Bouquet ~ Twenty Two

[annarti.livejournal.com]

Chapter~ 2034
Total~ 27 040

Flannel Flower felt as though a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders as she crawled back into bed for an early night. The prospect of the mission had been weighing on her mind for weeks, and suddenly, with the Raykinian king well and truly out of reach, it didn’t matter anymore.

The feeling of freedom lasted through to the morning and for the rest of the day.

‘What are you so happy about all of a sudden?’ Kiz asked her. ‘You’ve been like the walking dead for ages.’

Flannel Flower laughed and gave a shrug. ‘I just got something out of the way that has been nagging at me for ages.’

Kiz slapped her on the back. ‘Good for you then! I don’t suppose you’d like to shed some light on the something?’

She slanted her eyes sideways at the diplomat. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ she said slyly.

‘Oooooh… Is it a guy?’

The assassin laughed again, shaking her head and not saying anything. Kiz kept poking and prodding her for the rest of the week, convinced that she had her picked, though Flannel Flower never said a word.

It wasn’t until a full month later that she realised Frangipani hadn’t sent a response, or even another order. She checked in on the House of Silrona’s Heart daily, but there was never anything there for her. She tried sending a quick note to say she was awaiting orders, but as another month passed without word, she realised none was coming. She’d been unceremoniously dumped from the empress’s bouquet.

She kicked violently at a stone on the riverbank before plonking herself down on it with another muttered curse. ‘Why not just throw me back in the dungeons then? Surely I’m less of a bother to you there.’

She glared at the river, reflecting the patchy sky that passed for the height of Summer in Silrona. What was the empress playing at?

‘If I’m supposed to be looking over my shoulder in fear that your fabulous black horses will catch me, your plan hasn’t worked, Frangipani.’ She snorted and threw a rock at the water, then growled when the icy water splashed onto her legs.

She sat on the rock for a long while considering her options. She could leave Silrona behind forever, return to Suza and pick up where she left of. Nobody would recognise her now. She shook her head and ditched another rock at the river, dismissing the idea immediately. She didn’t know why, but her home state didn’t appeal to her anymore. She hadn’t been there in almost three years. It wasn’t home anymore.

She could go to Assiraz, demand of the empress just what was going on.

She snorted and aimed at a rock on the other side of the river, missing it as the pebble splashed into the water. ‘That would just be asking to be thrown to the dungeons, wouldn’t it?’

She could live somewhere else entirely, somewhere warmer, but that would mean starting all over again, which was something she was so sick of doing that the idea of it made her lip curl in disgust. She was settled here quite comfortably, on a diplomat’s wage, true enough, but there was nothing to stop her old handle from cropping up in Silrona.

A dangerous smile crept over her lips and she tossed a pebble thoughtfully into the air.

Silrona already knew the Golden Kris, but here it was known as the Executioner. Not quite as apt, Flannel Flower thought, with a frown. There were no superstitions or artistry surrounding executioners. They just killed. No ceremony, no rituals, just cold, clinical death.

The kris though…

Her frown deepened. No bad luck had befallen the hand that held the Golden Kris. For nearly three years Empress Shizaaqa had wielded the Golden Kris, and yet she still sat on the throne, still held power over at least the Assiraz army. If anything, her rule had grown stronger. Nearly three years and nothing from the Golden Kris but good luck.

‘And do you know why?’ the assassin interrogated her distorted reflection in the river. ‘It’s because you haven’t been the gods-damned Golden Kris for the whole time! You’re a gods-damned Flannel Flower now. What in the names of the gods does a Flannel Flower do? Nothing. It’s a hat for pixies and a skirt for fairies.’

She hurled a rock at the river, but the water simply swallowed it up and smoothed its surface back over again undamaged.

‘No more of that,’ she hissed. ‘I’m still the Golden Kris. Frangipani has simply been building up three years worth of bad luck.’

The dark grin stretched her lips again and she stretched her arms over her head, fingers giving satisfying cracks. ‘It’s high time some of that bad luck was paid out.’



It was strange getting back into the old routine. It was a routine that lacked Isai, Rensali, and Suza’s Saviour, but it was still busy enough that she wondered how she had done it all before and still had time for sleep.

With the trust she’d built up as Sheena, helping substantially in the war being fought on Sissillyan soil, she was able to walk with relative ease around the palace and collect all the information she needed. It was no secret who supported and opposed the Silronan queen, but the empress was far enough away that people rarely spoke of her, except to curse her when they didn’t wish to curse the gods. It was interesting that she was rarely praised.

Or rather, it was more awkward than interesting. Anyone who did genuinely serve the empress kept it tightly to their chest for fear that the queen would dismiss them.

Flannel Flower thought that unlikely though, since Queen Sasha could hardly keep herself strong in the face of King Mithé, let alone explain to Empress Shizaaqa why she had dismissed her most faithful subjects.

The assassin shook her head as she leafed through another advisor’s desk drawers. That was the problem with this gods-damned empire. Nobody trusted anyone, and they had little reason to, either.

