The Will of the Empress Page 10

  Sandry covered a giggle. He wasn’t as obviously handsome as redheaded Finlach or swarthy Jak, but he was good-looking in a friendly, approachable way. I wonder if his nose got that flat bit in the middle when someone hit it? she asked herself. “Forgive me,” she said with a smile of her own. “You must think I’m dreadfully conceited.”

  “No, but you must feel like bait at the moment,” he told her. He offered her a large hand. “I’m Pershan fer Roth. Shan.”

  Sandry let him take her hand. “Sandrilene fa Toren. Sandry.” His grip was warm, strong, and nicely brief, after so many men had already tried to make a romance of a handclasp. “Let’s see,” she murmured, looking at him. “Are you a cleham? Bidis? Saghad? Giath?” The last title was equal to that of duke.

  “No, no, no, and no. My father’s the giath, my older brother the heir. I’m just Shan,” he said with a scapegrace grin. “I’m Master of the Hunt. In other words, I tell the servants what to do, and they make all the arrangements.”

  “It doesn’t sound as if you enjoy the post,” Sandry remarked.

  “It beats crop management for my father and brother. Here I’ve little to do except inspect the hunting gear and animals from time to time, scout new places to hunt, flirt with pretty girls, distract their mothers and chaperones for my friends, and make Her Imperial Majesty laugh. The life of a younger son at the empress’s personal court.”

  “Are there many of you here?” asked Sandry. “I would think most couldn’t afford the life.”

  “Oh, Her Imperial Majesty gives us posts with salaries that help us survive,” Shan replied with a casual shrug. “She likes handsome men, and she’d be the first to tell you those of us who depend on her for a living are very devoted to her interests. We had better be.”

  “What did you mean before, she set her pretty boys on me?” Sandry asked. She had figured it out, but she wondered what this outspoken man would say.

  Shan dug his hands in his pockets. “You’re not very good at playing the empty-headed noble,” he informed her. “Of course you know our mistress would prefer that you and your fortune be confined strictly to Namorn from now on.”

  Sandry had suspected as much, and hoped he would report her answer to her cousin. “That’s not up to her, or to Jak or Fin or anybody. I make my own choices.”

  Shan grinned at her. “Very fiery,” he said with approval. “She’s had people oppose her before, you know. It never quite worked out as they wished it to. The will of the empress is not easily ignored.”

  She sniffed in disdain. Then something made her add, “Besides, I’d never marry any man who’s so obviously in love with someone else, like they are. Isn’t my cousin a bit old for them?”

  “Being imperial inspires a great deal of passion,” her companion replied. “Money inspires more passion still. I’m surprised you don’t know that, being a viymese and educated and all. I hear you mage students run wild at the temple and mage schools.”

  Sandry fiddled with a button and ordered herself not to blush at the sudden turn in the conversation. “I dislike passion, and I was much too young for it at Winding Circle,” she said firmly, watching the courtiers mingle like so many butterflies. “If your friends try it on me, they’ll only be disappointed.”

  Shan studied her for a moment, long enough that Sandry felt the weight of his attention on her. She looked up into his puzzled face.

  “You really think you can defy her,” he remarked slowly. “You really think you’ll beat her. Sandry, nobody beats Her Imperial Majesty. Not in the long run. She’s as beautiful and as treacherous as the Syth, and at least the Syth is limited just to weather. If I were you, I’d do the wise thing and accept one of her pets. Jak’s a good sort. Not particularly clever, but easygoing and cheerful. Once you’re married, the empress will move on to some other game and you can go where you please, as long as you produce an heir.”

  Here it was again, the ghost in the corner of her life, the one she had been sick of years ago. She had escaped it at Winding Circle, only to run into it again the moment she returned to noble society. She hated it. Why do people insist on seeing me as a doll dressed up in wedding clothes? she thought, furious. I’m a person with skills and friends and worth of my own beyond my fortune in lands and money. Beyond being an heiress! And to be told I’m not just a wedding doll, but one that will fold up the moment Berenene frowns at me—it’s just too much!

