Goddess of the Rose (Goddess Summoning #4)(49)

"Hog manure," she said, and the bright, attentive expressions dropped into frowns. "You do have pigs, right?"

A few heads nodded hesitantly.

"Good. I want you to fill baskets with pig manure." Hardly taking a breath, she turned to Nera. The Water Elemental was watching her with large, round eyes. "Nera, is there a lake or sea nearby?"

"Yes, Empousa, there is a large lake within the realm."

"Excellent." She turned back to the crowd. "I'll need fish heads, entrails - anything you'd normally throw away instead of cooking. Actually," she continued as if the group of women wasn't staring slack-jawed at her, "I need dead organic matter, both plant and animal. Gii, I'm assuming that the forest outside the rose wall is dark and dense?"

"It is, Empousa."

"Then the forest floor should be rich with loam. Bring buckets or baskets or whatever, along with something to turn over the ground around the roses so we can mix the fertilizer into the soil."

"But bring them where, Empousa?" Gii said.

"Oh, I'm sorry." Mikki spoke so her voice carried out over the crowd. "Bring everything, empty baskets and those filled with the fertilizer I've mentioned, along with gardening tools, to the gate in the rose wall. We'll start there."

No one moved.

"Now would be good," Mikki said firmly. "The roses have been ignored too long."

Still no one moved.

Floga cleared her throat and moved closer to Mikki. "Empousa, this is highly irregular."

"What is? That I've told you we need to fertilize the roses or that you're refusing to do as an Empousa asks?"

Floga paled. "I would not refuse your bidding, Empousa."

Mikki looked at her other three handmaids.

"None of us would refuse you, Priestess," Gii said quickly, and the girls nodded agreement.

Mikki swung her gaze out to the crowd and raised her voice, making sure she sounded well and truly pissed. "Then is it only the women of the realm who refuse to obey Hecate's Empousa?"

The crowd stirred restlessly. One woman, who was probably about Mikki's age, stepped forward and curtseyed quickly.

"My sisters and I will gather the baskets for the forest loam, Empousa."

Another woman moved to the front of the group. "I will bring the fish offal."

"As will I."

"And I."

"We will see to the hogs," a young girl said from the middle of a group of teenagers.

Mikki wanted to weep with relief and thank them all profusely. But her gut told her that was not the reaction the people expected, or deserved. So instead she simply said, "Then I will meet you at the gate. You'll need to hurry. We have a long day ahead of us. The quicker we get started, the better." She turned her back to the dispersing crowd and caught Gii's eyes. "I'll need you to show me where the gate is," she whispered.

Gii smiled her approval before bowing her head and dropping into a deep, respectful curtsey. "As you wish, Empousa."

Chapter Seventeen

"THERE! This is the rose wall. The gate is just around that bend in the hedge." Gii pointed a little way ahead of them at an area of the wall that curved back toward the gardens.

"Multiflora roses - that figures." Following the imposing boundary that seemed to materialize out of the air, Mikki shook her head. "Well, they have been called a living wall, but I've never seen them contained in such an orderly way."

She'd seen multiflora roses take over pastures and completely destroy them in less than a couple years, but stretching before her was a huge wall of the wild roses that had apparently been tamed. She and Gii turned with the curving wall. Mikki gazed up. The mass of climbing roses had to be at least twelve feet tall. "Do they ever spread and threaten to take over the forest?" Or the rest of the realm, she mused silently.

"The rose wall obeys Hecate's command."

Mikki felt Gii's body jerk in response to the Guardian's deep voice, and she was profoundly grateful that she, too, hadn't jumped out of her skin when he spoke. But then, she'd known he was going to meet her at the wall. Subconsciously, or maybe not so subconsciously, she'd been waiting for him to appear. Her gaze shifted from the roses to the Guardian. He was standing on the other end of the curve they had been following, framed by what looked like an immense gate made entirely of multiflora roses. As per usual, his strong face was somber and his expression unreadable, but his eyes . . . his eyes seared her. He is not going to intimidate me. He's a security guard - a big, grumpy security guard. I'm Empousa, which would translate at the very least to his supervisor. Mikki smiled pleasantly.

"I know more than a few ranchers in my old world who would pay just about anything to have Hecate command roses like these to behave themselves."

He frowned. "Hecate is not a merchant who can be - "

"I didn't mean that literally. I was just kidding," Mikki interrupted, working hard not to roll her eyes. She glanced at Gii. The Elemental had her lips pressed tightly together in a thin white line, and her eyes darted nervously back and forth from the Guardian to Mikki. Huh. I guess no one kids with the Guardian. Or maybe the Empousa has never had a sense of humor before - the others were probably too young to have acquired one. Yet another thing she was going to have to change.