Chapter 7

Reykjavik, Iceland

Tuesday, October 4th, 2050

Kowalski eventually woke up; I’d slept through most of my previous flight over the arctic with Rose, so I hadn’t realized just how agonizingly long it takes to get from one hemisphere to another. Life in the Horde was much more rustic; we got about by animal drawn carriage, except in the few places where the trains hadn’t been torn down for scrap, or the rails hadn’t been destroyed during the invasion. The idea of crossing the globe in less than half a day still astonished me.

I almost wished I’d saved some of those pills for myself, just to make the time go faster, but I’d tossed them out in the bathroom to cover my tracks. I was even too nervous to eat the snacks they brought us.

Mariko was a fine conversationalist, but we both quickly realized that our month apart had been rather boring for us both, and we ran out of stories to tell before we’d even passed Siberia. At least, we ran out of stories that we wouldn’t mind somebody overhearing, or that I was willing to share with her. I wanted to keep my lies about my supposed homelife on a farm in England as simple as possible. I got the feeling there was something she wanted to bring up, but she kept stopping herself.

On another occasion, I might have teased it out of her, but we did have an audience, and I was busy being mildly terrified at the knowledge that I was in a metal tube flying at near-supersonic speeds a mile above the Arctic Circle.

Oh, well. I’d bought as much time as I could, and despite my forebodings, we touched down in Reykjavik without incident. I could barely keep my eyes open. By the vagaries of time zones and the international date line, it was the afternoon of the same day we’d left, but my body insisted it was well past midnight.

Not that I could tell the difference. By the time we left the airport, the sun had completely vanished. “It should be illegal for the sun to set before four PM,” I groused. “And we’re only going to lose more sun the longer we’re here!”

“Then we should make as much of each day as we can,” said Mr. Maki, his voice oddly jovial for a man who’d probably been awake longer than me.

The bus jostled, reminding me of our turbulent flight too much for comfort. “Easy for him to be in a good mood,” I whispered to Mariko. “I’m surprised he didn’t give himself a wrist cramp signing all those autographs.”

“It got me out of a bad spot,” she whispered back. “Knitting needles as weapons? Who ever heard of such a thing?”

“I think they tightened things up after the Tower Attack,” whispered Kowalski, turning around in the seat ahead of us. His face fell again. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

“No offense taken,” said Mariko. “I suppose that makes sense.”

“I don’t see why they should bother,” I said. “The Holy Brotherhood of Mankind is a spent force at this point. That was their last-ditch effort to gain some legitimacy, and they failed again.”

“You would know better than anyone,” she chided.

“As would you,” I said, leaning back in my seat.

Her face fell. “Wait, I did not mean it like that.”

Kowalski’s eyebrow rose. “Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Never you mind,” I said. “It’s an inside joke.”

“Yes, that is a good way to put it,” she said. “Something we can discuss later,” she added, whispering in my ear when Kowalski looked away.

Our route took us along the coastline, past rolling, grassy hills that I could just barely make out in the light of the mostly full moon. We rode into our destination, Keflavik, but I couldn’t make out much detail. The main indication that I’d left Japan was that the signs were in a different language I didn’t understand.

You see, Yukiko? Those Japanese lessons were a waste of time if I wasn’t going to stick around.

I don’t know what it says about me that I instantly heard her stern voice in my head, voicing her rebuttal.

Of course they weren’t a waste, said my inner Yukiko. You’ll be back in Japan soon enough.

There’s no guarantee. I could be assigned to Madagascar or Indonesia for all I know. I won’t be here long enough to use those lessons.

Oh? I could just imagine the short girl looking up at me imperiously, which was quite the feat. You screwed everything up, Malthus. You need to stay on our good sides. After all, where else do you have to go?

I could have used some conversation, but it seemed like everybody was finally exhausted from the trip. Mariko and Kowalski had fallen asleep, and I thanked my lucky stars that she was the one leaning against my shoulder. Even Mr. Maki nodded off once we were out of Reykjavik.

Where else do you have to go?

I was left alone with my thoughts as we were whisked away to a gated house at the edge of the city. It wasn’t quite a mansion, but it looked like there would be plenty of room for the four of us. The lawn was overgrown, and the garden was overrun with weeds, but the house itself was well-kept. It was built after a pre-Horde style I had come to recognize from the buildings during my brief layover in Reykjavik, which was good; the post-Horde buildings tended to be cranked out as cheaply as possible to house the waves of refugees that had become a fact of life. I’d trust this one not to collapse.

Where else do you have to go?

Nowhere, not really. Dash it all, even in my imagination, Yukiko was infuriatingly right!

“Merlin’s Lantern,” I said as soon as I got out of the car. I could see my breath as I cast the spell, and a beam of light shone from my hands. “Bloody heck, it’s cold out here! This island lives up to its name!”

“Reminds me of the Aleutians,” said Mr. Maki, his tone wistful. Easy for him to be nostalgic. That’s the only scrap of land the humans ever retook from us. “Marlowe, Kowalski, grab the luggage.” Not waiting for our response, he turned and vanished through the door, though the giant man had to duck.

“I will go make us some tea,” said Mariko. “Maybe see what there is in the pantry.”

Kowalski took most of the suitcases without my asking, which was another rare mark in his favor.

Where else do you have to go?

I struck up some light conversation, just to drown out the fake Yukiko. “What do you think of the house?”

He jumped at the question. “Who, me?”

