Berenene laughed and clapped her hands as Ishabal nodded to Sandry. “Wonderful, Cousin! You have solved our dilemma most delightfully. Rizu, see it done right away.” As Rizu left them with the cloth, the empress told a young man who hovered nearby, “Jak, you silly boy, stop pretending you aren’t interested. Clehame Sandrilene fa Toren, may I present Saghad Jakuben fer Pennun? Jak is one of my dearest young friends. He’s also your neighbor, near your estates outside the town of Kilcoin.”
Sandry knew she had passed the test. She smiled and extended her hand to a very attractive young man. Big, broad-shouldered, with crow’s-wing black hair and bright chestnut eyes, he was delightfully handsome, with an infectious smile. He kissed her fingertips. “Hello, fair neighbor,” he said in an engaging, boyish voice. “If you ever wish to borrow a cup of honey, I will be glad to oblige, though a creature as sweet as you will probably never run out.”
“I know what that is,” Sandry retorted, having heard variations on this theme since she had moved into her uncle Vedris’s home. “That’s flattery. Don’t do it again, please.”
Jak pouted and looked at the empress. “Great lady, you said I did flattery well.”
“You did before today,” Berenene told him with a catlike smile. “I fear our cousin has bowled you over and made you clumsy.”
“But I can’t admit to it,” protested Jak. “She’ll just say I’m flattering again.”
Sandry giggled and retrieved her hand since Jak had yet to let go of it. “Don’t admit to it,” she advised. “You’ve almost returned to my good graces.”
As if responding to an invisible signal, others moved in to be introduced, including more handsome young men who had paid attention to Jak’s greeting and avoided his mistake. Everyone also greeted Daja, Briar, and Tris. Berenene watched them all with the amusement of an aunt supervising beloved nieces and nephews. When the noblemen began to argue over who would bring Sandry tea and who could fetch her a plate of delicacies to nibble on, Sandry curled her lips in a wry smile. If only Uncle could see me now, she thought. Not that he’d have much use for these pretty courtiers. When Uncle sees a strong young man idling about, he puts him to work. And only think, a week ago I was riding in the mountains, wishing I could sew my sisters’ and brother’s mouths shut to stop them from arguing!
As Jak brought her tea, Berenene ordered Quenaill to fetch Sandry a chair. Once Sandry took her seat with a word of thanks, Finlach fer Hurich offered her a plate of tiny dumplings, fresh strawberries, and marzipan roses. Redheaded, with a handsome face composed entirely of carved angles, he rivaled Jak for looks. As he and Jak hovered around Sandry, she noticed that they glanced frequently toward Berenene. She was about to demand that they decide who they wanted to talk to when she saw the mage Ishabal and another older woman whispering together and looking in her direction.
It hit her like fireworks: These are my cousin’s choices, Sandry realized. She’s picked Jak and Finlack as the ones she wants to court and marry the heiress if they can. Uncle warned me she’d try this. If I wed a Namornese nobleman, I stop taking my income to Emelan. My wealth stays here.
Sandry veiled her eyes with her lashes as she bit into an early strawberry. So the summer’s game of snare-the-heiress begins, she thought cynically. It will be interesting to see how they try to do it, especially now that they know I don’t care for flattery.
She sighed. I hope they’re entertaining, at least. Otherwise I’m going to be very bored until it’s time to go home.
After an hour of further mingling, Berenene proclaimed it was too fine a day to spend indoors. She invited her court and her guests outside to view her gardens. Immediately Rizu went to a pair of doubled-glass doors that opened onto a marble terrace. When she struggled with the latch, Daja went to help her.
Rizu smiled at her through the curls that had escaped her veil. “These old things are always stiff this early in the year,” she said. “I told the servants to oil them yesterday, but it was a bit cold last night.”
Daja reached into the latch with her power and warmed the oil in its parts. The latch turned. The doors swung outward. “You just have to know how to talk to locks,” she told Rizu.
