Four


Huge thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed this story so far, and everyone else who has alerted it in silent affirmation. I love writing it, and the idea that other people enjoy this effort fills me with even more glee.


The Winding Circle Temple; Summersea, Emelan:

Niva scowled.

She had walked. She had walked halfway across the world with the weather-witch, who bit her nails. She also talked to herself and needed, according to her muttering, to be in Mbau and up by Kerang all at once.

Impossible feats from an impossible person, and now Niva was wandering the strange, orderly Circle world, and Trisana Chandler was gone, without so much as a by-your-leave. Niva, she had said, would be at home in the Earth Temple until Tris returned ("Whenever I can!") and had time to explain why she had plucked out of her father's holdings ("It's a long, complicated answer. If you want the satisfaction of it, ask me when I've time to explain,"). As it was, Niva had instructions to, "Stay out of trouble," which only increased her desire to stick a fork into someone's eye. Earth Temple novices, she felt, were a soft lot.

The Temple earth, she conceded, was beautiful.

Walking on it, breathing in the faint complaints of grass under her tread, slipping unto the kitchen gardens to feel the potential of herbs only now unfurling, she felt that if she had told anyone this, they might not even laugh at her. This was a temple where other people walked with mud on their hem, and bent to pull a weed without even thinking of it. The beds of her kept their green and brown stains, even as her hair and skin took on Emelan's bright, long-drawn scent, rather than the damp, warmer tones of Anderran. With her eyes closed and the sun on her face, Niva Magnusson belonged.

In the dormitories, or the kitchens, or the long, crowded classrooms, Niva was a weed. She stuck, and she stung, and people tried to pull her. She did not know how to breathe. She did not have a fa or ei or some kind other monosyllabic frippery in her name. She was no healer. Dedicate Elmsreach was stupid for planting madder anywhere near a patch of lettuces, if she didn't want greens that stained her teeth scarlet, and she would not take it back no matter how much the uppity farmgirl this supposedly made her sound.

And the next time any of those ridiculous boys pulled her hair, she would bite them. She was staying out of trouble. Everyone else just walked right in and poked it.

And so now, rather than "Reflect upon her behaviour," in the dreary confines of the girls' dormitory, she was walking. And the gardens were beautiful.

The house of glass made her stop.

It was tall. Taller, perhaps, than one man and half again, if he were lanky. And in the late spring light, it shimmered and shot at her, all strangeness and sharp edges. A sharp place full of soft, drowsy voices, of plants that had shades she had never known, mumbling happily about warmth and wet in quantities that, Niva felt, just did not exist in this climate.

She looked around, shaking her head to clear the tropical languor that wanted to settle there. There was no one to see her come up to the glass and lay a hand on it. No one to see her shudder as her mouth was flooded with tastes she could sift through but barely understood: hibiscus and orchid, vanilla and peppery mint that to her closed eyes had strange, serrated leaves and red tips; nothing like the kitchen taste she knew. It caught in her throat, and their voices were slower and stronger than ever, drinking in the air behind the glass.

Niva opened her eyes and peered. She could see nothing. The glass was so thick that all it gave back to her were blurred shapes and shades of green. The movement there made her head hurt. It was easier with closed eyes. The plants were drunken and strange, but they were plants, and they spoke to her.

The tomato scent was a shout. This plant she knew. It lived in pots by her father's doorway, twining up stakes against the wall. It belonged in her memories, red seeded salt against her lips as she tasted something she had grown for the first time, full of a four-year-old wonder and her father's proud smile. The catch-in-your-throat-and-nose sharpness, peppersweet, as leaves practically bruised themselves against any ungentle hand. The acid of green fruit cooked down to jam.

This plant was different. A gross, distended thing in the wrong type of heat. Sun turned to something else, through all that glass, and Niva knew, with all the certainty in her body, that if she walked into this building, she would see a plant as it was never meant to look. Overgrown and watery, with the sheen of something kept rather than living or understood. Bile rose, and Niva turned to the door.

A hand closed around her ear. The nails on it were well kept and filed. They dug. "Hey!"

"I'm the one who should be exclaiming, girl."

It was a lofty voice. Which, Niva realised, peering up with stinging eyes at her captor, was like the rest of him. A lofty, thin voice full of grease. He said 'girl' like it was a disease he might catch. His eyes were large, and dark, and tired. His face was sallow, too much so for the long yellow robes he wore. His other hand was splayed over his chest like some affronted old woman in a travelling play. His nose, like the rest of him, was very, very long.

"You should be ashamed!" The words did not slip out. They rushed out of her, tumbling over her heartbeat and the breath in her lungs. "You're doing something awful in there."

"The only awful you have to worry about is the punishment you shall receive for lurking so on Temple property, and spitting at your betters like some urchin." The hand not clutching Niva's ear reached into the depths of his vivid robe, and drew out a large, white cloth. To Niva's amazement, he moved the cloth quickly over the place her hand had been, polishing away marks.

"Any tomato you grow in that thing isn't even going to taste dead," she muttered.

