Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2)

by Becca Mills

  “I guess not,” Theo admitted.

  “It’s not just about following his orders,” Andy said. “We don’t want to damage you.”

  “I’m his latest big prize. If drawing on my capacity would damage me, he would’ve warned you not to.”

  “I don’t know,” Andy said. “Maybe, maybe not. He had a lot going on at the time.”

  “What did he say, exactly?”

  Andy looked at his brother, brow furrowed. “Did he actually talk to us, or did he talk to Gwen, and Gwen talked to us?”

  “Um … I don’t really remember. We heard it somehow or other.”

  “Oh my god, this is like trying to carry a bag of squirrels. You guys don’t know who said what, what they said, or what they meant.”

  They looked sheepish.

  “Well, jeez, Beth. It was months ago,” Theo said.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  Sure, I thought we needed to hear what Sturluson had to say, but Andy and Theo were my friends. They were trying to do right by me. Furthermore, they were old hands, compared to me. Their opinions should count for more than my gut reactions. I settled deeper into the couch, prepared to listen.

  “Damn,” Andy said. “This conversation is a pain in the ass. Let’s just go.”

  My resolution evaporated. “Two to one — we’re going!”

  Theo pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re just a trainee, Beth. You don’t get an equal vote.”

  “So what do I get? Half a vote?”

  “A quarter, tops.”

  “Fine. One and a quarter to one — we’re going.”

  Theo looked up at the ceiling, as though asking god for patience. “No.”

  No one said anything for a bit.

  I toyed with the fringe on a couch pillow. “What do you guys think would happen if I tried to go through the estate barrier? On my own, I mean.”

  The silence turned leaden.

  Andy looked at Theo.

  Theo looked at me.

  “Beth. Do not do that.”

  I stared at his chin for a count of five and then met his gaze. It was hard to do. I’d never seen Theo genuinely angry at me before. The look on his face was the one he wore when Cordus made him do bad shit. I teared up.

  “Jesus, T.,” Andy stage-whispered. “You’re making her cry.”

  Theo put his head in his hands and made a sound of pure frustration. When he straightened up, he looked resigned.

  “Fine. All right. The annoying moron brigade wins. We’ll go.”

  Chapter 4

  “More sugar, dear?”

  “No thank you, Miss Sturluson.”

  The old woman carefully set the porcelain sugar bowl down with the rest of her tea service, then straightened up.

  Theo stirred his tea with a demitasse spoon that looked absurdly small in his big hand. The spoon clinked against the cup. It seemed inordinately loud.

  It was almost 1:00 in the morning, and I was sitting in a small, oppressively cluttered parlor drinking store-brand English breakfast with two large men and a killer granny.

  I’d had weirder experiences.

  Theo and Andy had settled on the biggest piece of furniture in the room — a loveseat — and I’d squeezed in between them, where Andy could easily include me in his barrier and both men could reach me, should we need to share capacity.

  Theo shifted, and the loveseat squealed alarmingly. I hoped it was up to the six hundred–pound task we’d imposed on it.

  Sturluson was sitting across from us in a worn armchair. I assumed she had her own barrier up.

  Not that I can tell, I thought crankily.

  The polite-tea-party game we were playing was getting to me. I needed some sleep.

  I cleared my throat. “Miss Sturluson, if you don’t mind my asking, what was it you wanted to tell us?”

  She looked at me for several seconds, smiling slightly. “How much do you three know about the Thirsting Ground?”

  “Nothing, really,” Theo said.

  She nodded, not seeming surprised. “This world knows little. Let me tell you a story.”

  I glanced at Theo. He was wearing a politely blank expression. I guess this sort of thing was par for the course.

  “Long ago,” Sturluson said, “there was a village. The people there were farmers. They’d cut a vast stretch of farmland out of the virgin forest, burning the fallen trees to nourish the soil. For some years they prospered, but they didn’t care for the land, and over time, their yields dwindled. Some wanted to move to a new place and burn again, but others had grown attached to their home. In the end, the latter group held sway, and the villagers began to search for a way to renew the soil.

