Selling Out (39 page)

“One at a time,” the Ereba said mildly in a voice that was sweet and quiet and carried through the din. Zal climaxed and felt the sensation shoot straight through his body into his damaged hand, obliterating the pain with pleasure as some part of the Ereba’s
andalune
body took it away from Mr. Head and set it back on the table. She closed Mr. Head’s mouth with her own hand and there was silence. “Little Star, why don’t you speak first?”

Zal snatched his hand back and cradled it in his lap, scared to touch it. It felt as if it was his penis, shuddering and jerking with strange delight as it remade itself into an ordinary hand again. He wasn’t surprised the Ereba could do that to him. She was the Namer and Naming was the summit of power. Most likely his reactions weren’t intentional on her part, but just because everything about her was too intense for his system. He knew her in this form because it was her elven aspect but she had more. She could have any.

She gave him a sympathetic glance that stroked his whole body with a touch he could feel and said, “Rub it, dear.”

Her joke made him look at her.
Oh dear goddess
, he thought, and blanked out.

Zal came to slowly, face on the table again. He was woozy with self-generated happy chemicals and saw no reason to move. Either the ghosts would eat them or they wouldn’t. A girl was talking in that strange old language next to him. He heard her through a haze. She was saying that some people called Idunnai had forged something called a Brink. They had put prisoners on the Brink and spirits had come out. Sorcerers had controlled the spirits and sent them into the prisoners’ bodies, to merge with their true forms and make a new kind of people. But it didn’t work very often. Most of the prisoners became mad. They were hunted and herded through portals into Zoomenon where they fell to pieces.

The Ereba asked how many, and the girl said very many people. All who did not have magical ability. All. She said that the successful ones became sorcerers of a different kind. Not Idunnai. She gave an elvish word that meant face of shadow. Lothalan. These Lothalan were few. They were interbred with Idunnai mages. Some of their children were strong in magic, Idun throwbacks with powerful aetheric control. But some were weaker and stranger. She said most of these were sent away, told they were going to a new world through portals. It was a story. But it was not true. They were herded up and killed, their bodies sent to Zoomenon for disposal where it was safe to let them decompose. A few escaped and ran free. Monsters, she said. Not Idunnai nor Lothalan. Monsters without faces.

By this time Zal’s ardour had cooled with the talk of aetheric engineering. He was only glad of the resistance that endorphins put up, and the fact that the Ereba’s caress kept them circulating. The story made him want to stay where he was and pretend to be asleep. He could sense the attention of the ghosts in the room, listening with the same vigour they pursued all information; sucking it up like dry sponges.

“How long ago?” the Ereba asked softly.

The girl called Little Star said she did not know. She had lost count of time.

Then the Ereba said, “What would you like now, lost one?”

The admiral straightened, “She can join the Fleet,” he said staunchly. “All lost ones may join. It’s so. I made it so.”

“She is no ghost,” the Ereba said.

“She has a story,” the admiral corrected. “And no material form. Few memories. She is only a dream walking.”

“Is this the afterworld, is it the world of the dead?” the girl asked, hopeful. “We waited to get there. We thought it seemed long, but then, maybe it does to everyone.”

“Nah,” Zal said, eyes closed, face glued to the wood by drool. “This is the future. You’re not dead. You just lost your body and now you have to share one with . . . whoever . . . whoever I didn’t eat to stay alive. Welcome. Great to see you. Was I asleep there or did she just explain how the elves got into two different forms and that it wasn’t evolution, or, not the usual sort?”

“Elves?” The girl repeated the word. It was clearly new to her.

“Shadowkin and lightside. Night and day. Light and dark. A world of contrasts, and other bollocks,” Zal said. “I don’t suppose you remember any names from those days, do you? You and your friends?” He was rather impressed with his skill at remembering to exploit any moment for its information. Almost a fey skill. Malachi would be proud of him.

“The mage who left us there,” she said. “Lothanir Meyachi Saras Evayen of the House of Abhadha-Ilia,” and here she used a word Zal had never heard, only read about in old grammar books. A bi-gendered pronoun. “Shya was against the actions but shya had no choice. All the others were against shyam.” She paused. “You speak strangely. Are you one of the Lothalan?”

