Page 16 of The Verdant Cage
I stand at the threshold, my pulse thrumming in my ears.
This is the last time I’ll be here. When I leave this cottage, I’ll belong to the Guardian House in name, if not in heart. Never again will I be allowed in this space, never entrusted with the craft that’s shaped every aspect of my existence.
I inhale deeply, steadying myself as I realize that I came here to say goodbye.
My mind catalogs the room, taking in every neatly arranged tool and precisely placed ingredient. The drawers of medicinal powders are closed, their contents safe. The bottles of distilled liquids lining the shelves are labeled and aligned, the mortar and pestle on the center worktable clean and ready for use. The rootlings in the next room that I speak to like friends thrive in their neat pots.
Something’s wrong, though. I can feel it prickling across my scalp.
That’s when I spot something my wedding jitters must have hidden from me yesterday: a nearly imperceptible dusting of black speckles scattered across the third shelf to my left. I step forward and drag my finger through it, bringing it to my nose to smell.Charcoal. The trail leads behind a row of tincture bottles. Strange. Mother—the only other person who regularly used this space—was meticulous about cross-contamination. I reach behind the bottles and feel…a book?
My breath catches as I pull out Mom’s journal, far from its usual home on her workbench. I’m surprised she’s left it this close to the greenhouse. She always lectured Jonas and me about how damaging humidity is to paper. My fingers skim the cover, tracing scuffs and scratches, before I remember I don’t have time for sentimentality. I flip through the pages, scanning her precise handwriting, looking for any explanation as to why this book would be hidden away.
Most entries are exactly as I remember them—detailed notes on preparation methods, dosages, contraindications. But an error on the belladonna page makes me pause. She’s listed it as safe for children in small doses. Nonsense. A few pages later is a note on foxglove—the very plant I turn into digitalis extract to treat Horace’s weak heart—warning that it should never be used on a heart patient.
Deliberate inaccuracies.
Mother never made mistakes like this. My mind sharpens, dissecting. What had she been up to? A misdirection? If so, there must be a pattern to the falsehoods, a rhythm to their placement. But I can’t work it out now. I’m away from the Tzu house on borrowed time already. I slip the journal into my suitcase, trying to ignore the guilt. It’s not stealing if it was my mother’s, after all, and no one else in this House understands plants and potions well enough to use it.
I’ll give it back, I tell myself.Once I clear Jonas’s name and find Mom’s killer.
I take one last look at the room, confirming that everything remains precisely as it was before I entered. I’m about to slip through the rear door when a soft creak sounds from the other side of it.
My heartbeat double thumps.
Someone is shuffling around out there, and it’s not my aunt or uncle. They’re still back in the main room with Gran. And a villager would enter through the clinic. I scramble for a hiding place inside the greenhouse, pale daylight pressing through windows that line the walls from floor to ceiling. I dive beneath a table stacked with yarrow and goldenrod just in time, tucking myself away as a door opens across the lab.
I can’t see the intruder from here, but every part of me is straining to listen. I hear the careful shuffle of footsteps, the faint sound of pots being moved, the telltale rustle of turned pages across the room.
Whoever it is, they’re looking for something.
11
I exhale slowly.
I don’t know what’s happening, but if this person really is searching the lab, then I can’t sit here waiting to be discovered.
With quiet, measured movements, I lift my suitcase and creep toward one of the retractable, ground-level windows that encircle the greenhouse. I open a pane slowly, wincing at the faint squeak of the glass. I shove my suitcase and myself outside and breathe a sigh of cool air and relief when I’m not followed.
Closing the window as silently as I can, I sneak away, hurrying to the Record Keeper cottage. Marina answers the door, bundling me into her arms as soon as she lays eyes on me. The affection is unsettling. She’s only ever paid attention to mock me.
“How are you?” she asks, releasing me to look me up and down. Her blue eyes, startling against the pale cream of her skin, bore into me. “Do you know I was the last person to talk to your mother? I’ve been telling everyone how awful I feel! But a child of the Tanner House looked off-color to me, and I was so sure it was the Vex. I went to inform Henrietta and Jonas exactly as procedure dictates, and you know the rest.”
Well. I guess that puts to rest the question of whether or not she killed my mother or knew who had. “Uncle Richard says it wasn’t the Vex.”
She shrugs dismissively. “Turned out the child suffers from allergies.”
Anatol, then. Thirteen years old, allergic to stone fruits and pollen…neither of which would give him a sickly pallor. Had his stomach been upset? Before I can ask more, Marina tugs me into her cottage. I need to focus on getting inside the vault, so I force my Apothecary training to quiet. I’m sure my prior family will follow up on Anatol’s condition.
I enter Marina’s home. The interior looks like every other village house I’ve visited. The only difference is its size. This house is connected to the communal library, and beneath that lies one of only two cellars in the village. The Record Keeper basement is for preserving our history, the other for gatherings after chapel, just as the Founders intended.
While I’ve visited the library many times, I’ve never been to this side of the cottage, the living side, not even to set David’s foot last week. We prefer to treat broken bones at the site of injury, but David had been hauled to the Apothecary cottage by a pair of stone-faced Guardians, his foot crushed in one of their animal traps, they’d said. He’d been in too much pain to speak. I requested he stay for observation after I set his bones, but the Guardians carried him home against my advice.
Marina guides me to the couch before dropping into a plush chair across from me. She leans forward expectantly, throwing me off an already shaky guard. “How are you? Tell me everything.”
“I-I’m actually here to talk to you about Jonas. Is that all right?”
She nods, but she’s staring off into the distance. That’s when I realize: she’s also lost Jonas. Now that he’s gone, she’s a Caster. Unless a wife in our cycle is Harvested or dies, Marina will never have her own wedding night. Out of instinct, I grab her hand. She flinches but doesn’t pull away.
