Zal’s eyes narrowed and the misty shadow of his aetheric body condensed and withdrew beneath his skin. He was solid as Lila
and the girl, waited for their replies. When they were both silent Sassy
moved uneasily on her barstool and drew her lips into her mouth, biting both of them between her teeth until a white line
appeared at their joining.
‘I always hated the idea of being a puppet,’ he said, with slow and exacting conviction. ‘But I have been one and it was every
bit as awful as I imagined. But in the scheme of the universe, however it stands, however weak it looks like it might be becoming
I don’t buy what you’re selling.’
‘No. You’re a demon. You wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘And I am not saying that your every move is pushed by unseen hands from on
high. I’m not saying that! I’m saying there are those who like to play and they have liked to play with you. No more. Their
age and their powers is all that makes them different. It makes them see things differently. They pick people up, see what
happens; they don’t take your will, they don’t take your life away. They push a little bit here, pull a little bit there,
see what happens. They lose some, they win some, they play short and they play long.’
‘They’re gamblers,’ Lila said, feeling the solid click of pieces falling into place inside her. They made a shape that was
certain, a definite form, something she knew all about.
‘Yes,’ the girl nodded. ‘That’s it.’
‘So what’s your part?’ Zal said, glancing back and forth between her and Lila.
The girl looked each of them in the eye, first Zal, then Lila. ‘Everyone’s got their price.’ She waited until both of them
nodded to show they understood her, and agreed, in principle. ‘For some it’s money, a little or a lot. For some it’s honour,
shame, vengeance – all the currencies of pride. You,’ she pinned Lila with a direct gaze of impossible clarity, ‘you played
for pride. That’s a deadly mortal game. I’ve never understood why anyone would want it, but that was your game, wasn’t it?’
Lila lowered her eyelids, unable to nod but unable to say no. She had thought, early on when Sorcha had showed her the nature
of her game with Zal, that it was a love game, perhaps even a sex game. But this girl, whoever she was, had it right. It was
a pride game. And so was the one she’d played with her family. ‘I wouldn’t play it that way again.’
‘That is why it lost its power. You changed,’ the girl said. ‘Games themselves can change in time, make new rules, lose old
ones. Ah,
you didn’t know that, well, they can. Haven’t you ever watched faeries play cards?’
Lila had. It was completely baffling, apparently random. She’d never figured out what was going on or how they knew who had
won.
Sassy nodded. ‘Now your game has become only that – a lovers’ game, a toy. If either of you decided to end it now by meeting
its victory condition that would be voluntary, a choice, and so you cannot meet the condition. A condition that can’t be met
is unplayable, so the rule changes. In this case it has become the spice to a foregone conclusion. It is worn out. You knew
this.’
Lila blinked; the girl had put her finger on feelings she hadn’t been able to articulate herself. She glanced at Zal and found
him looking at her with a glowing warmth she hadn’t expected, his eyes amused, his expression a little knowing, a little bit
sad. But before she could react the girl was talking again, her intensity begging and getting their attention.
‘Zal, you played for your soul time and again. You always bet everything on it, and it always came up. That’s a pirate’s game,
a free man’s game, the stakes of angels.’
Zal grinned and his nostrils flared for a moment as he bowed his head.
‘I’ve been instrumental in all kinds of games,’ the girl said, knotting her hands together around her knees, balancing on
her narrow bottom on the high chair. Her feet pointed elegantly at the floor as she darted teasing looks at them now. ‘Win
or lose, it was never my hand that mattered, I had nothing to play for and freedom was impossible. When you’ve got my gifts
you can’t breathe before someone grabs you round the throat. But I’ve seen a lot, heard a lot.’ She let go of her knees and
unfolded with grace, sliding off the seat to stand on her feet. On contact with the ground she suddenly gained a strength
that both of them could feel as if it were a force pushing at them. Energy surged up through her small frame and gathered
in her gaze.
Lila felt her skin suddenly react, surging with a chill over her back. She saw Zal move unconsciously into a defensive stance,
poised on the balls of his feet.
The girl nodded in acknowledgement. ‘You’re like me. Sure you played some small-time business for yourselves but in terms
of the Long Game you’re in over your heads because you don’t see the big picture. Well, I see it – the players, the moves,
the stakes and I’m tired of watching. On my own I’ve got nothing. I can’t get in by myself. But
you two – you three, four, five whatever: you’ve got serious leverage, know what I’m sayin’?’
Lila nodded slowly. She knew that look from her mother’s face. ‘You want in.’
‘Damn right!’
‘I’m curious,’ Zal said, though Lila could tell he was interested just by the way his body was moving. ‘What’s your price?’
‘Power,’ the girl said simply. ‘The power to play, that’s all.’
