Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (52 page)

He raised his voice. “You up there.”

Everyone riding in front of us turned around.

“You,” he said, gesturing at Ida. “You will be staying. See my steward. He will find something for you to do.”

Ida went gray.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “She cannot stay here. She was sent with me by Mr. Gates. Accompanying me is her assignment.”

Negus observed me blandly.

I got mad. “You cannot claim her like a piece of property.”

“Of course I can. I even
may
— she is an oath-breaker.”

Ida cried out. The pain in that sound was unbearable.

I leaned over and caught Negus’s sleeve. “Please. Please, my lord. She has a child in another stratum.”

He looked down at me. “Children come and go. She can have another here if she wishes.”

“No —”

“Miss Ryder,” he said, lowering his voice, “you seem to want to have Innin for a master, the way you fight for her spy. I thought you wiser than that.”

Finally, I understood.

I looked from him to Ida, doubled over on her horse. Mizzy was leaning over hugging her. Both of them were staring at me, desperate.

My eyes drifted over to Williams. His face was still, but his gaze was intent.

Was he trying to tell me what to do? If so, I couldn’t read it.

Don’t fool yourself. You know what he’d say — good riddance to a traitor.

I turned back to Negus.

“Give her to me,” I said. “As a present.”

His brow furrowed in surprise. Then his eyes narrowed. “Why should I do that? Are not four mules enough of a gift?”

I ran my fingers down his sleeve and onto the back of his hand. His bare skin was warm and smooth.

“My lord, I think you are forgetting a truth I learned from my mother.”

He didn’t speak for several long seconds — just stared down at me, focusing. Checking out my screwed-up capacity, no doubt.

Finally, his focus relaxed. He looked thoughtful, but beyond that I had no inkling what he’d discovered.

“What great truth am I forgetting, Miss Hanson?” he said lightly.

“The best way to destroy your enemies is to make them your friends.”

For a moment, everything went still. Then he laughed. A second later, his entourage joined in.

“Far be it from me to fight the forces of cliché itself. I give this woman to you to dispose of as you will.”

The entourage murmured and applauded politely.

Negus smiled at them, nodding.

Then he leaned in close to me. “See that she does not betray you, child. I wish to see you again. That I cannot do if you are locked away on Cobao.”

He reined his horse away, and all his hangers-on followed.

I watched until they rode out of sight among the trees.

We were a somber little group.

Not seeing much point to hiding what Negus had told me, I repeated it to everyone.

Ida admitted that Innin had agreed to take her and Cata into service if she reported back all she learned about me and left a traceable piece of essence — one of Innin’s own hairs — wherever I ended up.

“Innin must be gifted in tracking,” Mizzy said.

I saw what she meant. How strong a tracker would you have to be to find a single hair across worlds? Power-strong, for sure.

“Give,” Williams said, holding out a hand.

Ida opened up the locket she wore around her neck, pried out the photo of Cata, and extracted the single long, black hair that had been coiled behind it.

Williams tied it around a twig and tossed it into the next stream we passed.

With luck, it would end up far away from Negus’s territory. The man clearly delighted in stirring up trouble. Who knows what he’d tell Innin if her tracking brought her to his doorstep.

“Beth,” Ida said, “from the bottom of my heart, thank you. And I’m so sorry.”

I shrugged, uncomfortable. “It’s okay.”

Williams growled out an objection.

“Not
okay
exactly,” I said. “I just mean, I’m glad you’re really on my side, now.”

Williams shook his head in disgust.

I looked away, hoping I was right. As for the thanking part, who knows? She might well have been safer with Negus. He might’ve kept her from going home, but death would do a pretty good job of that too.

“How did you get mixed up with Lady Innin, anyway?”

“Cata ran off in September — stowed away in a cart of goods bound for the F-Em, then hitchhiked down to Florida. South of the panhandle, that’s Lady Innin’s territory.”

So much for my assumption that sneaking back through Chasca’s strait would be impossible.

“Lady Innin’s people caught her using her flight to pick oranges in a public park. They were going to kill her. Mr. Gates called in a favor and got her off, but when we went down to pick her up, the lady got me alone and, you know, made me an offer.”

Ida shot Williams a scared look. He said nothing.

“What did she offer?” Mizzy said.

“She said Lord Cordus’s days were numbered, and we were better off cutting our ties to him.”

“And you just believed her?” Mizzy said.

“Yes! Sweet Jesus, don’t you remember what it was like? Everyone saying he was dead, his people disappearing left and right. Maisie Carter in Raleigh, Jacob What’s-His-Name up in Richmond, the whole Atlanta unit — all just gone. I bet Mr. Gates made a deal with her too. Bet that’s how he got Cata off.”

“He would never do that,” Mizzy said. “She was a slaver.”

“They’re all slavers. You saw what happened back there. I was no more than a thing to be taken.”

“Because you’re an oath-breaker! He was trying to protect Beth from you.”

“Enough,” Williams said.

There was a lot in that word. A threat, of course. Anger. Disgust. Maybe a touch of exhaustion.

I could see why. We had months of our journey yet to complete. Two of our party were gone — our second-best fighter and the tracker he’d needed to keep tabs on me. The others weren’t trustworthy. One of the greatest powers of the S-Em had just found out all about me. And whatever was happening at home probably wasn’t good. From Williams’s perspective, this had to be one big clusterfuck.

We rode on in silence.

