Soul of Fire tp-2

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Martin nodded and climbed the steps and went past them, giving them neither the satisfaction of fear nor the instigation of a sneer. First, he had to get into the court. Then...

  Then they’d clean it up and take the trash to the curb.

  Chapter 9

  Twenty-four hours was both no time at all and an incredibly long time. Long enough to get from London to what Galilia referred to half-affectionately as “deepest, whitest Connecticut.” Time enough to work and sleep and wake again surrounded by an entirely different world.

  Glory drank her coffee and ate the food she was given that first morning—scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and surprisingly good jam—packed herself up, and went to work. And tried not to think about what she was working on.

  Patently impossible, of course.

  Without Jan—and nobody seemed to know where she had gone exactly, or if they did they weren’t telling, and only the fact that both Tyler and that horse-faced boy, Martin, had gone with her was keeping Glory from freaking out about that—Glory had to figure things out on her own. Galilia and the others on the team did their best, but they didn’t understand.

  Magic, fine. If there was science, why not magic? But it wasn’t like jam and toast; they were supposed to stay separate, weren’t they?

  But it wasn’t. Separate, she meant. It was all mixed up and jumbled, and hearing about it had been one thing, one kind of manageable crazy. Living in it...Glory understood now, maybe, what had kept Jan here, rather than running when she’d had the chance. Not the glamour, in any sense of the word, or even the fascination of, oh, dear god, fairies—or jiniri, or werewolves, or trolls, dear god, utterly polite trolls asking if she wanted tea, no. It was the quicksilver flashes of a different way of thinking, a different way of being, that every now and again would rip through Glory’s awareness, triggered by something one of the others would say, making her look at something she thought she had seen a hundred times before and see it in an utterly new way.

  You always got that with new coworkers; that was part of why she liked changing jobs as often as she did. But this was a whole new level of seeing. No, not a level. A whole new set of eyes.

  Glory never wanted to go back to her old life, and that scared the hell out of her.

  It wasn’t until the day after, time spent either in the workroom going over every bit of data they had on the most recent preternatural incursions, talking over every bit of data they had, or, for a few hours, sleeping in a narrow bed in the attic room that had been Jan’s and dreaming about the data they had, that everything came together in Glory’s head. She stopped halfway through her sandwich and changed the topic of conversation entirely.

  “So, magic is actually a thing.”

  Galilia put down her own lunch and looked at the human, waiting for more context. “Yes.”

  “But it’s a thing you can’t manipulate directly. No supernatural can?”

  “It depends on how you define manipulate. Or directly.”

  “Or is?”

  “What?” The jiniri looked at her in confusion, while Alon, a squat, lizardish super, coughed into his hand, grinning.

  “Never mind. Go on. Magic is an actual thing, but...”

  “Less a thing than a force. No, not a force. You can manipulate a force, influence it. This is...”

  “Like maths,” Glory said. “We assign a value to things, and we manipulate them, but we’re not really changing it, just how we perceive it. Like time.”

  “Time?”

  “Time isn’t real.”

  “What do you mean, time isn’t real?”

  Glory shifted in her chair, aware that messing with the perceptions of human coworkers might be a safer game than doing the same with supernaturals. Jan had warned her that the preters, at least, didn’t like having to see things a new way.

  It’s not so much that they’re hidebound, she had said early one morning over the crackling vid-connection. It’s...they don’t think the same way we do, I think. They can see the forest and the trees, but they can’t make a new path through them when one already exists. That’s why them suddenly changing how they did things, how they could do things, is such a big scary deal.

  “Okay, time is real,” Glory said now. “But it’s real because we’re putting labels on something so that our brains can comprehend it. There’s a theory, and never mind the theory because that’s way off track, but my point was—” and she’d had a point, she knew that “—magic is like time. It is, but we can only label it, not manipulate it. Not really. But there are things that can, maybe, mess with time. Real time and our perception of it.”

  Glory’s brain hurt. She was good at practical things, solid things like maths and coding, not theoretical physics.

  “Except some humans can,” the jiniri said.

  “What?” Glory’s head came up, and she stared at the other woman.

  “Some humans can manipulate it. Witches.”

  “That’s what the Huntsman said,” Glory recalled suddenly. “It was all pre-coffee hazy and then jet lag, but he said that witches were calling or something. That’s why he got me, why he went off doing god knows what. There are witches?”

  “Maybe?” Alon looked uncertain, which already Glory knew was unusual. “I’ve never actually met one. Stories say they don’t like us.”

  “Huh. Witches. Actual witches? Well, why the hell not. Bet I’ve met one. More than one.” Glory frowned, another thought occurring to her. “And I bet Jan has, too. Or knows someone who has. That’s where she’s gone, both of them. Lay odds on it.”

  The jiniri considered that and then dismissed it as not being relevant to the current discussion. Glory could tell AJ later, if she thought there was need. “So, what does that have to do with us figuring out how the preters are using technology?”

  “Because suddenly I’m not sure they are,” Glory said. “Using it, I mean. Not the way I use it, and not the way you use glamour, as an active thing. I think magic is like time.” She looked at her companion and shook her head, exasperated. “A construct, a...a force that is variable, undefinable until we force a structure on it. We’ve been trying to figure out how they’re using it, when we should be asking how they see it.”

