A chubby girl with tousled redheaded curls, looking all of perhaps six years old, staggered determinedly up a steep slope under the weight of two big woven shopping baskets. She let herself into the kitchen through a side door and began unpacking, only to go stiff, her movements stilted, when an old woman came in to interrupt, and to pick up handwritten receipts and change off the counter.
“Trisana, you aren’t listening to me!” her cracked, sharp, voice sounded. “You beggar me with your extravagance! I’m just a poor widow, with barely enough to live on, and you eating me out of house and home! No more beef at this table, not at these prices! And a copper penny for turnips? You didn’t bargain enough! You—“
The counters were too high for her to reach. Once she finished putting away most of the shopping, Tris brought a chopping board over to the table and started cutting the aforementioned turnips as the tirade continued, making no answer aside from the occasional monosyllable of acknowledgement.
That is, until the complaints came around to, "And you didn't mop the entryway before you left. No books for two days!"
Her head snapped up from what she was doing, and Tris protested plaintively, "No, please! I'll do it as soon as I'm finished here!"
"Make it a week for talking back! Rude, ungrateful..."
Edited 2018-03-19 03:35 (UTC)
Age 10: Overhearing speculation on what's wrong with her and meeting her teacher
As she waited, staring fixedly at those battered leather satchels, she realized that the Honored Dedicate's door was not quite closed.
" - I know that you're already on your way to Winding Circle, and I need you to take this girl with you. Is that such a hard request to grant, Master Niko?"
"Send her later in the spring, when the trade caravans leave for Emelan." The light, crisp, male voice sounded annoyed. "I'm on a very special task these days. If I have to change my plans suddenly, this child will only get in my way."
"We can't keep her. Her parents swore that she was tested for magic and found to have none, but..." The Dedicate Superior's voice trailed off. Briskly she continued, "I don't know if she's possessed by a spirit, or part elemental, or carrying a ghost, to be at the center of such uproar, and I don't care. Winding Circle is far better equipped to handle a case like hers. They have the learning, and dedicates who are more open-minded with regard to unique cases. They have the best mages south of your own university. They will know what to do with her."
Hearing all this, Tris felt sick. Spirit, elemental, or ghost-burdened, was she? And what kind of fate awaited her? Some people learned to manage such creatures within themselves; others got rid of them. Far too many ended up homeless and crazy, wandering the streets, or locked up in an attic or cellar, or even dead. She swayed, feeling ill - and then clenched her fists. She was sick of it! Sick of being gotten rid of, sick of being discussed, sick of not being helped!
With a thundering roar, hailstones battered the roof and walls around her, hitting wood and stone like a multitude of hammers. They shattered the glass panes of the window in the outer office to spray across the floor like icy diamonds. Clumsily she knelt to pick up a handful.
The door of the Dedicate Superior's office swung open, revealing a slender man in his middle fifties. He stood there, hands on hips, black eyes under thick black brows fixed on Tris.
From the floor she glared at him, hailstones trickling from her fingers. "It's rude to stare," she snapped, not over her fury.
"You were tested for magic?" he asked, his clipped voice abrupt.
Why did this stranger taunt her? Her family would have put up with her oddities, if only she'd been proved to have magic, which might be turned to the profit of House Chandler. "By the most expensive mage in Ninver, if you must know. And he said I haven't a speck of it."
The stranger turned and looked at the woman in the yellow habit behind him. "Honored Wrenswing, I've changed my mind. I will be very happy to escort Trisana to Winding Circle Temple in Emelan." He smiled thinly and reached a hand to Tris. "I am pleased to meet you, young lady."
She ignored the outstretched hand. Getting up, she shook out her skirts. "You'll change your mind before long," she retorted. "Everyone does."
Age 10: Settling in at Discipline Cottage and meeting future family
"So that's why you wear all that black," Daja remarked. "Somebody told me once that the landsmen wear black for mourning."
"So are you, I see." Sandry's wave took in the other girl's clothes.
Daja smoothed her crimson tunic. "I-"
"Traders mourn in red?" asked a scornful voice. Briar stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. "What kind of barbarian thing is that?"
"Red is for blood," explained Daja. She wasn't offended by his tone. Kaqs were ignorant. She couldn't expect one to be as courteous as real people. "Even a-" she started to say, and changed her term when she caught Sandry's glare. "Even a mud-roller like you should know that much." In Tradertalk, she told the other girl, "And he is a kaq."
"I haven't spent my life with my fingers in my ears," Briar remarked in clumsy, but plain, Tradertalk. "And I'm not stupid." Switching back to Imperial, he added, "Beats me how you people don't break teeth on that gabble."
Daja showed him all of hers in a big, warning grin. "Our teeth are stronger than yours, is why."
Sandry interrupted before the boy could answer. "If we're going to share the same house, shouldn't we try to get along?"
"Don't bother with him," Daja advised. "He's just rude and ignorant."
"Not as ignorant as you thought a moment ago," he teased.
Behind him, Tris announced, "I'm starved. When do we eat?"
"Midday's on the table!" called Lark from below.
Tris bolted for the stair. Briar raced to catch up, but she beat him to it.
"We'd better watch him," Daja told Sandry, closing the door of her room as they left it. Sandry frowned at her, puzzled. Daja tapped the web between her right thumb and forefinger. "He wears the double X - twice a thief. He'd best stay clear of my things."
A dark head appeared in the opening where the stair pierced the floor - Briar had not gone all the way down. "You think I'm a sluggart, kid? Everyone knows Traders curse their boodle, so them that nick it meet a terrible end. I'm smarter'n that."
"Nick?" Sandry asked, stepping onto the ladder. "What's that?"
Briar jumped down, out of her way. "Steal. You nick it, you steal it."
"Wonderful," Tris drawled. She was already downstairs and cutting slices from a loaf of coarse bread. Lark set food on the wooden table as Niko lifted a pitcher of milk from the cold-box set in the floor. "We'll learn thief-slang."
"At least you'll have learned something,' stead of being just another bleater all your life," retorted the boy.
Lark smiled at him. "Briar, would you tell Rosethorn it's midday? Keep after her so she won't forget to come in."
He backed up a step. Just eating supper and breakfast with Rosethorn had given him a wary respect for her. "What if she bites me?"
Lark glanced at him with gentle impatience, as if he should have known her reply already. "Bite back."
Niko looked at her and sighed. "I wish that by now you could trust me."
She looked out through the cave entrance, at the clouds. "Everyone I ever trusted sent me away," she said flatly.
For a while he said nothing. Tris, glancing at him, saw a look of pity that made her blush with embarrassment. At last he reached over, squeezed her fingers, and let go. "Then I will just have to hope that you change your mind someday. In the meantime, you're going to learn meditation."
"Why?" she demanded. "The others don't have to."
"They start tomorrow. As for you, why now?" His eyes held hers; she tried to look away, and couldn't.
"Things happen when you get angry, Tris. First hail, now lightning - if you don't learn to control yourself, you will kill someone."
She felt like there wasn't enough air to breathe. Was he saying she was possessed by a spirit, or not entirely human, as they'd thought back in Capchen? There were people who attracted spirits they couldn't control - every child knew those stories. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life in a cage. "How do you know?"
"Do you know we mages choose the name we bear, once we are trained?"
She shook her head.
"We do. My last name is 'Goldeye.' It means that I see things that are hidden to most people. That's how I know. And I tell you this. If you learn to meditate - if you learn to control your mind - you will be able to keep things from happening when you are upset."
She tore her glance away from his and clenched her hands. A chance to stop people blaming her for what she couldn't help? "What do I do?" she croaked.
Age 10: Trapped underground, combining with her foster siblings to survive (voices only)
"I don't want to upset anyone," Tris said, fighting to sound calm. She was grateful they couldn't see each other: what she felt in the earth around them was making her sweat. "The stones are talking. I can't explain, so you just have to believe me. Something very big and bad is coming at us from a long ways off. Can we-"
"Another quake?" interrupted Briar.
"Mostly a quake," Tris replied. "And - maybe this is odd, but - it feels like there's magic all wound up in it. We have some time, but it's coming. Daja, I'm not sure the thing you did for us will hold."
For a moment none of them spoke. It was overwhelming news.
"We'd better do something fast," Daja said. "It's that or die. Tris, can you try anything with what's coming? Can you turn it around, or stop it? No, forget I said to stop it. I know you can't."
"All that power has to go somewhere," Tris replied. "And there's magic in what's coming - that complicates things. I don't know what I'm doing with my own magic, let alone someone else's."
Daja sighed. "Look, we must try. I'll find metal-"
"Maybe I can get plants to help us," said Briar.
Three sets of lungs inhaled. Briar let his mind branch through the earth, feeling a million traces of green in the distance. He strained to reach them and failed. Daja found traces of iron, copper, and lead scattered through the soil. She called them together, hoping to make a metal cage around her box. They shuddered, wanting to obey but unable to.
Daja opened her eyes, gasping. "I need heat," she said. "I can't shape metals till I run them through a forge. Where do I find such heat, or control it?"
"Fire the coal?" Briar asked.
Tris was ill. Tension grew in the stones as the wave of strange force thundered their way. Her stomach was protesting. I can't throw up now! she thought fiercely. "Don't burn the coal, unless you want us to go with it!" she snapped. "We can't use real fire. Below, where volcanoes are born - it's heat. It's the essence of fire. Daja, if you control that heat - if you keep it off the coal-"
"My box - our protection. It's outside the coal right on top of us, so that's safe. I can keep it from the rest of the coal in this ground - I hope," replied Daja, coughing. She inhaled and sent her magic out with her exhale, reaching for the heat that Tris had described. Soon she came back. "I can't," she told them, trying not to think of time running out. "My reach won't go that far."
Tris sighed. "Mine can, but I don't know anything about iron."
"I need to reach far, too," Briar said. "I'm just missing the plants' roots." In spite of himself, his voice quivered. He was getting scared. "I wish there was a way we could combine this fancy magic stuff."
Sandry had listened, shame and terror filling her mind. She was letting her friends down, sitting by useless when they were in danger. It had been the same when Pirisi was killed. Would she let that happen again? Couldn't she help?
Daja and Briar both needed Tris, and Tris needed strength. What a tangle of knots! she thought.
She gasped. "Waitwaitwait! I think - I think-" She grubbed in her workbag, digging past rolags, scissors, skeins of finished yarn...
A packet met her fingers. She pulled the contents out: her first spun thread. She hooked a finger around the shaft of her spindle and dragged it out as well.
"Are you still thinking?" Daja inquired.
"We need to help each other, right?" She put the spindle down and gripped the thread. "I have a way to make us stronger. Daja, I'm passing you a string with four lumps in it. Take the first lump, hold it, and put some of you in it - your magic, your memories, I don't care what as long as it's yours, understand?"
"I think so," Daja said. A hand gripped her arm, and a coil of thread was pressed into her fingers. She found a lump close to the end and hung onto it.
"Give the long end to Tris, who does the same thing with the second lump. Keep it in your hand! Briar gets the third lump; I'll get the last. When part of you is in it, ask the gods' blessing, and give it back to me. Quick, now!"
Age 10: Betrayed by yet another family member; cw: assault, discussion of murder & slavery
Tris glanced up. The fog was racing into the night-dark sky, colliding with storm clouds that had been forming higher up. Had she started something? I can’t think about that, she decided, and stomped up to her cousin. “Aymery!”
Briar ducked behind a tree. He’d let Tris do the talking. Let the maggot think they were alone, and he might speak truthfully.
Aymery lurched away from the wall. “What are you doing here?”
Despite the heavy snoring all around them, the cousins spoke quietly, as if they might wake someone. “Aymery, please... You aren’t—” Tris swallowed hard. “It looks bad, Aymery. It really does.”
“You don’t have to worry,” he said earnestly as she approached. “I’ll protect you. Nothing will happen to you.”
“What about my friends? What happens to them?” Tris stopped a foot away from her cousin.
“I’ll do my best, and - you’ll just have to trust me, that’s all. In case you forgot, I tried to get you to leave, remember?”
“You lied even then, didn’t you? About my father being ill?”
“I didn’t want you here for this. But you were mule-headed, and I never got another chance to talk you around. Just stick close to me, and I’ll speak for you to Enahar. He’s their chief mage.“
“Why are you working for them? They’re thieves, and murderers—”
Aymery sighed. “I owe them money, Tris, more than you could imagine. It was gambling, and - and other things. Enahar gave me a loan, but there was a price. That’s how the world is.” Going to the gate, he wrapped his hands around one of the locking bars and started to lift.
Briar cursed. This was cutting things much too fine. Daja! Sandry! he cried. We need help and we need it fast!
Tris ignored the boy’s call. “This is a temple community” she reminded Aymery. “What kind of loot do you expect to find?”
He stopped pushing on the heavy bar to stare at her. “Don’t you know anything!” he asked “There are spell-books here, centuries old, which teach things like making diamonds from coal and rubies from blood. Bespelled weapons, devices - they have a mirror that will let even a non-mage spy on anyone at all. And mages are the highest priced slaves anywhere - there’s all kinds of ways to keep a mage that won’t hurt his ability to do magic.”
“I see they worked on you” she said flatly.
Aymery sighed. “Yes, they do. See this?” He tugged at his earring. “It was made with my blood and with Enahar’s. It binds me to him. If he thinks I’m about to betray him, he can use it to kill me. And don’t tell me to get rid of it. I can’t, not so long as I’m alive.” His smile was crooked. “I tried.”
The winds rose as Tris swallowed hard. “Can’t you turn it on him?”
Aymery shook his head. “I’ll just bear with it - he’ll free me when my debt’s paid. This raid should do it, with plenty left over.“ One locking bar was up. One remained. Someone outside pounded on the gate.
Tris grabbed Aymery, dragging him back. The growing winds made her skirts whip. “You can’t do it!”
Unsheathing his knife, Briar hurled the blade straight at Aymery. A puff of angry air knocked it away.
