He nodded. "I'm not sure it was what ailed him, and if it was, it was in the beginning stages. His peers didn't think that they might be mocking a sick man. They were ruthless."
The grief under his words was old and worn smooth, and I felt for him, but I wasn't ready to dismiss the work of the man I admired as the hallucinations of a sick mind.
"I would like to read those tales if you still have them. Folklore fascinates me. Where were the tales clustered? Was it near the places the Silver Princess grew?"
Lou regarded me for a moment, and the sadness gave way to surprise. "You're quick. That's exactly the thing that ruined him, in the end. They were clustered. The Silver Princess only grows in a handful of specific places at specific altitudes and right on top of magnetic lines. And in those places, people tell similar stories of strange things." He spread his hands. "Strange lights, shapes at the edge of the trees, ghostly figures glimpsed across a slope at dusk and gone when looked at again." He shook his head. "He was certain it meant something because the tales were so alike and always near places that the Silver Princess grew. I tried to tell him that it was usually at high altitudes, and that the goat herders, who were going crazy from spending weeks alonein the mountains, were also suffering from altitude sickness, but he refused to listen to reason. You see, the version he believed in was mystical, and it excited him. He didn't want to exchange that feeling of awe for something mundane and rational."
I leaned back in my chair. "Can you blame him? I'm itching to read those stories and find a pattern that will hint at something mystical and intriguing. Who wants to be limited to the boring reality?"
He chuckled. "I guess I do. I'm a historian, not a playwright or a novelist."
I arched a brow. "Professor Lou Haldren. Do you mean to tell me that everything written in the history books you teach is the unvarnished truth?"
He smiled sheepishly. "It should be."
"Should be. I agree, but one person's truth is another's lie. What the Precepts of Truth fail to realize is that truth is not monochromatic. It has shades."
He pursed his lips in mock disapproval. "Careful there. You are starting to sound like a Sitorian."
"Elurion forbid." I made the sign against evil, lifting two fingers over my eyes. "Those minions of evil have been seduced by the deceiver, to spread death and destruction."
He lifted his hands into the air. "I didn't mean it that way. It was supposed to be a joke."
"I know." I smiled to let him off the hook, but the truth was that I had little patience for people who ignored evil when it stared them in the eyes and promised them death. "I'd like to read your father's journals," I said to change the subject. "Anything he wrote about the Silver Princess, including the fairy tales. I promise I'll cherish every word."
"You'd cherish them," he repeated.
"Every word and every map and illustration. I don't care whether it's botany, tales, or a grocery list in his hand. Your father is my mentor even though I've never met him."
He took off his spectacles, polished them on his shirt for no reason, and put them back on. "My father drew beautiful maps," he said. "Every place the Princess was known to grow, marked and annotated, with the local tale for each region written in the margins. There are also countless sketches of the Silver Princess, beautifully done in colored pencils. The truth is that I cherish his journals as well. Mostly because it's his legacy and they still smell like him even decades later, but also because of the artistry. Not many people know that he was so talented."
"That's a treasure," I said and leaned forward. "Is there any chance you can let me see them?"
He hesitated, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had just the thing to make him agree.
"It would be so helpful. I have a living specimen that is surviving but not thriving, and the maps might tell me something about the conditions she needs."
Lou Haldren went absolutely still.
"You have a what?"
"A living specimen. I found a single Silver Princess, brought her down the mountains, and I keep her alive in a chiller at the palace."
I registered the way he was looking at me, as though I'd casually mentioned keeping a dead queen in my pantry. "What is it?"
"My father was the last botanist of record to have a living Silver Princess. After him, there are sketches, and there are stories, and there are people swearing they saw one glowing on a slope, but there is no living specimen anywhere. She's hardly more than a myth." He leaned across the table. "And you're telling me you have one in a glass case?"
"I have photographs." I reached into my satchel.
I laid them on the table between the cups. The Princess in situ first, the one I was proudest of, her petals throwing that impossible cold light, starlight caught and held in living tissue. Then the slope where I'd found her, the grey mineral-streaked rock, the angle of the path. Then the recovered specimen under the chiller, dimmer but alive.
Lou picked up the first photograph with both hands, and I watched a lifetime of secondhand shame fall off his face, and wonder take its place.
"Captured starlight," he murmured. "He used those exact words." He looked up at me. "Where did you find her?"
I described the route. The border crossing, the long climb, the fork where the goat track gave out, the mineral-veined slope at thirteen hundred meters where she'd been growing in a seam of pale rock.
He set the photograph down.
