a/n: Originally written for SMACKDOWN 2011, on Fief Goldenlake.
Masquerade
By icecreamlova
Lies 1 ~ 4
- : -
At one point, Briar took it upon himself to teach each of his foster-sisters how to lie. It was a very good skill after all - as long as it wasn't used on Niko. Then the skill wasn't much use at all.
They all improved, in some aspect. Sandry slipped unconsciously into the slang of his old ways, and it made every word she said seem like a half-truth until even he wasn't sure which ones were truth and which weren't. Tris was less willing to take it up - she wanted to remain respectable, after all - but her dry tone made her surprisingly good at lying when she really needed to.
And Daja? Briar could teach her nothing.
She told him, straight-faced, that her family had conducted lessons for this very thing.
And only later, when Sandry and Tris were giggling in the background, did Briar realize he'd been had.
- : -
Tris sneezed.
The flour bag exploded.
Daja, Briar, Sandry and Tris stared in dismay at the powdery white that covered Sandry's bedroom.
"When Niko told us to practice using our powers," Sandry said slowly, "he wasn't thinking of this."
A wind rose up, stirring the powder and spreading it, but with a glare from Tris, it died meekly down again.
"If you don't want to be skinned," Briar said. "This is what we've got to do..."
Some time later, Lark and Rosethorn stared, astonished, at the many platter of small misshapen cakes on the dining table. Rosethorn's traveling bag dropped from her fingers.
Lark examined one of the slightly burnt cakes.
"It looks to me," Rosethorn said, "like they cooked it using a burst of magic-fueled fire."
- : -
"Just a humble gardener," Briar often called himself, while on the run from the Emperor and trying to explain why he spent so much time in everyone's gardens.
Humble? Sandry would laugh at that.
Briar often thought that he would do a great deal to hear Sandry laugh at him again. Even Tris scolding him about trying to hide her glasses, or Daja gloating for a few moments about beating him during their sparring matches, were things he had never realized he would miss this much.
But he did. And escaping into someone else's persona didn't make it any better, at all.
Most gardeners he had met had some sort of family, while his sisters were beyond reach, far to the west.
- : -
Pasco was growing up.
Three years ago, Lady Sandry's presence had seemed comfortable and, sometimes, annoying. Now her smile made him stumble, and her absent-minded way of patting his shoulder had made his stomach swoop. (And him being a dance mage, too! What would Yazmin think, seein' him totter around like a baby?)
The problem was, it didn't go both ways. It wasn't Pasco that made her catch her breath, but that plant mage in Cheeseman Street - no matter how casually they touched each other, as though they were nothing more than good friends. She did not even disclose her secrets to him, as she confessed them to the Trader with hands lined in Living Metal, or muttered them sulkily to Mistress Chandler. (No, he wasn't eavesdropping! He'd just... stumbled upon them while visiting Lady Sandrilene.)
His limbs were too long and awkward, and now... this. Another change. Pasco did not think he liked growing up, so pretended as well as he could that he wasn't.
- : -
He told Sandry to back off.
He told Tris to take her neb right out of his business, please.
Daja didn't ask, but he warned her off with a look that made her raise both eyebrows.
Briar knew that Sandry and Tris worried, despite Daja's attempts to keep them calm. Maybe they thought that fleeing from Berenene was far too reminiscent of running for his life from a very different Head of Empire.
So when Sandry finally saw the flowers he had carefully nurtured as presents, to mark the anniversary of the Circle, he grinned smugly, privately, at the undignified manner in which her jaw gaped.
- : -
Well?