Now, the Winter Palace's garden was not your basic let me just make myself some vegetables garden. Or a ooh that's a pretty walkway garden, or even a wow that is one impressive (and probably expensive) garden kind of garden.

No, it was a someone could get lost in this thing and nobody would find them for five days kind of garden. And I was quite sure that I could be that someone very, very easily. If someone had told me that whoever had designed the garden had been an extensive lover of mazes, or had a security motive to make sure nobody could find their deepest treasures hidden inside of it, I would believe it without a single hesitation. 

After five minutes of aimlessly wandering around the garden, we could no longer see the gazebo we'd started off from, there was some kind of section that looked pretty dark (I was trying my hardest to ignore it), and the leaves were becoming way too enormous to be thought normal for any kind of garden, much less one from a Winter Palace, of all places.

"This is getting ridiculous," I told Rosa, warily eyeing the vines twisting around us. They looked very strong. What were vines doing at the Winter Palace, and how were the gardeners dealing with them? "Are you sure we haven't accidentally walked into another country?"

She snorted. "That can't be. You can still see the Palace behind us." She was right, of course-- the Palace was peeking out above the leaves. Barely. And with a Palace of that size, that wasn't an easy feat.

I was almost starting to wonder if the gardeners were dealing with them at all.

"Besides," she continued, casually ducking under a leaf, "we're almost to a meeting place."

Just as the last words left her mouth, we stepped into a grassy clearing, with white dainty tables and noble-appropriate, pretty flowers dotting the place. I blinked a few times, then looked behind me. "Didn't we just come from a jungle?"

"From a jungle to a tea party," Rosa mused, nodding appreciatively. "I like it."

"You like it?!"

"It's like a two-package deal. You want a little adventure at ten in the morning but settle down for some nice sandwiches at lunch? What better place than here?"

"Who would want a little jungle adventure at ten in the morning?"

"Who wouldn't?"

I gave her a wry look. "Sorry, Rosa, but some of us are normal--"

"Shh!" she hissed abruptly, pulling Lady Mildred and me back into the jungle. "Someone's here."

"What? Who?" I whispered back. "Glitcherman?"

Rosa thought for a second, then shook her head. "No, I don't feel grossed out. I usually get these goosebumps when he exists around me," she explained when I raised my eyebrows at her. "Since I don't feel it now, I don't think it's him."

I kept my ears and eyes open for any signs of movement or sound, but I couldn't detect anything out of place. "Are you sure someone's here? I don't see any--"

"...first," said a deep voice. "We're... today."

You were saying? asked Rosa's eyes at me, her entire self now turned to gloating.

Haha, I told her smug face. I should've known better than to doubt Rosa's certified sixth senses. My bad.

We turned back to the clearing, now somehow crouching near the very vines I'd been judging the palace gardeners over. Wait, why were we hiding again? If it wasn't Glitcherman, there really wasn't a reason to hide, was there?

"Who's that?" Rosa muttered in the meantime, looking very natural peering through the leaves. "And why does he feel so important?"

I let myself get a glimpse of the pair of men who'd come and had sat in some of those dainty chairs. They did look important, but maybe that was because their shoulders were puffed up and they wore funny hats with single feathers on them. I'd only seen those kinds of clothes in cheap plays and on backs of illustrated books. A very medieval, tight, and purple look.

Lady Mildred (!! I'd forgotten! Was she okay with crouching down here with us? But she looked very natural as well! Or rather, she made the leaves themselves look regal. Like an exotic royal lady. As expected of a true noble!) made a humming sound.

Rosa frowned. "Hm? What was that, Lady?"

"Do you know who they are?" I asked at the same time.

Lady Mildred blinked once, then her eyes drifted to the clearing. "The Duke of Norden," she said quietly, "and His Highness the Prince."

"The Prince?" we echoed. Then gasped, looked at each other, and exclaimed in whispers, "Prince Baltazar?!"

I gulped. "You mean, that pompous person in purple is the uncle to the current Crown Prince and simultaneously the brother to the current King Sylvester (whose wife tried to poison him) and who is maybe treasonous to the king?!"

Rosa inhaled. "You mean, that frivolous fellow of fanciful feathers is the infamous One Who Must Not Be Forgotten and the one the author said will come out in future chapters seven chapters back but never as much mentioned him until now?!"

We paused to take a moment to appreciate our brief endeavors into alliteration.

"Nice one, Ro." Frivolous fellow of fanciful feathers, indeed. We gave each other fist bumps and called it a day.

Lady Mildred appeared unfazed.

"Now, onto the important part," Rosa murmured. My attention was now recalled to the pair of men talking in the garden. Well, we were all in the garden, so I supposed that didn't really make sense. As jungle-like as things could be, it was still the garden. "Let's eavesdrop on him."

I frowned. "Why."

"Because We Must," Rosa replied, a solemn look in her eyes. She waggled her fingers at me. "I feel it in my bones. It is our duty."

"Mm... I see. You've got nothing better to do?"

"I've got nothing better to do."

