The rest of the meeting, for Rosemary, was a boredom of listening to question and response from Rosewater and Collar, and even Cloudy had fallen by the wayside as the two heirs dickered over details for the coming negotiation.

Although Collar hadn’t said ‘yes’ to courtship, and definitely not the yes that Rosemary’s heart had hoped for, they had called Lace back in and both she and Rosewater had left to have a meeting together while Collar and Cloudy commiserated on guard schedules, tossing about names that sounded halfway familiar, and some names being struck down or passed on.

When she’d asked what they were talking about, she’d been informed that it was her guard roster. To give her kindly ponies to talk with on a regular basis.

None of the names were familiar enough for her to give any meaningful input on, so she opened the book Rosewater had sent with Cloudy.

Rosewater’s elegant, if cramped, hoof made barely a mark on the first page, only giving the title, “Principles of Free Love, by Rosethorn the Wise.” A small footnote declared, “Translation note: During his lifetime, Rosethorn constantly beat back against ‘The Wise’ for himself, and throughout his journal that eventually became the Principes that we abide by, he refers to himself as simply Rosethorn where he refers to himself by name at all.”

So very specific… But also informative. Rosethorn had been a humble pony, Rosewater always said, humbled by the age he lived in and the ponies in his life.

She settled in on the couch, one ear cocked to the discussion of ponies and names, and pretended to read. If this ‘negotiation’ took as long as it had taken Rosewater to decide to court Collar and Cloudy, she would have plenty of time to read it in its entirety, and likely finish the translation. And make copies.

Somewhere along the way, she’d closed her eyes while staring at the page and had laid her head on it.

When she opened her eyes again, the book was closed and on the table, and both Cloudy and Collar were gone from the room. But she wasn’t alone. Rosewater was sitting on the floor at the base of the couch she’d fallen asleep on.

“Sorry,” Rosemary said softly. “Stars, I’m tired.”

“It’s fine, Rosemary. From what Lace told me, you had a long night of worrying.” Rosewater bent to kiss her cheek. “I just wanted to say goodbye before I went back home. Lace and I finished our first negotiation, and we came up with a schedule for when I’ll be visiting. Once a week, more often if we need to cut a negotiation short for any reason, but we have terms that we’re presenting to the Treaty Office tomorrow. After that…”

Rosemary blinked owlishly at her. “You’re actually negotiating for my release?”

“Stars, no.” Rosewater laughed. “That’s for public consumption. But Lace and I agreed that we needed to put on a show. The real negotiation is… courtship. If we—” Rosewater coughed and winked at her. “—come to terms, then you are released as soon as, erm, the terms are finalized. If not… you’re released to Damme. As a free citizen. If you wish. I’d suggest you stay, Rosemary. It won’t be safe for you in Merrie.”

“And not safe for you either!” Rosemary shot back.

“I know.” Rosewater’s eyes fell to the letter resting at her hooves. “I’ll seek asylum and fight her the only way left to me and try to make a life here, perhaps I would even find a home and happiness.”

“You won’t…”

“I won’t fall back into my old ways, Rosemary. I can’t. Carnation would have beat my head in years ago, I’m sure.” Her smile came and went quickly, just a twitch of her lips. “I expect you to do that for her, now.”

Rosemary raised a hoof as if to do just that, and tapped her on the nose instead. “No. But I will be disappointed in you.”

“Stay thy arrow, oh merciless maiden!” Rosewater gasped, then grinned and stood. It was odd to see Rosewater tease her, even if it was melodramatic. “It’s been good for me to be open today. I feel… lighter. Regardless of what happens with the negotiation, I think I will be… happier. At the least. Be a good mare, Rosemary, and don’t get into trouble.”

“And brush my teeth and scrub behind my ears…” Rosemary rolled her eyes and rose, pulling her mother in closer with a spell. “Be safe, mother.”

“I will.”

And with that, Rosewater left her, knocking on the door to admit Captain Pink, who gave Rosemary a stern, but not hateful, look and turned about without another word, escorting Rosewater away.

