The Garden of Three Hundred Flowers Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by E. K. Johnston

  Cover design by Marci Senders

  Lettering by Nim Ben-Reuven

  Excerpt from A Thousand Nights copyright © 2015 by E. K. Johnston

  Excerpt from Spindle copyright © 2016 by E. K. Johnston

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Ahsoka © & TM 2016 Lucasfilm Ltd.

  All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-368-00831-0

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Garden of Three Hundred Flowers

  Also by E.K. Johnston

  Preview of A Thousand Nights

  Preview of Spindle

  Preview of Star Wars: Ahsoka

  There is room enough in my mother’s heart to fit the whole of the world, but my father has never claimed a place in it. Rather, he would have lived apart: from her, from his qasr, from everything. And yet she would not let him, though she did not forgive him, either. Instead, she set upon him a penance, and he went forth to suffer as he felt he deserved to.

  Three hundred girls, murdered with his own hands.

  Three hundred families, grieving in his own desert.

  And my mother, who still had need of the king.

  My husband would not come to my bed, though before he had not hesitated to claim—at least by threat—his power over me. I knew that I had changed him when I warred with his demon in the desert sand, but it took time to reason out the full measure of his change. At first I judged his reluctance to bear my presence the result of my having defeated him in battle, that despite those moments of clear thinking in my father’s tents, my husband was angry with me—or else he was afraid.

  The men of our court were afraid. They knew I had come to my husband’s qasr to pay their price. They knew they had not cared for my life or for the lives of the hundreds before me. They knew they had sought to use my body for the getting of an heir. And they knew that I knew all of these things as well.

  The women of the court were not afraid. They knew I needed both of my hands to spin thread.

  And so I spun.

  While my husband avoided his responsibilities, I embraced them. I do not imagine he was surprised. He knew, as I had, when we spoke in the desert, when I agreed to marry him again, that I would be a queen regardless of what he decided to do next. I did expect him to take more of an interest in our people, but if he would not, then there was me to do it for him.

  I had learned to manage sheep and goats almost as soon as I had learned to walk, and I found that men were much the same. A good shepherd, a true one, does not use the rod except for show. Instead, they push the lead animals—those strong few that the rest of the herd will follow—and once those lead animals are managed, the rest is easy. The trick is to learn which of the sheep are those that the others will trail.

  “Lady-bless,” said the henna mistress to me, “the designs I put upon you no longer fade with the rising of the sun, and so you no longer have such frequent need of me. They say I must give up my place in the qasr and live in the city, and you may send for me as you require.”

  The henna mistress had been my first ally, the first to speak to me as though I were not going to die. She had placed her family’s marks on my skin, and I had drawn power from them, though I had not known how I did it at first. She spoke to me often in the baths, where she did her work. This was the first time she had come to me-as-Queen. I would not have her sent from my side.

  The man whose job it was to decide the billets had been the chamberlain since before my arrival, and he knew the stories of what I had done as well as any man at court. I met with him every week to discuss the state of affairs within the qasr, and I had believed him to be loyal, but the fact that he had not told me about his decision with regard to the henna mistress spoke volumes of his disdain for her and for me. I would tolerate neither.

  The man was overfond of wine-soaked lamb, a delicacy when most of our sheep must be kept alive for their wool. I did not appreciate the taste of it myself, but I instructed the cook to make some, and to have it served at my table for the noon meal. The cook, who loved me, too, sent the platter up with the meat spread out on mint leaves and warm flatbread to wrap each mouthful in.

  I wore no veil. Four of my bees—in truth, they were bees no longer, but I did not yet have a new name for them—hovered around my shoulders.

  The chamberlain took his seat across from me, and began to give his weekly report on the state of our granaries. I watched him try to ignore the platter between us, but he could not do so fully as the mint-infused fragrance of well-prepared meat filled the air. I took one careful bite.

  “I understand that under the terms of my marriage to the king, I am given full discretion when it comes to setting up my own household,” I said to him.

  “That is true, lady-bless, within reason,” he said.

  “I was also given to understand that this included not only the people, but also certain resources.” I paused to take another bite. He leaned almost imperceptibly forward, a shift of his weight in the direction I wanted him to move. My bees hummed.

  “That is true as well, lady-bless,” he said.

  “The people of my household will stay where they are,” I said to him. “You will assign them rooms and you will not evict them from the qasr without my permission.”

  He winced. Perhaps men should go about veiled, if they were this unpracticed at concealing their emotions. I took another bite of the lamb, making sure the bite was mostly flatbread. I disliked the richness of the flavor. It reminded me too much of heavy nights when I feared the dark.

  “Of course, lady-bless,” he said finally.

