by J A Armitage
Hedley nodded slowly, the movements keeping a regular time against the irregular jolts of the cart against the cobblestones. We were passing through the city now, where the blight was only visible in the empty window boxes and the small gray lawns and bushes that had once brought life to the homes along this route.
“I’ve seen your entry,” Hedley said. “You have a shot.”
A shot. It wasn’t a guarantee. But nothing in life came with guarantees, especially not when the Duke Remingtons of the world were in charge.
“This is my last chance,” I said. “I couldn’t protect the gardens. I couldn’t save Lilian. I couldn’t even earn the respect of my gardening staff. The one thing I’ve managed to do since this nightmare started is to keep those flowers alive. If I’m going to go down in history as the palace’s worst gardener, I want the record to show that I did one thing right.”
Hedley smiled a little, the gesture tightening the apples in his cheeks. “You’ve done plenty right, my boy. You’ve just had a bad year. Don’t let it sour you. You’re a good gardener and a good man. No one could have handled this crisis better.”
That was far from the truth. Thinking back, I could think of a dozen things I should have done differently. I should have plucked out the blight the instant it appeared, instead of waiting until the next morning. I should have seen who Duke Remington was, instead of being blinded by his gracious manners like everyone else. I should have gone to see the queen the moment she fell ill, should have put my foot down with Linden and Chervil and all the other gardeners instead of letting them walk all over me, and I should have run away with Lilian when she’d given me the chance.
I was in a situation as dire as any I could imagine, and it was my choices and failures that had led me here.
I had only a few hurdles left on which I could try to prove myself. There was the festival, feeble as it was likely to be this year. And there was the flower competition, which would pit me against the best gardeners and breeders in the world combined with Duke Remington, the last man on earth to give me a fair chance.
“You’re going to do just fine today,” Hedley said. He leaned back and tapped his suspenders. “And if not, I suppose I can always find you a job out in Goldenrod shoveling manure or running Hyacinth’s errands.”
I tried to give him a severe look, but couldn’t stop myself from chuckling. “That’s low.”
“Wouldn’t want you to think no one’s looking out for you.”
“She wouldn’t even let me run errands; she’d just feed me until I looked like a kingdom pig.”
“It’s the only thing you’ll be good for if you don’t win this contest,” Hedley said with a serious shake of his head. “Seeing as how you’re past your prime and all. The Shame of Floris. The worst human being to ever mar this great land. The first man since the infamous Lord of Larceny and his great tulip con to truly bring ignominy upon the royal family of Floris. The greatest disappoi--”
I plucked a clod of dirt from the floor of the cart and threw it at him. It hit one of his suspenders and bounced onto his lap in a shower of dust while he grinned at me.
“All right,” I said. “You don’t have to go on about it.”
He winked, and the cart slowed to a stop before the festival ground gates.
Given the dull gray of the blight, a black-and-white garden seemed in bad taste. But we’d been planning and growing flowers for this display for a year, and we had too few displays to back out of anything now.
A bed of onyx tulips and midnight calla lilies danced together from their pristine white pots. Black satin irises fluttered in the breeze, and black widow columbines stretched their pointed spurs in every direction. Snow ivy crawled up an oiled ebony trellis, and striped black-and-white hellebores clustered alongside beetle pansies and void roses. Throughout the display, white petunias and hibiscus added light from their gleaming black pots.
A chessboard of alternating patches of stone clover and white candytuft stood in front of the display, covered in chess pieces made of wire grown over with black and white moss. Similar moss-covered sculptures as high as my knees sat to either side, shaped to look like a pair of skunks considering the board and reaching toward the pieces.
I set the last pawn onto its place on the board, and the apprentice helping me carefully pinned it into the ground with a curved metal stake.
I stepped back and took in the view. The blooms were big enough to stand out from their green foliage, and the solid-colored pots added to the overall effect.
“I like it,” I announced.
On the other side of the display, arranging the climbing vines of a variegated shadow rose, Hollis pursed her lips.
“It’s not what it should have been,” she said.
Briar, one of the younger gardeners, shoved her hands into the pockets of her sturdy overalls. “It’ll have to do,” she said. “It’s not as though we’ve got anything else.”
I frowned at her. It really did look good. I’d seen black-and-white gardens before, and this one held its own. “Why the long face?”
She sighed. “Sorry. It’s just been a long couple of weeks. I never thought one of our flower festivals was going to go like this. I don’t even have a display to contribute this year.”
We’d had to completely scrap her forest of miniature flowering trees. Too many of them had died, and her one remaining apple tree was under lock and key in her chambers back at the palace. We didn’t have any reason to believe bringing flowers indoors would stop the blight from spreading, but I had a hard time blaming her from wanting to keep it close.
“Not having anything is better than having a display like mine,” Hollis said. “I’ve been coming over here every week since autumn to grow the rose maze, and now, it’s so thinned out, it doesn’t even qualify as a maze. It’s just a sad little walk.”
“It’s still something,” I said. “Your Thornton reds are still better than any in the kingdom.”
Of course, the Thornton reds had survived. They were Duke Remington’s preferred flower.
