[Towers Respite] A Green(?) Thumbed Ethaefal

[Alses]

Timestamp: 78th of Summer, 512 A.V. Secret : Gardening. It wasn't exactly a task fit for a prince of magic – or a princess, technically, in her case – but everyone had to start somewhere, and that often meant doing jobs quite, quite tangential to one's real aim – and the offer of gardening around the Towers Respite, a job which kept her under Syna's warm and forgiving light and had the benefit of bringing in a few kina for the incidental expenses that every student incurred, had seemed the best of the lot. Alses winced at the memory there. Rather naively, she'd assumed that helping with the gardening meant just the same here as it had back in Zentiva – a leisurely stroll through straight, pleached avenues of plants valuable for their various properties, making sure to age each and every one so that more harvests could be wrung out of them for use in various experiments and, not least, in the formulation of the charged water necessary for quenching magecrafted items. Thus, she felt she'd rather been tossed in at the deep end when Tahala Chinsta, the matron? Owner? Supervisor? of the Respite had shown her to the gardens that screened the whole place from, well, the rest of Lhavit, handed her the key to the gardening shed – in actuality more a miniature fairytale pavilion of shimmering skyglass than a wood-and-iron shack – and had then had to dash off to deal with a student who'd apparently set his hair on fire. Or someone's, anyway – the words had dopplered away with extraordinary rapidity, leaving Alses all on her own at the entryway to the gardens. Hands on her hips, she surveyed her new domain with a sinking heart. From raised beds and pots on every side there poured a riotous profusion of unfamiliar plants, tumbling and scrambling over one another in a continual vegetative struggle for light and space. Mountain roses drowned amid huge mats of some fleshy plant that she took an instant disliking to – roses were some of her favourite flowers – and some form of creeping moss had colonised parts of the pathways, spilling down from artistically-tumbled piles of rock in other parts of the garden. Duckweed, one of the very few plants she recognized, had made serious inroads into what would otherwise have been a rather charming water feature in one corner of the gardens, too. To a master gardener, or even someone passably competent, it was probably not any sort of major project – it might have gone to seed a little from recent neglect (Alses had got the impression that this was more due to the workload of Tahala than any disinterest on her part) but it was hardly a tangled, jungly wilderness that made veteran gardeners gird their loins, grip their rakes and hoes with fanatical determination and break out the machetes. Regardless, to a complete novice it was daunting, to say the least. 'Perhaps I should have looked at the gardens a bit more before I agreed to give them a tidy-up,' she thought ruefully. 'Maybe I should find someone to teach me reimancy, then I could just burn the weeds out.' A lopsided smile tugged at one side of her mouth. 'Then again, I don't really know what's a weed and what's a flower. Well, except for that kuhari stuff – and then only because one of the Shinya caught me about to pick it and talked my ear off about how dangerous it was before burning it to ashes from a safe distance.' Clearly, then, the way forward was to compartmentalise. Alses' mind was generally quite an ordered place, something which promoted diligence, care and precision, all of which were needed in large amounts for her chosen craft. Some might have considered her pedantic or fussy, with all the damning connotations thereof, but magic was a cruel and harsh mistress who tolerated precious few mistakes. The old wizards were the careful ones, those who planned their procedures, set up triple-warded circles and absorption shields before experiments and always, always had a backup plan. Or six. So. The area she was in at present, the right side of the building, facing out towards the Dusk Tower, that would be Area One, and within that, the borders and wooden mesh-like things (Alses learned later that the proper term was 'trellis') that abutted the Respite itself would be Section One, the terraces which plunged vertiginously down towards the misty sea of clouds far below was Section Two – 'Really must work on my balance before I tackle that,' she thought. 