Starsinger

Garden Plots

The brilliant, waxy green leaves of the hedge rose around Aaron as he crouched in the dirt. He glanced up at the sun directly overhead. Midday. They should be here.

In this part of the garden maze, the hedges were thick enough to hide him from anyone wandering down the polished stone path. When Aaron leaned close, the gaps in the leaves became fragmented images of the maze beyond.

The sun was bright but cold and he shivered in the thin linen shirt he'd been given. Once the shirt had been a muted blue, but the stains of hard labor in Vivalta's stables had already reduced it to a nondescript shade of muck. All the other villagers wore the same. Their families had been here before the Malcolms bought the island, or had come over generations ago looking for steady incomes and security. Vivalta was an island of serfs, common people who worked the land for the right to live on it. Pay was meager, but reliable. Every now and then someone would save up to leave the island – with their liege's permission, of course – but even more had embraced the stability.

Aaron was near enough to the gate to see the guards lounging outside their towers, bored. He watched them carefully. They were Vivalta's only sentries. Farther away from the gate, the thick wall sloped down into nothing more than a glorified fence whose primary purpose was to keep livestock and village children from tumbling off the steep cliffs that surrounded the island on all sides. Guards patrolled the interior wall now and again, but it didn't give them the vantage point of the two in the watch towers, responsible for cranking the winch gate open and closed as Malcolm and his soldiers directed.

Most of the guards were spottily-trained village workers, marked separate from the rest by their weapons and cheap leather armor, but Malcolm was also amassing a crew of mercenaries. They wore chain mail and forest green tunics, but even without those markers Aaron could have told them apart by the way they walked, with the swagger of those who'd seen combat and lived. When they weren't training, the mercenaries lounged around the island, visibly bored. They made Aaron nervous.

In the village where the workers lived, Aaron, Delia and Jace had each been assigned to stay with a different family on opposite ends of the town. The couple Aaron was staying with had just had a baby and were too busy to do more than say hello and pack Aaron off into the spare room. They assumed he'd come to Vivalta willingly, buying passage on the same boat as the beautiful rich lady who was to be Leopold's betrothed.

Aaron thought about telling them the truth, but what good would it do? They were Isles folk, not Zareymans, and they owed no loyalty to Raelyn. Even if they had wanted to help, the serfs had little power to resist their master. More likely they'd tell one of Malcolm's guards that the new fellow was stirring up trouble and Malcolm would know his vow of obedience had been a lie.

So instead, he was hiding in a hedge maze getting picked at by mosquitos.

"...and never attended a tournament? But you must!"

Aaron snapped to attention, leaning in toward the dense leaves.

Leopold talked on as he came striding down the path, a reluctant Raelyn on his arm. "You can't imagine the excitement. And the horses, by gods, the quality of horseflesh these warriors bring for their jousting and hunting is something to behold. I met the fellow who sold me Fire Foot at a tournament."

"My father doesn't believe watching young nobles bash each others' heads in for sport is a suitable form of entertainment," Raelyn said tiredly. "If any of them had real talent as fighters, they ought to join the kyrsquads."

No doubt she'd had this conversation before as Leo led her on their daily circuit of the gardens. Courtship at its finest. But it got Raelyn out of her well-guarded chambers, and occasionally she could press Leo into showing her some of Vivalta's other sights: the greenhouse, the menagerie, and once the village.