After a few minutes, Williams turned to me and asked a quiet question.

“What made Innin think this particular woman would be spending time around you?”

I frowned, turning the question over in my head. I came up blank, so I answered it with one of my own.

“How did Helen Sturluson get ahold of my brand new phone number?”

He met my eyes for a long moment but said nothing.

“It couldn’t be Yellin,” I said.

“It could be anyone,” he said. “It can always be anyone.”

Up ahead, Mizzy’s horse stopped with a snort. Ida shouted in fear, and I heard a gunshot. Then Mizzy shouted “Sleep!” and things got fuzzy. As if from a distance, I felt myself hit the ground. Someone grabbed me under the arms and got me back on my feet. Williams. I swayed a little. He gave me a
snap-out-of-it
shake and headed up the trail, shotgun at the ready.

I followed, too dizzy and spaced out to have any business holding a gun.

I squeezed past several mules and horses that were asleep on their feet. Then I saw a lot of things at once. Four equines sprawled awkwardly where they’d fallen. Ida snoring beside one of them. Mizzy kneeling beside her. And, thirty feet down the trail, the cause of the commotion: a huge white wolf whose fur floated strangely in the still air.

“Elder beast,” Williams said. “Greetings.”

The wolf ignored him.

“Pup,” he said in his silent way.

I felt myself smiling ear to ear.

“Hi, Ghosteater.”

“Something for me? Are you sure they meant, you know,
me
?”

“Yes,” Ghosteater said.

Dragons.
“How do they even know about me?”

He didn’t answer.

“She can’t go to Eyry,” Williams said. “It’s impossible.”

The wolf lay down and began licking his foreleg just above the spot where it faded to nothingness.

I shivered and looked away. In my fond memories of him, I’d managed to push the no-feet thing into the background.

“Can you tell me exactly what they said?”

“She.”

“Right. Sorry. Can you tell me what she said?”

Ghosteater raised his head and yawned. His teeth were unbelievable. The molars in the back looked like icebergs.

“She showed, ‘Teated, pup-called, daughter of not, crippled, kindness. Bring, time, must now. Oldest thing, thought, heart, pass. Late. Run teated, run hot-blood.’”

What the hell?

I looked over at Mizzy and Ida, who were well back by the horses.

Ida just stared back at me. She was still groggy from Mizzy’s sleep whammy.

Mizzy shook her head. She was very pale.

Williams said, “Ryder.”

I turned to him and saw an expression that said something like,
Get this animal out of here before it eats us
.

Not helpful.

“Ghosteater, I don’t understand why you think she was talking about me.”

“You are pup-called. You pack with the oldest thing.”

“Okay, right, you call me ‘pup.’ But —”

“The scent was you.”

“How could she have my scent? I don’t understand.”

“I do not know.”

“Elder beast,” Williams said, “she can’t go to that place. She’s helpless. Prey.”

“Not prey. Pup.”

“I understand that pups become wolves, but she’s too young. She belongs in the den.”

Apparently this was a good point because Ghosteater gave Williams his full attention for the first time.

“Yes,” he said. “Milk pup. But her den is gone. She must come out early.”

“There’s a big difference between being out of the den and going to Eyry,” Williams said. “She isn’t ready for that kind of hunt.”

“This is not a hunt.”

“You know it is. The dragons never act as one.”

The skin on the wolf’s shoulders twitched. “I will protect her. If I live, she will live.”

He said it with an air of finality.

Ghosteater wasn’t much of a talker. Really, it was amazing that he spoke at all. I wondered how many of his million years it had taken for him to learn to communicate as he did.

I went and sat down next to him, then twitched a little in surprise when he laid his head on my thigh.

Mizzy made a strangled sound.

Since he seemed to be inviting it, I stroked his head softly, ruffling the strange, translucent filaments. My youngest niece — the one who’d introduced me to him — had called it glass fur.

“Have you seen Madisyn recently?”

“No. Her mother only.”

“You’ve seen Justine? When?”

“She is the thing.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“‘Oldest thing.’ ‘Pass.’ It is her.”

My hand stilled as I processed the words.

“Williams, we need a silence barrier.”

I shot Mizzy a look. “Sorry.”

She just shook her head, confused.

Williams approached slowly and knelt. I saw the telltale finger twitch.

“Ghosteater, I need to understand this clearly. Are you saying the ‘thing’ the she-dragon wants to give me is a piece of Eye of the Heavens?”

Williams shot me an incredulous look.

“The fragment woman. Justine.”

“The dragon has a piece of her? One of those blue balls? And she wants to give it to me?”

“Yes.”

Damn.

I closed my eyes, working my fingers into Ghosteater’s thick ruff.

The thought of going with him was terrifying. He’d do his best to protect me. I knew that. But he was just one creature. And dragons. I couldn’t really wrap my head around that. They must be some kind of dinosaur offshoot, but it was hard to grasp. Dinos were bad enough. How much worse must these be?

“Ryder.”

I looked up at Williams. I could see he was angry. And something else. Scared. That was a weird emotion to see on him.

“What blue balls? What the hell are you talking about?”

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure how much I should say.

“Look,” he said. “You can’t go to Eyry.”

“Why? Would it make the trip even longer?”

He spoke slowly. “Your
trip
would be through the digestive tract of a dragon. People don’t go to Eyry. Cordus wouldn’t go there. Negus wouldn’t go there.”