“No. Are you?”

“I was only a servant,” she said. “Idunnai-ap.” A girl of no power.

Zal was almost comatose. He was dimly aware that the Ereba was doing the equivalent of leaning on him because she didn’t want him to do anything now. He felt incredibly good and incredibly sleepy. His hand was still on Mr. Head’s arm and he was stroking it, and he hoped the girl could feel it. He would have liked to meet her and he wanted her to know he felt a bond to her, a complicated one, a personal one. But Mr. Head’s arm was only pottery.

“From now on,” the Ereba said, “each one of you may choose a destiny. Death, or residence within this golem until the time of its destruction. But if you stay you will speak only when spoken to and you will not control your vessel. What say you?”

Zal fell asleep to the sound of voices that slowly became soft and slurred like the wash of the sea. He held onto Mr. Head’s arm. It was warm. He was inside a woman. That was nice. He liked her very much and it was good of her to give the lost threads their new chance at being woven in again, even if there wasn’t much space for them left in the fabric after so long being lost.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

L
ila brought Malachi into the house, avoiding the closed, taped door, and said to Max’s back, “This might be a bad moment but, Max, this is Mal, my partner. Work partner,” she added the last quickly at the end, not wanting any romantic puzzles leading Max to make some joke or other. “Mal, this is my sister, Maxine.”

Max turned around and leaned back on the counter, chopping board behind her and her paring knife dangling loosely from her fingers. Her kitchen presence was loose-limbed and deadly, in a quiet way. Lila wouldn’t have wanted to be Max’s sous-chef for anything. She always reminded Lila of Clint Eastwood when she was in her kitchen; languid self-possession, tough as nails. Lila used to envy her so much, she even felt it now. Inside her chest Tath snickered with recognition and she gave him an internal shove.

Max gave Malachi the once-over, leaving no doubt that he could be whatever he wanted as long as he understood that, in the kitchen, she was the king. King was the only word, not because Max did drag, but because she had that kind of authority. For a moment his natural jungle cat and her Clint-ness had a brief stare-down, fey to human and man to man. Then some barrier was passed. Mal made a minor tip of one shoulder and Max grinned with the left half of her mouth, arrogant and pleased.

She put the knife down and came forward to offer him a garlicky hand. His nostrils twitched but he took it without flinching. Lila knew how much he hated having clinging odours on him, so it was a mark of major approval on his part. She sighed, not even knowing until then that she’d been holding her breath.

“I’ve been done over by one of your lot in the past,” Max said, as if she were making small talk. “So, just as a fair warning, and I’m not saying you will, but if you let anything happen to my sis, you’re gonna be hamburger on my grill.”

Mal raised his eyebrows and grinned. “Pleasure.”

Max nodded, her eyes shrewd. “Always takin’ it that you aren’t responsible for everything else around here.”

“That was the elves,” Malachi said without a pause, dismissing the entire notion that faeries could be responsible for anything unfortunate. He sniffed, and Lila saw his glance flick to the pounds of ground meat waiting to be browned. “And the humans,” he added, his eyes roving over the rest of the room before going back to Max, but lower; he tended to look up at her with his chin down, Lila noticed.

Deference
, Tath said.

Maybe you should come out too
, Lila said.

Do you really think that would be wise? Even your cat does not know me.

Mmn
, Lila was suddenly unhappy at the idea of having secrets from Max, who would take it very badly if she knew. She wanted, needed, to have Max back on her side, where she belonged. But the elf’s doubt was powerful, and she didn’t say anything.

“Uh-huh.” Max had dismissed Malachi meanwhile and turned back to her work, picking up the big knife and starting to create hundreds of perfectly square tiny bits of onion. “I heard a lot about faeries they . . .” She hesitated and then ploughed on with determination, “. . . have a big presence in the hotelinos.”

Lila knew it was because the fey there were high rollers coming to cream the best of the luck, hotelino owners notorious for running untraceable scams, or call girls and boys offering special experiences for the endless supplies of tourists and businessman who made the industry run so hot. Whatever they did, they were better than the humans at the same game. It was a big sore point in the places Max worked. The only thing the fey weren’t good on was cookery, but only because they had such varied tastes in food and most of them weren’t acceptable to human palates or stomachs.

