Soul of Fire

by Laura Anne Gilman

“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.

  Jan had expected that, prepared herself for that. She had not prepared herself for Nalith.

  They had theorized that she would be drawn to humans, that her purpose in coming to this world centered on that need. And although the majority of the court were supers, her reaction to them seemed to support that theory. But the humans she was gathering to her were not warriors, not wealthy or particularly good-looking, the way all the humans Under the Hill—or even the Greensleeves, the abandoned ones—had been. They were artists mostly. Creators. Patrick, who turned bits of wood into abstract shapes and spirals that caught the eye and invited contemplation. Kerry, who, when he wasn’t waiting attendance on the preter, could dab the back of a spoon into paint and create the shadow of a cat, lounging along a ledge. And now Tyler, who had been tasked to sit at Nalith’s feet and sing to her. His voice wasn’t professional quality, but it was pleasing, and he’d always been able to carry a tune well.

  And his brain remembered a hundred or more songs that Nalith had never heard, from traditional folk songs to pop ditties.

  And there was the older man, who had not yet been introduced or spoken to them, who seemed to know about opera and ballet and made sure all of Nalith’s programs were recorded properly on the media system he had set up.

  It didn’t take a genius to realize that the
preter queen was fascinated by beauty, by art, by the act of creating art, both decorative and performance. That was her criteria for humans, for membership in her court.

  Jan couldn’t draw, couldn’t paint, couldn’t do anything artistic, but she hadn’t lied about her design skills. She understood how things fit together, could see the patterns. She had a suspicion that Nalith wanted Jan with her during her drawing lessons, to give her feedback on a shape, a color, a choice, a placement. Like a pet decorator, some kind of Tim Gunn to elves?

  There was no way they could have predicted this. No way to have expected it. And even as it gave them entrée to the court, Jan wondered what it all meant. How did you take over the world with artists? What was Nalith’s plan?

  It didn’t matter, Jan reminded herself. Whatever the preter queen had wanted when she’d come here, it didn’t matter. She’d woken up this morning because the tick-tick-tick inside her bones had stilled. The ten weeks and ten days and ten hours they’d been given were up. The preters would no longer be barred by their word from opening portals and coming into this world. AJ and the others would have their hands full if the consort kept his threat, and she had no reason to believe otherwise. They—she, and Martin, and Ty—were the only ones on scene. They had to find a way to use the queen, to turn her into a tool to force the court back, once and for all.

  She must have made some noise, disturbed some waft of air, because the preter queen looked up then and saw her there.

  “Ah. Human Jan.” Nalith motioned, one elegant hand curling less in invitation than command. “Come to me.”

  Jan went.

  Today they weren’t, apparently, going to discuss colors. Nalith was sitting on an antique love seat upholstered in gold velvet, the woodwork gleaming of polish. She wore dark blue, a long skirt and sweater, with her long legs stretched out in front of her and an expression that, on a human, Jan would have described as pensive. Her elegant hands were now resting in her lap, still. Jan had already learned that boded ill.

  “My lady?”

  “Why does the light change?”

  “My lady?” she asked again, less cautiously.

  Nalith repeated her question. “The light. Each day, it changes. You have been to both realms. Why does it do that here?”

  Jan thought back to the preter world, the continuous overcast that seemed to last forever, broken only by odd intervals of night. She followed the queen’s gaze to the side window, where a patch of early-morning sunlight crept along the floor.

  “I...” Jan closed her mouth and tilted her head, considering how to answer. “There is a scientific explanation that I would have to look up,” she said finally. “Perhaps we should recruit a meteorologist, who could answer your questions more effectively?”

  “Perhaps,” Nalith said in the tone that meant not really. She wanted an answer now, not to wait. “It vexes me, this changing.”

  She was taking it personally. Why? Jan cast her gaze around the room and saw the easel, shoved off to one side, the pastels sketch she had been trying to do the night before now abandoned.

  Ah. The queen had been trying to draw in the morning light, and it had been different from the afternoon light. Jan tried to think of something useful to say, something that might interest the preter enough to distract her from her potentially deadly vexation.

  “The morning light is cooler because it has not had so long to warm in the sky,” Jan ad-libbed. “In the afternoon, the light is warmer, it has a deeper glow to it. And at night, the moon and stars give us the coolest light of all, because they have no fire.”

  For utter bullshit, it sounded pretty good. Jan held her breath, waiting to see if Nalith would buy it.

  The rattlesnake-quick slap across the face answered that. Jan didn’t bother picking herself up off the floor, staying on her knees, her head down, staring at her hands held loosely in front of her, trying to project not a threat not a threat not a threat as clearly as she knew how.

  “Do not think me a fool because I am indulgent with you,” the queen said, and the cool disinterest was more terrifying than anger might have been. “I am your lady, and you will be respectful.”

  “My lady, yes, my lady. It is true, however, that the morning sun will bring forth cool tones, and the evening warmer ones. This is what you discovered, yes? That the colors look different in the morning than afternoon?”

