"You've got to be joking." Tris planted her feet wide apart, for the best possible stance. As she gripped Aymery's earring, sparks began to glimmer in her tumbling curls. "All right, Briar, but I still don't think I can do it."

Briar tossed the reed circle into the air. Tris pointed, but the lightning on her fingertip tangled, and writhed around her hand like knotted string. Briar threw again, lower.

This time the lightning missed by a hair. He threw a third time,

and Little Bear jumped, grabbing the circle in his teeth. Tris burned a streak on the wall keeping the lightning away from the pup.

"I can't do this!" she cried, out of patience. "It's like playing with poison! It-"

Daja gasped, pointing at the sky. High overhead, a small, round shape had begun to fall towards them.

A blazing strip of white heat roared past them. It struck the boom-stone, blowing it to pieces two hundred feet overhead. The children hid their faces as soot and pottery fragments rained down on them.

Tris wobbled. Her knees gave, and she sat down hard. Little Bear came to lick her cheek. The other three children turned to stare at her.

"I guess we just need to make it worth your while," remarked Daja.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Taking supper from the cart sent up from the Hub and putting it on the table, they were wondering if they would have to eat alone when their teachers returned. They obviously washed in the Water temple baths before coming on to Discipline: all wore undyed robes, and carried their own clothes in string bags. The bags were left beside the back door. Sandry, looking at the garments, wondered if they could even be used for rags, as sooty, torn and scorched as they were. The smell that rose from them was vile, and made her queasy.

The adults spoke little, and ate less. There seemed to be no way to mention controlled lightning after the first few "Not nows" the four got. Instead of following the ch.o.r.e schedule, they were sent to the Earth temple baths, while the adults cleaned up. When the children came back, they went quietly to their rooms, to read or think.

They all slept badly. When Tris cried, the other three knew it. When Briar dreamed of starving and watching the bread he'd just s.n.a.t.c.hed melt through his fingers, they knew it. When dawn came, they were roused not by the Hub clock, but by the first boom-stone explosion of the day.

Everyone was up after that. Like the night before, no one spoke much. Tris fed her nestling, and barely smiled when Rosethorn pointed out that nearly all of his pin- feathers had come in. He might be ready to fly in another two weeks.

"Into a boom-stone," Briar growled.

"Enough of that," cautioned Niko.

Breakfast was over when Moonstream and Skyfire arrived, looking as if they had spent as good a night as the four had. "We need to talk," Moonstream said after she kissed Niko's cheek. She looked meaningfully at the children.

"Upstairs," Rosethorn ordered.

They started to argue; Niko said sharply, "Now."

"Just like Mother in her Captain mood," Daja remarked mournfully. Gathering up dog and starling, they climbed the steep ladder-stair.

"They're treating us like children," Sandry commented rebelliously as the four sat on the floor around the topmost step.

"We are kids," Briar reminded her.

"But if we're mages, are we kids?" demanded Tris.

Frostpine appeared at the bottom of the stairs. "We would appreciate it if you would go into one of the rooms, and not eavesdrop." His dark eyes were bloodshot and level, with no hint of his usual laughter in them. "Scat."

Grumbling, they obeyed. Tris hung back, shooing the others into her room. Making sure Frostpine had left the steps, she reached through the opening in the floor to grab a fistful of air from the room below. Carefully she backed into her room, letting it out of her fingers a breath at a time. Once inside, she drew the breeze over to her window, and sent it out that way. Now she had a steady draught coming from downstairs.

"What-" Briar started to ask.

Tris put a finger to her lips, and cupped a hand around her ear.

"... used battle fire on the thorns late yesterday," Skyfire was saying. "They've been pounding the spell-net in the east with the black powder b.a.l.l.s. Those things make a deep hole when they strike the ground - they're blowing the spell-net apart, working their way in. Two more days, and they'll be at the East Gate. And even though we've found out how their black powder works, there's no guarantee some boom-stones won't get past our mages. They'll throw as many as they can over our walls, to soften us up. Some are bound to hit."

"Have the war-mages been able to get through the protective barrier around the pirate fleet?" Rosethorn wanted to know.

"They've thrown all they have at that cursed thing - nothing gets through" Skyfire replied bitterly. "Water-mages say it goes to the floor of the sea."

"He's got the barrier salted with mage-traps." That was Niko. "He really likes to use other mages' power in his work, this Enahar."

The four looked at each other, and moved closer together, for comfort.

"What of the navy?" Lark wanted to know.

'No word, the Duke says" Moonstream told them. "They may come, they may not.

You need to evacuate the children. We can take them to Summersea through the hidden ways. A load of the worst sick and injured are going at noon."

"No!" snapped Sandry, eyes blazing. "Absolutely not."

Tris and Daja shushed her. From below Niko called, "What's going on up there?"

Briar went to the door. "We're just frisking like little captive lambkins."

There was a crack of laughter downstairs: Skyfire, perhaps.

" Frisk quietly," Rosethorn ordered.

Briar stepped back into the room.

"They are not sending me to my uncle!" Sandry thrust her chin out as far as it would go. "I won't leave!"

"Is that what 'evacuating' means?" the boy enquired.