“So I see,” the young woman replied, and laughed. “Obviously I need to learn a new language. My goodness…” She looked at Daja’s brass-wrapped hand. “Is that jewelry?”
“Not exactly,” Daja replied. She offered the hand for Rizu’s inspection and turned it over so the other woman could see the brass on her palm. As Rizu inspected her hand, Daja felt warmth start under her skin where Rizu touched her. It fizzed up into her arm, making Daja feel both odd and pleased at the same time.
“Does it hurt?” asked Rizu, awed, when she saw the metal was sealed to Daja’s flesh.
Daja shook her head. “It’s part of me. And it’s a long story.”
“I’d love to hear it,” said Rizu, walking onto the terrace. “If you don’t mind telling it?”
Daja smiled and tucked her hands in her tunic pockets, falling in step with Rizu as the nobles surged out into the morning sun. “Well, if you insist.”
Tris drew back as the courtiers streamed outside. Let them go walk and flirt and gossip about people I don’t know, she thought, meaning the nobles, not her friends. If I wanted to be bored, I’d have tried embroidery. She smiled. And Sandry would scold me for saying it’s boring, she added.
The truth was that the breezes surrounding the palace at ground level drowned her in images and voices trapped in its air currents and drafts. They were the gleanings from the hundreds of people who walked and worked on the grounds. Tris could block out most of the voices, but it was harder to keep bits and pieces of pictures from assaulting her eyes, and Sandry had forbidden her to wear her colored lenses on the day she was to be officially presented at court.
I need spectacles that block the images without looking odd, Tris told herself. Or I need to tell Sandry that I don’t care how strange I look.
Or…there are advantages to staying indoors, she thought. This is a new place. Better still, this is a new wealthy household, which means more books. I doubt the empress will even notice I’m gone, she told herself. She’s so busy watching Sandry, I’ll bet she has eyes for little else. I wonder where Her Imperialness keeps her library?
Briar drifted through the crowd of nobles, getting to know who was who, particularly among the women. He didn’t go all out with any one female, not today. You’ve got all summer to spend in this human garden, he told himself, when the urge to single out a particular beauty caught him up. And some of these flowers are well worth the effort to cultivate. You don’t want to race around clipping them like a greedy robber.
A few male mages drifted his way to get acquainted. They accompanied their greetings with a subtle pressure to see if Briar was weak or unprepared, a magical touch like a too-strong handshake. It was a popular game with insecure mages, particularly men, and Briar withstood it without pressing back. He ended the conversation and moved away from the pressure as soon as was polite. Why do they waste their time like this? Briar wondered for perhaps the thousandth time since he had begun his mage studies. They aren’t competing with me, or me with them, so why bother? None of my teachers ever tried that nonsense.
“Stop that,” he finally told the last mage crossly. “I’m not going to yelp like a puppy and I’m not knocking you over, either. Stop wasting my time and yours. Grow up.”
Quenaill was within earshot. He came over, waving off the man who had begun to turn red over Briar’s remarks. “You’d better hope Her Imperial Majesty doesn’t catch you at such tricks with her guests, particularly not with a garden mage,” he advised the nobleman. As the older mage left, Quenaill smiled quizzically down at Briar. He was a hand taller, the tallest man at court. “You think it’s a waste of time?” Quenaill asked. “Not a way to gauge the potential threat of a stranger?”
Briar dug his hands into his trouser pockets. “Why?” he asked reasonably. “I’d be an awful bleat-br
ain to try anything here, where even the pathways are shaped for protection.”
“You don’t want others to respect you?” asked Quenaill. He had the look in his eye of a man who has stumbled across some strange new breed of animal.
“What do I care if they respect me or no?” asked Briar. “If I want them to learn that, I won’t use a silly game to teach it. I save my power for business.”
“Well, my business is the protection of Her Imperial Majesty,” Quenaill reminded him.
