She nodded. ‘I would.’
Zal grinned at her, with the wolfish abandon that was both fierce and light-hearted. ‘And as a failed monster at least the
pressure’s off.’
‘It has been suggested to me I might collect an army of lame halts to make an heroic stand,’ Lila said, putting aside the
empty beef plate onto the floor and taking a drink from the jug. ‘As if by banding together with a common goal of great goodness
we will be lifted by valour into victory.’
‘Did you swallow an elf on your way here?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I like to try it out and see how it feels. Well, it has. The thought popped into my head, much
in the way they usually don’t. Just now.’
‘You’re hacked?’’
‘Possibly. Anyway, since it’s the stupidest idea I’ve heard in a long time I won’t be doing that.’
‘No,’ Zal said. ‘Though it has poetic and moral appeal. It could be an artistic feat.’
‘Not my style,’ Lila said.
Zal stroked the silky smoothness of the harness and felt her skin. When he looked at her she saw his memories of their lovemaking
in his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t say that. Is this what I think it is?’
‘Wait and see,’ she said, turning her attention back to Teazle’s bickering. ‘I think he will resort to violence soon.’
Everything waits to break through.
The words, the idea, formed in Lila’s mind as clearly as a voice speaking, so much so that she looked around for the speaker
before realising that it wasn’t to be found in Demonia. She’d had a lot of this kind of thing with Tath, when he had lived
in her heart, so she quickly got used to the idea, but now there was no physical connection to
whatever or whoever had spoken. If spirits spoke, then they spoke this way. She waited.
In her mind’s eye she saw the surface of reality splitting and breaking open like ice, smashing into shards, also unfolding
like complex bundles of cloth, unravelling like twine and reknitting into other forms that broke through the fine, thin crust
of the real and stretched it, pulled it. Everything tumbled under and boiled up again, places remade like personal memories
of themselves. From these places unrecognisable creatures appeared and wrestled free of the grey goo that formed them, fishlike,
ottery, and went dashing away.
It lasted an instant, and then it was gone. It was nothing like the idea of forming the halt army – something she felt was
a tease rather than a genuine suggestion, a test perhaps. She glanced at Zal but he was unperturbed, watching Teazle with
an expression of tolerant wariness that surprised her. She had turned a blind eye to their rivalry, much as they did themselves
because it suited them temporarily, but it had not vanished.
Since she couldn’t detect or stop these two messages, nor discover their route or author, she decided not to worry about this
new style of communication or speculate pointlessly on it. She drained the beer jug and wiped her mouth on the back of her
hand.
Teazle gesticulated and dramatised and swore his way to a deal with the hardbitten figure of the drakewarden. At last, as
the sun began to go down, they slapped each other’s shoulders and turned away. The dragon behind them, which had gone to sleep,
lifted its ugly eyeless head and sniffed the air before getting to its feet, claws grating on the stone roof tiles. For a
moment it moved its attention to Lila and she felt as if it were looking at her, then it hefted itself into the windless air
and was out over the lagoon leaving her wondering if it had been her secret speaker.
Around the city the lights were coming on. A cruiser balloon floated past, thrumming with engines and music. Somewhere in
the twilight street below demons screamed and squabbled. Teazle said, ‘I’m going to watch. I don’t trust them.’ His wings
opened as he took his natural form and then sprang into the air. Where the drake had flown so swiftly he arrowed even faster,
gliding on non-existent air currents. She was left alone with Zal on the roof.
‘When you go out to Alfheim I’m heading back into Otopia. You can talk to me anytime. I can be there instantly.’ She hesitated,
not wanting to ask the next question. ‘Did you get your cure?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘There isn’t one. Teazle thought if he leaned hard enough on some of the mages up at the Eternal Light they’d
be able to fix it, but they all said that because she’s dead they can’t do anything.’
‘So stupid,’ she said. ‘Why did she do it?’ She tapped her fingers restlessly on her thigh.
‘Demon,’ he said, as if that was the answer to everything. ‘Forget it. I’ll be fine.’
She looked at him and shook her head. ‘Don’t get yourself killed.’
‘I don’t know what you’re so worried about,’ he said. ‘You didn’t get yourself killed. Why would I?’
‘Because you gave a lot of your energy to me. Worked too.’
‘No it didn’t,’ he said and smiled, brilliantly. ‘That was just one of Teazle’s cheap tricks.’
She peered at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well I
am
knackered, but it wasn’t from any aetherical donations. That was a placebo. We fooled you.’
Lila felt the beer making her heavy but not heavy enough to stop her blood rising. ‘But it reacted to the . . . things . . .’