"That's what it means," Daja replied.

Tris's face was dead white. Small lightnings crackled all over her hair and dress.

Winds stirred in every corner of the room. "They can't send me away again. They can't."

Another boom-stone exploded in mid-air. Tris flinched.

"It'll get you away from that," pointed out Daja.

"And what'll be here when we come back?" Briar wanted to know.

None of them could answer.

"They killed my favourite cousin. Now they're going to drive me from the only place I ever felt welcome," Tris said very softly. "I'm done with being pushed around by the likes of them!" Going to the window, she sat on the ledge, and swung her legs outside. She would go up on the wall, she decided, and throw lightning at them until it killed her.

Sandry lunged, and grabbed her. The lightnings p.r.i.c.kled, but didn't hurt.

"Let me go," snarled Tris, fighting. Daja came over to help.

"Listen to me - listen!" Sandry talked low and fast, trying to hold Tris's attention.

"You want to fight back, and that makes perfect sense, but you can't do it by yourself.

Haven't we all been hurt by this? He wasn't our cousin, but we liked him, and we're in danger, too." Tris was still trying to wriggle out of their hold. "You need our help.

Listen to me, are you listening?"

The roar of a boom-stone shook the rafters.

"Let me go," panted Tris.

"She's right," Daja insisted, dragging her inside. "Listen to her."

All three girls tumbled on to the floor with a thud. Sandry's and Daja's hair fought to rise out of their braids.

Briar listened at the door. The adults seemed to be too deep into their conversation to pay attention to them. "We won't be allowed on the wall," he pointed out.

"We don't need their permission," Sandry replied. She had given up on reasoning with Tris, and was now sitting on the redhead's stomach. "Remember the other night?

How we protected ourselves at the North Gate? / can do that. I can keep anyone from touching us. I don't want to go! If the pirates took this place - if they hurt Lark..."

She looked away, blinking eyes that stung. The lightnings had slowed down, but now they climbed on Sandry and Daja just as they did on Tris. Must be more light then heat, Briar thought, looking at the girls. And isn't that just as well? Or Tris'd cook anyone who came near her.

"I don't think I could bear it, if Winding Circle fell," murmured Daja. "I can be a bellows, and blow people away from us. Or - or I think - I think..." She halted, turning something over in her mind.

"Let me up," said Tris. "I won't go out of the window."

"Promise?" asked Sandry.

"Promise."

Sandry and Daja rose to their feet. Little Bear got in a few licks before Tris could stand, and take her face away from his tongue.

Briar eyed the redhead suspiciously. He didn't like the stubborn set of her mouth. Her lightnings seemed thicker - so did her hair. "You look like a bush," he informed her.

Tris grumbled. Seizing a long scarf, she wrapped it around her head and tied it tightly.

Past the cloth her curls still rose to fan out, but at least she didn't look so odd.

"What about their magic barrier?" she asked, sitting on the bed. "You heard Skyfire."

"We can ram through," Daja said. "They're always telling us how much strong we are when we hook up. I wish we had the string, though."

"You sure we need it?" Briar enquired. "We did all right at the North Gate. Maybe we just thought we had to touch it."

"I have to use the privy," Tris announced. "I had too much juice."

"If they'll let you down there," Briar said.

Tris smoothed her skirts. Her lightnings had faded. "I have to go. I'll be right back.

Don't make plans without me. I want to get these - jishen." She brushed past him, and trotted downstairs.

"If Sandry protects us, and if I get near the ships, well..." Daja mused.

"Tell us," Sandry urged.

"When Frostpine and I did the harbour chain, he made the chain rise in the air. I'm pretty sure I remember how." It was one of many things burned into her mind when they had magicked the rest of the chain so hard and so fast. "I think I can get metal to pull out of whatever it's attached to, in a small area. Maybe even drag nails from their moorings."

"I'll find something to do," said Briar. "There's always getting seaweed to foul their oars. And if Coppercurls can use her lightning, we might be able to make these t.u.r.d- eaters back off."

They discussed their plans for a few more minutes. Briar was the first to realize that, for someone who promised to be right back, Tris was taking a very long time.

"Wait here," he told the other two. He swung out of the window, letting himself drop to the pillows on the roof of Rosethorn's shop, where Tris had planned to fall. He landed with little more than a b.u.mp, just as another boom-stone exploded. Waving, he dropped to the ground. They waited nervously as he trotted around to the privy.

Within moments he was back, scowling furiously.

She's gone! he mouthed.

"Help me down," Sandry told Daja, tucking her skirts between her knees. She sat on the windowsill and swung her legs outside. Daja lowered her as much as she could, until Sandry was able to drop lightly to the workshop roof. On her jump to the ground, Briar was there to catch her.

Daja wasn't about to risk the thump the adults would hear if she dropped. Running into the attic, she got a coil of rope. With a few quick twists, she secured one end to Tris's bed. Clinging to the rope, she lowered herself to the ground.

"Where would she go?" Briar asked when she arrived. They trotted away from the house, coming out of the gardens and on to the gra.s.sy strip on the inside of the wall.

"There's sentries all over the wall."