The sun was at its peak on the second day of travel, and Striketrue March came to the city of Silen at the heart of Gystis with his horse walking beside him, for they had ridden so long that poor Mist had gotten too tired to carry him. The castle was a tall, spired thing that seemed to lean over the city, casting a dark shadow below it, though it was made from pale stone and reflected the sun’s rays beautifully. After a brief negotiation with the gate guards, the tall knight walked proud into the city and went in search of a good quality stables.
Mist adequately accommodated, March made his way up towards the grand edifice of the castle, drawing his travelling-cloak tight around him though the sun beat down heavy from on high. The kingdom of Gystis was close at hand to Lord Simas’ lands, but he was no less a stranger here than he would be in the far-off Empire of Attas that he had once visited with his liege, where the people were ruled by a necromancer class and death, for the powerful, was just another part of living. Here, though the similarities to his home were more obvious, differences still abounded. Silen was a younger city than any in the Source Lands, its wide streets designed to accommodate the two-wheeled carriages that merchants and minor nobles had taken to as a means of transport in recent years over horse-riding. More than once, March had had to leap out of the way of a fast-moving carriage as the driver swore at him viciously. If this is the future, he thought, I want no part of it.

Hurrying up to the gates of the castle, March announced his intent of an audience with the Prince with a reverberating yell. His letter of passage from Lord Simas clutched in his hand, he was shown into a high-ceilinged chamber with tapestries draped down carrying verdant forest imagery arrayed along the walls. There was a single table, a long one with chairs for a few guests, evidently the honour granted to the Prince’s closest friends. He stood at the end of the table, hoping that some of the urgency of his entrance had been conveyed upon the Prince. Though he knew that an hour one way or the other would be unlikely to make significant odds considering the distances involved, he had no desire to waste any moment.
It was at least an hour, and the sun was distinctly lower on the East wall of the chamber when the Prince came in, flinging the door aside. He was a bright, airy sort, dressed in a long robe that trailed a silk train behind him like a bride, and his beard tapered to a delicate point. He beamed when he saw March, and declaimed:
“Ah! This is the messenger from our friends to the South! The Order of the River, if I’m not mistaken!”
Taken aback a little by the aggressive friendliness of his host, March could barely form words. He had been told to anticipate a frosty reception, if not an outright hostile one. Now here he was being greeted like an old friend! He nodded, opening his mouth and closing it again like a carp, dumbfounded in his shiny silver mail. The Prince gave an easy, charismatic grin and held out his hand. As befit a royal, even a minor one from such an overlooked kingdom as Gystis, March bent forwards in a bow and near touched the outstretched hand with his forehead.
“I believe you have come to visit our little collection, is that right? My Garden of Delight?”
Hoping he wasn’t agreeing to anything unusual, March nodded and straightened up. “Aye, sir,” he said.
“Sir is what you call a soldier, March,” said the Prince, waving a hand airily. “‘Your Highness’ will do. It is always a pleasure to meet a fellow enthusiast. Come! Let me give you the tour.”
March nodded and followed the Prince as he left by another door than the one he had come in by taking care not to tread on the silk trailing behind him.