  “Thank you,” I said. “In return, I will of course do my utmost to ensure a smooth running of the qasr, from the security of the gates to the contents of the kitchen.”

  His eyes betrayed him fully, dropping to the platter between us before returning to the space above my shoulder where all men but my husband always chose to look. One of the bees must have fluttered into his view, because he flinched again. Men did not like to be so palpably reminded of what I had done that night in the desert when I had saved their king, and now I had reminded him that I controlled what went on within their stone walls as well.

  “It shall be as you say.” He swallowed hard. I did not have to imagine what he was thinking of—that men could call me lady-bless and think I was disposable—and I waited while he mustered up the gall to say the name he had to give me, now. “My Queen.”

  “Thank you, lady-bless,” said the henna mistress, steam surrounding us like mist.

  On my skin, the patterns she drew slowly dried. My not-quite-bees settled on the designs, trailing lines of golden dust that glimmered in what was left of the day’s light.

  My mother’s rooms were warm on the coldest of desert nights, and kept cool by the breeze under the scorching sun in the daytime. I learned to walk there, stumbling on hard stone, but never falling. There were always plenty of hands to catch me. My mother’s women wore white and smiled at me when I was brought in to play. The skeptics and priests who taught me how the world worked did not always allow me freedom to while away the hours, but when I had it, it was my mother’s rooms I chose. I imagined that the world made sense there, and that nothing bad could ever happen inside those wal
ls, though I could not have put words to why.

  I had never seen the place where my father slept. But I had seen his garden, and my mother told me that his garden was the place where he kept his heart.

  My husband would not come to my bed, but at least I knew he slept. In the early days, he told me, when we had first come back from my father’s tents in the desert, he had not been able to find rest. Instead, he paced the walls of the qasr or, if there was moonlight enough, prowled the gardens. He found statues there, the ones he had forced his stone carver to make, and he hated to look upon them. He would have had them destroyed, returned to rubble, but I spoke to him.

  “My husband, you are not the only one the statues have hurt,” I said to him. I remembered the pain in the carver’s eyes and the scars on his hands. I knew what each of those statues had cost him.

  “You are right, Queen-of-Mine,” he said to me.

  And so the carver destroyed the statues himself, all save the one of a lioness, which he had carved under a kinder influence than my husband’s demon. That statue was placed in the garden near my rooms, so that I might see it when I desired to, and I often did, for it was beautifully made. My goats-that-were-not-goats admired it as well. Often, when I went to look upon the statue, they were already sitting on it, their long white limbs astride its rounded back, as though they could ride the lioness into battle.

  Once all of the ill-eyed statues had been ruined, my husband no longer prowled the grounds at night, haunted by shadowed shapes. Instead, he sat by the fountain I had first loved, and looked up at the sky. He did not tell me what he thought.

  “How do you stand it, Queen-of-Mine?” my husband asked of me. “How do you forget what I have done?”

  We sat in the hall where my father and brothers had come to beg leave for my attendance at my sister’s wedding, and we were alone there. I did not hold court in the manner of men, where disputes were voiced in public and squabbling filled the air. Instead, I went to where my people did their work, so that I could see with my own eyes what they did and what they needed. My husband did not hold court at all, and so I was surprised when he had come to my water garden and asked if I would go and sit with him there.

  “I do not forget,” I told him. “I know what your hands have done and I cannot unknow it. But I know, too, that your darkness is gone, and that your mind is once again your own.”

  He looked at me the way he had in my father’s tent when he had asked me to marry him again. It was a desperate look, but one that held promise. It was why I had agreed to a second, formal, marriage.

  “Yes,” he said to me. “You have faced the darkness and defeated it. But I have not.”

  This was something I had not considered, but as soon as he said the words, I knew them to be true. I had fought his demon. I had beaten it. I had saved him. But I knew, too, that such security could feel fragile when it had not been earned with his own hands.

  “I do not know how to help you further,” I said to him.

  “Queen-of-Mine,” he said to me, “already you do more than I could ever ask, though ask it I have. You keep my kingdom while I wrestle with a demon that is no longer there. You speak with men whose daughters I have murdered, and you win affection from them. I do not know how to do the same thing.”

  I had given so much thought to the herding of the men in my court that I had not given consideration to my husband. I had agreed to be queen and wife both.

  “My husband,” I said, “I swear I do not fear you.”

  “I know it,” he said. “But I fear myself. I fear the desert will scald me bare for what I have done.”

  “Then it is into the desert you must go,” I said to him. “Take the stone carver. All he has ever wanted was to be your guard.”

  “I no longer wish to hunt lions,” he said.

  “Then do not,” I said to him. “I have another path in mind for you.”

