Luminara Starwhisper's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Luminara slept four hours in a clerk's alcove and woke with the sealed petition still under her hand. The dawn call would open in two hours. To be heard, she needed a neutral first name on the sponsor line, and every councilor she could reach owed a debt to someone she had already crossed. The ice court's token from her filing counted against her now. The relic ruling had made a fifth enemy of the councilor who wanted the vault. She had no clean voice left in the chamber. She walked out the side gate and cut through the garden path toward the only building in the council quarter that did not answer to a councilor. The flower goddess kept her own greenhouse behind a low iron fence, tended by her order, and the order sponsored no petitions and blocked none. Neutral by charter. Luminara had never asked them for anything. Antheia Botanis had gone north to investigate the dying groves, but her steward had stayed behind with the seedlings. The greenhouse doors stood open to the cold morning. Inside, potted trees ringed a small stone throne, and a tiered fountain ran clear water into a shallow basin. Antheia stood at the fountain with her sleeves wet to the elbow. Her sunflower crown had two brown petals hanging loose. She had come back. "You're not north," Luminara said. "Grove near here went black last night," Antheia said. "Second one this week. I need council eyes on it before it spreads." Luminara set the petition on the fountain's rim. "I need a neutral first name on my sponsor line before the dawn bell. Your order can give it. No one can call your crown bought." She kept her hands flat on the stone. "In exchange, I open a council inquiry into the black groves the hour I take my seat. Sponsored by me, on record, first business." Antheia looked at the crown's brown petals, then at the scroll. "You may not take the seat." "I know. If I lose, you lose nothing but a signature. If I win, you get the inquiry no councilor will file for you, because none of them will cross the vault councilor to touch it." Luminara pushed the scroll one finger closer. "Your crown does not lie. Sign, and it will not have to." Antheia dried her hand on her dress, took the clerk's reed pen from the rim, and wrote her name on the sponsor line in one short stroke. She sealed it with a pressed leaf from her sleeve. "Dawn bell is close," she said. "Run." Luminara ran. She reached the call chamber as the bell struck and laid the scroll on the herald's table with a neutral first name at the top. The clerk marked it accepted. Her petition would be heard. She now owed the flower goddess's order an inquiry she did not yet know how to survive.