Previous || Table of Contents || Next
Rose was pleased to see the Garden’s beauty hadn’t changed over the years as she looked through the bars of their carriage. She also saw that the dormitory windows were still barred with the same ornate grilles of women warriors and flowers. They delighted the visitors while keeping the wards from leaving. The Garden’s beauty was a façade, but at least the cage was gilded.
The carriage that held Marigold and Rose pulled through the iron gates and crossed a cobbled square. It came to a stop in front of a covered stone walkway that was lit by small gas lamps fixed to its columns. In the late Durleigh evening, each lamp cast a small circle of light, keeping the darkness at bay.
The driver clambered down. “Here now,” he shouted. “Where are all the guards who’ll defend me from these dangerous prisoners I’ve brought ya, eh? More like yer sleeping, or paying footsies with all the loose women here. Hurry up and come do your work, now!”
Marigold winced at the driver’s tone. “Sounds like he’s one of those Purity fanatics.”
Rose gave the smallest nod she could manage. The driver did have a shrill voice for such a big man. “They do seem to take a dim view of the Garden.”
“Oh Rosie, dear,” Marigold smirked. “They don’t take a dim view. That would imply they see us. They prefer not to know we even exist. We’re ‘unnatural’, after all.”
Rose snorted. “As if dwarves or any other clades were any more ‘natural’ than us.”
They looked out through the bars. A group of guards rushed out in response to the driver’s strident calls.
“Well, here we go, Rose,” Marigold sighed. “Don’t be a fool and do something reckless. Azelea needs us. Don’t give up hope. We will get out of here.”
Rose put her hand on Marigold’s arm. “Marigold. Do not give up hope yourself. Dorrin Ybarra is many things, but he is not one to abandon people. He will not leave you here either.”
“I know he’s not. But he’s also not stupid. The Church invading a Granblue military facility? I know he loves me, but he won’t put the Church at risk for me.”
“Now who is being foolish? That man will not rest until you are free to remind him how lost he is without you. And if you are right about Joseph being needed by the General Staff or even the king, I know he will come for us as well. You stay strong.”
They couldn’t embrace, but they could grasp each other’s arms.
The guards opened the carriage and unfastened their chains from the ring fixed in the floor. Climbing down, Rose took a deep breath. Jasmine. How they managed to make the garden so fragrant had never crossed her mind before.
Rose had lost track of time, but suspected it was after lights out. All of the windows were dark. All of the Garden’s petals would be in their rooms, but if they weren’t sneaking looks through the ironwork, she’d eat a gull.
The guards pulled her and Marigold forward. They both knew better than to attempt to talk. The Garden’s guards insisted that women should be seen and not heard. Rose tapped her hands in the old code. Into the jaws…
Marigold tried but couldn’t hold back a small smile. One guard looked suspiciously at the two of them when he saw her face but didn’t say anything.
They walked down the length of the covered walkway. Rose took in the ancient trees and careful order of the Garden’s layout. On each side of the walkway, different flowers and shrubs from across the continent filled their own beds. The arrangement of the plants was meticulous, shaped by a design that had been refined over hundreds of years. It was a point of pride for the women who maintained it that they could exercise control over this much. The General Staff of the Royal Army of Granblue might have control of the rest of their lives, but this beauty was the truest expression of the women who tended it.
They came to the front entrance. Two wooden double doors stood fully twenty feet high and fifteen feet across. Each was carved with a kneeling woman facing her counterpart on the other door. Both women held swords, with a sun blazing down upon them. There was a smaller door inset into the left-hand entrance. The great doors were only opened on ceremonial occasions, like when the Garden had marched to war over forty years ago.
They entered through the smaller door, and Rose’s breath caught as it always had when she beheld the Great Hall.
It was an open room three stories high and a hundred feet both across and deep. It was where the entire Garden assembled each week as a unit. There was a balcony at the far end, where the leadership of the Veiled Garden could address the assembled petals. The floor was inlaid with stones in varied colors, worn smooth by thousands of feet over hundreds of years. The walls were covered with paintings of martial scenes. Some were victories that had been immortalized in oil, while others were visionary, showing the Angels descending from the heavens to grant the Valkyrie Gift to the fortunate women they encountered.
At the far end of the hall, the women and their guards passed through another small door, and then proceeded to the Grand Staircase.
It was a pure white marble staircase that ascended from the ground floor to the third floor, with a grand landing at the second floor wide enough for ten people to walk abreast. To the right of the ground floor landing, a smaller staircase descended to the basements.
