Chapter 18: Solburne

Anna held the door open for us. Her free hand gripped the pommel of her sword hard enough that her knuckles whitened. The booming march of the horde kept its rhythm. The noise of it rolled across the city like a tidal wave.

“How are things looking?” she asked.

“Not great,” Yusuf answered truthfully. He smiled at her, “But don’t worry. We’ll get through this just like we always do. You’ll make it back home to your kids.”

Poor woman. I hoped her children weren’t alone back home. The scope of this mass disappearance should have alerted the local authorities that something was up. 

Anna’s pursed lips loosened. She smiled, “Go on. Samara is waiting.” 

I walked behind Yusuf, nodding at Anna when I passed her. She returned the greeting with a nod of her own. Inside, the library was abuzz with activity. Everyone had something to do. Non-combatants reinforced the walls with spare wood. They must have ransacked the places nearby. Even Elana was up and about again, both her chestnut eyes restored. She barked at old Tomás to get off his ass.

During my brief excursion, the library turned into a defensive fort. 

“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” I asked. 

“What? Fighting?” he looked questioningly at me. 

“Staying here,” I clarified. 

“Hard to say. It either works, or it doesn’t.” 

“What happens if it doesn’t?”

Yusuf sighed, “I’m hoping Samara planned for it.” 

We passed the long dining tables and walked farther inside than I’d been before, through the ornate archway, into the officer's office. Inside, a small group of people wearing the same breastplate as John argued around a circular table. It stood smack dab in the middle of the room. Most didn’t take notice of us entering. Everyone except the girl everyone argued around. She had flowing brown hair the colour of oak. She locked eyes with me; there was an unnatural yellow tint to hers. 

The voices of the crowd faded out around her. Not because they stopped talking. They just seemed unnecessary. I glanced at Yusuf. He was unusually quiet. 

“Yusuf,” the woman declared, and reluctantly shifted her eyes. Something about her made my spine tickle. 

The surrounding officers quietened down. The pair of doll-like twins glanced in venomous synchronicity at us. They looked like copies of each other, short, blonde curly hair, button-noses, a mean scowl. 

“Samara,” Yusuf said flatly, with a slight nod. 

“Good to see you made it back in one piece—you and your friend. What about John?” she asked. 

“He split the squad up into two to divert the horde. He didn’t think they could buy a lot of time.”

She nodded, cupping her chin with a hand, “Good.” 

Her studious gaze moved to the hand-drawn map covering the table. After some thought, she moved a few pieces carved out of wood in two separate directions, circling a pile of scraps. 

The scraps representing the horde of stumblers hadn’t received the same love as the other pieces. The first ones looked as good as ones you’d buy in a shop. 

“We’ll send out another squad to check on their progress. Adam, you’ll be leading it,” she said and pierced a middle-aged man with a horrifying bowl cut with her eyes. “And you, Tom, will relay information between the squads. Take Elana with you.” 

A man with thick lips and a large scar covering his forehead squirmed; his beer gut jiggled as he nervously drummed his fingers against it. He took a breath. “Are you sure? She just recove-” 

“Yes, I’m sure. Do it, you dolt,” Samara interrupted and bared her teeth. 

I chuckled at the brief exchange. 

She whipped her head at me. I could see the others in the room tense up, especially Tom and the twins. Samara opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, then closed it and turned to look at the map again. 

“Yusuf, you’ll head up security. Relieve Elana so that she can run messages with Tom. You,” she said and pointed at me with her chin. “You’re Cal. I know. A genuine pleasure to meet you and all that. What can you do?” 

I shrugged. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that.” 

The twins glared at me. One of them reached her tiny hand to the belt hanging around her waist, fingers wrapping around the handle of a mirror. Samara raised an arm and glanced at her. The twin returned her glance, nodded understandingly, and let go of the mirror. 

“There’s no time to be smart,” Samara said. Her eyes grew sharper. “Will you help or not? If not, I’m going to have to ask you to get the fuck out of my base of operations.” 

I glanced at Yusuf by my side; he just shrugged at me. I turned back to Samara while rubbing my fingers. “What’s in it for me?” 

“Security in numbers,” she smiled. “And peace of mind knowing I’ll lead you.” 

I groaned, “Is that supposed to mean anything?” 

“I am Samara Solburne,” she stated matter-of-factly and puffed up her chest. 

“Sorry. Doesn’t ring a bell.” 

The room turned deathly quiet. 

Yusuf looked at me in disbelief, his mouth practically hanging open. “You’re serious?”

“Yeah. So?” I shrugged. 

She leaned close to my ear, and whispered sharply, “She’s practically royalty, man. Not just the royalty of a country—blessed royalty.”

That explained the reverence the others held for her. I should have known her, but I didn’t. Someone as high profile as her shouldn’t go unnoticed in the world.

Samara shook her head. ”Well. It doesn’t matter. I’m giving you my word that I’ll try to the best of my ability to get you out of here.” 

I whistled. “What an impressive undertaking.” 

“And one that I plan to uphold.” 

“Alright. I’ll help you. But if shit hits the fan, I don’t want you to complain when I run. I’ve got people I need to find,” I said. The twitchy twin gasped and let her fingers wander toward the handle of the mirror again; the other held her back by the shoulder. 

Samara nodded. “That’s fine. If we come out of this in one piece, you will have our support.” She reached her hand to me under the watchful gaze of the twins. 