Lace came to get her a few minutes later and guided her to a lower level office with the sign of Damme etched into the door and painted with metallic hues.

“Have a seat, Rosemary,” Lace said as she stepped around the desk. “Cushions or chair, only make yourself comfortable.”

“Thank you, Lady Lace,” Rosemary said, curtsying before Lace closed the wards on the room and sealed the door. “Did negotiations go well?”

“When I first met Carnation,” Lace said, pulling free two glasses and a flask of some orange liquor she didn’t recognize from a shelf of bottles of various shades and shapes, “I saw at once that she wasn’t a typical infiltrator. Even under Roseline’s rule, we still had them on occasion, but much rarer than the thrice-weekly incidents of today. She admitted being caught immediately, and said the reason she’d even approached me was because I looked ‘interesting’ and wanted to meet me.”

Lace poured a glass for herself, sniffed it, and passed it to Rosemary. “Tell me what you think.”

The sharp alcoholic smell was there, but too were… roses. Faint, but there. A hint of a strain that might have been carnation rose hips fermented but not distilled more than necessary to get the particulates out. It was still unfamiliar, but it wasn’t what she’d expected. The rest of it was a brandy made from a white grape wine and aged in a fired oak barrel.

“This isn’t a brandy I recognize,” Rosemary said, and took a sip. The essence of Rose burst on her tongue, spreading like wildfire. There, the scent was much more noticeable, and she gasped.

“It packs a punch,” Rosemary gasped.

“It does. Just like Carnation. This was a gift from her, given to me to celebrate Collar’s birth. From Rosewine Vineyards. It’s the last of six bottles that she gave me. I’ve been meaning to ask the Garden if they have any more in stock… clandestinely of course. I asked your mother to inquire for me, at a later date.”

“That was… the negotiation?” Rosemary asked, incredulous.

“Well, yes. We had to agree on something that would be a ‘negotiation’ type thing to do,” Lace said with a smile and a wink. She corked the bottle and set it back in its place, turning the label away from the room. By itself it looked like any old bottle of brandy, but now that she knew the smell, she could tell it had a presence in the room.

“You shared a drink with her?”

“Of course. Your mother is a fascinating mare.” Lace stared at the glass Rosemary still held in her spell, and closed her eyes briefly. “In return for refilling my stock, she asked for several concessions to be granted to you, to make your stay here more palatable and less like a prison sentence.”

Rosemary sat up straighter and took another small sip of brandy.

“The first that I granted,” Lace went on, “is that you are to be allowed access to the public gardens while escorted by a guard. This privilege is not unlimited, however, and is restricted to daylight hours and one hour a day. It’s equivalent to the yard time inmates at Prim Prison receive. This stipend of one hour will increase to two after two weeks, and three after a month. Pending good behavior of course.”

“Of course,” Rosemary agreed quickly. Anything to not be stuck in that room all day for months? Stars, if Rosewater went her usual plodding way, she might be stuck in there until well past her twenty-first.

“Further, once a week, and then twice and three times following the same schedule, albeit only with Collar or myself escorting you, you may visit my private gardens to talk with us at your leisure, or simply enjoy the work I’ve put into them. Or help me. It’s getting close to winter, and my garden needs to be made ready.” Lace raised a brow with a small smile. “I understand you’re good with plants. You can call that a ‘work detail’ if you really want to.”

Rosemary swallowed, mouth dry. “Th-that is generous of you, my lady. Housing me here is a generosity, but I hadn’t expected your private gardens on top it.” Rosemary swallowed and glanced around the office. It was where Prim Lace worked, and it showed. It wasn’t messy, but the detritus of work was everywhere. Pictures of ancestors hung on walls, all wearing some form of Lace’s collar as their symbol of office.

“Relax, child.” Lace’s smile was the same kind of motherly she’d seen from both Carnation and Rosewater. “This is a safe space, and nopony is going to judge you.”

“I… love plants. I’d consider it an honor to help you turn down your garden for the winter. It’s beyond generous.”