  “You must think I have the will of a jelly,” she told Shan tartly. “That I’m one of those sweet noble girls who does as she’s told.”

  “If you’re not, I’d advise you give it a try just this once,” Shan told her gravely. “Berenene is implacable. And I’d warn your friend, Viynain Briar, if I were you. None of us would dare to raise a hand or even to criticize Her Imperial Majesty, but him? Jak’s too good a soul to think it, but I wouldn’t put it past Quenaill or someone else to arrange an accident for Briar, to keep him from ousting anyone she favors. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Fin bundled him up and dropped him off a cliff some night, viynain or no. His uncle is a viynain with a soft spot for Fin, and he’s head of the Mages’ Society of all Namorn.”

  “Why do you care?” demanded Sandry. “Why should you care what happens to us?”

  Shan chuckled. “Because I want to marry you myself, and stay on the good side of your magical friends,” he said teasingly. “It would be a shame to have a bride who weeps for her friends all the time.”

  Sandry frowned, but a smile kept tugging her mouth. It was hard to take Shan seriously.

  Shan’s grin broadened. “See? You like me already. I’m housebroken, well-trained, not so handsome that all the other wives will be flinging themselves at me…”

  Sandry laughed outright. “Are you always silly?” she asked when she caught her breath.

  “Always,” Shan told her. “It’s part of my charm. Did I mention I’m charming?”

  “Just tell me you’re not serious about marrying me,” replied Sandry. “Truly, I mean to return to the south when autumn comes.”

  “But you’ll break Jak’s and Fin’s hearts,” protested Shan.

  Sandry giggled again.

  “You watch. Berenene will find out that they didn’t court you in her absence and the fun will begin.” Shan scratched his jaw. “No, she doesn’t care for it when people don’t hop to. They’ll have to do something really desperate, like, oh, rescue you from a rampaging bear or something.”

  “I’ll remember to be wary of bears, then,” Sandry replied solemnly. “Do many of them get inside the palace walls?”

  Shan leaned back against the tree behind them. “I have a feeling the population is about to increase.” His face was sober and earnest, but his eyes danced. “Bear importation will be the newest fashion. We can hold hunts through the palace galleries. Everyone will buy new wardrobes, and the grand prize winner will carry you off over his saddle.” Sandry sighed. “I think I’d prefer to marry one of the bears.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Shan told her earnestly. “My father is one, and he’s gone through three wives. Is it true that your friend Daja walks through burning buildings?”

  “Ask her yourself,” Sandry replied impetuously, holding out her hand. “Come. I’ll introduce you.” As he wrapped a very large palm around hers, she felt an agreeable ripple of gooseflesh course along her arms.

  Rizu and her circle of friends sat or reclined on the grass in a loose arrangement with Daja at their center, joking and laughing together. When Sandry approached with Shan, the Namornese ladies greeted him happily and made room for him and Sandry.

  “Oh, sure,” said Shan as he took a space between Rizu and Sandry. “Now that I come to you with another woman, you’ll happily let me join you.” To Sandry, he said, “Would you believe half of these ladies have broken my heart?”

  Rizu slapped his broad shoulder. “Tell us you didn’t enjoy it.” To Sandry, she said, “Be careful of this one. A few jokes with him and you’re in a secluded little nook with his
hands where they shouldn’t be!”

  “Pershan fer Roth, this is my friend, Daja Kisubo,” Sandry said, introducing them. Deliberately testing them and him, she added, “Daja, Shan says it’s the empress’s will that I marry one of those young men who hovered around me in the Hall of Roses.” From the cynical smiles of the courtiers, she saw that Shan had told her the truth, and that the empress’s plan was common knowledge.

  Daja clasped Shan’s hand, smiling. “I hope the empress has some years to wait for that marriage,” she said lazily, turning her face up to the sun. “Sandry’s made up her mind to go home before the mountain passes close. She’s just here to inspect her estates and return to Emelan. Unless your bucks mean to chase her to the border?”

  The young ladies around them cried aloud at this, protesting that Sandry would never see the best of Dancruan if she didn’t stay for at least one winter’s social season.

