The Secrets of Solace

by Jaleigh Johnson

  “You sound like my dad,” Ozben said. “He wants to make peace with King Aron, but grandfather says it’s impossible, because the Dragonfly will never give us iron again.”

  “So what does that mean? Your grandfather thinks he should just take it?” Lina asked, annoyed.

  “It’s not like that,” Ozben said defensively. “Not having iron has put a ton of our people out of work. Blacksmiths, factory workers—all because King Aron wants to use it for his inventions. He’s being selfish.”

  “But people say King Easmon wants to use it for weapons,” Lina pointed out. “They say he wants to conquer all of Solace.”

  Ozben scowled. “So what you’re saying is, you do side with the Dragonfly territories,” he accused. “You think the Merrow Kingdom’s wrong.”

  “I think you’re both wrong,” Lina shot back. “But King Easmon is the one who’s attacking in the west, getting closer and closer to our border every day.” She remembered the concerned expression on Zara’s face when she’d told Lina this. If Zara was worried, Lina knew there had to be a good reason.

  Ozben shook his head. “Grandfather would never attack the archivists while they were neutral, even if they’re taking in refugees from both sides,” he said. “He just wants to protect his people.”

  “Are you sure?” Lina asked. “You said your father wants peace with King Aron. What does your grandfather say about that?”

  Ozben’s expression faltered. “Yeah, they argue about that a lot. Grandfather thinks father’s being too trusting. He doesn’t think King Aron will stop his attacks for any peace talks. And when the assassins invaded the palace, you should have seen how furious he was. He accused Father of putting his family in danger. But Grandfather’s always been protective of his family, especially my sister and me. Well, more so of Elinore,” he said with a strained smile. “I’m just an extra heir; I’m not that important.”

  “Don’t say that.” Sadness squeezed Lina’s heart. “I’m sure your parents don’t feel that way,” she said, crouching down so she could look him in the eyes.

  “I know they don’t, it’s just…” Ozben trailed off as he picked at the hay. “It’s not that I want to be king or anything. Elinore was born for it, and she’ll make a great ruler after Father, but I just wish that I was needed for something, you know? That I was important to someone the way she is. I mean, she’s the commander of our entire forces. What have I got that can compete with that?”

  “Well, for one thing, you’ve got a really hard head,” Lina joked, hoping to lift his mood by making him laugh. She tapped him gently on the forehead with the pitchfork handle. “I found that out when we ran into each other in the Heart of the Mountain.”

  “That’s a comfort,” Ozben said. His eyes were still sad, but he smiled at her. “Your head wasn’t exactly a pillow either. I think I still have bruises and cracked ribs.”

  They laughed, and then one of the archivists called over to Lina to stop talking to herself and get back to work. Ozben ducked deeper into the hay so he wouldn’t be seen. Lina made a face when the archivist turned away. “Guess I’d better keep scooping,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I still have to clean out the barns after this.” Zara was nothing if not thorough in her punishments. “At least princes don’t have to clean cow pens all day long.”

  “Nah, but I had to shovel plenty of horse dung whenever I got in trouble at home,” Ozben said. “The royal stables in Ardra have to be twice as big as this cavern. And I’m not sure what they feed the horses, but the smell is bad enough to make your eyes water.”

  “Ugh,” Lina said in sympathy. “Well, I think another two hours of work here should do it. As soon as I’m finished, I’ll come and get you. Be ready when I do,” she added.

  “Don’t worry. We’ve been planning for weeks. We’re more than ready.” Ozben saluted her and grinned before ducking back into the hay pile.

  —

  True to her word, almost exactly two hours later, Lina stuck her head through the grate in Ozben’s bedroom and said it was time.

  They made their way back to the Menagerie, where they would put the first stage of the plan into motion. Lina led him along the edge of the cow pens, ducking low so the archivists wouldn’t spot them.

