Sidra could hear shouts in the distance. Hamish’s father was coming. She wasn’t sure if Hamish had told his parents about his mysterious condition, but chances were that he had not. They would have brought him to Sidra for treatment if they had known.
She quickly tethered his boots back to his feet, hiding the mottled skin. This was a conversation for later, because grief was about to grip the hearts of Hamish’s parents and shatter this warm summer day.
The tide receded with a whisper. Clouds began to build in the northern sky. The winds shifted, and the air suddenly felt cooler as a raven cawed overhead.
Sidra remained at Hamish’s side. She wasn’t sure what had afflicted the boy. What had possibly crept beneath his skin and stained his blood, weighing him down in the water, causing him to drown.
All she knew was that she had never seen anything like this.
Kilometers inland, Torin stood beneath the same arcing sun and deep blue sky, staring at a southern orchard. The air was thick, laden with rot. He had no choice but to breathe it in—the damp soil, the weeping wood, the spoiled fruit. He didn’t want to fully acknowledge what he was seeing, even as he tasted it.
“When did you first notice this?” he asked, his gaze remaining on the apple trees and the fluid oozing from their split boles. The sap was thick and violet in color; it glittered in the light, as if suspending tiny shards of gold within its viscosity.
The crofter, Rodina, was pressing eighty years. She stood at Torin’s side, hardly reaching his shoulder in height, and scowled against the sunlight. By all appearances, she seemed not the least bit concerned about her sick orchard. But Torin noticed how she drew her plaid shawl closer about her shoulders, as if she wanted to hide beneath the enchanted threads.
“A fortnight ago, Laird,” Rodina replied. “I thought nothing of it at first. It was just the one tree. But then it began to spread to the others in that row. I fear it will take my entire orchard soon and my crop will be lost.”
Torin’s gaze drifted to the ground. Small, underripe apples littered the grass. The fruit had been dropping early from the ailing trees, and he could tell the flesh was mealy. Some of the apples had started to decompose, revealing cores writhing with worms.
He almost nudged one of the apples with the toe of his boot but stopped himself. “Have you touched any of the fruit, Rodina? Or the trees?”
“Course not, Laird.”
“Has anyone else visited your orchard?”
“My hired help,” said Rodina. “He was the one who first saw the blight.”
“And who is that?”
“Hamish Brindle.”
Torin was quiet for a moment as he sorted through his memories. He had never been good at remembering names, although he could recognize faces. Truly a curse for a captain-turned-laird. He was awed by Sidra, who could conjure up names as if by spell. Recently she had saved him in quite a few instances from keen embarrassment. He blamed the stress of the past month.
“A lanky lad with brown hair and two caterpillars for eyebrows,” Rodina supplied, sensing Torin’s inner dilemma. “Fourteen years old and doesn’t speak much but is smart as can be. A hard worker too. Never complains when I give him a task.”
Torin nodded, realizing why that name had sounded familiar. Hamish Brindle was the youngest son of James and Trista, a crofter and a teacher. The boy had recently shown interest in joining the East Guard. Although Torin had been forced to relinquish his title as captain weeks earlier, passing it on to Yvaine, his second in command, he couldn’t help but meddle. The long-suffering Yvaine, thankfully, let him come and go as he needed, eating breakfast in the barracks, observing the practice green during drills, and assessing new recruits, as if Torin were still one of them and not the new laird trying to learn the role that Adaira had seemed to take to so naturally.
But the truth was that it had always been difficult for him to let go of things. Of roles that had suited him. Of places he was fond of. Of the people he loved.
“Was Hamish here this morning?” Torin asked. He couldn’t ignore the chill that touched him, soft as a shroud being drawn across his shoulders. He stifled a shudder as he stared into the orchard.
“Took the morning off to fish with his friends,” Rodina said. “Why, Laird? Do you need to speak with him?”
“I think I should, yes.” Torin gently guided Rodina away from the trees. The rotten scent trailed them all the way to the crofter’s kail yard. “I’m going to ask him to rope off your orchard. In the meantime, don’t touch the trees or the fruit. Not until I know more about this blight.”
“But what about my crop, Laird?” Rodina asked, pausing at the garden’s rusty gate. One of her cats—Torin didn’t even want to know how many she had—leapt up onto the stone wall beside her, meowing as it rubbed against her arm.
Torin hesitated, but he held the woman’s determined stare. She believed that her crop could be salvaged, but Torin sensed there was far more at play in the orchard. Ever since Jack and Adaira had played and conversed with the folk of water, earth, and wind, Torin had come to learn more about the spirits of the isle. Their hierarchy, for one thing. Their limitations and their powers. The fear they harbored toward their king, Bane of the Northern Wind. It didn’t seem like all was well in the spirits’ realm. He wouldn’t be surprised if every tree succumbed to the blight—blight he had never seen before, he realized as he raked his hand through his hair. And he had been roaming the eastern side of the isle for nearly twenty-seven years.
“Try not to worry about your crop,” he said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’ll be back soon to ensure the ropes are securely in place.”
Rodina nodded, but was frowning as she watched Torin mount his horse. Perhaps, like Torin, she sensed the hopeless fate of the trees, which were far older than both of them. Their roots ran crooked and deep beneath Cadence’s surface, down to an enchanted place that Torin could only dream of.
The folk were secretive and capricious, answering only to a bard’s music, and as far as Torin knew, Jack and Adaira were the only living Tamerlaines to have seen them manifest. And yet a good number of the Tamerlaines worshiped the earth and the water, the wind and the fire. Torin rarely did, in contrast to Sidra’s devotion. But despite his meager praise, Torin had grown up on their lore. His father, Graeme, had fed stories of the spirits to him every night like bread, and Torin knew of the balance between human and spirit on Cadence, one side influencing the other.
He mulled over his options as he traveled by road to the Brindles’ croft. The customary afternoon storm was about to break and the shadows had cooled when Torin saw a woman and a child walking along the road up ahead of him. A breath later, he realized the two were Jack’s mother, Mirin, and her young daughter, Frae. Torin reined his horse to a halt.