  “Some years earlier, a powerful worker had been born in the village. His gift, the fixing of workings within objects, was rare and coveted. He’d been sent to the closest power for training and, when mature, had taken a high position in that lady’s court. When he heard his home village was in need, he offered his help. He hoped that a working could be fixed in the land itself, nourishing it in perpetuity with the needed elements.”

  Sturluson paused to sip her tea.

  My ears were, by this point, well and truly perked. She’d pushed my mind down a completely different track. Cordus had said the weapon Justine allegedly stole from Limu must’ve been made this way — the fixing of a working within an object. Cordus said it was a lost art. Maybe Sturluson was a living link. Maybe she could explain how it worked.

  “What elements was the working supposed to make?” Theo said.

  “Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, several minerals.”

  My eyes strayed to the bottle of plant food sitting next to a ratty philodendron on the bookshelf behind Sturluson. Maybe fertilizer was her methadone.

  Sturluson set her cup down. “The young man gathered the village’s thousand occupants and drew some capacity from each, binding their strengths with a modicum of his own. Then he crafted the working and tried to fix it in the land. But he didn’t understand his task — not really. Soil is not an object. It’s not inert. It’s full of life. It wasn’t an appropriate vessel for his gift.

  “The shared capacity of all those people flooded into the countless tiny creatures in the soil, awakening and uniting them. The land became aware. Its new-found sentience twisted the young man’s working, and the land seized all the people’s capacity for itself.

  “The damaged working drove the land to hunger for the nutrients it lacked. It sensed them in the air above it and pulled them in. Still it hungered, so it pulled what it lacked out of the gathered villagers and their livestock, then all the wild beasts of the surrounding forest and the insects and birds in the sky, then all the green growing things. And still it hungered, never satisfied. It reached out into the lands around, endlessly calling into itself what it lacked.”

  Sturluson took another drink of her tea, then sat there looking at us. I felt Andy and Theo stir behind me. She’d stopped in a weird place.

  “I’m sorry, but what happened, exactly?” I asked. “What does it mean that the soil pulled something out of them?”

  “I mean just what I said, Miss Ryder. The Thirsting Ground atomizes living things and absorbs the elements it lacks from the remains.”

  “It works gravity?” Theo asked.

  Sturluson nodded.

  I couldn’t suppress a shudder. “But the ground didn’t crush everything, right? If it had, there’d be no S-Em.”

  Sturluson laughed. “No, my dear, but it did destroy several strata. When the great powers learned of the threat, they gathered, and together they were strong enough to cut the Thirsting Ground off from the rest of the Second Emanation. It remains an isolate to this day, alone and starving.”

  Sturluson’s warm tone clashed weirdly with the phrase “alone and starving.” I studied her, looking for signs of anger or resentment, but all I could see was the motherly old lady disguise.

  Andy shifted, trying to pull his shoulder out
from behind mine. “Miss Sturluson, do you believe the entity that attacked us in the sewer was a portion of that land?”

  “It’s not a matter of belief. A fragment of the Thirsting Ground is here, in the city.”

  “Don’t you mean a second piece?” I asked. “That’s what you are too, right?”

  Andy and Theo both stiffened. I realized my question had been too blunt and personal.

  Sturluson studied me, her dark little eyes glittering in her wrinkly face. “Did Mr. Yellin tell you that?”

  I said nothing. There was just no benefit to answering that kind of question.

  She chuckled. “Yes, dear, I am also of the Thirsting Ground. But I separated long ago and have gained some measure of …” She paused and seemed to search for the right word. “Of individuality, I suppose. This youngling is different. It has no sense of itself as a separate entity.”

  “Can it be restrained?” Theo asked.

  “It could be held within a barrier, but the worker would need to be very strong.”

  “Can it be destroyed?” I asked.

  “Miss Ryder’s question is strictly hypothetical,” Theo said hurriedly. “We wouldn’t want to harm it.”

