13. Idrilia
IDRILIA
"Authority is not a privilege but a duty that cannot be delegated."
—Queen Sarael of Tarina
Three days after the mountain, the Silver Princess grew a new root.
It was a thread-thin filament, barely visible against the magnetized soil, but it reached downward instead of hanging slack, and when I checked the gauge, two of the petals had brightened from their deathbed gray toward a healthy, beautiful pearl glow.
She was rallying.
I crouched over the ecosystem I'd built for her in my garden and allowed myself to hope.
If she lived, if I could coax even one bloom out of her and propagate it, then the expedition would have produced something.
It wouldn't bring back Moran or Voser. Nothing would.
But if the Silver Princess lived and helped produce the medicine Professor Haldren believed it would, they hadn't died for nothing.
They would have died for life-saving medicine.
I was clinging to that.
"Are you talking to the plant again?" Gavon asked.
He was arranged on the garden bench in the morning sun, his splinted ankle propped on a cushion, looking like an advertisement for convalescence. He'd been released from the hospital the day after being admitted with instructions to rest, and he had embraced the prescription wholeheartedly.
"I'm not talking to it. I'm assessing it." I straightened and brushed the soil from my knees. "She's doing better, and it makes me feel a little less horrible today."
He looked confused. "Why is your day horrible?"
He was unbelievable.
"Did you forget? I'm visiting Moran's and Voser's families today, and you are coming with me."
I figured I could justly demand his presence. The position of an official paramour came with some strings attached, some responsibilities. He couldn't just enjoy the benefits without contributing anything other than satisfying my sexual needs.
Well, that was his primary job, but it wasn't the only one.
"I can't, Idrilia." He grimaced as he gestured at his ankle. "I can barely walk to the fountain. Three hours each way in a hover-car would finish me. Sorel said to keep it elevated."
"You can elevate it in the hover-car. We can have cushions brought."
"It's not only the ankle. What good would I be? I wouldn't know what to say."
"You wouldn't have to say anything. You'd just have to be there." I heard the frustration creeping into my voice. "I need you beside me so I'm not doing it alone."
"You won't be alone. You'll have Ursa, and the driver, and Elurion knows how many attendants.
" He reached for my hand, and his was warm and without callus and useless.
"Darling, you're so much better at this than I am.
You'll be magnificent, and I'd only be in the way.
Truly, it's kinder to everyone if I stay. "
He was so disgustingly good at dressing up excuses as consideration.
Why was I even disappointed?
Why was I still expecting things from him that I knew he couldn't deliver?
Why was I still hoping he would step up to the plate?
"Of course," I said, withdrawing my hand. "How inconsiderate of me not to realize that everyone would be better off without you there."
"Now don't be like that—"
"I'm not being like anything. You've made an excellent case. Rest your ankle."
I turned back to the flower so he wouldn't see my face.
"The car is ready, Your Highness." Ursa stood in the garden doorway, and from the flatness of her expression I knew she'd heard at least the end of the exchange. "Shall I fetch the cushions for Lord Gavon's ankle, or will he be staying to guard the bench?"
Gavon found something fascinating in his glass of water.
"He's staying," I said. "Let's go."
The town where the porters' families lived was three hours south, a cluster of stone houses and slate roofs in the foothills, a village of goat herders, mountain guides and porters.
We went to Voser's house first.
Voser's widow didn't cry. She was a tall, thin woman who served us tea in her good cups and asked precise questions about the pension, the insurance, and whether her boys could continue attending school.
I answered every one of her questions, and I promised her more than she had asked for.
She thanked me with a composure that was worse than weeping.
I almost let myself believe she was bearing it well.
Then, at the door, she asked me to describe exactly where on the mountain her husband had fallen, because she wanted to know what the last thing he saw had been.
I told her. It was the only thing she had asked for that I could give without paying for it, so I gave it.
Then we drove to Moran's house, and I learned that there were worse things than a widow who doesn't cry.
His wife opened the door with a baby on her hip and three more children orbiting her legs who were too young to understand why their mother was weeping.
"Your Highness." She tried to curtsy, and I caught her elbow before she could.
"Please don't. May I come in?"
She stepped back to let me through. Ursa waited by the door.
There was nowhere to sit but the kitchen table, so I took a chair, and the woman lowered herself into the one across from me, the baby drowsing against her shoulder.
Her chin trembled. "He was proud to be chosen, Your Highness. A royal commission. He wouldn't stop telling everyone who'd listen."
"He was one of the best men on the crew.
Everyone liked him." I made myself hold her gaze for the part that mattered.
"I take full responsibility for your husband's death.
I pushed into a dangerous terrain, past where it was considered safe.
The avalanche wasn't my doing, and it wasn't his or the crew's either, but we were in a vulnerable spot because of my decision. "
She stared at me, the cup forgotten in her hand. Whatever she had braced herself to hear me say, it had not been that.
"They only told me it was an accident," she said.
"It was, but it might have been prevented if I hadn't insisted on us climbing so high."
For a moment she said nothing. The baby stirred and settled.
"I don't know how we'll manage," she finally said, very quietly, as if she were admitting it to herself. "We have no other source of income."
"You'll never have to worry about that. This I can promise." I leaned toward her. "The expedition was insured, and that payment alone will keep this house and feed your children. But I'll take care of all the rest. You and your children will want for nothing."
"Your Highness—"
"I'll cover their tuition through university, and I will provide well-paying jobs for them once they graduate. Everything you and your husband ever wished for your children's future will be supplied. You have my word."
Everything except the love of their father, but that wasn't something I could give them. That was lost forever.
"Thank you." Sella looked down at the sleeping baby, and then she surprised me by reaching across the table and covering my hand with her free one.
"It wasn't your fault, Your Highness. It was Elurion's will. Us mortals do not have dominion over destiny."
She was comforting me. The woman I had widowed was trying to assuage my guilt, and it devastated me worse than any accusation could have.
That was when the small girl slipped her hand into my other one.
She couldn't have been more than three, with her father's dark curls and a wooden horse clutched in her free fist. She looked up at me with the frank, fearless curiosity of the young.
"Are you the princess?"
"Yes."
"You go up the mountain." She said it in the way small children state facts, certain and uncomplicated. "My daddy goes up the mountain too. When is he coming home?"
Sella pressed her knuckles to her mouth.
The little girl waited, watching me with complete trust.
"Sasi," Sella whispered. "Come here, baby."
But Sasi didn't move. She wanted her answer, and she wanted it from the princess who went up the mountain, who would surely know.
I had answered every other question that day with the truth.
I had described to one widow the precise spot where her husband fell.
I had named my own guilt aloud at a stranger's table.
But I could not look into that small, trusting face and tell a three-year-old that her father was never coming home.
"He's still on the mountain," I said, and it was not a lie, because some part of him always would be. "But your mama is going to take very good care of you. And so am I. I promise."
It was the most cowardly answer I gave all day.
Ursa got me out of there when my composure was about to fail, and she had me thanking Sella and out the door and folded into the hover-car while I was still holding the tears from falling.
I made it almost a mile before the tears came.
She didn't say anything. She moved to the seat beside me and let me cry against her shoulder for the second time in three days, and this time she didn't bother with "Your Highness" at all.