It was two weeks before she found someone who was absolutely devoted to the empress. She was the Silronan ambassador to Assiraz, though everything showed she worked more for the empire’s capital than for Silrona. There were records of her people in the treasury, sending more coin than was required to the empress. There were details on all the people in the diplomacy who worked specifically with Assiraz.

Most interesting, though, was the sheet of parchment that Flannel Flower had taken from a hidden compartment in the woman’s desk. It was a list of six names with numbers beside them, anywhere between fifty and three hundred. The two names with the smallest numbers had been crossed out, and Flannel Flower recognised them immediately.

One was a woman in the diplomacy who had died a few months ago, and the investigators had suspected that his servants had undercooked his meat. Flannel Flower hadn’t known her very well, only ever handed her a cup of hot chocolate or smiled a hello in the hallway.

The other name Flannel Flower only recognised because she had died last week. She’d been killed in her sleep, by a kris stabbed into the nape of her neck, and naturally the investigators suspected the Executioner.

Flannel Flower had been most irritated when she had heard that. In her relative absence of the last two months, someone had thought it would be fun to take over her role. She narrowed her eyes again as she read the names. The number written next to the name was only seventy, and she shook her head in derision. The Golden Kris could not be bought for seventy gold, not from someone as high-ranking as the ambassador.

‘Charge by the client,’ she muttered to her unknown copycat, ‘not the target.’

She jotted down the other four names on the list and snooped around a bit more, finding anyone the ambassador was linked to, anything that incriminated him, anything that her four potential clients might find interesting.

The two lists of targets and potential clients grew over the next few weeks as she compiled detailed profiles on a solid number of them. She had enough to work with. Now she could begin putting that list into action.

She strapped her modest cleavage down once again to play Rensali, swearing quietly as she tried to shift it into a relatively comfortable position while still keeping them as flat as possible. It had never been this uncomfortable before, she was sure.

‘I’m out of practice,’ she muttered, pulling a shirt over her head. She threw Rensali’s Colours over top and adjusted them carefully, then teased her hair out and made for the door.

Even as she walked through Silrona’s streets, she felt Rensali’s familiar swagger return, and she slipped her hands into her pockets to keep herself from fiddling with the strapping.

People were still walking through the streets of Silrona, probably heading home. Flannel Flower gave an experimental ‘Good evening, sir,’ to one of the men she passed.

‘Ma’am,’ the man said with a slight nod, not pausing in his stride.

Flannel Flower waited a few paces to swear under her breath before a young lady passed by. ‘Good evening, ma’am.’

‘Sir.’

She smiled and strode past. Much better. She tested her disguise all the way to the home of her potential client, finding that neither gender was committing her to their own. The men tended to think she was a woman, and the woman took her for a boy. ‘Not good enough,’ she muttered. ‘Definitely out of practice.’

She could only hope that was the only place where her old talent needed polishing.

When she reached the right house, she smiled openly at the guard posted outside the front gate. ‘I’m here to see Advisor Mushaq,’ she said, dropping her voice just slightly to give it a more masculine edge.

The guard looked her up and down for a few moments. ‘Is she expecting you?’

Flannel Flower shook her head. ‘No, but I think she’ll be pleased to see me nonetheless.’

The guard stared at her for a moment longer. ‘Hold out your arms, please, sir.’

She tried not to grin as he began patting her down to check for any weaponry. ‘Very good, you can go through.’

Flannel Flower dipped her head, and the guard unlocked the door for her. ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said with another smile, then stretched her arms over her head as the door rattled closed behind her.

‘Not a very high-paid guard, then,’ she mused.

Beyond the outer stone wall, it was a standard big and unimpressive house that so typified Silrona, though this one was considerably larger than most. Flannel Flower cast her eyes up to the roof, tiled with slate rather than the traditional thatching, and raised her eyebrows. Richer than the guard belied, then. Maybe she didn’t think much of guards in the first place, and only hired one as a status symbol or to scare away any would-be intruders before they even approached the door.

The assassin swaggered slowly up the garden path towards the front door, then knocked twice and waited patiently. When the door opened she gave the winning smile of a salesman that had worked for her so many times in the past.

‘Good evening, Advisor Mushaq,’ she said with a deep bow of her head.

‘Unless you’re selling a new couch, I’m not interested.’

Flannel Flower shook her head. ‘Oh, but ma’am, I’ve heard you were in the market for an executioner’s blade.’ She grinned again and winked candidly. ‘As it so happens, I have the finest such weapon in Silrona.’

The advisor folded her arms and rested her weight on one hip, blinking slowly as she looked her visitor up and down. ‘The Executioner?’ she asked, raising her eyebrows in question rather than shock or surprise.

Flannel Flower nodded, still smiling. ‘Personal Assistant to, yes.’

Advisor Mushaq chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully for a moment, then stepped aside and pulled the door the full way open. ‘Step into my office.’