Chasing the Dragon

by Justina Robson

  "Madame Des Loupes," Lila said, and for the first time in months Malachi saw her composure falter. "Why would he kill her?"

  Malachi shrugged. Demon politics didn't interest him. All he knew about Madame was that she was the most powerful clairvoyant of any age. The only person she feared wasn't Teazle Sikarza either, it was Sarasilien.

  Three months and two weeks previously Sarasilien the elf had been steadily working in his long-term office of diplomatic liaison to the Otopian Secret Service. One minute to the second after Malachi and Lila had rematerialised in Bay City he'd dropped everything and left. Nobody had seen him since. He'd been a surrogate father to Lila, and Mal hadn't known how to tell Lila he was gone, so he just didn't tell her at all. Fortunately there was enough to deal with that he needn't worry about that yet, or so he'd thought. As it was, besides that coincidence which was clearly no coincidence, there was nothing to connect Sarasilien to Madame's death and plenty of evidence that pointed at Teazle. It was curiously easier to tell Lila that Teazle was the suspected killer, though he was her husband, than it was to tell her about the elf. Even Malachi didn't understand what the reason behind it would be.

  Motive wasn't the question that bothered Mal. There were perhaps a dozen reasons Teazle might kill anyone, not least of which was because he felt like it, but as a result of their immersion in Under, they had all changed: Lila, Teazle, Zal, and himself. Thinking of this Malachi licked self-consciously around his too-big canine teeth and for the thousandth time considered having them filed down. He'd do it, if he didn't think it might have horrible repercussions somehow, in parts of him that he had forgotten but which might be important.

  "How would he kill her?" Lila rephrased, jolting Malachi out of his dental fantasy. A frown made the rain suddenly dash down her nose and drip off the end. "I mean, she had clear sight, she'd see it coming, surely." Then she met Malachi's gaze with a curious one, a sad one of her own.

  She couldn't resist mentioning him, even though she'd promised herself not to. No talking about Zal. No brooding. He wasn't dead. "Why doesn't he come back?"

  Malachi shrugged. He didn't mention he was gladder that the demon was absent. Teazle made him deeply uneasy, never more so than since he had returned from Faery a changed being. Always lethal and ready to slay in his true form, he seemed to have disconcertingly acquired a form that was made of light, rendering him negligibly material. He could teleport before, and now? Malachi had no idea what he was capable of in that sense, but it added up to a scary prospect if it got coupled with ambition, and this murder did seem to smell of that on first sniff.

  The rain was getting him down. "Do you think we could go somewhere more civilized?"

  "Hm?" she glanced around them at the sheeting deluge, as though only just becoming conscious of it. "Oh. Yes."

  "My car's on the lot," he gestured back the way they'd come. She nodded and fell into step with him. He watched her. She was pensive all the way up to the car door and then she stopped with her hand on it and looked across the roof at him.

  "It's faked."

  She was referring to the crime in the images. He could tell by the seriously switched on look in her blue-violet eyes and because other agents had said the same thing. His heart sank. "I know," he said, opening the doors and wishing he'd brought a blanket to cover his seats. "Get in."

  The car creaked on its suspension as Lila eased into the passenger side, so smooth and graceful she might have been made of air. It didn't feel lopsided like it used to however. Malachi squinted at her as he reached for his handkerchief, "Did you lose weight?"

  "Apparently," she shrugged as she looked at him mopping his forehead delicately. Her fingertips ran over the upholstery. "At least you went for a synthetic this time."

  "My wages don't stretch to the insurance required by transporting freaks of nature anymore," he muttered. "Speaking of fakes, what tipped you off?"

  Lila smiled a short-lived and wintry smile. "The body is butchered almost into sludge. That's not Teazle's MO at all. He'd never waste the energy." She hesitated and a flicker ran through her face, "Plus, if you sum it all up, there just isn't enough of her to go around. They speculate he ate part of her, but that's classic necromancer-minion stuff or a practice for an assassin who's on his way up the ladder, not at the top. He'd never do that. Then, there's no sign of the Suitors and I don't believe they'd stand around and watch her die."

