33. Idrilia #3
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.
"I think that location is on one of his maps."
There was one more thing I could tell him, and I decided to share it.
"The magnetism was extraordinary. The field strength up there is enormous, which is part of why she grows where she does; she feeds on it.
It was so strong that I felt it in my teeth, of all places.
A buzzing, a tingling along the jaw and through the teeth.
It later faded." I tapped the photograph of the rock.
"I didn't read about this in any of your father's published writing.
Did he ever describe such a sensation or write about it in his private journals? "
Lou sat back. "Actually, he told me about it. He never experienced those sensations himself, but he collected accounts of people who had. Some reported pressure behind the eyes, a humming in the bones or the teeth."
"Well, mineral fields do act on the body. It's not mysterious. But it's worth noting, and I'm glad to know he noted it too."
Lou wasn't listening to my tidy explanation. He was looking at the photographs again, his eyes moving between the three.
"Can I see her?" He pressed a hand to his chest. "Forgive me, I know one doesn't simply ask, but I have to ask.
I want to see her with my own eyes if it's at all possible.
" He glanced around the café and lowered his voice.
"Though I suppose, I mean, you couldn't possibly invite me to the palace, could you? "
"I'd be delighted to host you at the palace," I said. "And I would love to show her to you. Bring the maps and the journals, if you're willing, and we'll see what they can tell us together."
His eyes gleamed behind the spectacles.
"This is the best day of my life," he said. "Well, it's the second-best day of my life. The best was the day my son was born." He started digging in his jacket. "Here he is."
He produced a fan of worn wallet photographs and pushed them across the cups toward me, beaming with pride.
The young man in them was perhaps in his thirties and already losing his hair in the precise pattern of his father and grandfather before him, a third dome in the making.
"My son," Lou said proudly. "Haldren the third, we call him. My father was Lorento. I'm Lou. And my son is Less." He counted the names off on his fingers. "Lorento, Lou, and Less."
"That is," I said, looking from the photograph to him and back, "extremely confusing."
He laughed, delighted. "It is, isn't it? My wife says the same."
"He looks just like you," I told him, which was true and made him beam even wider. "And exactly like your father. Three generations of the same kind face and smart eyes."
"He's about to take his doctorate," Lou said, the proud father entirely in charge now. "In the healing arts. Pharmacology. My father would have been so proud of him."
I gathered the photographs, his and mine, and handed his back across the table.
"Then it's settled," I said. "I'll send my driver for you. Tell me which day works best."