Category: Garden

It wasn’t difficult for Rylee to find the Resistance base. After all, she was one of the finest freelance detectives and vigilantes Melbourne had ever seen. At least, she had been back in the day, before the Conclave took over and she went into hiding as a boring buyer’s agent/real estate agent/conveyancer. 

Using a combination of Mr Chowski’s broadcast, traffic reports and satellites, Rylee quickly pinpointed the location, being a warehouse that supposedly stored everything you’d ever need if you were looking to buy seeds online and start your own garden. 

As she approached the building, Rylee could hear the sounds of battle from deep within the facility. The Conclave of Mechanists would fight hard to destroy the Resistance this day, and Rylee was going to do everything in her power to stop them. It was the first step in finding Maphira, after all. Without the Resistance, their reunion wasn’t looking likely.

The warehouse wasn’t a complete ruse, at least. As Rylee walked through it, she spotted boxes filled with seeds for ground cover roses, daisies and even some agapanthus. She wondered what use the Resistance would have for such things, other than maintaining their front. 

Deciding that she might as well make good use of the plant seeds in the warehouse, she found a nearby sack and began to pour as many seeds as she could find into it. She was about to walk into a huge battle, so best to have something she could use to sow some chaos.

Rylee tuned back into Mr Chowski’s broadcast and heard that things apparently had taken a turn for the worse. She had to be quick, otherwise it would be too late, so she sprinted forward with her sack of seeds, like some sort of nature Santa Claus, and mentally prepared herself to enter the battle of a lifetime. She had a Resistance to save, after all.

Ro seemed to have noticed Amira looking at her rose piles. She shifted uncomfortably.

“What are those?” Amira asked.

Ro didn’t reply. 

Xylia had instructed them to take cuttings of roses that would be useful for their heist; anything that would make it easier to steal the seed compendium from the palace. And Amira could see a number of such roses in Ro’s collection — especially the ground cover roses, which would provide them with valuable camouflage abilities. But on the edge of the pile was a shiny pink hybrid tea rose that Amira had never seen before. It was so unnaturally bright and vibrant that it looked almost poisonous.  

Amira’s brows shot up. “Why have you got that?” 

Ro’s face crumpled, and she turned away, the amber glow of the setting sun casting her profile in darkness. A tight coil of fear began to unfurl in Amira’s stomach.

“There is so many hybrid tea rose varieties,” said Ro slowly. Her mouth was working strangely, as though it was difficult for her to fit the words around her tongue. “Some are edible, some are not. It just so happens that I have decided to collect those that are not.”

“Ro,” Amira began. She wanted to stride over to the girl and shake her, to rattle her brains around and hope some answers fell out. “This is a heist, not an assassination.”

When Ro turned to look at her again, something had shifted in her face. Her eyes, once beautifully inviting and readable, now displayed nothing but the glimmer of guilt Amira had seen reflected in Xylia’s gaze barely two days earlier. Amira staggered back, the weight of betrayal ploughing into her.

Ro smiled weakly. “Xylia and I are in agreement that the king has held too much power, for too long,” she said. “You were right, Amira. There’s magic in the seeds, and in the roses. And it’s keeping him alive. Pruning those roses and cutting the king down is the only way to free our people.”