8. Idrilia
IDRILIA
"Every transplant is a wound. Whether it takes or fails depends less on the new soil than on what the plant carried with it from the old."
—Professor Ertozen Asuker, Principles of Botanical Transplantation
Ihave never been more grateful to see the ugly hauler than I was tonight.
From the outside, it looked like a beetle that had tucked its legs under its shell to sleep, but on the inside, it was warmth and a home away from home.
I sat on the bed with my hands wrapped around a hot mug of tea that Ursa had made for me, watching the lamp throw its small circle of light against the curved wall and listening to the silence.
The other haulers were dark. The crew who had been well enough to ride back down had eaten in near silence and gone to their bunks, and the camp had settled into the mourning quiet that followed a disaster.
Gavon had been taken directly to the closest hospital, no doubt charming the nurses instead of resting because he wouldn't miss an opportunity like that to shine. The dragons had flown him and Horrov and Palel straight down from the mountain, which had probably saved Horrov's life.
Moran and Voser were gone, and the captain had promised that they would return in the morning to search for their bodies, but we all knew that finding them under the thick layer of snow would be impossible.
I kept repeating their names in my head so I wouldn't forget them. I couldn't. They needed to be etched on my memory forever like a holographic tombstone that would reside in my mind for as long as I lived.
"You should drink your tea, my lady," Ursa said in that quiet tone of hers that was meant to soothe me but irritated me instead. "It will warm you from the inside."
"Perhaps I don't want to be warm."
"You're in shock, and you're not thinking rationally. The tea has sugar in it, which you need, and some of the tincture Sorel left for you, Your Highness."
Ursa could play a part in one of Gavon's plays.
Any part, really, because she was a chameleon.
To the other royals, she was exactly what she appeared to be.
A polite, unobtrusive, forgettable lady's maid, but I knew who and what she really was, and yet she insisted on keeping up the act with me no matter how many times I had told her to drop it.
"Don't," I said.
"Don't what?"
"You know exactly what. I hate it when you use that stupid honorific or my title for that matter."
"But both belong to you, Your Highness. You did not steal either, and you are not a bastard child who does not deserve them."
If I weren't as depleted and depressed as I was, I would have chucked a pillow at her, and maybe that was the reaction she was hoping to provoke, but today her teasing tactics were not going to work.
I drank the tea. It was over-sweetened to mask the taste of Sorel's bitter herbs, but it was exactly what I needed to defrost the ice around my heart.
The problem was that ice turned to water, and water needed an outlet, and it found it through my eyes.
The dam broke.
One moment I was drinking tea, and the next the mug was shaking in my hands, and the tears were coming faster than I could blink them back.
Ursa crossed the cabin in two steps, took the mug from my hands, and set it aside. Then she sat beside me, wrapped her arm around me, and pulled me against her shoulder, holding me while I came apart.
"Let it all out, Idrilia," she murmured into my hair. "I've got you."
I cried for Moran, who had four children.
I cried for Voser, who had liked to whistle off-key during the trek.
I cried because I had led them up that mountain for a flower, and a flower wasn't worth a life, let alone two, and no amount of telling myself that I couldn't have known an avalanche would claim them would ever make that arithmetic balance.
Ursa didn't tell me it wasn't my fault because she knew better. I abhorred platitudes, and I always took responsibility. I was a princess after all, so if not me then who? My mother, the queen?
When the worst of it had passed, she handed me a cloth, straightened, and stood. "Are you ready to disrobe, Your Highness?"
I looked at her, my eyes still swimming. "Are you for real?"
"Yes, very much so." The corner of her mouth twitched. "Now that you've let it out, you can have a good night's sleep so you can wake up refreshed tomorrow. You have a lot on your plate."
I sighed. "I know."
I would have to visit the families and deliver condolences in person. I wasn't looking forward to that.
"I don't think I'll be able to do it by myself."
She arched a brow. "Do what? Have a restful sleep? I promise you, Your Highness, that I will sleep soundly on my cot."
"I meant visiting the families. I won't be able to bear it on my own. I hope Gavon is not too injured to accompany me."
Ursa snorted.
"What's funny?"
"Nothing, Your Highness. I simply look forward to watching your paramour try to charm away grief. It will be an educational experience for him."
"He's not as shallow as he pretends to be."
"He is not pretending. He is shallow." She pulled my nightdress from the trunk. "You'll see. He'll find an excuse to send you alone. Pretty things avoid ugly rooms, except for me." She smoothed her hand over her glossy raven braid. "I don't shy away from ugliness."
She didn't. Ursa did not shy away from anything.
"Don't worry. I'll come with you." She draped the nightdress over the back of the chair.
I didn't argue, because she was probably right about Gavon, and I needed her there.
"Up." She motioned for me to raise my arms.
I did as she commanded, and she pulled the dirty sweater off me.
Then she crouched in front of me and started unlacing my left boot.
"You'll need to do something about these calluses before the annual ball," she said after pulling the sock off.
"How are you going to put these bruised feet into a pair of delicate sandals? "
I groaned. "Did you have to remind me of that nightmare? I hate those stuffy balls when my mother parades me like a prize mare."
Ursa chuckled. "You are a prize mare, Your Highness."
"I'm not. I'm the third child of the Queen of Tarina, the spare no one needs."
"You'd be surprised," she said in that conspiratorial tone of hers, the one she used for the things she'd gathered through her spy network, which I secretly funded.
"From what I'm hearing, the Catonian court is spending a fortune on this year's ball.
At least twice as much as they did last year. They must be planning something big."
I rolled my eyes. "As if I care, or if that has anything to do with me.
The heir to the throne is probably going to announce who he is going to marry, and it's not going to be my sister because she's the next Queen of Tarina.
" I reached for the cup and took a few sips of the tea that had cooled while I was crying.
"Maybe it's you?"
I snorted, almost spraying Ursa with the tea. "That's not funny. I'm probably last on the list of possible candidates. Tarina is a small and unimportant province, and I'm no great beauty. Prince Arlen has never shown the slightest interest in me."
She pursed her lips. "You know it's not about personal interest. It's all politics."
"Yeah, and I'm just as unattractive politically as I am physically."
Ursa pulled back and glared at me. "I don't want to hear you talking like that. You are beautiful, intelligent, and well educated, Your Highness. Any prince would be lucky to snag a rare flower like you."
"Oh, dear Elurion." I jumped to my feet, startling Ursa. "I need to take care of the Silver Princess!"
"Can't it wait for me to take off the other sock?"
"No, it can't!"
I pulled the rare flower from my pack. She was wrapped in the insulated cloth I'd packed her in, and when I unwound it, my stomach dropped.
The petals that had blazed like captured starlight on the mountain ledge were limp and dull, their glow faded to almost nothing.
The fine metallic roots that had drunk so greedily from the magnetic rock hung slack, reaching for a substrate that wasn't there.
I lifted her, as careful as I'd be with a wounded bird, and settled her into the field container that I'd built specially for her.
It was a glass cylinder ringed with coolant cells and lined with the magnetized soil.
It was a crude contraption, but it held a charge, and it held the cold, and it was the best I could do to recreate the conditions she needed.
"She doesn't look good," Ursa said.
"She's been ripped out of the soil of her homeland and dragged down a mountain in a sack." I sealed the lid and watched the coolant cells frost over. "It's shock. She will recover."
I had to believe that she would make it, so today's tragedy would have at least some kind of silver lining.