A/N This was written for the June challenge on the Tamora Pierce Experiment: Writing Challenges forum, which can be searched or found through my profile page. The challenge gave us the first sentence of the story and I decided to follow a bit of Evvy and Briar's post-Gyongxe interactions. Thanks to Sweet Sassy Sarah for the betaing work, even though you so encouraged my bad habit.
She never could forget what happened that day. There wasn't time — and she didn't have the strength to bring it up — when they were together, and then he was gone, and then she was gone... but it ate at her the entire time.
Evvy bounced, which Myrrhtide complained, in his usual manner, was 'un-stone-like', and 'if she was going to annoy him with all of her stone-like traits, she could at least be consistent'. Evvy ignored him and watched Summersea draw closer from the rail of the ship. Months after leaving Winding Circle, Evvy was returning and she had every intention to become a novice and be good, for once, and Luvo had said he was proud of her choice, once she had finally been dug out of the farm on the island and they had been reunited.
But would Briar would be in Summersea? She hadn't spent time with him — really spent time with him, that madness of the trip back from Yanjing didn't count — for what seemed to Evvy like forever. And rocks had a very long sense of 'forever'.
Myrrhtide could ask, but even Rosethorn would tell her it was an immature waste of his power just to check on something they would find out their own selves in less than a day, and Rosethorn had worried over Briar since he left for Namorn months and months ago. So Evvy waited, watching the city slowly, slowly draw closer and she bounced as if it would bring land, rocks, and Briar to her faster.
That day had been hot, she remembered. Sweat had dripped and stung in her eyes as the crowd pushed and shoved and screamed. She could hardly walk – her feet were raw strips of flesh from the guards' whippings – but if she had fallen she would have been trampled by the terrified crowd. There were shouts behind them and someone had yelled that the soldiers were coming. Evvy had wanted to scream for Briar or Rosethorn or Luvo but she hadn't been sure if they were alive and if they hadn't come when she called she didn't know if she would be able to go on, so she had set her expression and ran with the crowd through the heat and the pain.
Lark was waiting at the door with Glaki when they rode up the winding path to Discipline cottage. Glaki wore a pale yellow dress and held Lark's hand as the woman watched her friend dismount in front of the gate. Little Bear barked and jumped around Evvy – he knew better than to bother Rosethorn, even in his excitement – so Rosethorn reached the door before Evvy had even managed to close the gate behind them to keep Little Bear from greeting the driver who had helped them bring their stuff from the city and scaring his cart's horse. Looking up from where she knelt to pat the Bear's stomach, Evvy watched as Rosethorn hugged Lark.
Evvy waved at all three of them and slipped back out of the gate to take one of the chests the driver had untied. She was happy to be back at the cottage, which was a feeling she had never expected; after spending more than three quarters of her life without a home, she had never thought a building would hold fond memories for her. That didn't mean she wanted to be in the middle of their reunion, though. Just because she was going to be good, didn't mean she wanted all that mushy nonsense.
I have missed Discipline, though, she thought as she pushed her way through the gate holding one of the clothes chest. Looking up at the cottage again, Evvy saw Briar standing on the path in front of her, his hands in his pockets and a crooked smile on his face.
"Not even a 'hello', Evumeimei? Is that how you greet your teacher?"
Evvy dropped the chest in order to throw herself at him. He caught her in a tight hug.
She almost hadn't recognized him when he had finally found her, she remembered. The crowd had thinned out as they got further away from the city. She was slow, with her feet, and soon it was just her and the other slow ones – the families and children and injured and old – trying to get as far away from the army as possible. As the sun set, she had finally sat down at the edge of the road, unable to walk any further. The sounds of screaming or shouting had reached her, faintly, from somewhere far behind.
He had been wearing someone else's clothes – Briar surely hadn't ever owned a robe in the Yanjing style – and his face was so heavily bruised and swollen that he had looked like someone else entirely. She had pulled out a knife when he approached her and when he held his hands out in front of himself to placate her and she had seen the tattoos she had dropped the knife and bawled.
He had collected her in his arms and stroked her back and he had promised, in a whisper that was as fierce as his anger at the temple had been, that he would protect her.
He had kept his promise later that day, she remembered.
That was part of what she didn't want to remember.
"But she was a Great Mage! How did you beat her?" Evvy asked, wide-eyed. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed as she listened to his story of his adventures in Namorn. They had unpacked together while she told him about the volcano spirits, about Jayat and Nori and little Meryem and Cakes– the kitten Evvy had brought back with her from the island – and the month they spent on the farm waiting for rescue. Now, he was sitting on her desk chair facing her as he talked about the Empress and Sandry's lands and how they had been tempted to stay in that country, so far away.
Briar just shrugged. "We were lucky, I think. If we hadn't all worked together and if we hadn't had Sandry's thread we wouldn't have gotten out."
They sat in silence and thought about that.
"I'm glad you didn't stay there," Evvy said, playing with a loose thread on her bedcover. She watched it roll between her fingers. "I would have missed you."
"Don't be silly, Evvy," he said, laughing. "You're not getting rid of me that easily."
