“This?” Sespian touched the page.
“He might nod or grunt at a couple of final choices, but she gets to narrow them down.”
“Ah.”
Mahliki expected him to ask for tips on appealing to her tastes, but he merely stood back and studied what he had down. “Do you want to know what Mother likes?” she finally asked.
“Inside information? That hardly seems fair. Besides, I have to be true to my vision rather than worrying about pleasing the world. Or Kyattese matrons.”
Mahliki didn’t know how practical that was, especially if one wanted to win, but she admired his integrity in the manner.
“I wouldn’t mind hearing her preferences,” came the professor’s voice from the other room.
Mahliki started—she had known he was close enough to hear, but hadn’t expected him to jump into their conversation.
“Professor Edgecrest is entering a design as well,” Sespian said.
“Ah. Is that window open?” Mahliki pointed to the wall, and while Sespian was looking, stepped around the desk and kicked the door shut. “Oops, must be a draft.”
Sespian snorted. If the professor had a response, it didn’t float through the door.
“Let me at least give you one tip,” Mahliki said.
Sespian’s eyebrows rose.
“Don’t call her a Kyattese matron to her face.” Mahliki winked, though she feared her joke came out crippled, for Sespian’s lips puckered in contemplation. Odd how flirting was easy with men one didn’t care about, but when one actually hoped to impress another... “She doesn’t see herself as very proper and dignified, and might construe the word as an insult.”
“Oh, thank you.” Sespian didn’t smile.
And why would he? Were jokes supposed to get better when you had to explain them?
“I came on another matter actually.” Mahliki had better get to the point before he asked her to leave so he could get back to work. “I was wondering if you have time to come to the waterfront with me and sketch a few examples of the plant. I can do rudimentary drawings myself, but I want to send these back to some of my mother’s colleagues at home. They should be as good as possible. I’ve seen your work. You’re very talented.”
When jokes fail, try flattery...
Except that Sespian didn’t seem to notice the flattery. He had been scratching his jaw since she had mentioned the plant.
“You have seen it, haven’t you?” Mahliki asked. “Down on the waterfront? You must have heard of it at least.”
“Sorry, no. I’ve been assisting Professor Edgecrest with his classes, studying all the texts from my own classes, and trying to catch up in a business course—apparently I need to know how to ply my trade when I’m ready.” A bemused expression touched his face. It must be strange to have to worry about paying the bills after being predestined since birth to being the emperor.
Something she could talk about with him later, but truly? He didn’t know about the plant? Had he been living and sleeping in this tiny office?
“Yes, I can see where that’ll be important, but the plant is getting to be a problem. Father has called Sicarius and Amaranthe back, so it can be studied from beneath in the Explorer. In the meantime, I volunteered to research it since the current methods the city workers are using to eradicate it are primitive and limited.” Mahliki bit her lip, wishing she hadn’t chosen those two adjectives. He might think she was insulting his people. She actually found the Turgonians intriguing in ways—they made up for their rudimentary arts and mundane sciences techniques with impressive engineering skills, not to mention all those delicious things they made with apples, a fruit that rarely made it to the Kyattese Islands.
“I shouldn’t think I’d have any knowledge that would be anything less than primitive and limited when it comes to plants,” Sespian said—cursed banyan sprites, he’d picked up on that unintentional insult, “but if I can be assistance to your father or the city as a whole...” He shrugged. “It’s silly I suppose, but I do still feel a responsibility toward the empire’s subjects, or the republic’s citizens, as I guess we all are now.”
“It’s not silly. If you could do these drawings for me, it would be very helpful.” And if they spent a couple of hours chatting in the early spring sun, maybe he would come to find her company pleasant. Especially if she kept from insulting his people for the rest of the day.
“Let me gather a few items.”
“Excellent.” Mahliki kept the triumphant fist pump internal.
