Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2)

by Becca Mills

  All I could do was wait.

  I spent a while reading the local newspaper. It looked old fashioned, with squished-tight rows of text and no pictures, but the language seemed pretty standard. So long as I went slowly, I understood most of it. Newsworthy events included increased dinosaur activity along the major highland roadways, a drunken brawl down by the wharfs, and the sad case of a missing woman whose body had been found in the river.

  An amusing sidebar on an inside page contained interviews with three local people with weird gifts — the sort often referred to as “quirks.” One of them was a man who could make other people’s hair grow faster. Fittingly, he’d become a barber. He joked that he’d never had to be a particularly good barber, since he could always regrow what he cut and try again.

  I glanced up at Williams, who looked like he’d last visited a barber in a past life.

  He must cut his hair himself. With a hacksaw. Or maybe a weed-whacker.

  Sensing my gaze, he looked up. As usual, I couldn’t read much from his expression, other than the ever-present undercurrent of anger. I looked away.

  He finished reassembling his shotgun and started wiping down the outside. It was a nasty weapon — a matte-black nine-shot 12-gauge with a heat-shielded barrel. It looked nothing like the duck-hunting shotguns I’d grown up around. It even had a bayonet lug.

  He looked up at me. “You clean your weapons yesterday?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded and collected his guns. Amazingly, they all ended up somewhere on his person.

  We headed out.

  The inn we were staying in didn’t have a stable, so we’d boarded the horses a few blocks away. When we got there, a middle-aged man was waiting for Williams. I gathered from their conversation that the man was a horse-dealer.

  The dealer quickly agreed to buy the packhorses and all our tack, but hesitated over Copper.

  Williams’s expression darkened.

  “We were attacked by dinosaurs on our way here,” I said quickly. “I was riding this one, and he defended me.”

  The dealer looked Copper over again with more interest.

  “He is foul-tempered,” I said, “but sound and well trained. And I imagine you do not have many appaloosas in your stables.”

  I had to say the word “appaloosa” a number of times before the dealer got it. I guess there was no word for the breed in Baasha.

  In the end, the dealer agreed to buy him.

  When it came down to it, I was sort of sorry to see the little horse go. He was a pill, but he reminded me of happier times. I hoped the dealer found a good owner for him.

  “So what about Bertha?” I asked Williams, as the dealer led five of our six horses away.

  “Going to someone else.”

  He had one of the stable boys bring the mare out. He checked her carefully, then went over her with a soft brush until her coat shone.

  When he was done, he led her out into the street, heading west. I followed along, wondering where we were going.

  After about twenty minutes, we left the city proper. The buildings — clearly residences — grew larger and farther apart. Walled gardens teeming with flowers surrounded each home. The blossoms drew birds down from the wooded slopes above the city, adding to the swarm of colors.

  In the jungle, I’d only gotten a close look at the birds that had landed on us. But walking through the garden district of Kye Wodor, I saw birds that must’ve stayed in the trees when we were riding through the jungle — the ones that were interested in bugs and flowers, not people and horses.

  Watching them, I realized there were birds in Gold Rush that surely didn’t exist in the F-Em. I saw strange, mostly scaled things with only enough feather-power to glide down from a high perch to a lower one. Those tended to move in packs, swarming up a tree trunk in large numbers, working through the branches — finding food, I suppose — and then gliding down to the base of a new tree in a noisy waterfall of glittering bodies. I also noticed quite a few birds with talons on the leading edges of their wings. Some had long bony tails. Others had obviously reptilian heads, with toothy mouths instead of beaks. Some had beaks and teeth.

  The line between dinosaur and bird was pretty blurry. If there even was a line. Every dino I’d seen was feathered.

  As in the jungle, birds filled every niche. Where in Wisconsin I might’ve expected to see a squirrel or chipmunk, here there’d be a bird instead. I even noticed a flightless bird of prey creeping through the bushes like a cat. After seeing two more, it occurred to me that people might be keeping them as pets.

  I suppose it made sense. This was a world where dinosaurs had never been struck down to a single surviving line, where mammals never had the chance to expand into all those empty niches.

  Something occurred to me.

  “The green men — they’re dinosaurs, aren’t they?”

  Williams grunted.

  I took it as a “yes.”

  “Are there other species like that? Dinosaurs as intelligent as we are?”

  “Yes.”

  I waited several seconds.

  “Well, what are they?”

  “Things you never want to meet.”

  “What does wanting have to do with it?”

  He didn’t answer — surprise, surprise.

  We continued on through the quiet neighborhood, the only sounds the constant birdsong, the soft conversations of passers-by, and the steady clip-clop of Bertha’s feet on the cobblestones. Finally, we paused in front of a particularly large and gracious home. Williams studied the building, brow furrowed, as though trying to remember. Then he turned and went through the open gate and on up to the house. He handed me Bertha’s lead and rang the doorbell.

  A man opened the door and inquired in formal tones as to our presence. Williams asked to see a Mr. Dherudellen. The man nodded and disappeared back into the building.

  A good five minutes passed.