  Malachi nodded-he'd thought the same but he hadn't had the stomach to search the images thoroughly enough to be sure.

  Lila continued, "So, where are they? Plus, it makes no sense. Sure he might have wanted her dead because I'm on her books as one of her Eyes. He hates anyone having power over him. If she had a hold on me, then tenuously she was getting a claw into him. But killing her serves no other use. The demons might all fear her, but they want her alive because she's number one in their defense systems against Who Knows What? But I keep coming back to the more basic fact that all the parts look right but don't add up. They don't match. You put it together and you get Frankenstein's monster, not Madame Des Loupes. I'd bet she isn't even dead. So what is this about?" The chip had reappeared in her fingers magician-style as she spoke. She turned it over and over like a coin between her knuckles and then gave it back to him.

  He put it in his jacket pocket and started the car with the key. "They're for you, honey. The Service knows you're back and it seems they've lost patience waiting for you to come home."

  "Eh ... so they want to fit up my husband on some faked murder?"

  "Them and some other people. This came to my hands in a roundabout way. I know they think I see you. They're betting I'll show you, and tell you that Teazle is wanted for this, in Demonia. Their top Necromancer has fingered him for it. The forensics might give the lie, but he was the coroner on the case so it's a done deal. It's kind of a traditional demon way of getting rid of real trouble. The sentence is passed."

  Lila stared through the windshield at a world that was flowing and running and warped by the rain. "Kill on sight," she murmured, almost to herself. It was the penalty for Illegitimate Murder in Demonia. "What's the bounty?"

  "His house, his estates, and all he owns in perpetuity. And Lila," Malachi waited until she turned to face him and for an instant the violet eyes of the dress's girl became the curved mirrors of her true self, paying him full attention. The chameleon change showed how uncomfortable she had become.

  "Yes?"

  "You have to know-Teazle has been on a spree the like of which no one has seen in a literal age. They call it the Rain of Death. By the time this came out, yesterday at noon, he'd slaughtered his way through almost the entire crop of Bathsheban high society and made a good inroad into the Shalazad Dynasty. He currently owns eighteen and a quarter percent of the total wealth of Demonia and has rule over fifteen family houses and nine crime syndicates." He shared this, sure in the knowledge that no other human without firsthand experience of demon life would understand the true scale and monumental, suicidal ambition of this enterprise. He added with a wry half-grin, "They're all loyal to him, too, or he'd be occasional tableware by now."

  Her face went pale and seemed to age, flesh drawing closer to the skull. "But it can't last," she said quietly. "So much money. So much power. They'll all rise to challenge him. But why, Malachi? Why did he do that?"

  Malachi shrugged, "No idea. That trip to Under surely did something to him. Thing is, the Otopians and the Demons have done this fit-up together, with Faery help. They all see him as a major threat and they want him gone and they want you to show yourself."

  She did the frown that made two tiny lines between her brows. It made her face endearing, he thought, although he wouldn't dare say it. "I don't really think he needs me...."

  "Not to protect him, you dollop. To hunt him," Malachi broke over the top of her words with annoyance. "In demon law you're bound to the task, as his wife, number one. Two, you stand to inherit both ways if he dies, which effectively puts a human in charge of D
emonia for the nought point however many seconds you survive the office. Three, he is a menace and you are about one of the only creatures who stand a realistic shot at nuking him. Four, they want you back in ranks. They've figured out you're the one behind the missing rogues and their vanished agents-all the ones you disposed of on your arrival-and they're willing to make you a serious offer."

  Her face was attentive, open, pleasant. God, he didn't like the look of this.

  "I hate being the messenger!" He slammed the wheel with his hand and closed his eyes for a moment to regain his composure. The taste of blood let him know he'd cut his own lip on his fangs. He fussed with his handkerchief, realised it was silk, and started to look in the glove box for a tissue instead. "If you bring them Teazle on a plate they'll give you all the World Seven Technology and control of the projects it was used in. They want you to lead that unit. You'll have complete authority. The only person over you will be the president."

