If that was meant to be comforting, it missed the mark by a mile.
Forest detritus had already grown up around the tree, vines and flowering bushes. Carefully, Fife peeled them back, peering at the base of the sapling beneath.
“Kings.” He sat back on his heels. “This is the second one in as many days to come into the Keep.” With a practiced motion, Fife uncorked his vial with one hand, the scarred and withered one still held close to his middle, and poured the blood over the roots of the sapling. Nothing changed, not that Red could see, but he took no further action. His eyes darted to her. “Did you do anything to it this morning?”
“To what? The tree?”
“Yes, the tree. Did Eammon tell you to do anything?”
“No.” Incredulity made the word sharper than she meant it. “He told me to stay away from it. From all of them, I mean. All the white trees.”
Fife’s lips pressed together, regarding her for an unreadable second before turning back to the sapling. “Well, that should hold until Eammon can get to it.” He pressed up from the floor. “Since he is apparently still determined to do this on his own.”
Red’s brows drew together, looking from Fife’s retreating back to the sentinel sapling. A twist of her lips, and she turned to follow him down the corridor. “I’m Redarys. But you knew that.”
“Correct.”
“And you’re Fife.”
“Two for two.”
“So your blood doesn’t just kill shadow-creatures, then. It does something to the trees?” Lyra had mentioned that in the kitchen, something about holding saplings steady.
The question finally made him stop his march down the hall, giving Red a sidelong glance. “Keeps them stable,” he answered after a laden moment. “Holds off the worst of the shadow-rot until Eammon can move them back where they’re supposed to go.” The march to the foyer resumed.
Red followed, though the quick look he gave her said he wished she wouldn’t. “Thank you for breakfast,” she ventured, dropping her bag of books at the corner.
“Best cook in the Keep.” Fife headed for a door behind the once-grand staircase. “Not that it’s saying much. Eammon thinks bread and cheese are acceptable for every meal, and Lyra’s culinary skills begin and end at tea.”
He reached up to push the door open. As he did, his sleeve fell back from his arm. Another Mark, the mirror image of Lyra’s.
Fife saw her looking. “We all have one around here. Gaya and Ciaran weren’t the only ones foolish enough to make bargains.”
Red’s hand drifted to her own Mark, hidden beneath her dark-blue sleeve. “I made no bargain.”
“Neither did Eammon.” He shoved open the door. “But the original Wolf and Second Daughter are gone, so the Wilderwood makes do with the next best thing.”
The door spilled them into the back courtyard, with its crumbling stone wall and strange forest-wreathed tower. Fife went left, following the path of Red’s broken corridor. Three more white saplings pushed up from the rubble at the end, stretching into the fog.
She hung back as Fife approached them. “I take it those aren’t supposed to be here, either?”
“A quick study, aren’t you?” Fife peered closely at the sapling’s roots. Black rot boiled over them, though the surrounding earth still looked solid, not like the rotten sponginess she’d seen the night before. “He’ll have to heal these first,” he muttered, uncorking another vial of blood and pouring it over the ground. The rot receded incrementally, so small a difference Red wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been watching. “They’re already weakening. The one inside can wait, it isn’t shadow-rotted yet.”
“Shadow-rotted?”
Another arch look, like her questions irritated him. But Fife pointed through the fog, to the forest beyond the gate. “See that?”
Right at the edge of the tree line was a black spot on the forest floor— the same dark, damp ground that produced the creature from last night. Red nodded.
“That,” said Fife, “is an empty place where one of these sentinels is supposed to be. It felt the Shadowlands pushing through, so it came loose and regrew here, closer to Eammon, so he could heal it. Only the stronger ones can do that. The others just rot where they stand, leaving breaches we have to find and close.”
“Like the one last night. It was rotting when we found it, but he said it would’ve ended up at the Keep in ten more minutes.”