by J A Armitage
I pressed my tongue to the back of my front teeth, hard. Words I shouldn’t say fought their way up, and I shoved them back down. Duke Markus shifted just a hair forward, and I edged back so I wouldn’t give in to the urge to shove him that was building in my arms.
“Yes, Your Grace.” I didn’t sound like myself. This person was angry and as cold as the duchess.
Perhaps it wasn’t Lilian changing I had to worry about, after all.
“I’ll bring them to the florists the night before the wedding,” I said, keeping my voice on the tightest possible rein. “You’ll want them as fresh as possible.”
“You’ll do it today. The florists need time to do their work. And besides, we can’t have you doing something to the flowers just to spite my son.”
I took a deep, silent breath. “Yes, Your Grace.”
The duchess held her arm out, and her husband took it. She gave me a smile that didn’t go anywhere near her eyes. “You made a good choice not to cross me, Mr. Gilding. Whatever the Council decides, you’d do well to remember that you are still a servant.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Know your place, Mr. Gilding.” She cut her eyes at me. “You’re lucky to be here at all.”
I snipped the stem of a gorgeous blood peony and put it in the bucket I’d filled with cold water and pixie dust. Hedley added another of the giant red flowers and covered the bucket with the largest bell jar we’d been able to find while we moved to the next flowerbed.
“I hate her,” I said. “I thought I hated the duke, but I really hate his mother.”
“You don’t hate anyone,” Hedley said. “You’re not capable of it.”
He was teasing me, or trying to, but the lightness in his voice sounded forced.
“What does Hyacinth think of all this?”
“Hyacinth is inclined to murder anyone who so much as looks at you wrong.” Hedley knelt next to a trellis covered in amethyst sweet peas. “Any use in cutting these? I can’t imagine they’d hold up well in bouquets.”
“They’re delicate.” I stared at the curling green vines and the jewel-like purple flowers. Their fragrance was light and almost too sweet. This was how springtime was supposed to smell in Floris. “Lilian loves sweet peas,” I finally said. “Cut them.”
Hedley didn’t argue, just took his shears to the fragile stems and began clipping them with care.
The sound of the blades rubbing against one another made me wince every time. I would have gladly given up this garden to Lilian.
But not for her wedding. Not like this.
“I think I’m going to ask if the Horticulture Council will let me work on the enchanted glass efforts after this,” I said. “They seem to be on my side. Minister Blackwood is, anyway, and Minister Yarrow will be once she’s confirmed my lily is real.”
“I thought you were planning to run away to Atlantice?”
I lugged the bucket over, then knelt next to Hedley and began trimming the thread-like sweet pea vines. “I can’t leave. I won’t be allowed to see Lilian after this, but I won’t be able to keep an eye on her from Atlantice.”
“You think you’ll be able to keep an eye on her?” he said. “Sounds painful.”
I snipped a vine and placed it carefully in the water, draping the stem over the bucket’s edge. Several of the flowers weren’t blooming just yet; they would be perfect when the wedding arrived.
“Everything’s painful.” The words should have sounded dramatic and self-indulgent. But Hedley only nodded in silence as if he agreed.
I sat back on my heels. “You’re worried, aren’t you?”
He cut another vine and handed it to me so I could put it in the bucket but didn’t meet my eyes.
“I’m worried,” he said after a moment. “The blight’s taken the farthest reaches of the kingdom. The flowers in this garden are the only ones for hundreds of miles, as far as I can figure. Over half the flowers in the kingdom are gray, and crops are failing everywhere but at the farthest coasts. It’s only a matter of time.”
“At least, it’s spring,” I said. “It’s not too late to start new food crops.”
“Assuming we can grow enough of them under glass,” he said. “Assuming our greenhouse idea works.”
“It should. The bell jars do.”
“As far as we know,” he said. “It might not stop the blight, only slow it. Enough time hasn’t passed to tell.”
“You’re not making me feel any better about this, Hedley,” I said.
He sighed. “Not helping myself much, either. We’re far away from most of the other kingdoms, at least. There’s no word of the blight spreading beyond our borders. If we’re going to fall apart, maybe with luck, we won’t take the rest of the kingdoms with us.”
“This is getting cheerier and cheerier.”
“I’ll put in a good word with the Council for you,” he said. He snipped the last sweet pea vine and handed it to me. The bed in front of us looked like it had gotten a bad haircut, with only a scattering of spiky green stems to indicate the beauty that had been here moments before.
“I wish I’d discovered my magic earlier,” I said. “Maybe I could have done something about all this. I doubt I’ll ever be good enough to stop the blight, but I’ll bet I could figure out how to turn the duke into a toad, given enough time.”
I picked up the bucket with its bell jar and dragged it awkwardly down the path to a bed filled with swaying orange silk poppies. I loved looking at them. I felt starved for color these days.
“With all due respect to His Grace, I don’t think he needs to be turned into a toad,” Hedley muttered. “Although that might be an insult to toads.”
There was a distinct kind of pleasure in knowing Hedley disliked the same people I did. I grinned and dropped to my knees at the edge of the poppy bed.