Tris whirled, her hair flaring out like a halo. “Stop it!” she yelled, furious.
Briar searched two snoring guards, and found their knives. “He’s not listening!” he shouted. “And that isn’t the Fire temple guard waiting outside, is it, Aymery?” For answer the young mage punched Tris, knocking her back several feet. She hit the ground and lay there, stunned.
The gate exploded. Aymery went flying, landing not too far from Briar.
Age 10: Wrecking a pirate ship; cw: slavery, death
Immediately he threw up silvery shields, strong protections that would be hard to break.
Tris stretched out an incorporeal magical hand. The lightning bolt that had stayed nearby while Enahar taunted her now settled into her grip. To it Sandry fed the power of the spindle that had made the four into one. Briar added the green strength of stickers and thorns. From Daja came the white blaze of the harbor chain.
Tris pointed to Enahar's shields. Strike, she whispered.
The bolt split the air, giving birth to thunder. The shields, and Enahar's ship, exploded.
Shadow fingers locked around Tris, dragging her from Niko's hold.
If you want me so badly, you may go with me! the dying mage snarled. He clutched her tight, hauling the girl into darkness.
...
Tris yanked clear of Enahar as he faded to nothing. She rose from the pit he had dragged her into, until she found herself drifting on the sea's magical currents. Going back this way might take awhile. She was too weak to move higher and steal a ride on breeze-back, but the tide would bring her home.
Floating, she looked around, and found horror. Overhead patches of battlefire burned on the surface, setting the remains of wrecked ships on fire. Other ships were in motion, trying to move out into the open sea, away from Winding Circle. Bodies floated everywhere, tangled in debris, some of them in flames. The dead drifted in dozens to the sea’s floor, weighted down by chains. Some of them were in pieces; some were burned. Some had been alive when they entered the water, and their faces were masks of panic.
The galley slaves, she realized. They had no way to free themselves. How many of them had she killed? And how many were guilty of nothing but being unable to escape - or fight back - when pirates came to call?
Power - Lark’s - found her drifting among the dead. Encircling her like a net, it brought her home to her body. She heard cheering, and opened her eyes. The other three children caught her as her knees wobbled, and she staggered. “What’s the fuss about?” she asked through lips that felt swollen. Up here she could see the wreckage, survivors and bodies; they had begun to wash up on the beach. I can’t take any more, she thought, and closed her eyes.
Age 10: Sibling teasing, and Tris as a mama bird squeamish about bugs
Late that afternoon, Tris was about to give Shriek a feeding at the big table when Briar carried a small, covered dish to her. Sandry and Daja followed - he’d hinted that a treat was in store.
“Rosethorn says to start giving him some of these,” he informed Tris, offering her the container.
“Rosethorn?” Tris called.
“That’s his natural food,” was the reply from the workshop. “He won’t survive when you set him free if you don’t start him on this now.”
Briar removed the lid of the dish with a flourish. Tris looked, and shrank back: inside squirmed one or two earthworms, a handful of grubs and a small white caterpillar. Little Bear stood on his hind legs to peer into the dish. Grabbing his collar, Daja hung on, in case the pup decided it was time to try bird food. Shriek, still under the handkerchief on his nest-box, squalled.
“Drop them in his nest,” Tris suggested to Briar.
“Can’t. Rosethorn says they gotta go in his beak, same as the rest.” Briar offered a small pair of metal tongs in the size that ladies used to pluck their eyebrows. “These’ll help. Come on, bird-dam - he wants his supper.”
“I hate bugs,” insisted the girl. ‘They’re— Shurri defend me, they wiggle.“
“Come on, merchant-girl,” said Daja with a grin. “You faced pirates, an earthquake, Rosethorn - what’s wrong with a bug or two? Did she get any locusts?” the Trader asked Briar. “They’re better fried, but still good when they’re fresh.”
Tris gagged.
“Nothing that flies is in there, or it’d be gone by now,” Briar said. “Get to work, Four-Eyes. We haven’t got till the end of time.”
“Will you do it?” Tris begged Sandry. “You’re not afraid of anything.”
Sandry tucked her hands behind her back. “I’m not his mama,” she replied with an evil grin.
“Neither am I!” cried Tris.
Briar put the tongs in her hand and wrapped her fingers around them.
“The caterpillar is crawling out,” remarked Daja. She flicked it back into the dish.
“You do it!” Eagerly Tris thrust the tongs at her. “You like bugs!”
Daja grinned and stepped back. “Sandry’s right. I’m not his mother either.”
None of them but Little Bear had paid attention to the nest-box as the handkerchief cover bumped, thrashed and finally slid off. Its inhabitant climbed out. Almost a fledgling, Shriek was now three inches long from head to rump, with another two inches of tail. He was still in pin-feathers, but his black eyes were alert and wide open. He waddled across the table, yelling.
The dog fled. The four children watched Shriek.
“Maybe he’ll eat from the dish,” suggested Daja. She thrust it into his way.
Shriek walked around it without once shutting up, headed for Tris. When she stretched her hand out to him, he pecked one finger hard. “Ow! Shriek—”
He screamed - and pecked - again. Tris backed up.
Shriek came on and dropped off the edge of the table. Sandry and Tris banged into each other in their rush to catch him, while the bird - cradled in Sandry’s skirt - continued to scream. When Tris gathered him up, he continued to peck her. She kept her hands cupped around him, wincing at the pain. “That beak is sharp” she complained.
“Anything for peace and quiet.” Picking up the tongs, Briar selected a worm and held it over Shriek. The nestling gave Tris a last jab and sat up in her hands, opening his beak wide. Briar dropped the worm in. Shriek swallowed. He appeared to think about what he’d just eaten.
“Well, that’s better, anyway,” Sandry remarked with a sigh.
Shriek screamed.
“My turn.” Daja took the tongs and offered the caterpillar to the bird. This Shriek bit in two, allowing her to keep half while he gulped down the rest. Once the titbit was in his belly, he snatched the rest out of the tongs.
Sandry picked up an earthworm with her fingers. Shriek accepted this offering as he had the caterpillar, eating it in neat bites.
“Your turn, mama.” Briar drew the nest-box over so Tris could put her charge back in his bed. Shriek squalled.
Slowly, gingerly, Tris picked a grub up with the tongs, wincing as her firm hold crushed the sacrifice. She positioned the tongs over the nestling’s gaping beak, nd dropped the grub in.
Everyone applauded. Shriek blinked, sighed and settled down for a nap.
Age 11: Two grown men fight over who gets Tris as an assistant
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."
"One moment." Crane looked as if he'd been caught by surprise. "Why her? Her vision-skills aren't as strong as yours-"
"Thanks ever so," Tris mumbled, pouring tea for herself.
"I can make far better use of her," persisted Crane. "There is work to do as we await your results."
"You cannot make better use of her," Niko said sharply, dark eyes glittering. "I will have to do a past-visualization working at some point. For it I require her strength and stubbornness. An extra pair of eyes will not come amiss, nor her ability to control water."
"She is a clear and accurate note-taker," protested Crane. "She thinks about the notes she is given. I made infinitely more progress yesterday, with her and Rosethorn and the boy, than I had until then."
Rosethorn flapped a hand as if she fanned herself. "Spare my blushes," she murmured. Briar snorted.
"I do not begrudge the acknowledgment of credit where it is due," replied Crane loftily. "We have a good team. Breaking it up now is most ill-advised."
"Find another scribe," Niko snapped. "I'll have the duke send his, if necessary-"
"Is this what it'll be like when I'm older and boys are fighting for the chance to kiss my hand?" Tris murmured to Sandry. The noble giggled.
"I do not want a ducal scribe; I want this girl. May I remind you-"
"I will not go into the sewers without her!" Niko barked.
Everyone stared at him. Tris turned white. "Sewers?" she squeaked.
"The disease spreads as the water level in the sewers rises and damaged pipes leak into wells. It's plain the two are connected," Niko said. "If we are to go there without drowning, I need Tris. If I am to have power to work the spells that reveal the past and to follow the trail to whatever mage concocted this- horror-I will need Tris. No one else will do."
"Not the sewers," whispered the redhead, trembling. "They're dirty."
"I know," replied Niko, his voice sharp.
For a long moment, no one said a word. Finally Crane sighed. "May she return to me when you are done?"
"I don't want to go," complained Tris. "Can't I stay with Crane and Rosethorn?"
"We must," Niko retorted. "Eat your breakfast."
"I'm not hungry."
"Then change into old clothes. We need to do this now."
[ Mick watches the video several times over the course of a day or two. Normally he'd just avoid it, knowing Tris hates his guts, but the subject of adults using kids as tools is one that he has not been able to let go. Not since juvie and meeting Len. Heck, he hasn't had the best of luck with his foster families either but that has always been different. The way they had talked about Tris has sounded a lot more like Lewis about Len than Mick liked.
He actually searches her out at lunchtime, bringing with him a couple of bars of chocolate and a six pack of beer. He places them on the table in front of her. ]
Tris pulls out her communicator and looks to see what scene Mick got before
she answers aloud. It isn't the one she expected based on his response.
She sounds somehow both stubborn and mildly confused when she replies, but
not angry.
"Niko cares about me. The man who taught me how to control my power and
told me there's nothing wrong with me was allowed to ask favors. He and
Crane both knew I hate sitting idle. I go mad with nothing useful
to do. I just don't like getting filthy."
She pauses a moment before admitting, "I was a tool or a threat rather than
a child for the first ten years of my life. I know what it looks like, and
that wasn't it."
"Didn't sound like he was asking." Mick looks at her, studying the expression for a moment. Another thing he had seen was people not recognising when they were being used. Was that what was going on here?
"I've seen too many kids not allowed to be children."
Tris folds her arms in front of her. "I wasn't allowed to be a kid long
before Niko met me. There's a limit to how much of that growing up can be
undone. Niko was the first person to look at me as a child in years, but
he wasn't going to watch people die just because he and I were both
squeamish. If he'd drowned because I refused to accompany him, I'd have
lost my teacher and been stuck in a plague ridden city with no cure in
sight." Niko hated going down there even more than Tris did.
"The thing about my magic is that it's tied to my emotions. He had to
drill control and ethics into me or I'd kill someone every time I'm
angry. Sometimes that meant telling me what to do. There's only so much
leeway you can give a girl who causes lightning strikes and hailstorms
every time she gets upset. I don't have the luxury of being careless. I
never did. And unlike my birth family, Niko always put my well being
first."
Mick studies her for a long moment, taking the words in and actually considering that he might be wrong in his assumptions. "As long as you're sure about that." If she isn't Mick would be tempted to go have a talk with this Niko.
"A bit of chaos is healthy sometimes though." He still firmly believes that. "That tight control sounds like someone else I know, and he didn't have it drilled into him in a good way."
"Not the kind of chaos that means I demolish buildings if I ever get
drunk." In other words, she won't be touching those beers. She does reach
for some of the chocolate, though. "Thank you."
As she unwraps it, she adds, "Control was the best thing Niko could
possibly have given me. I'd been out of control and terrified of myself
for as long as I could remember. Finally being able to stop things
from happening was wonderful."
"Healthier than the alternative. I can lose my temper now. It's
safe to do that, because I can keep a grip on my power when I do. Barring
floods. I'm working on further precautions for those." She grimaces,
because Mick has seen what floods do to her, that time Eliot had to
intervene to keep her from killing him.
The second part of that surprises her, though. Tris tilts her head.
"She's my foster mother. I ended up with her when I was ten. We live
together on the Barge."
She didn't actually realize that their connection wasn't well known to
anyone who had been on board for a long time.
"I know. She told me." And the look she gives Mick is a long, considering
one, because if she has trouble trusting him in general, she certainly
struggles more to trust him with a member of her family.
"Neither of us does well at letting go after breaches," she says after a
moment, in as neutral a tone as she can manage. It's the closest she's
letting herself come to warning Mick, even though she wants to.
Rosethorn's feelings stay tangled up with the people she loved in alternate
lives, and Tris can't stand anyone having that kind of grasp on her mother
unless they're going to treat her properly.
Mick meets her eyes during that long look, folding his arms. He's used to it. He is used to being distrusted and judged. He takes a breath after her warning. "It's not easy, but Rosethorn and I seem to have worked it out." Mostly by more or less avoiding each other.
Tris pauses a moment, not sure how much Rosethorn would be willing to
share. Finally, she goes ahead and tells him, "You were worried about me
being used as a tool, but I wasn't. Not the way Rosethorn was. I
was an object to be afraid of. But she doesn't stop caring just because
she wasn't quite herself in that breach, or because she never wanted
another brother in the first place."
The unspoken don't hurt her is still there, just as obvious as
before.
"The same way I never wanted another set of birth parents, but Jean and
Cold still mean something to me." Rosethorn wasn't the only person who
came out of that breach with a mess of mixed feelings and new connections.
"Well, she isn't alone in the not wanting a family. But this place doesn't give us much of a choice." He frowns when she mentions Cold. At the mention of Cold being a father in the breach. He has never thought that Cold wanted to be one. Not with how things were with Lewis. He grits his teeth. Part of him wants to tell her to back off, to protect Cold from any memories. But it is too late now.
And part of him is happy. The part that had been Rose's big brother is happy that she still cares. And furious that Tris implied he might hurt her.
He turns to look around the room, it is easier than to face Tris and all the complicated emotions. "Don't worry." He finally admits. He has no plans to hurt Rosethorn.
"No, it doesn't," Tris agrees grimly. She didn't mind her family in the
last breach, because it was familiar. She was born to a family that
didn't approve of what she was, and Erskine stole her away before they
could reject her completely. It was like her real life, only gentler.
Being born to parents who wanted her, though... the breach with Jean and
Cold was the one she's struggled with most, by far.
She hesitates a second, then says, "Good." She'll trust his word for now,
not that she has much choice in who Rosethorn chooses to let into her
life. That doesn't mean she'll ever be anything less than prepared to make
him regret it if he ever breaks that promise.