'Maybe some sort of rope tether arrangement might be sensible?', the water feature was Section Three – 'I'll definitely need to get some new gloves before I do anything about the duckweed there,' - and the paths would be Section Four. That seemed to cover the basics of organization, at least until she knew more about what she was doing – the next step was surely to take stock of whatever was in the gardening pavilion – calling it a shed was doing the graceful structure an injustice, really. Unfortunately, Alses managed only a few steps on the slick, mossy pebbles of the path before – a spray of rounded rocks followed by: “Syna's flaming knickers!” a decidedly ungraceful bellow, accompanied, a short time later, by a rather more feeble “Ouch...” rent the air. Her head rang with crystal chimes thanks to the stones skittering off her crown-of-horns, pain marched merrily up and down her spine and legs, and a particularly vicious pebble had scored a shallow cut on her left forearm. It bled, sluggishly, the colour of burnished bronze, and with another muffled curse, she roughly wiped away the blood and managed to rock herself at least partway upright, muttering expletives against Lhavit, pebbles, moss, plants in general, lack of funds, students (carefully excising herself from that group in her head) moss again, the rain which had made everything wet and slippery in the first place, the matted mass of...of foliage that covered virtually every scrap that wasn't trees or rocks, lack of funds and moss once more for good measure. Needless to say, Alses was not a happy Ethaefal when she finally made it – by dint of trampling merrily over the dwarf primroses which, in her mind, were a particularly invasive weed that would have to be torn out root and branch at the first opportunity– to the gardener's little dominion. Inside, everything was covered in a fine coating of dust, but organized, at the least. Sturdy shelves held up a gently-mouldering collection of tools that a rather the worse for wear Alses perused with interest and not a little trepidation. Shovels and spades she was familiar with, of course, along with the operation of a wheelbarrow, since these had been much in evidence back in Zeltiva, but some of them were a complete mystery – such as the one with a broad fan of hooked metal spokes on the end of a long pole. After some thought, turning it over and over in her hands, she concluded that it was evidently the horticultural equivalent of a billhook; it looked like just the thing to lay into those invasive weeds with a vengeance, after all. Another was essentially a half-moon of shiny, sharp metal that was evidently for some sort of cutting operation, a suspicion that was confirmed by a glyph fragment etched into the haft, although as part of the sentence was erased, she could find out nothing more specific. Trowels and gardening forks were neatly greased up, and the pump, to her surprise when she gave it an exploratory push, drew quickly and smoothly. 'Of course,' she thought, mildly embarrassed. 'Tahala probably at least waters everything once in a while, even if she doesn't have the time to do anything else.' The only other discovery of note was of a series of wax-sealed clay pots lined up against the back wall of the little pavilion. Most had no identifying marks, save for those of age, but a couple of the newer ones bore the inscription 'Weeds'. Alses puzzled over this for several minutes – were gardeners supposed to store weeds somehow? What possible use could they have? Curious, she cracked the seal on the newest – a caustic smell burned away at the inside of her nostrils, causing her to sneeze and cough convulsively and clap the lid back on as soon as possible. Whatever it actually was that was in those pots – Alses' sensitive nose had registered the smell of kuhari and a heavy potpourri of chemicals noted for their use as caustics and purgatives – she had a feeling it wouldn't help the weeds grow. Quite the reverse, in fact. After a few moments of rummaging, she emerged, triumphant and with a cobweb dangling forlornly from the tip of one horn, watering can brandished in one hand. “Aha! Time to do something about those paths, I think.” She grinned. “Teach them to trip me up,” she added, sotto voce, decanting the decidedly toxic liquid from pot to can and striding out of the door, letting it slam behind her. Arcs of weedkiller all but sizzled on the pale stones as Alses sloshed it about with merry abandon, giving the pathway a liberal dousing. The milky liquid gleamed on the limpet-like moss that clung to every available surface of the pebbles, but seemed to have no immediate effect. Alses, who had been secretly expecting something on the lines of some of the more dramatic compounds used in her magecrafting – corrosion, flames, maverick djed flows – or at the least a good sizzle and puff of smoke, was disappointed, then suspicious. What if the liquid had gone off, or whatever the correct phrase was? Perhaps – she blanched – it would act as fertiliser? Shaking her head to rid it of this unwelcome and unsettling thought, she perched herself on one of the low walls that – theoretically, anyway – separated the garden's levels, safely out of the way of her weedkilling bonanza. The air, which before had been heady with the scent of mountain roses, now had a tone that was decidedly more...acrid, burning the inside of Alses' nose as she calmed herself slowly, letting the heat of Syna draw the tension out of her muscles and bruised back. The straining of newly-knitting skin prickled her consciousness; operating almost on automatic, one hand scratched, until bright bursts of pain caused her to stop with a hiss – her fingernails had reopened the wound. She breathed again, and got a lungful of sulphurous fumes, but forced herself to keep breathing deeply and steadily. One of the ever-dependable breezes of Lhavit swept over the gardens then, taking with it the offensive odour, and Alses breathed out with its passage, sinking deeper into a