Prince Arno wanted to know Dathorne the way his father knew it. Not the throne room, but the rivers and roads and the people who lived near them. So when a small Edran sprite darted across the Rivercourt garden path and squeaked at his boots, he crouched instead of stepping back. The creature was shaped like a sleek otter, its body made of pale river-water. Blue and silver currents moved under its skin. But today those currents ran thin and slow. The sprite’s bright eyes looked dull. "Something's wrong with it," Arno said. Princess Averine knelt beside him, her gray skirts pooling on the stone. She had traveled from Absaroka to visit, and she never waited for permission to help. "It wants us to follow," she said. "Look. It keeps turning back." The sprite led them off the garden path toward an old stone channel. Arno had passed it a hundred times without stopping. Now he saw the problem at once. The channel was dry. Cracked mud lined the bottom. Along the edge, a row of bell-shaped flowers drooped, their wine-red blossoms gone brown at the tips. "The flowers are dying," Averine said. She touched one wilted bloom. It crumbled. "These need running water. And so does the sprite." Arno pressed his palm to the dry stone. "The channel runs upstream, toward the old grounds." He stood. "If the water stopped, it stopped somewhere higher up. We find where, we fix it." They followed the empty channel together. The spirit trailed at Arno's heel, too weak to lead now. Averine walked the far bank, scanning the stone. The channel climbed past the newer wings into the older, quieter part of the grounds, where few people went. Averine stopped first. "Here." A tangle of fallen branches and packed silt choked the channel. Mud had dried hard around it. Behind the blockage, a thin pool of trapped water sat green and still. The whole flow had stopped at this one clogged throat. Arno rolled back his sleeves. "Help me pull." They worked with their hands. Averine dug at the silt while Arno hauled the branches free. His gloves tore. Mud streaked her fine sleeves. Neither stopped. At last the largest branch came loose with a wet crack. Water broke through. It rushed down the channel in a brown rope, then ran clear. The sprite plunged in. Its thin currents swelled bright blue again, and it spun once before shooting downstream toward the thirsty flowers. Averine laughed, breathless and filthy. "We did it." But Arno stared at the dried mud around the blockage. It was weeks old. "This didn't happen today," he said quietly. "The channel's been drying for days. The stewards are supposed to report the grounds." He looked upstream, toward the old wings nobody watched. "Nobody reported this. Which means nobody checked." He wiped his hands on his ruined tunic. The problem under his own roof was bigger than one blocked channel.

The next morning, Arno went back to the old grounds. The water ran clear now. But a cleared channel did not answer his real question. Why had no one reported the blockage? Averine found him crouched by the stone, dirt still under his nails from yesterday. "You slept on it," she said. "So did I. Someone should have caught this." They started with the groundskeepers. Arno found them raking leaves near the lower terrace. He asked plainly. An older man set down his rake and met his eyes. "We reported it, Your Highness. Weeks past. I wrote it myself." He described the dry channel, the dying flowers, the branches. Then he shrugged. "We handed it up. Nothing came back. So we waited. It's not our place to chase lords." Arno felt his face go hot. "You did everything right," he said. The man only nodded, like he'd heard such words before and watched them lead nowhere. Averine followed the trail with him. A written report went from the keepers to a steward, from the steward to the household office. Each person they asked pointed higher. Each had a reason. Too many papers. A busy season. The old grounds mattered little. The report had not been lost. It had been passed along and quietly set aside, over and over. They were still tracing it when Corin found them. The king's advisor moved through the arcade without hurry, dark coat crisp, eyes already reading the stack of notes in Arno's hand. Arno straightened. Corin missed nothing, and he did not waste patience on half-formed ideas. "You've spent a morning on a garden," Corin said. "On a report," Arno answered. He laid out the chain, name by careful name. Corin took the papers and read. His jaw tightened. He flipped back a page, then another. "This isn't one channel," Corin said at last. "This is every report that comes up from the grounds. The same path. The same silence." He looked up, and for once he was not watching Arno with judgment. "How many others sit unread right now?" They brought it to the king together. Calder received them on the terrace, crown catching the light. He listened as Corin spread the notes across the table. Then he turned to his son. "Tell me what you found." Arno chose his words. "I thought the fault was lazy stewards. It isn't. The keepers did their work. They reported it, correctly, on time." He pressed one finger to the oldest note. "The problem is worse than neglect. People did exactly what we asked of them, and it changed nothing. The message had nowhere to land." Calder was quiet a long moment. He picked up the keeper's report and read the plain handwriting. "Then we have been blind by design," he said. "Not one garden. The whole flow of what reaches me." He set the paper down and looked at Arno. "Find out how much I never hear. All of it."