  She looked at him for one serious blue second. Then she burst out laughing. She laughed so hard that tears streamed down her face and got lost in the rainwater. Gasping for breath, holding her side with one hand, "Oh that was good!" she panted in between snickers. "That must have taken hours to make up. You really had me going! You bastard. Queen of Demons and ruler of the Secret Cyborgs? That was a bit far. Nice pictures though."

  He looked at the blood drops on the tissue paper and saw them spreading slowly into seven giggling pixies. He screwed the thing up, wound down the window, and shoved it out. "It's not a joke."

  "Oh, Mal," she patted his knee gently, her gales subsiding into gentle rolling fits. Then, as he sat miserably wondering what it was he'd ever done to make another second in Otopia worthwhile she coughed and cleared her throat and her face started to fall. "Mal. Is it? Mal. No."

  "Where's the sword?" he asked her, dead straight. He knew it would wipe the smile off her face and cursed himself when it did.

  "I've got it," she said, suddenly cautious. "Why? What is this?"

  "Someone at work knows about it. I don't know how. But they know. That's why this is here now. They know that it's what you used to dispatch the rogues. They want it. Or, they want to know what it can do and make sure you use it for them if you use it at all. That's the trouble with ancient artifactual objects ..." he trailed off and started cursing ferociously in the faery speech so she couldn't understand him. By the end of it he was gripping the wheel, his knuckles aching and his fingernails grown into claws that cut into the skin of his hands. He released them slowly and gently and turned again to her with a trou bled face, his orange eyes glowing through the black lenses of his glasses like miniature suns. "Lila, you have to do something. I think I've kept you secret, but obviously not. I don't think I was followed, but I don't know. They're giving you a grace moment. It won't last."

  She sat and stared at him for several seconds, then without a word she got out of the car into the pouring rain and took off. He heard her jets start and felt the air push at the car as she took off, but instead of seeing her leap into the sky he saw a strange grey and violet bird spring up, spread enormous, tattered wings, and beat its way into the air.

  "'Demalion," he whispered, making a warding sign of the old gods, feeling angry and troubled. No way should these things be happening in Otopian space, but, then, it was hard to get worked up about it when all the streets full of psychics and mediums and faith healers said otherwise.

  Human wasn't what it used to be. Nothing was.

  CNOPTER TWO

  ila flew above the city in the rain clouds. The mist blotted every- Ithing out of visual contact and left her with more space in her head to contemplate what Mal had just told her. She had other senses, including radar, to take care of collision control, though she wasn't aware of them working any more than she was aware of breathing unless she paid attention to it. Around her the silky mantle of the tattered dress folded itself tight and warm, shedding rainwater in drops stained lilac though the fabric never faded.

  She didn't know what to think about Mal's story. She briefly imagined becoming the mistress of Demonia and only then felt the faint tingle of a feeling that might have driven Teazle to attempt it: let's leave it all when we can't deal with it. Let's tempt death one more juicy, fatal time and stand on that edge, daring everything to bring it on. Such a thing was demon glory.

  That made her remember Zal. Zal had literally and figuratively run into the dark without a backward glance. It hurt to think of it. She wanted him so badly it stopped her in midflight. Zal would never have tried to rule Demonia, and not just because he was an elf by genesis. Tempted as they were by their natural wonts to sink into emotional festivals of angst, elves were corruptible and able to sacrifice themselves in the name of some cause relatively easily. But Teazle was all demon, and he didn't do sacrifice unless it was of someone else.

  For some reason she'd never figured out yet, neither did she, but she was much more bored with reasons than she used to be. All that mattered now was what idiots did and what she was going to do about it. There was only one thing on her mind these days-a desire that burned her and drove her crazy and didn't need reasons, but she was stuck fast with it because the last she'd seen of her love was a stain on Destiny's petticoat and damned if she knew what to do about that.

