As she grew older, her duties for Fel expanded beyond garden and writing work. The merchants came once a quarter to Fel's garden, and Fel often kept her close at his side during the encounters.
Not all the merchants, of course. There were those that visited him weekly seeking to restock the shelves of city stores, buying only the most commonplace of plant derivatives. No, the real merchants, the merchants who traveled to the corners of the world and back came once a quarter, and the even better ones once a year. And they sought goods that only Fel could provide.
"Angel’s tears," said one to the old man, in the beginning of the season. "I need forty drops."
"They're difficult to produce," replied Fel. "Only twice a year can I harvest them: at the very first dew of spring, and at the very first frost of winter, when the water melts down the petals and absorbs the essences with it. I can have them ready for you by next quarter, but that is the best I can do, and only twenty."
"And your price?"
"One gold coin apiece. I know they'll sell for six where you are going, and they'll take ten years off of any woman's face. You could likely charge as high as fifteen coins and still have smiling customers, and twenty before you start hearing grumbles."
"For an imitation third level plant, that’s a hard bargain, Fel. But deal," said the merchant, and they shook hands, each making marks upon a small piece of paper Fel provided with the order. No signatures were made, because they were not needed.
That was all it took to make a deal with Fel, the shaking of hands. Never before had he been unable to complete an order, and that was one of the reasons the merchants came to him first. Another was that he never changed the agreed upon price, no matter what the circumstances. Once he had lost twenty gold coins on an order, when his seeds were destroyed by frost after one of the windows cracked in the winter, but Fel had still filled it by planting five times the order and retaining what he could.
The best merchants for business were the ones who travelled the furthest, who might be away for years at a time before returning. They sought the most exotic plants and were willing to pay the most exorbitant prices. And they rarely dealt with the local Keepers.
When she turned fourteen, Merrill met her first of these. The streets hushed as he drove his wares through, cart upon cart of spices, gold, and garments. Armed guards walked beside each, men so foreign that Merrill could not place them, and they drove back any beggars whose eyes were too wide or hands too free.
The carts should have been heading toward a palace, to distribute the pieces among royalty for a high price, but instead they chose a side street, twisting up through the city to a more out-of-the-way destination, coming to rest before Fel's home.
The merchant that disembarked was tall and lanky, his skin as ragged as the canvas covering his carts and chapped by the weather. Merrill remembered his eyes, a deep blue that synced with the grey in his beard and the whiteness of his teeth. He'd come in clothes like none she had ever seen—long, flowing garments that swept well below his waist and onto the floor, with silver inlaid into their stitching and gems at the buttons. That shirt alone, she realized, could likely feed her for years, if not for life.
He greeted the old man with a hug like old friends, resting a hand with two too few fingers on his back.
"Fel," he said, his voice deep and accented. "Fel, it has been long. Too long. I trust you have received my orders? I trust that you have them ready?"
"Of course, Mairja," said Fel with a smile. "Nowhere else within hundreds of miles will you find another gardener that can grow glennsweed, and certainly nowhere will you find one that can grow it as potent! Nor will you discover the spices I have dried, some of them my very own discovery, long forgotten through time. Mairja, not only are your orders ready, they are the best that you could ever receive."
"I should expect no less," said Mairja, flashing his white smile. "Did you know that another gardener has been trying to undercut you? Why should I not take my business there? I'll tell you why! He tried to pass off grass as glennsweed! And worse, he tried to cheat the scales! But, he is much closer to my route. I travel out of my way for you, Fel."
"Mairja, I speak no ill of the others of my trade. I find no need to. But glennsweed... Glennsweed is a fourth level herb. You find someone who can grow better glennsweed outside the gates of heaven, and I will hand over the keys to my garden."
Together they laughed, embracing again before Fel rushed from the room and returned with fresh tea, ushering Mairja into a seat. Fel gestured for Merrill to join them at the table, and she pulled out a seat as Mairja turned his blue eyes toward her.
"My, my, you've grown, Abigail," he said, before Fel had a chance to cut him off. "I trust that you still enjoy sweets? I saved a couple in my cart just for you."
Chapter 12: Merrill
Merrill was sixteen when Fel started calling her Abigail. He could barely walk now, using the assistance of a cane that she had provided for him, and instead left most of the duties to her while he still led negotiations with the merchants. But even then, the small things would slip. A merchant might get more than he paid for, or might initially receive the wrong herb, and it was up to Merrill to ensure Fel's reputation remained untarnished.
There were some days when he had trouble with the simplest tasks, when Merrill would cook breakfast because he could not start the stove, or when he took longer than usual to return home from an evening walk because he had taken a wrong turn. Yet there were other days where he was sharp, sharper than Merrill had ever seen him, and it was on those days he would call Merrill down to his study and teach her with a ferocity so impassioned it was as if it were her last lesson.
Merrill remembered one time best, on a cloudy afternoon in late fall, when Fel excused her from the garden to instead read to him. He'd brought a spare chair down to his study for that reason, wedged tight between two of his bookshelves, the volumes teetering dangerously above her head.
