The next morning, the white rose returned in someone else's arms.
Tess from the herb court carried it down the lower path with the root ball wrapped in sacking. She had spent the last year insisting that soil from my beds migrated uphill to inconvenience her personally.
White ribbons still hung from the kitchen doors behind her. The Barrier had held through the night. Pell still would not promise the next one.
She stopped when she saw me beside the empty hole.
The healer had allowed me a stool, twelve minutes, and no tools heavier than the pruning shears in my left hand. My right arm was strapped across my chest.
Roxxy waited inside the open tool arch, far enough back to leave the garden looking almost ordinary. One guard stood at the kitchen door. The other was somewhere I had been told not to find.
Halden waited somewhere beyond the upper path.
Tess took in the healer, my bound arm, and the strip of armor showing inside the arch.
"I was told you were still in bed."
"I was promoted to furniture."
She lowered the rose. "This was left at the nursery gate. I'm meant to put it at the east end before the second bell."
The plant was younger than the one that had been removed. Three white blooms leaned over leaves wet from the nursery trough.
"Who told you?" I asked.
Tess took a folded slip from beneath the sacking.
Roxxy stepped out of the arch.
Tess nearly dropped the paper.
"Your Highness."
"Give it to me."
Roxxy read the slip once. Her face did not change. That usually meant the change had been moved somewhere less public.
"Where did you find this?"
"In my tool basket."
"When?"
"This morning." Tess indicated me with her chin. "I thought it was from him."
"It isn't," I said.
"You haven't read it."
"I rarely arrange my own work before breakfast."
The healer put a hand on the back of my stool before I could lean closer.
Roxxy folded the paper along its existing crease. "Did you receive another note yesterday?"
Tess's attention went to the shears in my left hand.
The answer arrived before she gave it.
I set the shears across my knee.
"Which hand did it tell you to use?"
Tess said nothing.
Roxxy moved between her and the upper path.
"Answer him."
"The left."
The lower beds seemed to contract around the empty hole.
"You worked this row yesterday," I said.
"I worked half the Academy yesterday."
"You cleared the stones with your boot."
"You complain when anyone uses a broom."
"And when the steward called?"
Tess rubbed soil from her thumb. "I raised my left hand."
Roxxy's voice stayed level. "Why?"
"The note said Ren had hurt his right hand and needed me to cover the lower beds until noon. It said to keep to the wall side, water at the stems, and answer the steward from a distance."
"You believed Ren wrote it?"
"We trade work. He covered the herb court when the glass roof broke." Tess nodded toward the bandage across my chest. "I thought he was calling the shift back."
"By asking you to pretend you were him?"
"The steward was on the upper path. I didn't give him a name."
"You raised the hand the note specified."
"I thought Ren was hiding an injury from him." Tess looked at me. "I did not think it had anything to do with the palace."
Before the expedition, my cuff had concealed the worst of my arm. At the service entrance, I had kept the hand inside my sleeve. The person who wrote the note had known what the Academy had not.
"Where is yesterday's note?" Halden asked.
His voice came from the upper path. Tess turned sharply.
"In my apron."
"Here?"
"In the tool room."
"Did you see who left it?"
"No. It was folded beneath my gloves."
"Who knew you owed Ren work?"
"Everyone on the grounds. He complained about the broken roof for two hours."
"That sounds shorter than I remember," I said.
Neither of them found it helpful.
Halden waited for Roxxy.
The person behind the alibi had not needed to imitate my handwriting or learn a private secret. They had used a real debt, a public habit, and a steward too far away to see a face.
Tess glanced toward the service passage. "Am I under arrest?"
"No," Roxxy said.
"You had me followed."
"I had the garden watched."
"I was in the garden."
For the first time, I understood why Tess disliked my wheelbarrow.
Roxxy held up the morning note. "I want you to do exactly what this requests."
Tess went pale.
"She does not owe us that," I said.
Roxxy faced me. "I am asking her."
The words were not loud. They did not need to be.
I had given a stranger a target and called it a rose.
Roxxy turned back to Tess. "You may refuse. The steward will be told only that the royal investigation delayed your work. You will not be charged for yesterday."
"And if I agree?"
"We watch who responds."
Tess nudged the sacking with her boot. One root had pushed through it and curled against the leather.