  Lina had explained that the Menagerie and the Garden were technically separate divisions but that physically they tended to overlap. The plants that needed sunlight were grown in greenhouses built into the side of the mountain, and what the archivists didn’t need for themselves from the harvests was brought down to help feed the animals. In return, the animal dung helped fertilize the plants. The whole area was set up like an underground farm. Sheep and cows grazed alongside flocks of small white flightless birds with red beaks that made low cooing sounds as Lina and Ozben passed by. Ozben slowed to look at the birds, and the closest one ruffled up its feathers and squawked at him. As it did so, its plumage flashed from white to bright yellow and back.

  Ozben blinked and slowed down to see if the bird would change colors again, but it didn’t. It just stared at him with eyes shining like black onyx. Ozben marveled at how much there was to see around here. Shaking his head at the strange bird, he hurried to catch up with Lina.

  “How many of these animals come from other worlds?” he whispered.

  “Four mammals, two amphibians, two species of flightless bird, one reptile, about a dozen insect species, and I can never remember how many plants,” she whispered back. “There’s a chalkboard up on the back wall that lists every species that’s come down in the meteor storms.”

  “It’s hard to believe,” Ozben said. Though he’d never seen one, he’d heard stories about how violent the meteor storms were. “How could anything survive the trip from one world to another?”

  Lina shooed a goat away from the fence when it reached out to chew on her sleeve. “Some archivists believe that the objects are shielded somehow and that the shield dissolves sometime during the object’s descent. Maybe some objects are more protected than others? Animals don’t come through very often, or we’d have a lot more of them here.” She stopped in front of a small pen that had a high fence of chicken wire. “The ones we do have, the archivists study thoroughly to see if they can be released safely into Solace’s ecosystem.”

  “Is that what you’re doing with the bugs on your wrist?” he asked, pointing to her leather band.

  Lina looked down at her leather bracelet and smiled sadly. “The lumatites.” She nodded. “Before my parents died, they were studying the lumatites’ light-producing capabilities and trying to develop a communication system. They’re actually very intelligent. I’ve gotten a little bit further with their theories, but the communication is still rudimentary.”

  “I see,” Ozben said. He didn’t, really, but he was distracted by what she’d said about her parents. She hadn’t mentioned them in the last few weeks, but Ozben had assumed they were alive. It stunned him to find out they weren’t. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” he asked abruptly.

  “Nope, it’s just me.” Lina glanced at him. “I thought you wanted to ask about the animals,” she said pointedly.

  Ozben could take a hint. Obviously, she didn’t want to go into detail about her family, but his mind was still spinning. No parents or brothers and sisters—surely she must have some friends, people she spent time with besides him. He started to ask her about it, but she was crouching down next to the chicken wire fence. She put her fingers in her mouth and let out a low whistle.

  “Come on out, kitties,” she called softly, snapping her fingers. “Come on.”

  A trio of hairless cats spilled out of a little metal barn at the back of the pen. Lina had described them to Ozben a week ago as they finalized their plan, but that description hardly did them justice. They were without a doubt the ugliest creatures he’d ever seen in his life. Slightly larger than house cats, they had huge orange eyes that seemed to swallow up the rest of their faces, and long, spindly necks covered in fleshy ridges. Still, wh
at they lacked in cuteness, they more than made up for in personality. They pranced over to Lina and meowed eagerly, crowding one another to rub their smooth heads against her hand through the gaps in the wire.

  “You can pet them,” Lina said, motioning him to crouch down beside her. “They don’t bite.”

  Ozben eyed the cats warily, but he got down on his knees and tentatively reached his fingers into the pen. Immediately, one of the cats broke off from the pack and trotted over to rub his neck against the boy.

  “Whoa!” Ozben pulled his hand back, rubbing his fingers together. “They’re…warm. Really warm.”

  “That’s a carnelian cat for you,” Lina said. “Their internal temperatures run about ten degrees hotter than a human’s, and they can raise and lower their skin temperatures according to their environment.” She reached up to open the door to the pen a crack, waited for one of the cats to come over, and then scooped him up, cuddling him against her chest with one hand while she shut the door to the pen with the other. “They’re pretty great, like holding a blanket that’s been left in front of the fire,” she said.

