by J A Armitage
I glanced up the table at Lilian. Her eyes were the bluest. I wished they would land on me.
I took the wish back before it had fully formed; I didn’t want the duke to catch her looking.
As servants began clearing the dinner plates to make room for dessert, the king stood and cleared his throat. The hundreds of conversations around the room died out, and all eyes turned expectantly toward the head table. Some of their gazes landed on me from people curious about the palace gardener or, perhaps, hopeful that the winning lily might mean something favorable for the fate of their home.
King Alder said a few words, thanking everyone assembled for joining us in celebration and paying tribute to our honored foreign guests. And then he turned toward me.
“Mr. Gilding,” he said. “Would you please stand?”
My face flooded with heat. My stomach churned as if it wanted to reject every morsel of the delicious meal. I stood, keeping my fingertips on the table for stability.
“Mr. Deon Gilding has been a valued member of our staff for eighteen years now,” the king said.
Out in the crowd, I caught a flicker of movement. Hedley and Hyacinth were out there, and Hyacinth was giving me a tiny, excited wave and beaming at me as if she was trying to outshine the sun.
The nerves in my stomach settled just a little.
“Queen Rapunzel and I have had the honor of seeing him grow from a curious, intelligent boy to a young man of remarkable kindness and talent. He has served as our palace’s head gardener for the past year, and has been both the youngest to hold that position in the kingdom’s history and a worthy successor to our own valued Sheldon Hedley.”
The king inclined his head toward Hedley, who nodded in return.
“And now,” the king continued, “we have the honor of seeing him named the grand champion at this year’s Spring Flower Festival. At a time when our future feels uncertain, Mr. Gilding’s green thumb has given us hope.”
He raised his wine glass toward me. The heat in my face only grew, and I had a feeling I was turning as red as one of Lilian’s strawberries.
“To Deon Gilding,” the king said.
Hundreds of glasses raised toward me, and hundreds of voices repeated the toast.
I wanted to crawl in a hole and die.
“Thank you,” the king said to me, quietly enough that only those of us at the high table could hear.
A few seats away from him, the duke glared at me and crumpled a napkin in his hand.
12th April
I had planned to sleep in the next morning. It was the first chance I’d had in months to really rest, without a thousand festival tasks waiting for my attention the moment I opened my eyes.
But when the first gleaming of dawn filtered through the windows of my shed, my eyes popped open. Excitement coursed through me, running through my veins with my blood and forcing me from my bed.
I had won.
The king had come home.
A few plants were still alive on the palace grounds, safe within the confines of my private garden.
And perhaps, given everything that had happened, the duke wouldn’t dare try to fire me. Now that the first confused rush of winning the festival had passed, I was thinking clearly, and it was obvious that, of course, King Alder would never let his future son-in-law fire me.
He probably wouldn’t let me live in a shed, either. I made a mental note to inform him of my living conditions. But that could happen later. For now, I had energy—energy, I could try to harness.
I jumped up and threw on my clothes, then sat cross-legged on my manure bed with a few wilting sprigs of lavender in a glass jar filled with water. I’d plucked these last survivors of the blight from the garden a few days ago and left them in my shed, thinking that perhaps I could try to figure out if the magic that kept my private garden alive had attached itself to the garden or to me.
The results were inconclusive; the lavender hadn’t turned dull gray, but it hadn’t stayed as bright as it should have, either.
Of course, that could have been due to the depressing lack of sunlight in this shed.
No matter. My magic, whatever amount of it I had, should work on the things either way.
I held my hands a few inches away from the sprigs and closed my eyes. I burrowed my attention into the plants, trying to go deeper and deeper, from the surface of the delicate purple blooms to the cells that made them up to the water that supported the cells. There wasn’t much water left--the wilting was evidence of that--but I tried to feel for it anyway and for the core of bright energy that still ran through the center of the stems.
I breathed deeply and focused, slowly, the way I’d focused the lens of my science tutor’s microscope back when Lilian and I had studied botany together. I remembered the intricate green webs of leaves and the coral-like texture of pollen and the fine-bubbled texture of a rose petal, and I tried to get a sense for what this wilted lavender might look like up close.
Slowly, gently, I began to draw water up the stem. I tried to force the water into the plant’s cells, then stopped and backed off. That didn’t feel right; the lavender resisted me, in a strange way I couldn’t explain. I took another deep breath, then, feeling my way through the words as if I were saying a prayer to a goddess I’d never met, asked the flower to please take a drink.
The lavender seemed to inhale.
But it wasn’t taking in air. It was taking in water, sucking up moisture through its stem and letting it flood throughout the silvery leaves and the delicate blossoms.
I opened my eyes. Before me, in the dim light from the high windows, the lavender was straightening and stretching like it had been woken from a long sleep.
Joy flooded through me. I’d done it.
It was a small step, to be sure. Plants wanted water, and reviving a few wilted but healthy sprigs was nothing like curing a plant of a cursed blight.
But stars, it had still worked.
I kept my focus deep within the lavender, holding the strange connection I’d created with this plant. If I could ask it to drink, what else could I do?
