The Fourteenth Key (The Chronicles of Terah Book 3) (27 page)

Landis shook her head and walked on, letting her thoughts drift for a while. She hadn’t thought about Trendon in years, but as she walked and let her memories surface, a lot of them centered on Robyn. He’d always been straight with her, he’d never hedged. He’d always told her the truth, even when she didn’t want to hear it. If she could talk to him now, she’d probably be able to figure out what she needed to do. But how could she do that? Was he even still alive? If he was, he’d be in his late forties by now. How would she ever find him? If Taelor had told her the truth, Robyn had been banished from Trendon, along with the rest of her brothers and sisters. Was he in hiding? Would she put his life in danger by trying to find him? Or was he living quite openly at the castle? How could she find out? Landis kicked at a pebble on the path. There had to be a way to find him. Surely someone could help her. But who?

As the questions bombarded her brain, her pace quickened, and soon she was back at the house, and, since she had not come up with one decent answer to any of her questions, she was not in the best of moods.

When she opened the back door and stepped into the kitchen, Rhianna looked up from the dough she was rolling out and asked, “Did you have a nice walk?”

“It was all right,” Landis answered.

“Do you feel any better?”

“Not really,” Landis sighed and asked, “Do you need some help?”

“Need help? No. But if you’d like to help, I’ll be happy to share.”

“To be honest, I’m not really in the mood,” Landis said. “So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll go lie down for a bit.”

“All right.”

A cloud of disappointment spread over Rhianna’s face, making Landis feel guilty as well as frustrated. “Look, I know I’ve been a bit of a pain lately. It’s just that I’m so confused. I don’t know what to do and the only person who might be able to help me figure it all out isn’t exactly available.”

Rhianna looked up in surprise. “Who?”

“One of my brothers. The oldest one. Robyn.” Landis sat down at the table. “Do you remember him?”

Rhianna thought for a moment. “I’m not sure, but if he’s the one I’m thinking of, he was old, like an adult.”

Landis nodded. “He was. I think I could figure all of this out if I could just talk to him, hear what he has to say. He knows Taelor. He knows Rolan. He’d know whether or not Rolan’s as bad as everyone says he is. He’d know who I can believe. And he’s a sorcerer. He could help me sort this whole thing out.”

“If you want to talk to him, why not do it?”

“How? I don’t know where he is. I don’t even know if he’s still alive. How am I going to find him?”

Rhianna shook her head. “Ask Myron to do it. And if he can’t, ask Glendymere. Surely, between the two of them, they can locate one man.”

“I don’t know …”

“Don’t give it another thought. If we wait around for you to do it, you’ll be old and gray by the time you find him. I’ll ask them, as soon as we get back,” Rhianna said with a quick nod of her head. “After all, that’s my job.”

Chapter 24

The End to a Long Day

It was 9:00 by the time the children were settled in their beds and the house was quiet. Joan poured two large mugs of scog and carried them to the office where Karl was staring at the budget report from the previous year.

“I still don’t see where the money for those kids is going to come from,” he said as Joan handed him his mug.

“Didn’t Cryslyn say she’d take care of it?”

“Yes, but it’s my problem, not hers.”

“How do you know that?”

“Huh?”

“How do you know that? Didn’t Wrenn say there was money in the accounts for things like this?”

“Well, yes, but …”

“No buts. Wait until Monday and see what’s what. It’s possible there’s a fund designated for rescuing slaves. Have you ever seen the full budget?”

Karl frowned. “No, but not for lack of trying. Cryslyn’s great about giving me reports on where the money goes, as in what she’s purchased, but I have no idea how much money we have, and by ‘we’, I mean you and me, the castle, or Camden. I don’t even know how much anything costs. All I know is if we need something, we go to Cryslyn. If we were back on Earth, I’d think she had a printing press in one of those basement rooms where she prints it as we need it.”

Joan laughed. “Now there’s an idea.”

“Seriously though, I feel responsible for this. I wasn’t sent there to buy slaves. I was there to observe, to learn.”

