Engines & Demons - The Undestined

Chapter 2i

Lessons in etiquette and decorum were a nonsense. An agonisingly tedious nonsense that Tahlia Layne was not prepared to waste another morning on, especially not on a day as full of potential excitement as the one that lay ahead of her.

Etiquette was worthless because she already knew everything she needed to know about the Order's numerous conventions and protocols. She had tried to widen her classmates' understanding of the subject by cleverly considered questioning, but Mistress D'almeria did not appreciate her efforts. In fact, she often seemed quite put out by them. The old kaddena would doubtless be glad of her absence.

Decorum was equally pointless. Tahlia knew herself to be more than capable of walking around and looking perfectly charming, and as for curtsying; any simpleton could bob about in a pretty frock and make it look convincingly deferential. It did not take lessons five out of nine days in a week to teach a girl the way of it. Well, not unless you were a lumpen grump like Luisanna, whose stomping gait made even a tragasaur look graceful.

Another lesson in either discipline would only be a futile misuse of her time so that morning, upon leaving the young ladies' quarters, and with her usual ease, she had avoided Mistress Oleander's fierce surveillance and escaped along a servant's side passage. She passed down through the fortress, finding her way through the maze of narrow passageways that were mostly ignored and disregarded by the majority of its inhabitants. She briefly considered following the twisting passages to the kitchens, where she could make good her escape via the chute to the composting bins concealed at the back of the gardens, but she quickly decided against that route. She was twelve years old, the rubbish chute was becoming too small, even for her, and the last time she had slid down it she had felt as though she would have become stuck if it were not for the greasy mess coating its sides. The thought also arose that her mother would not appreciate her appearing at the temple smelling of borak fat and half mouldy maylard shoots, so she decided that she had no choice but to take the long way down to the station.

The glow-lights that illuminated the passages and stairways that Tahlia followed were small and not as bright as those that lined the quarters she was used to. The corridors were also somewhat narrower, so she was forced to dodge around the legs of constantly hurrying servants. As she approached the lower levels, the servants were replaced with slower moving members of the Growers, and the whole place started to smell of earth and sap and compost. She began to pass rooms stacked with tools and the other paraphernalia of the Grower's craft; handcarts and buckets stood neatly parked and stacked, various tools and coiled watering pipes hung on their walls, and stone pots and bound bundles of thin support staves filled their shelves.

She finally emerged from one of these rooms, out into the bright sunlight of a stone courtyard at the rear of the gardens, where large pots of plants and flowers stood in rows, waiting to be planted out. A lone Grower was busily working at the far end of the courtyard. It was a small squat creature that scurried about on its many short limbs, circling backwards and forwards around a wide pot that held a particularly ornate bush, covered in small luminous red flowers. The creature was carefully shaping the bush with its two long forelimbs, clipping away twigs and unwanted blooms with sharp incisors, all the while making satisfied whistling noises to itself.

Not wanting to be seen, even by a menial, Tahlia ducked behind a row of tall potted vines, then left by a small gate, which led out to the splendour of the gardens themselves. These were not like the gardens far below on the southern slope of the fortress hill, where the exotic herbs, spices and fruits were grown for the fortress kitchens. The plants growing there were aligned in perfect rows amongst orderly paths that crisscrossed the terraces, but in the private gardens the plants sprawled and cascaded over the paths and walls, creating a place of peace in the shadows of the fortress towers that loomed above and all around.