Tris is far too observant to miss the look on his face when she mentioned
Cold. Circling back to the subject unprompted, she tells Mick, "I don't
expect anything of him, but he was a far better father than my real one. I
made sure he knew that."
Mick turns back to her. "Fathers are... Len and I didn't have good fathers. Lewis was worse than my dad. Len's always been uncomfortable with the whole idea of fathers last I checked. So don't push it. Don't ask him to be something he doesn't want to be." Mick doesn't believe in subtle warnings, might as well say it out loud.
Tris gives Mick an unimpressed look. "Were you not listening when I said
that I didn't expect anything of him? I'm not looking for a father. Mine
disowned me when I was nine, and I'm just fine without, thanks ever so.
But he deserved to know he was a good one."
She thanked him for not giving her more issues with family than she already
had, actually. And she can't just suddenly stop caring about him now that
she's started.
Mick frowns. He is not sure it had been good anyway. But done is done.
"He would make a good dad, but I am not sure he wants to be one." He frowns. He isn't sure about sharing Len with someone with someone who dislikes him so much even if it just as friends. In some ways, he wishes it was just him and Len against the world the way it used to be.
"And you look like you've done well without a father, sounds to me like he didn't deserve you anyway."
"I'm not trying to be his daughter," even if she has no intention of
backing out of his life again. Tris very deliberately refrains from
mentioning that she thinks Odd is more of a danger there than she is. But
Cold clearly cares about him, so Mick had better stay out of things where
Odd is concerned.
"Neither of my parents deserved me. My foster family does." Tris
cares a lot about Rosethorn, for very obvious reasons.
Mick looks at her for a long moment, trying to judge if he believes her or not. Eventually, he just gives her a nod. He does. At least for now. Not that he has a choice, it really doesn't matter what he thinks here.
"Good." He gets up, grabbing the beers since she's said she doesn't want them and then moves to let her eat in peace.
Age 14: Two lightning mages play in a thunderstorm
Lightning jabbed down near the Piraki Gate. Thunder blasted through the narrow canyons made by the buildings.
Here came another bolt, three-pronged, thunder on its heels. It struck Tris squarely, all three prongs twining around her. She held up her arms; she laughed as the bolt clung to her without vanishing, a white-hot ladder to the clouds. Several of her braids exploded from their ties, the hair in them wrapping around the lightning that secured her to the sky. Oddly enough, the rest of her hair stayed where it was, unbudging, locked in place with pins. Keth’s rescuers told him that his hair had been standing straight up when he was found. Why did some of Tris’s hair move, but not the rest?
It was her mage’s kit. Suddenly he believed that she held other forces ready for use in her many braids. She had not been joking when she had described the range of her power. Niko had said nothing that day, not because he liked the joke Tris played on Keth, but because she told the literal truth.
I’m dead, he thought helplessly. And all thanks to a cross-grained fourteen-year-old.
Chime’s claws bit into Keth’s breeches, forcing him to yelp and straighten his legs. Free of the bowl of his lap and arms, the glass dragon took flight, swooping and soaring around the trapped branch of lightning that still clung to Tris.
Keth stared. Inside Chime he saw a skeleton of silver. Around it twined veins that flickered and rippled like lightning.
Little Bear had seen enough. The big dog scrambled to the door and into the house, tail between his legs.
The bolt that held Tris shrank. It wasn’t dying, Keth realized. It was soaking into the hair that his young teacher had freed of its pins. It grew thinner and thinner, until it was gone. The braids that had absorbed it shimmered.
An immense fist pounded Keth on the head. He fell to his knees, staring at his hands. They blazed — he blazed — with lightning. He groped his scalp, and found something stronger and far hotter than the power in the globe he’d made for Dema. A bolt of lightning had struck his head, in the same place the last bolt had struck. His brain fizzed, his eyes filled with a glory of white fire that trickled down his throat, into his belly, through his arms and legs. In that splendid moment Keth saw that all things had some lightning in them. Physical matter did not reject lightning; it was simply overwhelmed by it, as a teardrop was overwhelmed by the ocean.
Lightning struck objects because it was drawn to the ghost of itself within them.
Except there was no ghost of lightning inside Keth: he had the true thing. He drank the power in like a thirsty man drinks water and, like Tris, raised his arms to call even more to him.
Later, as they staggered down into the house, he found the voice to croak, “You promised you’d protect me.”
“I did,” she replied, her voice as rough as his. “I saw that your power was calling to the lightning, and I made sure that you weren’t hit by so much you’d panic.”
“You made me think you’d—” he began.
She interrupted him. “What? Wrap you in a cocoon of magic? In a nice safe blanket? I would have done so, had there been the need. There wasn’t. It’s my job to know these things, remember? I wasn’t about to lose my very first student because he didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain.”
They had reached Keth’s door before he’d summoned the energy to say, “You are a wicked girl.”
Tris shrugged. “So I’ve been told. I’ve learned to live with the shame of it.” She looked at Little Bear, who huddled in front of Keth’s door. “Come on, Bear. Lightning’s done.” She turned her sharp gaze on Keth.
“Answer me truly — have I done you a disservice?”
It was his turn to shrug. He hung his head for good measure. “You know you didn’t.”
“I knew. I wanted to make certain that you did, too.” Before Keth could jerk away, Tris stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. A spark jumped between them. They both grinned. “If you have any leaks, put a big pot under them,” she warned. “It’ll rain all tonight and all tomorrow. Not my doing — this storm built up a lot of power while it was stuck in the east, and coming this way has made it stronger. I hope you’ve got a hat to wear to the shop tomorrow.”
Though he wasn’t sure if he would like the answer, Keth heard himself ask, “How do you know so much about it?”
Tris grinned, waved, and left him without a reply. Chime, riding on her shoulder, flapped her glass wings in farewell.
Age 14: Tris can't resist adopting a lonely little girl
Tris walked out to the courtyard, glad to be in cooler, less stuffy, air. She let rain fall on her head for a moment, enjoying its comforting feel on her braids. It was over the rain’s soft patter that she heard hiccups. Glaki was huddled on the stair to the upper galleries, weeping into Little Bear’s fur. Chime sat on her shoulder, crooning as she groomed the child’s tangled hair with her claws.
For a moment Tris could only stare, appalled. Did Poppy just bring the child out here and leave her to cry alone?
How often had Tris herself done this, crept into a corner to weep, knowing the only ones who cared about her were the animals of the house? She had not lost a mother or an aunt as Glaki had, but time after time she had been passed on to yet another relative. It was overhearing the talk that decided that she and her many strangenesses would be sent to some other family member that had always sent Tris to cry in secret. When Cousin Uraelle, who had kept her the longest, died, Tris had wept not for the mean, stingy old woman, but for the loss of the most permanent home she could remember.
She touched the girl on the shoulder. Glaki flinched against Little Bear, throwing up an arm to protect her face. Gently Tris pressed her arm down. A handprint showed clearly on the girl’s cheek. Poppy had slapped Glaki to silence her.
“It’s just me, Glaki. You saw me yesterday, remember?” Tris kept her voice gentle as she sat on the flagstones of the ground floor gallery. She leaned back against a wooden pillar.
“Mama,” the child mumbled at last. “Aunt Yali. When do they come home?”
Tris drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She knew she wasn’t good with children, though her heart went out to this one. What could she say? What did people say?
She could only know what she would say. She hated people who tried to evade the truth. “They died, Glaki. Mama and Aunt Yali died. They won’t be coming home.”
Fresh tears welled in the girl’s eyes. They spilled over her stained cheeks. “No,” Glaki replied, shaking her head. “No.”
“I’m sorry,” Tris said gently. “Yes.”
Glaki began to sob again, then to wail. Tris bit her lip, trying to decide what was right. In the end it was her knowledge of Sandry, her good-hearted sister, that guided her. Tris sat beside Little Bear and pulled Glaki on to her lap. The little girl fought, straining to get back to the dog.
“Doggie!” she screamed, her face turning beet red.
“It’s Little Bear. That’s his name,” Tris explained, panting as she hauled on the struggling child. “He’s not going anywhere. If you sit with me, he’ll be here, and so will Chime. We must talk, Glaki. You have to learn some hard new lessons. I wish I had someone nice to teach them to you, but you’re stuck with just me.” She finally got the little girl on to her lap. Glaki howled, battered Tris’s chest with her fists, and drummed her heels on the ground. Tris held on grimly, still talking softly. “It isn’t right, what’s happened to your mother and Yali. I hope you grow to be someone incredible, to repay you for all this misery. Why is it, do you suppose, the gods are said to be favouring you when they dump awful things into your lap? Is it because the other explanation, that sorrow comes from accidents and there are no gods doing it to help you be a strong person, is just too horrible to think of? Let’s stick with the gods. Let’s stick with someone being in charge.”
As she continued to speak, rattling along about any topic that came to mind, whether Glaki could understand or not, she held the girl close. Tris was so used to the child’s struggles that she didn’t notice at first when Glaki’s screams began to grow softer, her small body relaxing into Tris’s hold. It was only when Glaki was quietly sucking her thumb, whimpering against Tris’s chest, that the older girl realized she could loosen her grip. Her hands and arms stung from being locked in the same position for so long. She smoothed damp, tumbled curls away from the child’s face. “That’s very good.” She hesitated, then awkwardly kissed Glaki on the forehead. “We can’t let you make yourself sick on top of everything else.”
It was some time before Glaki would let Tris get up without hysterics. Each time the child’s voice rose, Tris would settle back into place. Finally Glaki herself climbed off Tris’s lap.
Edited 2018-08-10 22:14 (UTC)
Age 14: Tris has to be talked out of killing a man
He was three quarters of the way up the wall when the tremors struck. The brick under his feet quivered. Old plaster and mortar dropped away as the waves hit directly under the wall, held there by Tris. With a cry the prathmun fell to the street, into now-liquid ground. It swallowed him up to his hips before Tris shoved all of the force she had released deep into the soil. She jammed it down through cracks and veins, letting it disperse into the earth that had lent it to her for a while.
In the ringing silence that followed, the brick wall grated and dropped. Tris’s winds thrust it back from the Ghost, into the yard it had shielded.
Tris walked down the alley, the dirt reasonably firm under her sensibly shod feet. She reclaimed her protections from ground and buildings, satisfied that she had done them no damage. No one here would die because she’d allowed a place to be shaken past the point where it could stand.
At last she stopped a metre away from the trapped prathmun. He stared at her, sweat crawling down his face.
“You orphaned a little girl twice,” she said quietly, as cold as if she were trapped inside a glacier. “You took two of her mothers. A little girl who never did you harm.” Lightning dropped in fat sparks from her hair to her feet. It lazily climbed back up her plump body in fiery waves. “You left her among strangers who might have thrown her into the street. Never once did you think of her.”
“Never once did anyone think of me!” he snapped back, his eyes black and empty. “Fit to haul dung but not fit to be seen - this place is rotten. If she don’t like the smell of rot, she shouldn’t live here, and neither should you.”
Her lightning blazed as it flowed down her arms, gloving her from fingertip to elbow. “No,” Tris said quietly. “You shouldn’t live.” She put her hands together, then pulled them apart, creating a heavy white-hot thunderbolt.
“No, Dema, let her do it!” The familiar voice was Kethlun’s. “Don’t stop her!”
“For her own sake, she must be stopped,” Niko replied. Tris should have known that Niko would see this piece of the future. There were times when having a seer as a teacher was a pain.
“Tris, give him up,” Dema pleaded. “If you kill him, I’ll have to arrest you and have you executed.”
“No!” argued Keth. “She’s doing Tharios a service. He killed Ira. He killed Yali. Let him cook!”
“Is this what it comes to, Trisana?” Niko called, his normally crisp voice gentle. “When you sank the ships at Winding Circle, you defended your home. If you do this, it’s murder. You will be a murderer by choice.”
“He deserves to die,” she shouted.
“But do you deserve to kill him?” Dema asked quietly. He was much closer to her. “Leave him to the State, Tris. That’s what it’s for. His first debt is to Tharios. Let him pay it.“
She should have just killed the Ghost the moment they arrived, she thought ruefully. Now she was afraid they made sense. She let the lightning trickle into the earth, following the route of her tremors. The molten lava far below the surface wouldn’t mind the extra power.
When the last bit faded, a long, wet nose thrust itself under her palm. Little Bear whined and wagged his tail, nudging her for a scratch behind the ears. “Traitor,” Tris murmured. She knew very well that the dog had helped to track her.
Chime landed gently across her shoulders. There she voiced the ringing chime that was her purr. Tris rubbed the dragon’s head with her fingertips, looking down at the Ghost. “Take him then, Dema,” she said clearly, “but I won’t dig him out for you.”
Age 18: Adopting a wind seer who has spent decades doubting his sanity
Daja caught up to Tris. “It’s my crazy man, isn’t it?” she demanded. “You’ve been watching him like a hawk all day, even when you pretend you’re reading. You’re certain he’s got what you have, aren’t you? Hearing things?”
A blast of wind threw an image over both outer walls into Tris’s eyes: A cow struggled in a bog. Three men tied ropes to her so they could haul the wallowing beast out of danger. Tris whipped her head around in time to see Zhegorz. He stood just downwind of her. “Maybe that, and maybe more,” she said. “Look, will you steer him over by the wall, out of any breezes? I’ll see about getting a room for him.”
“He stays with me.” The girls turned. Briar stood behind them, his hands in his pockets. “You looked at the insides of his wrists, either of you? He stays with someone, and unless you want people talking about your reputations from here to the north shore of the Syth, it’s got to be with me.”
“What’s wrong with his wrists?” Daja wanted to know.
Tris marched over to Zhegorz, who faced into the wind that blew from the cow, his pale eyes wide and fixed. Tris seized his wrists and turned them so she could see the insides. Broad stripes of scar tissue, some old and silver-beige, others recent and reddish-purple, streaked the flesh between his palms and the insides of his elbows.