“And mine isn’t anything that might mean her harm,” Briar replied. “You obviously know that already. I’m a nice safe little green mage, all bestrewn with flowers and weeds and things.”
Quenaill covered the beginnings of a smile with his hand. When he lowered it, his mouth under control again, he said, “Little plant-strewn green mages aren’t safe, not when they wear a medallion at eighteen. I was considered a prodigy, and I was twenty-one when I got mine.”
Briar shrugged. “That’s hardly my fault. Maybe your teachers held off because they were worried about you respecting them—and maybe mine already knew I respected them for anything that truly mattered.”
Quenaill began to chuckle. Once he caught his breath, he told Briar, “All right. I give up. You win—such tests of power are pointless in the real world. But if you think any of these wolves won’t try to show how much better than you they are, in magic or in combat, you’re in for a rude awakening.”
Briar brushed off the idea as if it were a fly. “Just because they want to dance doesn’t mean I’ll do the steps,” he replied. He and Quenaill fell into step together as the court wandered down into the park that surrounded the palace. “So where did you study?” he asked as they followed the lords and ladies.
They had a decent chat before one of the ladies claimed Quenaill’s attention. Briar wandered on by himself, inspecting the wealth of plants that ornamented the paths. The sight of a pool drew him down to the water’s edge to see the green lily leaves that covered its surface. Buds stood up from the water on long stems, still too tightly furled to betray the color of the blossoms within.
He heard the rustle of silk behind him. Without looking around, Briar muttered, “Aliput lilies! How did she get Aliput lilies to grow so far north?” He let his power wash away from him, over the pond’s surface, but he detected only the tiniest whispers of magic in the edges and along the bottom, in charms to keep away rot and insects.
“It wasn’t easy,” Berenene replied, amused. Briar turned his head; she stood just a foot from him, with the court spread behind her like a gaudy cape. “I shelter them in the greenhouses all winter, in pools with just enough warmth to keep them alive. I have to do that for all the temperate land plants. They don’t last ten minutes in one good blast from the Syth in November. The first year I was empress, I lost a fortune in water lilies because I left them out in October.” She sighed, a rueful curl to her slender mouth. “My father forbade me to import any plants whatsoever. He told me he would not waste good Namornese coin on garden frippery. That first year I was empress, I feared he was right, and that it was a fool’s idea to spend all that money for something that went black with frost burn instantly and never recovered.”
Briar looked up into her large brown eyes, interested. This was a side to her that he had not expected. True, the imperial gardens were one of the wonders of Namorn, but he thought that was the work of imperial gardeners. He had no idea that the empress herself took an interest beyond having the fame of them. “But you tried again,” he said.
“By then I’d had three assassination attempts on my life, and a peasant rising that took five thousand troops to put down,” she said, staring into the distance. “I thought that if running the empire was going to be so treacherous, I owed myself something to remind me that there was some good in being empress.” She smiled at him. “I have papyrus plants growing in the next pond,” she said. “Would you like to see?”
Briar hurriedly got to his feet. “I’m your man, Imperial Majesty.”
She looked at him. “Are you indeed?” she asked with an impish smile. “Then you may offer me your arm.” Briar did so with his most elegant bow. She rested a white hand accented with rings on his forearm and pointed to one of the paths. “That way.”
The courtiers parted before them as they climbed to the next path, then fell into place behind. Briar looked at his companion, still trying to puzzle out how he felt about the discovery that this powerful woman liked plants. “So do you oversee all these gardens, Imperial Majesty?” he inquired.
Berenene put her head back and laughed. Briar’s eyes traveled along the line her lovely throat made. They should do statues of her as Mila of the Grain, he thought. Or the local earth goddess, Qunoc. I’m surprised all these lovesick puppy courtiers haven’t put them up all over the country. He glanced back. The lovesick puppies glared at him.
