Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (22 page)

Mr. Gates smiled and shook his head. “Well, I’ll just take the pack string up for you.”

He untied the first packhorse and headed up to the paddock.

I turned to follow him, but Williams stopped me.

“How much do you know about where we’re going?”

“Nothing.”

Williams regarded me silently. Maybe he didn’t believe me.

“Yellin’s taught me a little about the S-Em, but I don’t think he ever mentioned this stratum. He never talked about where the ice men live, either.”

“He teach you Baasha?”

“Yeah.”

It’d have to be enough to get us to the rest of the team, I guess. Good thing I’d worked pretty hard on the language.

Williams pondered me in silence for a minute. I stood there trying to ignore the skin-crawling feeling he gave me.

“The places we’re going are dangerous. You need to stick close to me, do exactly what I say.”

“Dangerous? Lord Cordus said —”

“Don’t tell anyone who you are,” he continued. “What you can and can’t do. Nothing about your capacity. No skin-to-skin contact with anyone.”

“But —”

“Just do what I say.”

My annoyance flared. “Don’t talk to me that way. You’re supposed to be helping me on this mission, not ordering me around.”

He stepped right up to me. I jumped back and was immediately furious with myself for acting scared.

“My job is to get you to the ice men alive. I can do that fine with you gagged and tied to a horse. Got it?”

I gaped at him, totally taken by surprise.

How dare he treat me like this?

He stepped in again. “Answer me.”

My pulse shot up. The urge to step back again was overwhelming.

“Fine,” I ground out. “I got it.”

He grunted and turned away.

“So what are you going to call me? Do I get a code name?”

“Her.”

He headed toward the paddock with Bertha.

I stood watching him, my fists balled up in fury. I wanted to drop Copper’s reins, march back into Mr. Gates’s house, and call Lord Cordus and tell him I couldn’t work with Williams.

Lord Cordus values this mission so much he’s given me his strongest fighter, and I can’t make it work? Am I really going to make that call?

I stood there, struggling.

He believes I can do this, and “this” includes handling Williams.

Lord Cordus was right — I could handle this. It was going to test my patience, but I could do it. Clearly, Williams was the kind of person who made himself feel big by demeaning others. But so what? His opinion didn’t mean anything to me, and it sure didn’t amount to a hill of beans when compared to the fate of humanity.

I took a deep breath and headed up to the paddock.

Even standing inside, I couldn’t sense a thing.

“I’ll go through first with one horse,” Williams said. “You come next with another. I’ll come back for the others one at a time.” He glanced at Copper. “Leave him for me.”

I was only too happy to oblige him on that one. The little appy was already shifting around nervously. He was going to be spooky about the strait.

Williams led Bertha forward.

His cell phone rang, and he stopped to dig it out of his pocket.

Beats me why he still had the thing on. Mine was turned off and buried at the bottom of my pack.

“Williams,” he said into it.

He listened for a minute.

“Okay, thanks,” he said, and turned to me, holding the phone out. “Callie.”

Oh for god’s sake.

I took the phone and brought it to my ear. “Hi, Callie.”

“Beth. It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Yeah, you too.”

She paused for a long moment. “I didn’t see anything about you. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” Her voice broke. “So sorry.”

I reminded myself that from Callie’s point of view, I was about to step into hell.

“Thanks, Callie. Hey, I’ll be fine over there.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

I could tell from her voice she didn’t believe me.

“I’m giving you back to Williams, now. Take care, okay?”

“I will. You too, Beth.”

I handed the phone back to Williams. He held it up to his ear briefly, but Callie must’ve already hung up. He snapped it closed and pocketed it, eyeing me. Then he turned back to the strait.

“Did she have a vision about you?” I said.

He paused, apparently considering whether or not to share.

“She said, ‘Water will save you.’”

“What water? Save you from what?”

He shrugged. Whatever their relationship, apparently it didn’t make Callie’s predictions any clearer.

Williams stepped forward and disappeared. Bertha went readily behind him.

Huh.
There really was a hole in the world right there. Part of me hadn’t quite believed it.

I took a deep breath of the warm morning air. Good smells — grass and horses, dirt and creosote.

I looked back at Mr. Gates. “Thanks for your help.”

“You’re welcome, child. Take care of yourself.”

He dipped his head once in farewell, and I smiled back. Then I chirruped to the packhorse and walked into another world.

I expected it to be hot. And it was — like a steam bath.

I expected an exotic otherworld of lush plant life and strange creatures.

I was wrong about that one. I stepped into something more like a prison exercise yard: a sixty-foot ring of gray pavement surrounded by high stone walls. There were guards watching me from the walls, and they had guns.

Williams was standing off to the left, near the only gate. He looked impatient.

When I joined him, he handed me Bertha’s reins and walked back through the strait. He returned with another of the packhorses, then repeated the process three more times, finishing up with Copper, who came through jigging and snorting.

The guards on the walls watched us silently. They gave me the creeps. No matter which way I turned, there were always some behind me.

Williams didn’t seem bothered by them, but his barriers could easily deflect bullets. I had no such defense.

