Chương 24: Trespass

A bell rang somewhere close, loud enough that Solstice's whole body jerked before his mind caught up, some buried instinct screaming that danger had already arrived. He couldn't move. His eyes opened on a tall, mysterious man standing just past the edge of his vision, a strip of dark fabric wrapped over his eyes despite clearly seeing something. Beside him stood a woman, middle-aged, scars visible even under the weight of her disappointment. Emelia. Solstice's mouth opened.

"What. What is this." His eyes dropped to his own wrists, then his ankles, both bound tight to the chair beneath him.

"Why am I tied up?"

"You were seen at the gates looking and smelling like you'd killed several men." Emelia's eyebrows drew tight.

"And you're asking why you're tied up?"

"Didn't Khufrol tell you anything?"

"He did."

"Then you already know my insides were crystallizing. I had to do something or I was dead."

"You could have told me."

"I didn't know where you'd gone. Didn't know who you were with." Solstice spat the words.

"All I knew was if I didn't move fast, I wasn't waking up tomorrow." Emelia let out a slow breath and glanced at the man beside her.

"He's clean. No need for this." The man nodded once. Two guards stepped forward and started working the ropes loose from Solstice's wrists. Solstice took the room in while they worked. Spacious. Warm enough to pass for comfortable, by his standards anyway, and his standards had never asked for much. A guard moved to his ankles next, and that's when Solstice saw it. The moment his eyes landed on his own foot, the pain arrived right behind it, sharp and sudden, like his brain had been waiting for permission.

One of his toes was gone.

"WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO MY TOE?"

"We removed it." The tall man's voice came out soft. Almost gentle.

"Frostbite had set in from your boots dissolving. The guards reported you shouting something about an Oryth swallowing you, which lines up well enough with the state we found you in."

"Just my frostbitten luck." Solstice's jaw clenched.

"I'm not even done healing from the last thing and now I'm short a toe." The man laughed, quiet.

"You're an interesting one. First person I've known to survive an Oryth swallowing them whole." He tilted his head.

"Don't worry, though. Captain Emelia spent a fair number of chips on a low grade Aplae. You won't scar from the burns." Solstice winced through the throbbing in his foot.

"Aplae?"

"An ointment. Local alchemist's work, used for—" Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"That's enough of that." Emelia cut him off, tossing a folded set of clothes and a pair of well-padded boots onto Solstice's lap.

"We need to move." She turned to the man.

"Thank you, Nohel." Nohel smiled, the band across his eyes doing nothing to soften it.

"You're welcome, Captain."... Solstice dressed in silence, and when he reached for his old clothes to strip anything worth keeping, he found both the knife Khufrol had lent him and the artifact he'd taken off Murren, still there, untouched, sitting right where the burnt fabric had left them.

'What's wrong with these people. Didn't even bother searching me. What's their angle here.' He tucked the knife into his new coat anyway. The pain in his foot had dulled to something manageable, and somehow the blisters from the Oryth's burns had already faded to nothing. Emelia stood ahead of him, arms crossed, expression already promising a lecture the moment they cleared this building. Solstice limped toward the door.

"Solstice, right?" He looked back. Nohel stood there, still wearing that same soft, unsettling smile.

"Glad you made it out alive." A pause, gentle, almost mournful.

"I think Lere would have been happy to know." Solstice's hand moved before the rest of him caught up. Pain screamed through his leg and he ignored it entirely, launching himself across the room with the knife already swinging toward Nohel's throat. Emelia intercepted the strike mid-air, her grip closing around his wrist with a force that felt closer to iron than muscle.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING, BOY?" Solstice's eyes never left Nohel. His expression hadn't shifted at all, still soft, still calm, laced with something that looked almost like confusion at the reaction he'd caused.

"You. YOU BASTARD! What are you? How do you know that name?!" Solstice's voice tore raw out of his throat.

"Please, don't be upset. I wasn't looking for it. It simply showed itself to me." Nohel's expression sank into something that looked like sympathy, and Solstice hated every second of looking at it. He reached out and set a hand on Solstice's head, patting it once, gentle.

"You've had it hard, haven't you. So young, and already carrying so much." Solstice's teeth ground together.

"YOU—" Emelia hauled him backward before he could finish, dragging him bodily toward the door.

"Calm down!"

"That bastard! What is he? How did he—" Solstice's eyes stayed locked on the door even as it disappeared from view.

"We're leaving. Now." She kept her grip on his arm the whole way out, past the guards, past the threshold, until they reached a squat black vehicle waiting outside, four wheels sunk into packed snow.

"Get in." She opened the door herself.

"Tell me how he did that." Emelia climbed in and fastened herself into her seat before answering.

"A Domain of Cognition. He can walk through your memories like they're his own to look through." Solstice's words fumbled out of him.

"A. A what? There's a Domain like that?"

"There's a lot of Domains, kid." He didn't respond right away, watching her instead as the vehicle lurched into motion, her expression pulled tight and staying that way.

"That's why you're in such a hurry to leave." The realization landed out loud before he'd fully decided to say it.

"You're worried he saw something of yours too." She didn't answer.

"That's it, isn't it." Silence stretched a beat longer before she finally spoke.

"Yes." Solstice studied her face, fixed straight ahead, tension sitting in every line of it. It hadn't been anything he'd done that put that look there. It was the simple fact that a man existed who could reach into a mind and take whatever he wanted from it, no consent required.

'That's fucked up.' Back at the orphanage, Khufrol sat perched on a slab of scrap metal, and he was on his feet the moment the gates opened. The vehicle rolled to a stop. Both of them climbed out, Solstice slower than Emelia, still adjusting to walking with one less toe than he'd started the day with.

"So? Did it work?"

"It worked." Solstice's voice came out flat, drained of anything close to enthusiasm. Emelia crossed straight to Khufrol without waiting for more.

"You. We need to talk."

"Why? I thought we'd said everything we needed to already, wench."

"We. Are going. To talk."

"... Fine." The two of them walked off together, and Solstice trailed a few steps behind, eyes fixed on the ground, still turning the words Domain of Cognition over in his head like something sharp he couldn't stop touching. A hand tapped his shoulder. He turned. A boy stood beside him, young, frail, hair and coloring close enough to Lere's that it hit something in his chest before he could stop it. One ear was missing entirely from the side of his head, the scar tissue old, long since healed over.

The boy looked up at him.

"You're a miner, right?"