‘What if we say no?’ Lila asked.
The girl looked her in the eye. ‘Yeah, you could do that. Run away from what you want. People do. But whatever you do, wherever
you go, whatever happens you know the game’s on, like it or not, and your only choice is play or be played. Take it to heart
or don’t give a shit, doesn’t matter. You’ll live and die, that’s for sure, only got a few details to work out here an’ there.
You keep trying not to play, eventually your offers are gonna dry up. But the thing about being someone else’s powerful toy
is that you got options. Your position is way better than mine right now, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking. Trust me, no options
gets old faster than you can believe, makes you ready to slip away, die maybe.’
Lila rubbed her face. ‘And I thought people just lived the best they could and got on with what they could and suffered with
what they couldn’t until it was over.’
‘Mostly they do, live and die, never played a move, didn’t notice or didn’t care. Pity them. Or not,’ the girl said. ‘I don’t
care for all that. I made my move. It’s your turn now.’
Lila gave Zal the nod, saying to the girl, ‘We need to talk, in private.’
The girl bowed her head a fraction. ‘Then you’d better go at least two miles out.’
Zal went back for his coat and then joined Lila on the deck where they both paused to look out over the forest down to the
first houses and then, much farther away, the city. The air was cool and crisp even though down by the shore and in midtown
it would already be warming up to humid.
Lila let her gaze rove across the skyscrapers and distinctive shapes of the skyline that was so new, noticing without caring
when some important place went under her scan – the International Bank of Otopia, the Art Museum, the Magisterium, the University
– and then she passed those and moved to the dull blocky shapes of apartments and low rises that spanned the gap called Bonville
before the last of the major roads vanished into a flurry of little bridges, walkways and snakethrough passes that wound into
the massed rises of Cedars like veins into a tumour. She didn’t remember it like that. It had been so pretty.
But now Cedars wasn’t ugly enough, considering what lay inside it, she thought. It had namesake trees in large numbers, breaking
up the gaps and shading the goings on, smothering the worst of the neighbourhood in a year-round coverage of deceptively rich
green. Cedars was a community park, made in what had been one of the more philanthropic moments of Bay City’s history. It
had been opened while she was still a teenager. The mayor had snipped the ribbons across the gaily painted Chinese gates and
a hundred paper dragons had taken to the air, dropping an electronic shower of gift vouchers wherever the wind bore them across
the city. She and Max had got on
their bikes and ridden hell for leather chasing them down. Never got close enough to grab one though.
Her memory of Cedars itself was much hazier. It had been an enclosed place, meant to be self-sufficient, a place of respite
and peace within the shambling heart of the city for families who couldn’t have afforded the luxury in ordinary circumstances.
It was close enough to midtown for work but far enough out that it wasn’t competing with any substantially prime real estate.
Max had an apartment there for a while when she first moved out of home, but soon left it for a place that went with her job
at one of the north-end casinos. Even at this time in the morning the flashing lights of the strip by the shore were blazing.
Bay City was a good-time paradise, thick with fey and demon interests from the cheapest motel on the strip right down Eighth
Avenue to the International Bank. And in the middle of the line that joined those buildings Cedars festered, its aspiring
young families long gone.
It reminded her of Solomon’s Folly, an ugly junction of malicious forces.
‘Where’s the bike?’ Zal asked.
‘At the Agency,’ she said, realising how stupidly she’d behaved again thanks to her anger the day before.
‘Come on then.’ He turned and walked down the steps to the dirt driveway. He didn’t take the route towards the road but stepped
off the property directly into the woods. Lila followed him, trusting his instincts on both directions and the forest implicitly.
They walked for a few hundred metres, jumping a couple of shallow drainage ditches and crossing a forgotten access road that
was overgrown with grass and young shrubs. Beyond this the woods became more dense and progressively wilder. It was clear
to her that they were not in line for the Agency.
Zal hiked steadily for another kilometre, then two, then three. They came to a minor clearing where a few trees had keeled
over in last winter’s blowhard gales and he sat down on the deadfall, waiting for her to join him. She sat beside him, carefully
testing the logs before she let them take her weight. They had moved quite quickly but neither of them were out of breath.
It had been good to do nothing but walk and breathe the air.
‘Lila,’ Zal said in the slow way that meant he was coming to say something important. ‘Where’s Tatters?’
‘We’ve parted company,’ Lila said, less confident of her decision
now that he seemed to be questioning it. ‘Last night I had a bit of a session.’ He was quiet and she felt more anxious. ‘What’s
the matter?’
‘I got the feeling you want to buy into this Long Game.’
‘I don’t know that I entirely buy her story—’
‘No but all the same. But I’m sick of those things. I had enough before I left Alfheim – they were the reason that I left.
