Chapter 17

17

The herd never forgets.

~ Elder Taybarri Seerathi

The kitchen smelled of rosemary, thyme, sourdough bread, and roasted pork, and Kaylina veered straight toward a number of pots and pans sitting on the counter. At first, she thought Frayvar and Silana had gone to bed, but as she cut a piece of bread and slathered butter onto it, her sister stepped out of the pantry with one of Frayvar's logbooks in hand.

"It would have been warm if you'd been here two hours ago." Silana pointed her chin toward the pans.

Ignoring the censure in her sister's voice, Kaylina said, "Frayvar's food is fabulous even when it's cold."

She checked the oven and found the pork inside in the pan, kept warm by the lingering heat, and she skipped to the cupboard for a plate. When had she last eaten? The snacks at Havartaft Estate had been ages ago.

"It is excellent, even if he's handicapped by a lack of key spices."

"If you're referring to nutmeg and the other ones he's allergic to, he does fine without them. You can hardly blame him for not wanting to risk touching and ingesting them."

"I don't. Did you know your tower is glowing purple?"

So much for hoping Silana hadn't noticed that.

"Is it? Huh."

Silana set the logbook on a counter and raised frank eyebrows. "The rumors about this castle being cursed are more than rumors, aren't they?"

"What did Frayvar tell you?"

"Nothing. I've heard about the curse from passersby, delivery drivers, and a ten-year-old boy who ran into the courtyard on a dare. Frayvar only told me about his recipes, your mead, and his budget and the income you've made thus far from bulk orders."

"Those are the things Grandma sent you to investigate, aren't they?"

" Some of the things. She also wants to know how you two are doing emotionally. Everyone wants to know that. You left without talking to anyone." Silana's eyebrows climbed again. They conveyed censure as effectively as her tone. "If not for Frayvar's letter, we wouldn't have even known where you were."

"I wanted to prove that I could start a business without…" Without everyone telling me what to do all the time, Kaylina thought. What she said was, "Independent of the family's influence."

Silana's snort suggested she heard the unspoken words. "And you thought setting up in a cursed castle would be the way to do that?"

"It's a magnificent cursed castle, and the rent is cheap. Very cheap."

"They say people have died here. Or… been murdered here?"

"There was a Kar'ruk invasion a few weeks ago. People died all over the city. The north is harsher than the newspapers led us to believe. There's a faction of rebels that call themselves the Virts—short for virtuous and righteous—that have tried to assassinate the king and were in league with the invading Kar'ruk. They want to overthrow the monarchy and set up some other system of government." Kaylina didn't know how much her sister would care about all that and mostly gave the information in the hope of distracting Silana from the curse.

Judging by how many times her lips pursed with disapproval, it didn't work. "Five hundred liviti a month is too much for a building in the middle of all that."

"Frayvar told you about our lease, I see. And that's not too much. Lord Vlerion said you'd be hard-pressed to rent a stable stall for that in the city."

"Lord Vlerion," Silana mouthed.

"The son of the woman—Lady Isla of Havartaft—who I went to see today about backing the business. She made a robust offer, but it had some stipulations that wouldn't have been good for us, so I had to refuse. Her interest is encouraging, though. She loves our mead. Others who've tried it have too. Maybe a couple of other wealthy benefactors will be interested in investing."

Doubtful. Unless someone else wanted to bribe Kaylina to leave the area. Still, she smiled for her sister, longing for her blessing on the endeavor. Oh, she didn't care that much about Silana's approval, but since she was acting as the eyes and ears of Grandma and Grandpa…

"The mead is good." Silana sounded grudging.

"Yes." After setting her plate on the counter, Kaylina cut off a piece of pork and ladled drippings over it that she could sop up with the bread.

"Especially the varieties from what Frayvar said is a new batch from local honey. I wouldn't have thought you'd find anything as good as what we get from Grandpa's hives."

"We got lucky." Kaylina decided not to explain that a taybarri had led her to the valley of hives because he'd wanted honey for himself. "Apparently, the bees in the druid preserve outside of the city also forage on altered plants, plants left long ago by the Daygarii. Do you know anything about them, by chance?"

