Free Briar's Book by Tamora Pierce

weak to sit. Briar helped the girl up, desperately trying to get her to drink more.
    The thin gray daylight was fading when Briar heard the clank of metal. He dropped the bowl he was scrubbing and looked for the source. Was it the outside door again?
    There was the sound of a bolt being drawn:
clack.
    The inner door, the one that opened into Urda’s House, swung open.
    Rosethorn and Henna got to their feet. Jokubas Atwater, the mean old man who had told Rosethorn that Urda’s House was not made of money, stood in the open door. “This entire building is now a pest-house,” he said acidly, eyes bitter. “The sick must keep to their own floors, but healers” – he looked around until he found Briar – “and apprentices, you may move freely about the house.”
    “We could use another pair of hands,” remarked Henna.
    “You’ll get them,” Jokubas said crisply. “My daughter is coming up here now, with ten more sick.”

Chapter V

    T he news that Briar and Rosethorn had been joined by Dedicate Henna was greeted with relief at Discipline Cottage. Everyone went to bed early that night, tired by worry and their own labors. Tris woke sometime after midnight to the sound of rain tapping the thatch overhead. She put on her spectacles, a wool gown, and a shawl, sending her power out. The familiar sense of hot metal in the room across from hers was missing – she frowned, then remembered that Daja was at Frostpine’s, working and sleeping at his forge. With a sigh Tris let her magic seep through the boards and plaster between her and the ground floor. Lark slept heavily, the warmth of her magic lower than Tris had ever felt it. Sandry was in the same shape. They had worked hard, putting their strength into the masks and gloves for Crane and his staff.
    Tris found Little Bear’s life force, that of a dozing animal with unhappy dreams. He had to be sleeping in Briar’s room again: her sense of him was nearly overpowered by the magic that radiated from Briar’s
shakkan.
Over its one-hundred-forty-six-year existence, the miniature tree had been used to store and build upon the magic of its earlier owners; its green strength pressed on her own power. There was a curiously similar feel to the
shakkan
and to Little Bear, a kind of sadness. They missed Briar.
    “We all do,” she muttered crossly, stuffing her feet into thin leather slippers. “Can’t you keep it to yourselves?”
    With the stealth of months of practice she left the house, though she wondered why she bothered to be quiet. From the feel of Sandry and Lark, Tris thought that she might bang kettle lids in their ears and they wouldn’t twitch.
    Through the back gate she passed, then between the fence and the vineyard. Over the winter she had worn a path in the grass, one that led across a band of open ground. It went straight to the closest stair on the inside of Winding Circle’s thick wall. The rain fell steadily as she climbed, hoisting her skirts to keep from tripping, panting with effort. At least these days no one who saw her puffing was silly enough to yell at her to lose weight. Before she had learned to control her power – and the way it produced hail or lightning when she was vexed – some had teased her, with interesting results.
    Learning to control her magic had meant she had to give up rewarding those people who gave cruel advice. She hadn’t liked that, even when Niko pointed out that those she frightened became enemies. Niko is a spoilsport, thought Tris, trying to catch her breath as she stepped onto the top of the wall.
    Most nights when she came up here, she walked south to get a view of the harbor islands and the Pebbled Sea beyond. There was no glimpse of the sea tonight; the rain cloaked it. Below and to her right lay the joining of the roads that wrapped around Winding Circle and the granite ridge between the temple and the Mire. The slum and even walled Summersea were gone from view; no light cut through the rain, not even that of