  I entertained myself by scratching Bertha’s forehead and rubbing the insides of her ears. She really liked the ear rubs, leaning her head toward me and getting a blissfully zoned-out look on her face. After a few minutes, her lower lip had relaxed to the point of dangling, and she was making little groaning noises. It was pretty cute.

  Finally an old man emerged from the house. He was leaning on a young woman’s arm and appeared feeble, but when he saw Williams, his face lit up.

  He came over and gripped the big man’s arm. “Leontios. I had not thought to see you again.”

  What’s with this “Leontios” business?

  Williams looked down at the old man with an expression that might’ve become a smile on another face.

  “Agathon,” he said in Baasha. “I have brought you a gift — a destrier.”

  “Indeed?” Agathon examined Bertha with interest. “A mare, and a gentle one at that.”

  “Nevertheless,” Williams said. “I trained her myself.”

  Agathon ran his hand along Bertha’s shoulder.

  “A handsome animal. What is she called?”

  Williams said her name, and Agathon repeated it. It came out sounding something like Bair-thah, with a little roll to the “R.” The Baasha accent had a nice effect.

  Agathon turned back to Williams. “My great-granddaughter, Agathe Dherudellen,” he said, gesturing to the woman supporting him.

  “Your great-granddaughter,” Williams said in a strange tone. Then he nodded at Agathe and introduced me to both of them.

  Agathon reached for my hand.

  Williams made no move to intervene, which surprised me. He hadn’t allowed anyone to touch me skin-to-skin except Ida and Hagut the healer. He obviously didn’t want anyone sensing my capacity. A few days earlier, a guy in a tavern had tried to lay a hand on me. Williams had almost broken his arm.

  I let Agathon take my hand in his, and he patted it in a stereotypical sweet-old-guy kind of way. Then he stilled and looked up at me. Under his bushy gray eyebrows, his eyes were surprisingly sharp and clear
. He looked perplexed.

  “A pleasure,” he murmured, and turned away.

  Someone else weirded out by my damage, I thought.

  Andy had once told me that, at first, I’d felt like I had no capacity at all. Then, after he touched me long enough, he began to get flashes of something big. He compared it to trying to hear a single conversation in a crowded room and only catching a word here and there — but those words were striking.

  “Like ‘death,’ ‘destruction,’ and ‘chaos’?” I’d said.

  “More like ‘I,’ ‘am,’ and ‘paranoid,’” he’d said, and given me a noogie.

  God, I missed Andy.

  Agathon invited us in, and I gave Bertha a quick last pat before she was led away. I was going to miss her too.

  Agathon clearly had a lot of money. His home was large and richly appointed. It was also crawling with servants.

  We were shown to a parlor, and a steward brought us drinks. I tried to make some conversation with Agathe, but she seemed very shy, answering in monosyllables and looking down most of the time. I shifted my focus to what Williams and Agathon were saying, but Williams steered the conversation toward the other man’s business and family, so they spent a lot of time talking about places and people I’d never heard of. It was hard to follow.

  Eventually I tuned out and spent my time enjoying my wine and taking in the room.

  It wasn’t at all like Chasca’s waiting room. Instead of bland paintings, Agathon favored drawings of people and animals, especially horses. I was no judge of art, but they looked great to me — brimming with life and movement. I wondered if he’d made them.

  The furniture was varied and looked handmade. The couches were covered in leather. I stroked the cushion I was sitting on and wondered if the leather had come from a dinosaur. Or maybe their skin didn’t lend itself to tanning. But people made stuff out of ostrich skin, right? I’d have to ask Mizzy.

  “I hear it said that Lord Cordus has vanished. Is it true?”

  My ears perked up.

  “No, he returned unharmed,” Williams said, sounding none too happy about that fact.

  “Ah. I am sorry.”

  Williams shrugged, his face blank, and a silence fell between them.

  Agathon smiled sadly. “You will stay for lunch?”

  Williams accepted, and after another half-hour, we moved to a formal dining room and were served what struck me as a lavish meal, though Agathe seemed to find it inadequate and apologized to me quietly at several points for omissions I never would’ve noticed.

  After the meal, Agathon and Agathe walked us out the front door. I could see that Agathon was tired, but Williams kept him standing on the porch for a few minutes, talking quietly. The guy was as difficult to read as usual, but I got the sense he was reluctant to leave.

  Once we were on our way back toward the center of town, I asked Williams how he knew Agathon.

  He waited so long to answer that I thought he wasn’t going to. Finally he said, “From the army.”

  “Oh? Why’s he living here?” My brain hiccupped and tossed out another objection. “And why doesn’t he speak English?”

  Then again, Williams had a slight accent. He must’ve served wherever he was born and then moved to the U.S. later.

  Wait a minute.

  He spoke Baasha fluently.

  He broke the Nolander dress code, and Cordus let him get away with it.

  “John Williams” wasn’t his real name.

  Of course it wasn’t. It was one step up from “John Doe.”

  I stopped walking.

  My god. How had I been so blind?

  Williams kept right on going, so I addressed his back. “You’re a Second, aren’t you?”

  He ignored me.

  “Hey!”

  I said it loud enough that other pedestrians up and down the block looked my way.

  Williams turned and came stalking back to me.

  “What’s your problem, Ryder?”