We worked in silence for a while, and then Hedley leaned back with a grunt and rolled his shoulders. “I don’t know how this is all going to shake out,” he said. “I worked at this palace for a long time and saw a lot of changes. I can usually predict how a thing will go. This breaks all the rules.” He rubbed his chin and looked over at me. “I hope you figure out your magic, too. Or maybe we ought to take another look at that witch the queen thinks is responsible.”
“I don’t have enough power to take down a witch.”
He was silent for a long moment. The gears were turning in his head at their own pace, and, as always, I waited.
“You can’t kill her,” he finally said. “But a crossbow might.”
He sounded like he was trying to figure out the best solution for a beetle infestation. I laughed. Nothing about it was funny. Nothing about this situation had been funny in a long time.
But the world was all shaken up, and Hedley was still here, solving problems in his own ponderous way, and something about it was hilarious.
Hedley gave me a concerned look, one of his bushy eyebrows drawn up. I only laughed harder and slipped from my crouch hard onto my backside.
“It’s not funny,” I said, laughing.
“You need a drink,” Hedley said flatly. “The pressure’s turned you mad.”
He was right. I’d gone crazy, and the world was going to hell.
It was what it was.
I just kept laughing.
Everything was stupid.
My bout of laughter, combined with the devastating sight of my garden without a single flower in it except for a few of my prized lilies--which were not going to Duchess Annemie, no matter what threats came my way--was enough to knock something loose in my head.
Suddenly, all these problems--these dramatic, awful problems--seemed ridiculous. The normalcy of my life was over, and all that was left was an obnoxious family from Thornton, an empty outdoor room where a garden should have been, and the absolute knowledge in the pit of my stomach that I had to do everything in my power to stop this blight.
Even if that meant breaking into the queen’s bedchamber.
Y
ou’ll get caught, warned the cautious little voice in my head.
But so what? I’d lose my job? The love of my life would marry the worst man on earth? My kingdom would turn gray, and I’d get accused of cheating in the Spring Flower Festival, and everything I’d ever worked for would be as dead as the flowers of Floris?
At this point, getting thrown in the dungeons would be a welcome break.
Getting into the palace ended up being easier than I’d expected. After all, I was working under orders of Duchess Annemie, and who in these circumstances was going to stop the man whose arms were full of fresh, living flowers?
“These get delivered straight from my hands to the Head Florists’ or not at all,” I said firmly to the guard at the front doors who tried to stop me. “I’m not going to risk one of you blockheads crushing these amethyst sweet peas. Do you have any idea how delicate these blooms are? The vines alone are--”
“You can go in,” the guard interrupted with an annoyed scowl. “Straight to the florists’ chamber, then straight back, do you hear?”
“What, you don’t want to put an armed guard on me?”
I regretted the words immediately, but, for the first time in a month, luck was with me.
“Guards are all at the docks searching festival visitors,” he growled. “Can’t have blight leave our shores.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Smart idea. Must not have been yours.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I’d gone too far. But I’d been talking back to Remington’s guards for a while now; it would be suspicious if I let up today.
“Florist’s chamber,” he barked. “Then out.”
I gave him a mock salute, which wasn’t easy given the two enormous buckets hanging from my arms and the giant bell jars strapped to my back. I looked like the world’s strangest beetle, and I could see the guard trying to formulate a remark that would condemn me for it. But my feet worked faster than his brain, and I was inside the entrance hall before he’d figured out the words.
I hurried the flowers to the florists’ chamber. The open, airy space had once been filled with colorful blooms on every day of the year, and the Head Florist herself had once commanded an army of assistants who made arrangements, placed them around the palace, sent them to local nobles and charities with the royal family’s compliments, and traded out bouquets the moments they started to wilt.
Now, that same army sat in the room, along with several of my apprentices, painting rocks. Everyone was chatting, but the atmosphere in the room was oppressive. It seemed they all felt the same way I did about replacing living flowers with painted stones.
The gloom lifted when I entered the room. Several pairs of widened eyes stared at me, and the Head Florist rushed forward, looking like I was about to hand her one of Lilian’s newborn puppies.
“How?” she stammered. “Where?”
“We managed to keep a few back for the wedding,” I lied. “These are the last you’ll see in a while. Treat them well and keep them under the glass as much as you can.”
She took one of the buckets from me, and her assistants rushed forward to relieve me of the other bucket and the jars. They touched the blooms like they were priceless jewels--and, to even the most average Florian, these were more precious.
I slipped from the room before my apprentices could get too curious about my appearance in the castle and slipped into one of the narrow servants’ corridors. It led me to Lilian’s room, and I let myself into our old schoolroom and then found her in the conservatory. She was sitting with a book but staring out the window instead of at the pages.
“Lils,” I whispered.
She jumped and spun around. The book tumbled to the floor as she rushed at me. Her arms flew around me, and she nuzzled her face into the hollow of my shoulder. The magnolia scent of her hair dazzled me.
“What are you doing here?”
“I need your help,” I whispered. “I need to get into your mother’s rooms.”
