Oracle: The House War: Book Six (56 page)

“No. He won’t. There is, however, a large possibility that we will be seeing more of each other in the near future.”

 • • • 

Birgide could easily carry a small satchel; she carried a large backpack, and several planters, in a small cart. She was not dressed as a dignitary of any note; nor was she dressed as one of the many, many servants within
Avantari
’s complicated hierarchy. She was, however, recognized by the part of the palace staff that had the responsibility for the interior grounds, and directed to the trade entrance.

The trade entrance of the palace was, however, militantly guarded. Birgide did not find this alarming; nor did she find it inconvenient. Today, in fact, it was the height of convenience. She stated her business and waited in a room that was only barely part of the palace’s interior. Given the attack on the Merchants’ Guild, the increased level of scrutiny was to be expected, and Birgide was not at all surprised to see a middle-aged woman, escorted by Kings’ Swords, enter the waiting area.

She wore, openly, the medallion of the Order of Knowledge, with the distinctive elemental symbols in a quartered circle. She was mage-born.

The Kings’ Swords were armed; one carried a crossbow. This was new, but it was, again, an acceptable precaution; she did not imagine the Sword who wielded that crossbow was particularly pleased to be doing so. Birgide had never understood the ways in which weapons were viewed by the royal guard—but she had never aspired to become one. She could wield a short sword should the situation demand it; she could wield a long sword, but with considerably less proficiency. In his place, given the possibility of demonic threat, she would have been far, far more comfortable with a ranged weapon.

She was a very good shot.

The mage stepped forward; she held out what appeared to be a slender gold-plated book. “Apologies,” she said, with an evident lack of sincerity, “but I will ask you to place your hand upon the cover of this book.”

Birgide examined the book. She could see, across its cover, the golden glow of strands of light. Gold was a color she had not yet encountered in her traversal of the Terafin manse. Without hesitation, she did as asked.

To her surprise, the lines of gold grew warmer and brighter at the touch; she could almost hear the snatches of a melody as the book was withdrawn. It was familiar music, in a bone-deep way, although she did not recognize it at all.

“Thank you for your cooperation.” The mage withdrew.

The Swords did not; they passed her into the main building itself.
Avantari
’s visitor galleries were grand and intimidating; the service entrances and hallways could not compare. They were, however, fully stone, and the ceiling, if lower, was vaulted. Manors in the hundred holdings could boast public halls as grand as these, although admittedly the decor in the palace was usually more impressive.

These halls lacked that decor; they lacked the runners and the long carpets; they lacked the paintings and the ornate weaponry that many seemed to feel were appropriate ornamentation. They had, on the other hand, gained the Kings’ Swords, in a single line against the wall to Birgide’s right. She moved past them; her cart—which was inspected carefully—echoing loudly in the high-ceilinged space.

First, she would do what she had come to do. Then, with luck, she would speak with Duvari.

 • • • 

As it happened, she was met by Sancor Littleton. He was not the Master Gardener, but answered directly to that august man, and he greeted Birgide with the weary, frustrated tolerance she had come to expect. When he saw the clippings, he frowned.

“You are not trying again, are you?” he asked, although the answer was so obvious he clearly asked to hear himself speak.

Birgide’s smile was self-deprecating. “I have been allowed access to the Terafin grounds,” she replied. “And these cuttings are from the trees that now tower there. I have some small hope that the results might be different.”

Sancor ran hands through his beard. “The Terafin Master Gardener is, at the present moment, an insufferable braggart.”

She laughed, although she considered the description unkind. “He is justifiably proud of the Terafin grounds at present; let him have his small moment of glory.”

“We would be content to let him have, as you call it, a
small
moment. He practically crows at every opportunity. He even has
you
working as part of his
staff
.”

Since Birgide suspected Sancor would bite off his own tongue before he condescended to offer her an actual position among the palace gardening staff, she made appropriate noises. All pretense aside, she
did
have hopes for these cuttings. If she had used that as an excuse to be here, it was nonetheless also true.

And to be fair to Sancor, if he disliked her, it was almost a matter of principle. She was, after all, an outsider; she was not the child of one of the servant lines that otherwise graced the staff. He would be beside himself with almost unequaled joy should these cuttings, against all prior experience and the odds that arose from them, take root.

The
Ellariannatte
were, after all, called the Kings’ Trees. If they could grow anywhere in the Empire, it should be here. Birgide, however, was content to have them grace the Common; in
Avantari
, they would be seen by vastly fewer people. She suspected that the reigning Terafin felt the same. Or perhaps felt it more strongly and more viscerally, given her background.

Sancor passed her through the Swords that were on duty, and accompanied her to the Courtyard gardens. These gardens were not, strictly speaking, in a courtyard, but they were bound on all sides by the various buildings that comprised
Avantari
proper, and all of those buildings looked out—and down—upon them.

There were small pavilions, small viewing platforms, artfully surrounded by standing trees; there were small ponds, small running brooks and multiple fountains. The flower beds closest to the trees implied wilderness, but did so artfully; Birgide preferred them to the geometrically precise flower beds and grass at the edge of this so-called courtyard.

She wheeled her cart very carefully along the small and perfectly laid paths, abandoning it there; she could walk into the interior, and did so, taking only the planter with her; her tools hung belted around her waist.

There was no sign of Duvari—but there wouldn’t be, not yet. And while she waited, she worked.

 • • • 

Choosing a spot in which to plant the cuttings was an act of deliberation akin to moving armies, at least in
Avantari.
She had made some educated guesses when she informed Sancor, by letter, of her intent, and he had—as expected—vetoed all but two instantly. Every patch of ground here was personal; Birgide, who was happy to remain apolitical, nonetheless understood this.

