Chapter 718: A Tenth of the Bloom

Chapter 718: A Tenth of the Bloom

Edda took him for a fool for perhaps three breaths.

Then her expression changed, and she looked at his clothes again.

"You really did come through one of those openings."

"Yes," Leon said. "Recently."

Nerin set down the basket he had just picked up.

Edda gave him a resigned glance before turning back to Leon. "Well. That explains the questions."

"Do many people ask them?"

"Not me. My grandmother spoke about visitors. Different clothes, different names for everything. Some stayed near the settlement for a while." Edda folded her damp cloth. "I thought you were from beyond the eastern hills."

Leon wanted to ask a dozen things. He settled for the one that mattered most to everyone waiting at the spring.

"Do you know how those visitors left?"

"No," she said. "I never met them."

"Were there records?"

"Perhaps somewhere. The stories I heard were mostly about what they bought and what they paid with."

Nerin shifted closer. "My father says one gave his grandfather a lamp that didn’t need oil. It broke before I was born."

Edda nodded. "I’ve heard that one too."

Leon let the subject rest. Pressing them would not turn an old family story into directions to an exit.

Still, his thoughts had begun moving quickly.

The Palace’s measurements had been taken through an unstable entrance complex. They had watched its boundary strengthen and waited for the passage to become safe. None of them had stood here while those changes occurred. They had interpreted what they could measure from outside.

If Edda’s account was true, the developing connection explained those readings much better than the birth of this entire place.

Master is going to want to hear this.

He almost reached for the communication plaque before remembering how little use it would be. Ji was outside, beyond a gateway that no longer existed. He would have to bring the information back himself.

Nerin had been patient for as long as he could manage.

"Is there really another sky?" he asked.

Leon looked up. Pale clouds moved above the ridge, ordinary enough that he had stopped studying them days ago.

"Yes."

"Different from this one?"

"Sometimes. The place I came through has storms and clear days too. I don’t know how much of what you’re used to would be different."

Nerin considered that answer with obvious disappointment.

"What were you expecting?" Leon asked.

"I don’t know. Something." The young man glanced at his teacher. "You said the visitors wouldn’t be like us."

"I said you shouldn’t assume they were," Edda replied. "He’s still got two hands."

Nerin looked at Leon’s hands, then laughed at himself. Leon found himself smiling too. He understood the disappointment. Having discovered another world, a person wanted it to look the part.

Edda began gathering the tools they had left along the bank. Leon carried the pail to the covered channel while Nerin collected the spare supports. Their conversation continued as they worked, no longer quite so wary.

He learned that Asterbank sold dried plants to several neighboring settlements, that the ridge path forked above a stand of red-barked trees, and that the lower route became unpleasant after heavy rain. Edda supplied directions by landmarks. The marks she scratched into the dirt meant nothing until she explained them.

Leon memorized the spoken instructions. He would have a recorder draw a proper route later.

When they returned to the pale plants, Edda stopped beside a stem whose closed bud had begun leaning away from its support.

She touched the wood, tested the soil, and called Nerin over.

"Earlier than I expected. We’ll need the shallow baskets ready tomorrow."

"For the garden?" Leon asked.

"For the bloom." Edda tilted the support so the bud had room. "These feel it before the field plants open. If the weather holds, the first beds in the hollow should be ready the morning after tomorrow."

"What happens then?"

"Enough energy moves through the ground to bring half the hollow into season at once. Not all at the same moment, though. That catches people out."

She named three plants he did not know. Sun cups opened first on the warm slopes. Frost-thread followed in shaded ground after the surge reached it. Emberseed released its useful pods later, once the stalks darkened.

The names were simple enough. Knowing when to pick them was another matter.

Edda described buyers rejecting whole baskets of sun cups because the centers had already turned dull. Nerin added that squeezing frost-thread into a sack ruined the pale growth along its stems. She let him finish, then reminded him that he had learned that lesson with her sack.

"How much do the sun cups hold?" Leon asked.

"Enough that refiners come for them. Whether they’re worth your time depends on what you need."

He thought of Bai Heng’s small sample containers and the pleasure of finally having fuel he could replace without spending a fortune. Then he thought of Loriel, studying unfamiliar leaves from a sketch while their owner spoke casually of a whole hollow coming ready.

She’ll want to see that.

So did he.

"Would you take a party there?" Leon asked.

Edda studied him. "A party that listens?"

"The four collectors will. I’ll make sure the others stay out of their way."

"And if someone decides our baskets look easier to take than their own?"

"They won’t take yours while you’re working with me."

He answered plainly. Edda looked at the sword at his side, then at his face. Whatever she made of him, it was enough to continue.

"One part in ten," she said. "Of what your party gathers during this bloom. I show you the grounds and the proper cuts. Nerin helps with sorting."

"Comparable portions," Leon said. "You don’t get the best tenth and leave us the damaged pieces."

"Neither do you."

"Agreed. We divide by kind and quality before anyone takes a personal share. This outing only."

Edda nodded. "And I want to see your containers before we leave."

Leon agreed to that too. The terms were simple enough to remember, and he intended to have them recorded when his people arrived. Her knowledge would be part of the cost of obtaining the harvest. What remained would be divided under the Palace’s existing arrangement.

There was no reason to make the bargain more complicated than that.

Edda did ask one more thing: whether his people would be paid from their remaining portion. When he said they would, she seemed satisfied.

"I’ve worked beside hired hands who gained nothing by taking care," she said. "You can usually tell by the second basket."

Leon remembered Lu Pei explaining the mineral wrapping long after they had returned to camp. The collector had been tired, dirty, and delighted with what they had brought back. He wanted his people to feel that way about this harvest too.

He asked about dangers on the way, and Edda described loose ground along one descent and animals that sometimes fed on the opened flowers. She knew where people usually waited and which slopes could be reached without trampling someone else’s crop. The hollow itself was wild gathering ground, she said. Her garden was not.

Leon assured her that he understood the distinction.

"I’ll return with my people tomorrow afternoon," he said. "If the route takes longer than expected, we won’t leave you waiting past sunset."

"Come here," Edda said. "There’s dry ground above the channel. You can sleep there and we’ll leave early."

Nerin brightened at the prospect of eighteen visitors. Edda handed him the basket before he could start asking about them.

As they prepared to leave, Leon took one final look at the leaning bud. A thin line of yellow showed between its closed petals. He could feel a faint concentration of warmth there that had not been obvious when he arrived.

"How will we know the sun cups are ready?" he asked.

"The outer petals lift first," Edda said. "Then a bead forms in the center. You cut while the bead stays clear. After it clouds, you’ve missed what the refiners want."

"How long does that take?"

"Sometimes less time than people spend arguing over whose patch it is."

Leon looked at her.

Edda tied her tool roll shut. "Bring people who can work quickly."

He watched the pair take the western path, then moved his second body uphill to check the route he would use tomorrow. There was enough daylight left to examine the difficult descent before turning toward quieter ground.

At the spring, his original body reached for a clean sheet of paper.

This time, he had more to offer Loriel than a drawing.