"About the ancient druids? Nothing more than we were taught in school. You know I'm not the history student that Frayvar is. I'm too busy doing Mom's chores as well as my own while caring for the children. Hagenth is watching them while I'm gone. We thought about coming as a family for this visit, but inklings of the chaos up here have trickled south. That was another reason Grandma wanted someone to check on you. You picked a strange time and destination for your endeavor." Silana's lips pursed again. They were good at that.

Refusing to be diverted from the topic of the Daygarii, Kaylina said, "I suppose that means you've never seen a druid. Or possibly someone who might have been descended from their people?"

"Of course I've never seen a druid. They left our world centuries ago, right? Or maybe millennia ago? There aren't even ruins or anything in our province, so it's not like they hung out down there."

"I know, but I thought you might have seen someone around the Gull when we were kids. No, when you were a kid. Before I was born."

Silana's brow creased. "The druids lived in our world centuries ago. I'm not that much older than you."

"I know that." Kaylina couldn't keep from rolling her eyes. Her belief that Silana might be a useful resource was dwindling fast. She would have to go home and talk to Mom if she wanted to know if there'd been another man.

"I don't know what a Daygarii descendent would look like," Silana added. "The history books don't even say much about what they looked like, do they?"

"Exotic and magical, I think."

"That's vague. Why are you asking about this?"

"Because…" Should Kaylina explain further? A part of her wanted to share everything, but she doubted her sister would believe much of it. She'd had a hard time believing the part about her having a hint of druid blood herself, and she'd been living through all the strange things that had happened in the weeks since she'd arrived in Port Jirador.

Her hand warmed slightly, and an image wafted into her mind.

Framed between two ancient trees stood a handsome man with reddish-bronze skin that reminded her of the bark of the cedars that grew in the foothills of the mountains here. He had deep brown eyes and windswept green hair that fell to his shoulders. After a moment, the image faded.

Who is that? Kaylina asked silently, directing the words toward the plant in the tower.

The image returned, this time with the green-haired man standing in the bow of a ship that was sailing past familiar rocky cliffs with seagull nests perched in the crags. That was the mainland behind the small island where Grandpa hunted birds with his hounds and gathered honey from his hives.

Is that a druid? Or someone with partial druid blood?

The image disappeared, and she didn't receive another response.

"Kaylina." Her sister prodded her in the shoulder.

"Sorry." Kaylina blinked and focused on her. "Did anyone with green hair ever come around the Gull when you were little?"

Silana opened her mouth, as if to issue a swift rejection, but she paused and looked thoughtfully toward the fire that burned low in the hearth. "Yes. I do remember that. He liked the mead and always ordered Grandma's seafood vegetable stew. He stayed in one of the rooms upstairs for a while, but he left eventually and didn't come back." Silana squinted at her. "That was before you were born. I was only four or five. How do you know? Did Mom say something about him?"

Not wanting to explain the plant and that it communicated with her, however vaguely, Kaylina shook her head. "No. Is there a reason she would have said something about him?"

"Just… I think they spent time together. Maybe…" Silana shrugged.

"Romantically?" By the moon gods, was it possible Kaylina did have a different father? Some weirdo with green hair? It was hard for her to see any of herself in the man in the image, other than maybe in the eyes, but her siblings had dark brown eyes too. And their brown skin was a similar hue to hers with no barky reddish tint.

"I don't know. I was too young to know about things like that. But it was between… Well, you know how Dad came and went and never would settle down and help out at the Gull when he was there."

"He was a deadbeat."

Kaylina expected her sister to object to the derogatory term, but Silana shrugged and said, "Yes. I didn't understand what Mom saw in him except that he thought she was hot and loved that she gave him mead and food for free. Grandma hated that—and him. But he kept trying to win her over by bringing gifts for her and Mom every time he came back."

"He brought us gifts too."

"Yeah, that was how he bought love and forgiveness for his absences. And for the fact that he never did anything to help out." At least Silana's lips were pursed disapprovingly for someone else, this time. "I'm pretty sure they were stolen gifts half the time. He was a thug and a pirate, even if he always said he was a buccaneer and worked on behalf of the kingdom."