  “My dear young man, I understand completely. There’s no offence.”

  I could feel my face burning. Why couldn’t I stop putting my foot in my mouth?

  Maybe because Sturluson’s disguise was so good. Everything about her said “harmless old lady.”

  “It’s small and could be destroyed,” she said, “but that would require tremendous strength. Lord Cordus could manage it.” She looked me over. “Perhaps Miss Ryder. I can’t be sure.”

  A spasm of horror ran through me. The last thing I wanted was to be classed with Cordus. He controlled people’s minds and bodies. He remade himself as he chose. He was over a thousand years old and, for all I knew, could live a million more. I wasn’t like him. I couldn’t be.

  Theo put his arm around me comfortingly, and I took a slightly shuddery breath.

  Sturluson was watching me with sharp eyes. I’d just told her a lot more about my feelings than I ever intended to.

  “Why is it here?” Theo said.

  Sturluson looked down and ran a gnarled finger along the edge of her saucer. “I can’t imagine how it got out of the isolate.”

  “Could it have learned how to create straits?” Andy asked.

  Whoa. That would really be something. Strait-working was extraordinarily rare.

  Sturluson shook her head. “It doesn’t learn. It hungers. That’s all.”

  “You’ve learned,” I said.

  She smiled. “I’m different.”

  We sat there for a minute. I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed.

  Finally Theo spoke up. “Have you told us everything you wanted to, Miss Sturluson? For instance, do you have any idea why it came here?”

  She didn’t answer. She just sat there, studying us in turn.

  Finally she settled on Andy. “You’re the one it attacked.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And Miss Ryder was with you?”

  “Yes.”

  Sturluson’s eyes narrowed. “And one other woman.”

  “Zion,” Andy said. “A tracker.”

  “I know of her.” Sturluson turned my way. “It’s here for you, Miss Ryder.”

  “Me?”

  “Do close your mouth, dear. Gaping is so unattractive.”

  “I don’t understand,” Theo said. “What does it want with Beth?”

  His voice was calm, but the fact that he referred to me by my first name when speaking to a Second told me he was rattled.

  “I don’t know. But I can tell you this: find out what it wants, and maybe you can get rid of it without having to fight it. Since you can’t be sure of besting it without your lord’s help, I’d suggest you get busy finding an answer. It mustn’t stay here. Its presence is dangerous to all of us.”

  So she knows Cordus isn’t around.

  Theo shifted slightly. He’d probably noticed that too.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “It attacked all three of us in the sewer, not just me. Before that, it attacked that child here in Brooklyn and some people or animals in Manhattan. I don’t understand why you think I’m its target.”

  Sturluson pondered me in silence. Then she seemed to come to some decision. She went very still, and the sweet grandma disguise began to fade. It’s not that her body changed. It was her expression. The warmth and humor became contrived, then emotion dropped away entirely, and I found myself staring into an alien presence horrifyingly molded into humanoid shape.

  “I rarely hunt. My fear of discovery is strong, so I have found ways to feed my hunger without destroying higher life forms. But occasionally the need overtakes me.

  “I am able to draw 79.39 kilograms with adequate force to destroy molecular bonds. Each hunt brings the risk of discovery, so when I hunt, I seek prey that comes as close as possible to that mass without exceeding it, maximizing the rewards of the risk I have undertaken.”

  The folksy speech had dropped away with the human movement and emotions. It was like being lectured by a robot.

  “Your mass is 61.18 kilograms, Miss Ryder. Killing you would be inefficient. Yet I feel drawn to you. I perceived the attraction on Sunday well before you arrived. I could not imagine what was approaching, but I knew it was desirable.”

  Andy and Theo had stiffened beside me. I felt Andy’s hand close around mine, and I tried to open myself to him.

  “I do not understand my attraction to you. I do not feel desire. I do not like or dislike. I do not prefer some prey over others. I balance my hunger against danger. Reward and risk: these are my only criteria. Why, then, do you attract me?”

