Vienda - The Fortesque Botanical Gardens
The Ninth of Loshis, Seventeen Minutes Past the Seventeenth Hour
The Ninth of Loshis, Seventeen Minutes Past the Seventeenth Hour
L
oshis and Parliament no longer in session. Courts and Halls sit half-empty, Incumbents and Councilors gone to their country houses to brood upon the rain, or else gone east to sun themselves in Mugroba. The sun will burn their skin and bleach their clothes. Fading. Fading into irrelevance. The Change has come, the Symvoul continues in its cycle. Anaxas wanes and Mugroba waxes. It is immemorial custom. It leaves too many things unfinished in its wake.
The affairs of nations do not heed the cycle. They have a rhythm all their own.
Tom, the Incumbent, has gone east. He goes to follow the cycle, to attend on what matters are necessary. He goes to take in the sights and sounds and smells of Mugroba. May he be well served by it. Any number of personages claim the heat and light of foreign lands are soothing to the soul, calming to the time. He cannot credit it. Then again, he is a man of the City. More so than most, it seems. He never leaves. He has never known a reason. Perhaps that is changing.
No. Not yet. There is still time, still hope that the information he needs can be found here. Found in records and census rolls, in interviews and in Bailey’s ferreting about. Already there has been some gain. Too much, perhaps. An embarrassment of riches. There are too many plots afoot, to many names he cannot place. The nature of the Incumbent is merely one. Yet all the others are predicted upon it. It is the one thread he knows. That thread ends here.
And so he will stay. He will stay to watch the rain, to walk the damp streets and attend to the neglected machine of governance. He will stay and wait for the world to come to him. He will set his lures and his traps. He will perform the necessary rites, make the appropriate sacrifices. His mind will clear, and perhaps he can begin to think, to plan, and to untie all the knots that have been set before him.
There are rituals for all this. Time worn and well practiced. All worn into the grooves of his thought like the passing of carriage wheels. First, a purgation, a cleansing of unlovely thoughts. He shall fill his head with beautiful things. He shall think upon nothing else.
In time, all the rest will come. It has always done so.
The Ritual of the Flowers
The first thing that comes to him are the flowers.
In pots and in hanging glass spheres they open and fill the space with color and heady scents. Jasmine, orchid, lilies, and under them, the darker, earthier smells of earth and gently rotting compost. The green-tinged air, hot and heavy, wraps about him, tugging at his coat and filling his lungs with an alien heat. He breathes, slow and deep, slow and deep. Away above, the rain pounds upon algae-stained glass. It is almost like drowning, if drowning could be a joy.
This is his City. This place is not of the City. It is somewhere else, a place in a bottle of paned glass and bronze girders. All of it has gone green. It is part of the transmutation. This place, so he thinks, is as far from Vienda as he ever wishes to go. A construction of foreign nations and distant lands. Controlled, constrained. An artificial museum, an homage to places that never quite have been.
How long has it been since he has been here? The months peel back, like the rind of an orange, like layers of an onion. Months upon months. The ninth of Vortas, 2718. Over a year then. It has been when he purchased one of the few truly parasitic orchids. A year without any new orchids, without strolling amid the uncomfortable flowers that grow in this part of the Botanical Gardens. It is not the most trafficked place, even upon a day so rainy as this. Strange blossoms and unsettling plants from the Mukuku Islands and even from the closer reaches of Shotha have fewer devotees than the roses which grow outside.
There are others here, a cadre as odd as the flowers. They move about, slow careful shapes, steps muffled by moss or else distorted by the crunch of gravel. Some whisper together in low voices, appraising the plants, discussing how they might care for them. Others stalk, predatory, among the foliage looking for choice specimens.
It is not often that the Gardens opens itself to collectors of its curiosities. One in Autumn and once in the Rainy Season the Greenhouses sell their lesser specimens. Once, he would have pined for a corpse flower or one of the bromeliads that drip venom to immobilize their prey. He has no place to keep them, no greenhouse of his own. And so he settles for orchids, the more curious the better.
In a hanging pot one catches his eye. White and pale green with long trailing petals. A ghost orchid. A beauty to keep in the glass terrarium upon the table in his study, a focus for his thoughts. Will he need to hang it as it is here, suspended over a pool of dark water? There is no space for that. It may have to pass him by.
And still he wants it. Why? It is a pale thing, wan and strange. There are other, brighter blooms here, flowers that should draw him in closer, hold him rapt. No, they are nothings. This one he desires. For its delicacy, its scent, and its sorrowful suspension above that dark water.
About it and around it, in circles. Three times clockwise, three times anticlockwise. Another turn, a change in the direction of his cycle, he goes to complete is circumambulations. He does not notice the other man until it is almost too late. A near collision.
“Your pardon, sir” he says. Too flat, too uncaring. How does one show concern again? It has been far too long since he has needed that emotion. A rummaging about in his mind, a recollection of faces and of voices. At last, the sound of his sister’s voice when she had dropped a vase, the image of Throckmorton’s face when he realized he had made a mistake in the citations in a report, fearing he might have doomed a piece of legislation. He puts on that face, modulates his voice, reduces the severity. A creditable imitation of concern. The imitation comes first, then rest follows. And so by praxis, the emotion becomes real. “I did not see you there. My attention,” and here he gestures to the ghost orchid in its hanging pot, “was elsewhere.” He tries for an apologetic smile. Too stiff and no time to recall how such things should be made. The orchid still holds him in its spell. The unfinished ritual of the circumambulation tightens upon his nerves. “It is not lovely?”
