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Leaving the kitchen, I found a break in the rain, and took the chance to wander up to the gardens. I knew they would be brown and withered at this time of year. What I did not know was that Lord Guerney had built a greenhouse.
It was a marvel, a green heart in the beast of stone, as large as the Great Hall. Paths wound between flowering bushes and small trees, and here and there a bench provided respite for no more than a pair of intimate friends. I saw where Sharp had taken his rose, from a bush than guarded a private bower – his gift had been an invitation, then, not just a gesture of appreciation.
Pushing deeper, I found plants both intriguing and disturbing. Their odd-shaped leaves and twining branches marked them as having come from deep within the Easter Green Forest. Lord Guerney did not fear that wood, but delighted in it.
Perhaps he valued that land more highly than an association with Lord Reinard, and that was why the Lady Laurice was so slow in coming? A troubling thought. Land is good, but worthless without trusted allies.
Leaving those stunted shrubs behind, I turned a corner in the path, and came across something worse. It was a bed of flowers, their translucent petals colored in the pale shades of a moonbow, their stems and leaves shimmering like frosted silver. I took a quick step backwards.
“Jewels!” Charles exclaimed, reaching forward. “Where did they come from?”
I grabbed his arm and yanked it back. Scrabbling out the slate and chalk, I hastily wrote, “The Heart of the Eastern Green Forest.”
Charles read what I wrote, his lips shaping each word, then frowned. “Wouldn’t that make them cursed?”
I nodded, though it is not the flowers that carry the curse, but those who grow them. Here before me was proof that Lord Guerney did not just visit the Eastern Green Forest, but traded with the soulless Silver-eyed.
The sooner I left this place, the better.
Refusing to follow the path past the flowers, I backtracked to the entrance. On the way I found a bramble of mountain roses climbing the far wall, and I conceived a thought. They were not so fine that Lord Geurney would take offense at my plucking a few, and their carried no secret invitation. A few, however, would make a pleasing bouquet – perhaps in that way I could ingratiate myself with one of the maids-in-waiting, and perhaps discover some tidbit about the Lady Laurice, some bit of news to carry back to my lord.