‘Of course it did. But that’s all it did.’
She sat, mouldering on her anger a little, settling into it, trying it on for size and finding it didn’t quite fit. ‘You tosser,’
she said finally.
‘Yes, well.’ He lay back in the recliner as if bathing in the murky streetlight. ‘True to form, and that’s what counts. Now
you know how the world of the spirit works.’
‘Trickery?’
‘Trickiness,’ he corrected. ‘If you believe it they will come and if you don’t, then they won’t. Or if they do then you can
be rid of them, as long as you keep your wits and don’t fear them.’
Lila didn’t remember fear. Dread wasn’t the same. Fear had some kind of hope in it but she had expected death so completely
there was no point in that emotion. ‘Ilya said that the three Titans were migrating from beyond Last Water into the other
worlds. Seems it’d be a lot easier to say no to them before that happened.’
‘I guess he tried it and they ignored him.’
‘Yes. Which makes your previous statement less persuasive.’
‘Poor old Ilya, too much time with the undead and not enough with Tinkerbell. Always his trouble.’ Zal turned the full force
of his attention on her and she felt his strength of will like a physical force breaking against her so that for a minute
she was convinced that it
alone had the power to remake her. His smile cracked the spell. ‘Never my trouble.’
‘My trouble is that I don’t know that it’s my business to stop them,’ she said. ‘These Titans may be special, but I doubt
their motives are anything to write home about. Maybe all they want is Sarasilien’s soul and maybe they should have it.’
‘Yes, could be,’ Zal said. ‘I’m curious to find out.’
This statement pleased her and soothed her more than she understood. ‘So am I.’
The drake they finally obtained was as promised, a large, ominous-looking creature with green fire burning behind the sealed
skin of its eyesockets and a strange, mottled hide of cadaverous purple, which was lit from within as though by glowing globes
rising to its surface and falling back. It touched down on the Manse roof with barely a whisper of claws on the stone and
immediately angled its ugly saurian head towards Zal.
‘It speaks,’ Zal said faintly, so that only Lila could hear. ‘This is the one they call Unloyal and it knows and keeps the
name.’
Sikarza servants fussed around, fixing the drake’s harnesses and rigging Zal’s seat between the shoulderblades. An image appeared
in the centre of Lila’s mind, a thought without words of someone who would not throw their lot in with anybody, for any price.
It was the drake’s introduction, she realised. She knew how to speak that way in return; it was like forming composite patterns
for another cyborg.
She asked it what it was doing as the servant of a drake trader and its reply was an inscrutable smooth blank. At the same
time she saw Zal frowning and guessed he was talking to it as well. How the signal passed from one to another she couldn’t
detect. Her wondering about this became a question and the answers returned as fast as deflected shots – Unloyal had been
getting fatter at the trader’s expense while he waited for an interesting opportunity to appear and was content for the demon
to act as his agent. The thought sharing was transmitted because Unloyal was a telepath, not because she was.
And what was telepathy? Lila wanted to know a scientific explanation.
Two-way aetheric radio, Unloyal returned. In her case the drake was powering both sides of the operation, since she had no
aetheric body of note. The transmission medium was the aether itself, clearly,
and the packet rate was unimpeded by physical constraints and virtually instantaneous and as wide as the world.
Lila told it she would stick with her clone and the old quantum transmission she understood, and the drake glanced at Zal’s
harness, made an equalisation and said they were the same thing.
She objected – surely aether and matter were not the same? Yes, it said, they were the same, but they were not simultaneously
expanded in the most material types of universe. Then its interest wandered and she felt it turning to Zal, leaving her sitting
in her sun lounger in the dark, looking at the gaudy pulsing lights of the dirigibles as her mind turned this new factlet
over and over like prayer beads. She had begun to have an inkling of who might play games with Titans.
Meanwhile Teazle returned, appearing like a white genie out of nowhere. He assumed his natural form and prowled across the
roof to the two of them.
‘This is where we part ways again,’ he said. ‘There is news of strange events in the Uathtan Wilderness and a sudden silence
from the City States of Zrae, which lie on its borders. Rumours fly of a demon horde from the wastes and in the Elusive Sanctum
mages pack their bags and flee. They have sealed all portals into and out of Bathshebat.’
Lila frowned. ‘Same thing as Alfheim?’
‘I am sure,’ Teazle said with great, pleased confidence. He was sparkling with anticipation. She could see she only warranted
a part of his attention. ‘Zal, can you ride?’