quasi-meditative state with her heartbeat, that most reliable and ubiquitous of beats, sounding loud in her mind. Reaching inside herself, with a flourishing gesture she spun thousands of tiny filaments of djed up and out from their usual tight coiling whorl around her brilliant centre, flushing them through her body with every thump of her heart, a sparkling and intricate webwork that, with an effort that grew less and less every time she attempted it, she cast wider, out of her skin, letting the thin conduits diffuse into the air and painting the world in rainbow shades. Her Sight showed much that was hidden or obscured – whilst to the unobservant, unaugmented eye, the gardens were a slightly overgrown idyll, when looked at with an aurist's trained senses, a greater sense of the struggle emerged, illustrated in shades of green, blue and black, pulsing and writhing as plants fought for dominance, for air and space and water and light. The paths were of the most interest to Alses, though, and she tore her gaze – with difficulty – away from the largest of the flowerbeds, where a continual roiling boil of auras seethed and raged, almost completely obscuring the plants that generated them. Where the small, yet vicious red and orange aura - spiked and pointed and positively reeking of danger - of the weedkiller met the calmer, somehow smoother haloes around each mossy patch, tiny motes of darkness ate away at the emerald shades, spreading a black cloak over what had been a patchwork of pearl-gray and green. It was fascinating to watch, and she stayed there for some time, feeling the ebb and flow of djed and watching the boiling maelstrom of weedkiller assault and moss counterattack. To anyone watching, it would surely have seemed very strange – a glorious Daughter of Syna, perched, hawklike, on a low, overgrown wall, intently observing what appeared to be a perfectly normal path.

[Alses]

Secret : There was, however, only so much entertainment – and, more crucially, information – that could be gleaned from watching green auras shrivel and die under the onslaught of weedkiller, and so after observing intently for some time, Alses turned her attention, somewhat reluctantly, to the rest of the garden, and was reminded, once again, of the apparent magnitude of her endeavour. Trees she didn't know the name of stood out of mats of that awful weedy stuff, tendrils of unknown plants coiled up the skyglass sides of the Respite and yet more variations on the theme of 'flowering plant' were ranged in fine glazed pots on various levels throughout the garden. 'I don't know how to do any of this!' she wailed, but only for internal consumption. 'Why is nothing ever easy? Why is there never, oh, I don't know, The Big Book of Gardening for Beginners, let's say, to hand? Somebody must have noted down what plants are which and what they like and don't like, yes? It'd probably be packed full of helpful tips like...like 'don't chop down these trees, they're pretty and nice. Get rid of plants that look like this, for they are nasty and invasive. Also poisonous. Oh, and while we're at it, there'd also be a section on what the tools I found in the pavilion actually are and what they do, too!' She turned her head from contemplation of her labours and scowled – inasmuch as a divine Ethaefal could – at the onion-domed roofs of the Bharani Library rising off in the distance. One day. One day. 'Bah. Everything is 'one day'!' she thought viciously. Alses took out her irritation on the hapless dwarf primroses, wielding the horticultural billhook-thing with a combination of annoyance and Ethaefal strength. Great matted clumps of close-packed leaves and roots were snared in its metal hooks time and again – the wooden haft bent and sang under the pressure as she tore it free with a rather animalistic snarl, piling up great clods of vegetation and exposing the rich, dark earth below. Weedy seedlings glowed palely, freshly uncovered, and a few stunted shrubs struggled upright, freed from the crushing weight. “Hah! That's better,” she remarked, slightly breathlessly, leaning on the haft and breathing deeply. Her arms ached and her back throbbed, but the work had been...well, refreshingly menial, an alien experience to her. She hadn't had to think, beyond 'I'll do that bit next,' and the steady, rhythmic action was somehow soothing. Her mind freewheeled as she worked methodically, thinking vaguely about ongoing classes in the Dusk Tower and the various glyphs she was in the middle of studying in the Tower library. Most were related to the expansion of perceptions, of course, but magic was magic and knowledge was knowledge, a nectar sweeter than honey and more irresistible than the Sweet Whispers to Alses. Her Nader-canoch was coming along slowly but steadily too, mostly thanks to the helpful annotations that some enterprising educator had carefully scribed next to the glyphs. Many of the later concepts and the more elaborate glyphery were completely beyond her understanding, but sometimes shimmers of inspiration struck and a knotted, impenetrable morass of inked lines and latent magic would unfurl before her straining eyes and busy mind, the harsh, angular intersections of one author's interpretation