work. There was little of the mute to see. The thorns and vines had covered him completely, gouging him in a thousand places and sprouting through his flesh, holding him in a massive, woody, bloodstained sheath. Briar nodded to his creation, his mouth trembling.
It was him or me, he thought, turning away. I knew he could kill, and he was going for me.
Evvy, he told himself. She’s all that matters.
Now he spared a look for the side of the house closest to him. The wall trembled. There seemed to be holes in the roof. Grit rose above them in clouds, given a sulphur-yellow glow by lamps casting light through the gaps.
The wall closest to Briar blew outward, spraying stone fragments in the hip-high grass. A small, dark figure appeared in the opening left by the collapse, petting the stone on either side of the gap like one would pat a trusty dog.
“Evvy?” Briar called softly.
The figure froze, peering at him. Briar stepped into the light that streamed through the hole in the house.
“Pahan Briar!” Evvy croaked. She threw herself across the ground between them and hugged Briar tight, burying her face against his chest. He hugged her back, feeling her thin shoulders quiver under his hands. Wetness that he was fairly sure wasn’t sweat dampened his shirt under her face.
“I guess you’ve learned a way to feel your magic,” he said after a few moments.
Evvy nodded against his chest and let go, stepping back. She rubbed eyes that ran with tears. “I’m not crying,” she said defensively. “I’m washing out the dust. I don’t think I can do any more with stones. I feel all — empty.”
“That’s all right,” he reassured her. “You’ve done plenty of damage already. And don’t rub your eyes — that just grinds dirt in. Let the tears wash it out.” He offered her his water bottle. Evvy drank half of the contents and poured the rest over her head.
Briar wiped grit and wet mud from her face with his handkerchief. “Better? We’ve a bit more to do, here.”
Evvy nodded. “I know. I just wish I could help.”
Briar grinned. “I think you’ve done plenty already,” he said, tossing a packet of rose seeds at the gap she’d made in the house. They scrambled to life, weaving their stems as they grew to bar the opening. No one would escape that way.
When he looked at her again, she was staring at the huge-thorned tree that had cut its way through the mute. She turned huge eyes to him. “Pahan Briar,” she breathed in awe. “What you did.”
“It doesn’t make up for all the folk he killed for her, but it’s a taste,” he said grimly.
Evvy nodded. “I can’t do anything like that. I wish I could,” she said, approval in her voice and eyes.
“That’s my girl,” he said, giving her a one-armed hug around her shoulders. “Now, let’s finish up.”
Working through the date palms, aloes, junipers, tamarinds, and fruit trees at the rear of the house, they found eight more dead, all but one fairly recent, all with a bowstring knotted around their necks. Briar was sure that the mutabir’s four missing spies were among the bodies he’d found. One dead girl wore the Viper nose ring and garnet; one looked like the boy who had followed Briar from Golden House. A third, the freshest, still wore the black and white of the Gate Lords: their missing tesku. The wind shifted twice as they walked, sending a cloud of dead gases into their faces. Twice they had to stop for Evvy to vomit; when she finished, she walked on with Briar, her face set in hard, angry lines.
The crack of stone nearby made Briar look up. The outer wall was coming to pieces along its length, assaulted by vines outside and trees within. Earth shifted and writhed as the plants surged, bringing down the last of the stone structure that had hemmed them in. There were torches outside. In the distance someone shouted, “Halt for the Watch! In the amir’s name, halt!”
Another voice cried, “We’re slaves! We didn’t know!”
“Halt for the Watch!” the first voice ordered again. “Or we will shoot you where you stand! Hands in the air!”
“Should we go?” Evvy inquired, worried. “I don’t want to tangle with the Watch.”
“Don’t fret,” Briar assured her. “They’re on our side, mostly.”
They came to the rear of the house. The courtyard gardens had rebelled, tearing chunks from the walls that separated them from the living quarters. Vines and shrubs had combined to block every window and door on this side of the building: the slaves had to be escaping from the front of the house.
“Stop that man!” someone behind Briar and Evvy cried. “Stop him!”
Briar rubbed his mouth with his thumb, thinking. There was no way out through the rear of the house: his plants had blocked those exits. The front windows and doors were easier to escape from — few large or tough plants had been planted on that side of the house. If he knew anything about Lady Zenadia, though, she would not run with the slaves, and she could not escape out the back without some hidden tunnel he didn’t know about. Reaching with his power, he made a request of the trees. They thrust their roots as widely and as deeply as they could, sifting through the ground. There were no tunnels.