Zhegorz blinked, trying to see past the vision on the air to the person who handled him so abruptly. Tris yanked him around, turning him until the breeze struck his back, not his eyes. “Briar’s right. You stay with him, Zhegorz. No more of this nonsense,” she said, stabbing a finger into one of the scars. Zhegorz flinched. “Listen to me.” She still didn’t want the others knowing of her latest skill, but she needed to reach this man, to convince him that his visions weren’t the product of madness.
Too bad he didn’t have Niko to tell him that madness is a lot more interesting than rescuing cows, she thought as she dragged Zhegorz into a corner of the yard, away from Briar and Daja. “I see things on the wind, understand?” she asked quietly. She stood with her back to her brother and sister to keep them from reading her lips. “Pictures from places the wind passed over. A moment ago we both saw a cow trapped in mud, and three men trying to free her.” Zhegorz gasped and tried to tug free. Tris hung on to his arm with both hands. “Stop it!” she ordered. “You’re not mad. You’re a seer, with sounds and with seeing, only nobody ever found you out because they were too busy thinking you were mad. Now you have to sort yourself out. You have to decide what part’s magic — are you listening? — what part’s understandable nerves from thinking you were out of your mind, and what part’s had so much healers’ magic applied that it’s muddled everything else about you. I know what you saw because I learned how to see like that. But you never learned it, did you? It was there, from the time you were just a bit younger than me, only the magic sniffers missed it, or your family never even gave you a chance to show you were in your right mind.” She talked fast, trying to get as much sense as she could fit into his ears, past his years of flight, hospitals, medicines, and terror. Slowly, bit by tiny bit, she felt the tight, wiry muscles under her hands loosen, until Zhegorz no longer fought her grip.
“Real?” he whispered, his voice cracking.
“As real as such things get,” Tris told him. “Keep the seeing things part between you and me for now. Briar and Daja already guessed that you can hear like I can, but they don’t know about me seeing things.”
“Why not?” Zhegorz asked simply. “They love you.”
Tris sighed, troubled. “Because the chances of someone learning to see on the winds are tiny. They’ll think I think I’m better than they are.” Seeing the man’s frown, Tris grimaced. “They gave me a hard time all the way here about going to university,” she explained. “And other mages — when they found out I could do it, when so many fail… they decided I was prideful, and conceited. I don’t want Briar and Daja and Sandry to be that way with me. And Briar already said having a credential from Winding Circle isn’t good enough for me. This would just make it worse. You know how family gets, once you turn different.”
Zhegorz nodded. “Maybe you’re too sensitive,” he suggested.
Age 18: Reconnecting with her foster brother, discussion of PTSD
When the other three went upstairs to bed, Briar found her in his room, talking quietly to Zhegorz as she hung onto the man’s bony hands. She looked up at Briar. “He’s afraid to go so close to court.”
Briar sighed. “It’s terrible, when a man has no faith. Did you tell him what you did, that first day at the palace? What you did to the pirate fleet?”
“Pirates?” Zhegorz asked with a wild start that jerked his hands from Tris’s hold. His eyes were so wide with terror that the white showed all the way around. “There are pirates coming?”
Now look what you did, Tris thought at Briar, forgetting his mind was closed to her. I’d just gotten him calmed down.
“Here you go, old man,” Briar said, pouring out a tiny cupful of the soothing cordial he gave Zhegorz for his bad moments. “These pirates were seven years ago, and they are most seriously dead. She did it.”
“You helped,” snapped Tris. “And Sandry, and Daja, and our teachers, and every mage in Winding Circle. And you know I don’t like that story repeated.”
Briar ignored her. “She did it with lightning,” he told his guest, putting the cork back in the bottle. “And when we first got to Dancruan? Some fishing boats were in danger of a storm on the Syth, but Coppercurls here sent a wind to blow them home and another to eat the storm. She likes rescuing folk. So don’t you get yourself all worked up. You’ll hurt her feelings, letting her think she can’t protect you.”
“She didn’t protect you, wherever you were, in the bad place you dream about,” Zhegorz pointed out. He had bolted the cordial as if it were a glass of very nasty tea.
And here I thought I made that stuff taste nice! thought Briar in disgust, trying to ignore what their madman had said. I should’ve given him nasty tea instead of something I worked cursed hard over.
“You dream about it all the time,” Zhegorz insisted. “You toss and turn and yell about blood and Rosethorn and Evvy and Luvo.”
Tris raised her pale brows at him.
Briar was about to tell them both that his dreams were no cider of theirs, but there was something about the way Tris looked at him. He’d forgotten that side of her, that he had always been able to tell her the most horrific things, and she would never laugh, be shocked, or withdraw from him.
Briar slumped to the floor, leaning back against the stone that framed the hearth. The stone was warm, the fire a comforting crackle in his ear. “The emperor of Yanjing tried to conquer Gyongxe,” he muttered at last. “We were at the emperor’s court when we heard, and then we ran for it, Rosethorn and Evvy and me. That’s when we met Luvo, on our way to warn Gyongxe. Luvo’s this… creature, Zhegorz. He lives with Evvy now.”
“The Mother Temple of the Living Circle,” breathed Tris. “It’s in Gyongxe. The one all the other Circle temples look to. Their first and oldest Circle temple.”
Briar nodded. Zhegorz slid down the side of the bed so he, too, could sit on the floor and lean against the bed. It seemed to be his way to comfort Briar. Chime, who had spent suppertime around Tris’s neck, now glided over and settled into Briar’s lap. He stroked the little creature, feeling her cool surfaces against his palms.
“So we fought our way into Gyongxe, and then we fought the emperor, and then we came home,” Briar whispered, closing his eyes. “The pirates was nothin’ to it, Coppercurls.” In his distress he had slipped back into the language of the streets he had left seven years before. “The whole countryside was afire, or so it seemed. The dead… everywhere. The emperor’s army filled the roads for miles, and they didn’t care what they did to folk in the lands they marched through. So sure, I dream about it all the time. I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll be seeing a mind healer when we get home,” Tris said firmly. “I’ve heard of this. People who have been through some terrible thing, it leaves scars where no one can see. The scars hurt, so they dream, and they snap at people for doing things that seem silly compared to the horrors. Sometimes they see and smell the thing all over again.”
“So I’m just some boohoo bleater, looking for a mama because I have bad dreams?” Briar asked rudely, though he didn’t open his eyes. “Looking for a handkerchief everywhere I go so folk will think I’m tragic and interesting?”
“If the scars were on your flesh, would you even ask me those things?” retorted Tris.
There was a long pause. At last Zhegorz said hesitantly, “She’s right.”
“She ’most always is, when it comes to other folk,” replied Briar softly. “I got off lucky. She’s being nice right now.” Inside the magic they shared, he said, I missed you, Coppercurls. With you there, we might’ve conquered Yanjing.
She looked down, her thin swinging braids not quite hiding her tiny smile. She waved a hand in awkward dismissal.
Age 18: All the injuries Tris is going home to whenever she leaves the Barge
The clock had struck two and Daja was drowsing when the bedroom door opened. The healer emerged. She was sweaty and shaky. Her hair straggled out from under the cloth scarf that covered her head. One of her assistants had to help her to stay on her feet; the other carried her medicines.
The healer looks like she battled Hakkoi the Smith God and lost, thought Sandry, rising to her feet. Everyone else stood to see what the woman had to say.
“The last time I treated anyone so badly off, he’d fallen thirty feet down a cliff, and he died.” The healer’s voice was an exhausted croak. “Your friend won’t die. Miraculously, she has five broken ribs, and none of them punctured her lungs. None of the broken bones cut through the skin, a blessing I never looked to get.”
“A very well-crafted curse,” muttered Ambros.
Ealaga glared at him. “How bad is Tris?” she asked.
The healer had looked at Ambros when he said “curse.”
“Ah,” she murmured. “Things become clearer. It explains much.” She sighed.
Sandry beckoned to the assistant who held the woman upright and pointed to her chair. Getting the hint, the young man carefully lowered the healer to the seat. Ealaga whispered to the maid who had stayed up in case anyone needed anything. The girl scampered off.
“Your girl has no punctured organs or skin. She has a broken collarbone, a dislocated shoulder, two small cracks in her skull, a broken cheekbone, one arm broken in two places, a broken wrist, five broken ribs, a dislocated hip, three breaks in her right leg, and a broken ankle on the left. She also has several broken fingers and toes,” the healer said once she’d caught her breath. “It is a miracle, or, if it is a curse, as you say, then it was deliberately constructed to save the girl’s life. There is only one curse-weaver in the empire with that level of skill, and that is all I will say on that topic.”
Sandry, Briar, and Daja exchanged horrified looks. They had all seen their fair share of injuries and healing. Never had they seen anyone who had endured the mauling Tris had.
I’m going to be sick, thought Sandry. She bit the inside of her cheek and forbade her stomach to misbehave.
“I did what I could tonight,” the healer continued. “She has been very well taught — I was able to work inside her power and around it with very little difficulty indeed. It’s always delightful to handle a mage who has been trained by good healers in the art of keeping power controlled. The hip and shoulder are back in their sockets. I was able to heal the ribs and skull completely — they are the most dangerous breaks. She is fortunate that she had no blood collecting inside her skull. I started the healing of the collarbone and jaw, and braced the broken limbs. I have safeguarded her for infection and shock. Tomorrow, when I come, I will bring two colleagues who will help to undo what healing has been done tonight on those breaks I was unable to look after, and begin clean healing for the rest of the broken bones.”
“Begin?” Ambros asked with a frown. Briar was nodding.
“This is not as simple a matter as a single broken arm or leg, good Saghad,” the healer’s male assistant replied at his most polite. “The more injuries the victim endures, the more time is needed for healing. If the healers do not take care, the repair will be weak and the bone will break again. Or scarring will take place and will put the patient’s entire body at risk.”
The senior healer nodded.
“But we were planning to leave for Emelan soon,” Sandry heard herself say.
“My dear Viymese, forgive me,” said Ambros as the maid arrived with tea for everyone. She served the healer first as Ambros continued, “This is my cousin, Sandrilene, Clehame fa Landreg, who is also Saghada fa Toren in Emelan. These are Viymese Daja Kisubo and Viynain Briar Moss. Your patient in there is Viymese Trisana Chandler.”
“Clehame.” The healer bowed her head, but did not try to get to her feet. She impatiently waved away an offer of cakes from the maid. “The girl — Tris? — she tried to tell me she was leaving soon as well. I let her know she won’t be leaving that bed for at least a week — more, if she tasks herself.”
Age 18: Sisters talk about their romance issues (CW: bullying)
A silver goblet flew at her head from the shadows. Tris ducked out of the way. She knew a warning shot when she saw one. Preparing for a flying piece of metal that would hit her, she twirled on one foot. The still breezes that were as much a part of her clothing as her shift twirled hard around her and continued to twirl. They made an airy shield that would knock the next missile aside.
Daja’s power shone from the bedroom. Determined, Tris went to the door. “If you were just going to be a brute to me, I would have stood for it, because when itch comes right down to scratch, you Traders don’t know how to act,” she said cruelly. Tris knew from early experience that sharpness spurred Daja harder than kindness. “But you had no right to frighten poor old Zhegorz out of what wits he’s got. You’re some kind of talisman for him, and when you tell him to go away, he thinks it means he can’t travel with us. Now you get off your behind and go tell him you wouldn’t think of leaving him!”
“Later!” Daja cried. She lay in bed on her belly, raising her face from her pillows to talk. “I’ll talk to him later, Tris, and I won’t talk to you at all right now, so go away! And insulting my Trader blood won’t work, either, you rat-nosed, pinch-coin, gold-grubbing merchant.”
Tris was about to blister the other girl when she caught the ragged tones in Daja’s voice. With a frown she walked over and plumped herself on the bed, reining in her whirling breezes until they were still again. Daja turned her face away from Tris too slowly.
“Oh, dear,” Tris said, understanding. Daja’s eyes were puffy and wet. Her nose ran. Tris dug out a handkerchief and stuffed it into Daja’s hand. When Daja tried to pull the hand away, Tris grabbed her wrist.
Did you really think she would come? Tris asked through their magic. Give up her own place at court, at the empress’s side, to live on your generosity? Rizu’s proud, Daja. She has every right to be. As Mistress of the Wardrobe she decides what every guardsman and servant in the palace wears. She chooses the imperial wardrobe. What would she have in Summersea compared to all that?
But I love her! cried Daja, accepting the renewed connection between them without a struggle. I thought she loved me!
Tris sighed and patted Daja’s heaving back. At least she didn’t laugh at you when she found out how you felt, she remarked. At least she didn’t turn you into a joke for her friends. And she told you something about yourself you really ought to know, that you’re beautiful, and worth loving. Even for just a summer.
All the boys I went with in Summersea after we came back from Kugisko said I was cold, Daja replied wearily. I didn’t like kissing them. It was nothing special, like all the books say love is. Then, when I liked kissing Rizu… it was such a blessing. I’m not cold. I was just kissing the wrong people. Even living with Lark and Rosethorn, I never thought that maybe I should try kissing girls. None of them drew me. Have you ever...?
Tris shook her head. No interest, she explained. And the boys don’t want to kiss a fat girl like me. They’re also scared of me. That doesn’t help.
They sat in silence for a long time, Tris simply rubbing Daja’s shoulders. Finally Daja pushed herself up and turned over to sit on the bed. “They made a joke of you?” she asked roughly, and blew her nose.
“Twice,” Tris answered softly. “After that, I tried not to let boys know when I liked them. One time the boy set up a meeting in a garden. Then he and his friends dumped honey on me. They told me even a gallon of honey wasn’t enough sweets to satisfy a tub like me.”
“I called the rain,” replied Tris. “To get the honey off me. All right. To run them off, too. But I’ve been trying to be good about it. About the weather.”
“And the other boy?” asked Daja, getting up to splash water on her face.
