"I've had enough of you," she said, overriding its speech in which it explained it had used its tactics in order to bring her here, or rather not her but the sword, which it wanted to use. The form of the demon's body looked exactly like the one she had sat before when she tried to use the crystal pane. "If all you wanted was the sword, why didn't you just ask me for it? It isn't even mine."
Xavien seemed taken aback, but only for an instant. "And would you have given it to me?"
"Take it." Lila flipped the sword up and around. She presented the hilt. "End the fucking drama already before I end it for you."
"Umm ..." Zal said behind her in the casual easygoing boy tone that meant it was a seriously bad move. There was a bright metal sound above them. Teazle had drawn his swords. The ghosts gathered close, closer until they were ringed by a mass of cold, glowing forms.
One of the light forms that Teazle had told her was an angel dropped down beside the demon suddenly.
"You don't even know what you hold," the demon said. "Night's Mantle."
"I do," Lila replied, looking up the reference and reading as she continued to offer the sword. "Go on. Take it. Have your stupid dream already so we can get out of here. I used to be patient but I've really had it with your crap. You have power. Big scare. I know it. You know it. Take the fucking thing and be done." She felt the moment brim with sudden tension, and that smile she'd felt on her face recently came back. It wasn't the nicest smile in the world. "If you can."
"She's a Voidelf," Zal murmured. The vibration of his voice against the back of her neck made her shiver.
Lila looked that up. As she did so the demon came forward to take the sword. And she twitched it back, just out of his grasp. She stared at the form, felt Zal, saw the Fleet, remembered Lily's promise, saw her office, filled with his things, Sarasilien's things, the library. She? She. This was no demon. She was an elf. And not just any elf. At a speed faster than she was aware of a pattern snapped in place inside her. For an instant she saw Sarasilien's eyes as he bent over her when she was suffering outside the operating room, the first day she woke up as a machine. He had been crying. It wasn't for her. She'd forgotten. His kindness, the way he had felt, like a father. And then, Zal's story about the creation of the shadowkin. Lila was sure, as sure as she was that her own father had never been able to pull anything together except his kindness towards his children, that her mother couldn't face an ordinary life without being smashed numb by drink, that Max had lived in that house all her life, in case she came back one day ...
She was sure that this was Sarasilien's daughter.
The demon hesitated with the patience of a striking adder and made another, much more definite attempt to seize the hilt. Lila flicked it out of reach teasingly a second time, as if she were toying with an irritating younger sister. She grinned and tutted, "Oh no, doesn't look like you can have it. Isn't that a shame?"
"This is not a game!" the demon snarled. Its voice had become slightly strangled. "Give me the sword or I will kill your boyfriend and the rest of them. There will not even be a memory left of what they were. I will ruin your world and theirs. Make it again."
"She probably can do it," Zal whispered. "She'll certainly try harder than last time. Unstable."
"Last time!" Lila felt her grin turn to a frown. "Others?"
"Here." The demon made an angry, sweeping gesture and Lila saw the bodies farther down the deck. She went cold for a second as she realized who they were, nauseous for a moment with the swirl of feeling as she saw Tath, delighted that he had survived, horrified that he seemed to be dead already. Along with Mal. Their slumped forms were dissipating, becoming thin. It was invisible to the eye, but she could feel the order of their signals breaking up. If they stayed out much longer this creature wouldn't need to bother trying to finish them. She felt weaker herself, and she'd bet even Teazle did, although you wouldn't know it to look at him.
"You moron," Lila sighed, with anger that she had to suppress for now, and with sadness. "Your father is still alive. You still have a chance."
"I have no father," the demon snarled, but it sounded less than certain.
"Well I have his office and personal effects and his library in my head, and I say he's alive. We could find him for you."
"I can find him myself. Give me the mantle."
"Here." Lila held it out. Again the hand came. Again she twitched it away. "It doesn't seem to want to."
"Stop doing that!"
Lila made her best innocent face. "What? I'm not doing anything. It doesn't like you." Faster than anyone would have noticed she looked at the sword herself. Now that she'd finished reading the damn books and their hundreds of references about the thing she really did realize what she was holding. "Shit!" she said under her breath so that only Zal could hear her. "It's the thing itself."
The moment was lost in a sudden lurch of the ship. All the bells of the Fleet went ringing and their horns sounded out. Patches of nothing flickered in all that had seemed so solid and true.
"We can all end here," the demon said. Its voice was icy. "If you rather."
Panic broke out. The Fleet began to break up more literally, lights moving off, some at speed.
In Lila's hand the sword moved. At the same time she felt Zal nudge her, and she looked around in bewilderment to find him holding out to her a book that was oddly solid.
"I'm supposed to give you this, apparently," he said.