blossoming into Alses' own curling curls and curlicues, the layers of meaning settling out into her head. Some days, however, it was as though she was beating her head against a skyglass wall – and that was a particularly apt metaphor, she'd often felt, struggling with a glyph, its inked shape heavy with vague shades of meaning, the curve of a line or the symmetry of its form suggesting comprehension without ever actually quite allowing her to achieve it, as though everything were viewed through a thin sheet of translucent skyglass, blurring the salient details. Bloody infuriating, that's what it was, but Alses was no fool – helped, admittedly, in that respect, by the constellation of old lives somewhere in the depths of her soul. All things would come, given time, and, as an Ethaefal, time was something she had in superabundance. In any case, it wasn't enough to simply fork the knowledge into one's head, when it came to magic; every bit had to be studied and thought about, twisted to fit each individual person. A prime example was in the descriptions of auras, in the Dusk Tower library texts – they all carried the caveat that everyone's Sight was different, and indeed she'd found the descriptions and diagrams there of very limited use, just enough (on a good day) to grasp the edge of a concept, which she then had to go and spend hours in the Sun Temple grounds or taking up space in Mhakula's Tea-House to align it with the organically-beautiful coronae that seared across her vision, to understand just what the poet-wizards had been rambling on about with their 'wavered sea-foam of anxiety, rich blood-thunder of desire', the knowledge all wrapped up in beautiful little quatrains that were profound without actually explaining very much. Needless to say, Alses had often found herself remonstrating with the books – and anyone nearby who would listen, much to the annoyance of many and the secret amusement of some. Then again, perhaps that was part of it all, another layer of tests set before the would-be traveller on the path of magic and mastery. The Dusk family were terribly fond of tests, after all, and since it was members of their family who had penned half the seminal works on Auristics, something of their devious natures must have seeped into the writing. Blinking herself out of that vague, quasi-meditative state, she looked around once more with a critical eye. Her efforts in ridding the garden of the scourge of dwarf primroses had resulted in towering piles of woody stems and vast, leafy mats, all of which had to go, well, somewhere. “Why did I never really bother with reimancy?” she grumbled, hands on hips. “I could have a bonfire with all of this!” More pressing, however, was the concern about what to do with it all – she couldn't just leave it piled all over the place, after all. “What under Syna's sun and I supposed to do with all of this?” Vague memories, from back in Zeltiva, of an odiferous box full of half-rotted plant material, surfaced, but to no avail – why was she thinking of that, of all things? No-one in their right minds stored weeds. They got thrown...away... Inspiration struck, and Alses turned to look at the terraces and the vertical drop into oblivion beyond their decorative railings.

[Alses]

Secret : Alses watched the last of the piles of vegetative rubbish go tumbling merrily down through space, vanishing into the thick cloud layer. She permitted herself a small smile. 'Out of sight, out of mind,' she congratulated herself, taking one last look around the area. 'Time for a bit of a fact-finding mission,' she thought – the Dusk Tower's gardens were very fine, and would surely be in much better condition than those surrounding the Towers Respite, which were, after all, subject to all the vagaries of student care. If nothing else, they would give her an idea of what plants were weeds and which were welcome, and that way if Tahala asked her what she was doing out there at any point she could at least answer with some degree of knowledge. Girding her loins and making herself presentable – something which took some time – she set off over the gracefully-arcing skyglass bridge - blessing for the thousandth time the easy access that the Respite had to all of the towers - heading towards the slender spire which pierced the sky in the distance, bleeding burnished bronze light and glowing with all the colours of that most perfect of dusks. The tower her patrons called home was impossible to miss, right across the city, soaring above the melange of lesser spires and domes, always quietly glorious and leaping to ascendancy in the twilight time where Leth and Syna were in perfect, precarious balance. Every scrap of it was carved or decorated in some way – allegorical and historical scenes from the founding of Lhavit, the Ascent above the clouds of the tribes, the Gnosis of Zintila, famous Dusk figures from the past...a reminder in celestial skyglass of hardships endured and hard-fought battles won, of historical figures who shaped the city and kept the fledgling settlement safe by the agility of their minds and the sharpness of their spears. On the threshold, boots ringing on the skyglass bridge and fingers drumming a chime on the crystal parapet, Alses