“Is anybody else there? Come on, man, spit it out!”

After a moment’s thought he said, “Besides the Tower, it’s the biggest place I’ve ever lived. I’ve never had a lawn before, so that’s nice.”

“Oh?” I must have been bored to consider this line of questioning. “Where are you from originally?”

“I grew up in one of the Little Polands in Gunma Prefecture,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed because of his meager upbringing, or if he seemed embarrassed because he was, well, Rafal Kowalski.

“Oh? I haven’t seen much of that government housing up close; is it more comfortable inside than it looks?” The drab, concrete eyesores were a fact of life in every human city I’d visited.

“It’s alright,” he said, hefting one of Mr. Maki’s duffel bags over his shoulder with a single, smooth motion. “Not the best, but it kept us out of the rain, right?” He punctuated it with a forced chuckle.

“Now, now,” I said, having a harder time with an identical bag. What’s in here, rocks? If I found out that Mr. Maki had hauled a set of weights with him to another hemisphere, I was going to be cross with him. I managed, though, if only because I wasn’t going to show weakness in front of Kowalski. “No sense in sugarcoating it. Tell me how you really feel.”

“It sucked,” he said. “I had to share a bedroom with two of my sisters because all of the apartments were made for families of four. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and it didn’t always keep the rain out. You know what got us better housing?”

“Do tell?”

“Buddy,” he said, lifting his own bag. He kept up his rant as we walked through the door and deposited our first load in a pile. “When my magic came in, they suddenly found a bigger apartment for us, when we’d been on a waitlist for years!”

I couldn’t help but smirk. Maybe it was my demonhood showing, but making somebody vent their negative emotions was almost as cathartic for me. “At least Buddy had one positive impact on your life.”

He looked down at me thoughtfully. “I guess, yeah.”

“Speaking of, let’s let him out,” I said. “He’s been cooped up longer than any of us.”

A loud pop confirmed what I’d said. “Are you sure? He, uh, doesn’t like you.”

Which I took to mean that Kowalski secretly bore a grudge with me. I nodded anyway; he needed to get over himself. What did I ever do to you? Besides whip you in the War Games and talk down to you all the time… Perhaps this wasn’t the best plan I’d ever conceived.

A mechanical click from his ankle told me it was too late to back out. Kowalski’s shadow melted into a shapeless mass, a black head with pure, white eyes rising from the wood paneling like a crocodile poking its eyes above the water.

“Good evening, Buddy,” I said, hunkering down to his level. I looked the monstrosity firmly in the eye, as much as I wanted to run screaming. No sense showing weakness, after all. “Did you have a good nap?”

The soulless orbs narrowed. Did he suspect that I’d drugged Kowalski?

I shook my head. Stop thinking of them as different entities. This is just Kowalski’s id on display. It doesn’t know anything he doesn’t. “I imagine you’re just full of energy to burn off. How’d you like to go get the rest of our bags? Your master’s probably as sore as I am from the flight.”

Oh, Buddy did not care for the m-word. It burst out of the floor, its shadowy form shifting into a serpentine, legged body, like an eastern dragon. “Oh? You don’t like the idea? I seem to recall you enjoy a good snack, right?”

Buddy’s eyes widened, and anger was replaced with curiosity.

“But he can’t eat,” protested Kowalski. “It just passes through him.”

“Lucky beast! It means he doesn’t have to watch his figure,” I said, pulling out my uneaten pretzels from the flight. “I’ll give you this if you go haul in the rest of the luggage for—”

A tongue like a chameleon’s lashed out of his mouth before I could blink, and a battery of razor-sharp teeth shredded the plastic bag and pretzels alike. When he finished, the floor beneath him was covered in dust.

“I take it my terms were acceptable?” I asked.

The shadow didn’t respond verbally. I think we were all happier that we didn’t know what Buddy was thinking. He did slink off towards the remaining bags.

Kowalski let out a relieved sigh as soon as we were alone. “I thought Buddy was going to bite off your head!”

“It’s amazing what showing a little confidence can do,” I said, straightening back up. With Buddy doing the manual labor, I took a moment to inspect our new home. It was split between two floors, with a small foyer that emptied into a living room. It looked a bit like my homes from occupied Europe; the furniture was all antique, and I didn’t see any electronics about. My breath still drifted through the air like fog, so I set about starting a fire in the fireplace.

I frowned as I hefted one of the logs; it was oddly smooth, and a tad too light. “Kowalski, what’s wrong with this firewood?”

“I think it’s synthwood,” he said.

“Synthwood? What the devil is synthwood?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “It burns just like the real stuff, though.”

“If you say so,” I said, arranging the logs in a reasonable pile. “Fireball!” I didn’t put a lot of oomph behind the attack, of course; I wanted to ignite them, not vaporize the whole wall.

I fell back on my haunches, my eyes full of foul-smelling smoke. “How the Hell does anybody stand that stench?”

“It beats freezing to death?” offered Kowalski with a shrug.

“As soon as I’m able, I’m getting us some proper firewood,” I said between coughs.

“Good luck,” said Mr. Maki, entering the room. “There’s barely enough wood for industry, much less burning it!”

I felt a smirk coming on. Finally, something the Horde had in abundance the humans didn’t!

… not that I had access to it anymore. I’d seen to that, hadn’t I?

“Tea’s ready,” called Mariko from the kitchen.

Good; I needed something to wash the bad taste out of my mouth.