He shook his head, then reluctantly nodded, finally moving more like a human again and not a statue carved from stone.“The trees…”
“Yes.Peach trees.They’ve all been espaliered.”Selly knew about the practice, though no one at House Phel employed it.Some orchardists espoused it as best for making trees bear fruit.The rigid confinement of the tree’s growth and relentless pruning meant that the tree didn’t spend “unnecessary” energy and nutrients on growing new limbs and leaves, instead forcing it all into producing fruit.They were plants and didn’t suffer the way animals might, but the practice had always struck Selly as cruel.
“My mother…” Jadren said in a voice hoarse from being strained through his convulsing throat.“She was obsessed with… this.”
“Was this her courtyard?Her trees?”
“No.Not peaches.She hated peaches.”His wizard-black eyes fastened on the ripe fruit as if it were an abomination.“But otherwise…”
Selly was suddenly able to put a mental finger on one source of the eeriness of the place.Besides, you know, being trapped in a sterile courtyard that hadn’t existed before by a sentient house.Though the peaches hung fully and obviously ripe, the fuzzy skin splitting in places so that juice dripped out, there were no insects.In a living world, flies and gnats would be drawn to the juices.Small animals, too, would be climbing the easy ladder of the espaliered trees to gnaw on or harvest the fruit.Instead she and Jadren seemed to be the only living creatures in the place and the trees produced their forced fruit in statuesque solitude, no evidence that a single peach had been picked—or even fallen naturally to the ground, as should have also occurred.
Letting the shudder of horror run through her to hopefully pass out again, Selly focused on helping Jadren think through this.The house was capricious and followed her own alien logic, but she wasn’t needlessly cruel.At least, not to Jadren.Whatever this artificial place represented, she hadn’t trapped them in it simply to torture them.For Jadren’s pain became Selly’s and the house had to know that.
“Otherwise?”she prompted, edging closer to him, wondering if a physical touch would reassure or break his hold on the thin thread keeping him together.
“She often said…” Jadren swallowed convulsively and looked at her almost pleadingly.She wished she could tell him he didn’t have to say anything, but that wouldn’t give them the key they needed to unlock this riddle-jail.“That she wished she could espalier me as easily, to force me to bear the results she wanted.”
“Oh, Jadren.”Selly had no words.Fortunately, now that he’d broken the strange paralysis, Jadren was able to continue without furthering prodding.
“She tried it a couple of times, in the labs, not here.”His gaze roved over the courtyard, indeed very much reminiscent of the glass-walled cages he’d been kept in with their stark and rigid angles.“She fastened me to the wall and broke my limbs to arrange them in the pattern she wanted, letting me heal that way.”
Selly managed a nod.With Jadren’s ability to heal from anything, his monstrous parent had experimented upon him with ruthless intent—and utter disregard for his suffering.Indeed, treating him as if he felt no more than these trees.“Why?”she asked simply, for Katica El-Adrel, sadist and psycho, also regarded herself as a serious scientist.Jadren’s pain was irrelevant to her, but she didn’t seek it out.It was simply a byproduct of her relentless search for results.
Jadren’s shrugged a little, more of a jerking of his shoulders rather than his usual insouciant attitude.“What she always and ever wanted, I think.She wanted to create the perfect automaton.She thought if she could break down and control my body enough that it would eventually accept the devices she wanted to implant in me, to make me grow over and incorporate them, as it were.”
He was at least speaking more normally.
“So, why did the house bring us here?”
“I don’t know.”He curled a lip and scowled at the walls.“It’s not funny.”
“Why peaches?”
Jadren gave her a distracted glance.“What?”
“If the espaliered trees are to remind you of what Katica was trying to do, but she hated peaches—why did the house choose that fruit?”
He frowned.“Good question.”
She presumed that’s what she was there for.“The statue—do you know who the woman is?”
Jadren turned to look at it as if he’d forgotten about it, which was entirely possible, given his traumatized reaction to the rest.He shook his head slowly.“No idea.”
Selly walked around it, looking for a plaque, as the house sometimes included when she produced these monuments, whether because they’d been original to the piece or as a helpful learning tool.After a long moment, Jadren followed her, his coltish gait smoothing after a few steps.
“No plaque,” she told him after making the circle twice, just to be sure.She peered up into the woman’s obscured face.The craft in carving it struck her anew, the hair a soft current that both revealed and hid the woman’s profile—and yet clearly conveyed her affection for the dog at her side.
“She’s no one of El-Adrel,” Jadren said thoughtfully.“At least, not emblematically.I’d expect to see a sculpture like this in House Ariel, where their wizardry focuses on animals.I can’t think of an El-Adrel wizard who had an affection for gazehounds.”
“Gazehounds?”
He pointed a stiff finger at the stone dog.“That’s the general breed.I’m surprised you don’t know that.Maybe it’s a cat thing.”
Selly was relieved enough at hearing some of Jadren’s snarky humor returning that she let the jibe pass.“I didn’t know that, no, but the hound looks familiar anyway.”Something about the shape of the long muzzle… “The hunters.They have this look to them.”
Jadren squinted, then bent to study the dog.“I mean, if you take away the fangs, the taloned paws, and the rabid desire to tear familiars apart—sure, I can see it.”
“We know the hunters came from somewhere.And we’ve speculated that they were made via a covert collaboration between houses.Ariel contributed the ability to manipulate animals.Possibly Elal or Hanneil lent spirit sentience to direct their behavior or the psychic fiddling.”