I felt down toward the cut stems. Perhaps I could ask it to root. Perhaps I could propagate these cuttings and use my magic to protect them from the blight. Perhaps I could accelerate their growth and coax the plant to adulthood before the curse reached it, even without the help of enchanted glass. Perhaps--
The door burst open. I jumped. My connection with the lavender snapped like a taut string, and like taut string, the end of attention I’d been holding recoiled back toward me. A blinding headache crashed between my eyes, and my head throbbed.
I squinted against the too-bright light pouring in from the doorway.
“Reed, I was in the middle--”
I cut myself off.
That wasn’t Reed.
Duke Remington stared down at me, his eyebrows arched in distaste, and his lips twisted in a snarl.
He was so different from the polite man I’d first met in the gardens. He had rotted just as quickly as the blight, but I had a feeling his transformation had little to do with a curse. He was just a good actor, and I’d failed to see through his lies.
I hoped I’d seen all of him now. If there was an even worse monster buried beneath this facade, I feared for Lilian.
“Can I help you?” My voice was curt, even cruel. I didn’t recognize that tone; it wasn’t me.
The duke threw a newspaper at me. It hit my shoulder with a thwack and tumbled to the floor, sending loose sheaves across the dirty boards.
“Are you happy now?” the duke snarled. “Congratulations. Get ready to pack your bags, Mr. Gilding, and don’t expect to find a warm welcome elsewhere.”
I stared at him, but I couldn’t make sense of the words. I wasn’t about to bend over to pick up the newspaper. Taking my eyes off that monster was as good as asking for a thump to the head.
I stood and straightened my shoulders. He was a hair taller than me, but I was broader, and I had the muscle
s that came from years of hard work.
“Are you done?” I said.
He eyed me, sizing me up. Then, wisely, he seemed to realize his precious guards weren’t here to protect him.
“I hope you enjoyed your celebration last night,” he spat. “It was the last you’re likely to get.” He glanced at the papers spread across my floor. “It’s a shame,” he added, voice suddenly sickly sweet. “You had such a promising career ahead.”
He left as quickly as he’d come, slamming the door behind him and leaving me in darkness.
I bent to gather up the sheets of newspaper, then, after making sure the duke had actually left, cracked the door to give myself enough light to read by.
It wasn’t hard to figure out which article he had meant for me to read.
ACCUSATIONS OF CHEATING ROCK SPRING FLOWER FESTIVAL, read the headline splashed across the front page. Right underneath it was a huge picture of me, grinning like an idiot in the throne room between the enormous tulip trophy and my gleaming Gilded Lily.
The kingdom of Floris was rocked late last night by accusations of cheating at the Spring Flower Festival, the article read. Representatives from multiple kingdoms have accused Mr. Deon Gilding, the eighteen-year-old Head Gardener at the Palace of Tulis, of cheating in this year’s New Breeds flower competition. Mr. Gilding was named both New Breeds and Grand Champion winner at this year’s festival, a surprising decision in light of Floris’s recent struggles with the plant disease various horticultural experts are calling the Florian Blight or the Gray Death.
“The existence of the Gilded Lily in a nation everyone knows was crippled overnight is suspicious, to say the least,” said one source from Oz, who requested that her name be withheld. “Anyone who thinks that lily was real ought to come see me; I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell them.”
Minister Saffron Blackwood of the High Horticulture Council of Floris vehemently denied accusations that the lily was artificial.
“Every judge on the panel examined the Gilded Lily in detail,” she said in a statement early this morning. “We found no evidence that the plant was in any way faked, nor that it was enhanced by magical means not explicitly allowed by contest rules, which permit the use of unicorn manure, pixie dust, and other common biological additives.”
Some, however, claim that the festival judges themselves are to blame for the lily’s unfair win. Rumors of bribery abound, with the most prominent accuser coming straight from the palace itself.
“There’s no way the other judges were unbiased,” said Mr. Sorrel Valerian, a palace guard. “The discrepancy in judging makes that clear. A string of tens in any of the competitions is unusual, but that’s what Mr. Gilding got, aside from Duke James Remington’s score. I know Duke Remington personally. He’s a man of honor and as much of an expert in horticulture as many of the others on the panel. The fact that he scored Mr. Gilding’s lily so differently from the other judges gives me pause. Duke Remington is above bribery or blackmail. Can the same be said about the other judges?”
This morning, representatives from the nations of Atlantice, Elder, and The Forge have lodged a formal request for an inquiry into the Gilded Lily and Mr. Deon Gilding’s participation in the festival. Other nations are expected to lodge their own complaints in the coming days.
King Alder departed to Urbis via private train late last night and is not expected to return until Princess Lilian’s wedding on the eighteenth of this month. Other palace representatives could not be reached for comment.
I stared at the last paragraph, and the words seemed to blur before my eyes. Then I glanced back up at the paragraph from Valerian. He was one of the duke’s new guards. I wondered how much the duke had paid him to go to the papers.
