Page 71 of Homegrown Magic

How frivolous they were, Yael realizes now, treating the Rookery like a daring side quest. Disrupting the lives of folk who had no choice but to be there, then leaving them on the other side of the river once more and never looking back.

At last they reach the inksmith—a squat brick building stained with soot, the stink of turpentine wafting out its propped-open windows. Beside it is a merchant’s shop in moderate disrepair, the peeling sign advertising ensorcelled items for cheap: hats of vermin, bags of holding, and the like. Whatever spellwork has been pressed upon the wares will probably wash off in the rain. These are largely the shops that serve the people who serve the students and merchants and nobility, as well as a number of factories. The lane is stuffed with unremarkable brick and cinder structures, but one building catches Yael’s eye.

A greenhouse.

Neatly cylindrical and well kept, its glass panes are clear and polished as a cut diamond in the light that falls between its neighbors. Of course, Yael’s seen greenhouses in Ashaway before, but they’ve never gone inside. The Claunecks have groundskeepers and party planners to handle such tasks whenever necessary.

Now they find themself drifting toward its glass doors.

As soon as they push inside, they’re struck by the warm, wet air overripe with commingling floral scents, like stepping into an excessively perfumed bath. It knocks them back a step from the closely packed troughs of plants.

“Can I help you?” a young woman in an apron with a cloud of dark curls calls from the back of the greenhouse. She has to turn and scoot sideways down the narrow aisles. When she reaches the front of the greenhouse, she stops, her lips pursing into a surprised oh. “Can I help you, sir’ram?” she amends breathlessly. She might not know who they are, but their jeweled rings, their gleaming gold watch chain, and their fine plum-colored coat and vest give them away as somebody.

Little does she know that she’s looking at one tiny, unimportant, ill-fitting part.

Yael looks away to examine the buds polka-dotting the greenery: teeny delicate jasmine in one trough, fanned pink and yellow plumeria in another, and in another, broad purple roses the exact color of—

“Sir’ram?” the shopkeeper asks again, twisting her apron between hands with soil stamped into every crease.

“Apologies, I—Are you the owner of this greenhouse?”

Swiftly, she shakes her head. “No, sir’ram, I only work for him.”

“I see. What do you grow all this for? And why here?”

“Well, there’s a factory next door to us.”

“This is for a factory?”

“Aye, where they make the perfume. I pick the buds at dawn before the heat of the day gets to them, and bring them over.”

“It’s very…” Without meaning to, Yael wrinkles their nose.

“There’s magic that makes the smell more powerful, so you get more perfume from each batch of pickings. Greater profits from a smaller growing space and all that. They press the petals into oil next door and send it off to the perfumery from there. But that’s down by the markets at the Copper Court, where the fancy folk…I mean…I’m sorry, sir’ram. It’s just, customers don’t come in here. I thought you were the factory boss coming to complain about the morning’s batch,” she admits, swiping a curl off the glistening bronze skin of her forehead.

It doesn’t look like the kind of greenhouse that welcomes visitors off the lane, now that Yael thinks on it. It’s overcrowded and overpowering. The Greenwillow Greenhouses smelled of nature—the very best of it. Like mossy forest floors and buttery sunshine and cool spring rain and…

And strawberries.

Yael clears their throat. “Do you like it here?”

The greenhouse assistant furrows her brow. “You mean, do I like the work?” She looks as though she’s never been asked the question before. “There are much harder jobs, to be sure. My brother and his husband, you know, they’re fishermen out in the Serpentine Sea off the Upper Islands. Perilous labor, and they don’t step foot on land for months. Working here, I bring money home to my mother every night. And I do like growing things. The owner lets me keep a little plot for my own garden out back, as there’s not much land to be had in the Rookery.”

“May I see it?” Yael asks.

She hesitates.

They suppose they are acting a bit alarming. Holding their hands up, palms out, they explain, “I, um, worked in a greenhouse, you see.”

“You did, sir’ram?”

“For a little while. And I guess I like growing things too, and I miss…the work. Though I was never very good at it.”

The assistant looks thoughtful. “Every year, I’ve got crops that don’t take. It’s the putting-things-into-the-ground part I love, more than what I pull out of it—though it certainly helps to feed us. Do you really want to see?”

Yael nods around the dam building up in the back of their throat.

She leads them through the cramped aisles (Yael slips more easily between the troughs than she does) and out the back of the greenhouse, where a patchy square of grass has been almost entirely taken up by weather-worn garden beds.