“And you did,” Joan said, smiling. “You learned you can’t stand by and let bad things happen to kids. And that’s one of the many reasons I love you so much. If we have to come up with the money, we’ll figure it out. Maybe I’ll grow and can vegetables this summer. We can sell them at Tolliver’s. And I can make breads, cakes, and pies for Fenway to serve in his tavern. Or maybe we should open a restaurant.”

“Here? In Milhaven? I don’t think we’d have enough business to keep the doors open. Everyone here eats at home.”

“Because there’s no restaurant. Believe me, if someone opened one, it might not be an overnight sensation, but I think it would make enough to keep it going. After all, how many women really like cooking three meals a day and cleaning up afterwards? They’d love to be able to eat at a restaurant once in a while.”

“Maybe, but we don’t have the time.”

Joan nodded. “That’s true. So maybe we should find out how much we get paid for running that office. If it’s not enough to help those kids, we can always resign, and if you were no longer governor, you wouldn’t ever have to walk into one of those auction houses again.”

“That right there would be a good reason to resign, but you’re right. I need to wait until Monday and find out what’s what before I try to figure out how to handle it.” Karl leaned back in his chair and relaxed.

Joan wasn’t sure whether her arguments or the scog were responsible for erasing the stress lines from her husband’s face, but she’d take whatever she could get. “But we do need to talk about the fact that, at the moment, we have three orphans living with us.”

Karl frowned again. “We don’t know that Caitlyn and Corey are orphans.”

“No, but for all practical purposes they are. The chances of finding their mother just went way down. Gen. Crandal’s men haven’t seen any sign of the people from Syrando, and I think he’s about ready to pull his men off the boat. The only other lead we had was the auction in Glenarbour, and now that’s out. Where else can we look?”

“We might not have any more leads right now, but we’ll keep watching and listening to see if we can pick up their trail.”

“I know, but you have to admit it doesn’t look good.”

Karl nodded. “But I don’t want them to give up on finding their mother, or to start thinking she’s dead.”

“Okay. But what are we going to do about them? Are we going to try to find them homes? Are we going to let them continue living with us on a day-to-day basis? Or are we going to adopt them?”

Karl frowned. “I was really hoping we’d find their mother and set the three of them up in a house here in Milhaven.”

“I was too, but since that’s looking less and less likely, we need to make a decision. I don’t want them to get attached to us, to start thinking of us as parents, only to have to move and get used to someone else.”

“Is there a reason we can’t keep them?” Karl asked.

“No, none at all. I just don’t want to make any assumptions here. We need to be together on this, whatever we decide. I don’t want either of us to get attached to those kids and then find out the other one’s looking for a new home for them.”

Karl nodded. “Well, I’m already pretty attached to Caitlyn and Corey. I knew if we found their mother we’d have to let them go, but one reason I wanted to set them up in Milhaven is to keep them in our lives.”

Joan smiled. “Me, too. So, want to adopt them?”

Karl nodded. “I think so. At least that way everyone would know it’s permanent. I know Corey’s been thinking about it. He asked me last week when they were going to have to leave.”

“What did you tell him?”

“When we found his mother.”

“And you left it like that?”

“Well, yeah, what else was there?”

“Never mind. It was probably enough for him,” Joan said with a sigh.

“Seemed to be.”

“When do you want to make it official?”

“Anytime’s fine with me. Why?”

“We’ve got that reception coming up, the one for Laryn and Steve. We haven’t heard from everyone yet, but there will be at least forty ministers and their wives here. I was wondering if we could work it into that weekend, sort of like a spotlight on the slavery issue. A lot of them have slaves in their towns if not in their homes. Maybe we could put a face on the tragedy of how those people came to be slaves.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. It would make the trauma they lived through public knowledge. Everyone who knows them will know what happened, how their father was killed and their mother captured. Not an easy thing to live with much less answer questions about, like how do you feel knowing your mother’s out there working as someone else’s slave?”

Joan frowned and looked at Karl. “Everyone at the castle already knows, and I’d be willing to bet everyone in Milhaven does, too. What would it matter if a few more people knew, especially since the kids probably won’t ever see them again?”

“I don’t know that it would,” Karl admitted, “but we need to think long and hard about how we handle it so we don’t end up doing any damage. Have you thought about how you want to bring it up at the reception?”