Here was where they were separated. Marigold and her three guards ascended the stairs, while Rose was taken to the basement path. When they separated, Marigold stumbled and fell. As she caught herself, she managed to tap the old signal on Rose’s wrist. Courage.
Rose nearly missed it. Thirty years was a long time to let a language go unused. But her body remembered. She tried to tap a response on Marigold’s wrist to give the reply they had used when they were children in these same halls. Then the guards jerked her back.
Rose descended the smaller staircase. It was still wide, but compared to the Grand Staircase, it was a gnat on the back of a steer.
At the bottom of the stairs, the guards were met by two Valkyries, also on guard duty. She didn’t recognize either of them, but she probably wouldn’t know many of the women here now.
She was handed off to her new jailers, a tall blond and a shorter brunette, and they took her deeper into the bowels of the Garden.
As they descended, the walls grew rougher, and the cells looked meaner. Finally, they stopped in front of a plain iron door. It held a simple slot at the bottom for passing food through, and a sliding panel at eye level for the jailers to inspect their charge.
The guards opened the door and motioned Rose into the room. The blond guard inspected Rose’s manacles as she fastened the chain joining them to an iron ring set in the wall above the bed. The ring was low enough that Rose could sit on the rough mattress and wooden frame, or even lie down while she awaited her fate. The guard nodded to her partner and left the room.
The brunette guard brought a simple clay water jar into the room and set it next to the bed with a cup. She set a bucket next to the bed and without speaking indicated it was for Rose to relieve herself. She turned her head slightly, looking to see if the blond guard had left the room. Then she turned back to Rose and tapped the same signal Marigold had used above at the Grand Staircase. Courage. And then something more. Unbound.
The brunette left the room and closed the door. Rose heard the lock slide into place.
Rose sat back on the bed. The Unbound were in the Garden. This was an excellent development. If Azelea was not willing to listen to Marigold, Rose might not need her after all. Personally, she almost hoped Azelea was still the difficult, predatory harpy she remembered of old. Because she did not like Azelea. She never had.
She lay back on the hard straw mattress. She loved Marigold. She always had. Her idea had no chance of success, though, because Azelea was small-minded. She had resented Rose ever since Rose had shown Azelea why you obeyed orders. With her fists. Azelea would not have forgotten or forgiven. Rose had stayed strong and supportive so that her friend wouldn’t despair.
But she was worried about Joseph even more. She let herself indulge a very brief daydream of her beloved smashing down the gates of the Veiled Garden. Entering triumphantly with the Forty at his back, she imagined Azelea dismayed, or even running away in fear. It was a sweet fantasy.
But she knew what that reality would portend. He would smash those gates. She had no doubt he was already hard at work implementing a plan to free her. But what happened next was where reality would diverge from daydreams. The Forty were killers, plain and simple. They were a dagger, but they still bled what they cut. In the Reaper’s hand, they would cut far and wide. The Garden would fight back, but they would lose against her Joseph. Hundreds of innocent women would take their Thessa leaves, activate their Gifts, and die, because Azelea was too stubborn to recognize defeat when the Reaper stared her in the face.
Joseph had done the same nearly forty years ago when a separatist group of Garden petals, the original Path of Thorns, had defied King Vexin and refused to fight until they were freed. Joseph had obeyed his king’s orders and cut them down, but it had nearly broken him. The only reason he had stayed in the army after that was because she had refused to leave.
She remembered what he had said to her the night she had told him she was deserting the army. “You walk away, Rose,” he had said, “I’ll be three steps behind you. Maybe four, if you pack too fast.” Then he had promised her she would never be alone again. Joseph, her Joseph, was a man who always kept his promises.
Her eyes tearing, she turned on her side. It would be a while before she could relax enough to sleep.
Marigold was escorted up the Grand Staircase. At the top of the third floor, two Valkyrie guards relieved the men who had brought her up this far. The General Staff might demand that men guard the exits, but the Valkyries would not permit them inside the Garden proper.
She recognized both women. Jasmine and Iris. Rose had been gone for the last thirty years, but Marigold had been the third-ranking officer of the Garden for the last several years. She knew everyone. They certainly knew the Golden Thorn.
Then Azelea Morcant had been appointed commander after Lantana Brightwood had retired.
That had been an interesting six months. Marigold had finally resigned her commission in protest and left the Garden and Granblue without permission to investigate the problem of the missing petals. The alternative had been killing Azelea and paying for the exorbitant cleaning bill that would result. She had strong feelings about paying for her laundry unnecessarily.
