Briar dug his hands into his trouser pockets. “Why?” he asked reasonably. “I’d be an awful bleat-brain 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.”