Chasing the Dragon (39 page)

She was slightly surprised to find herself with only eleven
remaining living in the audience. They bowed deeply and kept themselves well back and artificially still.

"Listen carefully," she said. "You can fill in the recruits when they
get here. I will be searching your properties in the city for my husband.
If anybody gets in my way or so much as attempts to interrupt me, I
will respond with mortal force. Those whose properties are clear will
be granted dominion over their own once more. You will remain in
exclusive and priority allegiance with the Sikarza house, but you will
manage your own affairs, all of which are in need of some serious attention as I see here. If I find any of you have concealed Teazle or his
whereabouts or are in any way implicated in his disappearance from
free conduct I will kill you, and that goes for any I deem to be involved. Does anyone have anything they would like to say that
might be useful to me?"

Some of them took breath.

Lila held up her hand. "I urge you to consider the fact that if your
information is not useful I will liquidate half your house assets and distribute them among the commons," she added. "Half a fortune every
time anyone utters a single word that is pointless. Chattels, property,
and dependents are not exempt from this. But if your information is
useful, then you will receive one-tenth of the Sikarzan fortune to be
distributed as you see fit among your house."

In one minute she had undone Teazle's empire and possibly saved
it from a fatal implosion, she figured, since after their takeover all the
houses had halted any effort to look after themselves and awaited
Teazle's decrees. Since he had no interest in managing a world again,
everything was in a terrible mess. Not that she wanted it either. This
was as close as she could get to returning everything without looking
like a fool. They could be a cartel.

She spent a moment allocating responsibilities to those next in
line at the Sikarza house who were still young enough to be able to
handle that kind of authority, and then she made a final check of her
subdirectors. They were all deep in thought, apparently.

Then one stepped forward. She was a hunched, birdlike creature, with
clawed feet, who was almost entirely hidden in the shelter of her enormous
feathered wings. Sweeps of green and blue were shining on her, signalling
deference and placidity. She cleared her throat, though this didn't help her
creaking, gravelly voice, and said, "Teazle Sikarza left my house a day
before he vanished from sight. He was moving on, but he did not take
another house over, and no further murder was reported. My servant was
near the house of the wolf lady. They say they saw him inside hours later,
as they were buying spell powders in the Souk. It is all I know. May it be
useful." She backed up a step after speaking, and then as the others sneered
at her she muttered a curse under her breath and they stopped quickly.

The antimagic detector Lila had engineered to be part of her skin
had flared in that instant. This demon must have a formidable power
if they were all willing to stay silent. She wasn't sure how she'd manage
against it. Hopefully she wouldn't have to. "I will go there directly,"
Lila said and stood up. She picked the sword up casually in her hand
and paused to finish her drink before walking out.

She took her time, waiting for a dagger to the back or some other
check. She was almost disappointed when nothing came and she was
able to leave the house unmolested.

The wolf woman was Madame Des Loupes. There was a certain
full-circle satisfaction at hearing the last sighting might be there, Lila
supposed. She wondered if Teazle had been looking for a way to clear
himself, but that seemed unusually forward-thinking for him. It could
be that he had run out of other places to look. His acquisitions were
extensive. If he had completed a search of the remaining small private
homes, he would then have been left with the Wild. She was glad it
had all stopped before it went that far. Demons of the Wild were something she never wanted to see again in any lifetime.

Madame's house, on the other hand, was something she did want
to see for herself. As her foot touched the street, however-a street
remarkably clear of pedestrians and other traffic-she realised she was
going to have a few delays. Clusters of demons were massing in the
alleys that lined her route back to the Souk. As she walked they
attacked her singly and in groups, piling one after the other in a great
eager rush, their energy like a wave breaking in a fury of destruction
until she was aware of nothing except herself in constant motion and
the sword, a whining hum of vicious glee in her hands.

