Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 30 of 59

Delia said she needed helpers, and the words hung in the air. But a new fear rose with them. She had a secret buried in her hands. When her fingers touched the ground, plants sprang up whole. Any worker she hired would see it. They would watch her fill jars faster than any healer could. They would talk. And the nobles were always listening for one loose thread to pull. "I can't hire strangers," she told Nick. "Not with what I can do. One of them sees me touch the floor and a mint sprig climbs up, and it's over. The king would know by supper." Nick set his jaw. He walked to the window and looked at the empty field. "Then don't do it where they can see," he said. "Hire hands for the beds and the wash and the wrapping. Keep the growing to yourself." "Where?" Delia asked. "There's no corner of this house they won't have reason to enter." Nick turned. He pointed at the ceiling. "Upstairs." Delia followed his hand. The house had a second floor, wide rooms she had left bare. She had planned to fill them with beds. She had not thought past that. "Make it an office," Nick said. "Yours and mine. A lock on the door. No worker sets foot up there. You grow what you need behind that door, then carry it down as stock. They only see the finished jars. They never see how." She thought it through. A hired girl would fold cloth and scrub floors below. A hired man would carry water and lift patients. None of them would climb the stairs. The magic stayed hidden. The work still got done. "They'll wonder why the door's locked," she said. "Let them wonder," Nick said. "A prince and his wife want one room to themselves. No one questions that." Delia climbed the stairs. Nick came behind her. The largest room faced the morning sun. Blossoms framed the window from the vines outside. She pressed a palm to the floorboard. A stem of comfrey rose green between the planks. She cut it and held it up. "Here," she said. "I do it here, and I carry it down." Nick found a spare bolt in the toolbox and fixed it to the door that afternoon. He tried the lock twice. It held. He put one key in her apron pocket and kept the other. "Now you can hire," he said. "They work below. You work above. No one learns the truth." Delia looked down the stairs at the rows of beds. Tomorrow she would find people willing to work for no coin. She had a place to hide her gift and a way to grow the hospital past two hands. But a locked room in a house full of workers would draw eyes. And the nobles she feared most were the kind who noticed a door that would not open.