“That where you work?” Mal shrugged and made himself at home. He ripped a binliner out of a half-finished roll lying on the top of the refrigerator and started collecting up empty bottles and packets from their resting places all around. He glanced at the books on the table but only in passing, though Lila knew he’d be drinking in all the information about her family as if it were water.

“I was head of the kitchen at the Tropicana,” Max told him.

“Was?”

“Relationship trouble. Never date at work.”

Malachi grunted, momentarily poring over a folded issue of
Bay-side Bugle
before stuffing it into his plastic sack.

Lila, not knowing what else to do, went to the cupboard under the sink and started to look for cleaning things. She was aware of Mal’s expert forensic eyes and that they were probably reading a history of neglect here she wanted to wash away. Naturally, what sprays and detergents there were had either run out or crusted over entirely. The only clean cloth was a half a T-shirt balled up in a corner. Sponges and mops were balls of mouldy gruesomeness, stained and covered with ancient, congealed things. Dad never managed to finish a cleaning job. He just lost interest and threw things into the nearest hidey-hole.

She found herself crouched in the shadow of the open door by Max’s legs, eyes prickling with tears, biting her lip. Max and Malachi had got into a casual get-to-know-you conversation that existed solely to keep everyone on an even emotional keel until they could get dinner over with. She ought to be participating to help things along. Lila bit her lips together even harder and reached behind the empty shoe polish containers to try and find any useful thing. She was momentarily surprised by a round dish of rat poison when the songs changed on the radio and suddenly she was surrounded by the funky, drum and bass hook of the No Shows’ latest single.

She straightened up in surprise and hammered her head on the countertop. The tears she’d so successfully held back sprang forth and she was wiping them on the T-shirt when Malachi said artlessly, “Hey, this is Zal!”

“. . .
I bring you back from the dead, So I can kill you again
. . .”

Lila pressed the T-shirt against her face, trying not to breathe in. When she took it away she was able to straighten up and say, “Yeah.”

Malachi was unconsciously bopping to the beat as he continued his leisurely circuit of their unhygienic home life. “Didn’t he write this about you, Li?”

“What?” Lila didn’t think that was possible. She hadn’t even known him long enough.

“They recorded it just before you left for the tour. A last-minute thing. Released it straight to download. He wrote it the first night after he met you. What? Didn’t he tell you?”

“Mal, I need a word in private,” Lila said, without trying to sound annoyed. She gave him a look that said—should we really be talking about this in front of civilians? But Max was already half turned, her knife poised in midair . . .

“What else has been going on that I don’t know about?” She looked incredulous. The No Shows were a popular band, comprising as many races and influences as they did. They were also the symbolic heart of the Otopian eclectic free-living culture, a reasonably sized social movement, which was nowhere bigger than it was on the Pacific Coastal Rim. Of course Max would have heard of them, whether she liked them or not. They were scene. Lila found herself opening and closing her mouth soundlessly like a fish.

“
I still got tons of ammo and without even a scratch on my face
. . .”

“It was part of a job, that’s all,” Lila said, abandoning the cleaning idea and thrusting the T-shirt down into Malachi’s binbag with a glare at his smouldering orange eyes.

“Uh-huh,” Max said, managing to make the sounds convey the impression that Lila had better spill the details now or later.

“Jobs are security protected,” Lila said, pointlessly, since Mal had already breached the rules so far they were squeaking for mercy. He hadn’t ruffled a hair either, as though he didn’t care. Maybe he didn’t. She paused to ponder that as he continued his cleanup and went out to take the bag to the trash bin.

“That’s why Cruella is staking out the house?” Max finished chopping and started cooking at the same time as she drew her conclusion; another pale rider-ism. She found a clean glass and poured a shot of wine into it, handing it to Lila who slugged most of it in one gulp. The dogs began to snore contentedly in their double basket on the outside porch. It was a peaceful afternoon, with the exception of the sealed room preying on Lila’s attention, like an unexploded bomb whose detonator was hidden, timer unknown.