Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (51 page)

“Why? Given the way you worked a roadway for us on the way here, could you not just give your lands whatever form you wanted?”

His brow wrinkled. “Why would you ask such a question, Miss Ryder? I cannot imagine why little Cordus has not taught you such basic things.”

The eyebrow-raising thing worked last time, so I tried it again.

And again I got the amused smile.

“I could have worked this garden into being,” Negus said. “I could work my territory into whatever shape I wanted. But the essence of Demesnes does not want to be other than it is. To alter its essence significantly would simply generate a new stratum. I do not wish my territory to become separated from Demesnes. So yes, I made our road in coming here, but I let the essence revert to its natural form after we passed.” He pondered me for a few moments. “It may seem there are no constraints on the actions of great powers, but that is not true.”

I nodded and turned back to the garden.

For a few minutes there, I’d thought extracting myself from Shuxian’s advances would be a challenge. I’d begun to panic. If I ever had a sexual experience with a woman, I darn well wanted her to have skin.

But then Negus had swept in and invited me on a post-dinner stroll.

I’d never really grasped that cliché about going from the frying pan to the fire. I did now.

I’d been careful not to look at my friends’ faces when I left. I didn’t want to see my obituary written all over them.

The stroll had brought us to a broad stone balcony overlooking the gardens. A rectangular pool stretched out in front of us. Moonlight skipped across the wind-stirred water in little silvery cups.

So beautiful
. 

But beauty isn’t trustworthy.

Negus moved in closer. I felt his hand on my upper arm, warm through the thin material. His touch slid up to my shoulder, and he thumbed the neckline of my dress.

“I would like to touch you.”

“I would prefer you did not.”

He didn’t respond — just kept that thumb moving a millimeter away from my skin.

I looked up at him. “Why know something when you can guess? Guessing is much more fun.”

“Perhaps.” He ran his fingers lightly over my pearl choker. “I will strike a bargain with you, Miss Ryder. You may keep your capacity to yourself if you tell me where you are really going, and why.”

“No deal. Go ahead and touch.”

His hand stilled, then dropped away. He laughed. “You are quite entertaining. Very well — keep your secrets.”

I smiled as though he’d done me a favor.
As if
. He could probably find out about my capacity from Shuxian anytime.

He watched me, and I got the feeling my thoughts were quite plain to him.

And why wouldn’t they be? He was unimaginably old — a single strand woven through the tapestry of humanity. People could hold no surprises for someone like Negus.

“Come,” he said, extending his arm. “I will escort you back to your rooms.”

“My god, Beth, are you okay?”

Mizzy looked me up and down, apparently amazed to see me with all limbs still attached.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I looked past her to Williams and Ida. “Really. He didn’t hurt me.”

“Thanks be,” Ida said, and plopped down in an armchair.

Williams was still eyeing me. “Did he touch you?”

“No. He asked to, but it didn’t happen.”

Mizzy frowned. “What —”

“But I don’t think it matters,” I said, “because Shuxian did. Oh, and Mizzy — you were right. He totally knows who I am. Once we were alone, he called me by my real name.”

“Okay,” she said, sitting down. “Spill.”

Williams pointed at me. “Quiet. You two,” he said to Mizzy and Ida, “get out.”

He ignored the angry looks they shot him as they left.

“Now,” he said, once they were gone, “talk.”

I told him about my private chat with Negus. I also told him about Shuxian.

He absorbed the information in silence.

“What do you think he wants?”

Williams shrugged. “Stimulation. Advantage, if he hasn’t grown tired of games. Many of the old ones do.”

“But not all?”

“Nope.”

I thought about it. Politics, power, ego, competition. I sure would get tired of that sort of thing as the millennia added up. Heck, I was only twenty-three, and I was sick of it already.

“So, what should I do the next time I see him?”

Williams leaned back against the wall, studying the floor. Just when I thought he was going to ignore my question, he spoke.

“I can’t tell you that. Never would’ve suggested what you did tonight, but it worked. You have a rapport with him. Go with it.” He looked up at me. “But stay alert. If the shit hits the fan, try to get to me.”

I nodded while thinking,
Like hell
. If the shit hit the fan with Negus, no one would be able to help me, and my friends would be better off on their own.

“I think he thinks I’m a power,” I said.

“He can think what he likes. Doesn’t make it true.”

I pondered him in silence.

Lord knows I wanted to believe him. Wanted to believe Cordus had engineered this whole thing to make the other greats think he’d stumbled onto a baby power and was botching it up. Wanted to believe I was a tiny cog in some grand plan that really had nothing to do with me.

Or heck, I’d be fine with Just Plain Wrong.

But Williams was looking at his feet, not me.

Don’t get me wrong — Williams often didn’t bother looking at me. But this didn’t feel like not bothering. It felt like not wanting to.

I watched as Williams checked the packmules.

Negus had given them to us. Surefooted mules would carry our load better over the rough terrain of the Far Wild.

Williams tossed me a lead rope and mounted up.

Then he took one more look around. I had a feeling he was thinking what I was.

Are we really going to just ride out of here?

We’d been at Negus’s eight days. There’d been parties and hunting trips. There’d been plays and concerts and bawdy puppet shows. There’d been games of tennis and croquet on the lawn. And meals. Countless formal meals, each one sown with terrifying verbal landmines.