  “Then she wouldn’t have to worry about going home,” Rizu announced with a broad smile. “She’d be frozen to this place!”

  Once inside the main greenhouse, Briar expected the empress to drift along, pointing out this sight and that, attended by bowing gardeners. And I’d’ve been dead wrong, he thought.

  It was true, the gardeners in sight had looked up when the door closed behind the lady and her guest, but they immediately returned to their work when they saw who had come in. Next, the empress had opened a drawer in a table that stood against the outside wall and pulled out a worn pair of gardener’s gloves, which she then tugged onto her hands. Briar watched as she briskly walked over to tables that held pots and boxes of flowering plants.

  “Most of these are for gifts,” she explained to Briar, inspecting potted lilies for mites on the undersides of their leaves. “The guild heads, ambassadors, and my fellow monarchs claim to prize what comes from my garden, so from time to time I gratify them with a plant. Coleus is always popular. The leaf colors go very well with the colors favored by those who live in east Namorn and Yanjing, and it brings cheer during wintertime. The same with cyclamen.” She caressed samples of each with gentle fingers, pinching off a wilted leaf here and there. “My goodness. What on earth…”

  Briar sighed. The greenhouse plants had noted his presence. At first the ones closest to him began to move, bending toward him or turning their flowers toward him as if he were the sun. As he watched, the more distant plants began to shift as if they could crane to see him. They reached out with leaves like hands, wanting his touch and his influence. “Sorry,” he told the empress, thinking to the plants, Stop that! Before you get me in trouble!

  The plants began to bristle, turning sharp edges outward and stretching out thorns if they had them. If anyone tries to trouble you, they will soon learn you have friends, their quivering stems seemed to say. They will learn the world can be filled with green enemies.

  Now, enough! Briar told them impatiently. Is that how you would treat this nice lady, who gives you rich earth and water and helps her people keep the itching things from your leaves and roots? It’s because of her that you sit warm in here when the cold wind makes your house rattle. She saves you, her and her friends, from the white death of snow and ice. She ties you with cloth when you get too heavy for your stems, and she gives you good things to eat. It’s her that gives the others their instructions to look after you and care for you, too.

  One after another, the plants that surrounded them shifted the surfaces of their leaves and the positions of their stems. Flowers turned their open faces toward the empress, who watched them all without giving away her feelings.

  She smells like us sometimes, said the roses and gardenias. She is quick with the clippers and the fork. She has touched each of us, often. She handles us gently.

  “It’s all right,” Briar said gruffly. “They just needed reminding of who they owe this soft living to.” He suddenly remembered to whom he spoke. “Your Imperial Majesty.” He glared at the plants within his view. “They didn’t mean to distress you. They like you.”

  “I’m grateful, Viynain,” Berenene replied. “This is the first time I ever had to wonder what might happen to someone they dislike. Actually, I had no idea they had thoughts or feelings.”

  “Not like we know them, Majesty,” Briar explained. “Your Imperial Majesty” was just too much of a mouthful to use each time he spoke to her. “They don’t have brains, exactly, but their bodies remember things like who waters ’em, who clips ’em, and so on. They just were so excited, feeling me come in, they forgot themselves a bit.” Now calm down! he ordered them silently. Act like I’m just another person! He glared at the vine that had reached out to twine around one of his hands and insert its tendrils up his baggy sleeve.

  The vine released him and returned to the trellis it had adorned before Briar had come into the greenhouse. Berenene watched it go. “I take it this happens to you fairly often,” she commented wryly.

  “Only till they get used to me being around,” replied Briar. “They’re like kids—children,” he explained. “They get all worked up, and they need time to calm down. You should see them around my teacher, Rosethorn. They can’t not touch her when she’s by. It’s like she’s the sun, except then the moss and funguses would stay clear of her, and they don’t. Are those potted palms?” He wandered over to the stand of large, tree-like plants, hoping to distract her from thinking about plants on the move. In his travels he had discovered that some people reacted oddly to it. Stopping next to the nearest one, he ran an appreciative hand over its trunk.