The guards stopped in front of an ornate door, inscribed with carvings of leaves and swords. Jasmine opened the door and motioned Marigold in.
This room was simple. Functional even. Small gas lamps illuminated the room. There were curtains on the window, and the bed appeared plump and inviting. There was a feather pillow on top of a comforter that matched the curtains. The dresser on the other side of the room was clean and topped by a large round mirror. The corner next to the window was walled off to conceal a privy. A chair and small table next to the window made the room seem more like a guest room than a prison cell.
Light, Marigold thought. I was prophesying when I told Rose I’d get a luxury suite. I pray she’s not in a cell with a bucket.
Iris took out a key and removed Marigold’s manacles. Marigold rubbed her wrists.
“Any chance of a bath, ladies?” Marigold grinned. “The Greybacks broke in just as I was getting ready to take a dip. Five minutes more and I would have made quite the sight.”
The two guards grinned. They might not be aligned, but they all felt the same about the GSS.
“We’ll see what we can do, ma’am,” Jasmine answered. “Commander Morcant did say you were to have full range of the guest wing.”
Iris piped up. “But let us confirm that with the housemothers, first, ma’am. We’d hate to get you in trouble because we didn’t make certain what you’re allowed.”
Jasmine left the room and returned with a porcelain pitcher and cup. “Water, ma’am?”
Marigold took it. “Thank you, Jasmine. Be easy. I’m not going to try bucking you off.”
The younger woman froze. A tremor went through the cup, the water lapping the rim. “That was years ago,” she said, not quite managing a smile. “At Merrow Ford. You… you remember that?”
“I remember your horse panicking at the pass,” Marigold said. “You tried to sing to her as you crossed over the floodwaters and that only made it worse. Brave and foolish. We were all both, then, I suppose.”
She turned to the other guard. “And Iris. I remember you at Redwater. You lost two fingernails to frostbite and didn’t complain once. We made tea with snow and bark and called it ambrosia. You both are everything we want the petals to aspire to. Are you really happy going along with Azelea now?”
Iris’s jaw set. “Commander. You resigned. You left us to her. It’s not like there was much of a choice.”
Marigold drank. The water was metal and cold, better than it had a right to be. When she set the cup down on the table, she left it in the exact place a clumsy hand might not knock it over. Habit.
“I thought you would be able to stand on your own feet while I found our missing sisters.” She shook her head. “That’s on me. I’m sorry.”
Jasmine shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “We stand,” she said. “We do our duty. That’s what the Garden is built on.”
“Is it?” Marigold asked softly. “Once it was. Once we cultivated beauty as a shield against cruelty. Now beauty is the cruelty. Perfume over the rot.”
“Keep your voice down, ma’am,” Iris hissed. She shot a glance at the door, though no one had moved beyond it. “Walls pass news.”
“So do women,” Marigold said. “Especially when they’re done being careful.”
“Thank you, ladies. Both of you.” Marigold inclined her head. “Any idea what’s next?”
Jasmine spoke first. “Why are you here now, ma’am? I can’t believe you’re here involuntarily.”
“And why is the Rose with you now?” Iris joined in. “Everyone thought she was dead. If she escaped, she should have stayed dead. Better for her.”
“She came when I called,” Marigold said. “Because I am still the woman who pulled you out of the river and made you drink tea that wasn’t tea. Because I am tired of this enslavement that we pretend is service.”
Iris snorted. “We were made to serve. To bleed where the crown points. We are the thin line that keeps the nation safe.”
“No,” Marigold said. “We were made so no one had to bleed at all. We protect, just as the Light made us, but we deserve to be treated with respect, not with a leash.”
She leaned forward, letting the lamplight catch the old scars on her wrists. “I left to find the Unbound. And I found them. I’ve eaten with them. Camellia didn’t vanish. She escaped. Her name, one she picked for herself, is Cerin. She’s free now.”
Both guards stilled. Iris’s eyes flicked to the door again, then back to Marigold. “Dreams, ma’am.”
“Reality,” Marigold said. “You’ve seen the signs. Beds suddenly stripped and the petals nowhere to be seen. Work schedules rewritten around absences no one will acknowledge. Someone told you not to look too closely. And you’ve gone along with that. Because you’re afraid.”
Jasmine’s hands tightened around her truncheon. For a moment she looked very young. Young enough still to be surprised when kindness felt like a blade. “Fleur was sent away last month,” she whispered. “To General Sanchez. They said she was a liaison. That the Garden and the Staff were mending fences.” She swallowed. “Fleur came back a week ago. She… she hasn’t woken yet.”
