by G. K. Lund
“Hey, it’s pertinent—”
“This is non-negotiable unless either of you wish to return Earthside permanently,” Agaton interjected with a pointed look toward Loki. Nobody in Atlantis cared who you used to be. It didn’t matter. What mattered was who you were… and possibly who you could become. But mostly it was what you had to offer in the here and now. An ex-god was just that; ex.
“You can return to your home, Ms. Morgan, and live there if you agree to these terms. Mr. Loft here will assist you and be relegated to your charge.”
“What?” we both cried out. “No!” I added.
“Are you serious? She’s an infant,” Loki said, and indicated me to make sure Agaton understood.
“Hey. I’m sitting right here,” I protested. “And I can walk and talk.”
Loki shrugged.
“Take the deal or don’t. You have a choice. Others will surely take it if you do not.”
As Loki sighed dramatically beside me, I knew I didn’t have a choice, but for the first time in two years, I recognized a lifeline. A ragged and slimy lifeline, but a lifeline nonetheless.
“All right,” I told the man. “I’ll take the deal.”
Chapter Four
I was surprised to see lights on through a few windows as I stood in Trenton Place, staring up at the old stone mansion.
My home.
I shuffled my feet and took a step. Then I stopped. I hadn’t lived here at all the six years the Kin had run the city, but before that, for a few years, I had lived here with my parents. After the coup, though, I’d been here only now and then, visiting them mostly. They weren’t there now, of course, so the lights had me on edge more than I already was on my own.
The mansion, known officially as the Morgan Mansion, was a stone building, large and imposing in the dark. From the outside, it had always given me a bit of a haunted house vibe. Building styles differed wherever one went in Atlantis, but the house shared some similarities with Earthside Victorian buildings, minus the tiny turrets.
Finally, I concluded I couldn’t keep standing out there in the street. This was a rich neighborhood, not noble family rich, but a nice part of the city nonetheless. People called the police if they noticed people loitering. Especially banned people.
I squared my shoulders and went for it. It was my home, and for now, because of Agaton’s offer, I had a right to it. So, who was in there? It sure wasn’t Loki. He’d been annoyed by our new deal and had vanished on me the moment we were let back outside the Pyramid with our weapons and things returned to us, stating he had business to tend to.
As I reached the door, I had to resort to the doorbell. The door was locked.
Yep, there I was, feeling like I was begging for a handout from my own home.
It didn’t take long before I heard steps from inside that soon revealed themselves to belong to a stringy-looking old man. His black garb, bald head, and wrinkled face brought back memories though. No, this man did not scare me, but he brought forth a feeling of unease in me. It wasn’t like my past was squeaky clean.
“Yes? Good evening, oh…” He squinted his eyes and considered me. “Miss?”
“Hiya, Worthy,” I uttered feebly, trying for a smile and failing somewhat. The older man eyed me some more, and I was thinking I’d have to find alternate accommodations when his demure-looking face allowed for a small twitch to his mouth.
“What are you standing here for, like a guest in your own home?” he asked me and ushered me inside. I gulped down a relieved breath of air when I passed through the opening and entered the warm, familiar house that had always felt more like my home even than the Earthside one I’d lived in for a lot longer. Yes, I thought as I smelled the familiar scent of green soap. This was it. This was home.
I dropped my backpack to the floor and turned around and took it all in. Well, not all, merely the foyer at this point.
“Let me get that for you, Miss.”
“Thank you, Walworth,” I told him, fighting back a tear in my eye.
“Yes, well…” He turned away to settle my backpack on a side table, as uncomfortable with my emotions as I was.
“You’re back then?”
I nodded.
“Well, I’ve kept it all in order. If you’ll follow me, Miss.”