tilted her head back to drink in the full beauty of the place. It was truly a testament to the unique culture of Lhavit that such a place wasn't barricaded off behind walls and guards, strictly private and for the enjoyment of the privileged few, but was instead largely thrown open to the masses, especially if they came with the desire and ability to learn. Inside, the Tower was a labyrinth of corridors and rooms, betraying its age as the structure had been remodelled time and again since its creation to accommodate the changing needs of House Dusk. The signs worked into the decoration all around the entrance hall were a godsend for almost everyone upon their first few visits to the grand citadel – Alses still relied more or less completely upon them to avoid getting hopelessly lost and ending up somewhere she really shouldn't have been – but fortunately the grand garden was impossible to miss, a vast, space, bordered by graceful colonnaded arches and chock-full of plants positively bursting with health, reaching up towards Syna's warm and forgiving light. It was much more controlled than the Respite garden, the sort of studied idyll that needed a great deal of maintenance to keep it looking as though it needed no maintenance at all, and yet for all that, as with many landscapes designed for beauty, it was carelessly perfect, every part of it harmonizing to draw in the weary and stressed and gently ease away all their cares amid gentle scents, the sound of a breeze soughing through feather-light leaves, and, everywhere, the rippling laughter of water. The garden was full of water; intricate rills and channels flowed all through it, winding sinuously about the boles of great trees, darting in and out of their mighty buttress roots, forming sudden, still reflecting pools, whilst the gentle chuckle of falling water on rock provided a light, pleasant backdrop to conversation or easement – and, a darker portion of her mind whispered, easily obscuring any secrets one might care to whisper over tea and wine. No-one paid much attention to Alses as she seated herself on a flat rock, wonderfully warmed from the sun's light, and spread various writing materials around. Students were known to do odd things, and at odder hours; the House guards, and probably even members of the Family would assume that someone had set her a task, or else that some particularly vexatious piece of research was occupying her brain. The gardens were an aid to concentration and mature, reasoned reflection upon lessons learned, after all; that was their ostensible purpose. In front of her, there were a pair of magnificent fadeong trees, their feather-light leaves the colour of blood and seeming to catch fire in the sunlight. A common sight along many of Lhavit's broad avenues, it was one of the plants she knew about, but these pair had somehow been coaxed to grow into a spiralling helix, winding about one another. She squinted up into the hazy canopy – yes, there were coils of some sort of metal wrapped around some of the branches and trunk, and their purpose she could only guess at, making a few cursory notes in her 'Observations' book, brought along for that very purpose – there could have been hundreds of plants to take note of, after all, and memory had its limits. Mountain roses brought a smile to her lips, their perfumes heady with all the promises of summer; her favourite flower, save perhaps for the jasmines with their scents sweeter than memory. She'd been sorely disappointed to find that the Respite had no jasmine – perhaps that was a project for her, then, to remedy that sad state of affairs. Something to consider, certainly. With the more unusual plants, those she didn't recognize in the least, she took her time observing them, noting down their salient features – flowers (if any), colouration, leaf shape, anything that she felt would help her identify them, before very carefully and – truth be told – laboriously sketching a perfectly symmetrical glyph onto the page, making sure that every curve was perfectly mirrored, every angle identical to its opposite, muttering to herself as the quill skated and slipped, or an overlarge inkblot ruined a line, before carefully channelling the djed that filtered lazily through the garden, weaving her own internal magics in careful opposition until, in her mind's eye, the interfacing surface was as smooth and glassy as a mirror, perfectly reflecting all it saw, drawing down the impressions of her Sight and senses into the focus, stored for now. The glyph flashed and flared, momentarily - Alses feared it wouldn't hold and her work would be lost – but the arcane fire wavered, then firmed. Pearls of cold sweat beaded her skin after the third such glyph and shivers raced up and down her spine, even though the garden was perfectly comfortable; thereafter, her notes became far more copious, if not a little rambling, full of crossings-out, arrows and asterisks to link it all together. So engrossed was she in studying the fleshy rosettes of a leiyona flower, the first she knew of another anywhere nearby was a light, somewhat hesitant voice calling: “Miss? Miss? Can you hear me?” With a start that threatened to send quill, ink and book flying, Alses' head