She progressed at the centre of a storm of violence, leaving a slick
trail of gore clotted with body parts in her wake. It was slow, slower
than walking. It was more grim and exhilarating than anything she
had ever known. As she moved forwards she seemed to have left the
ground and left all traces of her body behind. It moved without her, at a distance, its signals perfect in her absence until it seemed like she
directed the monstrous gyre as a conductor and lead dancer, everything
moving exactly to her timing and not the other way around. They
tried to move hell to kill her, each in their own way, and together in
every method they could muster. But Lila flowed and blood rained.
Magic died on her. Curses shot back to the mouths of their unhappy
givers. Blows shattered weapons. Poisons faded. Plagues died. Fire and
aether vanished into her shell as if she consumed them. Water evaporated, boiling unwitting nearby attackers alive and exploding them in
outguttings of steam and viscera. Missiles were returned to the gun,
the bow, the cannon, and the shooter, no matter how much they ran,
turned, twisted, and tried to escape.

The woman, the machine, the dress, and the sword had become an
unstoppable force. Lila rode them, watching from the quiet central eye
of the melee and at the same time seeming to float above herself and
see it all from a bird's-eye view. It would have been comical in its ludicrous excess if it were not unfathomably and unendingly horrible. She
wished in that moment, feeling stupid, feeling sad, "I wish I played
the piano instead of this. Or even cards. Or anything." It was the
greatest freedom and glory to be so good at something but the execution of her ability gave her no pleasure now, in the peak of the experience. She felt they were fools to attack her. They posed no real threat.
Killing them was a waste of time and their lives. Try as she might she
was no demon in her heart and at last she knew it. She would never
belong here, and now, after so much ample proof of her power, they
would want her to.

Finally the assault ended and she walked free, the last of the bodies
falling off her back and onto the unyielding stone. As she reached the
central square and Madame's house she was alone in a quiet town, her
footsteps sounding loud on the pavement. The green door that led off
the street bore the marks of the police department and was locked, but
she was equal to the picking, opened it and went inside, closing it behind her and locking it again. It was dark in the hall, and mercifully
enclosed and quiet. She leant against the wall and closed her eyes for a
moment and breathed out a long breath silently into the musty air.

I am never going home, she thought. Never.

After settling the sword on her shoulder she began to look at the
rooms. They followed an orderly layout the same on three levels, with
large square suites opening off a central hall and stairway. The crime
scene, as she had seen in the photographs, was in Madame's favourite
parlour that opened onto the square itself and commanded good views
in three directions over the Souk and larger city. She stayed well back
from the windows so that nobody could spy on her and examined what
was left of the furniture. Most objects were dusted with telltale powders
of various kinds and protected with hexing charms from disturbance.
There was a lot of dried blood and signs of struggle. All the gracious
items and lovely fabrics she remembered from previous visits were
either chopped up, stained, or blackened by what had been a hasty but
virulent fire. A lot was out of place, and she slowly pieced together from
her memory, the photographs, and the present evidence that looters had
been here several times over after the police had gone on their way. She
found the balcony doors broken at the latch ... that explained that.

There was nothing to indicate Teazle was responsible now. And
nothing to indicate that he wasn't. She gave up sifting and straightened, listening. The empty house listened back. And then she had an
impulse to put her hand in her pocket, though bikinis didn't have
pockets of course. But suddenly hers did-it had a small bag hanging
from the flimsy strap across her hip. She was not surprised to reach
inside and find the warm, unpleasant lump of fleshy stone that was
Madame's Eye. It seemed infinitely long ago that she had sat here on a
sunny day, with the imp cavorting in the milk jug, and accepted it
from Madame's hand as if she were a rookie reporter being given an
assignment. That was what it had felt like, though later she'd never
actually used it. There was nothing to fear now, however.

A feather was what she needed to make it work. She searched a few
more rooms-Madame had kept ravens as well as her suitors, who had
feathers of their own. There was nothing on the top two floors, not
even on the ground floor. She wondered if the police had cleaned out
the place or if Madame had just made the suitors incredibly fastidious.
Given their looks as risen dead, it seemed a bit incongruous if that had
been how it was. She was mulling this when her eyes flicked back
twice to something on the floor in the pantry.