I did. I didn’t say much while the butler gave me a brief tour of the main rooms. The mansion was filled with old furniture, paintings of long-lost relatives on the walls, weapons, and even an ancient tapestry that my grandmother had taken pride in mending before I was born. Sitting rooms, offices, a parlor, and a grand dining hall passed me by. Not until we entered the library did I stop Walworth from moving on. I loved that room. It was, despite its name, multipurpose. The walls were covered with books and heirlooms from floor to ceiling. A couple of large windows were hidden by heavy drapes, and in front of this stood a huge desk. It was my father’s. He’d preferred working in here instead of his office down the hall. And so, the large dining table on the opposite side of the room was my mother’s doing. According to her, it had been the only way to make sure he attended family dinners. And he had. That table was as well used as any kitchen table in any family house. I could still see some faint marks that couldn’t be removed after one of my more aggressive coloring sessions.
The lights were on, but there was no fire in the hearth. No one used this space anymore. No one except Walworth, who I bet kept the lights on for the neighbors’ sake. There would be fewer questions that way.
“How d’you manage to keep it like this?” I asked and turned around, taking it all in. It was clean too. I couldn’t believe he’d kept the staff on. There would be no need.
“The household accounts your parents set up are still active, Miss. I couldn’t keep the staff, but it was enough to keep everything going.” He glanced down a moment, reminding me of a boy about to admit to a prank. “Sometimes I hire a cleaning crew. I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“Oh, Walworth.” This time I did smile at him. “Thank you.”
“Yes, well…” he coughed and looked away.
“Have they…” I rescued the butler from anything else emotional, but realized I’d stumbled into something worse. “My parents. Did you see them? After?”
Walworth shook his head. My heart didn’t sink. I’d expected nothing less. I’d gotten a mild sentence compared to many others.
“Last I heard, they were arrested. I don’t know if there was a trial. I never found out.”
My heart sank anyway. There had been a lot of anger and hatred in the streets toward the end, and my parents had been in the Kin’s inner circle. I opened my mouth to say something, realized there was nothing to add to that, and settled on nodding instead.
“I will prepare one of the upstairs bedrooms for you, Miss. I suppose your childhood room may be a little too small now.”
“Thank you,” I said again and meant it. It was good to be home. To be welcomed in, even by this stiff, old man, who might or might not resent what we’d brought down on this household.
As Walworth left me alone in the library, a heavy sense of silence fell over me. The old stone walls surrounded me, cold and non-caring. Before I knew what came over me, I ran through the empty rooms for the front door. I told Walworth I’d be back shortly as I passed him and then slowed down a bit when outside. I paid little attention while I walked through the streets of Atlantis. I passed by houses and people and paid them no heed. My parent’s house might have been my home, but I was alone there, and the realization had hit me like a ton of bricks. I had wanted to come home so badly. I’d worked on nothing but returning and honing some particular skills Earthside, barely caring to get to know someone on my way. It hadn’t felt lonely, because I’d been so preoccupied with my goal. But now… now I was here; both in Atlantis in general, but in the district of Pingbrook in particular. I scanned the open space around me. Unlike Trenton Place, which was tidy, proper, and orderly, Pingbrook was a neighborhood of life. There were always pe
ople about, living equally inside and outside their homes. The houses looked like medieval buildings with a mishmash of wood or stone for building materials. The people looked like that too, with the odd blend of modern clothes. Modern for Earthside that was.
I stood on the outskirts of the square a minute or so before I made my decision. Right across from me, on the other side of a fountain of cherubs spitting water back into a pool, was a shop I’d visited often during my time with the Kin.
That had been an oddity.
I approached and glanced up at the sign above the door; Alba Herbs and potions. The letters looked somewhat worn, but then again, they might have always been.
A bell rang when I pushed the door open. The combined smell of dozens of herbs hit my nose and I had to fight the urge to sneeze. The whole place looked like a potion shop taken out of a fairytale book. There were vials of tinctures and potions on every shelf, and dried herbs hung from the ceiling.
