Chapter Twenty-Four—Gardeners and Spies

Debaku kicked his feet and swam up the canal at greater speed now that he was away from the walls and the eyes of the sentries.

From where he was, low down in the water, he could not see the palace, but he could make out the glow of lights over the gardens.

Figuring that he must have been in the right spot, he stopped and left the wooden toggle to float in the water. He climbed out of the canal, moving through the thick reeds. Even here the grasses were tall and plentiful.

As he trudged through the murky wet and soft ground beneath his feet, the reeds thinned and he came out onto a lawn of lush green grass, a view a slopping hill ahead. It blocked his view of what lay beyond entirely.

From here, he could see trails from which the gardeners used when traveling to and from the canal. Even with the hill in his way, he could see the peaks of the palace turrets and the mega dome.

He glanced up into the sky where the moon and the stars shone, giving him enough light to see clearly by in the night.

That is not good, he thought.

With this much light, he could easily be seen. If the gardeners did their work by night, which he suspected they did not, otherwise there would be some here now, then either they or the visitors might see him.

Trudging along the grass and up the hill, he was stopped by a hedge of immaculately trimmed shrubs. But they did not grow tall enough to prevent his view of the gardens beyond.

There were flower beds, tall hedges arrayed like walls and fountains. The gardens beyond were a veritable maze, with trees and cobbled paths. Lanterns were strewn on wires between the light poles that lit the way, which would make his journey to the palace all the more difficult.

Tinkling laughter erupted from ahead. Debaku frowned and glanced about with his snake eyes, eyes which frightened many, but were, in truth, not as perceptive as most thought. Debaku’s strengths lay in his sense of smell and hearing.

He spotted a woman in yellow robes pulling at a man’s hand. The young man laughed as she pulled him forward. He was in fine dress.

Pleading and begging playfully for the man to do something, Debaku could not make out their words from this distance.

The Mar’a Thulian looked behind himself at the canal and the wall further beyond. The watch towers were alight, but from here he could not make out the guards moving between the parapets.

From this distance if any of them saw him, they would simply suspect he was a gardener—perhaps doing a patch of work he had forgotten earlier in the day, or putting away tools that had been left out.

Near the edge of the canal was a small out building, probably used to house seeds and tools for digging and trimming the hedges.

With a loud creek, the doors on the outbuilding swung open. Debaku narrowed his eyes and tilted his head in that direction as two men, well dressed but dirty, came out as a third pushed a small cart of dirt containing a thick clump of thick flowers.

Debaku lowered himself into a crouching position.

So the gardeners do work in the evening hours. And to be clothed so well. Yes, this is the palace of Darshuun—the jewel of the Abassir Empire.

Glancing down at himself, Dabaku realized he would not pass for one of their ranks and decided to stay hidden. Once these men had moved on, he would drag the swords out of the canal and begin making his way through the gardens.

From this spot Debaku could see that he was in an advantageous position in relation to the north-east apartments—though from this distance, he couldn’t make out the apartments, or in them, Shai’na’s chamber windows.