His eyes flicked from a shaggy spirea to a triumphant sedum of some sort to a mound of lamb’s ears; then, from another hosta to a nearby bed of marigolds. Demansk himself found the odor of those flowers a bit too acrid, but he knew that the mistress of the patio favored them. Enough so, in fact, that she relaxed her usual non-vigilance and kept the surrounding plants sufficiently trimmed to allow the low-growing marigolds their own needed share of sunlight.
Marigolds. It did not surprise Demansk, when he thought about it, that his daughter Helga treasured them. She was much like they, when all was said and done. Beautiful . . . and a bit acrid.
There had been times when Demansk had regretted that harsh edge to his daughter. Despite his official august status, Demansk shared very little of the hauteur of the average Vanbert nobleman. So, where most such would have—did, in fact, those who knew her—found his daughter outrageous, he simply found her annoying. At times, at least.
But . . . he had always loved her, and deeply. More so, though he would never have admitted it to anyone, than any of his three sons. And he had realized, from the time she was a little girl, that his daughter was a marigold. A sun-lover, who would die in the shade.
Watching Helga now, from his position in the corner, Demansk suddenly understood that he had tended to his own daughter much as she had attended to her garden. Violating custom and tradition, true; but giving her the room she had needed to grow strong. And the air, and the sunlight.
He took some comfort from that knowledge, for a moment. Once he stepped into that patio, he would set in motion a train of events that would pile a mountain of sins and crimes onto his name. The marigold herself would be the instrument for many of them. But, whatever else, Demansk would be able to go to the afterlife pointing to that vigorous flower.
This too, gods, was my doing. Damn me if you will.
By now, of course, his daughter had noticed him. Demansk could see her examining him out of the side of her eyes. She would have detected him long before he arrived, in fact. She was as alert as any skirmisher in Demansk’s legions, and would have made a better sentry than most.
But she said nothing, allowing her father the same room he had always allowed her. That was her way, and it was one of the many reasons Demansk treasured her. She simply returned her eyes to the infant suckling at her breast, and resumed humming her little tune.
Tune? Demansk had to suppress a laugh. It was a medley, actually. A ridiculous pastiche of three songs: an Emerald hymn, usually sung at religious festivals; a semi-obscene ballad popular among the seamen and pirates of the Western Isles; and one of the marching songs of the Vanbert legions.
He began to stride into the patio, but was immediately forced to slow down and concentrate on where he put his feet. A good half of the patio’s worn flagstones were overgrown by a medley of ground-covering plants even more exuberantly jumbled together than the “tune” his daughter was humming. Aggressive vinca warred with carpet bugle; red phlox with yet another variety of sedum. In the shadier spots, silver beacon valiantly held its own.
In truth, the plants were all hardy—all the plants in Helga’s part of the garden were—and could have withstood his sandaled passage easily enough. But Demansk took a subtle pleasure in avoiding destruction, as he marched toward it.
“You don’t have to be so prissy, Father,” Helga murmured, smiling faintly. “They’ll survive.”
For a moment, Demansk felt his facial muscles struggling between a scowl and a smile.
As usual, the smile won.
“In the good old days,” he muttered, “girls wouldn’t have dreamed of being so disrespectful to their fathers. Who”—his voice grew stern—”ruled their families with a rod of iron.”
Helga’s own smile widened. “Oh, please. In the ‘good old days,’ our illustrious forefathers were illiterate pig farmers. Standing on a dirt floor under a thatch roof, clad in rags, piglets nosing their bare feet—pissing on them, often enough—and bellowing their patriarchal majesty to a huddle of wrinkled women and filthy children. What I never understood is where they got the rod of iron in the first place.” Slyly, looking up at her father under lowered eyelids: “Must have stolen it, since the beggars were certainly too poor to buy it.”