“That’s nice of you to say,” Hollis said, although she clearly didn’t believe a word of it.
Mace arrived a moment later, carrying a shallow box precariously loaded with waxy white geraniums in black pots.
“This is the last of them.” Holding out the box for Hollis and Briar, who took the first two pots and arranged them in their places among the other flowers, Mace glanced at me.
I rankled under his sidelong gaze.
“The tea garden is almost finished,” he said as if he’d rather not be speaking to me at all. “Glad the tea bushes arrived in time, humiliating as it is to have to ship them from outside Floris.”
I grimaced. “We’ve all had to make concessions this year.”
“I’m not complaining,” he said in a patronizing tone. “It’s just that one doesn’t really expect Floris to have to source the plants for its displays from elsewhere.”
“One doesn’t expect blight, either,” I said tersely. “We do the best we can.”
“Of course, no one would ever argue with that,” Mace said. “I just wonder if maybe there had been a better way to handle this festival than to try to make it go off like it always does.”
“No one needs your backhanded comments, Mace,” Briar said tersely.
He stepped back as if she’d slapped him. He’d always had a flair for the dramatic. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Briar. If you want to interpret my comments in a negative way, that’s your decision. It’s not my fault if you choose to be offended.”
“Oh, shut up,” she muttered.
Hollis clucked her tongue, caught Briar’s eye, and shook her head.
Briar rolled her eyes. “No, I’m sick of listening to you acting like this is anybody’s fault. This entire festival is a nettle-stung disaster. We all know it. But those of us with functioning brains also know we need to band together if we want any hope of not humiliating ourselves in front of the entire wo
rld.”
“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” Mace snapped. “This is already an embarrassment. We all know what a Spring Flower Festival is supposed to look like.” He swept a hand toward the festival grounds. “This isn’t it.”
“The grounds look fine,” Hollis said. “There are fewer displays than usual. So what? The rose maze looks bad, I’ll admit that, and we had to source plants from outside Floris. It’s not the end of the world.” She glanced at me, and it was clear she was trying to back me up, even if that meant taking a position she didn’t really buy into.
She thought the festival was a failure. But what did that matter? I thought the festival was likely to be a failure, but I was here anyway, doing what I could to make the best of the situation.
“Briar is right,” I said. “Either we work together without complaining, or we may as well not bother.”
“I was leaning toward not bother,” Mace muttered.
Briar’s hands balled into fists. “Mace, I swear to the fairies, I will--”
“Stop it.” My voice was hard; it had taken on an edge of authority I wasn’t used to wielding. “We’re wasting time bickering. People have already traveled across the world for our festival. We can’t just ignore this event. So either everyone here needs to stop feeling sorry for themselves and get to work, or you can decide this isn’t the right career for you and go home.”
I met each of their gazes in turn. Hollis pursed her lips and gave me a tight nod. Briar chewed on the inside of her cheek, sighed, and then she nodded, too.
Mace held my gaze for a long moment, a simpering little smile on his lips, but finally, he broke eye contact, and the smile faltered.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll do my best. But I’m just trying to look out for you, Mr. Gilding. You’re the Head Gardener. People are ultimately going to hold you responsible for all of this.” He gripped the edges of his box tightly enough that his fingers paled. “I just think, maybe, that you should consider skipping the competitions and festivities this time around. Go home after the opening ceremonies. People are going to have some unkind things to say about Floris’s offerings this year. I just thought that maybe you’d want to avoid hearing that.”
I didn’t like Mace. I knew Hedley would have taken objection to his suggestions, and Lilian would have given him a talking-to he wouldn’t soon forget.
To me, though, the words made sense. They sounded an awful lot like the ones that kept creeping into my mind in quiet moments.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Briar said, snapping me back to the conversation. She looped her thumb behind one strap of her overalls and made a face at Mace like he was a particularly dim child who had just suggested one of us go solve the blight by dancing on the moon. “Deon’s the one good thing we’ve got going for us.” She held out her hands and wiggled her fingers. “Give me that box. I’m sure you have some apprentices to bother.”
“Briar.” I put a hand on the back of my neck and furrowed my brow at her. “Come on. Teamwork. Remember?”
“I’m doing my best.” She grabbed the box from Mace, and the few remaining pots rattled. She caught my eye, and so quickly I almost missed it, winked. She spun around, and Hollis, who seemed happy enough to escape the conversation, hurried to help her place the last few plants.
Mace clasped his hands behind his back. “I’m only trying to look out for you.”
“I appreciate that.” I gave him a smile as insincere as the ones he usually gave me. “And I’d appreciate it even more if you could make sure the bulb cases in the tulip tents are being arranged properly.”
He searched my face, trying to figure out if I was arguing with him or not. For someone as indirect as Mace, every conversation, no matter how innocent, came with the possibility of a veiled attack.
Living like that sounded exhausting.
I widened my smile, and this time it was for real. “I know the festival isn’t what it should be,” I said, more gently. “But we’re all going to do our best, and I know that includes you. Thanks for caring so much about the kingdom’s reputation. It’s good to know you’re so passionate about your work.”