snapped around before her brain had even finished processing the sentence, bringing one of the Tower servants into view. This one looked amiable enough, clad in a practical forest-green tunic and leggings and with a face that could best be described as 'lived-in'. Any other description would fast plunge into geological terminology, describing the clusters of deep crevasses which rayed out across his cheeks, the fleshy creep of his jowls and the intricate ridging patterns of the foothills of his forehead. His eyes, though, powder-blue like a winter sky, were alert, though filled with caution – which was only prudent, when one disturbed a mage at their endeavours. “I'm sorry, miss, but we're shuttin' the garden for th' fifteen-sixteen bells. Doin' a bit of maintenance work before the Dusk Rest brings everyone out t'enjoy it.” He flicked a glance over at the plant Alses had been studying. “Have you done anythin' to that leiyona there? Only I'm not qualified t'deal with magical plants; I'd have to get Master Zentis to come and get rid of it, and he'd not be best pleased at us disturbin' his rest...” Alses shook her head with a faint smile. “Leiyona? Is that what it's called?” she made a careful note in her book. “I was just studying all the plants here, sir. I'm doing some gardening down at the Respite, but I really don't know the first thing about horticulture, so I decided I should at least find out which plants were welcome and which weren't before I started properly.” Surprisingly, the gardener laughed, a rich and earthy sound. “Is that all you've been doin'? Half the staff...well, let's just say they were ready to go for the guards at the first sign o' a giant walking tree or somethin' of that nature. If y'wanted to know about the plants, you could've just asked any one o'us!” He had an accent to his Common, a rolling burr full of dropped letters and contractions, but he spoke at an easy, measured pace. Alses looked away. “I didn't want to be an imposition,” she murmured. “We truly do know nothing about gardening – before today, I thought it meant walking down an avenue of valuable plants and aging them all so that you could get more harvests out of them.” The gardener raised two spectacularly bushy eyebrows. “Caiyha,” he breathed. “Agin'?” he repeated, as though he hadn't quite heard her properly. Her cheeks flushed brilliant ruby. “I can speed up the passage of time for anything I touch. Only by one day at a time, but we can do it every day. My old master back in Zentiva found it useful to wring two harvests a year from his gardens rather than just one.” “Well, y'learn somethin' new every day,” he said in a faintly marvelling tone. “Sounds a bit like you've been tossed in th' deep end, though – but good on yer for tryin' to work things out on your own. Now, I ain't really what you'd call an expert gardener, but I've been tendin' this garden for more years than you've been alive, probably. There's not a lot I don't know about 'er by now.” He gave her a brief, slightly crooked bow – perhaps due to age? She was no expert on that. “The name's Martin. Gardener to and retainer of the Dusk family, at y'service, fine lady. I'm no great teacher, never had much truck with book-learnin' – begging your pardon, o'course – but ye're welcome t' tag along as I check the garden, and I daresay I can talk ye through the common plants and some o' the basics, miss...?” He paused, long enough to let her know he was waiting on her name. The rubies redoubled their efforts to colonise her spectacular cheeks. Martin seemed to possess quite a lot of charm, in a twinkly-eyed sort of way, and it was something that she had rather limited experience with. Calf-eyed stares and longing looks she could deal with, but charm and courtesy? Another matter entirely. “Alses,” she replied hurriedly. “I'm a student here – as you might have guessed.” She laughed, nervously. “Are you sure it's all right? We shouldn't like to be a bother.” Martin flapped a leathery hand, heavily callused by hard work and quite unlike her own smooth, supple ones. “Had ye pegged for a student the moment ye came through the doors,” he said airily. “Even before ye mentioned th' Respite. And it's no bother – I like talkin' about plants, 'specially if someone wants t'learn about 'em. Plus, if'n I can get you into gardening proper, that'd be a right feather in my cap with Zentis. 'e's always goin' on about how people have no respect for plants and the right proper care they all need t'really flourish. Come on. We'll talk as we go. Time's a-wastin'.” For an old man – his hair was pure white – he was surprisingly sprightly, and Alses had to move with an odd, half-skipping quickstep to keep up. Despite his thickly-accented Common, full of rolling, burred r's and dropped letters, he spoke at an easy pace that, though animated and chock-full of information and interesting little asides, gave her spend the split-second she needed to understand him without having to rush to keep up. He took her on a winding and convoluted – though obviously well-practised – route, constantly talking about the plants they encountered. Sometimes, he'd have her pull an overhanging branch down to take a closer look at a bark pattern or examine the