“Oh, that won’t do.” Verandil offered a crooked elbow for Saeldian to take. “You can eat, and I’ll think about how to repay you.”
“For what?”
“Getting Kell here.”
“He would have done it himself.”
“Not the way I heard it,” Verandil said. “You have no idea what you’ve done, have you?”
“I—”Didn’t do anything?That wasn’t true. “I don’t. No idea at all.”
They followed Verandil to another platform like the one that had brought Lorzok and Saeldian up to this level, and the satyr answered as it sank gently toward the ground. “Kell was lost. We couldn’t find him. We had tried, but finding was Essanderon’s gift, and he fell in the battle. If I hadn’t been out in Eightbridge where you could find me, you would have had little chance in finding the village. The Brewmistress keeps it sealed away.”
“But he could have found you. When you were in Eightbridge again.”
“I go once a tenday, and you don’t have a tenday’s worth of time, do you?”
“You have a point,” Saeldian said. “But I found—I found my way into another domain when I needed to. Couldn’t he have done that too?”
“Whose?”
Saeldian’s tongue wouldn’t move. Lorzok spoke into the silence. “Saeldian’s patron is an archfey.”
“Well, that’s why,” Verandil said. “Direct connection to the archfey of the realm got you there without knowing the way. I’m not the archfey. Dad isn’t either. Kell never even met the Brewmistress before today.”
Lorzok cleared his throat. “And you know what stopped him from looking.”
Saeldian nodded. “He was scared you were all dead. I…was mean to him about being afraid to look. Which was horrible of me. But I figured out that he needed to believe that you were there to find.”
Verandil looked at Saeldian like two pieces that didn’t match suddenly fit together. “I wouldn’t usually go to get the gruit until tomorrow,” Verandil said. “But I woke up with an itch to go today.”
“It was probably him that you sensed.”
“But it was you who pushed him to find me. Maybe you were an ass to my brother, but you know him well. Maybe even better than I do. How do you know each other?”
“I turned him into a criminal,” Saeldian said, “and then I abandoned him.”
Verandil scowled. “You’re doing your best, but I don’t push away that easy.”
“I haven’t given it my best yet. Is that the cookhouse?”
And then Quickwit was there, hovering like a dragonfly. “Come and eat! Have a seat! I will bring an extra treat!”
Saeldian groaned. “Quickwit, can you talk without rhyming? I would consider it a favor.”
“Done! That’s one! No more rhyming,” Quickwit agreed. “Tell me what you want tell me your order tell me I’ll go tell them how do you want your eggs how?”
Saeldian regarded the tiny pixie hovering between them and Lorzok. “Fried, whites cooked, yolks runny. Are there mushrooms?”
“Runny yellow eyes on fire noodles with button tops!” The last words faded as the pixie zipped off.
“He’s helpful.”
Verandil chuckled. “Quickwit has to serve people a thousand favors before the Brewmaster will release him from his punishment.”
“What did Quickwit do?”
“Quickwit, ah…”