"I know." Kaylina waved in the air, wanting to bring the conversation back to the other man, the possibly druidic man. She already knew the man they'd called Dad when he'd visited over the years.

"The green-haired guy made us gifts," Silana said. "I remember that now."

That surprised Kaylina, and she dropped her hand.

"Me and our cousins," Silana clarified. "Since that was before your time."

"He was nice?"

Since the druids had supposedly hated humans, Kaylina had assumed anyone with their blood who'd visited would have been aloof, if not an outright enemy.

"Well, he was quiet, from what I remember, but he made things out of driftwood and gave them to us. He might have been trading them for lodgings. I think Mom still has the stuff he made her. You could ask her if you give up this crazy business here and come back with me."

Kaylina frowned. "Is that what the family wants? Did they send you to drag us back?"

"Not necessarily but to check on you, yes, and see if you're all right. But now that I've heard about this curse and all the trouble going on in the city, I think you should come back with me."

At least she wasn't talking about all the trouble going on with Kaylina. With luck, Silana hadn't heard about the kidnappers and assassins yet.

"Try this again somewhere closer to home," Silana urged. "I've got enough money that we can transport the bottles you've already made. Why did you pick the capital? It's so far from our islands."

Kaylina decided not to mention the Queen's Corner in the newspapers and her dream of having the royal family try and adore her mead. Now that she'd met the queen and king, she was less enamored by the thought of them visiting her business. She would prefer that Queen Petalira forget she existed altogether. The king probably already had forgotten about her.

"I wanted a place with a large population of people who would enjoy the mead. There are also good distribution lines from here. Oh, you have to go by sea, since the roads over the passes close for a large portion of the year, but ships come and go all the time from the harbor and head directly to all the major ports. I envisioned the mead becoming so popular, maybe helped by complimentary write-ups in the newspapers based out of the capital, that orders would flow in."

Silana touched her chin. "That's actually a good point. We've struggled with distribution since so few freight ships come to the Vamorka Islands."

"Yes." Kaylina was pleased her sister thought she'd had a good idea. Admittedly, Frayvar had helped her realize that and only after they'd arrived in the capital, but… whatever made the family believe this expansion was a good idea was fine by her.

"Let's see how the grand opening goes," Silana said.

"Yes." Kaylina smiled, encouraged.

Silana's lips twisted. "Frayvar wants me to help out by serving and washing dishes."

"Aren't you glad you arrived in time for the event?"

"Oh, terribly." Silana yawned and headed for the door. "I'm going to bed. There are a lot of rooms up there if you ever want to expand this place into an inn."

"We did consider that."

Especially after they'd cleaned the skeletons out of the rooms…

Silana paused with her hand on the doorframe and looked thoughtfully back at Kaylina. "Mom talked about him sometimes after he left."

"The green-haired guy?"

"Yeah. His name was…" Her eyes drifted toward the ceiling as she dredged in her memory. "Arsonli? Arsonti? Something like that. I never thought about it before, but it was after he left that Mom started taking the tarmav weed. She used to lose her temper and be moody when I was little—I always thought I'd done something wrong and it was my fault—but she seemed happier when he was there. Then he was gone, and she… wasn't. I'm not sure I'm remembering it all correctly or if it means anything. You'd have to ask Grandma."

Kaylina couldn't imagine asking their aloof and completely rational grandmother about Mom's love life, but she nodded, as if it was a reasonable idea. "Goodnight."

Kaylina hoped that the castle wouldn't moan or drop any chandeliers in the night—nothing to make her sister believe this place truly was cursed. It had seemed more content since she'd been feeding it the honey water, but who knew how long that would last?

After putting the leftovers away, Kaylina headed upstairs toward her room. She sensed a presence in the back of her mind. The plant.

Was the green-haired man my father? she asked silently. Is he still alive?

She didn't know how even a sentient magical plant in Port Jirador could know what had happened in the bedroom between two people more than a thousand miles to the south, but… maybe it could somehow see things in her blood.

The plant didn't answer except to again share the original image of the green-haired man between the trees.