A long counter ran the length of the room and behind it remained about a third of the space with the more powerful potions, and a tall, blond woman who was currently helping a customer. The sight of her made my nerves go haywire again. I hadn’t seen Delphine Alba in over two years, and I didn’t know how she’d greet me now. I’d had friends in the Red Kin. Many of them. You know, the kind of friends who are there for you and happy for you as long as you believe in the same thing. Turns out, that’s a very unstable foundation for any friendship. But we had known. Yes, we had. We’d had the answers and solutions and had been so sure of ourselves. We’d ratted each other out, of course. It happened all the time. How else to keep each other in line? I’d done that too. Not proud of it. And when someone left us, we never spoke to them again. When the Kin fell, our oh so meaningful relationships fell too.
But I’d had a friend outside the Kin. Delphine. I still didn’t quite know how she’d managed it, because, despite my errands in her shop, the Kin did not deal in magic. And that was what Del sold. She was a bog witch.
“Thanks. I’ll see you next week, Goodie Oldman,” Del’s voice carried through the shop, following the old woman who came toward me, heading for the door.
“Do you need some help…?” Del began, noticing me lingering by the door instead of coming further inside. Then her eyes squinted, much like Walworth’s had.
“By the spirits! Emery?” She came out from behind the counter and before I could say anything, not knowing if she was going to punch me or not—she dressed like a Victorian pirate after all—she hugged me instead. I sighed in relief. I’d known I’d be coming back to stares and judgment, but it would be worse coming from certain people.
“It really is you.” Del leaned back, patted my cheek, and then hugged me again.
“Hi, Del. Long time and all.”
That made her laugh and she let me go. “I heard you got banished. I tried visiting you in prison, but they wouldn’t let anyone inside.”
“You did?” I hadn’t expected that.
“I did.” She flashed me a smile that seemed to fight away any residual sadness. “I’m so glad you’re well.” She drew me further into the shop, behind the counter and into the kitchen behind it. If possible, the smell of herbs was even more potent in there. It was where she made her potions. She placed me in a chair at a small table and proceeded to make tea. That was how she’d lured me into spending some time in her ‘magic infested den’ in the first place. She’d never asked about the kin, never judged, and I’d felt okay spending a little time there. Belonging to the Kin had never been a question anyway. We’d all worn the red garbs demanded of us, our painfully visible uniforms, and proudly too. She’d always known.
“I’ll make your favorite,” Del stated and began collecting dried herbs. I arched an eyebrow at that but thought ‘what the hell’. I’d had a harrowing day so far. I could feel it too. My body tired, sitting there in a safe, warm place, chatting to an old friend about what had happened between then and now.
“Here you go,” she said a while later and placed a blue ceramic cup of steaming tea in front of me. It smelled wonderfully of berries and mint.
I tasted it and arched an eyebrow at her. “Where’s the whiskey?” It had never really been the taste that had made this our favorite ‘tea’.
Delphine gulped down a mouthful and then preceded to fan her mouth with her hand. “Woooh! Too warm.” Then she laughed. “Oh, the whiskey? Not gone, my friend. Not gone. I only figured out how to make the taste of alcohol vanish. Don’t worry. It still has the same effect. It just tastes better.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said and did as stated. “You could make a fortune out of this.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” She took a more careful sip. “So, this Agaton Groth is giving you a chance by risking your neck?” she went on, having listened carefully while I told her this. “I don’t think that’s a good deal.”
“It’s better than the alternative.”
“Mmph…” Delphine nodded reluctantly. “I’ve heard that some returned exiles have been sent away again. But why not register with the Guardians upon arrival?”
“We don’t want attention, Del.”
“Oh, yes, I see. I noticed they’d started announcing names in the papers, making sure every return is known.”
“Yeah…” That didn’t surprise me. Crimes had been committed against people, and they deserved to know if their perpetrators were returning. But naming people in the papers? That was shaming. We were used to that, though. Maybe not on this scale, but still, it was better to fly under the radar. “Anyway, tell me about your shop,” I said to break away from any more talk of the Kin at the moment. There would be enough of that.