  The Thirsting Ground stared at me across the coffee table, seemingly transfixed. Finally, it looked away.

  “I have been separated from the rest of the land for millennia. My connection has thinned, and I feel its impulses more weakly than I once did. But I am drawn to you. I can only imagine how strongly this small youngling feels the attraction.

  “That is how I know it is here for you. As for the question of why, that is beyond me. I have no idea how the land’s attraction to you could have come into being, much less why.”

  “How do you know the other fragment feels it too?” Andy asked.

  “All the land feels it.”

  Theo cleared his throat. “When you say it’s here for Miss Ryder, do you mean it’s here to kill her?”

  The silence stretched so long I began to think it wouldn’t answer.

  At last it said, “I do not know. Perhaps not.”

  I waited for some explanation, but nothing else was forthcoming. I sat there feeling confused and frustrated — and scared.

  “You will leave soon,” the Thirsting Ground said.

  “Yes, of course,” Theo said quickly, “but how can we find out what the youngling fragment wants? Can we speak to it the way we’re speaking to you?”

  “No. Such things take time to learn. Perhaps it can find another way to communicate with you, if given the chance.”

  The Thirsting Ground lapsed into silence and sat there staring at me with flat eyes.

  I had a million more questions. How had it gotten my phone number? How strong was the youngling? What could it do besides work gravity and track? Would more pieces of the Thirsting Ground be showing up?

  A million more questions, but no guts to ask them. Those eyes left no doubt as to what “Miss Sturluson” was: an insatiable predator. It seemed impossible that, a few minutes ago, I’d been forgetting to be afraid.

  The guys seemed as unwilling to prolong the interview as I was. Theo nudged my elbow. We rose, gave our thanks, and left.

  “Did you know the human body’s mass is three percent nitrogen, and that nitrogen is a key component of DNA?” Andy said from the front seat.

  “How do you know?” I said.

  He held up his phone. “Wikipedia never lies.
”

  “That could’ve been written by a third-grader.”

  “So long as he cites his sources, I’m cool with that.”

  We were threading our way through Brooklyn toward Battery Tunnel. We’d all been pretty quiet since we left Sturluson’s house. I guess we were digesting.

  “What did you guys make of what she said?” I asked.

  No one answered right away. When Theo finally spoke, he sounded tired.

  “I guess my main reaction is, we’re screwed.”

  “So you believed her?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “You too, Andy?”

  “Yup.”

  I agreed with them. We all could be wrong, but I was pretty sure we weren’t.

  “Why do you think she’s helping us?” I asked.

  “Who knows?” Theo said. “She said the youngling’s dangerous to all of us. Maybe she’s afraid of getting sent back to that isolate herself. She’s got a pretty sweet deal, here.”

  She sure does, I thought with a shudder. Cordus’s rule seemed to be “all you can eat,” so long as you don’t spill on your tie.

  I stuffed the anger down. Seconds valued human ignorance, not human life. I knew that. It was pointless to dwell on it. I couldn’t change it.

  “So we need to find the youngling and try to communicate with it, right?”

  “Nope,” Theo said. “We need to get you behind the estate’s barrier and keep you there. End of story.”

  Andy nodded.

  “But you heard what Sturluson said. It’s too strong. You guys can’t take it down. And you might not even need to — if it really is here to contact me, maybe we can get rid of it peacefully.”

  Andy shrugged. “We’ll pass her info along to Mr. Yellin. Hopefully he’ll be reasonable about it. If not, we’ll do our best.”

  I felt cold.

  “Guys —”

  “Beth, this is what we do,” Andy said. “Seconds are dangerous. Bad situations happen. We don’t have any choice.”

  My eyes prickled. I couldn’t lose my friends. Andy, Theo — they were what had made my situation sort of okay. Without them, I’d be all alone with my losses — my home, my family, my freedom, my humanity. Standing against all that, I had these few people. I needed them, and they needed their lives. They deserved better than a suicide mission.