Sespian grabbed pencils, charcoal sticks, pens, erasers, and a sketchpad. He opened the door and walked into the larger room. “Good afternoon, Professor. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“Don’t get too close to that plant,” the professor growled without looking up from his desk. The doors were thin here. “There’s talk of people going missing from the waterfront at night. And don’t get distracted by womanly wiles, either—the contest deadline is tomorrow, and you’ve work left to do in there.”
Mahliki was torn between mortification and indignation. The latter won out, and she jammed a fist against her hips. “Womanly wiles?”
“I’m sure Lady Starcrest has nothing but professional matters on her mind,” Sespian said, “but I will maintain a rigid shield of propriety around myself just in case.”
Mahliki might have been even more mortified, but Sespian winked at her as he said the last.
The professor grunted and muttered, “Good. You’ve a career to pay attention to. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life drawing for tips in the student square—that’s disgraceful.”
Sespian flushed and hustled for the door. The professor didn’t detain them further.
Mahliki searched for things to say as they walked out of the university district and caught a trolley heading for the waterfront. Oh, she thought of things, but they were all stupid things. There were stories she could share, but he would find her self-absorbed if she started spinning tales of childhood adventures without the slightest prompting.
They drew a few curious looks from trolley passengers, more for Sespian than Mahliki. Father was trying to keep pictures and news of his wife and children out of the presses, and she hadn’t been recognized often when she’d been out.
“I have a confession,” Sespian said as the breeze riffled through his short brown hair. “The construction site for the new capital building has been changed from Arakan Hill to a spot a few blocks up from the waterfront—something about donated land and politics, I understand. I’ve been meaning to take a look and see if the surrounding buildings and terrain should affect my design.”
“So you’re not coming with me purely for altruistic reasons? To help the citizens?”
“Well...” Sespian cleared his throat and looked down, seemingly embarrassed by having an ever-so-slight self-serving streak. “I think a handsome new capital building for the Turgonian Republic will help the citizens. By making them feel that this new regime has a permanence to it.” He gave her a quick smile.
She had been thinking of teasing him for his grandiose statements, but the smile stole her words. It wasn’t flamboyant or flirtatious, but shy and self-effacing, acknowledging the pompousness of his words. It warmed her heart. Well, all right, that wasn’t exactly her heart getting all tingly. She rummaged through her mind for something to say that would bring back the smile.
Someone climbing onto the trolley jostled Sespian, and he looked away—to her disappointment.
His mouth drooped open as he stared past the trolley driver, toward the waterfront, which had come into view... “That’s... unexpected.”
Mahliki had visited the plant a number of times already, but she frowned at the snarl of tangles growing up from the shallows, twining around the support posts on the docks, and stretching across the planks in places. The green blur stretched up and down the waterfront, like some overambitious algal bloom that had mated with a vining plant from the tropics. Here and there, boats at the docks had been caught in its
clutches, and their owners were hacking with machetes, trying to free everything from dinghies to yachts. Commercial fishing ships out in the deeper waters were unaffected, but they had to be keeping an eye on the shore, wondering if they dared return to their berths.
“I was here yesterday, but I swear it’s even larger today,” Mahliki said. “Amazing growth, especially for this climate.”
“I had no idea... That can’t be natural. Where’d it come from?”
“I don’t know. I wish your Amaranthe was around to talk to, as I understand your lake has been the hotbed for all sorts of unusual activity in the last year.”
“My Amaranthe.” Sespian snorted softly as the trolley came to a stop. “Hardly that.”
Mahliki tried to decide if there was something wistful in his tone, or if she was imagining it. Amaranthe and the assassin—Sespian’s father, she reminded herself, though that still wasn’t common knowledge—had been together for a long time, or at least that was the impression she had gotten.
“I do have some knowledge of what transpired here with the underwater laboratory in the last year,” Sespian said. “Now and then, my intelligence department actually told me things.”
“I’ve already read everything in my father’s records. The old chief of intelligence salvaged everything possible from those offices in the Imperial Barracks.”