“I would not have the time to oversee each and every garden here, let alone at my different homes,” Berenene told Briar. “And so many of them are displays of imperial power. They’re impersonal. But I do have spots that are all mine, with gardeners I trust if my duties keep me away, and I have my greenhouses. There’s always time in the winter to get my hands dirty. Here we go.”
They walked out of the shelter of the trees into bright sunlight, an open part of the grounds that would draw sun all day long. Here stretched the long pond bordered by tall papyruses. It was bordered by a wooden walkway. Berenene led Briar up onto it. “I hate to lose good shoes in the mud,” she explained, “and we have to keep the edges boggy for the reeds. Do you know what those are?” She pointed through a break in the greenery at the pond’s edge.
Briar whistled. “Pygmy water lilies,” he said, recognizing the small white blossoms among the spreading leaves. “Nice.”
“I tried to crossbreed them,” the empress said, leaning her elbows on the rail that overlooked the pond. “I wanted a red variety. I’ve had no luck, so far. But you might.”
“It would take longer than I plan to stay,” Briar told her, watching a father duck patrol the water near a stand of reeds. I’ll bet he’s got a lady friend with eggs hidden there, he thought. To the likes of him this expensive little stretch of water is just a nesting-place.
“It’s a pity,” replied Berenene. “I think between us we would create gardens the whole world might envy. But if your mind is settled, I would not try to change it.”
A glint of light on the far side of the long pond caught Briar’s eye. “Imperial Majesty, I think you might change any fellow’s mind, if you chose to,” he said gallantly, but absently. “What’s over there?”
“My greenhouses. Would you care to see them? Or would you think I was trying to tantalize you?” Berenene inquired wickedly.
Briar looked into her eyes and swallowed hard. If Rosethorn was here, she’d say this was way too much woman for me, he thought. And maybe she’d even be right.
Berenene gave him a long, slow smile. “Come.” She took his arm once more as they set off down the wooden walkway. The hammer of many shoes on the planks made the empress turn and scowl. “You all have my leave to remain here,” she said sharply. “We’re going to the greenhouses, and you know I can’t let any of you in.” To Briar, she said, “The last time I went there with three—three, mind!—of my courtiers, one of them knocked over a palm and one broke a shelf of clay pots. They’re all grace on the dance floor or battlefield, but not in a greenhouse.”
Briar looked back, met the smoldering eyes of a number of young nobles, and grinned.
6
Once the empress and Briar vanished into the long greenhouses, servants appeared with ground cloths to spread on the grass. The nobles occupied benches or cloths in the sun to await Berenene’s return. Small groups wandered through a complex of flower gardens nearby, while Rizu invited Daja to sit with her and some of Berenene’s other ladies-in-waiting. Sandry, unwatched for a moment, stepped back under a shady tree. She looked on as Jak, Finlach, and other men
who had eyed Berenene as they hovered around Sandry formed a clump of watchers. Their eyes were fixed on the greenhouses as they muttered to one another.
“Silly amdain,” a man said near her right shoulder.
Sandry glanced back and up. She had seen him in the crowd, the hunter who had been so angry with Chime. He was a tall man even not on horseback, with glossy dark blond hair, direct brown eyes, and a clever mouth. It was a face that was made for smiling, which he was doing at that very moment. “Why do you say that?” she asked, knowing amdain meant fool in Namornese.
“Her Imperial Majesty sets her pretty boys to courting you, and the moment she isn’t here to make them hop, they start sulking about her and ignoring you. In their shoes, I wouldn’t grumble about her walking off with your friend.” He stood loosely, his green coat open, his hands in the pockets of his baggy black trousers. “I’d be making certain you remembered my name when you went home tonight.”
Sandry raised her chin. “If you were present earlier, you’d know I don’t care for flattery.”
He grinned down at her. “What flattery? I’m talking common sense. Here you are, all the way from Emelan. You have to be more interesting than most of my friends, who know nothing but the roads between their lands and the imperial palaces.”