  “It’s vanity, I know,” said the empress. “But it’s so satisfying, knowing I have a bit of southern warmth when winter shrieks down off the Syth.”

  Briar smiled. “Winters are always hard if you like seeing green things about you,” he admitted. “I tried to get my teacher to visit Dedicate Crane’s greenhouse—he was my other plant teacher, back at Winding Circle—but she’s old-fashioned. She growls how plants are supposed to have their own season, then surrounds herself with potted plants all winter long. She just can’t get the tropicals to thrive in her workshop.”

  “I’ve read Crane’s book, you know,” Berenene said, leading him farther back into the greenhouse. As they walked, the gardeners continued to work. When the empress moved inside the palace she was followed and preceded by bows and curtsies. Idly, Briar wondered, How long do you s’pose it took her to break her gardeners of the habit?

  There was a wave of motion here, but it was directed at Briar, and it came from the plants. He called some of his power up and let it trickle away in the tiniest of threads, running to every plant and tree in the building. He did the same in the next greenhouse, and the next, and the next. The empress had a complex of them, each closed by its own doors and connected to its neighbors by wooden halls.

  “The things you learn,” Berenene said as she led the way into yet another greenhouse. “Mites. I had two greenhouses that connected, and the treacherous little nalizes got into everything. Once again I had to start from scratch. That’s the problem with gardening. One mistake will do more than just teach you. It can wipe you out.” She stood back and smiled. “I understand you have an interest in shakkans, Briar Moss. Would you care to grant your opinion of mine?”

  He had seen bigger collections in the imperial palace in Yanjing, but nowhere else. This greenhouse had been divided in half with glass and yet another door. In one half, miniature trees and the gear to care for them were arranged with an eye to the light that filled the greenhouse. A number of the step-like shelves on Briar’s left were empty, but the marks that water, earth, and light left on the unstained wood indicated that upward of twenty plants were missing. “Your pines?” Briar asked, nodding toward the empty spots.

  Berenene favored him with a warm smile. “Exactly so. When I think they have a chance, I bring them onto my windows and terraces. I tend to be more cautious with the ones that are not evergreens. It’s not unknown for the Syth to blow in a night’s frost even this late in the spring.”

/>   Looking around, Briar saw a miniature forest of Quoy maples, each perfectly set in its large, flat tray. He was drawn to it like iron to a lodestone. The emperor of Yanjing would wilt to have something like this, Briar thought as he touched the miniature leaves with gentle fingers. He can’t grow maples at all, let alone a forest arrangement. The trees nearly purred under his touch, welcoming the gentle trickle of his green magic as it flowed along their stems. From there, Briar found several shapes of rhododendrons, all blooming beautifully. A step away he found miniature apple trees in bloom. He moved from dish to dish, tree to tree, noting which had been wired to follow a particular shape, which trees displayed new grafts, which were very old and which were only made to look old. He lost all track of time and his companion as he inspected each and every plant. All were lovingly tended and in the best of health.

  When he looked up, Berenene was gone. Briar frowned. How long did I pay her no mind? Did I vex her, ignoring her like that, and she went stomping off? he wondered. She seemed to understand a fellow might get caught up, but it’s hard to tell what way empresses will jump.

  Then he saw spring green motion through the blurred glass of the divider. She had gone into the other half of the greenhouse. He followed her, passing through the glass door and closing it in his wake. This side of the building was hot and damp, as hot as the jungles of southern Yanjing. It was an entirely different world, filled with wildly gorgeous, complex flowers. There were as many different containers for them as there were colors and shapes of flower, ranging from pots to stick holders and slabs of cork. The empress handled the blooms very carefully, inspecting them for problems, shifting them if she felt the light was too strong.

  There were rolls of muslin at the inside top of the peaked roof, each with a cord that dangled to within arm’s reach at the center of the room. Briar noted small, ship-like cleats on the metal strips between panes of glass.

  Curtains, he guessed. In case she thinks the light’s too strong in one part of the room, she can pull down the curtains and secure the cord so the muslin’s close to the glass. And when she says so, they roll them up again.