The Sea King

by C. L. Wilson

  Spring, clad in a light, unadorned green gown with a heavily-stained apron covering her bodice and the front of her skirts, was kneeling beside a bed of lettuces, plucking weeds and thrusting her fingers into the loose, loamy soil. She wore no gardening gloves. As Dilys drew near, his skin tingled. She was using her magic.

  Not the weather magic that was the gift of every direct member of Summerlea’s royal family—weathergifts didn’t do much good inside a greenhouse—but something else. Growing magic of some kind. He took a breath. The magic tasted bright and grassy against his tongue. Like sunlight and springtime. No hint of danger.

  “Princess Spring,” he murmured. He kept his distance. Always wise to do with women of magic.

  She kept plucking weeds and digging her fingers through the soil without responding.

  He waited patiently. He was used to waiting for women to finish working their magics.

  Five minutes later Spring drew her hands from the soil, wiped them absently against her dirt-stained apron, and got to her feet.

  “Princess Spring,” he said again, still keeping his distance.

  She turned towards him, her brow furrowed in thought, then blinked in apparent surprise to find him standing there. “Oh, Sealord. Forgive me, I didn’t hear you come in.”

  She had a streak of dirt on her cheek and another on her chin. Her normally piercing green eyes were soft and hazy, and her long, ruler-straight hair hung in two braided loops tied near her ears with green ribbons. The effect left Spring Coruscate, the eldest and most coolly regal of the three Seasons, looking surprisingly innocent and girlish.

  “If you please, Myerialanna,” he murmured, “I would have a moment of your time to speak with you about your sister Gabriella.”

  The hazy look left Spring’s eyes, and so did the softness, leaving the intense, piercing green gaze he’d come to expect from her. “What about her?” A wealth of protectiveness curled around those words. A wall of thorns, just waiting to rip him to shreds.

  His heart warmed with approval. Protectiveness was a trait he admired, no matter where he found it. “You know I have been sending her daily gifts.”

  One elegant brow rose, a sleek, black, expressive arch. “I could hardly miss it. Your gifts have become the talk of Konumarr.”

  Of course, they had. After having initially danced attendance on Autumn and Spring, he’d wanted to declare his interest fixed on Summer in no uncertain terms. Not just to convince Gabriella of his determination, but also to quash any thought that he’d somehow “settled” for her instead of choosing her outright. Summer Coruscate was the liana he’d chosen, the only Season he wanted, and he would not allow the slightest whisper to the contrary.

  “This afternoon, I gave her a puppy. A golden malam. She returned it, which I expected, of course, but when she did, she was visibly upset, even near tears.”

  “Ah,” said Spring.

  Dilys frowned. “‘Ah’ what? She loves animals. I know she does. I have seen how she smiles when the children in the village bring their dogs to the park to play. I have watched her pet those dogs, throw sticks for them. And I have seen the longing in her eyes when they depart.”

  “If you want to know why your gift upset her, perhaps you should ask her directly.”

  A loyal response. But he was a courting Calbernan who had somehow misread something vital about his chosen liana, and wounded her as a result. He needed answers, and he would not let Spring’s loyalty stop him from getting them.

  “If I thought she would speak to me, I would, but even if she did, it’s unlikely she’d tell me the truth.”

  One sleek black brow rose. She fixed him with a cool, hard look. “If Gabriella doesn’t want you to know, then I can’t help you. The last time I let Autumn convince me to do so, Gabriella came back distraught and disheveled and shut herself away in her rooms. She claims nothing happened, but we both know that’s a lie, don’t we?”

  Dilys’s fingers curled. “What happened between Gabriella and me that day is not your concern—”

  “I’ve been looking after my sisters since our mother died,” she interrupted. “I consider their well-being very much my concern!”

  He sucked in a breath, fighting back a hot retort. She was not Calbernan. She did not understand how gravely she’d just insulted him.

  “Did you know,” he said, “that Calbernan males must earn the right to claim a liana? And it is not some easy task. A Calbernan spends decades learning, training, and earning sufficient gold and glory to prove himself strong, brave, and skilled enough to be worthy of a wife.”

