“Lyric Aharté,” the gardener says, pursing her lips. She doesn’tlook much older than him, other than hairline wrinkles around her squinting green eyes and the silver in her hair. But given the prevalence of human architecture, perhaps Lyric can’t accurately read anything so basic as age here. “Is haunting the fortress gardens this morning for a reason?”
“Exploring,” he says. “Appreciate plants. Flowers. Growing things. Though,” he says with a glance at the raining window, “this is more than growing things.”
“Spectacle,” the gardener agrees.
“Yes,” he says, then tilts his head. “Lyric is also searching for an alliraptor chimera living here somewhere.”
“Setka,” the gardener says with a little moue of distaste.
“Is that the chimera’s name? Setka.” Lyric smiles as benignly as he can. “Does Setka wander near?”
She huffs. Studies him boldly. It is like a slap to the face, how people watch each other here, study features plainly, making no effort to hide the analysis. Lyric can’t do it; he allows his eyes to focus just behind the gardener.
“Appreciates plants, Lyric said?” she finally says.
Lyric smiles again. “Does the garden keeper need an assistant?”
She holds out the toolbox. “Don’t have extra gloves, but the handsome priest can carry this.”
Taking it, Lyric follows as she leads him back the way he came, then around a tower via a shady lane with manicured evergreen trees, and into an orchard. It smells like honey and sunlight, like tart apples, though the fruit Lyric can see more closely resembles peaches in clusters like grapes. The trees are elegant, perhaps twice his height, and they all grow in graceful, curving shapes. Suddenly Lyric realizes a detail so simple but so different from what he’s used to that he can’t believe he only noticed now: All the trees and plants here reach toward the sky in soft lines, like swooping, melting ink. In hisown time, in the confines of Moonshadow City and beyond to the edges of the Holy Design, trees grow in perpendiculars. Branches square against themselves, straight trunks and shelflike limbs leading up and up without curve. Leaves are exactly symmetrical, growing in patterns of four always. Flower petals only come in multiples of four, too.
Lyric steps closer to one of the peach trees and stares at the coiling whorls of bark, the twist of a branch, the crooked bend of a twig from which hangs a cluster of three fruits. And the leaves! These are symmetrical, long ovals with pointed tips and evenly spaced veins—but the trees in the next row have five-lobed leaves, like a child’s hand, scattered haphazardly along their branches, though surely there is a pattern. Their fruits grow singly, or in misshapen pairs.
It’s ugly, but something about the ungoverned nature of it appeals to him, and Lyric wonders if this is how trees would grow if given the choice, without balance or Silence. The idea wiggles uncomfortably in his chest.
“Lyric Aharté can touch that one,” the gardener calls. “But not the honey nuts with the leaves turning red. Bring the tools here.”
Lyric gives in, pinching one of the oval leaves before him. It’s waxy, smooth, and a little dry. Needs misting, he would say, if it was his tree. But maybe the waxiness negates such needs. He shakes his head and releases the tree, murmuring a blessing because he can’t help himself. Then he makes his way to the gardener. She’s under one of the honey nut trees, an old tree with a trunk Lyric could barely embrace. The bark is rough, craggy, and in one place glistening with sap. He follows the sap up to a strange nest. It’s dark purple and more like a beehive than anything else, a tangle of material and long strands of silk. It shivers. Either it’s alive, or something inside of it is.
“Lyric Aharté can observe this part, but don’t touch anything,” the gardener says. “The pillars secrete an oil that keeps them safefrom the honey nut’s own poison, and most humans are allergic to it. Painful rashes. And there’s no touching any friends or spouses if infected,” she says over her shoulder at him.
Lyric nods solemnly. She gets to work, pulling out a stylus, to his surprise, and a disk of wood. She activates a few design sigils on the disk, and it puts out force-based legs Lyric senses rather than sees. The gardener climbs on and the legs lengthen, shimmering like heat waves in the air. Lyric struggles not to gape as she hovers on the disk. It raises her higher so she’s eye level with the nest. “Bowna is going to draw the caterpillars out. Lyric will hold the bucket. Careful, don’t spill.”
The gardener—Bowna—uses a trio of glass domes and sets them along the branch nearest to the nest. She draws a force-net between them, and a few other things Lyric can’t trace, and a small array lights up. It looks like a hand mirror to him, reflective side facing the nest. He can almost hear the thrum of forces. Almost instantly the nest quivers again, and caterpillars the size of his thumb squiggle out. They’re striped yellow and orange, with long whiskers or tentacles running down their backs that are electric blue and move like sensors.
“Ready? Lift the bucket.”
Lyric crouches to grab it, holding it carefully up. There’s a viscous liquid inside.
With her thickly gloved hand, Bowna grabs a caterpillar and drops it in the bucket.
“Does it kill the caterpillars?” he asks softly after nine have been submerged. They’re both watching the nest for more.
“Renders the pillars inert for transfer. The presence is good for the honey nuts, just not in a rutting nest. The little idiots can’t make proper cocoons like that.” Bowna shakes her head, clearly exasperated.
“What do the caterpillars become?” he asks as Bowna disassemblesthe hand mirror array and tucks the glass domes back into her pocket before descending.
She takes the bucket from him and peers in at the floating caterpillars. “Firemoths.”
He shakes his head, having no idea what that means.
“Very pretty, about as big as Lyric’s hands spread like wings. Like to pollinate the more finicky design trees in several precincts so these little idiots will bring in good trade.” She shakes the bucket a little, the oily substance barely shivering. “Bowna plans to get some of small king Ataa’s glass roses. The Moon-Eater likes glass.”
“And fish,” Lyric says.
“True, true.” Bowna jerks her head. “Want a peach? These over here can be eaten off the branch.”
Lyric picks up her toolbox and follows as she carries the bucket farther into the orchard. When they reach a thickly-clustered-together grove of trees, some old, some young, with a pond in the center, she says, “Those,” gesturing with her chin. But a flash of movement distracts him, and he turns in time to catch huge eyes disappearing behind a tree.
