CHAPTER 14

I walked to the end of the driveway. Maud had fought with me. She wanted to go down herself, but I won. It was my inn, after all. She was watching my every move from the inside. If anything happened to me, she would keep the guests safe.

The seed was a living thing, a little baby Gertrude Hunt just waiting to be planted. The inn seeds weren’t just rare; they were almost nonexistent. Sometimes we got two in a century; sometimes only one. I was a little girl the last time an inn produced a seed. It wasn’t ours, but we celebrated for three days. All the chores had been canceled. We had a big dinner and my parents were so happy. A new seed was a celebration of life. It meant a new inn to be nurtured and grown. How the hell had the Draziri even found one?

I made it to the end of the driveway. The lone Draziri eyed me. She was young, probably still a teenager, with intense blue eyes, a cream-colored face, and a long mane of pale feathery hair that darkened to deep lavender at the ends. The same design of silvery threads as the one Kiran Mrak wore decorated her forehead, which meant they were related. She seemed delicate and fragile and I had the distinct impression that if I punched her, her bones would shatter.

She opened her backpack and leaned toward me. The seed lay inside, a light brown sphere about the size of a basketball lit from within by magic, cradled in a net woven of wet greenish strands. The back of the backpack was missing and the green strands burrowed straight into the Draziri’s flesh.

Bile shot into my throat. I forced it back down. The seed was caught in a Gardener’s web. A parasitic organism, it bound the seed and the Draziri girl, feeding on the Draziri. Now the fear made sense. The seed should’ve sprouted by now. It had exhausted all the nutrients within its shell and grown too large. The web had coated the shell and kept it in place, turning the protective pericarp, the outer portion of the seed, from a shelter into a prison. Trapped and unable to grow, the sprout of the new inn was slowly dying.

If I severed the seed from the girl, the web would likely pull the shell apart. The moment the seed was free, it would root and sprout. But it couldn’t sprout here. This place was already occupied by Gertrude Hunt. Its roots stretched far; its branches spread through the fabric of time and space, altering it forever, and the area of that distortion was much wider than the town of Red Deer. Two inns couldn’t coexist in such proximity. They had to be hundreds of miles apart.

If I let the seed sprout here, it would die. Gertrude Hunt would feel its birth and its death, and if my inn realized its presence was responsible for the death of a sprout… It would never recover. I wasn’t even sure it would survive. I wasn’t sure I would survive.

How do I fix this?

A Gardener’s web could be removed, given time and proper feeding. I had done it before, when I was the gardener in my parents’ inn. I could do it again, given the opportunity, and the Assembly would be able to do it even faster.

I had to get the seed away from this girl and I had to do it with the Gardener’s web intact.

“What do you want?” I asked.

The girl held up a small screen. Mrak’s face appeared, his white hair framing it.

“Do I need to explain why you can’t harm her?”

“No.”

“Good. She is wearing a medical unit. If you are thinking of pulling her inside and erecting that barrier, the moment the barrier cuts off my signal, the medical unit will release a hormone which will detach the web, killing it. Have I made myself clear?”

No void field, or the seed would sprout. Got it. He understood way too much about how the inns worked. Someone was supplying him with this knowledge. None of the innkeepers on Earth would help him. It had to be someone from the outside. Perhaps the same someone who sent a corrupted innkeeper after us on Baha-char. Once I resolved this mess, I would have to bring all this before the Assembly.

“What do you want?” I repeated.

“I’d like us to talk, like civilized people. Let’s have a conversation, so we can come to a reasonable compromise. Please let her inside.”

It was a trap. It had to be a trap of some sort.

If I let her in, I would be leaving the inn wide open. But if I said no, and the seed sprouted, even if it was five or ten miles away, it would perish. I had to preserve the seed. It was an inn, a life.

I was at my strongest on the inn’s grounds. I had to get this seed away from them. Nothing else mattered.

“Decide, innkeeper. This child is terrified. It’s a heavy burden for someone so young.”

She did look terrified. She was actually trembling. “Don’t try anything,” I said. “I’m not in the mood to be kind.”

“I give you my word. I simply want to converse.”

I dropped the void field and watched her step onto the inn’s grounds.

The seed reached for me. It was weak and pitiful, and it needed me. My magic churned. Gertrude Hunt sensed the seed and was forging a connection. I grit my teeth. No.

The inn tried again.

No. I erected a barrier and poured my power into it.

If it connected to the seed and the unthinkable happened, Gertrude Hunt would perish. I had to shield it from the connection. But I couldn’t shield myself. The seed was reaching out and the compulsion to comfort it was overwhelming.

The Draziri pondered me. There was no way I was letting her inside the inn itself. It would be almost impossible to keep Gertrude Hunt from bonding with the seed.

“Come with me.”

I led her to the backyard and waved my hand. A patio slid across the grass, carrying with it two chairs. Her eyes widened. I sat in one chair and pointed at the other. The young Draziri sat, cradling the backpack.