  “Because what we see changes how we act. And the structure they put on magic changed them in turn.” Galilia got it.

  Alon was a little slower to catch up. “But why...why restructure it, after so many centuries?” he asked, not quite accepting her theory yet.

  “Two thousand and eight. That’s when it started, back then?”

  All three of them turned to look at the whiteboard propped against the wall, covered in colored marks of a time line.

  “Yes,” Alon said. “Or at least, there weren’t any reports of anything unusual happening before then.”

  “So what changed, then? What could have changed the way they saw magic?”

  Alon’s eyes went wide, and the scales along his arms went from a cool green to a dark, intense crimson. “Oh. Oh, fuck.”

  “What?” Galilia looked at him, expectant.

  “I just... Oh, fuck.”

  “Al, if you don’t get something coherent out of your mouth in the next ten seconds...” The jiniri stood up and looked surprisingly imposing for something so slight.

  The lizardlike super waved its clawed hands in tight circles, as if he was getting ready to lecture them. “We’ve been looking at the preters and not the humans, because hey, magic, right? And witches aside, humans don’t use magic. But what you said about time?”

  “Al...”

  “The LHC.”

  “The what?” Galilia turned to look at Glory, hoping the human would be able to translate.

  “The Large Hadron Collider,” Alon clarified. Gali still looked confused, but Glory nodded for him to continue. “Back in 2008, that’s when the LHC went online,” Alon said. “They were trying to— I don’t even know what they were trying to do, but it involved particles and the basic laws of physics and—”r />
  “And string theory,” Glory said. “I remember reading about it. They’re... Yeah. If magic’s world stuff, all around us, then it’s going to interact, and if scientists are shoving particles at really high speeds...Jesus, you think that someone got their physics in the preters’ magic? I don’t suppose we’ve got a pet physicist around?”

  Both supernaturals shook their heads.

  “Didn’t think so. Doesn’t matter. Not like we can go ask them to turn it off, and the damage’s already done, obviously, if the preters have changed how they work their mojo. Once shit like this goes down, you gotta deal, not denial. Jesus,” she said again. “Fucking string theory, seriously?”

  Alon was practically bouncing up and down in suppressed excitement. Glory almost laughed; she might not know its species, but she knew geek when she saw it.

  Galilia brought them back around to the original question. “So, how do we stop them? How do we—in, like, twenty-four hours?—prevent the preters from opening more portals?”

  Glory sighed and rested her chin on her folded hands. “That’s the problem. We can’t.”

  * * *

  Time. Time is up. Jan woke with that thought thrumming in her head, fight-or-flight instinct firmly tuned to flight before she remembered where she was and what she needed to be doing.

  The urge to flee still lingered, and she had to force herself to stay still, to keep her head on the pillow and her breathing calm until she could trust herself to stand up and not do anything stupid.

  More stupid than they’d already done, anyway.

  Either stupid or brilliant. Yesterday, they’d managed the first goal—infiltration—and only the first, and Jan still wasn’t sure quite how they’d managed that, even.

  My lady. Humans, to see you.

  The supernatural who’d greeted them at the door had barely come up to Jan’s knee, but his eyes had been cold, and his voice had held a sneer, as though humans couldn’t possibly be of any use whatsoever. Tyler had shivered slightly as they’d walked inside, her arm tucked into his to keep him from bolting, but when they’d been ushered into the queen’s...throne room, for lack of a better term, he’d straightened up and dropped her arm as if he’d never met her before.

  Humans? I will see them.

  Jan had seen preters before. She was prepared for the lean, elegant beauty, cool exoticism, a dangerous veneer hiding more danger underneath.

  She had not been prepared for a woman—a preter, clearly, with the same narrow, elegant, almost too-sharp face, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail—with sleeves rolled to her elbows, fingers covered with chalk dust, blues and greens to match the canvas in front of her. A woman who’d been more interested in what was on the canvas than the humans being brought in for her attention.

  “That’s not it,” the preter had muttered, her lips pulled back in an expression of distaste. “That’s not it at all.”

  It was a particularly bland and amateurish canvas, Jan had decided, catching a quick look at it as they were brought around to face the queen. Like someone who’d caught half a glance of Monet’s work and decided they could imitate it...and couldn’t. At all.

  “You need to draw the lines up more,” she’d said without thinking, stepping past Tyler, past their startled guards, past the man—another human—standing at the preter’s side like a butler, waiting for her next comment. “The browns need to balance all the green and blue. Otherwise it just turns muddy.”

  The queen had turned those eerie pale blue eyes on her, the narrow mouth with too-sharp teeth lifting in what seemed an almost welcoming smile.

  “You know art?”

  There’d been an almost predatory hunger in those words, not a casual inquiry at all. Jan had swallowed but—remembering the lessons of her encounter in the preter court before—had held that unnerving gaze without blinking. “Some.” Her work was technical, but she had drawn a lot on graphic-arts theory. “And I know design and color.”

