‘My lord!’ Beyau, the steward, hurried out of the shadows of the colonnade. ‘Please forgive the disorder.’
‘We’ve barely unloaded the galleys,’ Kheda said mildly. ‘I’ll give you till sunset before I have you flogged for an incompetent.’
After an instant of wide-eyed startlement, Beyau guffawed. Kheda grinned and squeezed Itrac’s arm. ‘We’ll look at the gardens. Come and find us when there’s some lunch ready.’
Beyau fell into step beside Dev and Jevin as Kheda led the way through the bowing throng to an archway leading into a garden. The forebuilding was a hollow square, its inner face similarly ringed with colonnades. As yet no suppliants had been admitted and the benches stood empty on the intricate lattices of blue and brown tile underfoot, still gleaming here and there with the fast-fading dampness of a mop. One stretch was bright with new tile.
Kheda nodded towards it. ‘What happened there?’
‘The savages made a fire with the roses.’ Beyau scowled. ‘They’re recovering, I see.’ Kheda glanced at Itrac with a smile.
The rosebushes no longer filled the garden at the centre of the courtyard but those that had survived were making a valiant effort, just coming into bud, their flourishing leaves glossy and green.
‘Let’s take that as an omen,’ she said with brittle brightness. ‘Did you see any other portents as you landed, my lord?’
Kheda realised belatedly. A flash of sunlight caught his eye and he looked up to see that the topmost level of the rear tower to the east of the forebuilding was enclosed with glass panes whose angles did not match those of the octagonal walls.
Twelve facets. Chazen Saril’s observatory. My observatory now that this is my domain. What will I see there?
Gates opened from this outer courtyard into the main residence, paired guards ready at each one. Itrac unobtrusively steered Kheda towards the eastern entrance, through the anteroom beyond and out into another, considerably larger, secluded garden.
‘If you’ll excuse me, my lord.’ Beyau slid past as Kheda halted beneath the shade of another colonnade. ‘I’ll see to your refreshments.’ He hurried away towards the doors on the eastern edge of the garden. The inner face of the fortification’s boundary wall was lined with sleeping quarters and workrooms for servants and slaves, resident or visiting. The warlord’s accommodations were a complex of courtyards framed by single-storey buildings of the local grey stone, topped with ochre-tiled roofs with skylights here and there catching the sun.
‘Is that upper servants’ accommodation?’ Kheda hazarded, glancing at Itrac. ‘Or the kitchens?’
Itrac didn’t hear him. Her eyes glistened with tears as she looked at the garden in the heart of this first courtyard. ‘Chazen Saril’s .’ She corrected herself hurriedly. ‘The Chazen warlord’s physic garden.’
‘And his audience halls beyond,’ Kheda said thoughtfully.
Where I will be expected to sit in judgement as lawgiver for the domain when I’m not out here doing my duty as healer and teacher of healers. Which I must do, if I’m to reassure these people. They have to believe all is well, or at least as well as can be expected. But how can all be well if I can’t find a way to slip out of here unnoticed to save them all with whatever abhorrent magic Risala brings back from the north?
How can all be well if I’m only making a sham of being this domain’s warlord?
A faint sound turned Kheda’s head. He saw Dev idly tracing the intricate tiles with a dusty toe, his expression bored. Jevin was watching him, indignation and something colder shading his face. The younger slave realised that Kheda was looking at him and his face darkened with a blush of embarrassment as he dropped his gaze.
‘The audience halls are through there, Dev.’ Kheda pointed abruptly to the wide arch at the southern end of the garden leading into a formidably large building. ‘Three of them in succession. Just keep going till you hit the great reception room and turn west. The warlord’s apartments run all along the back wall of this fortress. Go and make sure everything is as it should be.’
Dev shifted the coffers he was canying on his shoulders and sauntered away. ‘As you wish, my lord.’ Kheda released Itrac’s silk-draped arm from the crook of his own and took her hand. ‘I remember when this was Chazen Saril’s garden,’ he said softly. Gentle yet insistent, he left the colonnade for the white sand paths threaded through the carefully chosen arrangements of herbs. Jevin hesitated before staying leaning on a pillar, following Itrac with his gaze.
Purple poppy to dull pain mingled with red lance to cleanse the blood, bringing the bees to both. Firefew to ease the chest planted with mossy pepper, so effective against parasites of all kinds and incidentally keeping yellow mites away from the firefew. All shaded by carefully trained wax-flower trees offering up their leaves for wound washes and their trunks to support white vines, so insignificant in themselves yet valuable with such potent roots. Potent yet perilous, so barberry bushes keep anyone from incautiously digging those up.
‘I’m glad to see the household here still honouring Chazen Saril with their care of this place.’ Kheda surveyed the herb beds. No impertinent weeds marred the rich, black soil raked smooth between the myriad plants. The only sign that unfriendly hands had ever been at work here were scorch marks on the papery bark of the wax-flower trees.
‘He loved this place.’ A single tear trickled slowly down Itrac’s cheek, leaving a faint trail of golden face paint. ‘That’s where we met, in my father’s physic garden. We all liked flowers, me and Olkai and Sekni . .’ Distress choked her and she looked away, stricken.
‘I know.’ Kheda squeezed her hand with sympathy. ‘For every book of herb lore I studied out of duty, Saril must have read ten or more, for sheer love of plants and their properties.’
He wasn’t brave or overly astute, but he was content in his modest domain, with his wives drawn from lesser daughters, all charmed by his amiable adoration for them. Will I ever be so content here, without bonds of blood or affection to tie me to Chazen?
Other warlords may have mocked Chazen Saril as one who was ruled with a silken whip, but there were plenty who envied him his quiet life. How I miss the sound of the gates shutting on the Daish residences, knowing Janne would unbend from her wifely dignity within those walls and Rekha might even set aside her intricate tally of trades.
But my man-iages as Daish Kheda are as dead as Chazen Saril. And how much more Itrac has lost, barely older than my own eldest daughter. At least my children know I am still alive, even if I am lost to them in all other ways.
‘It’s so strange to be here without them.’ The desolation in Itrac’s voice cut Kheda more deeply than her tears. ‘Saril and your sisters in marriage still share in this domain, as long as the gardens you planted still flourish.’ Kheda put his arm around Itrac’s shoulders and drew her close. ‘Sekni’s benevolence will lend virtue to the tinc—
tures made with these herbs. Olkai’s goodness will sweeten the perfumes made from her flowers.’
I had better take care that these gardens do flourish. Their failure to thrive would be an omen everyone in Esabir could
‘You’re right.’ Itrac wriggled free of his embrace and wiped a tear from her eye with a careful fingertip. ‘What’s done cannot be undone. The chances that led us both here have been stranger and harder than we could ever have imagined but we must believe they are for the best. What’s happened just proves that you were right to claim this domain,’ she pressed on resolutely. ‘There’s the omen of the pearl harvest, and what hope would we have of driving out this dragon without your slave’s recollections of such beasts in the north being defeated? Chazen Saril was a good man in times of peace but he could not meet such trials.’ Her voice wobbled despite her determination.