The conversations were definitely the worst. Negus had a real knack for opening on some bland, unthreatening topic and then maneuvering you into discussing something you’d really rather not.

He initiated a conversation with Mizzy by asking if she preferred rings set with emeralds or rubies. Within a few minutes, the conversation had prompted her to mention — seemingly spontaneously — that she’d acted in a number of Hollywood films in the 1930s.

After she said it, I could tell from her face she’d said way more about herself than she’d intended to.

The next day, he started a conversation with Ida about the advantages of cooking with fresh herbs. Before long she had disclosed that Bill Gates was bankrolling some kind of ecotech company. Her guilty expression told me it wasn’t something she was supposed to be talking about, but Negus was fascinated and continued to question her long after she had exhausted her knowledge of what the company did.

Not surprisingly, I was his primary target. My tendency to derail conversations with stupid questions got me out of several uncomfortable exchanges, but he nevertheless wormed details out of me here and there — that my mother was dead, that I regretted my lack of education, that I preferred informal dress, that I grew up somewhere with a cold climate, and so forth.

But despite all of this, the four of us were alive and unharmed. And, apparently, about to get under way in better shape than we’d been before running into Negus.

Williams chirruped to his horse and moved out of the stable yard.

We followed a pea-gravel road east, passing behind the great house and its gardens. The road led to a charming manmade pond. We skirted it to the north and continued through the open lawn and scattered trees of the estate’s vast park.

At the edge of the park, we would be able to pick up a path through the forest. The path would, Negus had said, hook up with a road that would take us northeast. “A small matter of two hundred miles,” he’d said. When we reached the coast, we could take a ferry across to the northern island.

Two hundred miles of Far Wild terrain would probably take us more than three weeks.

I could almost see Williams adding up the time in his head as Negus spoke.

Well, at least I had a reliable, comfortable horse to ride. I gave my gelding’s neck a pat.

Beside me, Williams stiffened just a hair.

I straightened and saw a party waiting for us under an ancient spreading oak. Of course, Negus was at the center of the group.

Damn. Knew it was too good to be true.

We began to pull up, but he waved us forward. Williams dropped back, and Negus fell in beside me.

“I regret losing your company so soon, Miss Hanson.”

“That is very kind, my lord. Thank you.” I groped around for something else to say that wouldn’t be an out-and-out lie. “We appreciate your hospitality. Your home offers many pleasures.”

“All too few of which you have explored, my dear.” He studied me briefly, then looked ahead. “But come. I am not here to make you blush, but to warn you. One of your party is plotting against you.”

Totally taken by surprise, I gasped. Then I looked down at my hands so I wouldn’t look at Mizzy. Negus was probably keeping our conversation unheard, but a sudden stare would still give it away.

“What makes you say that?”

“I am not gifted in mind-working, but I have had a long while to study the subject. Grasping stray thoughts as they flit across a person’s mind — this I can do with ease.”

“And this person, what is she thinking?”

Negus tilted his head. “You assume it is one of the women?”

I felt myself turn red.

“Oh, um … no. But there are two women and just one man. Statistically, —”

He chuckled. The disjunction between my words and thoughts was no doubt entertaining.

I didn’t bother trying to laugh along. “So, what thoughts are you gathering from this person?”

“Fear. Guilt. Excuses.”

I thought about my next question carefully.

“What excuses?”

Negus smiled as some small birds fluttered past us and up into the trees. “That Innin will surely be no worse a master than Cordus.”

I thought quickly. Mizzy had identified all of us as serving Bill Gates and, through him, Cordus. Negus might or might not have picked up that Mizzy was actually sworn to me.

If he didn’t know it before, he probably just picked it out of my thoughts.

God, this stuff made my head hurt.

“Mr. Gates does not hold his people formally in fealty,” I said. “If she prefers service to Lady Innin, I believe she is free to undertake it.”

“But Miss Ryder, it is not herself she considers. It is you.”

I glanced over at him, confused.

He tilted his head, reminding me again of Cordus.

“She intends to bring intelligence of your abilities, potential, and whereabouts to the lady, so that you may be seized at her earliest convenience.”

I remembered my first encounter with Innin. Yeah, she’d wanted me. But surely she wouldn’t come all the way to the S-Em to steal me. It just didn’t make sense.

My horse tossed his head, annoyed at the way my hold on the reins had stiffened.

“You do not believe me,” Negus said. “How odd.”

“I am sorry, my lord. I mean no offense. I simply cannot imagine why Lady Innin would go to such lengths to obtain me. I am …”

“You are what, my dear?”

“Well, nearly useless.”

He looked at me incredulously. Then he started laughing again, and this time it wasn’t just a chuckle. He ended up having to pull out a hanky to wipe his eyes.

I looked around. Everyone else was assiduously aiming their eyes elsewhere. Negus might be keeping things quiet, but it must be obvious that I’d just bumbled into some hilariously stupid mistake.

“Why are you so amused?” I said, trying to keep my irritation out of my voice.

Negus gestured helplessly, as though he didn’t know where to start. “That you believe yourself useless. That of all the people to stumble onto a newborn it should be one who is little more than an infant himself, and a fool as well.” He shook his head. “Normally I would not interfere with Innin — such a nasty little creature, so endlessly vindictive. But really, you cannot be permitted to come into the hands of someone competent. The loss of entertainment would be insupportable.”