"Today," Fel had said, his cloudy eyes squinting through the dust as he cracked a book open and lit a candle, "we study medicines. Not just what they do, miss, or what plants they originate from. Oh no, no, today we discuss why medicines work. This book here, this book is old, miss. Older than you or I, transcribed many times over and kept in secret. For if the Keepers knew that I carried it, they'd have my head, and likely yours, too! This is the knowledge that they would hoard for themselves."
Merrill laughed, and Fel waited for her to finish, book open upon his lap.
"You're serious?" she said, an eyebrow raised, studying him and trying to determine if he was having an episode. "That book is actually illegal?"
"Deathly," said Fel. "Merrill, we live in an age of darkness. There is so much that we do not know, so much that has slipped between the cracks of humanity's collective mind through war and persecution, so much that we have forgotten. But we used to know it," he said, and tapped his forehead. “And from time to time, some of us remember."
"What do you mean, you remember? I know you're not that old, Fel. Though you're starting to look it."
"What I mean is that every so often an artifact trickles down. This book, for one, which holds much of ancient medicinal theory. But that's just a piece, Merrill. Oh, how great we once were. How great we could be! But we are not, and we'll have to make do."
"It seems like we're getting along just fine now."
"You wouldn't have said that when you were still a beggar in the streets!" Fel said, his voice rising for the first time in years. "Or when I found you freezing in the snow! Hundreds starve per year! The magicians squabble amongst themselves, pawns to the will of the Keepers. And as this book shows us, far too many die from ailments that were once but a nuisance.
"Now, for the theory," he continued, "It stems from the notion that everything on this earth is driven by the same force, connected. Plants, animals, humans—we are not as different as you may think. And by borrowing traits from one, we may fill the holes within ourselves, and right our own
unbalances. This book postulates, Merrill, that the lines between all creatures may be thinner than we imagine. That it may exist by perception alone. Now–"
Overhead, thunder boomed, lightning striking nearby from clouds that had turned dark purple while Fel was distracted. Merrill's forehead wrinkled as she looked outside the window, watching the storm. It had formed rapidly, faster than most she could remember.
Thunder boomed again, rattling the windows of the house, and shaking Fel, whose face had taken on a confused expression after the din.
"Abigail," he said, mumbling. "Abigail, go fetch your mother and I some tea. I fear this storm will not be an easy one to ride out, and we had best do it warm."
Merrill opened her mouth to respond, but Fel kept speaking, water forming at the base of his eyes.
"Abigail, you know she's sick and can't fetch it for herself. I've been doing all I can, all I can to find the cure. I know it's here, between the pages! Go on, fetch the tea, it shouldn't be long before mother will be on her feet again."
But Fel's eyes did not meet Merrill's, and instead they stared out the window, a single tear trickling down.
"Why did they take you, Abigail? Why did they take you from me? They never found the aurels. And even with the aurels I couldn't save her."
He bowed his head, his speech becoming even more incoherent.
"I couldn't save her, and they took you. As punishment, for following the old ways. For trying to save my wife."
And his eyes snapped upward, meeting Merrill's as she watched, frozen, lightning striking again to illuminate his gaunt cheekbones and the spittle that flew from his mouth with his next few words.
"Now they shall learn true punishment!"
Then his eyes squeezed shut, and he rocked slowly back and forth. Merrill kept watch over him the entire night, ensuring he still breathed. The next day, he awoke as if nothing had happened, tending the plants and instructing her in their techniques. For a few weeks, Merrill nearly forgot that it had happened.
Then Fel died the next month.
He refused to admit it, but he knew it was coming during his bouts of lucidity. By the time he died, there was little routine knowledge he could pass on to Merrill. After several years of being his apprentice, she had absorbed almost all that he knew, at least from a practical point of view. Sure, there were still hundreds of nooks and crannies of knowledge that had never come up, but those were things that might occur rarely, or in off years, or for plants that were ordered once a decade.
And on the night before he died, as he lay in bed, his breathing ragged, Fel had shown her one last secret.
"Merrill," he said. "There is one plant in particular which I have not taught you to look after. A plant I have cared for year after year. Fetch it for me, miss. It is small, and potted, and you can carry it. But be certain not to touch it! Right there, in that cupboard, by the door."
At Fel's command, Merrill retrieved the plant. It was a flower, kept in complete darkness. A single dark purple bloom the size of her fingertip, with four leaves that occupied the stem, their color pure black, and thorns arching up between them.
"Merrill," he said, taking the plant from her, "of all the plants in my garden, it is this on which I have spent the most time and energy. And just this year I have perfected it. Though being around it for so long has taken its toll."
He coughed, squinting in the darkness.
"And what," asked Merrill, taking a cautious step back. "Does it do?"
"A poison," he whispered. "As I've told you, Merrill, all life is connected. And this, this is connected to the most nefarious amongst us. It is incurable, undetectable, and precious little is known of its origins, Merrill, except that it is from the darkness. Not from night, but from darkness itself. From evil, from where all the misery in this world originates. And should something dark consume that flower, it's sucked back to where it belongs."
"Then why is it hurting you?" she asked, eyes wide.