Sticks and stones, I should have known it was too good to last. I threw the paper down onto my bed. On the shelf, my tulip trophy gleamed down at me in mockery, my winning Gilded Lily winked out its first hint of golden light through a crack in its otherwise tightly furled petals.
I had planned to send it up to the queen today as a gift, and then to send the next most-beautiful Gilded Lily in my private garden to Lilian.
Now, it seemed I would have to submit this one for scrutiny by every representative from every kingdom who put stock in these ridiculous rumors, all the while running the risk that the duke or one of his cronies would find a way to get to my flower. They’d do something to the bloom to make it seem less real and magical than it was. Such a thing wasn’t impossible. The duke had guards on his side; I had no doubt he could find an unscrupulous magician to do his bidding, too.
Outside, raised voices babbled in the distance. They grew closer until I could make out the slow, reasoned tones of the one and the tense comments of the other.
Reed barged through the cracked door without knocking. He met my gaze with his own grim expression. Behind him, Hedley stood with a face like thunder.
“I take it you’ve heard the news,” he said, taking in the papers on my bed.
I nodded wordlessly. All the joy and excitement I’d felt when I’d first woken up was gone, replaced by a dull ache that sat in the pit of my stomach. The feeling was as heavy and gray as lead, or perhaps blight.
“The press is here.” Reed’s jaw tightened. “You’re expected in the throne room.”
My first press conference had passed in a quick blur of excitement and surprise. During this one, I felt every moment.
I stood in front of the assembled reporters, who filled the throne room in quickly arranged wooden seats, with their notebooks and cameras at the ready. A flashbulb went off, and, like the first person to start a round of applause, it triggered several more to follow. I flinched back and blinked against the brightness.
“What do you say about the allegations that you brought a false lily to the flower festival competition?” someone shouted.
Lord Agave, the palace’s Officer of the Press, gripped his Forge-made microphone. “Mr. Gilding will read a prepared statement,” he said, and the enchantment on the microphone threw a blanket of silence over everyone else in the room, leaving his words alone to ring through the space. “There will be plenty of time for questions later. You may take photographs, but please keep flashbulbs off until after the press conference.”
I nodded my thanks, and he acknowledged the nod but didn’t smile.
I shifted from foot to foot and looked down at the paper that had been thrust at me before I’d entered the throne room.
“I am here to deny any rumors or accusations of cheating at the Spring Flower Festival,” I read. “My festival entry adhered to all restrictions and requirements and is a flower whose properties are all biological and inherent.”
“But what about the blight?” someone called.
I looked up sharply. The gears in my head spun. I couldn’t tell them about my magic. Not yet, and especially not with the duke sitting in the front row with an awful grin on his face, his parents on either side with their arms folded and the same expression on their faces. On the duke’s other side, Lilian sat, her face pale, and her hands clenched tightly in her lap.
“As you will know if you’ve been paying attention to palace statements, we’ve had some luck using enchanted glass domes to protect plants from the effects of the blight,” I said. They could interpret that how they would.
“So you kept your flowers alive and let the rest of the kingdom die?” someone spat.
I opened my mouth, but Lord Agave shook his head at me and gestured discreetly at my paper: Stick to the statement.
I looked back down and kept reading. “The Horticulture Council of Floris, as well as all delegates from the twelve kingdoms nominated to serve as judges in the competitions, were unanimous in agreeing that my Gilded Lily is a real, legitimate breed of flower and was subject to no tampering. I also absolutely deny any allegations of attempting to bribe, blackmail, or otherwise influence the judges. Thank you.”
That word, unanimously, glared at me from the paper. It hadn’t
been unanimous. The duke was the one spreading these rumors.
But, of course, he wouldn’t be foolish enough to do that on his own.
“Why did Duke Remington give you such a low score?” someone shouted.
Lord Agave stepped to the microphone. “Keep order.” He waited for a long moment, then looked out at the assembled crowd with warning on his face. “Mr. Gilding is now open for questions. One at a time, please.”
This said, he nodded at the person who’d spoken before. She stood and cleared her throat.
“Mr. Gilding,” she said, now that she had the attention of the whole room. “There was an obvious discrepancy in the judges’ scores. If you deny that you cheated or attempted to influence the judges, how do you explain Duke Remington’s decision to give you such an unusually low score?”
I glanced at the duke. He narrowed his eyes at me, daring me to speak.
I couldn’t say anything about him, not here. Not when everyone was already prepared to tear me into pieces. Launching a verbal attack on the future king of Floris wasn’t going to get me in anyone’s good graces.
“I can’t speak for Duke Remington’s decision,” I said. “However, the detailed scoring sheets given to me after the competition indicate that His Grace thought the Gilded Lily was too flashy and lacked originality, given the similarity in its coloring to the common gilded goldenrod. I can only conclude the discrepancy in scores came down to a matter of personal taste.”
The duke looked like a cat who’d just caught a bird. I wanted to punch the smug look right off his face. I clenched my fist on the edge of the lectern instead.
The reporter who’d asked the question didn’t look entirely satisfied, but she sat back down. A dozen hands flew into the air, and Lord Agave pointed at one of them.
