Berenene, Sandry, and their respective posses go to Dragonstone for the day, which is an old ruin of a fortress that Berenene has turned into a garden, using the crumbling rock walls like planters and fountains and doing nifty stuff that basically I wish this place was real because it sounds awesome.

Briar, of course, thinks this is all the bee’s knees, and while he and Berenene chat about it, she offers to make him her chief gardener if he’ll stick around.  But he’s too flabbergasted to answer before she runs off for more socializing.

Everyone breaks up into small groups and enjoys hanging out and doing small group things, and then Daja notices some disgruntled fellows doing suspicious disgruntled fellow things.  She follows them, and low and behold, they’ve cornered Briar somewhere to express their displeasure at the fact that he’s been hogging Berenene’s attention.

The whole scene is just to show off that Briar is FUCKING BADASS when you get in a fistfight with him, Daja is a deadpan snarker, and the two of them are both funny.  Then again…it accomplishes those goals. 😀

Don’t ever fistfight with Briar or make bets with Daja.  Especially don’t both at the same time. 

Sandry and Quen show up to patch the two fighters so the empress doesn’t know they’ve been fighting.

“I didn’t make those clothes for brawls.  I didn’t think even you could find a fight at the court of Namorn.”

“Well, you’re forever underestimating me,” Briar told her.  “If there’s a fight about, it’s nearly guaranteed I’ll be in it.”

You so cheeky, Briar. 😀

But!  Here’s why I like Briar and hate just about every other fighter type character.  He didn’t seek this out.  Briar is basically a fight magnet, but it’s because he’s aloof and honestly doesn’t care.  He marches to his own drum, and if that bothers you, he’s still not going to change.  So yeah, he rubs people wrong, but only the people inclined to try enforcing their own ways on others.  He isn’t trying to fight people, he’s just trying to live his own life.  Even at the start of this fight, with the men insulting him, his first reaction was “You think I’m a coward?  …sure, fine, call me a purple hippo if you want, like I care.  Long as you say it over there and stop bothering me.”  He only let it go to blows when the other party wouldn’t leave him alone.

And THAT is what makes the character sexy.  That sort of utter confidence, the kind of confidence that says “I am what I am, regardless of what you think,” and then has the skills to back that up.  Honestly, Briar is the entirety of the reason I say I like brawler characters and the reason I’m disappointed in all others.

Tammy, you’ve ruined me for other quasi-bad boys!

A week later, after Berenene runs them ragged calling them out for social gathers, Sandry finally relents and agrees to go stay at the Dancrun palace with them.  Zhegorz does not take the news well thanks to his paranoia, so Briar and Tris try to regal him with stories of their past exploits to prove that they can protect him. Zhegorz just counters that Briar wasn’t very protected during whatever gave him all those nightmares.

Briar…rather spontaneously remembers that Tris isn’t the smothering type and thus tells them a (very) little bit about the Gyongxe war he was in.  But Tris didn’t do anything before he had this change of heart.  He literally just looked over at her and went “oh yeah, that’s her personality type.”  How did he forget it?  I mean, I could see him be reluctant at first, or worried that she’d changed while they were apart, but it’s been like a year since he reconnected with all the girls again.

So…chalk one more telepathic connection open.  For no reason.  Which is fair, since it was closed for no reason.

Really, I love these characters to bits and pieces, but this drama was not set up well.  It was so close, and it could have been done, but this execution is so rushed.

Zhegorz is not encouraged, though, because he still sees and hears things, and it’s ten times as bad in the city.  So they go to Daja to see if she can help, because she has deus ex machine metal that can do anything.  No, really.  You’ll have to read her books to realize that there’s no rules for what this stuff she makes can do.  With normal metal, it follows the rules, but she grows her own metal that’s like “yeah, I just do whatever, hahaha.”

She makes little hearing aids and glasses for Zhegorz, ones that block out anything carried by the winds/magic, so he’ll only hear what a normal person would.

“I begin to think I can cure dry rot with this stuff,”

Well, if the author commands it, you probably can.