I studied the movements of the room. Everyone looked at me expectantly. As if there was no chance in hell that I, a commoner, would turn her, a royal, down. I grinned, daydreaming about their reactions. Sadly, there really wasn’t a downside to the deal. Even if I left this place and tried to find Joanna and the kids, the horde could very well still plow through these defences. And then the problem would end up on my doorstep once again. 

Might as well join forces. I stepped forward and shook her hand.

“Good,” she said. “What’s your blessing?”

I smiled wryly. “A secret.”

She rolled her eyes. “Let me rephrase. What are you good at?” 

The threads didn’t suit attacking. They favoured setting traps with their ephemeral nature. I nodded inwardly. “Defence, I believe.” 

“For afar or up close?” 

I nodded at the pipe of the wand sticking up from behind my shoulder. “Range.” 

She smiled, “Good. We’re short on rangers. Go with Yusuf. He’ll set you up.”

Yusuf grabbed my arm to lead me away when she spoke again, a bitter smile on her face. “Oh. And Cal. Don’t you dare disrespect me outside of this room.” 

Without ceremony or goodbyes, Samara turned to the map and her entourage to resume the high paced discussion from before. The twitchy twin stared at me until we exited the room.  

Yusuf sighed, “Samara likes you. She doesn’t like a lot of people.”

I raised my eyebrows. “That was her liking me?” 

“If she didn’t, you would be out on your ass the second you talked back to her. Which, by the way, was pretty fucking stupid.” 

“What does it matter?”

She wasn’t much older than me, and apart from her demeaning aura, she didn’t seem very imposing. Yet the others treated her like she was a deity. Not even being ‘blessed royalty’ explained their reverence. 

Yusuf shook his head. “My brother-in-law is a progenitor. That’s enough for companies and municipalities to bow down to us. Her entire family consists of progenitors. They’re said to have had access to the Forgotten lands since before the ruptures first opened. Do you understand what that means? The power they hold? They even control whole damn anchors and cities on this side.”

“So many questions.” 

Yusuf smiled, “Yeah? Maybe next time ask before you pull something like that. I swear Bea looked like she wanted to behead me.”

“Bea?” 

“The twin.” 

That didn’t clear up a thing.

The library was calming down. Ranged specialists lined the windows while melee fighters scrambled around outside. They laughed and jeered like nothing was wrong. Yusuf led me to a pile of chairs and handed me one. 

“Well, go on then,” he urged.

“What’s an anchor?” 

He chuckled, “Do you live under a rock or something?” 

I puffed out my chest. “No, I live in a nice log cabin in the woods.” 

I was proud of the cabin. It was very cozy. And it made me feel like a lumberjack living there all by myself. I kept the place nice and tidy. Even if I didn’t, Dorothea would. She had a god awful personality, but she wouldn’t send the black sheep of her family to live in some dump. 

Yusuf held the door open. “An anchor is a gateway between the Forgotten lands and Earth.”

“And the Solburne’s control them all?” 

“Not all. But many. The countries without one of their own have to rely on the Solburne’s for passage.” 

I scoffed, one family sitting on the keys to the Forgotten lands. Just thinking about the money they were raking with fees and taxes made my head spin. I squeezed through the door, holding the chair at an angle. “Sounds like they’ve got it made.” 

“Yeah.” 

“So that’s our way out then, an anchor?”

He sighed, “Normally it would be. But we’re in the Layered Empire. No one has been here before. There is no established anchor.” 

That spelled trouble. Way more than I’d ever hoped to face on our way out. I even half figured we just needed to finish a quest of some kind to get out. But this wasn’t a game, this was life and death. Of course, things wouldn’t be so easy. 

I groaned, “How the hell do we get out then?”

“We create a new anchor, or fight our way out of the empire, back to the surface. I don’t know about you, but creating an anchor sounds like a better deal to me. We can thank our lucky stars we have a Solburne here. Without her, we’d all probably die.” 

“Why stay?” If we needed a relic to get out, staying cooped up sounded counter productive to say the least.

“We all wanted to move as soon as we had a stable food supply, but Samara convinced us to wait a few more weeks. So we waited, and then, lo-and-behold, group upon group joined up. Before I knew it, we had a small army of our own.” 

We set the chairs down near an enormous pile of wooden scraps. A fighter greeted us with a nod, then tore off the chair’s legs with his bare hands. 

“Thanks,” said Yusuf and turned to me. “You got a knife?” 

“Yeah.” 

He tossed me one of the wooden legs. “Good. Let’s sharpen these. When dealing with many stumblers, it’s best to create a funnel. Build a barrier and line it with sharp spikes so they can’t climb over it. We force them into the middle.” 

“This isn’t the first time?” 

He shook his head. “No, but it is by far the worst. The previous groups were maybe forty—fifty at most. Never a horde like this.” 

I summoned the dagger, dark smoke flowing into my hand. 

Yusuf watched on wide eyed and cleared his throat, “Is that a bound armament?”

“Yes?” I said and blinked at him. 

“Are you sure you’re not a Solburne?” 

I tilted my head. “Most definitely. I’m a Kane.” 

He laughed and slapped his knee. “Yeah, right…”

I looked at him in confusion. I was a Kane. Caleb Kane. What’s so weird about that? The world has many people named Kane.