  One sleek black brow rose. Spring said nothing, but her vivid green eyes watched him with unblinking intensity.

  “Once a Calbernan has earned that right, there is no greater privilege or responsibility for a Calbernan male than to ensure the happiness and well-being of his liana,” he continued. “There is nothing he would not do for her. Nothing he would not give to bring her joy. A Calbernan would rather cut off his own arm than cause his liana pain—even if she is not yet his in the eyes of the world.” He let both his voice and his gaze harden as he said, “And if I ever assaulted a woman—any woman—in the way you’re suggesting, my own men would slaughter me and throw my shredded remains to the sharks. And they would be right to do so.”

  “I see.” Spring rubbed the back of her hand on her chin. A new, much larger smudge of dirt joined the one already there, turning almost her entire chin black.

  Dilys touched a jewel on his belt, and the front of his buckle sprang open to reveal a small, waterproofed compartment. “Please. Gabriella was extremely distressed when she returned the puppy. I need to understand why.” He extracted a thin, folded square of clean cloth from the belt compartment, shook it out, and offered it to Spring.

  “Dirt on my face?” she asked, unsurprised.

  “On your chin. And here.” He pointed to a spot on his cheek that mirrored the location of the smudge on Spring’s. As she scrubbed at her face, he said, “I would never ask you to betray Gabriella’s confidences, Myerialanna. I only ask for guidance, so that I will not make another such mistake. Will you not help me?”

  Her face now clean, the skin rosy from its brisk scrubbing, Spring handed Dilys back his cloth. He refolded the small square and returned it to the small compartment in his buckle. When that was done, his buckle once more clipped shut, he stood patiently waiting for Spring’s response.

  “I promised the head gardener I would look at some ailing tomato plants for him,” she said after a long silence. “You could keep me company, if you like. Perhaps we could chat to help pass the time while I work.”

  He could not have stopped his smile if he wanted to. “That would be my pleasure, Myerialanna.”

  Dilys followed her down the center aisle of the greenhouse. The smell of plants and soil was strong, the ground soft and warm beneath his bare feet.

  “What were you doing with the plants and the soil back there?” he asked, curious about the Summerlander princess’s magic.

  “Oh, just helping things along,” she said. When he cocked a brow, she added, “The nutrients in that patch of soil were running a little low. Now they’re not.”

  “Ah. This is a gift all your sisters possess?”

  “All Summerlanders have a basic talent for enriching the soil and making plants flourish. It’s part of what makes our kingdom so valuable. In other lands, fields must lay fallow, but in Summerlea our growing season never ends, the nutrients in our soil never deplete, and our produce is the plumpest, ripest, richest in the world. Some of us”—she cast a look his way—“can grow other things, too. Our father, for instance. He could grow just about anything.”

  “Like what?”

  She shrugged, and he wasn’t particularly surprised that she didn’t offer up more information. Calbernans didn’t speak of their magic to outsiders either. But Spring was not a woman who made idle conversation. When she spoke, she spoke for a reason. Verdan had been able to grow things. Things that w
ent beyond growing plants and enriching soil. So could others, including Spring and possibly Gabriella. Dilys filed the information away.

  They passed by rows of broad green leaves shading bright yellow, green, and orange squashes, and a column completely enveloped from the ground to the impressively high greenhouse ceiling with leafy vines flush with plump green bean pods.

  “This greenhouse wasn’t here last year,” Dilys said. He and his men had not landed at Konumarr. The defenses along the Llaskroner Fjord had been too strong. They’d chosen an uninhabited stretch of coastline a hundred miles further south. But he’d studied Konumarr nonetheless, poring over maps and sketches provided by the merchant spies who sailed freely into the ports of foreign lands.

  “The king had it built earlier this year. There’s one near Gildenheim, too. It was another of my sister Khamsin’s ideas. She wanted to see if the greenhouses could supply sufficient produce to support a palace and its surrounding villages throughout the year. A way to lessen Wintercraig’s need to import food from other countries, especially in the cold months.”