“By no means is it generous, Rosemary. Were I generous, and a fool, I’d let you free to wander the city with only a guard to keep you free of trouble.” Lace clucked her tongue. “Nay, it’s this mess with your status, and your mother’s ploy against hers. I can’t say that she will succeed. There are ever so many more ways for Roseate to be nasty without breaking the treaty.”

“I’m aware.”

Rosie Night and her family, the impending birth of their foal, all her friends, Cloudy’s family, Rosewater, and her childhood friends in the Garden of Love. They would all be targets for Roseate’s ire, or could be if Roseate thought to expand her net of anguish to push her mother to… do things.

Rosemary took a shaky sip of brandy, the warming liquid calming her fears somewhat. “Life was… not normal. But it was a normal for the past six years after we both settled into a new routine without Carnation. I’m used to things changing, my lady.”

“Lace, please, Rosemary. When we are here, I am Lace.” She smiled at the glass and dipped her ears. “Your mothers taught you fairly in courtly manners, despite what I hear about you being something of a free spirit.”

“I am a noblemare,” Rosemary said, catching herself just about to say Lace’s title, and awkwardly tacked on, “Lace. I do enjoy the life of a common pony most days, I do also recognize that I must one day act for my station.”

She sipped at her brandy again, warming her throat and her stomach with the fine liquor. It was a strong vintage, she found, and very well appointed in taste. She kept finding subtle undertones to each scent component in the tasting. She took another sip and held it in her mouth longer before swallowing.

“Perhaps…” Rosemary set the glass down and felt at her cheeks. Flushed already, and she didn’t feel like it had been as strong as it obviously was. “Perhaps that’s enough.”

“You’ve had a tiring day and a trying week. Please, drink the glass of brandy… or share.” Lace grinned and winked, but made no move for the glass. “The second thing is the friends your mother and Cloudy asked for, I think you may have heard Collar and Rosewater talking about finding companionship for you of a social sort. Stride, you already know.”

Rosewater hesitated, then dipped her ears. “I’m not sure it’d be right to ask for any of the ponies I met during my excursions. I feel…” Like I used them. Tricked them. Betrayed the trust they put in me. It was the cost of dealing with Roseate.

“It would be voluntary, my dear,” Lace said softly. “It won’t hurt to ask, and may even give you a chance to make it up with them by being a friend to them. Many of them have had their perceptions of Roses changed by talking with you, and I haven’t been ignorant of the effect you’ve had on them.”

“For the better?”

Lace chuckled and nodded, her eyes twinkling. “It was what gave me the hope that you were indeed Carnation’s daughter. At the time, I didn’t know whether or not your other mother was a product of her father and Carnation.”

That smile gave her the courage to name them. “Platinum, Starshine, Periwinkle.”

“Mmm. The first… I think would be open. The other two are on night shift still, and it would be rather difficult to move them without comment.” Lace wrote the names down nonetheless.

“I understand you grew on her somewhat during your open jaunts. Prim Coat has already volunteered as well, and Prim Poppy. Cloudy and Collar will also take hour turns with you, and she has asked, and been granted, night privileges with you.” Lace raised a brow at her. “Should you accept.”

Is this a test? “If it wouldn’t be against the rules, I… I have missed being with her. Talking to her. It was never just about the sex, my lady.”

Lace studied her for a long moment before nodding. “Cloudy is the same. I have watched her for some time since she took an interest in my son, and my husband has… softened my views on Merrie culture. I have long since stopped viewing the Merrie common pony culture as ‘obsessed with sex’ and see it as… complicated. Just like our culture, obsessed with monogamy, is not only about not having sex.”

“I… never thought that, my lady.”

“Noted. I’ll have you know that I was going to reprimand her, but given how Rosewater said things turned out, that corroborated her story, I think leniency is in order. She’s confined to palace duty for the duration of her ‘punishment’ for breaking my orders.” Lace smiled thinly again and patted a paper. “If there is anypony else you’ve charmed from my guard, young lady, let me know.”