Once all the horses were through, Williams mounted up.

“We’ll each lead two,” he said, nodding at the packhorses. “Led a pack string before?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t tie the rope to your saddle. If something spooks them, let go.”

I mounted Copper, remembering to keep the off rein tight so he couldn’t turn his head and bite me. The ass-chomp was one of his favorite moves.

Why hadn’t I asked Mr. Gates for a different horse? He’d practically invited me to.

I found my other stirrup and got the reins and the packhorses’ lead sorted out. It felt awkward to have something extra in my hands.

Williams had sidled Bertha right up to the heavy wooden gate. He was leaning toward it, as though studying the fine grain of the wood. I went closer and realized he was speaking to someone on the other side through a tiny window.

I took a moment to look back toward the center of the ring. Home was right there, just on the other side of something I couldn’t see.

Come to think of it, who’d opened the strait for us?

I looked around. It was hard to believe one of the rifle-toting guards was a power.

Mr. Gates.

He’d been the only one there. It was his farm. He’d said he’d been there a long time. And, I realized, he projected a subtle authority. He’d introduced himself first name and last, but it had never occurred to me to call him “Bill.”

But Lord Cordus letting another power live in his territory and operate one of his straits — that ran counter to what Yellin had taught me about the way powers related to one another. Plus, I’d never met anyone who seemed less like a power. He was low-key, kind, human. He used contractions. He even let himself look short and old.

Like Miss Sturluson.

A shiver ran up to the base of my skull.

I heard a loud scrape and turned. The wooden gate was opening.

Williams chirruped to Bertha and rode through into a corridor of stone — a narrow paved road contained by high walls. I could see that it stretched some distance away.

Whoever lived in this stratum, they were really paranoid.

I allowed myself one more look back toward the strait, but there was nothing there except empty, stone-gray light.

I turned away.

I’m off on a great adventure. I’m going to help Lord Cordus save humanity.

I got Copper and my pack string going and followed Williams.

The stone corridor ran for half a mile or so, taking several sharp turns and trending firmly uphill.

Eventually, we passed through a second gate into another walled enclosure. This one was a large courtyard. At the far side was a big stone building.

Well, not a building so much as a castle.

A number of small buildings were scattered around the courtyard. Activity was going on in front of several of them — carts being packed or unpacked, people bustling around or arguing.

We rode up to one of the buildings. Williams dismounted and began tying the horses to the rail out front.

“What are we doing?”

“Seeing the strait-master on this side.”

Williams looked up at me. I didn’t expect it. Meeting his gaze without preparation gave me a spasm of nausea. It wasn’t as bad as it had been, though. Exposure was dulling the response.

I dropped my stirrups and dismounted.

As we finished tying up the horses, a neatly dressed man came out of the building.

Williams began speaking with him in Baasha.

I was completely taken by surprise.

I guess it made sense that my guides needed to be able to speak to the locals. But Lord Cordus had told me studying Baasha was an unusual opportunity.

Well, “unusual” doesn’t mean unique.

After speaking to Williams, the neatly dressed man went to the corner of the little building and ran a yellow flag up a pole. Immediately several workmen jogged over to us and began unloading our packhorses and laying all our stuff out on the flagstones. The man wandered through the piles, making notes in a ledger.

“What are they doing?”

“Figuring our tax,” Williams said.

“The S-Em has taxes?”

“Everywhere has taxes.”

Eventually the neat man approached. “Twenty-nine for the lady,” he said briskly, handing Williams a sheet of calculations. He opened the small metal lockbox affixed to his belt and began poking through the coins inside, ready to make change.

Williams studied him, then looked down at the paper. His eyes moved as he scanned the math. He looked back up.

“Twenty-seven and a half.”

He said it in that Williams growl, the one that made “twenty-seven and a half” sound like “you’re trying to cheat me, so I’m going to break your legs.” It made me want to step away, even though it wasn’t aimed at me.

The neat man stopped fidgeting with his lockbox. He looked up at Williams, eyes a little too wide. “Yes, of course. My mistake. Twenty-seven and a half.”

Williams handed over some coins, and the neat man made change. Then he closed his lockbox and gestured to the workers, who’d been standing around talking. They began repacking our things.

“Come on,” Williams said, picking up a box that had come off one of the packhorses.

I followed him into the castle’s dark interior.

The man at the table called out “Next!” in Baasha.

We were standing in line off to the side of the castle’s vast entrance hall. We’d been waiting about fifteen minutes. The man at the table appeared to be another functionary. He was flanked by armed guards.

The line shuffled forward. Just one more party in front of us — a woman holding a little kid by the hand and carrying an infant.

“What is your interest in the first world?” the man at the table said.

“My child is ill,” the woman said. “I would go there for healing.”

“Do you know a healer in that world? Do you have any contacts, there?”

The woman shook her head.

“For passage through and full assistance on the other side, then. What do you offer?”

The woman pushed forward a small purse. The man poked at it. Even from where I stood, I could tell there wasn’t much inside.