The Burning City Read Free

grandfather. I’ve forgotten most of those stories now. I told them to your mother, but she didn’t listen.”
    â€œI’ll listen, Mother’s Mother,” Whandall said.
    She brushed her fingers through his freshly washed hair. She’d used three days’ water to wash Whandall and Shastern, and when Resalet said something about it she had shouted at him until he ran out of the Place-hold. “Good,” she said. “Someone ought to remember.”
    â€œWhat do Lords do?”
    â€œThey show us things, give us things, tell us what the law is,” Mother’s Mother said. “You don’t see them much anymore. They used to come to Tep’s Town. I remember when we were both young—they chose your grandfather to talk to the Lords for the Placehold. I was so proud. And the Lords brought wizards with them, and made rain, and put a spell on our roof gardens so everything grew better.” The dreamy smile came back. “Everything grew better; everyone helped each other. I’m so proud of you, Whandall; you didn’t run and leave your brother—you stayed to help.” She stroked him, petting him the way his sisters petted the cat. Whandall almost purred.
    She dozed off soon after. He thought about her stories and wondered how much was true. He couldn’t remember when anyone helped anyone who wasn’t close kin. Why would it have been different when Mother’s Mother was young? And could it be that way again?
    But he was seven, and the cat was playing with a ball of string. Whandall climbed off Mother’s Mother’s lap to watch.

    Bansh and Ilther died. Shastern lived, but he kept the scars. In later years they passed for fighting scars.
    Whandall watched them rebuild the city after the Burning. Stores and offices rose again, cheap wooden structures on winding streets. The kin-less never seemed to work hard on rebuilding.
    Smashed water courses were rebuilt. The places where people died—kicked to death or burned or cut down with the long Lordkin knives—remained empty for a time. Everybody was hungry until the Lords and the kinless could get food flowing in again.
    None of the other children would return to the forest. They took to spying on strangers, ready to risk broken bones rather than the terrible plants. But the forest fascinated Whandall. He returned again and again. Mother didn’t want him to go, but Mother wasn’t there much. Mother’s Mother only told him to be careful.
    Old Resalet heard her. Now he laughed every time Whandall left the Placehold with leathers and mask.
    Whandall went alone. He always followed the path of the logging, and that protected him a little. The forest became less dangerous as Kreeg Miller taught him more.
    All the chaparral was dangerous, but the scrub that gathered round the redwoods was actively malevolent. Kreeg’s father had told him that it was worse in his day: the generations had tamed these plants. There were blade-covered morningstars and armory plants, and lordkin’s-kiss, and lordkiss with longer blades, and harmless-looking vines and flower beds and bushes all called touch-me and marked by five-bladed red or red-and-green leaves.
    Poison plants came in other forms than touch-me. Any plant might take a whim to cover itself with daggers and poison them too. Nettles covered their leaves with thousands of needles that would burrow into flesh. Loggers cut under the morningstar bushes and touch-me flower beds with the bladed poles they called severs. Against lordwhips the only defense was a mask.
    The foresters knew fruit trees the children hadn’t found. “These yellow apples
want
to be eaten,” Kreeg said, “seeds and all, so in a day or two the seeds are somewhere else, making more plants. If you don’t eat the core, at least throw it as far as you can. But these red death bushes you stay away from—far away—because if you get close you’ll eat