The ear-hand tugged, and, yelping, Niva found herself looking at two dark, upraised eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

Stay out of trouble. Well, if this idiot kicked her out, at least the weather-witch would probably fry him with lightning whenever she returned. "You heard me."

He drew himself up, taking in more hot air than his glass house. "Do you know who I am?" he said, appalled. "I am Dedicate Crane, First Dedicate Initiate of the Air Temple and you, girl, are—"

"—better and knowing how some things are meant to grow in season."

"—are clearly one of his, even if he doesn't know it yet." A pause. "Unless, of course, you were spying for him?"

Insane. She was in the manicured clutch of a madman. "Spying for who, and who's aunty?"

Dedicate Crane no longer deigned to speak to her. He merely dragged, stride fast and his grip too fast for Niva to run away from him without a great deal of blood. And she could not see where his shins were under all those skirts. No easy kick. She did hear a faint, disdainful and a mutter that sounded something like, "Whom."

The walk was not long, though it made her breathless. They passed rows and rows of garden beds, and the shadow of the Hub felt smaller at Niva's back before they reached the whitewashed door of a single, double storied building, with a winding path leading up to it and a back garden that sung with seasonal brightness. The way Crane flung the door open made Niva think that, if he could, he would have passed through the structure like a vengeful ghost. The light inside was soft, and dim save a bright light by one window, where a lady sat.

Where a lady had been sitting. Now, she was before them in a rustle of skirts, eyes startled and wide. "Crane," she said, her voice soft, but very firm. "You know nasty things have happened when I'm surprised, lately. If I hadn't felt it was you at the last minute, you'd be stuck to the floor."

So, that was the man's name. Niva sniffed, pulling free of him. His hands had gone oddly limp.

"Sandrilene," he said, unctuousness spoilt by fast-moving breath. "Forgive my haste. This girl—"

"—Has never been here before in her wee little life."

This was a new voice, from behind them. Niva spun, and a compact, bronze-skin man in an Earth Temple robe grinned at her, his teeth very white and his eyes very green. There was a space next to him, just wide enough to bolt, but he raised a hand, and Niva's attention was caught by the writhing movement on his wrist and forearm—plants that sprouted and bloomed and died, but in dye, and in all the colours she thought she could name. She stared, and he broadened his stance to fill the space, still grinning.

"Trust me," he was telling the room. "I'd know." And he winked at her. Niva sniffed.

"Briar," said the woman, all cordial sweetness. "Dedicate Crane thinks you're spying on him again."

"Ah, shame, old man." The Earth Temple Dedicate turned his evil, warm look upon Crane, and reached out to clap him on the shoulder. The noise this provoked was similar to a strangled cat.

The whole room was ignoring her. Niva glared. "I was not spying."

"No?" The shorter Dedicate—Briar? There were certainly thorns on the plants that shifted beneath his skin—eyed her considering, head tilted to the side. "What were you doing, then?"

"I wanted to know how he changed the weather!" She bridled under his gaze, unsure of trouble and sure of strangeness. "And he's growing tomatoes out of season! They don't like it!"

"Oh?" A slow smile from him, as Crane started forward, only to be restrained by the lady's small hand on his arm. "Don't they?"

Who did he think he was? "Don't patronise me!"

He ignored her. "Dedicate Crane is a skilled gardener," he said. "And he's spent half his life dreaming of a greenhouse, and the other half living in it."

"Skilled!" Crane sniffed. "Insolent thief—"

"—Shut up while I'm defending you?" Briar grinned again. "It's not as if I have much of it in me. As I was saying, he is a skilled gardener, as full of Green magic as you, and—"

"—he's...you know I..." Niva stared, another small noise escaping her as the aggravating Earth Dedicate rolled his eyes.

"So everyone's going to interrupt me today? Fine. And of course he does. Of course you do. Had it pegged by the time Crane was halfway dragging you up here. Coppercurls mentioned I'd probably run into someone, last time she found herself talking to people not made of wind." He shrugged off Niva's continued glare, and Crane's groan. "Crane, crosspatch, would never hurt a plant any more than you would."

Crosspatch. The name was unspeakable, Better not to speak it. And Coppercurls? "He wasn't hurting it," she conceded, looking at neither man. "He was changing it, and that was wrong. Besides," she said, lifting her chin. "They'll never taste right that way."

"Oh?" Briar's grin was back, one eyebrow raised almost into his close cropped dark hair. "Is that right?"

"Discipline," Crane spat. "That's what the girl needs."

"Well, yes. I'd worked out the point of your angry cat act," Briar's voice slid over the other mans as if they were both sharing some kind of joke. One that Crane did not appreciate. "I'm sure she's not just 'girl,'" said Briar.

"I'm Niva," said Niva Magnusson. "And you shouldn't talk over my head."

"Pretty name," said the man, infuriating. "Almost as pretty as mine. I'm Briar. Or Dedicate Briarmoss, if you want the full thing." He nodded to the lady, whose smile had slowly been growing sweeter and more wicked throughout this exchange. "She's Lady Sandrilene, or Sandry to the likes of you. She's helping me out here for the time."

"Helping you with what?"

"Looking after you, of course."