"I want my first note back."
"After Halden reads it."
"It is mine."
"It will be."
"All right."
Halden stepped aside from the upper path.
Tess lifted the rose and carried it to the hole. She knelt with her right side toward the bed.
"Do I plant it?"
"Set it in," I said. "Don't close the soil."
The healer tapped the back of my stool.
"That sounded like work."
"It was advice."
"You have three minutes of advice left."
Tess lowered the root ball into the opening. It sat too high. Soil from the original plant still clung to the sides, preserving the shape of roots that were no longer there.
A clipped stem showed beneath the nearest bloom.
"Did you trim that?" I asked.
"No. It came like this."
Roxxy unfolded the morning note again.
As she did, Tess's shadow stretched across the bare soil.
The sun was behind her.
The shadow moved toward her.
A narrow strip detached from the rose leaves and slid over the soil. It passed beneath Tess's wrist and reached for the paper in Roxxy's hand.
"Your left boot," I said.
Roxxy stepped into the light.
The dark strip stopped at the edge of her boot.
Halden did not draw the borrowed blade. He moved down the upper path as the shadow withdrew beneath the tool arch.
The healer's hand closed around the back of my stool.
"Time."
"Halden is still following it."
"You are not."
That was difficult to dispute while seated.
The healer took me inside before Halden returned.
I objected until standing became necessary. Then the healer's decision developed better evidence than mine.
By the time Halden came back, my arm lay between rolled cloth on the treatment-room bed. Tess had retrieved the first note under guard. The replacement rose stood just inside the doorway, its root ball still wrapped.
Roxxy held both slips of paper.
"Where did it go?" she asked.
"Through the service passage," Halden said. "It crossed beneath a kitchen cart and disappeared at the laundry yard."
"Did anyone help it?"
"No one reacted. I questioned no one."
Roxxy accepted that with a nod.
The first note had softened where Tess had folded it into her apron. Roxxy handed it to me.
The writing was plain. No flourish. No attempt to imitate a hand I recognized.
Tess lower roses until the second bell. Water at the stems. Clear the stones with your boot. If the steward calls, raise the left. Ren's right hand is wrapped. This returns the shift you owe him.
No signature.
The personal detail was not private. That made it more useful.
Roxxy set the note beside the basin. "Captain, take Tess back to the herb court. Keep the steward away from her until my father receives the report."
Tess rubbed the soil from her palms. "Am I under arrest now?"
"No."
Tess counted the two soldiers outside the door. "You keep saying that."
"Captain Halden is escorting you."
"Of course."
At the doorway, she paused beside me.
"I did not know what I was covering."
"Neither did I."
That did not make either of us feel better.
Halden closed the door behind them.
Roxxy remained by the washstand.
"Can you do what we saw?"
"Not like that."
It was the cleanest answer available. Also true, as far as I knew.
"Who can?"
I watched the damp cut beneath the white bloom.
"One person I know can carry someone through shadows."
"The person from the plaza."
I had not said that.
I had left enough space for her to reach it.
"Would she have known about your hand?" Roxxy asked.
"Yes."
"The gardens?"
"Not from me."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the part I have."
"Did she write this?"
"I don't know."
The healer adjusted the cloth beneath my wrist. My little finger tilted against the others without feeling the pressure.
"You gave me one fact," Roxxy said.
"I am recovering poorly."
"You know the person who took you from the plaza."
"Yes."
"Name."
"No."
"Then my father receives an unnamed shadow-user, a gardener used as an alibi, and two notes that could have been written by anyone."
"He will be delighted by the efficiency."
"He will use Tess."
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
Roxxy noticed.
"So will whoever wrote these," she said.
She passed me the morning note.
Replace the white rose at the east end before the second bell. Do not fill the hole until Ren has gone. Do not speak to him. Do not cut the plant.
Nothing about which hand Tess should use.
I looked past the paper to the rose.
"Bring that closer."
The healer moved it, because I was not permitted to improve my sitting again.
Three stems had been clipped. Their ends were pale and wet with sap. The cuts had been made that morning.
Roxxy crouched beside the root ball.
"What?"
"Yesterday, Tess switched hands and cut toward the buds."
"And these?"
Every stem angled cleanly away from the nearest bloom.
"This time, there was nothing wrong with the cuts."