The affairs of nations do not heed the cycle. They have a rhythm all their own.
Tom, the Incumbent, has gone east. He goes to follow the cycle, to attend on what matters are necessary. He goes to take in the sights and sounds and smells of Mugroba. May he be well served by it. Any number of personages claim the heat and light of foreign lands are soothing to the soul, calming to the time. He cannot credit it. Then again, he is a man of the City. More so than most, it seems. He never leaves. He has never known a reason. Perhaps that is changing.
No. Not yet. There is still time, still hope that the information he needs can be found here. Found in records and census rolls, in interviews and in Bailey’s ferreting about. Already there has been some gain. Too much, perhaps. An embarrassment of riches. There are too many plots afoot, to many names he cannot place. The nature of the Incumbent is merely one. Yet all the others are predicted upon it. It is the one thread he knows. That thread ends here.
And so he will stay. He will stay to watch the rain, to walk the damp streets and attend to the neglected machine of governance. He will stay and wait for the world to come to him. He will set his lures and his traps. He will perform the necessary rites, make the appropriate sacrifices. His mind will clear, and perhaps he can begin to think, to plan, and to untie all the knots that have been set before him.
There are rituals for all this. Time worn and well practiced. All worn into the grooves of his thought like the passing of carriage wheels. First, a purgation, a cleansing of unlovely thoughts. He shall fill his head with beautiful things. He shall think upon nothing else.
In time, all the rest will come. It has always done so.
The Ritual of the Flowers
The first thing that comes to him are the flowers.
In pots and in hanging glass spheres they open and fill the space with color and heady scents. Jasmine, orchid, lilies, and under them, the darker, earthier smells of earth and gently rotting compost. The green-tinged air, hot and heavy, wraps about him, tugging at his coat and filling his lungs with an alien heat. He breathes, slow and deep, slow and deep. Away above, the rain pounds upon algae-stained glass. It is almost like drowning, if drowning could be a joy.
This is his City. This place is not of the City. It is somewhere else, a place in a bottle of paned glass and bronze girders. All of it has gone green. It is part of the transmutation. This place, so he thinks, is as far from Vienda as he ever wishes to go. A construction of foreign nations and distant lands. Controlled, constrained. An artificial museum, an homage to places that never quite have been.
How long has it been since he has been here? The months peel back, like the rind of an orange, like layers of an onion. Months upon months. The ninth of Vortas, 2718. Over a year then. It has been when he purchased one of the few truly parasitic orchids. A year without any new orchids, without strolling amid the uncomfortable flowers that grow in this part of the Botanical Gardens. It is not the most trafficked place, even upon a day so rainy as this. Strange blossoms and unsettling plants from the Mukuku Islands and even from the closer reaches of Shotha have fewer devotees than the roses which grow outside.
There are others here, a cadre as odd as the flowers. They move about, slow careful shapes, steps muffled by moss or else distorted by the crunch of gravel. Some whisper together in low voices, appraising the plants, discussing how they might care for them. Others stalk, predatory, among the foliage looking for choice specimens.
It is not often that the Gardens opens itself to collectors of its curiosities. One in Autumn and once in the Rainy Season the Greenhouses sell their lesser specimens. Once, he would have pined for a corpse flower or one of the bromeliads that drip venom to immobilize their prey. He has no place to keep them, no greenhouse of his own. And so he settles for orchids, the more curious the better.
In a hanging pot one catches his eye. White and pale green with long trailing petals. A ghost orchid. A beauty to keep in the glass terrarium upon the table in his study, a focus for his thoughts. Will he need to hang it as it is here, suspended over a pool of dark water? There is no space for that. It may have to pass him by.
And still he wants it. Why? It is a pale thing, wan and strange. There are other, brighter blooms here, flowers that should draw him in closer, hold him rapt. No, they are nothings. This one he desires. For its delicacy, its scent, and its sorrowful suspension above that dark water.
About it and around it, in circles. Three times clockwise, three times anticlockwise. Another turn, a change in the direction of his cycle, he goes to complete is circumambulations. He does not notice the other man until it is almost too late. A near collision.
“Your pardon, sir” he says. Too flat, too uncaring. How does one show concern again? It has been far too long since he has needed that emotion. A rummaging about in his mind, a recollection of faces and of voices. At last, the sound of his sister’s voice when she had dropped a vase, the image of Throckmorton’s face when he realized he had made a mistake in the citations in a report, fearing he might have doomed a piece of legislation. He puts on that face, modulates his voice, reduces the severity. A creditable imitation of concern. The imitation comes first, then rest follows. And so by praxis, the emotion becomes real. “I did not see you there. My attention,” and here he gestures to the ghost orchid in its hanging pot, “was elsewhere.” He tries for an apologetic smile. Too stiff and no time to recall how such things should be made. The orchid still holds him in its spell. The unfinished ritual of the circumambulation tightens upon his nerves. “It is not lovely?”
