Street Magic

She would be inside, then.

They walked forward. Plants moved aside to admit them to a passageway. Once they went by the plants drew together to create a living wall.

He led Evvy down a stone gallery now soft with grasses, moss, and flowers that grew from seeds blown into cracks and corners. It led to an inner garden that had become an impassable thicket of shrubs and short trees. Even the tiles that paved the ground had vanished, thrust aside by rioting plants. When he saw the larch on the other side, Briar realized that he’d talked with the lady and Jebilu here. The larch, freed at his bidding to become its normal-sized self, blocked the door into the main house.

Creaking anxiously — it knew it wasn’t supposed to be this big — the larch moved just enough to let Briar and Evvy pass. He stopped for a moment to pet it, to assure it he still loved it, even if it had lost its bunjingi form and gotten huge. He gave it his blessing, then walked on.

The house was no longer cool and elegant. There was greenery everywhere; he frankly thought it was an improvement. Tiles, flagstones, and walls had been knocked out of place, chipped, even cracked by an explosion of growth.

“Do you know where she is?” Evvy inquired, worry on her dust and tear-streaked face. “She won’t get away?”

“She won’t.” Briar reached throughout the house, asking its plants where he might find Lady Zenadia.

The lady was to his right, they reported. He and Evvy followed their directions, walking toward a door painted with the image of a burning lamp.

Halfway down they crossed an intersection with another hall. The Viper tesku Ikrum leaped from its shadows, daggers in both hands.

Briar ducked and rammed sideways, catching the older boy in the gut. He thrust up with his back and shoulder, tossing Ikrum into the air. The older youth landed with a thud and lurched to his feet. Like him, Briar wobbled, trying to get his balance as the hall floor rippled. Ikrum staggered and went down on one knee.

Briar realized what was happening and darted toward Evvy, getting onto solid ground. With a grating rumble the floor under Ikrum collapsed, dropping the Viper into the cellar below. He screamed curses up at them for only a short moment. Then the ceiling above the hole in the floor collapsed. Stone and wood rained into the cellar, knocking Ikrum down, then burying him, until there was no trace of him to be seen.

When Briar looked at Evvy, she shrugged. “I guess I had a bit left after all,” she told him. She walked to the hole in the floor to spit on Ikrum’s wood-and-stone tomb. “And that’s for kidnapping me,” she snapped.

Briar put an arm around her bony shoulders. “You do good work,” he said with approval. “Come on, now. We have one more thing to settle.”

They sidled around the hole in what was left of the floor, and continued on to the door with the painting of the lamp. Briar opened it. Inside was a sitting room, part of what Briar guessed was the lady’s personal chambers. Ornately carved sandalwood screens perfumed the air. Carved ebony screens covered two small windows. Sprigs of greenery poked through as the plants outside looked for a way in. They clamored their welcome to Briar.

The lady did not. She sat on a backless chair, as regal as a queen in red-and-bronze silks. She gleamed with gold jewelry: ankle cuffs hung with bells, armlets and bracelets, heavy earrings studded with rubies, a nose ring and a jeweled chain to connect it to her earring under her semi-sheer veil. Lamps had been lit and placed around the room as if she were prepared for a night spent reading at home. There was a pitcher beside her, and a cup. To all appearances she could have been welcoming guests. Briar saw past that, to the blank rage in her eyes, the trembling hands posed gracefully in her lap, and the brittle way she held her head.

“You disappoint me, Pahan Briar,” she said, her lovely voice tight. “You have played the destructive child here. What did you hope to accomplish beyond the ruin of my house? Will you dare to harm me? My family will avenge all that you have done. You should never have set yourself up to oppose me.”

Briar shook his head, amazed. To Evvy he said, “You wouldn’t think she did anything worse than borrow my student without permission.” Evvy nodded.

“I don’t think you understand,” Briar told Lady Zenadia slowly. He knew an explanation was probably a waste of time, but he had to try. “Your family won’t protect you, not after they see your garden.”

Her smile was tiny, but a smile all the same. “Do you think they will care about dead thukdaks? The children of the streets are without value to anyone.”

Evvy growled. Briar stilled her with a hand on her shoulder. “The mutabir will care about his dead spies. We had a nice talk about that yesterday, him and his pahan and me. Ask him yourself — he’s outside with the Watch. And I bet some of those other bodies aren’t as unimportant to him as they were to you.”

Lady Zenadia blinked. “He would not dare,” she whispered, but the tremor in her hands got worse.

“Your mute’s dead.” Briar inspected a scratch on his hand. “So’s Ikrum. I don’t know about your swordsman. I think maybe the mutabir’s people picked him up when he made a run for it.”

This time the lady swallowed hard. In someone less refined, it would have been a gulp. “Ubayid would never betray me.”

“How’s it betrayal if you can’t be touched?” Briar asked pleasantly. “If you can’t be harmed, then it isn’t betrayal, just — gossip.”

She flinched.