"There is darkness in us all, miss. Not enough for it to kill me, no, but enough to put rips in my soul. Especially the dark purpose for which I labored over that flower. Ten years alone it took me to find a seed, and many more to discover how to germinate it. For Hell’s barb grows only in pure darkness, and in perfect conditions."
"But why would you keep it? Why even create it?"
"As a gift," he said, sinking back into his pillow. "For those that took Abigail and her mother from me. For the Keepers."
Merrill buried Fel at the center of his garden, deep in the earth, placing a stone slab etched with his name across the grave, covered in every species of flower she could find. She still read there on occasion, out loud so that he could hear her, and she wished she could move the dirt aside and save him just as Fel had done for her long ago.
In the months since his death, she had taken over the garden, conducting negotiations with the merchants in his absence. She kept the Hell’s barb in its cupboard, as Fel had commanded, and followed the written instructions left for her to the letter to sustain it.
And sometimes, sitting on the roof of the garden as the sun set on the horizon, and glancing toward the obsidian tower at the center of the city, she wondered about the last line on Fel’s instructions.
"The petals are to be administered, crushed to a fine powder, to those who deserve them."
Chapter 13: Draysky
Three other chiselers joined Draysky on his first day climbing the mountain with the ridgers, taking their places at the very back of the trudging line. The climb itself took an hour, their packs weighing them down as the shale slid underfoot, threatening to roll their ankles despite high necks on their boots. Draysky shifted the straps on his shoulder as they cut off circulation to his arms, the sheer weight threatening to topple him over backward. As a chiseler, he carried water, the heaviest of the supplies. Better to exhaust a chiseler on the climb than to sap the strength from a productive pickaxer.
Beside him, Erki slipped, the shale kicking out from underneath his feet and skittering down the path, picking up other rocks on its journey to the bottom. He cursed, catching himself on a palm and stabilizing on the shifting ground, his breath coming in shallow pants as his other palm rested on his knee.
“Can’t find a damn foothold,” he panted, shifting, the rock crunching underfoot. Shale to the very bottom, the ridgers said when describing the mountain, like an enormous mound of churning rock. No surface was truly solid, no ledge a real purchase. Everything shifted or tumbled or slid. In the outpost below, the ridgers had collected the largest stones to make semi-permanent roads, or at least provide some stability on the sea of rock. But here, the largest had long tumbled far below, and all that was left were the sliders.
Draysky reached over, pulling the other boy up to his feet before the Keeper could take note.
“Don’t fall behind,” he warned, and they were crunching forward again. “We don’t want to start trouble on day one.”
“Pft. This shit is trouble for the rest of our lives. Ain’t like we are getting out of here,” said Erki, then he took off ahead. Erki’s family could always be seen haggling for the lowest scraps, their mother sending their children out into the snow to search for spice herbs that they could sell, though when Draysky saw them they always seemed to be sleeping against tree trunks. And among the ridgers, their arms were the lightest of shades stained by the dust.
Draysky picked up his pace, catching back up to Erki and the Keeper that walked just in front of him, remembering his father’s advice the night before.
“Stay within two arm’s lengths of a Keeper when moving. If there’s one person a Keeper will save in a rock slide, it’s themselves. And if the Keeper can’t keep himself safe, you’re already a dead man.”
“You’re saying they don’t just run?” Draysky had asked, and his father released a dry laugh.
“Can’t outrun a rockslide, son. If the rocks start moving, you go horizontal out of the path, across the mountain face, behind a Keeper. They
have their magics—the slides will split in front of them like a wedge, or stop entirely if they catch it early enough. If you run downhill, the rocks will catch you. Keep your eyes upward: You start to see dust, you take off.”
Now Draysky looked upward nervously every few steps, colliding once with the Keeper in front of him, who shoved his chest hard enough to nearly send him sprawling down the mountain. Beside him, Erki’s shallow breaths had turned to wheezing, and Draysky grimaced as the boy stumbled again, this time coughing as his knees hit shale. Too many naps, not enough walking, Draysky thought.
“You!” commanded Keeper Oliver, the same that had struck a man with his glove, turning to see Erki behind and pointing at Draysky. “You two are now partners. Either you both make it up the mountain, or neither of you do. I’ll not have us be a third short on water.”
Oliver took off walking again, and Draysky peered up the mountain face, searching for dust as his steps grew distant.
“Let’s go!” said Draysky, but Erki held up a hand.
“Not yet, I need a minute. I have to rest. Who cares, we’ll get up there eventually.”
“You can rest at the top! I’m not getting shalestruck down here.”
“Then go on without me.” Erki waved a dismissing hand, but both of them knew what would happen if Draysky directly disobeyed a Keeper’s order. Five lashings would be a mercy.
Draysky reached a hand down, clasping the other boy’s pack and yanking him to his feet despite his protests. Erki let his legs go limp, Draysky the only force holding him up, the pack straps pushing up under his chin to wrinkle his face.
“That’s how you’re going to be? Fine,” Draysky said, and he unclipped the front of the pack, dropping Erki hard enough to the ground for the other boy to yelp. Latching it to the straps of his current pack, he buckled it to his front, then started moving, his hands pushing down on his knees to give them extra power in the endless ramp of the trail. “Let’s move. We need to catch up.”
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