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“I’m honored,” she assured him, even as her tension mounted. He wanted her help with a plant she hadn’t known existed? He thought she could be of assistance, when even the experts in the tree’s native land had not been able to help him?
This was a disaster. Her first encounter with Lio’s uncle, her first chance to make a good impression on him. He had done her the compliment of asking her a favor, and all she could do was fail.
“I will do my very best.” She drew out her spade. “May I?”
“Of course.” He held out his hands toward the coffee plant in invitation.
Cassia bent near to sniff the soil. Fragrant and rich. She carefully tilted the pot and peered under it. Good drainage into the dish in which it sat. Starting there at the bottom, she examined the tree all the way to its topmost spindly twigs, looking for all the signs that would normally set off a gardener’s warning bells. Finally she chose a branch in a place that wasn’t very visible and scratched through the bark to check the color of the tree’s pith. Dry and colorless.
Everything looked perfect, except for the fact that the tree was dead.
“I have seldom seen a plant better cared for,” she reassured Argyros. “It seems to me you have done everything it could possibly need. It is quite a mystery, isn’t it?”
“One that has plagued me for centuries.” He pushed the pot closer still. “Of course I would not allow myself to hope for immediate results. Such a vexing problem can only be solved after careful observation, to be sure. I know you will need time to examine the question from all angles and consider various experiences you have had as a gardener that may be relevant to the present dilemma. Feel free to take the tree back to Lio’s residence with you, so you will have the opportunity for closer study.”
Cassia swallowed. “I shall be the most careful of stewards. I’ll put it in the window with the rose seedlings I started last night.”
“I entrust the tree to you.”
Cassia looked up from the poor thing to study its nurturer. “You have already been so generous tonight with your lovely gifts of coffee and starflakes. Perhaps it ill behooves me to ask for advice in return.”
“Not at all. I would be happy to help in any way I can.”
His face did not change, but his tone had. His despair over his trees was nowhere to be heard in his voice.
Cassia might have chosen the right strategy. “Truth be told, I hardly know where to start. Not long ago, I would never have imagined I would have the opportunity to ask you for your insight. How do I begin to consult your expertise, when you have sixteen hundred years of it? How do I, one player in this inglorious age of Tenebran history, start to learn from someone who influenced our greatest king?”
“Ah. A lesson in politics is what you seek.” He put his hands behind his back again.
“Lio is fortunate to have benefited from your wisdom these many years.” After losing Solia, Cassia had been without any teachers except her own experience. But she wanted to ask Argyros about his past, not bemoan her own. “Lio says you attended the very first Equinox Summit nearly sixteen hundred years ago. You assisted the Queens in negotiating the terms of the original Equinox Oath.”
“Yes, I lent my voice to the Annassa’s council with King Lucian and Queen Hedera.”
“You mean the Mage King and the Changing Queen?”
“Indeed.”
“Astonishing. I did not know his name. And…I was not certain of hers. Did she perhaps have another one? I think her own people must not have called her by a Tenebran name.”
Argyros lifted his brows. “Are you a student of language history? Indeed, her name in her own tongue was Ebah.”
A little chill went over Cassia’s skin at the word, as if Argyros had just invoked the very magic Cassia had awoken at Solorum with that name, Ebah. “The old garden names survive in remote parts of Tenebra. I only know it because Ebah is another name for ivy. I don’t think most Tenebrans ever think about the Mage King and Changing Queen’s names, although they are our best-remembered monarchs. They are so lost in legend, it is as if they are not people anymore.”
“They lived up to how history now remembers them.”
“If they were so good and just, why did they expel Hesperines from Tenebra instead of defending you against the cults of Anthros and Hypnos?”
“King Lucian and Queen Hedera had no quarrel with our people, in fact, and they were actively resisting the Cordian cults’ growing influence. However, the new monarchs had just succeeded in uniting the domains of the Tenebrae for the first time.”
“Their position over the free lords would have been tenuous,” Cassia said.
“Yes,” Argyros replied. “There were still many Tenebrans who considered us their own, but just as many who regarded us with fear. King Lucian and Queen Hedera could not risk challenges to their authority from within or without. The new self-appointed Orders already sought a way to remove the strong royals who had suddenly foiled their plans.”
“They must have thought they could make easy prey of the Tenebrae. How wrong they were.”
“With the Mage King and the Changing Queen on the throne, the Cordian mages could not bring the Tenebrae under their power. King Lucian was also a living defiance of their campaign to prevent men of the sword from wielding magic. However, as powerful as King Lucian and Queen Hedera were, they knew a direct confrontation with the war mages and necromancers would have resulted in catastrophic loss of life and damage to their kingdom.”
“The Tenebrae could never have withstood that, could they? Not when they were just beginning to recover from the Last War and generations of infighting.”