But alas, eavesdropping in the garden should never be encouraged. Take it from me. Every single sound of jungle-y nature blocked any imaginable sound that might be juicy enough for overhearing. The wind kept rustling leaves and tree branches and whatnot, the birds from who-knows-where chirped really happily, and bugs kept buzzing around me. And only me, it seemed, since neither Lady Mildred nor Rosa appeared bothered.

After sitting there swatting away my tenth fly in the past, I don't know, three minutes, I sighed. "Anything fun going on?"

Rosa hushed me immediately. "Excuse you, I just heard something really interesting."

Interest perked, I squatted closer to her. "Like what?"

"Like the fact that Prince Alexander likes to eat raspberries in the summer because apparently all men in the royal Forbias household, including himself, takes after a certain ancestor who loved raspberries."

"Oh." I leaned back, disappointed. "That's not fun or interesting."

"No," she agreed, shifting closer to the clearing to hear better, "but the fact that he's mildly allergic to it is."

Hmm, that sounded vaguely threatening and dangerous, not fun and interesting. I smiled. "You're not, you're not planning on doing anything to the poor guy, are you?"

She only smiled back.

I flapped my hands at her furiously. "Um, Rosa? His fiancee is right next to us?"

Lady Mildred merely looked back at the two of us.

Rosa rolled her eyes. "Wow, thanks for having faith in me. Of course I won't be using that against him." She shrugged. "It's still interesting."

We settled back down into our spots, even though I didn't really believe her half-hearted assurances about not holding this interesting fact about him against him. Then again, she was aiming for his heart, not his health, so maybe it would be fine.

...thank goodness Rosa wasn't against the royal family. That would have been a horrible experience, no matter which side of the fight you were on. If Rosa was in a fight, nothing could be guaranteed except one thing: she would win, even if that meant everyone else on her team lost.

I shuddered, then froze. Wait, hadn't Rosa always told me that the point was death? What if she'd been talking about the deaths of the royal family? What if she'd been aiming for the prince (whatever that meant, as unromantic as she made it out to be) all this time in order to take over Durova? My eyes widened. What if she thought she was fated to be the next queen or something?!

Calm down, Filly, I told myself, though my breath was coming faster and faster as possibilities unfolded in my mind. I was probably being paranoid.

But at the same time... there was never a better time than the present, was there?

Eyeing the intently listening girl next to me, I whispered. "Rose, just asking, but, you know, you don't have any plans to take the throne or anything, right?"

Out of the corner of my eye, Lady Mildred stiffened, but Rosa just gave me a weird look. "What would I do with a throne? Measure its properties and redesign it into triangular shapes in primary colors?"

"No, not the actual throne, I'm talking about--"

"Shh! We're getting to the good part!" she said, swatting me away. Like a fly.

I swatted away a fly myself. Well, that worked too. Rosa would probably hate having responsibilities like that anyways.

A muffled crash that was loud enough for even me to hear brought my attention back to the clearing.

"What do you mean, it isn't ready!" the purple Prince snarled. Himself standing, his chair was toppled over on the ground-- perhaps he'd knocked it down while getting up. "The boat should have been ready two weeks ago!"

The Duke also stood up, his stance defiant. "My lord, the deliveries have been postponed due to the searching of the Rose Palace. We could not--"

"Nonsense!" roared the Prince. His beard quivered in anger. "You will have the boat ready by tomorrow, is that clear?!"

He strode away, and the Duke of Norden sighed. "My lord," I could hear him say loudly as he chased after Prince Baltazar, "if you could give us just a few more days, the baron's cargo will..."

The rest faded out, and the breath I'd been holding slowly leaked out of me. "Was that intense, or was that intense?" I murmured.

Rosa stood up, and we followed.

My eyes still on the clearing where they had just been, I asked, "How much did you catch? I only heard the part when the Prince stood up."

When I looked over to where Rosa was, she looked thoughtful, and a bit uncharacteristically serious.

"...What's wrong?" I blinked, tilting my head a bit cautiously.

She shrugged. "They barely talked about anything else important. Only about supplies from the Rose Palace and some kind of boat."

"That's it?" Well, that wasn't any fun either. I brushed off the hems of my skirt. What now?

Rosa sighed, pursing her lips. She murmured, "I should've paid more attention to the context, why'd I skip all the dialogue?" When I frowned in confusion, she explained, "Now I don't know what's going on."

"Ah," I said, not understanding a word. "I see."

I waited for her to say more, but since she didn't look like she'd be telling me anything else for the time being, I took a deep breath. Time to move on. "Okay then! That was, um, entertaining!" I said brightly. I turned to smile at Lady Mildred. "Shall we continue walking?"

Lady Mildred inclined her head in a brief nod. Rosa lifted a shoulder in a half-yes, half-I-don't-care. That was good enough for me.

And so we stepped right out into the clearing, Rosa seemingly deep in thought and Lady Mildred the same as usual, when out emerged, from the other side, none other than Glitcherman himself.

---

A/N: Hurray for Glitcherman!