I haven’t been too good at leaving them behind. They follow me and pick me up it seems. But I’m not interested in being a
player. I’m done. Even if the world is at stake. Particularly if that’s the stake.’
‘God, you’re such a liar,’ Lila said. ‘You primed entire Otopian generations—’
‘I did,’ he said, cutting her off firmly but gently. ‘But it wasn’t part of a master plan. It was me, doing what I do, which
is pretty plotless and I intend for it to stay that way. I don’t care if someone thinks I’d make a good whatever. I’ll do
what I like for my own reasons and screw the rest. But you, you’re not like that.’
‘I’m getting more like it.’
‘Even so.’
She frowned, not sure where this was going but sure she wasn’t liking it. It smelled of separation, divided ways. It felt
like a version of ‘it’s not you, it’s me’. As the prospect of Zal going one way and her another grew more palpable, a jolt
of anguish shot through her and in its wake everything that had been occupying her for the last few days faded into a grey
desolation.
‘And then again,’ he said, looking at the wall of forest in front of them, ‘You’re involved with the Agency and your own issues,
Teazle’s fucked off without a word, which makes me assume he’s got more interesting people to kill. Malachi, well, he’s more
your friend than anything to do with me. My friends are all dead or gone. I have nothing to do and nowhere to go. I feel the
need to do something useful, worthwhile, of purpose since I’ve been back here. Never thought I’d say that, but I need to make
their deaths worth something more than another few years of me living on. ’
‘Zal, I—’
‘Hear me out. I don’t want a pity party. I want something to do so I don’t have to think about what I lost twenty-four-seven
for ever because then I’ll be a morose sonofabitch and drink, drug or fuck myself into oblivion, which looks like a waste
even from this end. Going into Alfheim is like a fucking godsend. But you going to find Ilya – I don’t like that and Sassy’s
story doesn’t quite add up. You can
throw in with her if you want to, but I’m out. I don’t care if Sarasilien is playing the best hand in history across all
of time and space and if I serve his purposes or not. Fuck him. I should probably thank him, because without him there’d be
no you right now, but fuck him anyway.’ He sighed. ‘I guess you have to go satisfy yourself you know what’s going on before
you gut him.’
Lila pulled at the rotting bark next to her leg, ‘Every time I think I know what I want to do I stop myself. Every time I
do something, the consequences . . .’ She shrugged. ‘You know what? If there are players in this Long Game, and everything
that happened with me is part of some scheme, I think I get where Sassy’s coming from. You get used enough, you want in. I
want to dish out some of what I’ve been getting. And then I want out and the way I see it, the only way out is to get rid
of all the bastards in my way. There may be an endless supply of bastards, is the thing that worries me. In Demonia I can’t
move ten steps before I have to gun someone down.’
‘No,’ Zal said. ‘Of that I am sure. The stronger you get the less you can be played. That’s why I am the strongest thing that
there is. I slipped up with Sorcha and paid Jack for it. I don’t do that again.’
She looked quizzically at him.
‘I am,’ he said. ‘That’s why I don’t play.’
She thought it over. ‘I’m so angry,’ she said, ripping bark free and throwing it down in the grass where their feet had crushed
it flat.
‘Yeah,’ he said and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘That’s why I love you.’
‘So you’re going to do what Sarasilien wants?’
‘No. I’m going to Alfheim, take a look around, see what’s happening. You can tell him it’s what he wants if you like.’
She thought it over. ‘I will.’
‘And you?’
‘I’m going to find Ilya, talk to him. Don’t know how I’ll get to Ilya short of standing in front of a freight train and praying
but I’ll find a way. I feel like I owe something to Greer, don’t ask me why.’
‘It’s the anecdotes,’ Zal said without hesitation.
She ripped another piece of bark free and scrutinised it, trying not to smile. It was covered in grey-green lichens, just
a few of millions on that hillside. They took hundreds of years to grow, didn’t go anywhere, didn’t even look like anything
special. ‘You’ll need gear.’
‘I’ll pick it up in Demonia.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Any excuse for a fight.’
‘You read my mind.’
Neither of them moved to get up. Lila put out her hand and Zal took it. They interlaced their fingers and closed them.
‘I liked our little house and our rebellious teenage daughter,’ Lila said. She didn’t look at him, she looked at her feet
and the crushed grass under them.
‘Yes, me too. I was looking forward to the pony rides in the forest.’
‘Christmas, with everything.’
‘Throwing unsuitable boyfriends off the deck.’
‘Shopping for clothes.’
‘Being shunned at the school gate.’
‘Graduation day. Oh, the prom!’
‘Walking through Alfheim, for the first time.’