  “I want an answer. Are you or aren’t you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters.”

  His eyes narrowed, as though to say, I just can’t wait to hear the massive piece of stupidity that’s coming my way.

  “If you’re not one of us, you don’t have to do what you do. Cordus doesn’t own you. You could walk away, but you don’t. You choose to murder people.”

  “Is that right,” he said flatly.

  I crossed my arms. “Tell me it isn’t.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Why?”

  He looked about ready to throttle me. “None of your business.”

  “I’m going to spend the next thirteen years in exile because you killed Bob. How is this not my business?”

  “Shut up and start walking.”

  I glared at him. Which, of course, had zero effect. In fact, he stepped closer, looming over me.

  I didn’t want to back down.

  Then again, I wouldn’t put it past him to toss me over his shoulder and carry me home.

  What was I trying to get out of him, anyway? Some sob story about how Cordus had enslaved him? I wouldn’t believe it, so there wasn’t much point.

  “Fine. You’re the one who has to live with yourself.”

  The rest of the walk home was silent and tense.

  By the time we got back to the inn, I’d cooled off enough to think.

  I needed to be more careful around Williams. I’d been assuming he wouldn’t harm me because he was under orders to deliver me safely. But if he had the option of quitting, then the threat of Cordus’s displeasure wasn’t the safeguard I’d imagined. If I pissed him off enough, maybe he’d indulge himself, even if it meant having to get a new job afterwards.

  My thoughts also pointed out I had no idea who or what Williams actually was. He looked like a thirty-something man. But would someone that age have an army buddy in his eighties? It didn’t seem likely. He could be a lot older than he looked. He might not be nearly as human as he looked, either. Heck, he could be a minor power, more Cordus’s ally than his employee. An evil version of Mr. Gates, maybe.

  I went up to my room and closed the door. My hands were shaking.

  Damn straight, I told myself. You should be scared.

  I needed to go back to thinking of Williams as I had when I’d first encountered him. This wasn’t just a loathsome person. This was a person who might kill me.

  When everyone convened in the inn’s common room that evening, I sat down between Terry and Ida. Williams came down a minute later and sat at the far side of the table.

  Thank goodness. I couldn’t get away from the man, but being eight feet away felt a whole lot better than being right beside him.

  Everyone reported on their activities. Since I didn’t have a report to make, I just listened and focused on not looking as rattled as I felt.

  As it turned out, the drought in Ancient Inland had made it easier to get things done quickly and cheaply.

  Mizzy said she’d had no trouble getting camels and tack. Demand for the animals was way down.

  “But the news isn’t all good,” she said, toying with her fork. “The dealer recommended putting no more than four hundred pounds on each animal. I’m afraid we’ll have to leave Mr. Williams behind.”

  No one laughed, but you could feel the wave of nervous amusement wash over the table.

  Williams didn’t react — just turned his gaze to Ida, who reported that trail food, tents, and other equipment were selling for next to nothing.

  Kevin said the ferrymen had competed to get his business, and the caravan master had been glad to add our party to his next crossing — we had several strong workers among us, after all.

  The only person who hadn’t finished his task was Terry.

  “We need more bags,” he said. “It’s not all going to fit.”

  Mizzy shook her head. “I got all the bags the camels can carry. It has to fit.”

  “Let’s get mor
e camels, then. More camels equal more bags.”

  “No more,” Williams said. “They’ll need to drink.”

  “Then you guys’ll have to help me,” Terry said. “I’m a packing failure.”

  So, I spent the next day helping to squeeze a mountain of food and gear into a bunch of oddly shaped camel saddlebags. It was sort of fun. By the time Terry and I both tried to sit at once on a bag of dehydrated meat that wouldn’t close, we were all laughing — even Kevin.

  Of course, it helped that, for once, Williams had gone off to do something and had left me behind. Everyone relaxed a bit in his absence.

  “Why are you going to see the ice men, anyway?” Ida asked, once we got the stubborn bag closed.

  “Mr. Williams has decided to return to his people,” Mizzy said.

  Everyone laughed.

  I poked her in the ribs. “That’s not fair … to the ice men.”

  “But really,” Ida said, once the titters died down, “why are you going?”

  “I’ve been declared a solatium. I have to stay with them for thirteen years.”

  A shocked silence fell.

  Finally, someone asked why.

  I hesitated, afraid telling the story would reveal my very late seeing-through.

  Then I remembered how Terry had heard about me through the grapevine, back in Free. My odd development wouldn’t be a revelation to these people.

  “I like to take photographs for fun,” I said. “When I first started seeing through, it happened with the camera instead of directly. I accidentally took a picture of an ice man who was living in my hometown. Well, just his foot, actually. I showed it to some humans. The ice man got killed for revealing himself, even though he didn’t mean to. I guess his people are pretty angry about it.”

  Everyone just sat there, staring at me. Then they glanced around at one another.

  “Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I thought emerging Nolanders weren’t usually held accountable for that sort of slip-up,” Terry said.

  “We aren’t,” Mizzy said. “If we were, there’d be no Nolanders. The first thing people do when they see through is talk about it to their family or friends. I certainly did.”