Joan nodded. “At some point, someone’s going to ask who they are, and we can explain about the raid. Then we can say they’re staying with us and we plan to adopt them now that we’ve run out of leads for locating their mother. When that gets around, someone’s going to ask me about their father, and I’ll tell them how he died protecting his pregnant sister-in-law and her unborn child. That’ll put a bit of a hero’s spin on it.”

“And show how heartless the slavers are,” Karl said. After a moment, he asked, “What about Tonnie? Are we going to adopt her, too?”

“I don’t know,” Joan said slowly. “Do you have any idea how long she was a slave?”

Karl shook his head. “From what the guy at the auction house said, I got the impression her parents died during the sea voyage, and, since no one knew what to do with her, they were offering her for sale, but I have no idea whether that’s the truth or not. He may have been making it up as he went for all I know.”

“So she hasn’t been treated as a slave?”

“I don’t know. She may have been a slave all of her life. Or he may have been telling the truth.”

“Let’s see what Gracie and I can find out about her past before we make any decisions. She may see adoption as another form of slavery, and if that’s the case, then no, I don’t want to adopt her.”

Karl nodded. Then he stretched and finished the last couple of swallows of his scog. “I don’t know about you, but I’m worn out. Let’s get some sleep.”

~ ~ ~ ~

About the time Joan and Karl were heading off to bed, Kevin said he was going to the kitchen for a mug of scog and asked if Chris wanted one. When Chris offered to go with him, they left the office and walked through the quiet halls of the castle. It was barely 9:30, but the only people they saw were the guards standing at their posts. They didn’t hear any voices, and the only footsteps they heard were theirs and the guards on patrol.

“It’s early for things to be this quiet,” Kevin said as they walked through the dining room. “No one’s even playing Octuro tonight.”

“Maybe it has to do with the auction today.”

Kevin shook his head. “I don’t see how. No one was involved but us.”

“I think a lot of people were waiting to see what would happen today, hoping for some news about the people in Syrando. Almost everyone in the castle has gone out of their way to try to take care of Caitlyn and Corey. I imagine a lot of them were holding their breaths hoping Karl would come home with their mother. Sort of depressing when it didn’t happen.”

“I hadn’t thought about that. You may be right.”

After they poured their scog, Chris said, “This morning you said you had something you wanted to talk to me about.”

Kevin nodded. “Let’s go upstairs.”

The two men walked back through the castle, up the stairs to their quarters, and on to Kevin’s room. When they were settled on the couch, Kevin said, “I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth.”

“Okay.”

Kevin hesitated, not sure how to phrase what he wanted to ask. While Chris waited for Kevin’s question, he sipped a mouthful of scog. He was just about to swallow when Kevin asked, “Am I turning into a control freak?”

Chris spewed half the scog on his tunic and strangled on the rest. “What?” he asked once he quit coughing. He grabbed his handkerchief and dabbed at the spots on his tunic. “Where in the world did that come from?”

“This morning, while I was working out, I realized I’m usually the one in charge now, and I like it that way. The idea of sitting back and waiting to see what happened instead of being the one out there doing it bothered me. I was never like that on Earth. I hated being in front. Now I feel like I should be the one taking the risks, figuring things out, making the decisions, and I’m afraid of what that says about me. Am I trying to take over everything? Am I running over people?”

Chris took a deep breath and asked, “Is that what happened this morning? When you quit in the middle of your routine?”

Kevin nodded.

“I’m not sure how to answer your question. You’re in charge of a lot of stuff, you have to run a lot of things, but that’s your job. You make a lot of decisions, and you have the final say on everything that lands on your desk, but you haven’t run over anyone to do it and you’re not a control freak. I’ve known a few of those. You don’t tell Gen. Crandal how to manage his army. You don’t tell Darrell how to manage the guards. You don’t order the pages around. You don’t tell Cryslyn how to run the household, or Miranda how to run the kitchen. You don’t tell Karl what to say to the ministers even when he asks you. A control freak has to be in charge of every aspect of everything they come in contact with, and that’s not you. You are not a control freak.”