“Ah, of course. You’d have access to far more information than I these days.” Sespian didn’t sound regretful; he was merely making an observation. Though did his mouth turn down an iota? At the notion he couldn’t be as useful as he once had?
Mahliki should have asked for his information instead of squelching him. She had wanted something to discuss, and that would have gotten him talking. Fool.
Sespian lifted a hand toward someone in the distance. Between the not-entirely-frigid spring air and the plant spectacle, the wide waterfront street was bustling with people, everyone from enforcers in their gray uniforms to vendors hawking “I saw it first” shirts with vines snaking around the sides and backs of the garments. It took Mahliki a moment to spot the recipient of Sespian’s wave.
The man strolling toward them was one of the first Turgonians, aside from her father, Mahliki had met. He wore a tastefully cut—if flamboyantly colored—suit and great coat that accented his height, broad shoulders, and muscular build. His facial features were strong enough so as not to seem feminine but elegant enough to draw the eyes of those who appreciated the aesthetically pleasing. Although the green hat on his head might make the owner of that same eye curl a lip—it was sprouting vines, not dissimilar to those on the garish shirts being hawked.
A woman in a crisp gray enforcer uniform walked at his side, her long strides matching his, though she was a few inches shorter than he, her height equal to Mahliki’s own six feet. No one would call the enforcer woman a beauty, but she had handsome features that bespoke strength and determination. Her broad utility belt housed a dagger, a short sword, and a pistol, and her hand rested on the latter as she scowled out at the invasive plant. Mahliki hadn’t yet seen anyone trying to shoot the biological curiosity into submission yet, but, this being Turgonia, it was only a matter of time.
“Hello, Maldynado,” Sespian said as they drew closer to the other couple. “Sergeant Yara.”
Maldynado swept the hat from his head and bowed, a tumble of brown curls falling about his cheeks. “Good evening, Sespian, and Ms. Starcrest. It’s delightful to see you both.”
He gave Mahliki what she would consider a flirtatious smile, and Sergeant Yara—his... friend? Lover? Arresting officer?—rolled her eyes. When Maldynado turned the smile on Sespian it was almost as flirty. Maybe he simply didn’t know another way to stretch his lips. He added a wink to Sespian along with an unsubtle nod toward Mahliki. At least she found it unsubtle. Sespian’s return smile had a faintly baffled air about it.
A sheltered upbringing, Mahliki decided, though, for all her travels, her upbringing also hadn’t been as ecumenical in the ways of lovers and suitors as she might have wished, not with her very tall and very imposing father looming in the background. Amazing how little a man with his reputation had to do to make boys trip over their own feet in hasty retreat...
“Are you working?” Sespian asked.
“Some of us are.” Yara slanted an exasperated look at Maldynado, or perhaps his newly purchased hat, though a fondness seemed to underlie her glare.
The exasperation bounced off Maldynado, who simply smiled wider. “Some of us are offering emotional and physical support to those who are working.” He slugged Sespian in the shoulder, a common male-to-male Turgonian greeting, Mahliki had noticed, though it would have knocked a slighter man over backward. “Where have you been? You missing your loving pa?”
“Er,” Sespian said.
“Want to come to the baths one of these nights? We’ll box and throw the sand bags around for a while, then get steamed up and rubbed down by the ladies.” Maldynado winked.
Mahliki thought Yara might scowl at this mention of a rubdown, but perhaps not. Mahliki’s one and only experience in a Turgonian bath had left her with bruises. She wasn’t sure what had been worse, the pummeling by the rotund loincloth-clad masseur or the flaying of her skin by the scrub lady with tree trunks for arms. If anything sexual ever happened in those baths, she doubted it was with the employees.
“Er,” Sespian said again. “I have to finish—”
“Please go with him,” Yara said, a tinge of desperation to her voice. “He misses his friends.”
“Oh,” Sespian said. “I can understand that. You and Basilard were close, weren’t you?”
“Despite the fact that he cheated ruthlessly at every dice, tile, or card game that you played with him, yes,” Maldynado said.