Rosemary swallowed but, given the tone of the past conversation with Lace, she decided to take a risk. “And if there are? You have fascinating ponies in your Dammeguard, Lace. Quite a few, actually.”

She’d been right, and her reward for being bold was a smile and twinkle of the older mare’s eyes. “Well, if there are then I will see to them joining the rotation.”

Another sip of brandy soothed away the nerves caused by taking a risk, and brought to mind a cheerful face, a worried smile, and a delightful evening, night and morning talking, loving, and sleeping with a fresh-blues Dammeguard. She’d been the reason her interest stayed on Damme for so long.

It might be a risk, but Lace had yet to corner her with a trick. “There was one other Dammeguard I met. A while ago. Just after I turned eighteen, I met her on the bridge before these became too dark to hide in my coat.” She touched her heart mark. “I would have been a Rose unicorn to her. No names, just dinner and a night and morning. She was a pegasus, sunny blonde coat and a sky blue and white streaked mane. I think she had a sun rising above a blue feather.”

“I know her. She’s one of our reservist weather wardens. Primfeather Sunrise, Stride’s sister. Fascinating that both of them should be drawn to you the way Collar tells me Stride has been. Would you like me to have Cloudy drop a hint? I believe they were, briefly, involved.”

For a moment, the name threw her. Primfeather. Stride was a Primfeather, but seemed so far divorced from their hard-line philosophy of ‘Anything Rose is bad, and anything Rosethorn is worse.’ Sunrise had been a delight and a sweetheart, worried and anxious and just into her Dammeguard blue as a private. She had to have known she was a Rose, and possibly even a Rosethorn despite the way her darker pink coat had tended to mask her marks earlier in life.

“Please. We had… we had a good time together, but she had to run off after we had breakfast in bed.” It had been an odd request for a Dammer innkeeper to take, but since Sunrise had made the order, nopony had questioned it. “She paid for me to stay an extra night, just so she could go without comment on who her bedmate had been.”

I wonder if she got away from that without incident… I hope so. Swallowing her worries, Rosemary coughed, and asked, “Did I cause her any trouble?”

“I would have to ask Collar or Stride, but I do seem to recall a nasty rumor that I asked Pink to stamp out about a mare in the Guard who’d been wooed by a Rosethorn. Or corrupted by one.” Lace bowed her head, a frown on her lips, and her brows lowering. “I… worry about some of my guard that did cross. Perhaps you’ve heard of them? Prim Prism, Primrazzle Dazzle, and Primrock Tremor.”

“They’re at the garden,” Rosemary said without hesitation. “I… don’t know them very well. Rosewater asked me to limit my time at the garden to bring less trouble to Budding and her ponies.”

“Trouble?”

“By Roseate,” Rosemary said with a sigh.

Lace chewed her lip for a moment, her eyes going to the door. “Carnation did a lot more than impress herself on Rosewater, didn’t she? Her morals are there, too. For good or ill. Carnation never wanted anything to splash back on anypony else, either. She and Rosewater…”

“They were good parents,” Rosemary said, more forcefully than she’d meant to.

“Oh, don’t take it the wrong way. That kind of moral compass is good to have—in moderation. Rosewater takes it to an extreme. I’ll have to talk to her about that.”

Once again, Lace proved herself more than flexible in mindset. Not even two days ago, Rosewater and Rosemary had been enemy combatants as far as her city was concerned.

“Dear, if I had known, if I had more than an inkling of what your mothers had to go through, I would have done more and damn the opposition. Do what you can to push her to be more open, too, if you would. I feel like it coming from you would be more impactful than coming from an old busybody like me.”

“I’ll do my best.” Rosemary took a final sip from her glass and set it back down. Lace didn’t move to refill it, but pushed a glass of water at her. “If I may ask a question of my own, what do you think of Rosewater’s proposal for your son?”

