‘Demonia’s out,’ she confirmed. ‘T stayed there. Zal’s gone to Alfheim.’
‘Well, it’s not like we were a big alliance,’ Greer said, handing the orange rings to Malachi again. ‘I mean, we’re all cut
off. So what? Most people here are over the moon about it.’
‘Don’t I get any?’ Lila asked.
‘No,’ he said, edging her out of the way so that he could line up to throw again. ‘You’re no fun at this.’
She moved back and stood shoulder to shoulder with Malachi. ‘Nice coat,’ she said to him.
‘You’re playin’ with fire, Black,’ he snarled, literally curling his lip to show the size of his big yellow teeth. They were
oddly whiter and sharper than she remembered. His gums and tongue were black, with red edges. It was hard not to stare. He
lined up his rings on his finger carefully.
‘Do you know where Tatters is?’ She tried to make the question sound casual.
He jerked his head in the direction of the yurt’s open door flap. ‘On the rack.’
‘We didn’t expect you to cut and run so fast,’ Greer said. ‘But thanks for tidying up that police job. I crossed off one entire
line of my to-do list.’
‘Sir,’ Lila said. ‘How comprehensive is this isolation?’
He paused in his lengthy stance process and stood back to eye her. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Are any internal networks functional?’
‘Nothing. Individuals and within individuals, yes. Everything else is as quiet as the . . . what’s your point?’
‘I think this is a by-product and not an attack. It’s like a necessary prequel.’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Greer said, recreating his position and leaning forward, ring balanced in his fingertips. ‘I had
a guy up here to explain it and he couldn’t.’
‘It’s aether disruption,’ Lila said just as he made his move. The ring tumbled forward, hit wide of the post and flopped in
the dust. ‘And it does. But not to a pure-matter physicist. My point is that it doesn’t look like we can evacuate the city
without networks. But I think that at least we should evacuate this building and the surrounding area.’
‘The entire army and every officer able to walk is presently supervising contraflows downtown,’ Greer said, easing a shoulder
as he
moved to let Malachi take his place. ‘Those that are able are distributing themselves to keep order. Why do you want this
building turned upside down as well?’
‘I think this is all about Sarasilien. Where he is, that’s where trouble is coming,’ she said.
‘He is our only adept advisor, with the exception of Malachi here,’ Greer said watching Malachi flick a ring and just edge
the post. ‘And he’s the only one with significant powers. The only one, Black. One. In a world of trouble.’
‘He
is
your trouble,’ Lila said.
‘You’ve got proof of course.’ Greer moved around Malachi and smoothed one side of his moustache with a finger before squinting
at the post and adjusting the position of his toe to the scraped line in the dirt.
‘There would be no silence without him, no crisis.’
‘No cyborgs,’ Malachi growled, making the word sound like a beast’s curse.
‘You see, Black,’ Greer fiddled with the shoulders of his jacket and took a deep breath, ‘Sarasilien is a royal pain in my
ass but I have to be grateful, and the rest of us, because we’ve got you and you are something that stands on the line between
the humans and the rest of the aetherials and their goddamned business. Without you we’d go back to being the wildebeests
on the savannah with a lion explosion in process. So while you may be right, I still have to protect his skinny elf butt.’
‘Everything you see is just the tip of a much nastier iceberg,’ Lila said. ‘And I believe it’s going to try to shove itself
right up that skinny elf butt. So the further away everyone else gets, the better.’
Greer tossed his quoit. It thumped solidly over the post, the first one. ‘How far away?’
‘I have no idea. For my money, about one country.’
‘I can probably manage a couple of miles. What else?’ He walked behind Lila as Malachi moved in front of her to take aim.
A smell of hot animal fur and baking minerals pushed out towards her from the folds of the camel coat. She watched him flex
his pawlike hands, trying to straighten the knuckles, failing.
‘Xavi’s got to go,’ Lila said. ‘She’s a wild card.’
‘Yeah well, that’s not a problem. She’s gone already. That was what I was going to give you as your next assignment, always
assuming you survive this assignment.’
‘She’s gone?’
‘Completely gone. Mal came to sign her out, the comms went down and she skipped town at the same moment. My guess is she cracked
the aether part of the cell a while ago and was waiting for an opportunity.’
Malachi made his turn and watched his quoit thud into the scrappy weeds next to the post. He grunted in disgust. ‘I picked
up traces of her spells. She went to Alfheim.’
