While the porridge finished cooking, he brought his shakkan down from his room to the dining room table. It needed attention, and working with it soothed his last uneasiness over the sale of the larch. He always needed time with his shakkan after parting with another miniature. Reaching for the larch with his power, touching it on its ledge in the lady’s house, he could feel contentment. He knew he hadn’t given it to a bad home, at least not for trees. Still, the shakkan soothed him. It reminded him that the trees were not simple creatures, but as complex in their ways as the humans who shaped them. He wasn’t their creator, only their caretaker, one who was expected to pass them on in time.

He was sweeping dirt and trimmed branches from the table when Evvy emerged from her room, yawning. Under one arm she still carried her stone alphabet. Briar shook his head when he saw it. “Are you going to bathe with that?” he wanted to know, pointing at the roll of cloth.

Evvy smiled. “Probably. Look.” She got the slate and chalk and carefully wrote out each letter they had studied, both in capital and small form without mistakes. Watching her, Briar felt something warm and funny in his chest, something that made him want to clap her on the back and take her out for an expensive breakfast.

He was proud of her.

“Pretty good,” he said, not wanting to get all emotional. “Can you match them to the stones?”

Evvy undid the ties and rolled her cloth out flat. Starting with the top, left-hand pocket, she drew out the proper stone for each letter and recited its name. She even listed its uses, with only one or two small errors.

Briar corrected them, then ordered her to wash her face and hands and clean her teeth. She’s smart, he thought as he spooned porridge into bowls. Where would she be right now if someone had started her learning things years ago?

He didn’t know, but he would make up for that lost time. He could read ahead in the stone books at night to help her learn. It was worth an hour or two less of sleep, if he could teach her enough to keep that proud feeling inside. They’d show Jebilu what a fine student he’d missed.

They cleaned the dining room and kitchen together. “See, I think about my lessons when I do chores,” he explained as they scoured pots. “Practice them in my head, see if I have any questions about things. Be sure and ask questions. Your teacher doesn’t know if you’re learning right unless you do ask.”

Once her bed was made, Evvy went to the souk with a few coins for cat meat — some of the cats had already tried porridge, with mixed reactions. They went out to the rear yard as Briar fetched some traveling boxes from the storage shed. He would start packing in the workroom.

He walked into the barrier Rosethorn had laid on the room, forgetting she had put it there to keep Evvy out. It was one he could pass, once he remembered the right unlocking words. Rubbing his toes, he spoke them, and carried the boxes in.

On Evvy’s return, Briar let her feed the cats, then took her up to the roof. There he enclosed them in a protective circle of his own. “Show me what you learned from meditating yesterday,” he ordered.

With the same steady attention she brought to everything she wanted to learn, Evvy sat cross-legged and began the pattern of breathing. Immediately Briar could see the silvery glow that was her power, set loose from whatever bodily stronghold it was kept in. Today it stayed inside her skin, which impressed him. She learned so fast!

He talked her through drawing her power in, compressing it to make it stronger, then releasing it to fill her skin again. There were slips and escapes, but she seemed to understand better what he asked of her. At last Briar settled into his own meditation, coming out of it only when she stretched a cramped leg.

“More letters now,” he said as they clattered downstairs, cats all around them. Since she’d moved in, he felt as if he took every step in this house as part of a river of fur. “At least a couple of stones before midday, and then maybe a break for a time. You’re working harder than I did at my first lessons.”

“But didn’t you like it?” she asked, hugging the cloth roll to her chest. He’d made her leave it outside his protective circle when they’d meditated. The first thing she did when they got up was grab it, as if she’d thought it might run away. “Didn’t you like learning the magic?”

“I wasn’t sure why I was learning it, or what use all that sitting and thinking and breathing would be. And the first plant thing I did, the first thing I thought might be magic, was trim my shakkan. That hurt. It’s hard to think magic is fun when clipping bits off a tree hurts.” He smiled as they walked into the dining room. “But the gardening. I liked the gardening, even if it was mostly pulling weeds. Any garden that Rosethorn works in is happy. Well, except for the weeds. We try to make it quick for them.” He pointed to the chair. Evvy sat, undoing the ties to the cloth roll with eager fingers. Briar got his sheet of notes and the book, pushing the slate and chalk over so Evvy could reach it. “Hematite,” he read, and drew the large and small h on the slate. “Healing. It helps you concentrate on the real world,” he began.

They had gone as far as lapis lazuli, and Briar was planning lunch, when a flurry of knocks sounded at their door. It was Ayasha, the dimpled girl who’d been a Camelgut. She was flushed, tousled, and gasping for air, clutching her chest as she tried to slow her breathing. Briar hesitated, not sure he wanted anything more to do with the city’s gangs. She grabbed his arm, her brown eyes huge with fright. Her thick lashes fluttered like butterflies as she sagged against him. He could feel her trembling. Against his better judgment Briar let her into the dining room to sit, then fetched her a cup of water.