“They made fun of him until he came to hate me,” Tris said with a shrug. “At least both times we left the towns, eventually.” She could feel the heat in her face. If there had been light in here, Daja would have seen her humiliated blush. “I dove into my studies after that and tried not to notice any boys. Most of them just aren’t like Briar, you know. He’ll drive you to commit murder, but the only part of him that’s hidden is the good part. And he isn’t nasty to any female, have you noticed? Not to the little farm children or the old grannies who want to tell him how beautiful they were in their prime.”
“That’s because he knows Rosethorn would pull him out by the roots and throw him on the compost heap if he was,” Daja said. Both girls looked at each other and giggled softly at the image of Briar thrown out with the rotten leaves of cabbage and the heaps of dead weeds.
When they had quieted, Daja suddenly kissed Tris on the cheek. “I had forgotten that Sandry wasn’t my only saati,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
Tris, aged nine, was hiding in a shadowed staircase clutching her knees to her chest.
A hushed argument echoed through the hallway, voices harsh and vehement.
"I don't care if you offer to pay us for her keep, Valden, something is seriously wrong with your daughter! You know that full well, or you wouldn't have sent her away by her fourth birthday!"
Tris bit her lower lip, hard, as a man retorted, "What are we supposed to do with her now, then?"
A third voice chimed in, a woman this time, "I don't care, but she is out this door tomorrow regardless of whether you make arrangements. You've burned through all your credit with the other members of House Chandler finding someone willing to take the little monster for a few months or a year at a time; we won't be stuck with her just because you've finally run dry!"
Tears were running down Tris's cheeks now. Had her parents finally run out of favors to call in? Would she be out on the streets next? And how long did they expect her to last there, when even family couldn't seem to tolerate her despite Tris doing every chore she could possibly manage?
"Send her to Stone Circle," suggested the first man. "The temple's not allowed to turn anyone away, are they? She wouldn't be House Chandler's problem anymore. Not if you tell them you never want her back."
Wind howled through the staircase as Tris pressed her hands to her mouth to keep from making a sound. Hail began pummeling the stairs around her, and from below, a trio of shouts erupted. The three adults, one of them with hair to match Tris's red curls, ran to the base of the stairs and looked up at the little girl who met their gazes in stubborn, defiant silence, eyes red from crying.
The redheaded man looked back and forth between his cousins and his daughter, then nodded in acquiescence. "I'll talk to Darra tonight."
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stormandwind) wrote2018-03-13 04:22 pm![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
lastvoyages
Age 6: Cousin Uraelle's house (cw: for child labor/verbal abuse)
“Trisana, you aren’t listening to me!” her cracked, sharp, voice sounded. “You beggar me with your extravagance! I’m just a poor widow, with barely enough to live on, and you eating me out of house and home! No more beef at this table, not at these prices! And a copper penny for turnips? You didn’t bargain enough! You—“
The counters were too high for her to reach. Once she finished putting away most of the shopping, Tris brought a chopping board over to the table and started cutting the aforementioned turnips as the tirade continued, making no answer aside from the occasional monosyllable of acknowledgement.
That is, until the complaints came around to, "And you didn't mop the entryway before you left. No books for two days!"
Her head snapped up from what she was doing, and Tris protested plaintively, "No, please! I'll do it as soon as I'm finished here!"
"Make it a week for talking back! Rude, ungrateful..."
Age 10: Overhearing speculation on what's wrong with her and meeting her teacher
" - I know that you're already on your way to Winding Circle, and I need you to take this girl with you. Is that such a hard request to grant, Master Niko?"
"Send her later in the spring, when the trade caravans leave for Emelan." The light, crisp, male voice sounded annoyed. "I'm on a very special task these days. If I have to change my plans suddenly, this child will only get in my way."
"We can't keep her. Her parents swore that she was tested for magic and found to have none, but..." The Dedicate Superior's voice trailed off. Briskly she continued, "I don't know if she's possessed by a spirit, or part elemental, or carrying a ghost, to be at the center of such uproar, and I don't care. Winding Circle is far better equipped to handle a case like hers. They have the learning, and dedicates who are more open-minded with regard to unique cases. They have the best mages south of your own university. They will know what to do with her."
Hearing all this, Tris felt sick. Spirit, elemental, or ghost-burdened, was she? And what kind of fate awaited her? Some people learned to manage such creatures within themselves; others got rid of them. Far too many ended up homeless and crazy, wandering the streets, or locked up in an attic or cellar, or even dead. She swayed, feeling ill - and then clenched her fists. She was sick of it! Sick of being gotten rid of, sick of being discussed, sick of not being helped!
With a thundering roar, hailstones battered the roof and walls around her, hitting wood and stone like a multitude of hammers. They shattered the glass panes of the window in the outer office to spray across the floor like icy diamonds. Clumsily she knelt to pick up a handful.
The door of the Dedicate Superior's office swung open, revealing a slender man in his middle fifties. He stood there, hands on hips, black eyes under thick black brows fixed on Tris.
From the floor she glared at him, hailstones trickling from her fingers. "It's rude to stare," she snapped, not over her fury.
"You were tested for magic?" he asked, his clipped voice abrupt.
Why did this stranger taunt her? Her family would have put up with her oddities, if only she'd been proved to have magic, which might be turned to the profit of House Chandler. "By the most expensive mage in Ninver, if you must know. And he said I haven't a speck of it."
The stranger turned and looked at the woman in the yellow habit behind him. "Honored Wrenswing, I've changed my mind. I will be very happy to escort Trisana to Winding Circle Temple in Emelan." He smiled thinly and reached a hand to Tris. "I am pleased to meet you, young lady."
She ignored the outstretched hand. Getting up, she shook out her skirts. "You'll change your mind before long," she retorted. "Everyone does."
Age 10: Settling in at Discipline Cottage and meeting future family
"So are you, I see." Sandry's wave took in the other girl's clothes.
Daja smoothed her crimson tunic. "I-"
"Traders mourn in red?" asked a scornful voice. Briar stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. "What kind of barbarian thing is that?"
"Red is for blood," explained Daja. She wasn't offended by his tone. Kaqs were ignorant. She couldn't expect one to be as courteous as real people. "Even a-" she started to say, and changed her term when she caught Sandry's glare. "Even a mud-roller like you should know that much." In Tradertalk, she told the other girl, "And he is a kaq."
"I haven't spent my life with my fingers in my ears," Briar remarked in clumsy, but plain, Tradertalk. "And I'm not stupid." Switching back to Imperial, he added, "Beats me how you people don't break teeth on that gabble."
Daja showed him all of hers in a big, warning grin. "Our teeth are stronger than yours, is why."
Sandry interrupted before the boy could answer. "If we're going to share the same house, shouldn't we try to get along?"
"Don't bother with him," Daja advised. "He's just rude and ignorant."
"Not as ignorant as you thought a moment ago," he teased.
Behind him, Tris announced, "I'm starved. When do we eat?"
"Midday's on the table!" called Lark from below.
Tris bolted for the stair. Briar raced to catch up, but she beat him to it.
"We'd better watch him," Daja told Sandry, closing the door of her room as they left it. Sandry frowned at her, puzzled. Daja tapped the web between her right thumb and forefinger. "He wears the double X - twice a thief. He'd best stay clear of my things."
A dark head appeared in the opening where the stair pierced the floor - Briar had not gone all the way down. "You think I'm a sluggart, kid? Everyone knows Traders curse their boodle, so them that nick it meet a terrible end. I'm smarter'n that."
"Nick?" Sandry asked, stepping onto the ladder. "What's that?"
Briar jumped down, out of her way. "Steal. You nick it, you steal it."
"Wonderful," Tris drawled. She was already downstairs and cutting slices from a loaf of coarse bread. Lark set food on the wooden table as Niko lifted a pitcher of milk from the cold-box set in the floor. "We'll learn thief-slang."
"At least you'll have learned something,' stead of being just another bleater all your life," retorted the boy.
Lark smiled at him. "Briar, would you tell Rosethorn it's midday? Keep after her so she won't forget to come in."
He backed up a step. Just eating supper and breakfast with Rosethorn had given him a wary respect for her. "What if she bites me?"
Lark glanced at him with gentle impatience, as if he should have known her reply already. "Bite back."
Age 10: Her first hope of control
She looked out through the cave entrance, at the clouds. "Everyone I ever trusted sent me away," she said flatly.
For a while he said nothing. Tris, glancing at him, saw a look of pity that made her blush with embarrassment. At last he reached over, squeezed her fingers, and let go. "Then I will just have to hope that you change your mind someday. In the meantime, you're going to learn meditation."
"Why?" she demanded. "The others don't have to."
"They start tomorrow. As for you, why now?" His eyes held hers; she tried to look away, and couldn't.
"Things happen when you get angry, Tris. First hail, now lightning - if you don't learn to control yourself, you will kill someone."
She felt like there wasn't enough air to breathe. Was he saying she was possessed by a spirit, or not entirely human, as they'd thought back in Capchen? There were people who attracted spirits they couldn't control - every child knew those stories. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life in a cage. "How do you know?"
"Do you know we mages choose the name we bear, once we are trained?"
She shook her head.
"We do. My last name is 'Goldeye.' It means that I see things that are hidden to most people. That's how I know. And I tell you this. If you learn to meditate - if you learn to control your mind - you will be able to keep things from happening when you are upset."
She tore her glance away from his and clenched her hands. A chance to stop people blaming her for what she couldn't help? "What do I do?" she croaked.
Age 10: Trapped underground, combining with her foster siblings to survive (voices only)
"Another quake?" interrupted Briar.
"Mostly a quake," Tris replied. "And - maybe this is odd, but - it feels like there's magic all wound up in it. We have some time, but it's coming. Daja, I'm not sure the thing you did for us will hold."
For a moment none of them spoke. It was overwhelming news.
"We'd better do something fast," Daja said. "It's that or die. Tris, can you try anything with what's coming? Can you turn it around, or stop it? No, forget I said to stop it. I know you can't."
"All that power has to go somewhere," Tris replied. "And there's magic in what's coming - that complicates things. I don't know what I'm doing with my own magic, let alone someone else's."
Daja sighed. "Look, we must try. I'll find metal-"
"Maybe I can get plants to help us," said Briar.
Three sets of lungs inhaled. Briar let his mind branch through the earth, feeling a million traces of green in the distance. He strained to reach them and failed. Daja found traces of iron, copper, and lead scattered through the soil. She called them together, hoping to make a metal cage around her box. They shuddered, wanting to obey but unable to.
Daja opened her eyes, gasping. "I need heat," she said. "I can't shape metals till I run them through a forge. Where do I find such heat, or control it?"
"Fire the coal?" Briar asked.
Tris was ill. Tension grew in the stones as the wave of strange force thundered their way. Her stomach was protesting. I can't throw up now! she thought fiercely. "Don't burn the coal, unless you want us to go with it!" she snapped. "We can't use real fire. Below, where volcanoes are born - it's heat. It's the essence of fire. Daja, if you control that heat - if you keep it off the coal-"
"My box - our protection. It's outside the coal right on top of us, so that's safe. I can keep it from the rest of the coal in this ground - I hope," replied Daja, coughing. She inhaled and sent her magic out with her exhale, reaching for the heat that Tris had described. Soon she came back. "I can't," she told them, trying not to think of time running out. "My reach won't go that far."
Tris sighed. "Mine can, but I don't know anything about iron."
"I need to reach far, too," Briar said. "I'm just missing the plants' roots." In spite of himself, his voice quivered. He was getting scared. "I wish there was a way we could combine this fancy magic stuff."
Sandry had listened, shame and terror filling her mind. She was letting her friends down, sitting by useless when they were in danger. It had been the same when Pirisi was killed. Would she let that happen again? Couldn't she help?
Daja and Briar both needed Tris, and Tris needed strength. What a tangle of knots! she thought.
She gasped. "Waitwaitwait! I think - I think-" She grubbed in her workbag, digging past rolags, scissors, skeins of finished yarn...
A packet met her fingers. She pulled the contents out: her first spun thread. She hooked a finger around the shaft of her spindle and dragged it out as well.
"Are you still thinking?" Daja inquired.
"We need to help each other, right?" She put the spindle down and gripped the thread. "I have a way to make us stronger. Daja, I'm passing you a string with four lumps in it. Take the first lump, hold it, and put some of you in it - your magic, your memories, I don't care what as long as it's yours, understand?"
"I think so," Daja said. A hand gripped her arm, and a coil of thread was pressed into her fingers. She found a lump close to the end and hung onto it.
"Give the long end to Tris, who does the same thing with the second lump. Keep it in your hand! Briar gets the third lump; I'll get the last. When part of you is in it, ask the gods' blessing, and give it back to me. Quick, now!"
Age 10: Betrayed by yet another family member; cw: assault, discussion of murder & slavery
Briar ducked behind a tree. He’d let Tris do the talking. Let the maggot think they were alone, and he might speak truthfully.
Aymery lurched away from the wall. “What are you doing here?”
Despite the heavy snoring all around them, the cousins spoke quietly, as if they might wake someone. “Aymery, please... You aren’t—” Tris swallowed hard. “It looks bad, Aymery. It really does.”
“You don’t have to worry,” he said earnestly as she approached. “I’ll protect you. Nothing will happen to you.”
“What about my friends? What happens to them?” Tris stopped a foot away from her cousin.
“I’ll do my best, and - you’ll just have to trust me, that’s all. In case you forgot, I tried to get you to leave, remember?”
“You lied even then, didn’t you? About my father being ill?”
“I didn’t want you here for this. But you were mule-headed, and I never got another chance to talk you around. Just stick close to me, and I’ll speak for you to Enahar. He’s their chief mage.“
“Why are you working for them? They’re thieves, and murderers—”
Aymery sighed. “I owe them money, Tris, more than you could imagine. It was gambling, and - and other things. Enahar gave me a loan, but there was a price. That’s how the world is.” Going to the gate, he wrapped his hands around one of the locking bars and started to lift.
Briar cursed. This was cutting things much too fine. Daja! Sandry! he cried. We need help and we need it fast!