Zal got up and reeled slightly though he kept his feet. With a steady motion he eased the joints in his neck and shook out
his arms. ‘I’ll survive it.’ He bent and picked up a light elvish pack that had been brought and laid at the side of his chair,
went through it quickly and then slung it over his shoulder. ‘Don’t forget if they come to sack the place that you need to
save the instruments from the Opera House. Put them away in one of your vaults or something. You’ll never be able to replace
them.’
Teazle’s bright gaze flicked briefly over Zal. ‘I intend to defend the city,’ he said, almost hurt. ‘It might be the last
bastion of demon culture.’
Zal nodded. ‘If I don’t hear from you I won’t come back here.’
‘I’ll find you,’ Lila said to Teazle.
‘The elf is right,’ Teazle replied. ‘You should consider Demonia closed from now on. Much as we may feast and party it is
no time to
let loose our wild brothers on foreign soils. All entry points shall be sealed as my first duty. I will do any finding that
must be done.’
‘You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?’ She got up herself and finally conceded that the beery happiness must go. Within
moments it was reconfigured to sugar and water in her system.
‘Why not?’ Teazle said. ‘It is interesting.’ With that he sprang up into the air on his own, white wings. Beside the looming
bulk of the drake he was small, a lithe figure of beaming brilliance that flicked itself quickly up and over the observatory
tower and then stooped with the speed of a falling dagger and was lost to sight somewhere in the night streets below.
‘Right,’ Zal said, blinking as if with a mighty mental effort. ‘One final thing. It seems to me there’s a slight chance of
possession by unstoppable phantoms circling about. I didn’t want to burst his bubble but as from now on, all things being
equal, we have no way of verifying anybody’s identity. I seem to remember something from my days as a spy that in this kind
of situation we can’t trust one another at all. If you, for instance, got taken over by infernal evil able to copy your every
move, how would I know this . . .’ he touched the silver harness, ‘. . . was still okay?’
‘I won’t be in contact with it as long as you’re in Alfheim,’ she said. ‘I did think of running it as a simultaneum but one
consciousness is really more than enough to deal with. If you need to contact me you can instruct a part of it to return to
Otopia. It will find a way. Of course, then I won’t be able to believe a word of what it has to say but . . . you know . . .’ She smiled and put her hands on the front of his shoulders lightly.
‘Thought that counts,’ he smiled back and his long, pointed ears fanned out their ragged edges in the way that always made
her laugh. He leaned down and kissed her. She stored the moment in full sensory maximum-width capture and smelled lime zest.
He wobbled on his feet. ‘Typical for the bloody charm to work now,’ he said and straightened up. ‘I’ll see you soon.’
She watched him walk across the tiles to where the blotched, craggy form of Unloyal, who for some reason she couldn’t stop
thinking of as Unholy, waited in his own septic light.
Zal had the same easy stride and arrogant swagger he’d had when walking out onto a concert stage. If anything, he looked more
convincing now and less like a set extra from a movie. His leap to the high saddle was an effortless bound of the elastic
sort only elves
could muster. He landed as though weightless and buckled the safety straps over his legs, ignoring the drake’s sudden lurch
as it got to its four feet and stretched itself out for a shake. He took hold of the saddle bow and then Unloyal turned to
her.
Again she felt the sensation of a pause in conversation, but it said nothing. She did not attempt to conceal her conviction
that if Unloyal did anything harmful or neglectful to Zal she would hunt it down. A faint amusement came to her that wasn’t
her own and then with a swing of its head Unloyal crouched and burst up from the roof. A single flap of its wings sent all
the tables and chairs and everything else loose scattering and tumbling across the tiles, servants falling down headlong to
save themselves. Only Lila stood fast, her hand lifted to shield her eyes as she watched them take off into the humid murk
of the demon night. She felt lonely as she followed their going until they were only a speck against the greater darkness
out over the ocean. She tracked the burst of particles that showered their departure through the drake’s own portal and then
knew them to be as far away as the faint stars overhead.
Then Lila went back the way she had come, to the ruined gangster house and through the portal in the room with the broken
window.
The Cedars apartment block was quiet as she came into it. She didn’t know much about portal technology, but enough to know
how to ruin one. Teazle had taught her. She found the locking crystals and smashed them, then watched the circular time-space
distortion decay over a few seconds until its presence was only a piece of history visible to high-end forensics. There were
better ways of disposing of the things, less dangerous ways with less risk of blowback, but she didn’t care about the other
end of the system, only that one more wormhole was shut.