  “Yes.” Nalith raised her chin and looked at the half-finished picture propped against the opposite wall. She was considering Jan’s words, distracted from further violence. “And so, I should work on the piece only in the same light, to make sure the view is consistent. That is the trick to it?”

  Jan stayed down on the floor, keeping her breathing steady, even though she was shaking with anger and fear. “I believe so, my lady. And...” She tried to remember the tricks she had learned when she was first putting together websites for clients, years ago. “There is a thing, a Pantone color chart. It might be helpful. I do not think there are stores here that would carry one, but I may order one for you, online?”

  Jan didn’t know if there was a computer in the house or not, but surely with all this media setup there had to be, or someone knew where there was an internet café somewhere, or maybe in the little library/post office in town. First, though, she needed permission to leave. Her phone had lost data and voice signal the moment they’d gotten into town, although she didn’t know if that was merely the crap signal out here or if the preter had magic’d the area somehow. Yeah, AJ and Martin both claimed that supers and preters couldn’t actually use magic, but they hadn’t told her about witches before, either, and witches apparently could use magic, so she wasn’t discounting anything.

  But if she could get access to the internet, without someone or something looking over her shoulder, then she could send a message to the team back at the Farm, let AJ know where they were, what was going on, telling them to bring the cavalry. She had asked Martin to find enough signal to send emails from her phone before he joined them, but—

  “Perhaps,” Nalith said, interrupting Jan’s thoughts. “Perhaps another time. My mood is not suited for such pursuits now. I wish to be entertained.”

  Jan had assumed that the queen would have her turn on the wide-screen television on the wall—the preter had developed eclectic tastes, from Sesame Street to opera to crime dramas, and the only thing she seemed uninterested in were reality shows and QVC-like channels, although she occasionally paused her restless channel-surfing to watch some reality TV. Instead, the preter stood and gestured with her hand. “Come.”

  The queen’s mood swings were already becoming familiar. Jan did not trust them enough to raise her head but got to her feet and tamely followed the preter through the house, skirting the kitchen, and out into the back yard.

  It wasn’t so much a yard as a field, extending an acre or more to where trees lined the property, hiding the neighbors from sight. Not that any neighbor had shown any interest at all in what went on there, from what Jan had been able to determine. So much for small-town curiosity. Or maybe they had been curious and learned better of it.

  While there was a porch that wrapped around the front of the house, in the back some previous homeowner had built a two-tiered deck that was completely out of character for the style of the house but made a great lounging area, with steps that led to a narrow, flagstone patio.

  Several of the brownies who seemed to run the house proper were lounging around, but they jumped to their feet when Nalith came outside. Jan stayed back a step; brownies might be helpful homebodies according to legend, but she didn’t like these ones at all. They looked at her as if they’d just as soon lock her in the basement and throw away the key. It was small consolation to discover that they looked at all the humans like that. Weren’t brownies supposed to be friendly?

  “My lady,” the one who seemed to be their leader s
aid, making a bow that almost scraped his nose on the porch floor.

  “The kelpie who came in last night. Fetch it.”

  Jan stiffened but managed not to react otherwise. Martin had arrived, and she hadn’t known? Why the hell had he come in at night? Was he all right?

  One of the brownies ran off to do her bidding, short, bowed legs carrying him away, and the queen moved to one of the chairs, settling herself regally. She might be wearing simple clothing, not much different from Jan’s own, but when she moved, the sensation of a gown seemed to flow around her.

  Without a direct order, Jan moved to the preter’s right-hand side, leaning against the wall in case she was called for but staying out of the way until then. She looked around cautiously; she was the only human visible. The others were still asleep or otherwise occupied. None of them were allowed to leave the house, either, all tied by the silver around their necks.

  And then suddenly, Martin was there, striding across the yard from out of the tree line. Had he slept out there the night before? Was that why she hadn’t known, because he wasn’t in the house? There really were tree houses out there, weren’t there? Jan almost felt jealous. She’d always wanted a tree house as a kid.

  “Ah. My kelpie.”

  The instinctive rush of fury that hit Jan at the preter’s use of a possessive came as an utter surprise. The queen wasn’t looking at her, but others might be, so she struggled to control herself before daring to look up again.

  Martin had come up onto the deck and gone down on one knee, making a clear obeisance before lifting his head to gaze directly on Nalith’s face. “The brownies said you wished to see me. How may I serve you?”

  “You asked for a chance to prove yourself,” Nalith said, and Jan mistrusted the purr in her voice. It was too close to the sound of the consort’s voice back in the court, when he’d tried to finagle their deal. From the way Martin’s cheek twitched, just a tick at the left corner, she thought he remembered that, too.

  “I did,” he agreed, and if you didn’t know better, the expression on his face was one of a happy idiot, just waiting for the command to do something gallantly stupid. Jan was too worried to be amused. He hadn’t taken any notice of her yet, and she wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.