The Will of the Empress - By Tamora Pierce Page 0,40

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 centre, 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 colours go very well with the colours favoured 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