“Hopeful curiosity. We will see how things play out, but I am grateful beyond belief that Carnation didn’t raise Rosewater after Roseate’s pattern. I had feared that for a time. Psychopathy can be hereditary. We need look no farther than our own histories to know that for true.” Lace’s magic flared, highlighting a few portraits on the walls around her. “All descended from the same line. Vicious ponies before the treaty. Instigators of many eye-for-an-eye attacks and vengeances before Princess Celestia imposed her peace on our… disagreement.”

Two were pegasi, and two unicorns, and one earth pony. A diverse family line.

“Our history has as many,” Rosemary murmured, looking around the portraits. Many more were not highlighted, and had noble bearings in their paintings. Defenders or attackers, they were history, honored by their contemporaries or not. “Rosewater is not one of them. Nor was Carnation.”

Lace bowed her head. “Our twin cities have more history than most between them. I think only Canterlot has more conflict in its past than our little piece of the north.”

Conversation faltered, and the drink’s work on her tired mind proceeded apace. Lunch was too far in the past for it to do anything against the alcohol’s progression of draining her energy.

“You have a place in our city if things do not go well with your mother’s plan. So does she, with provisions, and I hope she does not follow Carnation into exile. She’s… I wish I could rescind an exile order. But once the deed is done, and she accepted asylum from Princess Celestia, I can’t override that. But I understand why she accepted the asylum. Being exiled into the wilds for a noble can be a sentence of slavery and…” Lace shook her head and shuddered.

“It’s not unwise,” Rosemary closed her eyes against the pang of loss again. “But I don’t think I could live like that. Having Carnation taken out of my life was the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with. Watching Rosewater descend into a kind of ‘sensible madness’ afterwards was another. I didn’t know what to do but love her as much as I could, and make her life as happy and joyous as I could.”

“If you succeed, if Rosewater succeeds in her plan, then that exile doesn’t need to be forever,” Lace said gently, raising Rosemary’s chin with a warm spell. “Collar told me of his promise to you. Mother’s Kiss, I believe was the name of the perfume. I will allow this one scent magic to be used within my palace. It was made with love, for the purpose of love.” For a long moment, a wistful, hopeful look crossed the matron’s face, then passed.

“I… can share, my lady. Rosewater makes a potent perfume, and the dosage for a memory is quite small. If you wish to remember your parents?”

“Alas,” Lace replied, smiling sadly, “I’ve come to terms with their loss long since. I’ve no wish to reawaken that heartache. My father, as much of a bastard as he was, still loved me, and my mother… dear stars. But no. No.” She let out a sharp breath and shook her head. “Maybe once this is all over, my dear. They are with the stars now, in their rest. I will let them rest until it’s nearer my time to meet them.”

It was a beautiful expression of love.

And Rosemary yawned explosively a few seconds into contemplating what it meant.

Horror rammed through her with the icy spike of ‘By the stars, that was disrespectful.’ “M-my lady,” Rosemary said around another yawn forcing its way up. “I’m tired. Not… bored.” Her cheeks felt aflame at her break of decorum and show of disrespect.

“My dear, today has been an ordeal for you. I’m surprised you’ve found any time to rest. Truly rest. It may not be much, but I’m scheduled to debrief you for another hour. We can schedule the rest for later. In the meantime, please nap. I have to think on what you’ve told me without another appointment intruding on my ruminations.”

Lace nudged her to a couch along one wall, a couch that smelled like a stallion more than anything. Dapper Air, Lace’s husband, a sincerely emotive stallion. A Merrier sixty years an expatriate. Or something like that. Maybe forty?

The thought about Dapper and his history dogged Rosemary down into a light sleep while Lace sat back in her chair and pored over a letter, her lip caught between her teeth as she read and wrote on another sheet of paper.

Author's Notes:

The final chapter of book one, setting up some of the conflicts for the next book. Part 1 of 2. Part 2 tomorrow morning.

The next book will be on the same story, but it will be known as "The Primrose Gala."
Book three will be "The Primrose Rebellion"
The fourth and final book's title is "The Primrose Promise"

Interludes chapter next, taking a peek in at some side-characters and their daily lives and how they've been affected.
First chapter of book two is a monster three parter.