Elia
Elia Wren had always believed love was a luxury, much like sugared violets, imported oranges, and rent paid before the landlord knocked.
This opinion was not popular in Aurelune.
It was especially unpopular in the Rootwards on the first morning of Choosing Week, when every window in Marrowmere had been bullied into festivity by ribbons, garlands, painted hearts, and paper portraits of Prince Christopher Marlowe looking devastatingly handsome in a way that suggested he had never once scrubbed mould from a kettle.
Elia had scrubbed mould from a kettle that morning.
She had also burned her thumb, argued with a customer about heartbreak tonic, and discovered that the moonflower cutting in her back room was dying.
The last problem concerned her most.
“Don’t you dare,” she told the plant.
The moonflower did not respond. Plants were better company than people, but they did have the disadvantage of being smug in silence.
Elia crouched beside the worktable, skirts tucked beneath her knees, and pushed aside seed packets, twine, and unpaid bills. The cutting sat in a cracked blue pot near the window. Its leaves should have been silver-veined and firm, curled at the edges like fingers half-closing around a secret.
Instead, they drooped over the rim in a tragic little collapse.
One petal had browned at the tip.
“That is melodramatic,” Elia said. “And unnecessary.”
She touched the soil with two fingers.
Cold.
Too cold.
The shop was warm from the stove, but the soil carried a chill like cellar stone.
Elia’s annoyance sharpened into attention.
The bell over the front door gave a frantic jangle.
“Elia!”
“Mara,” Elia called, without looking up, “if you have come to tell me the prince has smiled at another balcony, I shall poison your tea.”
“You say that as though it would stop me.”
Mara Thistlewick burst through the curtain, bringing printer’s ink, street dust, and fried honey-cakes. She was short, round-cheeked, bright-eyed, and wearing a green ribbon in her hair at such a violent angle that it looked less like decoration and more like a tiny flag of rebellion.
In one hand she carried The Blooming Gazette. In the other, a paper bag darkening with grease.
Elia looked at the bag first.
“If those are honey-cakes, you may live.”
“They were honey-cakes. Then Mrs Barlow accused me of insulting the royal romance by not looking cheerful enough.”
“You do have an insulting face.”
“I have an honest face. The public hates that.”
Mara dropped the newspaper onto the worktable. The headline bloomed across the front page in ornamental script.
PRINCE KIT BEGINS HIS FINAL SUMMER OF FREEDOM!
Beneath it was an illustration of Prince Christopher “Kit” Marlowe on a palace balcony, hair swept artfully back, smile bright enough to cause crop growth in three counties.
Elia gave the portrait a glance.
He was, unfortunately, handsome.
Not in the stern, marble-nosed way favoured by old kings and rich men who thought cheekbones were a moral achievement. Kit Marlowe looked alive. That was the problem. His grin had a lopsided edge, as though he had heard the joke half a second before everyone else and forgiven them for being slow.
Elia turned the newspaper over so he could be handsome at the table.
Mara made a wounded sound. “Must you be so violent with the nation’s beloved?”
“He’ll survive. He has cheekbones and a palace.”
“He also has the sacred duty of falling in love by midsummer so we all avoid famine, plague, river rot, and whatever else the priests are threatening this year.”
“Rust on roses,” Elia said. “Apparently.”
Mara’s grin faltered. “You heard about that?”
Elia nodded towards the moonflower. “I’m looking at worse.”
Mara came closer at once. “Oh,” she said softly. “That’s not right.”
“No.”
“Is it sick?”
“Plants don’t get sick like people do.”
“Elia.”
“Yes, fine, it’s sick. But not with blight. The roots are cold, the veins are dull, and it started browning overnight. Moonflowers are dramatic, but they’re not usually suicidal.”
“Could it be city water?”
“I used rainwater.”
“Bad soil?”
“I mixed it myself.”
“Spite?”
“That was my first thought.”
“And your second?”
Elia looked at the brown creeping along the petal like a burn mark.
“Something is wrong with the mother bed.”
Mara’s eyes flicked towards the window. Beyond the smudged glass, Marrowmere climbed from the Rootwards to the Upper Rings, roofs rising towards the pale gleam of Midsummer House.
From down here, the palace looked less like a building than a promise someone else had made.
The royal moonflowers grew there. Sacred blooms, tended by Crown gardeners, sung over by temple choirs, and written about by Peregrine Quill as though petals had opinions on courtship.
If the mother bed was failing, the palace had a problem.
If the palace had a problem, ordinary people would be expected to pay for it.
That was how problems worked.
The front bell jingled again.
Elia closed her eyes.
“If that is Mr Vale asking whether I have anything to make his wife less disappointed in him, tell him to try being better.”
“Elia Wren?” called a clipped male voice from the shop.
Not Mr Vale.
A palace voice.
Mara’s eyebrows climbed.