The Prince chattered excitably about his gardens the whole way to the entrance, which was an unassuming door guarded by a tall soldier. The soldier bowed less deeply than March had done and opened the door for the Prince.
Other side of the door, a small room waited for them. Laid out on a rack was what appeared at first to be a man’s figure, vanishingly thin and starved in appearance, and March’s breath caught- but as his eyes adjusted to the light he recognised the shadowy form as a suit of off-white linen. As he stared at the suit in mild horror, the Prince slipped one shoulder out of his silk robes, then the other, and let them fall to the floor. March quickly averted his eyes from the heir of Gystis’ vulnerable flesh and turned his back, facing the wall and examining the gap between two stones.
“March?” said the Prince. “I’ve finished dressing. I quite forgot, you know! I never have company who are interested in my gardens.”
March turned around and essayed a quick bow, since there was no sense in playing it anything but safe. “Yes, your highness. I apologise.”
“My dear man, what for? Anyway, let us go. I am dressed, and you are… well, as appropriately dressed as you are going to be, I suspect.”
“I am afraid I have come from the Source Lands with little more than what I stand up in, your highness.”
“No matter, no matter!” said the Prince. “I shall have to have my tailor take a look at you if you wish to stay here. A White Knight would be quite a boon to some of our peacekeeping efforts. Deserters from the war have made the forest roads quite a fraught journey for our merchant and tradesman class.”
“I think I met some on my way,” March said, nodding. The Prince clapped him on the shoulder.
“So you’ve started already!” he said with a laugh. “Excellent work! Now, come and have a look at my garden.”

The Prince pushed open the other door in the room and strode out, with March in tow. It struck March, in this late-afternoon running on to evening-light, how perfectly ordinary the Prince looked, his slippers traded for practical shoes that left a faint tread in the perfectly-maintained grass.
“Obviously,” he said, “the climate around here is much too cold for many of my dearest posessions. Oh, that is quite a rare one,” he said, changing tack suddenly to point at a small and slightly sickly-looking tree. “Don’t be fooled by appearances, it’s perfectly healthy. It looks like that as a defence mechanism against forestry, according to one of my sages. An Ilibark Beech, you know.”
March, who didn’t, nodded diplomatically.

For more than an hour, the Prince guided March around, giving him a grounding education in botany and the challenges of accommodating so many different plant varieties in one location, as well as a brief explanation of the most notable species from neighbouring kingdoms. Eventually, he ran out of local specimens, or grew tired of them, and lead March around a narrow gravel path to his great glass-house.
It was ten feet tall if not more, and the glass panes glittered in the evening’s golden sunlight. The Prince drew a small silver key from around his neck where it hung on a chain finer than any March had seen.
“The key to my soul, March. This is a sight few are blessed by,” he said, and slid it into the lock. He closed his eyes, counted to three, and twisted the key all the way around once. The door opened with absolutely no sound, and he withdrew the key and hung it back around his neck.

The Aligey flower sat proudly in the centre of the glass-house looking exactly like Vitriol’s hurried description of it, given to March as he had ridden out of the city the day before. Catching sight of March’s expression, the Prince grinned.
“I see you recognise the jewel of my collection. Your eyes do not deceive you, my friend.” He put a hand on March’s shoulder and outstretched the other, index finger extended straight at the small, insignificant-looking yellow flower. “She cost me- my father, really- a dozen cases of gold to have transported here from the burning heat of the tropics. Keeping the humidity in here right for her is the sole occupation of one of my garden attendants. She is a costly mistress indeed, but ah! Is it not the way?” He laughed easily. “In any case, she is worth every ounce of that gold to me. I sense that perhaps you feel that is excessive. Even so, that is my opinion.”
“Excessive?” murmured March. “Not at all…” As if dreaming, he drifted closer to the flower. The power to save Lady Kalila was literally within his reach. He could easily overpower the Prince, dandy that he was. But…
His hand stroked the favour that his lady had given him, which was hanging from a pouch on the strap that crossed his chest. Hanging over his heart. He had made two promises. One to her, to his lord. But the first promise – the one that had the power to destroy him – was the promise to himself. If the prince had been some rotten little pig, it would have been easier.
“That silk holds great meaning to you?” asked the Prince.
“It does, your highness,” said March. “It is the token of my lady. It is for her that I come here.”
“Please, call me Estilo,” said the Prince. “Your lady bid you come? To what end?”
Before March had a chance to reply, a knocking on the glass startled the pair of them. “Your highness! It’s your father!” came the shout from the servant outside. The Prince swore an impressive oath, and darted for the door. In a moment, he was gone, and March was left alone with the Aligey flower.