leaves, other times, they'd both crouch around the buttressed roots of some mighty tree. “Soil,” he pronounced grandly at one such stop, “is th' basis of all gardening. Down on th' lowlands, the best soil is this rich, dark stuff.” He reached into one of the many ornamental pots and came up with a handful of nearly-black earth and rubbed it between his fingers, creating a fine particulate rain. “See that? Breaks apart pretty easily when you stress it, but it holds together well enough on its own. Lots of air pockets, lots of nutrients there. Don't matter what you plant there, really, it'll come up somethin' wonderful.” He grinned. “Here in Lhavit, though, that stuff's in precious short supply. The plants up here have t'make do with thin, sandy soil – ye can see that around the base o' this kariino – or make their own. Don't look like that,” he added, catching Alses' incredulous look. “'Tis true. I'll take ye by the rockery later and show you. Ye can help the sandy stuff turn into that rich black dirt if'n you fork in lots o' manure – the bird droppin's work wonders, I tell you – or compost – that's rotted down weeds and such.” Alses winced; fortunately, he didn't seem to see it. Next time, at least, she'd know what to do. He stood up – with an audible crackle of bone – and looked around. “Tch!” he muttered, - an inarticulate expression of irritation – before crossing to one of the ubiquitous feather-leaved fadeong trees and roughly tearing away a rather pretty blue vine which nicely complemented the bark. “This is jasao. Looks pretty, I'll grant ye, but the very devil in a garden. They choke th' plants they grow around, steal their water, air and light – and they grow very fast. I'll have t' let the others know we've got jasao again – once it gets a foothold it's a lot o' work to get rid of. If ye find it in the Respite garden – an' I've a feelin' ye will – make sure ye get every last scrap of it out in one go.” Alses nodded intelligently, and, upon noticing the strange spirals of metal around the upper half of the trunk, asked: “What are those, if you don't mind me asking?” Martin followed her gaze, and then her pointing finger. “Oh, that. Very advanced secret technique, that. One of Master Zentris's projects. 'e does it with these little trees he grows, too – full grown trees, mark you, but somehow shrunk so's they fit in a shallow plant-pot as you can put on any windowsill. The metal makes them bend into all sorts of fancy shapes. They fetch a very high price, I'm told, from people wi' more money than sense.” He sniffed. “Zentris always says there's no magic involved, but I ain't sure I believe him. 'taint natural, makin' a kariino six inches high, you mark my words. Now-” Alses interrupted him then, comfortable enough in his company to know he wouldn't take offence. “Isn't that a weed?” she asked, pointing at a small cluster of dwarf primroses edging a larger flowerbed. Martin's callused finger caressed the fleshy leaves, surprisingly gentle. “This? Bless ye, no. 'Tis dwarf primrose. Very common around th' city – people like the pretty pink flowers it gets in wintertime, see.” He paused. “Why do ye ask?” With a groan, Alses quietly explained – the great mats of the stuff she'd torn out like so much rubbish, the plants hidden underneath it that she'd wanted to free, expecting at any moment an explosion from the gardener at the magnitude of her blunder. He was silent for some time after she finished, eyes cast upwards. “Well,” he pronounced heavily, as though some great deliberation were finished. “That's perhaps not the way I would have done 'er. But it sounds like ye've stumbled on one o' the other principles o' gardening there – any plant, if'n it gets too big fer it's boots, is a weed. They chokes the other plants, see, and then you've got a right old mess on your hands. You'll want to keep an eye on the bare patches now, though – all that disturbed ground is prime territory for weeds. A good forking over'll help until you get some cover growth.” Martin straightened up and continued onwards, towards the back of the garden, a rather more...workmanlike area than the rest of it, with beds staked out and separated with baulks of timber from each other, each with plants in various stages of growth. “This is the real heart of the garden,” he said, over his shoulder. “Master Zentris's playground.” He nodded towards one particular bed, where two other gardeners were carefully shovelling a whitish powder into the soil. “That's another one o' his projects. 