  When my father’s mother died, she was buried in the hillside with the bones of my father’s father beside her. After she was gone, the stone carver took up his hammer and chisel one last time, and made a statue for the memory of her. My father’s mother was a lioness, but it was lions’ manes she wore on her head, and that is how her stone was carved. The statue was not perfect, as were the ones the carver had made before, but he had done the work with love in his eyes, not madness, and he did not draw blood from his own hands to do it.

  From that day on—my mother told me again and again until I knew it in my very bones—the carver has touched only wood, and only when he chooses. More often, he rides beside my father, watchful and faithful, as they go into the desert on the path upon which my mother set them. They no longer return to the qasr with scared girls.

  My husband would not come to my bed, but he would go out into the desert again, the carver by his side. They were never gone for very long. There had been a law, written in haste: one girl from every village and one from every district inside the city walls. Those were the steps they retraced.

  The desert is a hard place, and an unforgiving one, but if you are wary of it, and careful, then it will not grind you into dust. My husband rode with only one companion, though my no-longer-birds flew above him, bright sparks spitting from their tail feathers. No one could catch them anymore, and no one tried to shoot them with arrows. They guided my husband’s track across the expanse of sand.

  Desert people did not always stay in the same place, even along a reliable wadi, and so sometimes my husband looked for a family that he had wronged for some time before he found them. But whether the ride was hard or short, the ending was the same.

  “Will you come with me, Queen-of-Mine?” my husband asked of me.

  “No, husband,” I said. “I will stay here and keep our kingdom.”

  “I do not think they will resent you,” he said to me.

  “I know they will not,” I said. “If I wanted to be revered above my station, I would have stayed in my father’s tents and not married you again.”

  “Queen is enough for you?” he asked.

  “It is,” I said to him.

  It was the first time since the moment in the desert, when I saved him and said that I would wed him again, that I had seen him smile.

  This is how it went: my husband and the carver would ride to a camp or village, and then the carver would hold the horses. My husband would walk alone, with his head uncovered, between the tents. He was always recognized. He had never ground his own grain.

  The children would hide. The women would draw their veils up over their faces so that they could look at him without giving away their feelings. Sometimes, the braver of them would throw stones. My husband would sit, and take their abuse of him.

  And then a girl’s father would sit across from him, her mother hovering behind. My husband would apologize, even though he knew that words were not enough to stem the loss. He would make no excuse. Over and over he would say the words.

  “These are the hands that murdered your daughter. The demon has stolen her bones.”

  One girl from every village, and from each district inside the city walls.

  He would ask what names their families had called them. He would listen for hours while a younger sister told him stories of the girl he had stolen. He remembered every detail they told him. And before he left, he would take one flower.

  Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered had wanted me to give my husband an heir, and I had refused him. It made no difference, my refusal, as the demon had not wanted an heir either, but I had kept my small defiance and nurtured it into something more. Now, when I wanted an heir for myself, I was not able to get one.

  My husband was mending. Every time he came back from the desert he was stronger in spirit than he had been before. The carver told me that people expected him now, and that there was less violence when he waited for a murdered girl’s parents to come to where he sat. My husband began to ask for more details of the court, and he laughed when I told him how I had manipulated the chamberlain and others
of his like into understanding the full extent of my control over them.

  “I ask too much of you,” he said to me again.

  “I knew what I was agreeing to,” I reminded him. “And I confess, I do enjoy it. I had never thought to master anything but goats. Men are far more interesting.”

  “And they love you for it,” he said to me. “Even if they are too blind to see it for themselves.”

  I did not imagine that the men of the court loved me. I would settle for their obedience and compliance. But perhaps love would make it easier. I did, after all, ensure that they had everything they needed and more besides. It was easy to rule well when you listened, and when your coffers could support your generosity.

  “And yet, you are wise not to overspend,” my husband said when I told him as much.

  “I remember the price,” I said to him.

  “I remember it, too,” he said.

  He took my hand, then, not cruelly, as he might have done when the demon drove him, but gently, as though he thought that I might be afraid of him. I met his gaze with my own, as I had ever done, and he asked no more of me, even though we both knew that I would give it to him, if only out of our shared duty.

  I still drank the tea in the morning when the serving girl brought it to me. I had had enough of mixing sand and blood.

  My father’s garden was not very large, though he kept the heart of his kingdom in it. It was fully planted before I was born, all of the work done without the aid of those who tended the other gardens in the qasr. His hands had broken the earth; his shoulders had carried the water; his feet had crossed the ground a hundred times and more as he toiled. His ragged nails and soiled clothes showed the marks of his labor. My mother would laugh kindly when she told me about it; his hands were still softer than hers.

  The garden took years to make, with flowers from all corners of my father’s kingdom. All of them, except for one, he carried out of the desert with the same hands he used to till the earth and set the roots.