Yara mouthed, “Never happened,” to Mahliki.
Mahliki smiled but found her gaze drifting toward the plant. Her parents had sent her down to study it, but she would have come of her own accord anyway. She had seen nothing like it, not in any of her travels, nor in any of her books, and it fascinated her. It could be some practitioner’s project that had gotten out of hand—or perhaps it was doing precisely what its creator had intended—but what if it were some natural mutation?
“It’s hard to believe, but I miss Akstyr too,” Maldynado said. “Even if he was appallingly uncouth, he was just getting interesting when he left. And Sicarius? Well, all right, I don’t really miss him, but Amaranthe, for sure. And, ah...” His eyes grew distant as he gazed down the waterfront.
“Books,” Sespian said quietly.
This remembrance of old comrades Mahliki barely knew made her feel like an outsider. It would be an opportune time to start work, though she was hesitant to leave Sespian, lest he walk off with them instead of with her.
She touched his arm. “I’ll be on that dock over there. If you still have time, those drawings would help.” She lifted a hand toward the others. “Good day.”
Though she told herself not to, she glanced over her shoulder to see if Sespian would follow or if he looked aggrieved that he had to go off with her instead of staying with them. His face didn’t suggest that, though he was probably politically minded enough to mask his thoughts. He shared a few more words with his comrades, received another solid thump on the shoulder from Maldynado, and strode after her.
Mahliki plucked a specimen collection kit of out the satchel she carried, though most of the tools were inadequate for such a large plant. The wooden dock, though broad and of recent construction, creaked and groaned as she walked down it. Not due to her presence, but because the vines wrapping the pilings and boards were applying pressure as they grew at an alarming rate. She paused near a clump of tendrils sticking out of the water like grass—albeit grass with inch-thick stems. Their tips wavered in the breeze, and one had a bulbous tip. She had observed those bulbs on her last trip, but none of them had been near enough for collection. She had a hunch that bud might produce a flower eventually, and she would love a c
hance to dissect the pistol, stamen, and ovule, or whatever organs it ended up having in there.
“Be careful.” Sespian eyed the bulb. “Sergeant Yara said people have gone missing down here the last two nights. She’s not ready to blame the plant, but everyone on the force talks about the oddity of it. An, ah, magical oddity. I know you Kyattese think us primitive for calling it that, but—” He shrugged and opened his sketch pad.
“You’re not primitive. It’s just strange that the mental sciences aren’t practiced here at all, and that so many people don’t even believe people can do things with their minds.”
Sespian had started sketching, but he stopped to point a pencil at the tendrils. “Can you tell if these were a result of ma— the Science?”
“I’m not the expert to ask. My brother and sister would be if they hadn’t gone home. I can sometimes sense the presence of artifacts or of people tinkering with the elements, but this just feels like a plant to me. My mother said the same thing when I brought her down to see it, and she’s more of a Sensitive than I am. Still, a practitioner could have created the seeds in a laboratory, then planted them, and what grew up wouldn’t necessarily feel Made, if that makes sense.”
“Hm.” Sespian set the pad on top of a piling and dropped to his belly. He peered under the dock. “Do you think this started as seeds? As in a lot of seeds?”
“It could have started as one plant and spread laterally via rhizomes. I haven’t dug around in the soil down there to see yet. Someone said the water is fifteen or twenty feet deep around the docks here, and, at the risk of sounding like a weak-blooded foreigner, the lake seems cold for swimming at this time of year. I checked on the beach to the south and north of the city, but there’s nothing growing around there yet, so I couldn’t simply wade in and pull up some roots. I tried to pull on one of these tendrils, but it didn’t budge.”
Sespian slithered halfway off the dock to dip a finger into the water. “Very cold,” he agreed, “but I imagine I could survive a thirty-second immersion to pull up a root for you.”
Mahliki hadn’t expected such an offer and beamed at the back of his head. “Thank you, but there’s more than water to be concerned about down there. I wouldn’t want you to become entangled and not be able to get back up.”