My sincerity seemed to confuse him even more. He hesitated.
“Thanks,” he finally mumbled, and he wandered off toward the tulip tents.
I bit back a smile and watched him go.
Hedley had been watching the whole thing. I didn’t realize it until I turned around, but then, his slight smile was impossible to miss.
He waved me over, and I fell into step with him. I expected him to make some quiet comment about how Mace had always been hard to manage or a confirmation that the black and white garden did, in fact, look all right.
Instead, he leaned in so only I could hear him.
“Mace is right,” he said. “You should go back to the palace after the opening ceremonies.”
I stopped in my tracks. “Why would you say that?”
Hedley had always been my biggest supporter, aside from maybe Lilian. I had worked so hard to make sure the festival was as good as it could be under the circumstances. And now he was siding with Mace?
“Are the rest of the grounds so bad?” I said. “They’re not what they should be, I know that, but we’ve been working hard, and I think we’ve done a decent job--”
Hedley cut me off with a sharp shake of his head. “It’s not the festival,” he said. “It’s the duke. He’ll be at the event all day.”
I snorted. “Very funny. If you think I’m going to run and hide from Duke Remington, you’ve seriously underestimated the level of pure contempt I have for that man.”
“It’s a sentiment I share,” he said, still quiet. He stopped speaking as we passed a group of gardeners, their arms laden with wire and greenery. Linden was in the group, and he gave me a very slight nod as they passed.
Hedley turned onto a walkway that quickly gave way to a bridge that floated at almost surface level with an artificial lake, and I stayed with him. Beautiful sea grape bushes rose up from the water, their branches heavy with fruit, and a merman who was arranging saltwater lilies waved as we crossed the lake.
On the other side, the path reached land again and abruptly descended and twisted back the way we’d come, this time as a wide ramp sloping gently underground.
The air cooled as soon as the last traces of daylight disappeared. Blue light danced on the walls of the dark corridor ahead of us, and then the path opened onto the Atlantice Tunnel.
A glass ceiling curved above our heads, revealing a vibrant underwater world on every side. The Atlanticeans had outdone themselves this year. A few humans and merpeople had arrived a week ago to establish plants in the lake’s sandy bottom. Now, brilliantly colored fish darted between swaying ribbons of bull kelp and an octopus slept in the crevice between boulders. Its arms curled and drifted in the underwater currents. I wondered what filled its dreams.
Other than the sea creatures and the merman, whose tail I could see far overhead, we were alone in this bubble, and the glass would protect us from curious ears.
“I think you need to go back to the palace after the opening ceremonies,” Hedley repeated, “because Duke Remington will be here, filling in for the king. And if Duke Remington is here, he will not be there.”
I let out a sharp breath. Of course. I was a fool.
“If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to speak with Lilian, this is the best one you’ll get. I can get word to her easily enough to claim a headache and retire to the palace, and chances are good the duke’s new cronies will be too busy escorting him around the festival grounds to realize they’re leaving their posts at the palace unguarded.”
It was a brilliant idea and the only chance I’d get for a moment alone with Lilian.
It was also impossible.
“I can’t leave the festival,” I said. “Not until the flower competition is over.”
Hedley’s eyebrows drew down a little. “I think the current situation warrants you missing a flow
er contest.”
“Not this year,” I said. “Not when I might win. You know I have a chance. You’ve seen my flowers.”
“It’s not a question of whether you’ve got what it takes.” His lips thinned a little. “It’s a matter of priorities.”
I shook my head. In the distance, past Hedley’s shoulder, a school of dazzling silver anchovies flitted by, followed by the sparkling flowers of silver seagrass that drifted through the water in their wake.
“It’s not about me.” I tasted the lie on my tongue as soon as I said it, and I shook my head quickly. “I mean, it is about me, I’m an idiot and a liar if I claim my ego’s not in this somewhere. But it’s also about Floris. Everyone already knows we’re struggling. What if we lose the flower competition for the first time in the festival’s history?”
Hedley tucked a thumb behind his suspenders. “That’s a point,” he admitted.
“Everything is riding on me winning this,” I said. “I represent the palace and the royal family. If I don’t win, how’s that going to reflect on them? There’s already talk of other kingdoms refusing to renew their contracts with some of our flower producers. Enchantia is already in talks to cancel its annual order of snow lily bulbs. You know how much money that brings in.”
Hedley didn’t like it, that much was clear. He pursed his lips and made a thoughtful tutting sound.
“There’s too much at stake,” I said. “I have to be here.”
Hedley was silent for a long moment, thoughts steadily forming in his head like seedlings peeking out of the soil and unfurling their leaves. I knew this process, and I waited.
“I could try to talk to her,” he finally offered. “Find out what she knows, pass it to you.”
“That could help,” I said. “You know as much about this as anyone.”
“She won’t tell me as much as she’d tell you,” he said. “I might get the facts, but I won’t get her real opinions. She’s forever the princess, even with me.”
I smiled, and something in me softened. “She knows her duty,” I said. “Always, no matter what it costs her.”
