Dilys touched a jewel on his belt, and the front of his buckle sprang open to reveal a small, waterproofed compartment. “Please. Gabriella was extremely distressed when she returned the puppy. I need to understand why.” He extracted a thin, folded square of clean cloth from the belt compartment, shook it out, and offered it to Spring.
“Dirt on my face?” she asked, unsurprised.
“On your chin. And here.” He pointed to a spot on his cheek that mirrored the location of the smudge on Spring’s. As she scrubbed at her face, he said, “I would never ask you to betray Gabriella’s confidences,Myerialanna.I only ask for guidance, so that I will not make another such mistake. Will you not help me?”
Her face now clean, the skin rosy from its brisk scrubbing, Spring handed Dilys back his cloth. He refolded the small square and returned it to the small compartment in his buckle. When that was done, his buckle once more clipped shut, he stood patiently waiting for Spring’s response.
“I promised the head gardener I would look at some ailing tomato plants for him,” she said after a long silence. “You could keep me company, if you like. Perhaps we could chat to help pass the time while I work.”
He could not have stopped his smile if he wanted to. “That would be my pleasure,Myerialanna.”
Dilys followed her down the center aisle of the greenhouse. The smell of plants and soil was strong, the ground soft and warm beneath his bare feet.
“What were you doing with the plants and the soil back there?” he asked, curious about the Summerlander princess’s magic.
“Oh, just helping things along,” she said. When he cocked a brow, she added, “The nutrients in that patch of soil were running a little low. Now they’re not.”
“Ah. This is a gift all your sisters possess?”
“All Summerlanders have a basic talent for enriching the soil and making plants flourish. It’s part of what makes our kingdom so valuable. In other lands, fields must lay fallow, but in Summerlea our growing season never ends, the nutrients in our soil never deplete, and our produce is the plumpest, ripest, richest in the world. Some of us”—she cast a look his way—“can grow other things, too. Our father, for instance. He could grow just about anything.”
“Like what?”
She shrugged, and he wasn’t particularly surprised that she didn’t offer up more information. Calbernans didn’t speak of their magic to outsiders either. But Spring was not a woman who made idle conversation. When she spoke, she spoke for a reason. Verdan had been able to grow things. Things that went beyond growing plants and enriching soil. So could others, including Spring and possibly Gabriella. Dilys filed the information away.
They passed by rows of broad green leaves shading bright yellow, green, and orange squashes, and a column completely enveloped from the ground to the impressively high greenhouse ceiling with leafy vines flush with plump green bean pods.
“This greenhouse wasn’t here last year,” Dilys said. He and his men had not landed at Konumarr. The defenses along the Llaskroner Fjord had been too strong. They’d chosen an uninhabited stretch of coastline a hundred miles further south. But he’d studied Konumarr nonetheless, poring over maps and sketches provided by the merchant spies who sailed freely into the ports of foreign lands.
“The king had it built earlier this year. There’s one near Gildenheim, too. It was another of my sister Khamsin’s ideas. She wanted to see if the greenhouses could supply sufficient produce to support a palace and its surrounding villages throughout the year. A way to lessen Wintercraig’s need to import food from other countries, especially in the cold months.”
“But Summerlea now belongs to Wintercraig. Food will never be a problem again.”
Spring shrugged again. “Winterfolk prefer to be self-sufficient whenever possible. In any event, since the climate here in Konumarr is milder than Gildenheim, and since we were coming here for the summer, the king decided to locate a second greenhouse here in Konumarr to see if this location makes a difference on production.”
They had reached the plot of tomato vines. They looked perfectly fine to Dilys’s eyes, with clusters of tomatoes in various stages of ripeness hanging amidst the pungent green leaves, but Spring frowned when she saw them.
“These plants are not healthy?” he asked. Agriculture was not his forte, but he was always willing to learn something new.
“Not as healthy as they should be,” she said. “The tomatoes should be larger, and there should be more of them.” Kneeling, she thrust her right hand in the soil and began sifting it through her fingers. With her left hand, she reached out and began lightly stroking the thick, hairy main stalk of the tomato plant. “Hello, little friend,” she whispered. “How are you feeling today? A little under the weather?”
He’d heard that Summerlanders talked to their plants, but until now, he had always considered the stories nothing more than a joke.
“I’m certain, if you tried, no other plant in all of Mystral could rival the size or quantity or ripe perfection of your fruit,” Spring told the plant. “What do you think, hmm?”
As Dilys watched, the plant’s vines thickened. New tendrils unfurled and climbed up and around the massive wooden pillar. The existing tomatoes plumped, while new, small yellow flowers blossomed all over the plant’s new and old growth. Dilys’s senses tingled like mad, recognizing the crooning words of encouragement for the commands they were. Spring Coruscate’s magic wasn’t only in her hands. It flowed from her voice as well.
Not the pure, powerfulsusirenaher sister possessed, but something closely related.
“That’s quite an impressive talent,” was all he said.
“Mmm,” Spring murmured in absent agreement. “One of the gifts I inherited from my father.” Pulling her hand from the soil, she began running both hands over the tomato plant, inspecting its fibrous stalks and clusters of fruit the way a mother might inspect a child during its bath. Giving gentle caresses and whispering words of encouragement as she went. “Breeding is a funny thing. I could cross this red tomato plant with one of the varieties that produces yellow fruit, and I might end up with some plants that grow red tomatoes, others that grow only yellow, and some small percentage of plants that grow both red and yellow tomatoes on the same vine. Or, depending on their lineage, I could cross two red tomato plants and end up with a plant that produces yellow fruit.”
Having finished with the first plant, Spring moved to the next. She thrust her right hand into the soil, stroked and caressed the tomato plant with her left, and began crooning her encouraging enchantment. As the plant shivered and responded, unfurling new vines and leaves and blossoms, swelling the fruit clustered among its leaves, she said, “Our father wasn’t always as he was at the end.” Her lips compressed. Her eyes darkened. She shot Dilys a shuttered look. “He wasn’t always mad.”
“I know,” Dilys murmured. If they had known each other better, he would have laid a soothing hand upon her shoulder. But they did not, so he kept his hands to himself. “I met him as a young boy. My family and I sailed to Summerlea for Princess Autumn’s naming day. It was clear how much loved his children and his queen. My father and mother were greatly impressed by his devotion. They found him almost Calbernan in that regard.” It was the highest compliment a Calbernan could give anoulani.“That memory was one of the reasons we did not turn away your brother, Falcon, when he came to us for aid.”
“Yes,” she said. “When my father loved, he loved completely, with all the strength and emotion and magic within him. He held nothing back. He hated that way, too. And as I said, he had a gift for making things grow.” Her voice trailed off, the hands sifting the soil and stroking the tomato plant slowed as her thoughts traveled down some invisible path. Then, with a brisk shake, she came back to herself. “My mother, on the other hand, was calmer. She loved with her whole heart, too, but that love never grew so strong it made her lose all reason. She was the perfect queen for my father. A cooling rain to his summer fire. She balanced him.”