Tris ignored the boy’s call. “This is a temple community” she reminded Aymery. “What kind of loot do you expect to find?”
He stopped pushing on the heavy bar to stare at her. “Don’t you know anything!” he asked “There are spell-books here, centuries old, which teach things like making diamonds from coal and rubies from blood. Bespelled weapons, devices - they have a mirror that will let even a non-mage spy on anyone at all. And mages are the highest priced slaves anywhere - there’s all kinds of ways to keep a mage that won’t hurt his ability to do magic.”
“I see they worked on you” she said flatly.
Aymery sighed. “Yes, they do. See this?” He tugged at his earring. “It was made with my blood and with Enahar’s. It binds me to him. If he thinks I’m about to betray him, he can use it to kill me. And don’t tell me to get rid of it. I can’t, not so long as I’m alive.” His smile was crooked. “I tried.”
The winds rose as Tris swallowed hard. “Can’t you turn it on him?”
Aymery shook his head. “I’ll just bear with it - he’ll free me when my debt’s paid. This raid should do it, with plenty left over.“ One locking bar was up. One remained. Someone outside pounded on the gate.
Tris grabbed Aymery, dragging him back. The growing winds made her skirts whip. “You can’t do it!”
Unsheathing his knife, Briar hurled the blade straight at Aymery. A puff of angry air knocked it away.
Tris whirled, her hair flaring out like a halo. “Stop it!” she yelled, furious.
Briar searched two snoring guards, and found their knives. “He’s not listening!” he shouted. “And that isn’t the Fire temple guard waiting outside, is it, Aymery?” For answer the young mage punched Tris, knocking her back several feet. She hit the
ground and lay there, stunned.
The gate exploded. Aymery went flying, landing not too far from Briar.
Age 10: Wrecking a pirate ship; cw: slavery, death
Tris stretched out an incorporeal magical hand. The lightning bolt that had stayed nearby while Enahar taunted her now settled into her grip. To it Sandry fed the power of the spindle that had made the four into one. Briar added the green strength of stickers and thorns. From Daja came the white blaze of the harbor chain.
Tris pointed to Enahar's shields. Strike, she whispered.
The bolt split the air, giving birth to thunder. The shields, and Enahar's ship, exploded.
Shadow fingers locked around Tris, dragging her from Niko's hold.
If you want me so badly, you may go with me! the dying mage snarled. He clutched her tight, hauling the girl into darkness.
...
Tris yanked clear of Enahar as he faded to nothing. She rose from the pit he had dragged her into, until she found herself drifting on the sea's magical currents. Going back this way might take awhile. She was too weak to move higher and steal a ride on breeze-back, but the tide would bring her home.
Floating, she looked around, and found horror. Overhead patches of battlefire burned on the surface, setting the remains of wrecked ships on fire. Other ships were in motion, trying to move out into the open sea, away from Winding Circle. Bodies floated everywhere, tangled in debris, some of them in flames. The dead drifted in dozens to the sea’s floor, weighted down by chains. Some of them were in pieces; some were burned. Some had been alive when they entered the water, and their faces were masks of panic.
The galley slaves, she realized. They had no way to free themselves. How many of them had she killed? And how many were guilty of nothing but being unable to escape - or fight back - when pirates came to call?
Power - Lark’s - found her drifting among the dead. Encircling her like a net, it brought her home to her body. She heard cheering, and opened her eyes. The other three children caught her as her knees wobbled, and she staggered. “What’s the fuss about?” she asked through lips that felt swollen. Up here she could see the wreckage, survivors and bodies; they had begun to wash up on the beach. I can’t take any more, she thought, and closed her eyes.
Age 10: Sibling teasing, and Tris as a mama bird squeamish about bugs
“Rosethorn says to start giving him some of these,” he informed Tris, offering her the container.
“Rosethorn?” Tris called.
“That’s his natural food,” was the reply from the workshop. “He won’t survive when you set him free if you don’t start him on this now.”
Briar removed the lid of the dish with a flourish. Tris looked, and shrank back: inside squirmed one or two earthworms, a handful of grubs and a small white caterpillar. Little Bear stood on his hind legs to peer into the dish. Grabbing his collar, Daja hung on, in case the pup decided it was time to try bird food. Shriek, still under the handkerchief on his nest-box, squalled.
“Drop them in his nest,” Tris suggested to Briar.
“Can’t. Rosethorn says they gotta go in his beak, same as the rest.” Briar offered a small pair of metal tongs in the size that ladies used to pluck their eyebrows. “These’ll help. Come on, bird-dam - he wants his supper.”
“I hate bugs,” insisted the girl. ‘They’re— Shurri defend me, they wiggle.“
“Come on, merchant-girl,” said Daja with a grin. “You faced pirates, an earthquake, Rosethorn - what’s wrong with a bug or two? Did she get any locusts?” the Trader asked Briar. “They’re better fried, but still good when they’re fresh.”
Tris gagged.
“Nothing that flies is in there, or it’d be gone by now,” Briar said. “Get to work, Four-Eyes. We haven’t got till the end of time.”
“Will you do it?” Tris begged Sandry. “You’re not afraid of anything.”
Sandry tucked her hands behind her back. “I’m not his mama,” she replied with an evil grin.
“Neither am I!” cried Tris.
Briar put the tongs in her hand and wrapped her fingers around them.
“The caterpillar is crawling out,” remarked Daja. She flicked it back into the dish.
“You do it!” Eagerly Tris thrust the tongs at her. “You like bugs!”
Daja grinned and stepped back. “Sandry’s right. I’m not his mother either.”
None of them but Little Bear had paid attention to the nest-box as the handkerchief cover bumped, thrashed and finally slid off. Its inhabitant climbed out. Almost a fledgling, Shriek was now three inches long from head to rump, with another two inches of tail. He was still in pin-feathers, but his black eyes were alert and wide open. He waddled across the table, yelling.
The dog fled. The four children watched Shriek.
“Maybe he’ll eat from the dish,” suggested Daja. She thrust it into his way.
Shriek walked around it without once shutting up, headed for Tris. When she
stretched her hand out to him, he pecked one finger hard.
“Ow! Shriek—”
He screamed - and pecked - again. Tris backed up.
Shriek came on and dropped off the edge of the table. Sandry and Tris banged into each other in their rush to catch him, while the bird - cradled in Sandry’s skirt - continued to scream. When Tris gathered him up, he continued to peck her. She kept her hands cupped around him, wincing at the pain. “That beak is sharp” she
complained.
“Anything for peace and quiet.” Picking up the tongs, Briar selected a worm and held it over Shriek. The nestling gave Tris a last jab and sat up in her hands, opening his beak wide. Briar dropped the worm in. Shriek swallowed. He appeared to think about what he’d just eaten.
“Well, that’s better, anyway,” Sandry remarked with a sigh.
Shriek screamed.
“My turn.” Daja took the tongs and offered the caterpillar to the bird. This Shriek bit in two, allowing her to keep half while he gulped down the rest. Once the titbit was in his belly, he snatched the rest out of the tongs.
Sandry picked up an earthworm with her fingers. Shriek accepted this offering as he had the caterpillar, eating it in neat bites.
“Your turn, mama.” Briar drew the nest-box over so Tris could put her charge back in his bed. Shriek squalled.
Slowly, gingerly, Tris picked a grub up with the tongs, wincing as her firm hold crushed the sacrifice. She positioned the tongs over the nestling’s gaping beak, nd
dropped the grub in.
Everyone applauded. Shriek blinked, sighed and settled down for a nap.
Age 11: Two grown men fight over who gets Tris as an assistant
"Tris," Niko said, "eat breakfast quickly, please. We're riding to Summersea."
"One moment." Crane looked as if he'd been caught by surprise. "Why her? Her vision-skills aren't as strong as yours-"
"Thanks ever so," Tris mumbled, pouring tea for herself.
"I can make far better use of her," persisted Crane. "There is work to do as we await your results."
"You cannot make better use of her," Niko said sharply, dark eyes glittering. "I will have to do a past-visualization working at some point. For it I require her strength and stubbornness. An extra pair of eyes will not come amiss, nor her ability to control water."
"She is a clear and accurate note-taker," protested Crane. "She thinks about the notes she is given. I made infinitely more progress yesterday, with her and Rosethorn and the boy, than I had until then."
Rosethorn flapped a hand as if she fanned herself. "Spare my blushes," she murmured. Briar snorted.
"I do not begrudge the acknowledgment of credit where it is due," replied Crane loftily. "We have a good team. Breaking it up now is most ill-advised."
"Find another scribe," Niko snapped. "I'll have the duke send his, if necessary-"
"Is this what it'll be like when I'm older and boys are fighting for the chance to kiss my hand?" Tris murmured to Sandry. The noble giggled.
"I do not want a ducal scribe; I want this girl. May I remind you-"
"I will not go into the sewers without her!" Niko barked.
Everyone stared at him. Tris turned white. "Sewers?" she squeaked.
"The disease spreads as the water level in the sewers rises and damaged pipes leak into wells. It's plain the two are connected," Niko said. "If we are to go there without drowning, I need Tris. If I am to have power to work the spells that reveal the past and to follow the trail to whatever mage concocted this- horror-I will need Tris. No one else will do."
"Not the sewers," whispered the redhead, trembling. "They're dirty."
"I know," replied Niko, his voice sharp.
For a long moment, no one said a word. Finally Crane sighed. "May she return to me when you are done?"
"I don't want to go," complained Tris. "Can't I stay with Crane and Rosethorn?"
"We must," Niko retorted. "Eat your breakfast."
"I'm not hungry."
"Then change into old clothes. We need to do this now."
no subject
He actually searches her out at lunchtime, bringing with him a couple of bars of chocolate and a six pack of beer. He places them on the table in front of her. ]
Kids are not tools.
[ is the only explanation he gives. ]
no subject
Tris pulls out her communicator and looks to see what scene Mick got before she answers aloud. It isn't the one she expected based on his response. She sounds somehow both stubborn and mildly confused when she replies, but not angry.
"Niko cares about me. The man who taught me how to control my power and told me there's nothing wrong with me was allowed to ask favors. He and Crane both knew I hate sitting idle. I go mad with nothing useful to do. I just don't like getting filthy."
She pauses a moment before admitting, "I was a tool or a threat rather than a child for the first ten years of my life. I know what it looks like, and that wasn't it."
no subject
"I've seen too many kids not allowed to be children."
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Tris folds her arms in front of her. "I wasn't allowed to be a kid long before Niko met me. There's a limit to how much of that growing up can be undone. Niko was the first person to look at me as a child in years, but he wasn't going to watch people die just because he and I were both squeamish. If he'd drowned because I refused to accompany him, I'd have lost my teacher and been stuck in a plague ridden city with no cure in sight." Niko hated going down there even more than Tris did.
"The thing about my magic is that it's tied to my emotions. He had to drill control and ethics into me or I'd kill someone every time I'm angry. Sometimes that meant telling me what to do. There's only so much leeway you can give a girl who causes lightning strikes and hailstorms every time she gets upset. I don't have the luxury of being careless. I never did. And unlike my birth family, Niko always put my well being first."
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"A bit of chaos is healthy sometimes though." He still firmly believes that. "That tight control sounds like someone else I know, and he didn't have it drilled into him in a good way."
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"Not the kind of chaos that means I demolish buildings if I ever get drunk." In other words, she won't be touching those beers. She does reach for some of the chocolate, though. "Thank you."
As she unwraps it, she adds, "Control was the best thing Niko could possibly have given me. I'd been out of control and terrified of myself for as long as I could remember. Finally being able to stop things from happening was wonderful."
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"Healthier than the alternative. I can lose my temper now. It's safe to do that, because I can keep a grip on my power when I do. Barring floods. I'm working on further precautions for those." She grimaces, because Mick has seen what floods do to her, that time Eliot had to intervene to keep her from killing him.
The second part of that surprises her, though. Tris tilts her head. "She's my foster mother. I ended up with her when I was ten. We live together on the Barge."
She didn't actually realize that their connection wasn't well known to anyone who had been on board for a long time.
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"She was my little sister in a breach." He offers as an explanation as to why he cares.
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"I know. She told me." And the look she gives Mick is a long, considering one, because if she has trouble trusting him in general, she certainly struggles more to trust him with a member of her family.
"Neither of us does well at letting go after breaches," she says after a moment, in as neutral a tone as she can manage. It's the closest she's letting herself come to warning Mick, even though she wants to. Rosethorn's feelings stay tangled up with the people she loved in alternate lives, and Tris can't stand anyone having that kind of grasp on her mother unless they're going to treat her properly.
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Tris pauses a moment, not sure how much Rosethorn would be willing to share. Finally, she goes ahead and tells him, "You were worried about me being used as a tool, but I wasn't. Not the way Rosethorn was. I was an object to be afraid of. But she doesn't stop caring just because she wasn't quite herself in that breach, or because she never wanted another brother in the first place."
The unspoken don't hurt her is still there, just as obvious as before.
"The same way I never wanted another set of birth parents, but Jean and Cold still mean something to me." Rosethorn wasn't the only person who came out of that breach with a mess of mixed feelings and new connections.
warn, implied child abuse
And part of him is happy. The part that had been Rose's big brother is happy that she still cares. And furious that Tris implied he might hurt her.
He turns to look around the room, it is easier than to face Tris and all the complicated emotions. "Don't worry." He finally admits. He has no plans to hurt Rosethorn.
Re: warn, implied child abuse
"No, it doesn't," Tris agrees grimly. She didn't mind her family in the last breach, because it was familiar. She was born to a family that didn't approve of what she was, and Erskine stole her away before they could reject her completely. It was like her real life, only gentler. Being born to parents who wanted her, though... the breach with Jean and Cold was the one she's struggled with most, by far.
She hesitates a second, then says, "Good." She'll trust his word for now, not that she has much choice in who Rosethorn chooses to let into her life. That doesn't mean she'll ever be anything less than prepared to make him regret it if he ever breaks that promise.