  “Amazing,” Ozben breathed. It seemed like he was constantly saying that word, but he meant it every time. Lina’s world was unlike any place he’d ever been before. Despite what he’d said earlier about not wanting to live underground, if things had been different—and there were no war going on—he was beginning to think he wouldn’t want to leave. He’d be happy to spend his days exploring, as Lina did.

  Lina held the cat securely in her arms and glanced around. Ozben noted that there were several archivists in the cavern, feeding the animals or checking on the mushroom gardens, but nobody was paying any attention to them. He followed Lina as she stood up and moved away from the pen to the far side of the room. They slipped out of the cavern through a side passage. They had their distraction, now they just had to put the little guy into place in the Gears and Steam workshop.

  “I’m going to turn him loose in one of the workrooms, wait a few seconds, then run in after him as if I’ve chased him there all the way from the Menagerie,” Lina said as they made their way down the hall. “It should cause a big enough commotion that you’ll have time to slip into the Haystack and find the hand winch. But you’ll have to be quick,” she warned. “I’m only going to let this guy run around for a minute or so before I grab him. I don’t want him to get hurt.”

  “I’ll have enough time,” Ozben assured her. He’d been studying Lina’s maps and had taken notes when she told him where the winch would be in the storage room. “Third row on the left, halfway down the aisle, bottom shelf.” He had it all memorized. “I sneak in, grab the winch, and we meet back in your workshop.”

  “Easy as breathing,” Lina said, grinning at him.

  —

  Lina stood outside the doorway of Gears and Steam’s main workroom, stroking the cat’s smooth skin as he wriggled in her arms. His soft purr vibrated against her chest, but all Lina was aware of was the pack of weasels wreaking havoc in her stomach. She petted the cat reflexively, just to have something to keep her hands occupied.

  She’d been waiting so long to put her plan into action that, now that it was time, she found herself hesitating, and she had no idea why. The plan would work. She’d thought it out a thousand different ways, gone over everything twice with Ozben, and he’d agreed they were ready.

  Lina forced herself to relax and take a breath. When she did, she felt some of her confidence return. It would work, she told herself. It wouldn’t be long now.

  A few minutes later, the clock on the wall of the workroom struck the hour. That was the signal for Ozben to be ready to move and for her to let the cat loose.

  “Okay, boy,” Lina whispered, setting the cat on the ground just outside the doorway. “Go make a little noise and have some fun. Go!”

  To Lina’s surprise, the cat didn’t need any urging. He took off as soon as his paws hit the floor, darting inside the workroom. She waited outside and counted to ten, then, pretending to be out of breath, she tore into the room, ready to shout, “Hey, did anyone see a cat run in here?”

  Before she could even open her mouth, one of the archivists cut her off, screaming, “Grab it! It’s heading for the forge! Block the forge!”

  The forge? What was going on? Lina tried to make sense of the chaotic scene in the workroom. About a dozen archivists were there, and every one of them had scrambled up from their worktables, knocking over benches and scattering tools all over the floor in their haste to make a grab for the carnelian cat. The creature hopped from table to table and then back down to the floor, moving steadily toward the blacksmith forge in the back of the room.

  And then, as Lina looked more closely at the cat, her stomach plummeted, and she realized what had the archivists so panicked. The animal was glowing bright orange—not just his eyes but his entire body. The closer he got to the forge, the brighter he glowed.

  “Oh no,” Lina whispered. This was without a doubt the worst miscalculation she’d ever made. That was her last thought before she took off running, leaping over tables just like the archivists, scrambling to reach the cat before it got too close to the open flames of the forge.

  None of them made it in time.

  Reaching out helplessly, Lina watched as the cat streaked between an archivist’s legs and hopped up on the ledge in front of the fire.

  And burst into flames.

  Several facts clicked into place for Lina at that moment. Why the carnelian cats were kept separate from the other animals in the Menagerie. Why their enclosures had no wood, fabric, or other flammable materials anywhere nearby. And the most important revelation: why the archivists were studying their body temperatures so closely.

  The cats’ body temperature regulation was linked to the air temperature in the room, but Lina had no idea it could be taken to this extreme. As this cat got closer to the forge fire, some unknown biological mechanism activated, and the result was a living, breathing fireball sitting calmly on the ledge of the forge, scratching himself behind one ear as flames licked harmlessly along his skin.