She had to bend down and reach back into the deep shadows
behind a grain bin to reach it, but there it was-a blue-and-white
feather. One of Teazle's.

What the hell was it doing back there? Nothing in here had been
moved. The air was fusty with mould and the floor covered in dust
that showed no tracks. He would have had to put it there, she thought,
but her spirits lifted at this sign of him. She was slightly loath to use
it, but she moved back to the kitchen area, set the plume down on a
sideboard, and then put the Eye on top of it.

Instantly the nodule sank down as if melting and became markings on the feather, transforming it into something rather like the end
of a peacock's tailfeather. Then that marking moved and blinked and
became a blue eye on a white background. The eye looked around,
swivelling as far as it could, then fixed on Lila. She had no idea what
to do. There had been no further instructions.

The eye stared at her, and its pupil dilated and then narrowed as it
put her into focus. She was about to speak when the most peculiar
feeling of being watched from the inside came over her. There was no
centre to the sense of presence, and none of her Al systems registered
or set off an alarm, but the hairs on her body stood up and a chill ran
through her that made her shiver convulsively. She half expected a
voice any moment: Tath had spoken to her easily when she had carried
his spirit. Instead it was like occupying, faintly, another person.
Faintly because in comparison her own senses were strong signals and this was a weaker thing, less than half the power. But it was good
enough. She understood, because this occupying ghost understood,
that she was connected to Madame's mind and it was a place of curious,
unfolded dimensions, glimpsed vistas, winking possibilities, and the
flickering half-lives of moments as they fell from chance to reality or
into oblivion.

She took the feather, so as not to break the fragile contact-the eye
did not seem to mind-and carried it in finger and thumb as she left
the kitchen and moved along one of the halls to a particular spot.
There she was now able to see that the light fittings where smokeless
torches had been taken away and little solar glowbulbs fixed in place
were the covers to a panel. She stuck the feather in her hip sash and levered the panel free. It was beautifully made. Even with her enhanced
faculties she'd missed it. Beneath the fascia lay a small set of buttons,
unmarked and unpowered. There was also an inlet socket. It was the
work of a second to create a matching plug, jack it in, and run electricity through the system. As she keyed in the combinations it did
occur to her to wonder where Madame was, why she seemed to be
helpful. The answers that suddenly manifested in her mind were hard
to grasp at first. Madame was in the back of beyond-a faery style of
answer if ever there was one. She was assisting Lila because she was
being hunted.

Lila paused at this and cast about looking for more details. A sense
of reassurance came over her. All would be revealed. Prompted by her
new thoughts she realised this part had concluded. She unjacked,
replaced the panel, and went up to the second storey, to a walk-in cupboard where a new door had opened behind a rack of clothes, splitting
the rack neatly in two. There was a narrow staircase, circular and stonebuilt, lying in the heart of the house. Lila had to shrink all her proportions very slightly and take in some of the bladed extravagance of her
armour. Then she slid into the opening and closed the doors behind
her. It was utterly dark, but this did not bother her as she had more than enough senses to cope without eyesight. She felt her inhabitant's
slight twinge of envy and smiled as she started a long walk down.

As she descended she found that she knew this stair led past the
house's single and obvious cellar and farther down to a tunnel that had
been dug long before out of the friable bedrock of the city's foundation. Some ten metres below the surface she reached it. It was dank and
her feet splashed in low water. Beneath the lagoon's surface the rock
here was usually supersaturated with water, but spells kept most of it
out. The house had belonged in much older times to a pirate queen,
and this was the secret passage to her treasure chamber. Madame had
discovered it via her clairvoyant skills, because prior to her purchase of
the house all knowledge of it had died with the pirate herself. Madame
had fitted the tricky electronic extra lock mechanism herself, as she
had foreseen a police search of the house in which the cupboard would
be scanned and its old lock system discovered.