Elia pushed through the curtain. Wren’s Apothecary was narrow, cluttered, and unwilling to impress anyone. Bundles of herbs hung from the beams. Jars lined the walls in imperfect rows: fever moss, dream lavender, thorn salt, grief balm, honesty mint, and three separate shelves marked DO NOT TOUCH unless you enjoy consequences.
A man in palace livery stood near the counter, trying not to look as though the shop might stain him.
“I’m Elia Wren,” she said.
He produced an envelope sealed with gold wax. The Marlowe crest gleamed in the centre: a moonflower cupped between two antlers.
“You are requested to attend the royal gardens immediately.”
“Requested,” Elia said, taking the envelope, “or required?”
His tight smile answered before he did.
“Her Majesty’s requests are rarely misunderstood.”
Of course they weren’t.
The card inside smelled faintly of roses and expensive threats.
Miss Elia Wren,
By order of Her Majesty Queen Aurelia Marlowe, you are to present yourself at Midsummer House this morning for consultation regarding a matter of botanical urgency. Your expertise in lunar-root cultivation has been recommended.
Discretion is expected.
Compensation shall be arranged.
Elia read the note twice.
Compensation shall be arranged was a dangerous phrase to a woman whose rent was due in nine days.
Botanical urgency was worse.
She glanced towards the dying cutting, then at the unpaid bills breeding beside it.
She should say no.
Palaces were not places people like Elia entered without losing something. Time, dignity, money, honesty. Occasionally their heads, depending on the monarch and the century.
Outside, another paper portrait of Prince Kit fluttered on a lamppost.
The whole kingdom was preparing to watch him fall in love.
Somewhere in the palace, the sacred flowers were rotting.
Those two facts sat too close together for comfort.
“Give me five minutes,” Elia said.
The messenger blinked. “Miss Wren, the carriage—”
“Will still be a carriage in five minutes, unless palace horses are more delicate than other horses.”
Mara beamed.
Elia packed her worn leather satchel: knife, twine, root hooks, glass vials, clean linen, truth-salt, concentrated sunwater, and the last honey-cake.
Mara watched with bright, worried eyes.
“You’re going to Midsummer House.”
“Apparently.”
“During Choosing Week.”
“So it seems.”
“To inspect royal moonflowers.”
“Elia Wren, apothecary, gardener, fool.”
“Elia.” Mara’s voice softened. “Be careful.”
Careful was a small word. People used it when they meant ten larger things but could not bear to name them. Do not trust them. Do not get trapped. Do not forget where you came from.
Elia closed her satchel.
“I’m only looking at flowers.”
Mara gave her a look.
“Fine,” Elia said. “Politically inconvenient, possibly cursed flowers.”
“There it is.”
Mara reached out and straightened Elia’s collar with unusual gentleness.
“You have soil on your cheek.”
“That will establish dominance.”
“It will establish that you are you.” Mara rubbed the smudge away with her thumb. “That might be better.”
The front bell jingled again, impatiently this time.
Elia stepped back.
“If I am not returned by dusk, water the fever moss and tell Mr Vale to improve himself.”
“If you are arrested?”
“Deny knowing me.”
“If you are murdered?”
“Haunt the landlord.”
Mara nodded solemnly. “Finally, a sensible plan.”
The royal carriage waiting outside was white and gold, with glass lanterns shaped like unopened flowers. It looked absurd beside crooked shopfronts and laundry lines. A small crowd had gathered at a safe distance, pretending not to stare while absolutely staring.
Mrs Barlow clutched a basket of ribbons to her chest. “Elia Wren, why is there a royal carriage outside your shop?”
Elia opened the carriage door herself before the footman could do it for her.
“Botanical treason, probably.”
Mara laughed.
Mrs Barlow gasped.
By the time the carriage reached the palace gates, Elia had eaten the honey-cake, regretted nothing, and counted fourteen public portraits of Prince Kit Marlowe.
On the fifteenth, someone had painted a tiny moustache beneath his perfect nose.
Elia leaned closer to the window.
Perhaps there was hope for the kingdom after all.
The gates of Midsummer House opened.
Glass towers flashed in the sun. White steps swept upwards between terraces of roses. Fountains threw silver water into the air. Everywhere, gardeners moved with dreadful precision, trimming, polishing, arranging, hiding.
The palace did not look like a home.
It looked like an audience waiting for applause.
At the top of the steps stood a woman in a pale green gown, with a ring of keys at her waist and a face so calm it made Elia instantly suspicious.
“Miss Wren,” the woman said. “I am Nell Bracken. You are to come with me.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.” Nell’s gaze flicked briefly to Elia’s satchel, then to the palace windows, then back again. “And you may wish to avoid touching any white roses.”
Elia looked at the nearest rose bush. Its blossoms were enormous, flawless, and arranged along the path like applauding hands.
“Why?”
Nell’s expression did not change.
“They listen.”
Elia stared at her.
Behind them, from somewhere deep inside Midsummer House, a bell began to ring: bright, ceremonial, and far too cheerful for a warning.
Nell turned towards the palace.
Elia followed.
She had come to look at flowers.
Already, the flowers were listening.
