Reap What You Sow

The packet was still warm in Mara Voss’s hand.

She stood beneath the iron ribs of Harrowgate Conservatory, where rain ticked against the glass roof and the old heating pipes knocked like someone trapped inside the walls. A black smear crossed the packet’s cream paper. No name marked it. No seal identified the nursery that had grown the seeds. Only a thin red line, stamped diagonally across the front, curved like a scratch from a claw.

Mara glanced toward the locked doors.

Beyond the glass, the conservatory’s courtyard lay empty beneath a silver wash of rain. The night guard had passed that way less than a minute ago, his lantern sliding across the panes. Soon he would make his second circuit. If he found her here with the packet, there would be questions she could not answer.

She needed to plant it before he returned.

The packet had appeared in her coat pocket after the west archive alarm shrieked. Mara had not put it there. She had been shelving dried specimens when the alarm sounded, and in the confusion someone had brushed past her near the records room. A moment later, the packet had been inside her coat.

She should have dropped it at the security desk.

Instead, she had carried it into the greenhouse.

“Ridiculous,” she whispered.

The word vanished beneath the rain.

At the far end of the conservatory, the propagation benches waited under blue lamps. Mara hurried toward them, keeping to the narrow path between potted citrus trees and towers of fern. Wet leaves slapped her sleeves. The packet pressed against her palm, its warmth growing sharper with every step.

The central doors clicked.

Mara stopped.

A beam of white light moved across the floor behind her, paused at the entrance, then swept toward the orchids.

“Miss Voss?” called a man’s voice. “Are you still inside?”

It was Calder, one of Harrowgate’s security staff. He had a habit of sounding polite when he was already certain someone had done wrong.

Mara slid behind a curtain of hanging vines. Their stems were cold and slick against her cheek. The packet’s paper rasped as her fingers tightened around it.

“I’m checking the irrigation valves,” she called.

“After closing?”

“The east bed was flooding.”

Calder’s boots struck the tile. Slow. Unhurried.

Mara lowered herself behind a row of clay pots. The beam passed over the leaves above her head. Water dripped from a broad banana leaf onto the floor with a soft, steady plink.

“Come out, Miss Voss,” Calder said. “The doors are locked.”

“I know.”

“That means no one should be in here.”

Mara watched the light slide along the tiles. Her pulse beat hard in her throat, but she kept her breathing shallow. The last thing she needed was to be found clutching an object connected to a theft. Three years earlier, a collection of rare seeds had vanished from Harrowgate’s restricted vault. The conservatory director had never said how much was taken. He had only said that the person responsible had known exactly what to steal.

Calder’s light moved away.

Mara waited until his footsteps faded toward the orchid wing. Then she crawled between the pots, rose, and ran.

The propagation room was separated from the main greenhouse by a glass partition and a sliding door. Mara shoved the door open and slipped through. Warm, damp air closed around her. Rows of trays filled the room, each marked with neat labels and dates. The soil bins stood beneath the worktable. She seized a small terracotta pot and a hand trowel.

The packet had no instructions, but when she tore the top, a single seed dropped into her palm.

It was the size of a plum stone, black at one end and pale at the other, with a fine silver vein running through its shell.

Mara stared at it.

Something moved behind the glass partition.

She tipped soil into the pot. Her hands shook so badly that half of it spilled across the bench. A second beam of light flashed through the leaves outside.

“Miss Voss!”

Calder was coming back.

Mara pressed her thumb into the soil, making a hollow. The seed seemed to twitch against her skin.

She nearly dropped it.

The sensible choice came quickly: return it, explain the impossible transfer, let someone else deal with the alarm and the stolen packet. But the sensible choice had already begun to feel like a lie. Whoever had placed the packet on her had wanted it found. If she surrendered it, the person who had planted it on her would know exactly where it went.

And beneath that thought, quieter and more dangerous, was another.

She wanted to see what it was.

Mara placed the seed in the hollow.

The heating pipes knocked overhead.

She covered it with soil, pressed the surface flat, and poured water from a nearby can. The first drops struck the dirt and vanished at once. The pot grew warm beneath her hand.

Outside, Calder reached the propagation door.

Mara snatched the pot from the bench and shoved it beneath the lowest shelf, behind a stack of empty trays. She had just straightened when the door rattled.

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