In almost all cases, the cuttings would be planted in the various hothouses that fed into the gardens; the growth in the courtyard itself must imply perfection on all levels—and not all successful growth was perfect. Birgide was therefore sidestepping at least three different protocols to be here at all, and Sancor had made clear—odiously, condescendingly and desperately clear—that there would be ructions if her work interfered with his—or any of those under his direct command. Since Sancor would be the one called on the carpet if such damages took place, she had some sympathy with this—but she had chosen Sancor for a reason.

He was vain, he was arrogant, and he always felt slightly uncertain about his positioning on the staff, although he was much closer to the top of the hierarchy than Birgide could ever hope to become, all of her expertise notwithstanding. And he knew that she was now a member of the Terafin staff—and that, in Terafin, the
Ellariannatte
grew. She had standing permission to continue her various attempts to cultivate the trees here, but seldom invoked them as a right—there was always an unspoken cost to invoking rights people didn’t feel you ought to have been granted in the first place.

She worked. Hands that had been painstakingly cleaned once again adopted dirt; she often thought that fingernails served no actual purpose except to accrue evidence of the labor that divided the patricians from the working class.

Birgide was not a chatty person, except when necessity forced it upon her; she worked, as she lived, in relative silence. She was surprised to find herself humming as she cleared a very careful amount of dirt, adding the water she had personally prepared. She had no fond memories of lullabyes; no fond memories of most human voices. She, like anyone who could hear them, enjoyed the work of the bards—but she did not seek them out; she accepted invitations to gatherings at which bards were guests. Bards were often found in the Western Kingdoms; they, like she, traveled widely in pursuit of their goals. She offered no offense to the bards, ever.

She did not know what kind of voice she had. She had no interest in choirs or singing. She could not, therefore, name the tune she was humming. She could stop, and did, but as she focused on work, on the familiarity of a pursuit that almost everyone—Birgide included on most days—felt was chasing rainbows, she took up the tune again, without intention, without deliberate thought.

She paused a second time, frowning.

This time, she looked at the cutting. It was, she thought, glowing softly; its light was gold. There were no strands around it, nothing to imply that there was an enchantment cast upon it by an external mage; it was simply golden. It reminded Birgide of summer.

When she began to hum a third time, she let it be, as if the song itself, wordless, was her only method of communicating with the
Ellariannatte
. And so, she hummed and planted. Her knees joined her fingers; although she had brought a mat on which she might kneel, unrolling it had entirely slipped her mind. She knelt upon the ground, her knees making rounded dents, as if, in some measure, she were temporarily planting herself.

There were days, in her distant childhood—a childhood she had escaped and would never return to—when she had dreamed of just that: to be buried someplace in the forest that was her only refuge. To be part of it. Of course, she had assumed she would be dead when and if it happened—but death had seemed like peace, because there had been
no
peace.

She almost never thought of her childhood. But it was true that the personal meaning of forests—the trees, the weeds, the wildflowers—came out of that childhood. Where there were no people, there was no pain. As a child, she could easily confuse lack of pain with joy; joy was absent. It was not something she experienced. Relief could make her giddy. Relief could give her small moments in which the act of existence was not a cosmic injustice in the eyes of people who were larger, and angrier, than she.

Training with the
Astari
had involved pain, injury, and not a little humiliation, but the pain was predictable and consistent; if she failed, if she did not learn quickly enough, she suffered. But she suffered
only
then. It had been a relief. It had not been like pain at all.

But joy? Joy had been the absence of pain. She developed pride in that absence as well: it meant she was stronger, smarter, swifter. It meant she had learned.

What, then, did planting and nurturing and tending have to do with joy? Pain was absent, yes; pride was present—when the careful nurturing and planning actually worked. But it was more than that.

These were alive. They took root, they grew, they aged—and yes, they died. They did not war; they did not politic; they did not rage. They existed, and they offered—to those who could grasp it—peace. And yet, even that was not quite right.

She hummed. Her hands were warm. By definition the earth was dirty, but it was a clean dirt. She could, with time, effort, and careful application of nail files, wash it away with nothing but water and soap. It did not stain her; it did not linger. As she worked, she smiled.

She could not honestly say she cared about the fate of Jewel Markess ATerafin one way or the other. By her very position, she was in the middle of every deadly game that the patricians could play. Somehow, playing those games had failed to kill her, but very, very few of the leaders of The Ten died a peaceful death; one could not count on winning.

What she cared about—what she had cared about the moment she first left the Terafin manse and entered the grounds—was the forest. The Terafin had given that to her. If The Terafin had not understood just how much it would mean to Birgide, that was fair; Birgide herself had had only the barest inkling.

She paused to examine her hand. It was—she was certain—burned to bone; the burn had not scarred. It did not, to the eye, exist at all. It did not pain her, although from time to time she could feel a tingle of something in the center of her palm.

She felt it now, as she worked. She felt it as she handled a cutting imbued with a golden warmth and light she had never seen before. She was almost certain that that light had existed in every other attempt; the ability to
see
it had come with the Terafin grounds. With the forest that could not exist, except in idle daydream and visceral yearning.

She knew, as she worked, that she would give her life to defend The Terafin because The Terafin stood at the forest’s heart—and only because of that. But that, she thought, had been enough. She looked, once again, at her hand.

With the meticulous care that characterized almost all of her work, she finished. She had left space in which to erect a tiny fence around the cutting, but the materials remained in the handcart. She rose, brushed specks of soil off her knees, and headed toward the cart.

The ground beneath her feet shuddered.

The carefully laid path, narrow and winding as it was, broke; stones rose, scraping against other stones as the path itself was shattered.

Sancor
, she thought, with genuine panic,
is going to kill me.
Or die of apoplexy on the spot. She turned, and when she did, the gardening spades she carried fell out of almost nerveless hands.