  “But Summerlea now belongs to Wintercraig. Food will never be a problem again.”

  Spring shrugged again. “Winterfolk prefer to be self-sufficient whenever possible. In any event, since the climate here in Konumarr is milder than Gildenheim, and since we were coming here for the summer, the king decided to locate a second greenhouse here in Konumarr to see if this location makes a difference on production.”

  They had reached the plot of tomato vines. They looked perfectly fine to Dilys’s eyes, with clusters of tomatoes in various stages of ripeness hanging amidst the pungent green leaves, but Spring frowned when she saw them.

  “These plants are not healthy?” he asked. Agriculture was not his forte, but he was always willing to learn something new.

  “Not as healthy as they should be,” she said. “The tomatoes should be larger, and there should be more of them.” Kneeling, she thrust her right hand in the soil and began sifting it through her fingers. With her left hand, she reached out and began lightly stroking the thick, hairy main stalk of the tomato plant. “Hello, little friend,” she whispered. “How are you feeling today? A little under the weather?”

  He’d heard that Summerlanders talked to their plants, but until now, he had always considered the stories nothing more than a joke.

  “I’m certain, if you tried, no other plant in all of Mystral could rival the size or quantity or ripe perfection of your fruit,” Spring told the plant. “What do you think, hmm?”

  As Dilys watched, the plant’s vines thickened. New tendrils unfurled and climbed up and around the massive wooden pillar. The existing tomatoes plumped, while new, small yellow flowers blossomed all over the plant’s new and old growth. Dilys’s senses tingled like mad, recognizing the crooning words of encouragement for the commands they were. Spring Coruscate’s magic wasn’t only in her hands. It flowed from her voice as well.

  Not the pure, powerful susirena her sister possessed, but something closely related.

  “That’s quite an impressive talent,” was all he said.

  “Mmm,” Spring murmured in absent agreement. “One of the gifts I inherited from my father.” Pulling her hand from the soil, she began running both hands over the tomato plant, inspecting its fibrous stalks and clusters of fruit the way a mother might inspect a child during its bath. Giving gentle caresses and whispering words of encouragement as she went. “Breeding is a funny thing. I could cross this red tomato plant with one of the varieties that produces yellow fruit, and I might end up with some plants that grow red tomatoes, others that grow only yellow, and some small percentage of plants that grow both red and yellow tomatoes on the same vine. Or, depending on their lineage, I could cross two red tomato plants and end up with a plant that produces yellow fruit.”

  Having finished with the first plant, Spring moved to the next. She thrust her right hand into the soil, stroked and caressed the tomato plant with her left, and began crooning her encouraging enchantment. As the plant shivered and responded, unfurling new vines and leaves and blossoms, swelling the fruit clustered among its leaves, she said, “Our father wasn’t always as he was at the end.” Her lips compressed. Her eyes darkened. She shot Dilys a shuttered look. “He wasn’t always mad.”

  “I know,” Dilys murmured. If they had known each other better, he would have laid a soothing hand upon her shoulder. But they did not, so he kept his hands to himself. “I met him as a young boy. My family and I sailed to Summerlea for Princess Autumn’s naming day. It was clear how much loved his children and his queen. My father and mother were greatly impressed by his devotion. They found him almost Calbernan in that regard.” It was the highest compliment a Calbernan could give an oulani. “That memory was one of the reasons we did not turn away your brother, Falcon, when he came to us for aid.”

  “Yes,” she said. “When my father loved, he loved completely, with all the strength and emotion and magic within him. He held nothing back. He hated that way, too. And as I said, he had a gift for making things grow.” Her voice trailed off, the hands sifting the soil and stroking the tomato plant slowed as her thoughts traveled down some invisible path. Then, with a brisk shake, she came back to herself. “My mother, on the other hand, was calmer. She loved with her whole heart, too, but that love never grew so strong it made her lose all reason. She was the perfect queen for my father. A cooling rain to his summer fire. She balanced him.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “Everyone always talks about how like our mother Gabriella and I are—Gabriella especially. I suppose it’s only natural. We’re the calm ones of the five of us. And in addition to inheriting our mother’s looks, Gabriella is the kindest of us all, her heart the largest and most loving. Even you saw only her gentleness when you first met her and mistook it for weakness.”