Tris is far too observant to miss the look on his face when she mentioned Cold. Circling back to the subject unprompted, she tells Mick, "I don't expect anything of him, but he was a far better father than my real one. I made sure he knew that."
Re: warn, implied child abuse
Re: warn, implied child abuse
Tris gives Mick an unimpressed look. "Were you not listening when I said that I didn't expect anything of him? I'm not looking for a father. Mine disowned me when I was nine, and I'm just fine without, thanks ever so. But he deserved to know he was a good one."
She thanked him for not giving her more issues with family than she already had, actually. And she can't just suddenly stop caring about him now that she's started.
Re: warn, implied child abuse
"He would make a good dad, but I am not sure he wants to be one." He frowns. He isn't sure about sharing Len with someone with someone who dislikes him so much even if it just as friends. In some ways, he wishes it was just him and Len against the world the way it used to be.
"And you look like you've done well without a father, sounds to me like he didn't deserve you anyway."
Re: warn, implied child abuse
"I'm not trying to be his daughter," even if she has no intention of backing out of his life again. Tris very deliberately refrains from mentioning that she thinks Odd is more of a danger there than she is. But Cold clearly cares about him, so Mick had better stay out of things where Odd is concerned.
"Neither of my parents deserved me. My foster family does." Tris cares a lot about Rosethorn, for very obvious reasons.
Re: warn, implied child abuse
"Good." He gets up, grabbing the beers since she's said she doesn't want them and then moves to let her eat in peace.
Age 14: Two lightning mages play in a thunderstorm
Here came another bolt, three-pronged, thunder on its heels. It struck Tris squarely, all three prongs twining around her. She held up her arms; she laughed as the bolt clung to her without vanishing, a white-hot ladder to the clouds. Several of her braids exploded from their ties, the hair in them wrapping around the lightning that secured her to the sky. Oddly enough, the rest of her hair stayed where it was, unbudging, locked in place with pins. Keth’s rescuers told him that his hair had been standing straight up when he was found. Why did some of Tris’s hair move, but not the rest?
It was her mage’s kit. Suddenly he believed that she held other forces ready for use in her many braids. She had not been joking when she had described the range of her power. Niko had said nothing that day, not because he liked the joke Tris played on Keth, but because she told the literal truth.
I’m dead, he thought helplessly. And all thanks to a cross-grained fourteen-year-old.
Chime’s claws bit into Keth’s breeches, forcing him to yelp and straighten his legs. Free of the bowl of his lap and arms, the glass dragon took flight, swooping and soaring around the trapped branch of lightning that still clung to Tris.
Keth stared. Inside Chime he saw a skeleton of silver. Around it twined veins that flickered and rippled like lightning.
Little Bear had seen enough. The big dog scrambled to the door and into the house, tail between his legs.
The bolt that held Tris shrank. It wasn’t dying, Keth realized. It was soaking into the hair that his young teacher had freed of its pins. It grew thinner and thinner, until it was gone. The braids that had absorbed it shimmered.
An immense fist pounded Keth on the head. He fell to his knees, staring at his hands. They blazed — he blazed — with lightning. He groped his scalp, and found something stronger and far hotter than the power in the globe he’d made for Dema. A bolt of lightning had struck his head, in the same place the last bolt had struck. His brain fizzed, his eyes filled with a glory of white fire that trickled down his throat, into his belly, through his arms and legs. In that splendid moment Keth saw that all things had some lightning in them. Physical matter did not reject lightning; it was simply overwhelmed by it, as a teardrop was overwhelmed by the ocean.
Lightning struck objects because it was drawn to the ghost of itself within them.
Except there was no ghost of lightning inside Keth: he had the true thing. He drank the power in like a thirsty man drinks water and, like Tris, raised his arms to call even more to him.
Later, as they staggered down into the house, he found the voice to croak, “You promised you’d protect me.”
“I did,” she replied, her voice as rough as his. “I saw that your power was calling to the lightning, and I made sure that you weren’t hit by so much you’d panic.”
“You made me think you’d—” he began.
She interrupted him. “What? Wrap you in a cocoon of magic? In a nice safe blanket? I would have done so, had there been the need. There wasn’t. It’s my job to know these things, remember? I wasn’t about to lose my very first student because he didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain.”
They had reached Keth’s door before he’d summoned the energy to say, “You are a wicked girl.”
Tris shrugged. “So I’ve been told. I’ve learned to live with the shame of it.” She looked at Little Bear, who huddled in front of Keth’s door. “Come on, Bear. Lightning’s done.” She turned her sharp gaze on Keth.
“Answer me truly — have I done you a disservice?”
It was his turn to shrug. He hung his head for good measure. “You know you didn’t.”
“I knew. I wanted to make certain that you did, too.” Before Keth could jerk away, Tris stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. A spark jumped between them. They both grinned. “If you have any leaks, put a big pot under them,” she warned. “It’ll rain all tonight and all tomorrow. Not my doing — this storm built up a lot of power while it was stuck in the east, and coming this way has made it stronger. I hope you’ve got a hat to wear to the shop tomorrow.”
Though he wasn’t sure if he would like the answer, Keth heard himself ask, “How do you know so much about it?”
Tris grinned, waved, and left him without a reply. Chime, riding on her shoulder, flapped her glass wings in farewell.
Age 14: Tris can't resist adopting a lonely little girl
For a moment Tris could only stare, appalled. Did Poppy just bring the child out here and leave her to cry alone?
How often had Tris herself done this, crept into a corner to weep, knowing the only ones who cared about her were the animals of the house? She had not lost a mother or an aunt as Glaki had, but time after time she had been passed on to yet another relative. It was overhearing the talk that decided that she and her many strangenesses would be sent to some other family member that had always sent Tris to cry in secret. When Cousin Uraelle, who had kept her the longest, died, Tris had wept not for the mean, stingy old woman, but for the loss of the most permanent home she could remember.
She touched the girl on the shoulder. Glaki flinched against Little Bear, throwing up an arm to protect her face. Gently Tris pressed her arm down. A handprint showed clearly on the girl’s cheek. Poppy had slapped Glaki to silence her.
“It’s just me, Glaki. You saw me yesterday, remember?” Tris kept her voice gentle as she sat on the flagstones of the ground floor gallery. She leaned back against a wooden pillar.
“Mama,” the child mumbled at last. “Aunt Yali. When do they come home?”
Tris drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She knew she wasn’t good with children, though her heart went out to this one. What could she say? What did people say?
She could only know what she would say. She hated people who tried to evade the truth. “They died, Glaki. Mama and Aunt Yali died. They won’t be coming home.”
Fresh tears welled in the girl’s eyes. They spilled over her stained cheeks. “No,” Glaki replied, shaking her head. “No.”
“I’m sorry,” Tris said gently. “Yes.”
Glaki began to sob again, then to wail. Tris bit her lip, trying to decide what was right. In the end it was her knowledge of Sandry, her good-hearted sister, that guided her. Tris sat beside Little Bear and pulled Glaki on to her lap. The little girl fought, straining to get back to the dog.
“Doggie!” she screamed, her face turning beet red.
“It’s Little Bear. That’s his name,” Tris explained, panting as she hauled on the struggling child. “He’s not going anywhere. If you sit with me, he’ll be here, and so will Chime. We must talk, Glaki. You have to learn some hard new lessons. I wish I had someone nice to teach them to you, but you’re stuck with just me.” She finally got the little girl on to her lap. Glaki howled, battered Tris’s chest with her fists, and drummed her heels on the ground. Tris held on grimly, still talking softly. “It isn’t right, what’s happened to your mother and Yali. I hope you grow to be someone incredible, to repay you for all this misery. Why is it, do you suppose, the gods are said to be favouring you when they dump awful things into your lap? Is it because the other explanation, that sorrow comes from accidents and there are no gods doing it to help you be a strong person, is just too horrible to think of? Let’s stick with the gods. Let’s stick with someone being in charge.”
As she continued to speak, rattling along about any topic that came to mind, whether Glaki could understand or not, she held the girl close. Tris was so used to the child’s struggles that she didn’t notice at first when Glaki’s screams began to grow softer, her small body relaxing into Tris’s hold. It was only when Glaki was quietly sucking her thumb, whimpering against Tris’s chest, that the older girl realized she could loosen her grip. Her hands and arms stung from being locked in the same position for so long. She smoothed damp, tumbled curls away from the child’s face. “That’s very good.” She hesitated, then awkwardly kissed Glaki on the forehead. “We can’t let you make yourself sick on top of everything else.”
It was some time before Glaki would let Tris get up without hysterics. Each time the child’s voice rose, Tris would settle back into place. Finally Glaki herself climbed off Tris’s lap.
Age 14: Tris has to be talked out of killing a man
In the ringing silence that followed, the brick wall grated and dropped. Tris’s winds thrust it back from the Ghost, into the yard it had shielded.
Tris walked down the alley, the dirt reasonably firm under her sensibly shod feet. She reclaimed her protections from ground and buildings, satisfied that she had done them no damage. No one here would die because she’d allowed a place to be shaken past the point where it could stand.
At last she stopped a metre away from the trapped prathmun. He stared at her, sweat crawling down his face.
“You orphaned a little girl twice,” she said quietly, as cold as if she were trapped inside a glacier. “You took two of her mothers. A little girl who never did you harm.” Lightning dropped in fat sparks from her hair to her feet. It lazily climbed back up her plump body in fiery waves. “You left her among strangers who might have thrown her into the street. Never once did you think of her.”
“Never once did anyone think of me!” he snapped back, his eyes black and empty. “Fit to haul dung but not fit to be seen - this place is rotten. If she don’t like the smell of rot, she shouldn’t live here, and neither should you.”
Her lightning blazed as it flowed down her arms, gloving her from fingertip to elbow. “No,” Tris said quietly. “You shouldn’t live.” She put her hands together, then pulled them apart, creating a heavy white-hot thunderbolt.
“No, Dema, let her do it!” The familiar voice was Kethlun’s. “Don’t stop her!”
“For her own sake, she must be stopped,” Niko replied. Tris should have known that Niko would see this piece of the future. There were times when having a seer as a teacher was a pain.
“Tris, give him up,” Dema pleaded. “If you kill him, I’ll have to arrest you and have you executed.”
“No!” argued Keth. “She’s doing Tharios a service. He killed Ira. He killed Yali. Let him cook!”
“Is this what it comes to, Trisana?” Niko called, his normally crisp voice gentle. “When you sank the ships at Winding Circle, you defended your home. If you do this, it’s murder. You will be a murderer by choice.”
“He deserves to die,” she shouted.
“But do you deserve to kill him?” Dema asked quietly. He was much closer to her. “Leave him to the State, Tris. That’s what it’s for. His first debt is to Tharios. Let him pay it.“
She should have just killed the Ghost the moment they arrived, she thought ruefully. Now she was afraid they made sense. She let the lightning trickle into the earth, following the route of her tremors. The molten lava far below the surface wouldn’t mind the extra power.
When the last bit faded, a long, wet nose thrust itself under her palm. Little Bear whined and wagged his tail, nudging her for a scratch behind the ears. “Traitor,” Tris murmured. She knew very well that the dog had helped to track her.
Chime landed gently across her shoulders. There she voiced the ringing chime that was her purr. Tris rubbed the dragon’s head with her fingertips, looking down at the Ghost. “Take him then, Dema,” she said clearly, “but I won’t dig him out for you.”
Age 18: Adopting a wind seer who has spent decades doubting his sanity
A blast of wind threw an image over both outer walls into Tris’s eyes: A cow struggled in a bog. Three men tied ropes to her so they could haul the wallowing beast out of danger. Tris whipped her head around in time to see Zhegorz. He stood just downwind of her. “Maybe that, and maybe more,” she said. “Look, will you steer him over by the wall, out of any breezes? I’ll see about getting a room for him.”
“He stays with me.” The girls turned. Briar stood behind them, his hands in his pockets. “You looked at the insides of his wrists, either of you? He stays with someone, and unless you want people talking about your reputations from here to the north shore of the Syth, it’s got to be with me.”
“What’s wrong with his wrists?” Daja wanted to know.
Tris marched over to Zhegorz, who faced into the wind that blew from the cow, his pale eyes wide and fixed. Tris seized his wrists and turned them so she could see the insides. Broad stripes of scar tissue, some old and silver-beige, others recent and reddish-purple, streaked the flesh between his palms and the insides of his elbows.
Zhegorz blinked, trying to see past the vision on the air to the person who handled him so abruptly. Tris yanked him around, turning him until the breeze struck his back, not his eyes. “Briar’s right. You stay with him, Zhegorz. No more of this nonsense,” she said, stabbing a finger into one of the scars. Zhegorz flinched. “Listen to me.” She still didn’t want the others knowing of her latest skill, but she needed to reach this man, to convince him that his visions weren’t the product of madness.
Too bad he didn’t have Niko to tell him that madness is a lot more interesting than rescuing cows, she thought as she dragged Zhegorz into a corner of the yard, away from Briar and Daja. “I see things on the wind, understand?” she asked quietly. She stood with her back to her brother and sister to keep them from reading her lips. “Pictures from places the wind passed over. A moment ago we both saw a cow trapped in mud, and three men trying to free her.” Zhegorz gasped and tried to tug free. Tris hung on to his arm with both hands. “Stop it!” she ordered. “You’re not mad. You’re a seer, with sounds and with seeing, only nobody ever found you out because they were too busy thinking you were mad. Now you have to sort yourself out. You have to decide what part’s magic — are you listening? — what part’s understandable nerves from thinking you were out of your mind, and what part’s had so much healers’ magic applied that it’s muddled everything else about you. I know what you saw because I learned how to see like that. But you never learned it, did you? It was there, from the time you were just a bit younger than me, only the magic sniffers missed it, or your family never even gave you a chance to show you were in your right mind.” She talked fast, trying to get as much sense as she could fit into his ears, past his years of flight, hospitals, medicines, and terror. Slowly, bit by tiny bit, she felt the tight, wiry muscles under her hands loosen, until Zhegorz no longer fought her grip.
