“I’ve told you a thousand times to call me Gwenna, you fuddy-duddy. Now go, andnolecturing the kids on civic duty this time.” She shoos them down a cramped hall to the right, then leads Rapunzel, Verette, and Councilor Savary to the left.
Inside, it’s just as close quarters as Gwenna had warned. Rapunzel can see the lines of what used to be a small clinic, voids where walls were knocked down, divots in the floor from when beds were spaced farther apart. A ramp leads upstairs, its wood a younger, paler hue than the floorboards. Everything spells the prioritizing of hasty expansion over aesthetics, and she can see why; there’s a waiting room full of unhappy-looking patients, but nearly every bed is full.
“After the Night of the Poisoned Dagger,” Rapunzel starts, only to pause when Dr. and Councilor Savary both look at her, alarmed.
“Father told them,” Verette says quickly. “Please, continue.”
“Was there a surge in illness?” Rapunzel asks. “The symptomsmight help identify the poison.” At Gwenna’s bafflement, she adds, “I grew up with three books total, and one of them was on botany. I read the section on poisonous plants alot.”
Gwenna’s mouth twists. “It’s actually been the inverse. We took our health for granted, and when the Starlight Spring was cut off, it took a few years for the long-term effects to start showing. People were developing chronic conditions, seasonal illnesses hit them harder—all things we didn’t realize the spring water was keeping at bay.” She touches her own tight white rows of braided hair. “It used to be that the starlight turned everyone’s hair white by eighteen. That was how you knew someone had come of age. But now it takes nearly twice as long.”
Rapunzel looks around the room and finds shades of pewter, sterling, slate; only people past their mid-thirties have true snowy hair. Something about that itches in the back of her mind, but she can’t put her finger on it.
The area upstairs seems intended for longer recuperation. Some patients are carefully walking around with a nurse’s help, others sitting up and reading or bickering with their neighbors. Little personal touches mark the walls by each bed; Rapunzel spies the pale shell moths of verette charms dangling from bedposts or pins in the walls or even worn as necklaces, crafted with everything from crude hemp and clay beads to silk ribbons and crystal.
“It’s been too long, Princess!” croaks an older man, grinning broadly, from a bed.
“It’s been one week,” Verette retorts with a grin of her own, “same as last time. How have you been?”
“We’re feeling it everywhere,” Councilor Savary says under her breath as Verette goes to speak with the old man. “The fountains haven’t run with starlight for over twenty years. Oh, the sight of it was…almost as beautiful as Gwenna.”
Her wife pushes her shoulder with an embarrassed smile. “You old sap.” The smile fades a bit. “But you’re right. The cost keeps growing. People aren’t recovering the way they should.”
“Fewer fish in the coves, smaller crops, even the hens don’t lay as many eggs,” the councilor says grimly. “We’re making do with less and less, but we can’t stretch much more.”
Rapunzel twists a lock of hair around a finger, thinking. Something like a theory is snowballing in her head; she just knows it needs another push or two. “And the sunmills, they’re tapping normal underground springs?”
“I would presume so?” Gwenna shrugs. As Verette rejoins them, she asks brightly, “So, Your Highness, do you think this year’s coming of age ceremony will be the one?”
Verette’s shoulders stiffen, just for a moment, as her gaze flicks to Councilor Savary. She laughs in a way that reminds Rapunzel of how she’d laugh at Gothel’s “teasing.” “Well, we’ll see in a few days, won’t we? But my father knows best.”
“You’d think the king would give you more of a heads-up,” Gwenna says.
Verette’s empty smile doesn’t crack. “You would think.”
They continue through the rest of the second floor, pausingto let Verette and the councilor check in with patients and staff. Rapunzel can’t help overhearing more questions about the coming of age ceremony, if the throne will pass to Verette, what the first thing she’ll do as queen is. She deflects them all with refrains of “We’ll see” and “I trust my father” and “If he thinks it’s time.”
Rapunzel also can’t help noticing more verette charms on the nurses and doctors, pinned to collars or swinging from belts. Unlike the variety of the patients’ verettes, though, all of theirs seem to be crafted with the same midnight-blue cord and golden beads. Like they carry more meaning than a blessing.
They’ve just reached the top of another ramp leading back downstairs when a kerfuffle erupts below. Voices rise, Eugene’s among them.
Rapunzel hurries down the ramp and finds him attempting to keepThe Tales of Flynnigan Riderout of the grasp of a flailing elderly nurse. “Youasked me to read a nap-time story to them,” he grunts, trying to back up while avoiding the dozen or so children strewn about the room on heaps of pillows, cushions, and blankets.
“Not fromthatbook!” The nurse makes another swipe for it. “The king banned it twenty years ago! We could get shut down just for having it on the premises, you foolish—”
“It’s fine,” Verette interrupts from behind Rapunzel. “It’s all right—”
“I wanna hear about Flynnigan Rider!” shouts a girl of about seven, clutching a stuffed toy sea turtle to her chest.
“Yeah! Let him read!” another boy yells. Three children, all in the vague stage Rapunzel thinks is between ages three and five, take the opportunity to start wailing at the top of their lungs, setting off a chain reaction of hysterics through the children’s ward.
The nurse also looks ready to cry as she scowls at Eugene. There’s real trepidation in her eyes, like he’s brought a wolf into the nursery. “Now look what you’ve done!”
“I didn’t—it’s just abook!” Eugene protests.
Hughes clears his throat from the doorway, steadfastly ignoring the toddler hammering his shins with a toy horse that, for reasons beyond Rapunzel, squeaks with each blow. “Minister Cressien stepped outside for some fresh air. Perhaps the young gentleman and I might join him.”
The toddler loses interest in Hughes and shifts targets to Eugene, who neatly sidesteps him with a bewildered shrug. “Fine! Fine. I’m going.”
