Christmas was over, and everyone was grumpy-that is, everyone except the king.

King Haimeric of Yurt came back inside the castle from the courtyard. He had been seeing off the king and queen of the neighboring kingdom, who with their family had spent Christmas with us. King Haimeric had a faint smile on his lips and a faraway look in his eyes, as though seeing well beyond the stone walls of the great hall. I noted irritably that many of the pine boughs hung on those walls had started losing their needles.

“Wizard!” he called to me as he settled himself on his throne before the roaring fire and arranged his lap robe. “I’ve just heard something wonderful.”

I pulled up a chair to sit next to him. The royal castle of Yurt had once been a defensible castle, a center of wars, but for the last several generations the Christmas festivities were about as exciting as we got. Even the time we were all attacked by a dragon, just as we finished opening the presents, had been nine years ago. I really had eaten too much this last week or two, and the weather had been bad enough that none of us had gotten much exercise beyond walking to and from meals.

“So what have you heard?” I asked the king, feeling dull but trying my best to sound interested.

“The king of Caelrhon was just telling me very exciting news: someone has developed a blue rose!”

It was going to be even harder to sound interested than I thought. “But I can create a blue rose for you with magic any time you like. I haven’t practiced wizardry on your rose garden in the past because I assumed you liked doing the crosses yourself, but a new color shouldn’t be hard.”

I hesitated inwardly even while I spoke. An illusory blue rose would certainly be easy enough, but the color would shortly fade. I didn’t know offhand a spell to change something’s color permanently, much less to pass that color on to the next generation of roses, but I might be able to improvise something.