Bouquet ~ Eighteen

[annarti.livejournal.com]

Chapter~ 1464
Total~ 31 057

Flannel Flower cursed herself the whole way to Silrona, and ended up accidentally kicking Grevillea a few times in her annoyance. How could she have been so stupid? Again?

That’s it. Isai is gone. No more Isai and no more bows. He’s the one getting you caught.

She couldn’t get rid of her bow though. Not because she had paid so much for it, but it was a beautiful bow.

The Houses were easy enough to manage. She experimented at each House to find which was the cheapest profession. Ironically, she had to fish out six silver pieces to pass through the Houses as Rensali the fisherman, but only two as Isai the warrior. She smiled smugly to herself and patted Grevillea’s light grey neck. There, you see? Play it average and nobody will notice you. She would have had to pay at least a gold or two to get through on Tazin’s glistening black back.

She wondered with a smirk what would happen if she told them she was the empress’s assassin.

By the time she finally reached Silrona, the journey that should have taken four weeks ended up taking five. One taxation House had given her the wrong directions. She refused to admit she’d gotten lost.

Silrona was big and unimpressive. Its houses were similar to the thatched rooves of Suza, but the sheer number of them stripped them of their ‘quaint’ title. They weren’t nestled in amongst the forest like Suza, rather the gums stuck out of the mass of shaggy-rooved houses like toothpicks. There was little to break up the monotony of houses, and she decided she could easily get lost here.

She asked one woman where the House of Silrona’s Heart was, and was directed to the other side of the city.

It seemed a simple enough direction, but when she could only see as far as the end of the street, she managed to get lost all too easily.

It didn’t help, either, that people in this city didn’t know the streets by their proper names. Most couldn’t read the street names anyway, and unlike Suza, there were far too many of them to remember all the names in even a person’s home district. Streets weren’t called ‘Wattle Street’ or ‘Greenhill Road’. They were ‘The street that Russa’s daughter lives on’ or ‘The road one over from the House of Small Donations’ or more often than not, ‘Not this one but the next one over’.

She lost count of how many people she had asked for directions, and it took her at least two hours to cross to the other side of the city.

Finally though, the large yellow-painted disk that hung above the door to every House came into sight, and she walked inside with some strange relief not generally associated with the taxation houses.

There was a letter there for her, as she’d predicted, and with much trouble she managed to stuff it in the saddle bags without reading it first.

She had to get home first, which was a task in itself. Eventually though, she made it to her home district and was pleased to find it was populated largely by people who could read and knew the street names.

How was she ever going to make it back to the House of Silrona’s Heart? This city was a maze. Maybe most of her targets would be in this district.

Grevillea snorted behind her as if in derision at her thought. She raised an eyebrow back at the mare then tugged on her reins, finally arriving at what she hoped was the right place.

It was locked, unsurprisingly, and though the letter was clearly light enough that it was obviously Shizaaqa had neglected to give her a key, she was able to pick it open easily enough.

Like the rest of the city, the house was big and unimpressive. She led Grevillea down the hall to the small, rather well-kept garden at the back and removed her tack, leaving the horse free to poke around the garden and eat what she felt like. She was too annoyed with Silrona at the moment to bother solving yet another problem.

She trudged back inside, blowing at her fringe in frustration and relief. She dumped Grevillea’s tack in the hall and dug out the letter, then mooched around in search of the lounge room.

Flannel Flower half raised her eyebrows upon finding it. Between two plush lounge chairs sat an upside-down tree stump, smoothed off and polished to make a rather interesting coffee table. Sitting in the middle of it was a sheet of paper with a fine coating of dust. Who lived here before that they could afford to buy coffee? Was it cheaper down here than in Suza?

‘Ooh, gods, I hope so.’ She picked up the letter, strangely more intrigued by it than Shizaaqa’s, and flopped down in one of the two armchairs.

Welcome, traveller, to your new house! I truly hope it is up to your standards. I’m sorry about the dead bluegum out the back. It simply had to be left there, because where would the kookaburras live otherwise?

What else? Oh yes, you’ll find a good little shop just down the road for groceries. Nice owners, and with any luck they’ll have what you want. I have stored the clean flannel in the cupboard outside the upstairs bedroom. The creeper is an obnoxious flower, but I can’t for the life of me get rid of it. Sorry again.

That’s all you will need, I think. The people next door always hated me living here. The worst neighbour in all Silrona, they told me! They’ll be glad I’ve gone, anyway, and good riddance to them! Sorry a third time.

Best wishes,
Wattle

Flannel Flower didn’t pay the letter much attention until she read the name signed at the bottom. It was a flourish of a signature, but with much squinting and a little imagination, it almost definitely read Wattle. Out of curiosity, she ran one finger over the words, a sly grin curling the corners of her mouth.

She folded the short letter in half and flicked it onto the table, then carefully picked open the red wax seal of the letter from the empress. She took a deep breath and immediately began picking out the words, not in the mood for giggling at Frangipani’s flowing prose at the moment.

The letter was almost an anticlimax. It was very much run of the mill, outlining the physical description of Ansi, one of the diplomats working at the palace. It wasn’t until the last few paragraphs that the empress showed anything was different.

Do you think I should take this opportunity? The pay is good, but Ansi’s attitude is worrying me. I’m not sure that this job is worth putting up with her standing over me like a hawk all day.

What do you think that I should do? I don’t know if I am really ready for a job at all. Even thinking about it is very stressful to me. Please do not be too disappointed in me if I do not take it. I love you.

‘Definitely no more Isai,’ Flannel Flower warned herself. Empress Shizaaqa thought her volatile enough that she thought she needed a proper cover to hide behind. The knowledge tempted her so very dearly to just ride up to Assiraz and pull down Kazin’s obviously corrupt empress, but common sense won out. Instead, she built a fire for the single purpose of screwing up Shizaaqa’s letter and throwing it angrily into the flames.

It took her almost two weeks to find Ansi, not least of all because she kept getting lost on the way to the palace, the diplomat’s home, and even her own home.

‘This whole city is like a pile of noodles with houses stuck onto them,’ she muttered, hunching under her cloak as she wandered the night streets. If Suza was unusual by moonlight, Silrona transformed into an entirely different city. ‘An entirely different, cold pile of noodles.’

The rest of the kingdom was happily enjoying Summer right now. Silrona was still struggling for Spring.

She kicked at the ground in annoyance and stubbed her toe on a loose cobblestone, swearing violently and hopping a bit to catch her balance. She paused and looked up at the nearest street sign, not recognising its name at all, and swore again.

‘I bet it snows here in Winter, too,’ she muttered, her thoughts drifting back to the pleasantly warm, almost tropical streets of Sijaaz.

She paused and dug her hands into her pockets, frowning at but not seeing the road in front of her. When had she begun pining for Sijaaz?

When had Suza stopped being home?

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