  Dilys started to defend himself, then closed his mouth. He had been fooled by the face Gabriella showed the world. He had underestimated her strength, her passion, the vitality and the power she kept bottled up so tightly inside her. It wasn’t entirely his fault . . . she’d run from him like a frightened rabbit from the very start.

  Spring cupped one of the green tomatoes in her palm and bent to whisper to them. The fruit in her hand plumped and ripened. “But what those people forget about all the Seasons is that no matter how much any of us may look or act like our mother, the blood and magic of Verdan Coruscate runs in us, too. And none of us,” she said, leaning back to reveal the bright, vibrant yellow tomato growing amid all the red ones, “is giftnamed Serenity.”

  “You’re saying Gabriella is much stronger and potentially more dangerous than she appears,” Dilys interpreted. “This, I know already. Calbernans do not fear a woman’s strength—magical or otherwise. We celebrate it.”

  “Neither I nor any of my siblings fear what strengths we may have inherited from our father,” Spring murmured. “It’s the weaknesses that concern us.”

  And then, at last, he understood. Gabriella’s habit of never letting any man get close, holding them at bay with soft words and that self-effacing sweetness that made her fade in comparison to her bolder, more vibrant sisters. Her fear of Dilys, of what he made her feel. Her pain when he’d given her a puppy to love.

  The children of a madman would, naturally, be haunted by the specter of that madness.

  Gabriella was a Siren. She felt everything more deeply than others. Indeed, her vast power came from the enormity of emotion that dwelled within her.

  And she had spent her whole life trying to suppress that emotion, fearing to feel. Thinking the depth of her love, of her emotion, was proof that she was destined to follow her father’s descent into madness . . .

  “She is afraid to love?”

  Spring stroked the pungent leaves of the plant in front of her. “You met my father. You knew him at the end. You’ve seen for yourself what can happen when someone with great power, who loves without restraint, loses what they love.”

&n
bsp; “Did Gabriella have a puppy when she was younger?”

  “We weren’t allowed pets as children. My father thought it prudent to keep children with potent magic away from fragile living creatures. He was probably right. Mama used to call Autumn and I her little thunderstorms. We were forever calling up storms whenever we got upset—which was shockingly often. We tended to emote a lot. Then Khamsin came along and put us both to shame.” Her lips quirked in a wry grin.

  “And Gabriella?”

  Spring shrugged. “It’s no secret she’s always been the best-natured of the five of us.”

  She would be. As a Siren, she thrived on love—she required it, the way plants needed rain and fish needed water. Even as a baby, she would have instinctively behaved in whatever way resulted in her receiving the most of what she required. And receiving constant, loving attention would have, in turn, soothed her and fed her own happiness, making her a good-natured child others couldn’t help but love.

  “Of course,” Spring continued, “I wasn’t a particularly obedient child back then. Papa’s no pets rule didn’t stop me from sneaking out of the palace and going to play with the stable boy’s dogs. It’s a good thing I never got terribly attached. There was a horrible accident in the stables involving the puppies, and if I’d been there, I could have really hurt someone.”

  Dilys didn’t have any older siblings, but he’d spent enough time around other people’s children to know that where one child went, the younger ones were sure to follow. Spring was telling him that Gabriella had snuck out with her to the stables . . . that she’d gotten attached to the puppies . . . that she’d been there when something had happened to them. Gabriella, a young Siren, who would have been overwhelmed by her first taste of grief, who couldn’t have known how to process it.

  In Calberna, young imlani girls were pampered and sheltered, protected from all darker emotions until they could learn how to handle them, how to release sorrow and anger and grief in ways that caused no harm to themselves or others. Here in Summerlea, no one would know to take such precautions. And when dealing with a child of Gabriella’s vast power, the results of such ignorance could have been catastrophic. It could have—no, it clearly had—left her with deep emotional scars.