‘Dinner at home.’
‘It would never work.’
‘No, not in a million years.’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Yes. Yesterday it did. Ten years in one minute.’
‘We aren’t going back there.’
‘I will,’ Lila said. ‘Let her think I’m taking her offer.’
‘You’re going to play?’
She took a deep breath and sighed it out through her nostrils. ‘You know, I never even played cards with Mom? Wouldn’t. Not
once.’
‘Why not? She must have known all the games.’
‘Sure. Every rule, every variation, every cheat. She couldn’t lose.’
‘You didn’t want to lose either.’
‘No no, it wasn’t that. You forget that you’re not a blackbelt in codependency, sensei. I was worried that one day I might
win and break her stride. Poker’s a confidence game. What if I beat her at something, anything, and she lost a bit of her
faith? She got the stuffing kicked out of her three or four times a year anyway. I didn’t want to be the person who did that.
Not even a little bit. Even though if I had played with her at least we would have had one thing in common, ’stead of nothing.’
‘But you’re going to play now?’
‘Hardball,’ Lila said, closing her free hand into a fist until the black leather of her fingers creaked and it felt like a
solid mace at the end of her arm. She turned it, admiring its flat knuckles, the gleam of the daylight cold and grey on the
curving planes of her thumb.
Zal put up his own fist in response, larger and bonier than hers. He touched knuckles with her and they pressed against each
other for a moment. ‘This is where I’m supposed to warn you off the dark side of the force,’ he said, and opened his hand
out then, shaking it as if he’d already punched someone and hit bone.
‘Feel free.’
‘I would, but this way seems more fun.’
Now they turned to face each other and touched foreheads, tilting slightly to the side so that their noses didn’t clash, they
could press the flat bones together like small bulls, staring wall-eyed.
‘Don’t get killed, Blackout,’ Zal said.
‘Aces high, is what you’re s’posed to say,’ she told him, grinning to match his grin.
‘Why?’
‘That’s the code,’ she said. ‘That’s what you say.’
‘Aces high, then.’
‘And to you.’
It took only a slight movement to change the headbutt into a kiss.
Lila let it evolve of its own accord. To really kiss Zal
was a pleasure she could afford and he never disappointed her. He put all of himself into it, and she could feel it and it
made her dizzy and shy and gratified and strange with delight.
At last she murmured, ‘So, do you think she heard us?’
‘Definitely,’ he said. ‘I guess she figures we’re safe bets – I can’t be arsed to lie and you . . . are you.’
Lila frowned. She didn’t like to be thought of as solid and predictable. ‘That’s just my poker face.’
He grinned at her, a fiendish, wolfish expression that agreed, but he wasn’t going to say it aloud. This made her feel that
what she had boldly said to lift her spirits might actually have potential as a truth. She kissed him again and stood up,
brushing bark off her trousers.
‘How about a little trip into Cedars? I’m pretty sure there’ll be a portal there.’
He cocked his head to the side, ‘And check a few small stories while we’re there?’
‘You see, telepathic again. I think you must be magical.’
He made a slight kind of shrug and for an instant she saw his shadow body emerge, flickering; black flames dancing across
his skin. ‘Must be.’
*
They walked a wide circle around the house, maintaining their nominal safe distance, until they reached Podunk Flats. The
ground was low and swampy, being at the end of the mountains and at the edge of the vast, watery delta that ran over Bay City’s
rocky outcrops and along its faultlines to the sea. The sound of insects was loud, the grey morning muggy as they stepped
out of the trees and onto the hardtop of the road. Lila had called a taxi and it was waiting for them at her coordinates a
few metres from their position, in hibernation, lights off, signalling systems offline.
One thing that had changed about Bay City in the last fifty years was something that had affected the entire human population.
In Lila’s earlier life citizens had been freer to move around. After the Hunter’s Reign and the influx of new blood the citizen
registry had changed and now everyone was tracked, not only by their spending patterns and their phonecalls, but every device
that contained an OS was enabled to collect data and match it to the national database, either online or merely as a precautionary
memory of where someone had been and what they had done. It was possible to get around a lot of types of tracking device,
but when almost every working machine could sniff your genome in seconds, it didn’t do much good. Thus, although Lila had
shut herself off from the other cyborgs, and from the network except for times of her choosing, she couldn’t vanish entirely
from the vast infopool that was the Bay City Memhub. At least she was more or less invisible thanks to her Agency markers,
depending on the day. Zal had no entry at all, which made him an Unknown Entity, identifiable perhaps as an elf but nothing
else. This would create a security alert that would instantly call attention and also prevent them using the car, so to preempt
that eventuality she signed herself on to one of the pending Cedars murder investigations and arrested him.