  Somehow, impossibly, that had been the right answer. The preter had dismissed the human next to her, sending him off to sit on a cushion at the far end of the room like a pet, and spent the next few hours making Jan recite everything she knew, every detail she could remember from her college courses.

  Keep yourself useful, Martin had told them before they’d split up. Become as essential as you can. That will protect you.

  Now she slipped out of bed, the sheets slithering around her as she moved. Still trying to adjust to the new surroundings, she had to pause a moment and remember where everything was before she reached to the nightstand for her morning routine of pills. Birth control was less of an issue these days, sadly, but her asthma medication—Jan had gone without a few times since her life had been turned around and shaken in a can of crazy, and she wasn’t going to do that again. You never knew when you’d have to run, or fight, or panic. Breathing wasn’t optional.

  The floor was polished wood, cool and smooth under her bare feet. She pulled the robe—thick cotton, basic but comfortable, like all the clothing she had been given—off the back of her chair and wrapped the belt securely before going to the door and looking out into the hallway.

  The house was three levels; they had been settled on the second floor. Upstairs, in the attic, or what might have been the servants’ quarters, was where the brownies stayed. A pack, they were called, and that had made her wonder which had come first, the term for them or the Girl Scouts’ usage. The other supers lived outside, she guessed; she had seen them coming and going, and there was a small campsite set up at the far end of the lot, by the trees. Maybe they had tree houses in the copse or something.

  This hallway had four doors, two bedrooms to the front of the house, two to the back. They had the left-hand back room. The other rooms had been given to the three humans the queen had taken already: an older man who seemed to handle the jungle of media stuff crammed into the main room; Patrick, a tall, long-haired man who didn’t talk much; and the painter, Kerry, who was trying to teach Nalith how to draw.

  Trying and failing. Nalith understood the mechanics clearly enough, but nothing seemed to stick, no matter how many times Jan and Kerry explained that it wasn’t about replicating the flower exactly but re-creating it in a different medium.

  Nalith. The queen was not what she had expected at all. She was...

  Jan leaned against the door frame and reached up to touch the silver chain around her neck, her fingers running along it nervously. It itched where it touched her skin, but Nalith had warned her not to remove it, that it would allow her access to the court and protect her within its boundaries.

  Tyler had almost bolted when Nalith had dropped a similar chain over his head, and the queen had paused, placing her delicate, elongated hand flat on his chest.

  You have been touched by our metal before, she’d said, not quite a purr. You have been the thrall of that world...you were a portal-maker. Those blue eyes had looked him up and down, and Jan had tensed, not sure what they could do, two humans surrounded. And then Nalith had looked at her and then back to Tyler and laughed.

  It hadn’t been a cold laugh.

  You took him, she’d said to Jan. Took him from them and came to me. Wise human. Wise.

  And that had been that. No questions, no mind games, no anything. They’d been accepted in the queen’s court, given food and clothing and a role to play. They were waiting only for Martin to arrive and work his way in, as well.

  And then...

  There was a sound, and Jan turned to look over her shoulder. Tyler was curled on his side, on the far edge of the mattress. They shared a bed now, but not comfortably. Not the way they used to, curled around each other, sharing a pillow, her head against his shoulder.

  Still. He remembered her, who she was, if not what they had been to each other. He didn’t shy away from her company or her touch. He was here with her, on this adventure, alert and aware and fighting to take back what had been stolen from him. It was enough.

  She would protect
him from everything else. Even the queen, if it came to that.

  Nalith. Jan frowned, something prickling at her, making her rub her arms as though she were cold. The preter was alien, strange, disturbing—but she was something else, too. Not like the others Jan had encountered, here and Under the Hill. Something burned behind those eyes, in her voice, and that heat made Jan more nervous than before. Cold appraisal, disdain; those were things she had braced herself against. Not this.

  The plan was already off-kilter. She wished Martin were here so she could talk to him, figure out what to do....

  “Human.”

  The voice floated along the hall, although it was so soft it should not have been heard a foot from the speaker, much less a full flight above. Nalith could have been calling any one of the four of them, but Jan knew it was meant for her. Knew that Nalith was aware she was awake and desired her presence.

  “I come, my lady,” she said into the air. If her throat was tight and her words thin, the preter queen did not seem to notice—or deemed it unworthy of remark.

  Jan took a few minutes to dress, pulling out her jeans and a loose-necked sweater of the same cotton as her robe, and brushed out her hair. A shower would have been nice, but there was no time; already she knew that you did not delay when the queen summoned you. She touched the inhaler in one pocket, the sachet and the small horse the witch had given her in the other, gathering courage, and then went down the stairs, through the kitchen, and into the front of the house, where the court gathered.

  Jan paused in the doorway, her feet still bare against the wooden floor, and studied the creature who had instructed them to call her not “queen,” but “my lady.” No, the preter was nothing like what they had been expecting.

  They had expected, readied themselves for, a preter queen: cold and harsh, selfish and calculating. Nalith was selfish, true. Every thing and every living being in this house moved around her, acted and reacted according to her whim. Within hours of their arrival, that had been made clear to them both. The queen was calculating and harsh and utterly, undeniably alien. Simply standing in the same room, Jan could feel the prickling unease that came from nothing else.