Page 116 of Gilded Locks

They wandered slowly toward the abandoned farm at the edge of town, not in any hurry.

“How’s your father?” Garrick asked.

“Fine, I think. Tired, though. What with harvest in the daytime and meeting with the council in the evening.”

“Ahh, the weight of power.”

Grace nodded. While she’d been in the copse chasing and then running from the mayor, the Tuckers, Stantons, Lerouxs, the rest of Grace’s family, and Garrick had subdued a large enough number of the patrolmen to gain control of the chaos.

They’d confronted Sheriff Clairmont, who, despite no longer being protected by the mayor’s good graces, stubbornly insisted the Robbins Family had caused every problem that existed in Fidara. Threat of reporting him to national leaders eventually loosened his tongue concerning what the mayor had been up to. Embezzling taxes, passing false information to the district and national capital, and, of course, breaking into citizens’ homes.

When Grace’s father had returned to the square to call a meeting, he’d demanded a vote of the aldermen, which was effectively made up of a single representative from each noble household. In light of the sheriff’s information, few voted for anyone who had supported the mayor. They elected Grace’s father.

As his first act as mayor, he demoted and arrested Sheriff Clairmont with the intent to figure out his future once harvest was done. James’s arrest came seconds after that.

Mayor Nautin was buried in his private copse, with minimal ceremony.

There wasn’t enough time before market day to figure out exactly what amount Mayor Nautin had stolen from the nation. Mayor Robbins was hoping to gather enough information to present estimates to the leaders at Vathra.

“Yes. There’s a great weight to carry with power. Someone else will have to take over the supply run from now on,” Grace said

“Hmm. So there’s an opening, huh?”

Grace nodded.

They reached the farm, and rather than heading to the shed, they turned and made their way to the farm home Grace and her family had been living in for almost a week. It had needed somecleaning and a few minor repairs, but they didn’t have time to fix the massive amount of damage done to their own manor until harvest was done.

Grace and Garrick settled down on the porch stairs. She wrapped her arms around his like she loved to do and laid her head on his shoulder. This time, he laid his head atop hers.

“So, does doing a supply run make me a Protector?”

“No, dunderhead. That has nothing to do with the gold.”

“Oh, come on. It keeps people happy, and happy people don’t go looking for food and other resources in the woods. Plus, it’s definitely sneaky.”

“We don’t actually need to sneak around anymore. It’s just to help the townsfolk until the town is doing better.”

Garrick sighed. “Fine.”

He’d asked the question with too much tease in his tone for the question to have been weighing on him. But it had been weighing on Grace.

Despite the progress made to their town in the last five days, she was still very concerned about the Zerudorn gold.

Grace and her parents had various ideas about containing the mystic metal. Until they could find a safe way to extract the huge amount of gold and the entirety of the sick land and take it to the crater in the forest fortress, the gold had to stay where it was. They had dug a small trench around the gilded land and trees on the former mayor’s property, into which they’d placed kicked the Nix Ice. The mystic resource restricted spreading mildly well, and adding what they purchased on market days would help.

People seemed to be heeding the edict to stay out of the mayor’s copse. Her family had come up with a skewed explanation that the ex-mayor had introduced an infectious disease to the trees that might spread to the forest if people tracked foliage from the copse elsewhere in Sherwood Forest.

Still, the risk of someone wandering into the copse and discovering the gold would always exist.

It wasn’t a lasting solution, and Grace knew it.

Life was changing in Fidara, and what it meant to be a Protector was changing too.

Grace thought about how the Protectress had formed the original group of Protectors. It had been a long time ago. Maybe it was time to expand responsibility, to have a team to rely on again.

She couldn’t bring everyone in on the secret, of course. But she knew of a few people she thought she ought to invite for an evening walk tonight.

Grace shifted her head, trying to get Garrick to move his. He complained half-heartedly but lifted his head and looked at her.

---