Neither of them had seen Rosethorn or Luvo in what they supposed was the week since the army had attacked the temple. They had walked through the night and didn't mention them again after Briar had asked if they had all been taken together, once the soldiers had started rounding people up. Evvy hadn't had to ask if Briar had seen them after the attack was over: the torn look on his face when she had answered said it all. She remembered that pain and sadness and a deep, deep anger had fought for room in the silence of his expression.
The anger had won.
The bells of the Hub chimed the hour and Briar flinched a little at the sound. Evvy remembered, for a moment, the sound of the bells in the Living Circle temple calling the alarm as they were being attacked by the Emperor's men, but the memory was gone as quickly as it came. She knew that Briar was trapped in what had happened in Gyongxe, but she had hoped getting away from her and Rosethorn and the temple would make it all better, that he would be the old Briar again.
There was more of that old grin and the cool confidence he had had from Chammur to Yanjing, though his eyes were still haunted and he looked more uncomfortable in his old room than Evvy thought he should.
Lark stuck her head in to check on them and ask whether the girls were going to come for supper later that night and Briar only had to tilt his head to say that all three were able to make it, though Daja would be slightly late. Lark ducked back out.
Briar grinned at Evvy's open-mouthed stare. "I told you we could mind-speak," he reminded her.
"Yea, but I never saw it before," she replied. "You didn't talk mind-to-mind before Namorn."
"I didn't want them in my head because of Gyongxe," Briar said, looking out the window. "I didn't want them to know what I had done."
She remembered how tight he had been holding her hand; he had squeezed her fingers together so hard it hurt. She remembered that when the torches had finally come around that bend in the road, she had shut her eyes tight so that darkness surrounded her again, like it had while they hobbled the road with hardly a moon to guide them. She remembered that Briar had leaned close to her ear and his breath had been ragged and it had taken him three tries to get the question out in a whisper while the soldiers had cut their way through the high grass that hid them and some other refugees from the torches' lights.
"Can you run?" he had asked.
She remembered that his breath had felt like a sob when she shook her head.
There had been two groups hiding near them. One was a man travelling alone, walking with a cane and a limp, and the other was a young woman with her elderly mother and a toddler. Evvy had opened her eyes to look at Briar as the soldiers drew closer. They had seen someone run off the road as they turned the corner and they wouldn't stop until they had found them. Neither Evvy nor Briar had the strength to stop the dozen men from killing them, their magic was so drained. Evvy had looked at Briar and the torchlight had flickered on her face and she knew her expression had pleaded for him to save her.
Perhaps if she had been able to run he could have distracted the soldiers and given them all time to get into the shadows, but he had spent the last week starved in a prison somewhere and he had been beaten and he had chased her following only the rumours plants left behind and he just did not have the strength to carry her and use his magic on so many. The soldiers had drawn closer and Evvy had gripped his hand and he had made the only decision he could make.
There was a thorny low-growing plant close to the man hiding three feet to their left and Briar sent his magic into it so that it grew quickly around the man's ankle. He had yelped.
The soldier who had reached him first hit him hard on the temple with the hilt of his sword. There had been yelling and the torches had created crazy shadows around them as the man was dragged, screaming, back to the road and away around the corner. The screaming had stopped, suddenly, and they were left in a painful silence that had stretched far beyond their hiding spot in the grasses.
Briar's breathing had been harsh and ragged, Evvy remembered. She remembered that he had picked her up and carried her away from the soldiers. They hadn't stopped that night and the next day, in a small village already burned by one of the armies, they had found Rosethorn and Luvo. Evvy had sat on the ground with Luvo in her arms and had watched Rosethorn and Briar come together. She had grabbed Briar and pulled him into a fierce hug and he had stood there, his arms hanging by his sides and his face buried in her shoulder.
"You saved our lives," Evvy said.
"I condemned that man to die," Briar said, not looking at her. "I've killed people before, but never just because they were there, in the way. It got bad and I went with it and I feel dirty. I as good as killed him myself and he had done nothing to hurt us. What right did I have?"
"You saved me and those women and that baby. You and Rosethorn nearly died getting us to the temple to warn them about the army. We held the walls until most everybody could escape, so much that we couldn't defend ourselves when the temple fell." Briar looked up at her. "It's not because I think that it's all right," Evvy said, reading the expression on Briar's face. Anyone else would have said it was neutral, but she could see the concern there; she was always able to read her teacher. "It's because you weren't given any choice, Briar. We never were, kids like us, given a choice about violence or not and... and that could make us go bad, you know? It nearly made me go bad. But you? You were never, never bad, Briar. Not ever." Evvy took a deep breath at the end of that speech, her inhalation shaky as she fought not to start crying. Briar's hands were on his forehead, his head bowed, so that she could just see that he was biting his lip hard.
"You would have gotten up yourself," she whispered. He didn't look up. "If I was able to run, you would have gotten up yourself and let the soldiers take you, but you had me to take care of. His life is on me too."
Briar shook his head. "It wasn't your decision."
Evvy was interrupted before she could reply. "Boy! Evvy!" Rosethorn yelled from the kitchen. "The girls are here; come out for dinner."
Briar jumped up and held out his hand to her. She looked into his face for a long moment, seeing past his smile, but she couldn't think of more to say. She didn't want to remember Gyongxe any more than he did.
She grabbed his hand and he pulled her up off the bed. His grip was tight and she remembered that he had squeezed her fingers together so hard that it had hurt.