She searched my face for a brief moment.
“Don’t talk to her about Garritt,” she said. “I don’t want to worry her. I can handle him.”
“I need to ask her about the blight,” I said. “How we can fight it.”
Lilian gave me a brisk nod. “I’ll distract the guard.”
A few moments later, we were one corridor down from the queen’s chambers. I crouched behind a massive, now-empty golden vase, and Lilian, halfway down the corridor from me, threw herself to the floor and started screaming.
The guard was at her side in an instant. Lilian clutched her ankle and wailed about having twisted it, dramatically enough that I was surprised he believed her.
As soon as I was sure he was focused on the princess, I sprinted down the corridor and to the queen’s door. I slipped inside and shut it silently behind me, then rested against the door and waited for my heartbeat to slow.
When I glanced up, the queen was looking at me from a sofa with her eyebrows raised and an amused smile playing on her lips.
“It’s good to see you too,” she said lightly.
Her hair was wrapped in a pink scarf today, patterned with cherry blossoms on delicate branches. Despite the gray peeking from beneath the silk, she appeared healthy. Her skin had its usual glow; her cheeks held their usual flush.
“Your Majesty.”
I dropped into an awkward, too-sudden bow. Her smile twitched.
“Are you and Lilian playing hide-and-seek?” she asked lightly. “I remember that being a great favorite about ten years ago.”
It had been a favorite. The castle was enormous; even when we’d restricted the game to a single wing or floor, it could take us hours to find one another. Once Lilian had tracked me to the inside of an old oak chest, only to discover me fast asleep atop some priceless woven heirlooms. She’d called me Tapestry Boy for a week.
“She did help me get in here,” I said.
“Have a seat,” she said, patting the couch beside her.
It should have been uncomfortable, a grubby gardener sitting like an equal next to a beautiful queen. But Queen Rapunzel had always made me feel at home. I settled next to her, and she held out a hand. I took it.
“You’re still strong,” I said, watching the tendons shift under her creamy skin as she squeezed my hand.
“I’m not sick,” she said. “But I suppose you already figured that out.”
I looked at her more carefully, and she gave my hand another squeeze.
“Lilian has never been able to keep from spilling all her secrets to her best friend,” she said. “I suppose she told you she came to see me?”
I nodded.
“I’m quite all right. We weren’t certain what would happen when the gray reached my head, but it seems to be… nothing.” She pulled at the scarf, and it slipped easily from her hair, which was still long, gray, and dull as rough stone. “But Alder and I agree, I can’t be seen like this. Not when the kingdom is already under such stress.”
“That’s all?” I said. “You’re just hiding your hair?”
I frowned at her. That didn’t seem like enough to keep someone like Queen Rapunzel locked in this room for so long.
“I wouldn’t think you’d be willing to get locked in a tower again,” I said cautiously. “Not over something so simple.”
She started, and her hand slipped away from mine. The queen’s gaze darted back and forth between my eyes. Her eyes were as blue as her daughter’s, but darker, the way Lilian’s sometimes looked under the dappled shade of a tree.
“You know, then,” she said. “About my history. Who told you?”
“Hedley.”
The fine lines on her forehead softened. “Oh, of course. Yes, he was there for all of it.”
“Is that why you’re hiding?” I said. “Is that why you’re staying up here, really? Are you trying to hide from the witch?”
She blinked a few times as if she wasn’t sure how to take the question. I tensed, worried I’d insulted her.
&n
bsp; “I don’t think I could hide from Gothel,” she said at last. “She knows who I married. And she was always so overprotective. I daresay she’s kept a closer eye on me than anyone would assume.” She twisted the silk scarf in her lap. “No, I’m not hiding from Gothel. I’m trying to hide Gothel from the rest of the kingdom.”
I squinted at her, trying to make sense of it. She let out a heavy sigh.
“It’s my fault the flowers are dying,” she said. “If Gothel is causing this--and I’m almost sure she is--then she’s doing it to spite me.”
“Would she do that?” I said. “After so long?”
The queen looked steadily at me. “No one else’s hair has turned gray.”
I bit my lip. This was no great mystery, then, if the queen and Hedley’s suspicions were to be believed. A single wicked witch in the forest was responsible for all of this.
It was simple. And the solution was simple, too.
“What can we do?” I said. “How do we find her?”
The queen’s jaw tensed. “We don’t,” she said.
I stared at her. On the side table beside her end of the couch, a bouquet of silk roses sat in a crystal vase.
Florians never used silk flowers, not for ordinary decorations. Their presence here felt artificial and sickly.
“We have to destroy her,” I said. “We have to stop the blight.”
“We will not.” The queen’s voice was firm, almost harsh. Then, slowly, her face fell. “Not until we’ve tried everything else,” she added softly. “She’s dangerous, Deon, terribly so. And in spite of it all--she’s my mother.”
She stared at me, willing me to understand.
And I didn’t understand, not really.
But I loved the queen, and I trusted her.
“We’re going to just fight against her magic, then,” I said. “Not her.”
Queen Rapunzel’s face relaxed. “That’s my hope.”