‘You sure?’ Lila was taken aback and puzzled.
The huge cat-beast gave her a baleful orange stare and stepped wearily off the plate. ‘I’m sure.’
‘Who made that cell?’ Lila asked. She dreaded the answer.
‘Who do you think?’
‘Then he knows,’ she said. ‘Crap.’ She’d been relying on the information as an ace in her sleeve; now she was back to nothing.
‘Maybe not,’ Malachi said as they both stood back and watched Greer re-rolling his sleeves. Faces came and went in the windows
of the surrounding building but nobody tried to come out and disturb them. ‘If she was correct about him then he had no idea
she was alive. He will be in shock. Shocked people are not at the top of their form.’
‘D’you think she’s in touch with them – with the Betrayed?’ Lila asked.
Greer picked up his remaining rings and skimmed one low, too low. It hit Malachi’s previous throw and fell over, making a
little Venn diagram of near misses. ‘From what she’s told us, I doubt it, but then, she might be a good liar. Mal here thinks
your diary charm made her unwittingly honest so, I’m gonna make a bet and go with him. Say she hasn’t, but she still is more
like them than not. She could be in touch. Who knows if they’re in cahoots or not?’
‘I have a taped interview.’ The voice was Bentley’s, carrying clearly from her spot on the bench where she was beyond human
hearing distance but obviously not beyond cyborg pickup. ‘Would you like to see it?’
‘Yeah,’ Lila said, watching Malachi miss again. He groaned and rolled his heavy head, easing the massive neck muscles under
their thick ruff of coal-black hair. She excused herself from the game with a slight bow and backed away from her position,
going to join Bentley in the shade.
The grey woman greeted her with a smile and as Lila sat down reached out and took hold of her hand. With the contact established
passing across the files was as simple as usual. Lila unpacked the compressions and closed her eyes, keeping hold of Bentley’s
hand even though there was no need any more as she watched the recording.
Bentley and Xaviendra were sitting in Xavi’s holding cell. It was a single room with an adjoining bathroom and in the weeks
that she had been there Xavi had furnished and decorated it extensively – this at Lila’s expense – creating a pretty, well-lit
sitting room complete with a work area in which a huge array of painting materials lay ordered with two canvases up on easels,
although they were turned from the camera. It was hard to say who looked the most unreal in the situation, Bentley with her
uniformly grey plastic exterior or Xavi’s purple- and blue-toned elf skin with its mane of black hair hanging almost to her
ankles and her blue, saurian tail coiled neatly around her hoofed feet. They sat with an ease that spoke of their familiarity
with the situation. Lila knew there were dozens of recordings of Xavi. She had taken many of them herself but by far the most
had been patiently undertaken by Bentley.
This one was part way through. Bentley was speaking.
‘ . . . did you ever know about any successes in the experiments?’
‘Yes,’ Xavi said in her immaculate, accented Otopian. ‘There were three.’
‘But you weren’t on the site any more at that time.’
‘No, I had escaped, but I stayed close by – I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t want to go anywhere.’ She sighed. ‘I heard
them, you might say. I felt them. They had a presence in that . . . place . . . where I was.’
‘Was this place physical?’
‘No. It was shadows. The place of the undead. I don’t know its name. I don’t know if it has a name. Nobody speaks there. There
are things without names, without bodies. I didn’t understand how I could be there. I was very frightened. When they came
I knew them because they felt like me and not like the other things there. We could touch each other and I knew their thoughts.’
‘Who were they?’
Xaviendra’s hooves flexed and her tail wound itself more tightly about her ankles. ‘It doesn’t matter. Who they were didn’t
exist any more. Nor me. We chose new names there, so that we wouldn’t get lost.’
There was an expectant pause and then Xavi said, ‘I cannot use
them here. It is not right for you to know them. Magical naming. I am sure you know of this.’
Bentley nodded. They had never tried to coerce anything out of Xaviendra. She had been a broken creature and readily forthcoming
with anything they asked so it hadn’t been necessary to push. Having her withhold something was new.
‘You must understand I wouldn’t ask for them unless we had a strong belief that we would need them,’ Bentley said.
‘I would not give them to you unless I was certain it was necessary,’ Xaviendra countered. ‘You do not know the three.’
‘And do you?’