She did the same to the Zoomenon garbage portal in the opposite room, noting that Roxa’s blood was still sticky in places
on the floor, and then walked back into the apartment proper. There was nobody about. The cushioned area with its two thrones
was vacant, although incense still smouldered in a dish on the floor. She heard voices on the floor below. Something about
their pitch, a feeling of anxiety, made her open a tentative spy channel into the Otopian networks.
Silence greeted her.
She closed the link and recrypted her operating frequencies, then crossed to the window, opened it and stepped onto the sill.
From there
it was a quick leap up to the roof, which was high enough to give a reasonable view over the city and the bay.
From shoreline to hills every road was jammed with cars, every street full of people. Some rushed purposefully, others stood
and gaped around them at the incomprehensibility of a world suddenly without its lifeblood of electronic chatter. She was
glad she’d lived on the outside of it for so long, self-sufficient because she had the world of information in her head. There
was a giddy unpleasant fretfulness to the movements she saw and heard everywhere, a panic not far away in spite of the fact
that barkers were already out, moving through lines of stalled traffic to reassure everyone that this was a temporary and
relatively unimportant setback. Fine, unless you wanted to buy, or sell, or travel, she thought, watching cars trying painfully
to work their way across gridlocked junctions. Going by the activity she figured the whole network was down, but she could
feel local traces of electrochatter here and there, so individual machines were working and there was power.
Beneath her several gang-coloured cars were gathering, teams moving quickly, arming themselves. She knew a raid forming when
she saw it and expected that a thousand other opportunists would be making ready to snatch and run while the systems failure
inhibited the police response. Her anger at them was brief, useless. She could only stop them with death or violence close
to it, and after them would be more and a billion other unstoppable things. She felt the Signal, its eternal hum of bee-busy
knowledge, but whatever she did that hum never altered. It didn’t approve or disapprove, it gave no sign that something was
gained or lost, if she had won or if she was just another one of the features pushing the numbers of the dead up and up. There
was no payback either way.
In the cracked concrete yard the car doors were sliding shut. Bullets counted themselves into guns, voices swore, laughed,
said obscene things with the emphasis of overconfident foolishness riding fear. So alive. So uncertain.
Everything waits to break through.
She ignited her jets and took to the air.
Temple Greer waited for her in the open courtyard – what he called his ‘ready room’ at moments when he couldn’t stand to be
indoors. Malachi was with him outside the yurt’s cream-coloured woollen dome. They were playing quoits. Greer was winning.
Bentley sat to the side, a grey statue on the bench where the trees cast the most
shade. Her hands were folded in her lap. She looked demure, quiet, an android from some period film of social manners. Her
face was tilted towards the sky.
As Lila arrived Bentley turned towards her and half lifted her hand in a wave. Lila waved back, coming in to land on the browned
grass, worn almost to its roots by so many feet. Malachi was slow to notice her, because he was hidden behind a clump of shrubbery.
As she moved around it she saw another reason. His graceful figure had broadened so his shoulders split the seam of his coat.
His arms protruded far below his cuffs, and they were furry with clawed hands that handled the rope rings of the quoits with
a degree of clumsiness. His head was more square, more flat from the back and when he turned she saw that his face had lengthened.
Halfway between a worg and a tiger, he was a hunched aberration in his tailored camel coat – the only clothing he had left.
But it was still Malachi. The orange eyes and a way of moving as if the air around him was silk would have given it away.
Greer tossed his final quoit at the post and missed. ‘Goddamn it.’
She reached them. ‘They always said the old games were the best.’
Malachi blinked at her. ‘They?’ It was barely distinguishable as words. It was a growl that had a shape like a word, and that’s
all.
‘Chess, shove ha’penny, billiards, dominoes, all that stuff that was good before computers,’ she said. ‘Quoits.’
Malachi held out two rings to her, speared on the bulky, gnarled shape of his index finger. She unhooked one and stepped up
to the line as Greer moved aside for her. She looked at the stumpy stick that was the mark and turned the ring in her hand
for a moment before tossing it with a flick of her wrist. It spun down and snagged the mark, coming to rest so that it lay
centred over it. She stood aside to let Malachi have his last throw. He sighed and made a cast, opening his hand with difficulty.
The ring bumped and rolled on its edge, turning away into the rough.
‘Quiet around here,’ she said as Greer went forward to collect the rings, shucking up his trousers to bend down and gather
them all up. ‘When did all this happen?’
‘Two hours ago,’ Malachi rumbled. ‘All systems at first. Then some things came back on. No communication though.’
Greer came back, sorted out the rings marked with orange and the rings with green. ‘I guess it’s the same everywhere.’