After some ragged breaths, Charlotte’s eyes flutter open, and she grasps at the cup desperately. Sloane supports her back as best she can through the wooden posts. Charlotte gulps the liquid hungrily, gasping for air once her chest clears. After a few final coughs, she’s lucid enough to be frantic. Her eyes are desperately dilated, just a thin rim of sky blue.
She sees Bahram first and scrambles back with a gasp, knocking into Sloane’s arm so hard it almost snaps backward. Charlotte whips around and stills at the sight of Sloane’s face. “Sloane?” She squeaks, her trembling eyes widen.
“Yeah, you’re alright, Charlotte. It’s me.” Sloane almost laughs.
Bahram shifts in the periphery, making Charlotte clutch at Sloane defensively through the fence. Sloane assures her that Bahram won’t hurt her. He sits down docilely to demonstrate that he isn’t a threat.
“Wait, where’s Dmitri?” Charlotte asks, scanning the room. Her timid posture transforms to ferocity.
“Your aequalis is right where we left him,” Bahram assures her. “I had to render him unconscious to get you here.”
Charlotte steps towards him. “If you want me, you take me,” she snarls with a viciousness Sloane didn’t think her capable of. “Don’t you ever touch him.” Bahram nods once, slowly. Charlotte turns back to Sloane, her face twisted with worry. “Are you okay?” she whispers, grasping Sloane’s face.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” Sloane squeezes her hand. She can’t get the next question out fast enough. “What’s happened? What has Esht done—”
“Everyone thinks he’s the one that….” Charlotte glances over at Bahram.
“Bahram, can we have some privacy, please?” Sloane asks.
“I must keep you within view, but your conversation may be your own.” Bahram stands and offers Charlotte a bow. “My apologies again.” They watch him depart silently.
“Who is he? What does he want?” Charlotte asks.
“He thinks he’s keeping me safe, but someone else is pulling the strings.” Charlotte’s frown deepens. “Bahram is kind to me, Charlotte,” Sloane promises. “He says it’s his job to protect me from Esht, but that’s bullshit. Sisiro just wants me out of the way.”
“He works for Sisiro?” Charlotte scrunches her nose. “I don’t understand. Why would he do this?”
“I think I really pissed him off.” Sloane almost laughs at her own ignorance. She lowers her voice. “I discovered something about him he doesn’t want anyone to know. And if I can’t get out of here, you need to tell Erim.” Charlotte swallows, leaning closer. “Esht is Sisiro’s brother.”
Charlotte’s eyes bulge out of her head as her mouth drops open. “What?” She hisses.
“I know it sounds crazy, but you just have to trust me.”
“He’s been lying all this time?” Anger inflames her face.
“I don’t know the bigger picture yet, so only tell Erim, okay?” Sloane says, trying to keep her focused on the crucial points. Charlotte glances over her shoulder and nods. Silence falls as they both absorb the information and each other. “So, how’s Er—everyone?” The relief is sharp when Sloane catches herself from saying his name. It doesn’t feel safe here, not even with Bahram out of earshot.
Charlotte’s face twinges and she grasps her middle. “I can feel Dmitri’s fear, his pain.” Her voice is soft. “I feel it, and I know that he’s hurting because it turns my stomach same as his.”
“I’m sorry, Charlotte. You shouldn’t have been dragged into this.” Sloane thumps her head against the post.
Charlotte is quiet for a moment, waiting for the feeling to pass. Then she looks back up at Sloane. “But Erim’s pain, that I can see with just my eyes. It’s all over his face, every day since you’ve been gone. He tries his best to be an unshakable leader and might fool everyone just fine, but not me. As sure as I can feel that Dmitri needs me, I can see that Erim needs you.”
Sloane never wants to imagine what sorrow looks like carved into Erim’s features. She doesn’t want to know whether it bends the slope of his neck or sags into his black eyes. But the mere image of him with life in his eyes, the lift of his shoulders when he breathes, is enough to make Sloane smile. So maybe she isn’t allowed to imagine how the curves of his cheeks round when he smiles, but at least he’s out there, untouched by Esht. Sloane’s breathing shudders as cooling relief crashes into her. She can stop terrorizing herself with images of a pile of Erim under Esht’s foot. Sloane’s growing smile is the first real one since her captivity.
