Chapter Five: The Garden of Whispers
The garden was only the size of a bathing pool, but to Sira, it might as well have been a kingdom.
Stone paths curved between raised wooden beds, and clay pots of basil, mint, jasmine, and ginger lined the edges. The Empress's approval had come with conditions: Sira was to remain in the west courtyard, tend only approved herbs, and be supervised by a silent palace scribe named Yun.
Yun never spoke. But he always watched.
Fine.
Sira could perform obedience as well as anyone.
She knelt in the soil, hands dirty, back straight, a perfect picture of a quiet, pregnant surrogate. She hummed softly in Mandinka. Watered twice, never thrice. She even smiled when Yun brought her lunch.
But beneath her calm, she planted more than roots.
She planted a strategy.
The first seed was a fast-growing kudzu
vine, easily overlooked, and almost impossible to remove once it took hold. She placed it near the garden's edge, where the palace walls cast a morning shadow.
The second was a handful of crushed bitter almond seeds mixed discreetly into the soil of the Empress-approved rosemary bed.
To the untrained eye, they were harmless.
To a healer like Sira, they were markers.
Warnings.
Smoke signals in the dirt.
She watched who touched what. Who took what and Who returned with what reports.
After three days, Yun stopped inspecting the rosemary.
After five, two new servants were assigned to her quarters both silent, both young.
Spies.
She smiled at them sweetly, brewed tea, and offered honey.
The one who refused the cup?
She made note of his shoes black silk, left heel worn down.
He would be the first to trip.
Xiao, ever loyal, ever wordless, understood without needing instruction.
She adjusted Sira's headwrap to cover her ears when eavesdropping was needed. She placed small pebbles under the tea tray to signal danger. And once, when Sira nearly drank from the wrong porcelain cup, Xiao slapped her hand hard enough to bruise it.
That night, Xiao kissed the bruised skin and left a tiny blossom of red wax in her palm shaped like a wolf.
A warning.
And a gift.
Then came the gardener.
An old man with skin like tree bark and eyes full of smoke.
He arrived at dawn without announcement, carrying a basket of lotus bulbs and a crooked smile. When he saw Sira bent over the mint patch, he grunted.
"You dig like a court girl," he muttered.
"I am one," she said calmly.
He sniffed. "You'll need stronger fingers if you want them to bloom by winter."
She straightened. "Then teach me."
He glanced sideways. "You ask too quickly."
"And you talk too much for a mute gardener."
That earned her a short laugh, the first from anyone in weeks.
"My name is Wei," he said. "I've worked at this palace since the Emperor's father wore the crown. I knew his mother before she became Empress. I know every worm and spy in these gardens."
She tilted her head. "Then you know about me."
"I know enough." He jabbed his hoe into the dirt. "You bleed differently. You think dangerously."
"Then why help me?"
He smiled again, slow and sharp.
"Because I hate her more than I fear you".
By the end of the first week, Wei had taught her how to grow nightshade under jasmine, how to mask the scent of bitter herbs with citrus peel, and how to scratch symbols into soil that only sharp eyes could read.
"You need a network," he told her as he trimmed back a sprouting plum root. "Loyal ears. Quiet tongues. People who owe you more than they owe her."
Sira looked down at her hands cracked, lined with dirt and nodded.
She was no longer just trying to survive.
She was building something.
One morning, the Emperor appeared again unannounced, dressed in his simplest robe, hair damp from an early bath.
Sira didn't rise. She was kneeling over the lavender row, fingers deep in loam.
"You've taken to the garden," he said gently.
"It doesn't lie."
Liang knelt beside her, unbothered by the dirt. He plucked a sprig of mint and held it to his nose.
"They used to grow this near the southern wall," he murmured. "My mother would crush it between her palms when I had nightmares."
Sira looked at him.
"The Empress?"
He shook his head. "No. My real mother."
He paused. "She died when I was six."
For a moment, he wasn't an Emperor.
Just a boy lost in a memory.
"I hated her," he admitted. "She was always looking at the stars. Always talking about fate. She said I was born for a war I couldn't see."
He tossed the mint away.
"Now you're part of that war."
Sira leaned forward. "Then give me a sword."
Their eyes met.
And for the first time, she saw fear in his eyes.
That evening, she wrote her first letter.
Not to the Emperor.
Not to Han.
But to a woman named Shun Ni, one of the palace librarians she'd glimpsed twice during her morning walks.
She remembered her quiet eyes, her ink-stained fingers.
She also remembered the whisper she'd heard in passing last week:
"Shun Ni once translated the Oracle's Song into three forbidden languages. She dreams of rebellion but writes it in riddles."
Perfect.
Sira inked the letter carefully, in alternating lines of Mandarin and Mandinka. It read like a recipe, spices and measurements but the pattern was clear.
Do you still believe in storms?
Or only in the clouds they leave behind?
A flower planted too deep will learn to bloom upward.
She folded it into a lotus, tied it with a rosemary stem, and tucked it into Xiao's sleeve.
Xiao didn't ask.
She never did.
The next morning, Sira's soup bowl was warm and fragrant.
But under the spoon, curled like a sleeping snake, was a single petal of red peony: a symbol of uprising in old palace code.
A reply.
Yes.
That night, she told Wei.
The gardener only grunted. "One ear gained. Now find more. The baby's heartbeat is strong. That's your power."
She nodded.
Then whispered, "What about the Empress?"
Wei gave her a long look.
"The Empress built this palace," he said. "But stones crumble when the root grows beneath them."
He placed a seed in her hand.
"Plant this when you're ready to break something."
Later that week, the Empress summoned her again this time for a moonlit supper in the southern pavilion.
Sira wore silver.
She smiled.
She bowed.
She complimented the rice cakes and asked about the Empress's favorite constellation.
And when the Empress smiled back thin and practiced Sira saw it.
Fear.
Not much.
Not loud.
But real.
Because Sira was no longer afraid.
And the Empress could smell it.
By the end of the meal, Mei Lin placed her chopsticks down and said softly, "You're learning your place well."
Sira folded her hands in her lap.
"My place is wherever the child grows," she said.
The Empress's smile twitched.
Sira bowed again.
Then whispered, "And I am growing more than just a child."