'e got sent some seeds and cuttings from one o' his lowlander colleagues, planted 'em as best he could, and do you know not a one grew? Best soil, richest fertilizer we had, light an' shade an' waterin' regime just as his friend had said, and still nothin'!” Martin chuckled. “Oh, Zentris was hoppin' mad! Locked himself in th' study, with 'is books and 'is letters, shoutin' and carryin' on something dreadful! Sent so many letters to 'is friend tryin' to figure it out until one day he comes out of there, as excited as a little boy at Midwinter, cooin' over this stuff-” he pointed at the powder “-like it was diamond dust. It's limestone, actually, ground up real fine. Told us to dig it into that plot and try again. I don't know what difference he thinks it'll make – th' explanation went right over my head, somethin' to do wi' soil conditions, but there we go.” Martin clapped his hands together suddenly, making Alses jump out of her skin. “Right, that's me finished me inspection. Just gotta let the others know we've got bloody jasao in the Evergloam section, tell 'em to keep an eye out for it everywhere else. Well, nice to have met ye, Alses. Kept nice and quiet, didn't ask stupid questions, took in everythin' I told ye, near enough. If ye ever need any more help, jus' ask fer me. I'd ask ye in for tea, but Master Zentris'd yell me ear off for bringing ye through 'is playground.” He pointed to a small track that lead off through the undergrowth. “Bit tough goin' at first, that path, but ye won't be seen usin' it and it's the quickest way t' get back t' the main entrance. Quickly now, before Zentris catches sight of ye.” So encouraged, Alses bowed – as deep as she would to the Patriarch – to him, mute thanks for his help, and hurried off. Martin had been right about the pathway – her crown-of-horns snagged several times in branches and whippy stems lashed at her legs, at least at first, but after a few minutes of forging through what seemed like a jungle, the track widened onto one of the larger, scallop-raked paths that wound its sinuous way back to the main doors. There was but one more thing she wanted to do before going home for a well-deserved rest and – most crucially – a bath, and that was to collect any messages that might need to go out, and so to earn her keep. It wasn't the most glamorous of jobs, true, but it did mean that she got to know every nook and cranny of the city, all the shortcuts and interesting forgotten squares. Then, too, it got the city's merchants and their apprentices familiar with her face, with her, so that, in the fullness of time, she could lean on acquaintanceships and the easy conversations struck up with apprentices as their masters bustled around sorting all the paraphernalia that the Tower seemed to require, in her dealings with them on her own account. All in all, she reflected, ever-ready to see the bright side in anything, a courier got a very good grounding in the city, and in realpolitik from the ground up, an education which would undoubtedly complement that which she'd received in the halls of the University in Zeltiva. Fortunately, the Dusk family were sensible in the layout of their tower, and the general secretary's desk, the first line of defence, as it were, was very close to the main doors, just up a discreet spiral staircase that opened out into a generously-proportioned room full of the comforting smells of paper and ink. She took a moment, on the final step, to make sure she was presentable, no leaves in her hair or branches caught in her horns, then walked forward and bent fluidly into a bow before the secretary at the marbled desk, the natural grace of an Ethaefal accented and refined by the experience of a lot of genuflection ever since she'd come to the city, where it was a courtesy as common as a cheery greeting. It was a custom she rather liked, on the whole, since everyone did it. 'You have worth and so do I, and we shall both recognize this fact respectfully when we meet,' was what it said to her. “Good evening, sir.” That part, at least, came out without a hitch, but it was the next bit that was difficult. 'Pronoun, pronoun, pronoun,' she chanted silently – it was important to get it right. “Are there any messages that I could take for the Tower?” The secretary looked up and scrutinized Alses through his singular glass lens over the right eye. She shifted uncomfortably under his gaze; it had always seemed as though he were examining her soul, or at the very least, her insides, as well. “No boxes at present, courier, but I have some letters that must go to the merchants in the Azure Market. The specifics are indicated on the envelopes. Here,” he handed over a slim sheaf of creamy parchments, each one folded and sealed with a blob of pearly wax. “Good day, courier,” he murmured, with a foreshortened bow, before picking up his pen once more. A quick dismissal, true, but a polite one nonetheless. Despite the tiredness settled in her bones – something which would wrack her waking hours for the next few days – she left the Tower with a spring in her step, more sure of her knowledge thanks to Martin the helpful gardener and with just a slim set of light letters to deliver, rather than the heavy boxes reserved for more important missives. It would be the work of a bell, at most, to see them distributed at the Market, and then she could look forward to a nice, long soak back at the Respite – which, at present, was definitely living up to its name. END

[Quasar]

Alses: Skills Awarded Skill XP Auristics +1 Glyphing +1 Gardening +3 Lores Awarded Caring for a Lhavitian Garden The dangers of Kuhari Dealing with weeds Dusk Tower's gardener: Martin Properties of Jasao Appearance of Leiyona Zentris' Garden Additional Notes: I actually learned a bit about gardening myself in this XD. I love your conversation with Martin, it was a fun dialogue to read . Anyway, please PM me if you have any questions concerning the grade grade above.