“It’s so good to see you.” Sloane laughs, pulling Charlotte as close as she can.
Sloane asks Charlotte about preparations for the fight against Esht, but Charlotte refuses to talk about it. She insists it isn’t important, not here. She decides that they can talk about something else, anything else.
She tells Sloane about her new nephew, who was just born. Storytelling comes so organically to Charlotte. She can thoroughly sweep Sloane away from the dusty stone, the wooden posts, the smell of tea. Charlotte’s details about her nephew and his welcome party are as colorful and full of excitement as all her tales. Sloane finds such refuge in them like she did her first few days in The Midst. If Sloane closes her eyes, it’s like they’re back in the glade trading stories about their mothers.
But the temple darkens too soon, and Bahram’s shape emerges from the depths to take Charlotte back. Sloane doesn’t want to let go of her. “Just tell them I’m okay,” she whispers, pulling Charlotte close. “I’m going to get out of here.” Charlotte nods, clutching her shoulders.
Bahram steps forward, cloth bag in hand. Charlotte slaps his hand away and snatches the bag, eyeing him skeptically. “Remember,” she says, pointing a threatening finger, “you don’t touch my aequalis.” She slips the bag over her head, and Bahram leads her away.
TRIGINTA SEPTEM
Erim has never had cause to ponder the efficiency of The Midst’s record system until now. He stares at the vast archive and its endless shelves of ledgers. It’s never looked so daunting, the millions of names on thousands of pages. One of those names may be Sloane’s salvation. Erim is used to only coming down here once a week to shelve the old ledger and take the next one from the central lectern. Since Esht, Soul Keepers have had to cross out the names of each soul destroyed by hand.
Erim pulls out the book with Sloane’s arrival, thumbing through until he gets to her page. Ches’s name has faded to barely a watermark, the sign of a soul that never took its place in The Midst. Most names rarely stay that way long. Fate always seems to catch up with them, sealing their demise in black ink on the page.
Erim didn’t know there was an organized effort behind those corrections until a few years ago. After hearing a peculiar death story, Erim approached Sofia with his concerns. She did some research and returned with some vague information about Innocui. Still, they knew little until Ches’s mother recently put all the pieces together for them.
Erim is glad that Ches’s name will remain faded forever, but it’s also the reason he won’t work for Erim’s purposes now. Erim traces Sloane’s name written in his own hand next to Ches’s.
He spends the day searching through the ledgers for another faded name. He doesn’t even notice the dimming light until Ben tears the doors open.
“There you are!” she grumbles. “Should’ve known you’d be jacking off in the archive room.”
“Whatever it is, can Dmitri handle it?” Erim asks, shifting his sore back in the chair.
“Dmitri’s the problem,” Ben retorts.
That mobilizes Erim.
They find Dmitri pacing back and forth through the beach shallows erratically, muttering. There’s a thin trail of essentia down the back of his neck.
“Found him knocked out,” Ben says. “He won’t let anyone look at his head.”
“Dmitri?” Erim calls. Dmitri’s eyes liven when he sees Erim; he reaches out like grasping for a life raft. Erim grabs his forearm, anchoring his unsteady hand.
&nbs
p; “He took my Charlotte.” Dmitri’s eyes are wide and crazed. “Hit me from behind before I even saw him.” His voice cracks hoarse. “She screamed for me, and I couldn’t protect her.” Pain twists his lips as he releases a shuddering breath.
“We’re going to get them back. I swear to you, Dmitri,” Erim says.
“It’s been hours.” Ben shakes her head. “Whoever took her is long gone.”
Erim shoots her a look, then turns back to Dmitri. “What do you feel?”
Dmitri takes a jittery breath, trying to concentrate. He inhales sharply. “She’s alright.” He nods, clutching his stomach. “I can feel it.”
“That’s right,” Erim says, lowering Dmitri into the sand. Ben slips behind him to check his head and shrugs at Erim; it’s not bad. She cleans his skin and retrieves a remedium leaf from Erim’s room to paste against his scalp. Erim tries to get Dmitri inside, but he refuses, insisting on sitting in the dark where she was taken.
