Page 81 of Grave Flowers
“Maybe we should sit,” the monasticte said. He motioned to two rickety chairs. Flower beds filled with soil perched on the seats, and he carefully moved them. As he did, he muttered under his breath again, only it was fully a tune this time. It would’ve sounded cheerful if it weren’t entirely minor notes, each one discordant. “From whatyou say, you are Madalina and your sister, Inessa, was the one writing me?”
I sank down. “Yes, but why would she write you—and how would she know about this book and never tell me and—and—the book. What is it about?”
“I was corresponding with the wrong sister. Not good.” Worriedly, the monasticte twitched in the chair, making it creak loudly. “Not good at all.”
“Please.” I leaned forward, eliciting a matching creak from my own chair. “Tell me everything. From the beginning.”
“The beginning …” His fingers returned to his beard. The ends already turned up perfectly, but he kept reforming them to the exact same style. “I apologize. I am as overwhelmed as you seem to be. I think I’ve made a mistake. A terrible mistake.”
“Of what manner?” Shakily, I took a breath, trying to slow my own thoughts so I might guide my discombobulated host, but there were too many questions to ask, too many points of entry into the secrets. I picked the most pressing one. “Who are you, and why do you look so much like my mother, the former queen of Radix?”
The question made the monasticte lower his hands from his beard. A smile flashed from inside his beard, and suddenly he looked as though he’d walked into a memory. He stared at me with familiarity, like he also saw Mother, not me. “I’m her twin brother and your uncle, Alifair.”
I sank back into my chair. Just as I had a twin, so had Mother. I’d imagined her with different types of families—several vivacious sisters or strict parents or a pesky younger brother—but I’d never considered she might’ve had a twin.
“She never spoke of her family,” I said.
“We spoke of her all the time,” Alifair replied. “We missed her terribly. But she believed in what she was doing, and she helped us tremendously.”
“What do you mean?”
“Growing up, I was raised to know my path and what I was meant to do. Agathine was always there for me as I struggled with my future,” Alifair said. He had one leg crossed over the other, and the raised foot swung side to side instead of back and forth. Somehow, the motion reminded me of the tune he’d hummed—strange and eerie. “Eventually, she decided she could do the same thing but in her own way. Just as I was a sacrificial soul for our family and people, she would be too. Agathine thought she could change things for us by marrying King Sinet. After he killed his father and seized the throne, she went to work in the palace—the only Fely to do so in several generations. She was paid half the wages of everyone else and treated cruelly.”
I hardly dared to breathe. I felt if I did, then the story unwinding around me might vanish under the heat of my breath and this new image of Mother would be snatched away. Alifair continued, his voice growing stronger as though strengthening after years of disuse. I heard strains of Mother’s accent in it, but his was different. His accent was half Fely and half some other strange thing, his intonation evolving on its own apart from his people.
“Agathine realized King Sinet was having trouble establishing authority over his court after stealing it from his father, and every day, when he stormed out of meetings with the nobles and advisors, she’d be there. Dusting. Mopping. Carrying trays of dishes.” His foot stilled as he told the story, and his eyes grew warm as he recalled Mother’s actions. “Eventually he noticed her, and she smiled at him, just a bit. A secret smile, just for him. One day, she made a bold move. She spoke to him in front of a prominent nobleman. The nobleman struck her for daring to speak to the king as a Fely, but it was enough. King Sinet defended her. He saw how disdained she was and knew that if he married her, his court would be appalled, and they’d understand they had no control over him.”
“They married,” I said softly. “I always thought Father pursued her. I never considered that she might’ve tried to orchestrate it.”
“Immediately, things changed for us. Before, we were taxed triple, and when they were due, collectors would come with guards and take whatever they wanted, often killing one or two of us in the process. Now, with a Fely queen on the throne, it was rectified. Certainly, Radixans still loathe us, but legally, we are equal.” Alifair shook his head, as though uncertain the good was worth the cost. “Agathine was terrified all the time. She tried to be whatever she thought King Sinet wanted. He’d told the court he wished to marry her to gain more knowledge about the grave flowers, but when she offered none, she thought he might divorce or execute her. Then, when it took her a long time to become pregnant, she feared he’d strangle her. She prayed every day at her altar on her knees, begging for help. Every now and then, she’d sneak away and meet me, and every time, she wept in my arms.”