“Real?” he whispered, his voice cracking.
“As real as such things get,” Tris told him. “Keep the seeing things part between you and me for now. Briar and Daja already guessed that you can hear like I can, but they don’t know about me seeing things.”
“Why not?” Zhegorz asked simply. “They love you.”
Tris sighed, troubled. “Because the chances of someone learning to see on the winds are tiny. They’ll think I think I’m better than they are.” Seeing the man’s frown, Tris grimaced. “They gave me a hard time all the way here about going to university,” she explained. “And other mages — when they found out I could do it, when so many fail… they decided I was prideful, and conceited. I don’t want Briar and Daja and Sandry to be that way with me. And Briar already said having a credential from Winding Circle isn’t good enough for me. This would just make it worse. You know how family gets, once you turn different.”
Zhegorz nodded. “Maybe you’re too sensitive,” he suggested.
Age 18: Reconnecting with her foster brother, discussion of PTSD
Briar sighed. “It’s terrible, when a man has no faith. Did you tell him what you did, that first day at the palace? What you did to the pirate fleet?”
“Pirates?” Zhegorz asked with a wild start that jerked his hands from Tris’s hold. His eyes were so wide with terror that the white showed all the way around. “There are pirates coming?”
Now look what you did, Tris thought at Briar, forgetting his mind was closed to her. I’d just gotten him calmed down.
“Here you go, old man,” Briar said, pouring out a tiny cupful of the soothing cordial he gave Zhegorz for his bad moments. “These pirates were seven years ago, and they are most seriously dead. She did it.”
“You helped,” snapped Tris. “And Sandry, and Daja, and our teachers, and every mage in Winding Circle. And you know I don’t like that story repeated.”
Briar ignored her. “She did it with lightning,” he told his guest, putting the cork back in the bottle. “And when we first got to Dancruan? Some fishing boats were in danger of a storm on the Syth, but Coppercurls here sent a wind to blow them home and another to eat the storm. She likes rescuing folk. So don’t you get yourself all worked up. You’ll hurt her feelings, letting her think she can’t protect you.”
“She didn’t protect you, wherever you were, in the bad place you dream about,” Zhegorz pointed out. He had bolted the cordial as if it were a glass of very nasty tea.
And here I thought I made that stuff taste nice! thought Briar in disgust, trying to ignore what their madman had said. I should’ve given him nasty tea instead of something I worked cursed hard over.
“You dream about it all the time,” Zhegorz insisted. “You toss and turn and yell about blood and Rosethorn and Evvy and Luvo.”
Tris raised her pale brows at him.
Briar was about to tell them both that his dreams were no cider of theirs, but there was something about the way Tris looked at him. He’d forgotten that side of her, that he had always been able to tell her the most horrific things, and she would never laugh, be shocked, or withdraw from him.
Briar slumped to the floor, leaning back against the stone that framed the hearth. The stone was warm, the fire a comforting crackle in his ear. “The emperor of Yanjing tried to conquer Gyongxe,” he muttered at last. “We were at the emperor’s court when we heard, and then we ran for it, Rosethorn and Evvy and me. That’s when we met Luvo, on our way to warn Gyongxe. Luvo’s this… creature, Zhegorz. He lives with Evvy now.”
“The Mother Temple of the Living Circle,” breathed Tris. “It’s in Gyongxe. The one all the other Circle temples look to. Their first and oldest Circle temple.”
Briar nodded. Zhegorz slid down the side of the bed so he, too, could sit on the floor and lean against the bed. It seemed to be his way to comfort Briar. Chime, who had spent suppertime around Tris’s neck, now glided over and settled into Briar’s lap. He stroked the little creature, feeling her cool surfaces against his palms.
“So we fought our way into Gyongxe, and then we fought the emperor, and then we came home,” Briar whispered, closing his eyes. “The pirates was nothin’ to it, Coppercurls.” In his distress he had slipped back into the language of the streets he had left seven years before. “The whole countryside was afire, or so it seemed. The dead… everywhere. The emperor’s army filled the roads for miles, and they didn’t care what they did to folk in the lands they marched through. So sure, I dream about it all the time. I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll be seeing a mind healer when we get home,” Tris said firmly. “I’ve heard of this. People who have been through some terrible thing, it leaves scars where no one can see. The scars hurt, so they dream, and they snap at people for doing things that seem silly compared to the horrors. Sometimes they see and smell the thing all over again.”
“So I’m just some boohoo bleater, looking for a mama because I have bad dreams?” Briar asked rudely, though he didn’t open his eyes. “Looking for a handkerchief everywhere I go so folk will think I’m tragic and interesting?”
“If the scars were on your flesh, would you even ask me those things?” retorted Tris.
There was a long pause. At last Zhegorz said hesitantly, “She’s right.”
“She ’most always is, when it comes to other folk,” replied Briar softly. “I got off lucky. She’s being nice right now.” Inside the magic they shared, he said, I missed you, Coppercurls. With you there, we might’ve conquered Yanjing.
She looked down, her thin swinging braids not quite hiding her tiny smile. She waved a hand in awkward dismissal.
Age 18: All the injuries Tris is going home to whenever she leaves the Barge
The healer looks like she battled Hakkoi the Smith God and lost, thought Sandry, rising to her feet. Everyone else stood to see what the woman had to say.
“The last time I treated anyone so badly off, he’d fallen thirty feet down a cliff, and he died.” The healer’s voice was an exhausted croak. “Your friend won’t die. Miraculously, she has five broken ribs, and none of them punctured her lungs. None of the broken bones cut through the skin, a blessing I never looked to get.”
“A very well-crafted curse,” muttered Ambros.
Ealaga glared at him. “How bad is Tris?” she asked.
The healer had looked at Ambros when he said “curse.”
“Ah,” she murmured. “Things become clearer. It explains much.” She sighed.
Sandry beckoned to the assistant who held the woman upright and pointed to her chair. Getting the hint, the young man carefully lowered the healer to the seat. Ealaga whispered to the maid who had stayed up in case anyone needed anything. The girl scampered off.
“Your girl has no punctured organs or skin. She has a broken collarbone, a dislocated shoulder, two small cracks in her skull, a broken cheekbone, one arm broken in two places, a broken wrist, five broken ribs, a dislocated hip, three breaks in her right leg, and a broken ankle on the left. She also has several broken fingers and toes,” the healer said once she’d caught her breath. “It is a miracle, or, if it is a curse, as you say, then it was deliberately constructed to save the girl’s life. There is only one curse-weaver in the empire with that level of skill, and that is all I will say on that topic.”
Sandry, Briar, and Daja exchanged horrified looks. They had all seen their fair share of injuries and healing. Never had they seen anyone who had endured the mauling Tris had.
I’m going to be sick, thought Sandry. She bit the inside of her cheek and forbade her stomach to misbehave.
“I did what I could tonight,” the healer continued. “She has been very well taught — I was able to work inside her power and around it with very little difficulty indeed. It’s always delightful to handle a mage who has been trained by good healers in the art of keeping power controlled. The hip and shoulder are back in their sockets. I was able to heal the ribs and skull completely — they are the most dangerous breaks. She is fortunate that she had no blood collecting inside her skull. I started the healing of the collarbone and jaw, and braced the broken limbs. I have safeguarded her for infection and shock. Tomorrow, when I come, I will bring two colleagues who will help to undo what healing has been done tonight on those breaks I was unable to look after, and begin clean healing for the rest of the broken bones.”
“Begin?” Ambros asked with a frown. Briar was nodding.
“This is not as simple a matter as a single broken arm or leg, good Saghad,” the healer’s male assistant replied at his most polite. “The more injuries the victim endures, the more time is needed for healing. If the healers do not take care, the repair will be weak and the bone will break again. Or scarring will take place and will put the patient’s entire body at risk.”
The senior healer nodded.
“But we were planning to leave for Emelan soon,” Sandry heard herself say.
“My dear Viymese, forgive me,” said Ambros as the maid arrived with tea for everyone. She served the healer first as Ambros continued, “This is my cousin, Sandrilene, Clehame fa Landreg, who is also Saghada fa Toren in Emelan. These are Viymese Daja Kisubo and Viynain Briar Moss. Your patient in there is Viymese Trisana Chandler.”
“Clehame.” The healer bowed her head, but did not try to get to her feet. She impatiently waved away an offer of cakes from the maid. “The girl — Tris? — she tried to tell me she was leaving soon as well. I let her know she won’t be leaving that bed for at least a week — more, if she tasks herself.”
Age 18: Sisters talk about their romance issues (CW: bullying)
Daja’s power shone from the bedroom. Determined, Tris went to the door. “If you were just going to be a brute to me, I would have stood for it, because when itch comes right down to scratch, you Traders don’t know how to act,” she said cruelly. Tris knew from early experience that sharpness spurred Daja harder than kindness. “But you had no right to frighten poor old Zhegorz out of what wits he’s got. You’re some kind of talisman for him, and when you tell him to go away, he thinks it means he can’t travel with us. Now you get off your behind and go tell him you wouldn’t think of leaving him!”
“Later!” Daja cried. She lay in bed on her belly, raising her face from her pillows to talk. “I’ll talk to him later, Tris, and I won’t talk to you at all right now, so go away! And insulting my Trader blood won’t work, either, you rat-nosed, pinch-coin, gold-grubbing merchant.”
Tris was about to blister the other girl when she caught the ragged tones in Daja’s voice. With a frown she walked over and plumped herself on the bed, reining in her whirling breezes until they were still again. Daja turned her face away from Tris too slowly.
“Oh, dear,” Tris said, understanding. Daja’s eyes were puffy and wet. Her nose ran. Tris dug out a handkerchief and stuffed it into Daja’s hand. When Daja tried to pull the hand away, Tris grabbed her wrist.
Did you really think she would come? Tris asked through their magic. Give up her own place at court, at the empress’s side, to live on your generosity? Rizu’s proud, Daja. She has every right to be. As Mistress of the Wardrobe she decides what every guardsman and servant in the palace wears. She chooses the imperial wardrobe. What would she have in Summersea compared to all that?
But I love her! cried Daja, accepting the renewed connection between them without a struggle. I thought she loved me!
Tris sighed and patted Daja’s heaving back. At least she didn’t laugh at you when she found out how you felt, she remarked. At least she didn’t turn you into a joke for her friends. And she told you something about yourself you really ought to know, that you’re beautiful, and worth loving. Even for just a summer.
All the boys I went with in Summersea after we came back from Kugisko said I was cold, Daja replied wearily. I didn’t like kissing them. It was nothing special, like all the books say love is. Then, when I liked kissing Rizu… it was such a blessing. I’m not cold. I was just kissing the wrong people. Even living with Lark and Rosethorn, I never thought that maybe I should try kissing girls. None of them drew me. Have you ever...?
Tris shook her head. No interest, she explained. And the boys don’t want to kiss a fat girl like me. They’re also scared of me. That doesn’t help.
They sat in silence for a long time, Tris simply rubbing Daja’s shoulders. Finally Daja pushed herself up and turned over to sit on the bed. “They made a joke of you?” she asked roughly, and blew her nose.
“Twice,” Tris answered softly. “After that, I tried not to let boys know when I liked them. One time the boy set up a meeting in a garden. Then he and his friends dumped honey on me. They told me even a gallon of honey wasn’t enough sweets to satisfy a tub like me.”
“Miserable dung-grubbing pavao,” whispered Daja. “Did you... lose control?”
“I called the rain,” replied Tris. “To get the honey off me. All right. To run them off, too. But I’ve been trying to be good about it. About the weather.”
“And the other boy?” asked Daja, getting up to splash water on her face.
“They made fun of him until he came to hate me,” Tris said with a shrug. “At least both times we left the towns, eventually.” She could feel the heat in her face. If there had been light in here, Daja would have seen her humiliated blush. “I dove into my studies after that and tried not to notice any boys. Most of them just aren’t like Briar, you know. He’ll drive you to commit murder, but the only part of him that’s hidden is the good part. And he isn’t nasty to any female, have you noticed? Not to the little farm children or the old grannies who want to tell him how beautiful they were in their prime.”
“That’s because he knows Rosethorn would pull him out by the roots and throw him on the compost heap if he was,” Daja said. Both girls looked at each other and giggled softly at the image of Briar thrown out with the rotten leaves of cabbage and the heaps of dead weeds.
When they had quieted, Daja suddenly kissed Tris on the cheek. “I had forgotten that Sandry wasn’t my only saati,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
Age 9: Her family decides to disown her
A hushed argument echoed through the hallway, voices harsh and vehement.
"I don't care if you offer to pay us for her keep, Valden, something is seriously wrong with your daughter! You know that full well, or you wouldn't have sent her away by her fourth birthday!"
Tris bit her lower lip, hard, as a man retorted, "What are we supposed to do with her now, then?"
A third voice chimed in, a woman this time, "I don't care, but she is out this door tomorrow regardless of whether you make arrangements. You've burned through all your credit with the other members of House Chandler finding someone willing to take the little monster for a few months or a year at a time; we won't be stuck with her just because you've finally run dry!"
Tears were running down Tris's cheeks now. Had her parents finally run out of favors to call in? Would she be out on the streets next? And how long did they expect her to last there, when even family couldn't seem to tolerate her despite Tris doing every chore she could possibly manage?
"Send her to Stone Circle," suggested the first man. "The temple's not allowed to turn anyone away, are they? She wouldn't be House Chandler's problem anymore. Not if you tell them you never want her back."
Wind howled through the staircase as Tris pressed her hands to her mouth to keep from making a sound. Hail began pummeling the stairs around her, and from below, a trio of shouts erupted. The three adults, one of them with hair to match Tris's red curls, ran to the base of the stairs and looked up at the little girl who met their gazes in stubborn, defiant silence, eyes red from crying.
The redheaded man looked back and forth between his cousins and his daughter, then nodded in acquiescence. "I'll talk to Darra tonight."