“Dmitri!” They all turn to Charlotte’s silhouette, lit by the tunnel. Her hair bounds behind her as she runs.
“Charlotte?” Dmitri yells, stumbling forward. They race to each other, and he scoops her into his arms as she wraps herself around him, gasping with relief. She clings to Dmitri as his knees buckle and they sink to the ground. He lets out a soft sob, and Charlotte speckles his cheek with tiny kisses. He leans back, combing through her blonde curls, laughing through tears. They exchange a flurry of hushed words; she assures him, calms him before he can even finish his questions. Dmitri runs probing hands over her neck, arms, torso, making sure she’s unblemished.
Ben rolls her eyes and departs with a groan, allergic to the PDA. Dmitri whispers apologies over and over, but Charlotte shushes him, refusing to hear it. It looks like they might never detach from each other again.
Charlotte smiles up at Erim. “Thank Midst, you’re safe,” he says.
“And so is she,” Charlotte whispers.
After raising a thorough fuss over Dmitri’s head wound and moving him to Erim’s quarters, Charlotte tells them everything. Dmitri holds her hand through everything, but the story doesn’t look difficult for her. She only pauses sometimes to make sure she hasn’t left out any details. Erim drinks in every piece of her tale, feeling his agony lift with every word that Sloane’s unharmed, fed, and treated well as far as Charlotte saw. Erim barely hears anything other than that. For the first time in weeks, he feels himself thaw just a bit at the thought of her back in Aquae again.
“Erim?”
“Sorry, what?” Erim refocuses on Charlotte’s expectant face.
“I said, there’s something Sloane wanted me to tell you.” Her eyes flicker to Dmitri and back. “Esht is Sisiro’s brother.” Dmitri lets out a breath of shock. Erim knows he should be equally blindsided, but all he can focus on is how many questions that would answer. “Sloane thinks Sisiro had her kidnapped to silence her,” Charlotte says, glancing nervously at Dmitri. “Do you think it’s possible?”
“Well, that would certainly explain why he released Esht,” Erim mutters.
“He what?” Dmitri leans forward.
Erim sighs. His head is such a flurry; he didn’t even think before he opened his mouth. “It seems that our esteemed Head Soul Keeper is not who we thought.”
“A corrupt Soul Keeper?” Dmitri muses, shifting closer to Charlotte.
“We’re only human at our basest.” Erim shrugs. He thought he was the worst a Soul Keeper could get. Any selfish relief he has about being wrong is drowned out by the dread.
Charlotte turns to him, her jaw set sternly. “We need to get Sloane back.”
If Erim knows one thing for sure, it is that. The weeks of rage have been washed out by something new, something more potent. He feels it reverberating through the water in his veins, a blind determination to tear down whatever walls, whatever worlds, stand between him and Sloane. Death didn’t stop her, and Sisiro won’t stop Erim; nothing will.
Erim feels his hands curl into fists. “She’s not in The Midst, so there’s only one place left to check.”
The next morning, Erim recruits a few Claimants who are itching to be let out of the NeoRealm again. Though, they don’t seem to want their freedom very badly when they learn what he has planned for them. He scatters them through the archives of all the terrarums and sets them to work scouring each ledger.
Erim works through Aquae’s ledgers personally, taking all his meals in the archive, only resting when he accidentally falls asleep over a book. Dmitri and Charlotte, the Arcs, and a few Soul Keepers help when they can, but days yield nothing. Charlotte drags him out of his hole to attend a couple of Somboon’s healing lessons. His bandage wrapping isn’t as tight or neat as hers, but no one’s is; she’s a teacher’s pet.
Days of no success devolve Erim one night as he sits in the archive alone. He flings another fruitless ledger against the wall and flips over the table, launching books everywhere. Rage overflows his mind, summoning choppy water that floods the room.
He wakes in the morning to see Somboon kneeling in the water, quietly stacking the ledgers back onto their shelves. “Don’t do that, Somboon,” Erim croaks, his voice sensitive from yelling. “It’s my mess. I’ll clean it up.”
Somboon’s eyes do a sweep of the room and end on Erim. “When you can’t control what’s happening, challenge yourself to control how you respond. That is where your power lies.” He shakes water off one of the ledgers.
