Page 118 of A Baron of Bonds
I rolled my shoulders and entered the kitchens with Rev behind me.
“—without asking first, Moira. You know the rules of my kitchen and you will follow them.”
Lia glared down at Moira with her fists tucked into her hips in a clear attempt to scold the unscoldable.
Baring her sharp teeth, Moira retorted, “I was hungry! You try sitting still and listening to your elders blabber on for days before getting to the important stuff!”
She pulled the buttered roll closer to her chest, hoarding the doughy treat with a tight grip.
“Moira!” I called, stepping down into the kitchen, feeling Rev’s hand brush my back as he turned to the right, headed to the servant’s corridor.
“Karus!” She didn’t drop her roll, but instead flew to my face, knocking her forehead to mine.
I laughed, giving an apologetic look at Lia who huffed and resumed her work, once again wrist deep in dough.
I pulled a plate from the shelves and placed it on the small table near one of the few windows in the Fortress and gestured for Moira to sit while I grabbed some food from the communal tray.
Lia had strict rules in her kitchen about any passerby looking for something to eat. She kept us well-fed and always had fresh fruit and cheese on a tray that we could take from at any time.
What she didn’t allow was the grazing of food she was currently preparing for a main meal, which was exactly what Moira had taken from—the basket of rolls and butter nowhere near the communal tray.
I bit into a yellow pear, catching the juice as it ran down my chin. “Tell me everything, my friend. Where have you been for an entireweek?”
She stuffed her face with no concern for manners or pleasantry, bits of bread covering her cheeks, her long sage fingers greased with butter as she chewed loudly.
I ate almost as ferociously, rising to make a plate for Revich when he returned from Pompeii.
“Well,” she started, licking her fingers and eyeing the bread basket Lia had moved closer to where she worked. “The Growers want to help you take back Viridis.”
I choked on a piece of cheese. “What!” I gasped. “The Growers in Felgren can help with that? How? And why would they want to?”
She eyed my strawberries and I held one out to her. She folded her legs underneath her and began to pick off each tiny seed. I laughed having forgotten that little quirk of hers.
“We had a meeting with the elders. This season, they asked me to attend and I figured it had something to do with all of this,”—she gestured around to the inside of the Fortress—“but I had forgotten how long and boring those meetings are. The Growers speak so slowly, I slept most of the time, but then,”—she bit into the now seedless strawberry and chewed—“they spoke of the Blight. They’ve been trying to force it back, you know. Especially now that the sun stays in the sky longer each day. They said they haven’t been able to do much and want to try something new.”
“What do they want to try?” I waited for her to take another bite and chew.
“They want to experiment with pushing the Blight back and growing more forest at the same time. But they need your help. And they don’t want to try it on Felgren first. They’d rather risk your library than the forest.”
I thought for a moment, plucking at a piece of hard white cheese. “What exactly do they think could go wrong?”
She shrugged. “Something about growing too quickly permanently causing the soil to sterilize.”
“Sterilize? Moira, do you know what that means?”
“Never heard of it.”
“It means the soil would become barren. Unable to grow anythingever.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Well, that’s why they want to try it in Viridis first, I suppose.”
“How do Growers…grow?”
“That’s what they do. They grow things. I’ve told you before, Karus, if you’d been listening—Growers keep the forest healthy and new. They vary in shape, size, and numbers depending on the season.” She eyed me with her large violet eyes. “And there area lotof Growers this spring. More than we’ve ever recorded.”
I tucked that detail away to think about later. “So, let me get this straight. The Growers want to come to Viridis and attempt to regrow it while we useSimulair Solumto push the Blight back? They really think that could work?”
She shrugged, wiping strawberry juice across her yellow tulip skirt. “I guess so. I’ve told them about Viridis before. At least asmuch as you’ve told me. I’m still not convinced it’s really all you say it was.”