Iris closed her eyes for a brief moment. When she opened them again, they were the proper clear glass of a petal at her post. “You’re trying to make us say treason, ma’am,” she said.
Marigold raised her eyebrows and said a quick prayer to the Light for Fleur, and a quicker one for patience. “I’m trying to make you remember what you are. Who you are,” Marigold replied. “You seem to need my help for that.”
Jasmine’s gaze slid to the floor, then to the door, then to Iris. “You always talk like this, ma’am? I remember you being more…humorous.”
“I am the very soul of wit, dear. Unless I’m out of time,” Marigold said, and smiled.
Iris stepped nearer, close enough that the lamp glinted the birthmark at her temple—a little smear of brown like a thumbprint. She lowered her voice. “Is it true, Commander?” she asked. “About the Unbound. Truly?”
Marigold did not look away. “Yes. I promise you it’s all true. The net has holes the Garden can’t see. Or stop up. Camellia went through one. And there will be more to come.”
A breath unknotted in Jasmine’s chest. She tried to cover it with a cough, but the relief showed anyway. “If we spoke to you again,” she said, “hypothetically. If we wanted to… to help without—”
“You would do what you have already done,” Marigold said gently. “You would bring water without being asked. You would place a cup where a boot will not find it. You would remember that orders are not the same as obedience.” Thinking of Rose’s husband, she finished, “A friend said it best: ‘You carry the weight when someone else can’t.’ That is true service, ladies. That is the love we Valkyries should be giving.”
Iris shook her head, but it wasn’t refusal. It was grief trying to fit inside duty. “They’ll read our faces,” she murmured. “She always knows when someone is breaking.”
“Then don’t break,” Marigold said. “Be a willow. Bend where you must. There is a plan.”
Both guards nodded. Jasmine said, “We’re on the duty watch tonight, Commander. If you need anything, ask us for it.”
Iris nodded. “Shift will change at midnight, and we’ll be back on tomorrow afternoon. This late, I wouldn’t expect anyone to come see you tonight, ma’am. But we can see about a change of clothes and that bath for you.”
Marigold nodded graciously and sat down on the chair. Jasmine and Iris left and closed the door. Marigold almost didn’t hear the lock as it slid in place.
She hadn’t wanted to tell Rose how tenuous her plan was. She loved that redheaded scamp more than anything, but Rose didn’t have an ounce of guile in her. If Marigold had shown the slightest bit of concern, Rose would have been crushed. Marigold needed to know her friend was all right while she focused on getting them out of here. And she had to do that before that impossible paladin of hers stormed the walls.
Because Rose was right. Dorrin Ybarra had a reputation as a man who did the right thing every time, no matter what it cost him. It made her heart catch thinking about it. She’d be damned before she let him throw his career or possibly his life away on a futile effort to rescue her.
And then there was Elias Ward, Joseph Tharnen, or whatever he was calling himself. Rose’s husband. The Reaper. If there was anyone who could breach the Garden, it was him. He had the Forty behind him as well. There were five hundred petals or so in the Garden, but the Forty had Valkyries of their own. The only ones outside Garden control. That was all the blasted man needed when he cut down the Path of Thorns leaders during the war.
She had seen how he and Rose looked at each other. Marigold knew that kind of dumb love would not tolerate either of them being in captivity. So he would come for her and bring his friends when he did. If they truly attacked, the Garden would lose a lot of innocent women whose only crime would be following that damned Morcant’s orders. She couldn’t allow that either.
If she couldn’t convince Azelea to work with her, she might have to reconsider that cleaning bill.
She really wished she had Rose’s innate ability to trigger her increased metabolism without needing Thessa leaves. She could’ve already been in Azelea’s quarters and resolved this problem far more satisfactorily. She sighed. She’d just have to settle for being incredibly beautiful and charming. Since she had finally managed to get Dorrin to admit his true feelings about her, she might not need as much charm as she had before, but she was sure she’d find a use for it.
She felt her eyes getting heavier. She managed to drag herself across the room to the bed and was asleep before her head reached the pillow. Her last thoughts were of Dorrin and a sleepy hope that he would find a way to come to her rescue before she had to free herself.
Next week on Blood & Iron:
Chapter 12—She Hates Me More Than She Needs You
Freedom is never given. It is taken.
But the question remains—
Who are you willing to become to claim it?
Previous || Table of Contents || Next