The doors creak open. It’s one of the Claimants, Elvia, quite out of breath. Her eyes are alight. “I found one!” Her joy drops off when she notices the damage. “What happened?”
“Plumbing issue.” Erim swipes the ledgers off the lectern as she slams the spine down. “Nubibus had a no-show six months ago.” She flips through a couple of pages and points to a name. “Here.”
Erim leans in, barely able to make out the faded text. “Graham Bryce Noling.” It doesn’t even register with him for a moment; the possibility of finding Sloane, getting her back. Then it all comes crashing down on him. “Yes!” Erim slams a fist down on the lectern. “Yes!” He swipes Elvia up into a hug. This is what he’s been waiting for.
After finding a quiet place to sit and focus, Erim anchors his observation to Graham’s name and can locate him quickly. He isn’t what Erim expected. For a man who has escaped death, Graham doesn’t look very alive. He’s thin and lanky, with a scratchy gray face and long brown hair. His clothes are old and well-used, patterned with holes and stains. He has one hat, always pulled over his ears.
Erim’s new obsession becomes trailing Graham every second of every day, just watching and waiting. He watches Graham when he sleeps soundly under overpasses, wrapped in his blue tarp. Erim sees him share the heat of his fire with others struggling and pick through garbage heaps to find dinner. Graham often grapples with the voices in his head and is restless on the nights when they whisper poison. Erim’s never spent so much time watching Earth; sometimes, it even seems like Graham senses him, shooting suspicious glares behind his back.
One night, Graham goes to the port to bathe. The water in his quaint fishing town must be freezing, but it doesn’t seem to bother him; he can wash in peace under the cover of dark. It’s a wet night, likely harboring the kind of cold Erim imagines seeps into your bones. The rain drizzles onto the pavement of the empty streets, eating away at the small snowdrifts and reflecting the yellow glare of streetlights. The traffic lights change from green to yellow to red, but there are no cars out to obey. Sirens cry in the distance, but in this neighborhood, all is silent.
The dark buildings tower towards the sky with sharp square angles that Erim is unaccustomed to. Over the past few days, he’s grown to miss the rugged walls of Aquae, how the light reflects off the water with a blue tint.
Graham stops at the sight of a small boy near the water, illuminated under a streetlight. He looks around at the vacant docks and warehouses, fiddling with the dog tags under his shirt. That’s always his move when he’s un
sure; he’s clearly unsettled by the child’s odd appearance. Erim would be, too, if he didn’t know better.
“What’re you doing out here, kid?” Graham calls.
The boy turns to him with tears streaking his face as he tries to catch choked breaths. “Help, please! My mommy fell in there.” The boy points a quivering finger at the dark water sloshing below. As he takes a step toward the edge, Graham bolts forward.
“No, no, don’t do that, stay back!” He grabs the boy’s arm and pulls him away. “It’s icy there. You’ll fall and crack your head open!”
The boy whimpers. “Please help my mommy. I don’t see her anymore.”
“Stay here. Let me look.” Graham kneels over the edge, squinting into the empty water. The boy steps up behind him, pulling back his leg like a loaded spring. It’s now or never.
“Hey!” Erim shouts. The boy’s head jerks up, lowering his foot just enough to miss Graham’s back, but it still catches his leg, sprawling him out on the ice. He gasps as his weight slides him right off the edge into the black frigidity. He bobs up, splashing and coughing, the shock of it preventing any efficient swimming. The currents are strong, quickly sweeping him downstream towards the town’s lights.
The small boy kicks Graham’s plastic bag into the water and whirls on Erim. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He stalks up to him. “That’s the closest we’ve gotten in weeks, you idiot.”
“Sorry.” Erim’s gotten better at faking sincerity in recent years, but he doesn’t put much effort into that one.
“Sorry?” The boy snarls. “Do you realize how long it’s taken to pin this one down? Brain trauma from the war left him paranoid; thinks people are conspiring, out to get him.”
“Yeah… crazy.” Erim puffs out an apathetic breath.
“All his moving around already made this case a nightmare, and now I’ll have to wait until he’s out of the hospital.”
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