  The archivists in the workroom had formed a rough semicircle on either side of Lina, fencing the cat in. “Don’t scare him,” one of the men to Lina’s right murmured tensely. “We need to coax him away from the fire.”

  Easier said than done. Now that he was bathed in orange flames, the cat seemed perfectly content to sit in front of the forge all day. But they had to do something to put that fire out before he decided to make a run for it through the stronghold, lighting fires along the way.

  Suddenly, Lina heard the sound of footsteps coming up behind them, and a familiar voice yelled out to her from the doorway.

  “What’s all the noise in here? Winterbock, what happened?”

  It was Simon. As if the situation couldn’t get any worse.

  “Shh!” Lina said, whirling toward him and pressing her finger to her lips.

  Then Simon saw the cat, and his eyes got so big, Lina thought they would pop right out of his head. “Emergency!” he yelled. His voice carried up and down the hallway. “Technology division—emergency! We need to contain that cat!”

  “Simon, don’t!” Lina tried to shush him again, but it was too late. The cat, startled by the noise, bunched himself up into a ball, launched himself from the forge’s ledge, and was off, streaking across the room before anyone could react.

  Lina turned and sprinted across the room after the cat, tripping and bumping into the archivists as they all tried at once to cut him off from the open doorway. If they couldn’t grab him barehanded, maybe they could at least turn over one of the large tables and shove it across the entry, closing off the cat’s escape route. The workroom had no door to close.

  But as he ran, the cat brushed against a towel hanging from one of the worktables. The fabric ignited into a ball of flames, forcing two of the cat’s pursuers to break off and work to put the fire out before it spread.

  This isn’t good, Lina t
hought, trying to push down the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. She needed a plan. Wildly chasing the cat was just going to start more fires, but they couldn’t let him get out of the room either.

  Simon was still at the back of the room, but he’d moved into the doorway. He held a small crossbow—he must have picked it up from one of the tables—and was aiming it at the cat.

  “No!” Lina screamed, horrified. “You can’t kill him! Simon, don’t!”

  He ignored her and fired. Lina screamed again, but to her relief, the bolt went wide, skipping off the stone floor and coming to rest harmlessly under one of the tables. Simon reached for another bolt on the table, but the cat had already darted past him into the hall, leaving a streak of flames that caught the boy’s pant leg. The archivists ran out of the room in pursuit.

  When Lina reached Simon, he’d dropped the crossbow and was squealing and slapping the fire out. His pant leg was singed brown around the ankle, and he wore a murderous expression.

  “I’m going to get that stupid cat,” he growled. “Stay here, out of the way.”

  “What are you going to do? You can’t kill him!” Lina cried. How could he even think it? She snatched the crossbow off the floor before Simon could reach for it and hurled it across the room.

  “Are you crazy?” Simon made a grab for Lina’s arm as if he meant to shake her, but she dodged out of the way. “If we don’t stop that thing, the whole stronghold will go up in flames!”

  “He’s not lighting the fires on purpose,” Lina shouted, “He’s just scared!” And it was all her fault. She ran out into the hall and took off in the direction the cat had gone, leaving Simon shouting angrily after her.

  She had to fix this before the cat got hurt or hurt someone else. So far, Simon had been the only one to try to use deadly force to stop the cat, but if the situation got any more desperate, the archivists would have no choice but to put him down for the safety of the stronghold.

  With a sinking heart, Lina realized as she ran that the cat was heading for the library, the worst possible place he could choose to go. She followed a trail of small fires eating at the wall hangings in the corridor, and she passed more of the archivists who had pulled off from the chase to put them out. By now, the rest of the divisions must have been alerted to what was going on—Lina heard doors slamming up and down the corridors as the archivists tried to seal the cat off from as many rooms as they could. But the library’s front entrance, like Gears and Steam’s main workshop, had no doors, just an open archway of chiseled stonework. Surely, the archivists would have time to block the entryway. If only there was something in the library or the corridors leading to it that Lina could use to trap the cat or at least entice him to calm down.