I’d thought Mother had been embarrassed about her family and that she’d kept us away from them out of shame. But that wasn’t the case. She wasn’t embarrassed. She’d been protecting them.
“I had no idea,” I said, my voice catching. I remembered Inessa standing in front of her mirror, pretending to be a different person, honing each character like an act. Little had we known that our own mother had been acting too. Only, she hadn’t acted for a night or a meeting or a few days. She’d acted for her entire life. I’d thought Inessa’s skill had come from being a Sinet, but maybe it came from being a Tachibana too. “If only I’d known.”
“You couldn’t,” Alifair said. “It would’ve been too dangerous.”
Mother hadn’t been protecting only her people. She’d been protecting us too. Inessa and me. The knowledge was twofold, bringing comfort and grief.
“Inessa figured it out, then?” I asked. Sadness pervaded my confusion. Why hadn’t I ever thought to inquire about Mother’s past? I might’ve known her differently, known her truly. I would never get the chance now. “You said she’s been writing to you under my name about a book.”
“Indeed,” Alifair said. His voice lowered, as though he was afraid someone might overhear. “There’s something calledA Guide to Grave Flowers for Tortures and Torments.It’s an ancestral book by a long-ago king for Radixan monarchs, recording experiments with the grave flowers before the invocations were lost to time. It includes the invocations themselves and results of the experiments. None of them went very well.”
I listened in awe. I’d always wondered at the full potential of our grave flowers. If there was a guide to them, I longed for it. I’d never thought there would be a way to learn the old invocations, but the knowledge hadn’t been fully lost. Merely hidden.
“A Fely prisoner was used to help.” Alifair’s fingers returned to his beard. This time, though, he didn’t curl the ends. He dragged his fingers through it. The motions undid the twists and left it raggedy. “One day, an experiment went particularly disastrously, and part of the palace was destroyed. In the chaos, the prisoner stole the guide and escaped to Acus. He joined a monasterium—this monasterium—and became a garden monasticte. Some of our people thought the book should be destroyed, but his family didn’t agree. However, they knew it was powerful and that it would be dangerous in the wrong hands. And they certainly didn’t want a Radixan monarch using it. Ever since then, a child from the Fely prisoner’s descendants has been sent to safeguard the book while studying the grave flowers here. I’m the current one. I was raised knowing I would do this for our people. But I must be careful. Our Fely interpretation of the faith is heretical to most, and we wish to keep the information secret, so I stay in isolation.”
“Did you send the book to Inessa?” I asked.
“Certainly not.” He spoke strongly, passionately, and for once there were no minor notes in his voice. “The book must stay out of Radix. But I answered her questions and transcribed passages for her for the past year, sending them to the Radixan palace. I knew she was writing in secret because she had me send the letters to a servant’s quarters. I assume she had someone in her employ who she retrieved them from.”
“What sorts of passages?” Inessa had been plotting for well over a year and writing to Alifair the entire time. The knowledge was as heavy as a stone. It sat in the pit of my stomach, coated with dread and panic. I didn’t know the nature of Inessa’s plot, but I knew Inessa. She longed for power more than anything and pursued it naturally, her desires pointing the way and forming her path. After finding the address in the dress and learning she could visit other people, I’d suspected she wasn’t a mere victim, and with every confirmation, a new image of her formed before me. Only it wasn’t truly new. It was Inessa, just as I’d known her in life. The new Inessa was the one who’d come to me claiming to want sisterhood and friendship. That was the fake Inessa, a counterfeit I’d so easily accepted as real.
“In her first letter, Princess Inessa sent me a drawing taken from the plaque you have. It was where she discovered my name.” I remembered how the plaque had gone missing from the hiding place atop the palace. She’d taken it and kept it despite our plans to make our own chapel. “The plaque features the immortalities. I sent her the results of the experiments.”
“Immortalities? But those have died out.”
“Not so, not so. Your sister was under the same misunderstanding. But immortalities have an alternation of generations.” Just as his eyes had warmed when he talked about Mother, so they did when he explained the grave flowers. “One generation grows underground for a century. The next grows above.”
