A Garden Full of Borrowed Kings

How it begins

The king was pruning the wrong rose.

Tamsin stopped at the garden gate and considered whether this was a horticultural emergency or a constitutional one.

“Put down the shears.”

He obeyed.

This was sufficiently unusual in a king that she looked at him properly.

No guards. No ceremonial gloves. Soil beneath the nails. A tear in the knee of trousers that had once been expensive.

Beyond him, three other men worked among the beds. One carried a watering can. One argued with a pear tree. The oldest sat beneath an arbor, polishing a crown with the unhappy concentration of a person cleaning something he should have thrown away.

Tamsin had been told the royal garden was empty.

“Who are you?”

“Cale Arden.”

“The northern king died.”

“Officially.”

She looked at the rose. Pale roots curled above the soil, holding a small gold circlet.

The gardener before her had locked this gate every evening for thirty years. He left Tamsin the keys, a list of feeding instructions and no warning that monarchy could be grown as a perennial.

Cale followed her gaze.

“That one belongs to the next selection.”

“What selection?”

He looked toward the palace.

At the upper window, a figure moved behind glass.

Tamsin understood suddenly why the old gardener had refused assistants. It was easier to keep a secret when everyone assumed soil was beneath their interest.

Cale picked up the shears only after she nodded.

“I don't want another crown.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because it's the first place I've been allowed to work without anybody calling it a blessing.”

He showed her the branch he had meant to cut.

Diseased. Not useless.

Tamsin took the shears and demonstrated where living growth began.

Cale watched with an attention no courtier had ever offered her instructions.

Outside the gate, the palace bell rang for the morning council.

For once, the man who should have answered it remained beside the roses.