Taro lowered himself onto his elbows, forearms flat on the mazeway, arse in the air. He started to edge off the mazeway and onto the nets, curling his fingers round the ropes, pulling himself forward, slow and careful-like. His stomach fluttered and his heart-rate soared as his world was reduced to the simple need to get across the nets. Arel’s voice sounded further away now, as though he’d already slipped off the City into the darkness below. Perhaps he was already falling, very, very slowly.
‘Anyways, I’m on m’way back from Resh’s to the whores’ sleepin’ room an’ I walk past the fucker in the corridor. ’E’s in a real hurry, don’t give me so much as a second glance, but I know ’im. I’ll never forget ’is face. That’s it, Taro. Slowly, now.’
Taro had managed to get most of the way into the nets, fingers entwined in the ropes, body stretched over a pair of ropes set close and linked by an uneven network of thin cord. He worked by feel now, his eyes pressed shut. Reality was just the ropes under him, and Arel’s bitter words.
‘When I saw ’im it all fell into place. Limnel set us up with this - what d’ya say ’is name was? Scarrion? So ’e was in with ’im all along. Dunno why, and I don’t care. Do know there’s no way I’m gonna be Limnel’s whore when ’e’s the one shafted me in the first place. I was outa there. Yer almost bolted now, Taro, nearly there.’
He was less than an arm’s-length from safety. He stretched one hand forward. He just had to reach out and Arel would grab him.
His fingers brushed hers.
One of the cords stretched, twanged . . .
Snapped.
Taro flipped sideways. His legs tumbled away. One hand pulled off the rope. The other held, but he wasn’t strong enough, his grasp was slipping—
Something jerked him up, winding him. The rope round his waist. For a moment he swung, connected to the Undertow only by the flimsy rope and one numb hand still desperately clinging on. Then he managed to get his other hand back up and groped for the net. A moment later he felt Arel’s hand on his wrist, pulling him up, half-dragging, half-lifting him over the lip of the mazeway where he lay panting, the rush of adrenalin making everything clear and sharp for a few moments.
Arel grasped his arm and pulled him up. ‘There, that weren’t so bad. I ’ad to take ya with me, Taro, if ya wasn’t dead. Piss ’im off by taking away ’is toy, and pay m’debt to ya. C’mon, not far now.’
Taro hoped not. To get across the nets he’d cashed in some of the pain for a loan of energy, delivered on a tide of fear. Payback wouldn’t be long coming. While he could still speak he murmured, ‘Thanks, Arel.’
‘Aye. We’re even now, right? I ran out on Limnel, so I ain’t never comin’ back to this part of the Undertow. Don’t know if Daim’s people’ll ’ave me, but anythin’ beats fuckin’ punters for a spoon of happy dust.’ She hoisted him up and carried on. He let himself fall into a daze, just moving his legs, not thinking about anything other than the need to keep walking till he couldn’t walk any further, then he could let it all go and fall into darkness, comforting darkness . . .
‘Right, we’re ’ere.’
Taro raised his head to find they were at the end of the corridor leading to Fenya’s place. The short stretch of mazeway swam and dipped in his vision.
‘I’ll get ya t’the door, then I’m gone,’ Arel told him.
Though he could feel his feet moving, the corridor wasn’t getting any shorter. Instead it stretched away, pulling him with it. He was vaguely aware of being handed from one pair of arms to another. He gave up trying to stay conscious and followed the corridor off the end of reality.
They have found her. She hid as best she could but it was not good enough. She knew it never would be.
The demons are beautiful, but that beauty is a mask. Elarn can see beyond the mask to where infinity and hellfire lurk in their eyes.
She cowers at the bottom of the wardrobe like a child. They open the door and reach in for her. She cannot resist; she lets them pull her out. One of them leads her by the hand through the familiar rooms of her own home and tells her to sit down. She obeys, like the naughty little girl she is. They ask her to explain what she has done. She does, leaving nothing out, telling no lies, though her voice is a whisper of fear and all she can think about is the coming punishment.
She tells them how her brother Jarek brought home the adolescent girl he called Nual, though the identity he bought for her gave her another name, Lia, and Elarn suspects that when he found her she had no name at all. She reveals how she started to feel something beyond maternal love for the girl; and when she could resist the attraction no longer and tried to take the girl to her bed, she found out what the child really was. In her fear, she drove the girl away, and in doing so she drove away her brother too. Since then she has lived alone and in fear of this day, the day when the Sidhe would follow the trail of their renegade here.
When she falls silent they tell her that despite her fears they will let her live and never visit her again. Her fear, they say, is strong enough to ensure her silence. But she must kill the renegade.
The one who first took her hand stands up, walks over and kneels before her. She is caught in the woman-creature’s regard, paralysed and compliant. Elegant hands reach up to her, as though to take something from her, or to caress her cheek like a lover. She finds she still has her voice, or perhaps they are just listening to her thoughts.
‘What are you doing?’
The woman replies without moving her lips,
We are giving you the last song you will ever sing. And a safe place to hide it from our enemies.
Her fingers reach Elarn’s face.
And carry on.
Elarn wakes with a rush of indrawn breath.
She clutches the sheets to her and stares up at the ceiling where rain shadows dance on the familiar sculpted surface.