About an hour later, and two cups of ‘tea’ I had to leave. If I was going to stay in the city, I was going to figure out how to find a stolen gem and keep Atlantis’ pride intact. No biggie.
“Hey.” Del stopped me by putting a hand on my shoulder as I was heading out the door. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”
“Thanks, Del. For everything.”
She smiled then. “I did nothing.” She knew what I meant. It wasn’t about the ‘tea’ that now had me settled in a nice, breezy mood.
“Exactly,” I told her. “And that made all the difference.”
A nice sobering walk later and I laid eyes on the Morgan mansion again. This time, I didn’t ring the bell but walked inside. Walworth must have been expecting me though because he came into the foyer in a hurry, his eyes slightly widened and giving in to relief at the sight of me.
“Oh, Miss.”
“Something wrong?” My left hand automatically moved to the hilt of one of my daggers. I didn’t even think about it.
“Yes. There’s a strange man upstairs claiming he lives here now.”
“Ah.” I let go of my dagger. I’d forgotten to warn Walworth. “Dark-haired, never shuts up?”
“Uh, yes, Miss.”
There came a crash from upstairs at that. Something had smashed against the floor. I looked up at the ceiling a little too long, not wanting to meet Walworth’s eyes. Yes, so technically this was my house, sort of, but the man had been tending to it since before I was born.
“Uh, hehe.” I tried smiling again. “So, he’s not wrong. I promise I’ll explain. I just need to stop him from breaking any more things first.” And with that, I left the shaky butler to run upstairs.
Turned out, Loki had laid claim to the apartment on the second floor, and the man had settled in a little too nicely.
I walked into a huge bedroom where the guy’s beer, beef jerky, weapons, and clothes were scattered everywhere. Seriously, he didn’t own much, yet he seemed to have claimed everything in there by throwing his things around. The man himself was in the en suite laying in the bathtub, foam thankfully covering his stupid crown jewels. A vase, of all things, that had contained a bunch of green grapes, lay scattered on the floor. Eating grapes in the tub? Had he mistaken himself for an ex Greek god?
“What the hell, man?�
��
“God.”
“Shut up!”
“Hey,” Loki said, holding up his hands defensively in a response to my fuming state. “I didn’t decide this.”
“I—” I promptly shut up. He was right. “You will treat Walworth with respect,” I said instead.
“I treat everyone w—”
“This is non-negotiable! He didn’t ask for this.”
Loki rolled his eyes but acquiesced anyway. “Fine.”
“So. Are we doing this then?” I asked him, leaning against the door frame.
“Do we have a choice?”
“Isn’t there always a choice?” It’d mean banishment or prison, of course, but it was a choice nonetheless.
“Fine,” Loki repeated. Whatever his reason for choosing to stay in Atlantis, it was important to him.
I nodded and straightened up. “Okay then. Let’s get a couple of hours sleep and then get on it.”
“Oh, and Red?” he asked when I turned to leave.
“Yeah?”
“Can you pass me some grapes? I can’t quite reach.”
God damned A-hole.
Chapter Five
“The Order of the Learned and the Reflective.” Loki took in the sign above the closed, red and black wooden gate with apparent apprehension.
“Sounds… thought through?” I volunteered.
“Sounds pretentious.”
“Takes one to know one,” I mumbled. I ignored his side-eye and folded the piece of paper with the address and stuffed it in my jean pocket. Yep, no such thing as phones with maps in Atlantis. The city was an odd blend of modern and ancient, and I’d left my cell phone back home. There was no need to bring it anywhere. Besides, after living here so long, I’d never really gotten used to bringing it with me everywhere Earthside either.
“What are the odds the gem is here?” I asked Loki. I glanced around, seeing a few people pass us in the quiet street. We were in the Solon Vale district and most of the houses here were closed off, much like the gated house of the Order of the Learned and the Reflective. From what I understood, it was some sort of philosophical order or a think tank.