  Thankfully Malachi had turned up with this shitload of nonsense and she did know what to do with it. She flew on over the city another mile or so, avoiding the tiny one-person flitters that zipped over the tops of the skyscrapers. Great flower heads of idling rotor blades made the air shimmer over the tallest buildings, where power sinks in the form of minimaks sent out narrow tendrils to each tiny car and pumped their miraculous batteries full of aetherically charged electricity. They said charge, but she knew it wasn't: the science was still in the mumbo jumbo stages while the engineering had merrily forged ahead. So now they had almost limitless energy, and limitless gadgets to absorb them. Go humans. Lila just thought it looked like a takeover bid by the aetherials-distract the majority, give them something serious to worry about, meanwhile rip the rug quietly out from under-it was a standard faery tactic, but who could blame them? And at least the existence of relatively planet-friendly energy gave something positive to point at when the fey-bashing got intense.

  She descended, emerging into clearer air and sputtering drops of rain. She shook herself out as she stopped and stared down at the buildings below her: Otopian Security Services, disguised as a bland corporate office block and giving off the ordinary power signatures of a bunch of medium-level computers and a few air conditioners. Not much to look at considering that inside it, some ten metres belowground in a bio-bunker, was the cradle where she'd been processed and reborn half human, half-machine. One glance at the three tall square blocks of concrete was enough to know that she was completely and finally done with what they represented and what they housed. They could hang themselves with their own rope after all they'd done for her.

  She listened. The ever-present whisper of the machines was the merest vibration, and for so long it had made no more sense than random static. For weeks she had been effectively listening to a dead station. But although now she couldn't have decoded the whispers into words or even concepts, she knew that they informed her of things all the time, about the state of the physical world, about themselves. She knew, for example, that there were six agents below her in the building who had also started out their second lives as cyborgs, and had ended up as an advanced version of what she was now-a replica of a human being, her every cell mimicked to perfection in matter slightly other than flesh and bone. She was slightly more metal, more crystalline; more suited for the passage of light.

  She waited, patient as the grave, until she saw Malachi's blue Caddy circle the block and slide into the black mouth of the underground entry like a slow fish gliding into the mouth of a shark. Malachi was still "in" with Security, in spite of being the cause of their greatest malaise-the Mothkin invasion that had torn humanity from its mundane r
oots and spread aetheric talents like a contagion. Not that anyone called them that or recognised it officially. The newly psychic humans might be a genuine underclass out in the real world, but in the bureaucracy of Otopian Government they were just people who had suffered delusions under the effects of too much faery moth dust.

  When enough time had passed that she reckoned Mal was back in the building proper, she descended to the roof, jammed her fingers into the tiny gap between the security door and its housing, and wrenched it off its hinges. Nerve gas pumped quickly into the narrow corridor space beyond and fogged the treacherous steep stairs, but Lila didn't need to breathe like an ordinary person. She walked through it, feeling a slight headiness, and addressed the steel shutter that had come slamming down in her face. Getting through sheet steel was never easy, but in her months of solitude she hadn't managed the quiet contemplation and Zen retreat thing all that well. She'd spent most of it fooling around in scrapyards and empty warehouses, testing herself, figuring out what she could do so that when a reckoning came, as it surely must, she'd be ready. Lila didn't have magic herself and as machine and human was doubly useless in that respect, but metal elementals were a part of her structure now, and they had no such trouble.

  Being part of her structure meant being part of her mind. She wanted the door open and placed her hands out upon it. Tendrils of glimmering white light began to rise and crawl across her skin as the metal elementals rose and gathered energy from the matter around them, constructing themselves a nebulous kind of form. It was far from the forms of their true actualisation, she understood from Zal, but it was form nonetheless and capable of occupying and reconfiguring any metallic object. It took a long time in resolutely un-aetheric Otopia, where the laws of physical matter held firmest sway, but it was still more than possible. Beneath her hands the door became hot. She traced a line from top to bottom and side to side, drawing her arm steadily as if pulling the zipper of a tent. The metal separated, not visibly, but at the molecular level, and then she was able to use simple force to bend the four leaves of it and curl them back so that she was able to step through the hole she'd made and stand in the room beyond.