‘Lights on,’ she rasps. The furniture of her bedroom springs into life around her. Outside, a storm is throwing itself at the house, waves banging and crashing at the base of the cliff below. But she’s safe here. It was just a dream, fading now. A nightmare about
them
. She has these dreams sometimes. But as long as they remain dreams, she can live with it.
She sits up. As she shifts in the bed she finds that she is naked. Where is her nightgown? And her body feels odd, heavy, but in a good way. Self-conscious, although there is no one for tens of kilometres in any direction, she reaches down and feels between her legs.
She is moist, sore, and sated. That is not possible.
She shouldn’t wake from her recurring nightmare with the feeling that she has recently had good, prolonged and energetic sex. It’s not like she has had even bad sex for several years - since she almost took Lia to her bed she has not let herself get near another person. So she must have imagined the sex . . . except there is strong physical evidence to the contrary.
She puts her hand out and smoothes the covers. They feel insubstantial, compared with the pleasant ache in her centre. What colour are they? She cannot be sure. It has not occurred to her until now, but under the veil of familiarity, she has lost the ability to name her surroundings. To name is to question and she is not permitted to do that. She cannot grasp the feel of reality.
Which means that this is not reality.
Hands, reaching for her face—
For a moment after waking Elarn lay frozen, unsure whether she really was awake this time. She was still naked, and the pleasant ache she recalled from her dream was still there. The details of the dream ran away like water, but this time she knew the sex had been real.
And now she was - where? In a dark room, in a strange bed: Salik’s bed. She was in Salik’s bed, where they had made love for what felt like days before she finally fell into an exhausted sleep. She hoped her nightmares hadn’t woken him. She listened for his breathing, but heard nothing . . . then she heard the sound of a door closing. She rolled over slowly, her body still reluctant to be dragged from the paralysis of the dream.
The bed beside her was empty, but still warm. She raised her head.
A strip of light showed under the door to the living room. Someone was talking in there. Who would visit Salik at this hour? But there were silences in the conversation and his com was no longer on the table beside the bed. He was comming someone, or they had commed him. At this time of night?
She strained to hear, curious, but not concerned . . . but when she thought she heard the name ‘Nual’ she got out of bed and silently crept over to the door. Through the gap she could see Salik, still naked, pacing across the far side of the room. He looked agitated and he was saying, ‘—need to find out what’s on that dataspike as soon as we can. Get your man onto it first thing. But that’s good news about the gun, very good news.’ He listened for a while. ‘No, I’ll have to leave it turned off while I’m with the delectable Medame Reen. Leave a message if it’s urgent. You may as well get some rest. Goodnight, Scarrion.’
Elarn dived for the bed and when he opened the door she was still only half under the covers, so she shifted around, making a show of having almost woken up, then turned away from him. She heard him put the com down on the table, then felt him get back into bed. For a moment she thought he would reach for her and, suddenly repulsed by the idea of his touch, she tensed. But he lay down on his back with a small sigh, not quite touching her. Within a couple of minutes his breathing had settled into the slow rhythms of sleep.
She counted to a hundred, hardly breathing herself, to be sure he was asleep. Then she got up, dressed hurriedly and quietly, and left. He didn’t stir.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
She should kill him, that would be the wisest move. But looking at the youth in her bed, Nual was not sure. Even Solo only came to her homespace when she had important business; no one else even knew how to find it. Yet she had crossed the Undertow to fetch this foolish, pretty boy, and then brought him here, to her sanctum.
So much for the human belief that the Sidhe were masters of self-knowledge who always understood the full implications of their actions.
The water-traders had cleaned up the worst of his injuries, setting his dislocated finger and dressing the deeper cuts. He had remained unconscious throughout the flight here and only now, as dawn seeped up through the floor, did he start to stir. He twitched and moaned, no doubt reliving recent events in nightmare.
She needed to know what that nightmare was, what had happened to him. The safest, most logical option would be to ream the knowledge from his unconscious mind and when she had what she needed, to simply stop his heart. After all, what was he to her? Just an unlucky youth, one without lineage or influence, a liability - possibly even a link that her enemies could use to trace her.
He was also the only innocent in this whole mess. And he might be the only human in the City she could trust.
She placed a gentle hand on his arm; he flinched and groaned, but did not wake up.
Nual sighed. She could reach into the upper levels of his mind, not deep, just enough to rouse him, but years of self-control made her hesitate. Even without the promise she had made, she shied away from using her abilities, because of what they could do.
Because of what she had done.
She shook him gently.
Taro’s eyes darted behind their lids and his head thrashed from side to side on the pillow. He didn’t want to wake up. He wanted oblivion, death, an end to suffering.
If she couldn’t wake him, Nual told herself, she’d have no choice but to read his unconscious mind. Part of her wanted that, wanted to take him, use him, subsume him. It was what she had been born for. She had been in denial of her true nature for too long.
One last try the human way, and if he didn’t wake then, she would have no choice.
She said gently, ‘Taro. You’re safe, but you have to wake up.’
His eyes opened, slowly, painfully. The left one, badly bruised and watering, was barely more than a slit.
Despite herself, Nual felt a rush of emotions well up with his return to consciousness:
confusion-fear-shame-relief
.