Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 5 of 59

The field bloomed by morning, but Delia knelt among rows she could not name. She had traded her book for these plants. Now some leaves looked like medicine, and some looked like nightshade. She could not tell them apart. Then hooves sounded on the path. A rider in a black uniform swung down at her gate. She stood, wiping soil from her hands. Rynn Evander crossed the field in three strides. He was her friend from the palace, broad in the shoulders, jaw set hard. Other cadets stepped aside for him in the halls. Now he wore no warmth. "They're talking," he said. "About Nick's punishment. And about your claim." "My claim is real," Delia said. "The king signed it." "Doesn't matter what's real." Rynn stopped at the edge of the rows. "A cadet's coming to survey the land. Today. To check if your field earns its grant. If it looks worthless, they use it against Nick." He looked at the plants. "What is all this?" Delia's throat tightened. "A meadow. I planted it yesterday." "Name them." Rynn pointed at a cluster of dark leaves. "That one. What is it?" She knelt. The leaves were smooth and green, with small berries starting to form. Medicine, or poison. Her stomach turned. "I don't know," she admitted. "I gave away my book. I can't tell the healing ones from nightshade anymore." Rynn was quiet. Then he crouched beside her. "A cadet who finds poison in your rows will report it. They'll say you're careless. That the land grows death, not cures." He met her eyes. "That ends your claim. And Nick's with it." Delia looked at the field she had built in one day. She could not fake knowledge she'd lost. But she could show the truth. She stood and walked her rows, touching each plant, sorting by what her hands remembered. Yarrow felt rough. Chamomile smelled of apples. The dark berries she left untouched. She dug the questioned cluster up whole, roots and all, and set it in a basket apart from the rest. "If I can't name it, I don't keep it near the healing beds," she said. "I pull it. Every doubt goes in the basket." She worked fast, row by row. Rynn walked behind her, watching. When the cadet arrived at the gate, Delia met him with clean rows and a full basket of the uncertain. "These I've set aside," she told him. "Until I know them. A healer never plants what she can't name." The cadet studied the ordered field, the labeled beds, the caution in the separate basket. He wrote in his book. Then he mounted and rode off without a word against her. Rynn let out a breath. "You kept it." Delia looked at the basket. Nightshade was in there, she was sure. Along with cures she'd thrown out by mistake. She had saved her claim. But she still could not name half of what she'd planted.