‘We suffered the same fates. In that I know them. When it became clear that they were much more able than was I, and that
they were bound in a way that I was not, then we had to separate. They went to their duty and I stayed in case any others
came that way. But as time passed I knew that I was losing myself there. If I stayed I would decay and be as dead as I was
supposed to be, as undone as the elements. In that place there is no time, nothing to see, it is dark, an eternity of darkness,
a space without limit. The three suffered no loss there. But I had to return to one of the heavier planes. I tried to go to
Alfheim, but I . . . was barred.’ She became straighter, taller, narrower in her chair with the effort of holding back her
feelings. ‘My father’s magic kept me out. I was dead to them all.’
Bentley was the soul of compassion, her expression gentle as the turn of the subject. ‘Did you encounter the thing of which
they were afraid?’
‘The cause of the atrocity? No. After all I had been told I expected to face a monster of perfect horrors, a hell of vileness
beyond my imaginings. That is why I was lost for so long there. I thought it was a mistake. There was nothing there except
the spirits, and they were neither kind nor useful. They were malignant, but nothing at the same time. They were fond of my
misery but they were . . . of no consequence. There was
nothing
there.’ She sounded puzzled now and spread out her hands on her knees. Bright paint covered her fingers and she absently
scratched some of it off.
‘Where did the three go?’
‘To search,’ she said.
‘Did you meet them again?’
‘No.’ She shook her head and her curling, thick black hair moved like a waterfall, rippling its full length. ‘Never. They
had to search
until it was found. They went far beyond any place I came to. Mages tried to guide them from without, they said. I did look
of course. I was lonely. But I hated it there. And I never found any trace of them. Nothing.’
‘You didn’t call their names?’
Xavi shook her head. ‘When I understood that they might never find their quarry I knew I couldn’t wait. I decided I would
be revenged for us all. That decision saved my sanity. And I pursued it. The rest you know.’
Bentley nodded. ‘Do you think they may have come to the same decision?’
‘I suppose you think that because the mages died,’ Xaviendra said, smoothing paint flakes off her skirt. ‘No. They were bound
to the duty.’
‘Interesting that the attacks and the sickness stopped when the three were trapped Under,’ Bentley said.
Xaviendra frowned slightly. ‘I don’t have an explanation for you. Perhaps the Sleeper was bound to the mages and their attacks
on it killed them instead. Such things are not uncommon among magekind and their creatures.’
Bentley smiled. ‘What do you mean, creatures?’
‘They can make mirrors of themselves, like clones, or creatures of other dimensional natures, which are linked by sharing
spirit. A mage creature has most of the powers of the master mage. A mage always has control of their creations; they have
the same will. The Sleeper consumed all.’
‘An anti-magic?’
‘Something like that. A mage vampire perhaps, but without mind. Nothing they did could touch it. I believed their actions
to be evil and unforgivable but at the same time I witnessed their fear. It was overwhelming. They were provoked by terror
of annihilation and guilt, because if they had not opened their way to this place, they would not have attracted the creature’s
attention. I did not see it myself. As I said. I saw them and what they did.’
The recording ended. Lila opened her eyes and looked at Bentley. Quite aside from the obvious information was an implication
it was impossible to ignore. Cyborgs weren’t the only ones with clones. ‘She’s been out the whole bloody time.’
The android moved as if it sighed. ‘It is possible.’
Lila ground her teeth. Just as it seemed there could be no more
complication, one presented itself, fait accompli, right beneath her nose. ‘Where’s Sarasilien?’
‘I believe he is still here.’
‘Doing what, I wonder?’
Bentley made an equivocal face and shrugged.
‘What bothers me the most about all of this is that I can’t reconcile him with this monster that history paints him as,’ Lila
said. ‘I don’t know what to believe about him any more and I don’t trust him to tell the truth because he kept too much back.’
Bentley nodded. ‘When I first decided to take this form on I thought it would liberate me from the weaker parts of my humanity.
It was a sign of the war, of my loss of so much of myself, I thought. I was a walking testament to the horror of a kind of
murder. I thought I’d search the Signal and find the truth there – of who I was and would have been, of what was stolen and
what could have been changed without harm. But the Signal is everything, all information that could be. Yeah, the world and
everything that ever happened is in it, but among all the possibilities it’s so hard to find. The past is there, and the present,
and the future and all the never-was too. I thought it would have all the answers. I’d mine them out. I’d mine myself out.
I’d be . . .’