“Not wanting to butt in or anything,” said one of the maids with a wink at Briar, “but shouldn’t you be asking my lady before you go bringing in…” She rethought the word she was about to use and supplied, “Guests?”

Briar, Daja, and Tris all exchanged glances. Daja could see they felt just as she did. They were bewildered at the thought of having to ask such a thing of one of them.

“But I had a house and it didn’t bother us then,” she said.

“You’re different,” Briar and Tris said together. They looked at each other and smiled wryly.

“Then it shouldn’t be different here.” Sandry emerged from the shadows by the door into the kitchen. “Don’t I get to meet our new guest?”

Zhegorz lunged to his feet so fast that he ended up knocking the bench over again. He and Briar went sprawling onto their backs. Sandry helped Briar to his feet as Tris assisted Zhegorz again. Chime rose onto her hindquarters and made a crisp series of splintering glass noises at Sandry. It sounded rather like a scolding. Sandry almost dropped Briar on his rump again when she clapped both hands over her mouth to cover her giggle. He staggered to stay on his feet, then grabbed the bench and set it back up.

Sandry looked at them, waved for the maids and the cook to stop curtsying, and said quietly, “I’m still me, you know. And you were very right to scold me. I didn’t think to ask you.”

Tris propped her fists on her hips. “It’s just as well now,” she said, eyeing Zhegorz. “He’ll need someplace quieter than this to stay until we can sort him out.”

Zhegorz blinked down at his stout protectress. Standing, he was five inches taller than Tris. He should have more of a presence, thought Tris. He’s a grown man, after all, older almost than the four of us together. But maybe it’s that he’s spent so much of his life running and hiding from things, and being locked up. Maybe inside he’s not that much older than fifteen.

“I’ll make sure you have a room, and somewhere we must have spare clothing,” Sandry assured Zhegorz softly. “Will you mind a day’s ride tomorrow?”

The man’s eyes shuttled from Sandry to Briar, to Daja, then to Tris. “You won’t want to adopt me when all your secrets come popping out of my mouth,” he warned them, rubbing a temple. “It always happens.”

Briar clapped Zhegorz on the back. “Well, if it happens, and I doubt it, we’ll make sure you’ve got a pack full of clothes and food, at least.”

“We’re not going to get rid of you,” Daja said, glaring at Briar. “We blurt people’s secrets all the time. You’ll be safer with us.”

“It’s settled, then. Come on, Zhegorz,” said Briar companionably.

As he led their new comrade off, Sandry looked at Tris. “Will we be able to help him?” she asked.

Tris was looking at the chewed end of one braid. “At least enough to get him back to Winding Circle,” she murmured. “I think he’ll have to go there in the end.”

“But you’re going to be nice, right?” Daja asked. “You’re going to be gentle with him, because he’s all broken to pieces inside.”

“When am I not nice?” demanded Tris with a scowl.

That reduced Daja and Sandry to laughter. Each time they met Tris’s glaring gray eyes, a fresh surge of laughter began. Finally Tris herself began to smile crookedly. “Well, nice by my standards, anyway. Treat me right, or I’ll make sure you get rained on all the way to Landreg in the morning.”

Briar had difficulty getting to sleep that night. Bedding down alone—alone in the bed, Zhegorz had a cot in the dressing room not fifty feet away—was a strange new experience for him of late. He hadn’t deliberately set out to ensure there was always someone warm and cuddly to share his blankets with, but it was an agreeable coincidence. It helped that he was so friendly, and the ladies were so friendly in return. He certainly could tell none of them, or worse, tell his sisters, that he had a horror of sleeping alone. Admitting that to anyone would force him to admit there was something wrong with him.

He lay awake for over an hour, listening to the small noises that Zhegorz made, settling into his mattress, then falling to sleep. The crazy man buzzed in place of snoring. It was a soothing kind of noise, hardly crazy at all. When Briar finally realized what it was, it soon lulled him to sleep.

He ran through a series of rock-sided canyons, all of them stripped of vegetation. He reached every way around him with his magic, seeking even a blade of grass to keep him company, but the ground here was bare and dry, a desert high above the forests and plains of all the world. He kept looking for a way out of the canyons, but all he saw was smooth rock walls, innocent of cracks or ledges.

Behind him Briar heard the thud of Yanjingyi war drums, a loud, flat thump echoed by thousands of marching feet. The sound had followed him into the stone corridors, driving him like game in the dark. Now came the thin, shrill blast of the Yanjing emperor’s battle trumpets, and the frightful first roars of the black powder called boom dust. They were blowing up the stone canyons…

…which turned into the twisting hallways of the First Temple of the Living Circle, jammed with dedicates, fleeing the attacking Yanjingyi army. Briar fought against their rushing tide, trying to find Rosethorn and Evvy, his student. Where were they? Evvy was small, yet—she could have been trampled in this chaos! He screamed her name, but it was lost in the cries of the frightened civilians who had taken shelter in the temple.