Lila took it. As she did so she felt the sword lift and the demon's hand grab it successfully. She let it go and looked around at the sound of surprise to find the demon standing with a pen in its hand, staring at it. She opened the green-bound book. On the flyleaf was written, in deep black ink and a hesitant but beautiful handwritten elvish script, as of someone doing their best writing, "The Journal of Xaviendra Angela Sarasilien, begun on her twenty-eighth birthday...." Lila turned the page and saw the first line, the date, and then closed it. She held it out as the negative storm began to blot out the spirit forms in greater flurries, feeling motes of herself vanishing.
"This is yours."
The demon stared, hesitated, reached out, looked at the book and the pen in its hands, then opened the book, and turned it the right way up. Then it looked at Lila and the demon disguise it had been wearing fell to dust. The storm blotted out its last few flakes and was gone. Before them stood a tall, narrow figure of an elflike girl who looked exactly as if she had been drawn in ink and coloured in with a lighter wash of the same. She looked like Zal, but unlike him she had two magnificent antelope-like horns rising out of her skull. Her black hair whipped around her and grew down her back and over her shoulders in a long, silky fur.
"I don't understand," she said falteringly, looking at the pen. "I thought ... I thought it would change me. Why am I still here? Why?!" And the last word was a cry of absolute horror and loneliness. She turned to the angel beside her. "What have you done?" She held out the pen. "What is this? Why aren't I like you? Why can't I hear you?" She whirled around, looking for the other one, but it was already rushing towards her as she started to scream, a truly awful sound that felt like it was tearing Lila's own insides apart.
The black storm was back in an instant, but this time it had a vortex focused on Xaviendra as she hunched in on herself. She'd dropped the book and the pen and was clawing at her own face with both hands. As Lila watched the angels darted in and their light closed on her arms. They fought with her, trying to make her stop. All the time the scream continued.
Lila turned to find Zal, suddenly terrified he was gone, and looked into the dark of his face. He was shouting at her, almost inaudible. He was pointing at the pen, the book, miming writing, pointing at her. Teazle was the fastest to react. He darted down and seized both items, opened the book to the last page that was written on, and held out the pen to her.
Write something! he mouthed at her.
Lila felt herself dissolving. Overhead the Void was beginning to break open and the light of other w
orlds was coming through, like a haze.
She read the last lines of the careful hand, now more practiced and less self-conscious ...
... experiments are truly evil. I cannot allow them to continue or allow my father to continue in this insane purpose which he is so convinced is for the greater good of the elves and the safety of Alfheim. There are forces at work in those with power that are too fond of their own will. If he will not see how he is used and corrupted, then I will make him see. He has gone to Demonia on a hunt for more "materials" for the soul forge. In his absence I have answered the call. I have volunteered to be a subject for the change. When it is done and he returns home then let him see the value of his work. I pray to survive long enough to illustrate the truth.
Around them the Fleet shook and began to fade. Deep cold burning.
Lila uncapped the pen and saw the nib flood with the infinite blood of Night. She looked up at Zal, thought of her own father and, strangely, of Sandra Lane and Sarah Bentley. She struggled for a moment, because what she was about to do did not seem entirely just and merely a whim that exacted no retribution and solved no history. It salved only pain. But then she wrote quickly and easily.
It was aboard the Fleet in the gulf of Night that Xaviendra Angela Sarasilien woke from the long journey she had embarked on centuries before to find herself changed according to her most heartfelt and sincere wish ...
The screaming abruptly stopped.
... surrounded by the faery, Malachi, a curious cat; by the Lord of Winter. Ilyatath Voynassi Taliesetra, who was once carried in the heart of the robot girl and who was born again in Faeryland; by the demon, Teazle Sikarza, who went Under and came out an Angel; by the human Lila Amanda Black, who was remade by the Signal; and by Zal the rock star, soul rebel, and last survivor of the reign of jack the Giantkiller-her allies. Friends and lovers all, they had recovered from the rigours of their trials by the grace of Night, mother of creation, whose pen so wrote, this day. She time-stamped it and signed her own name to the entry, because it seemed appropriate to. In doing so she realized that she did not know Zal's true name.
Lila looked up. Zal was reading over her shoulder. She capped the pen and closed the book. There was calm and the Fleet drifted, damaged but still distinguishable.
A tall elf with white hair and golden eyes was standing beside Zal, just behind him. She nodded at Lila in a businesslike manner and spat the dog end of a cigar out onto the deck, where she ground it under the toe of her soldier's boot. "Signed, sealed, delivered, he's yours," she said. "That concludes my bargain with you. It's me, Lily, whatever. Thanks for unlocking Under and letting us all out," she added with a scowl as if thanks weren't something she was used to delivering. Then she cleared her throat, spat the result over the rail, and addressed Zal. "I'll be seeing you, honey. Make it not too soon." She reached out and clapped him on the shoulder. "Be sure you go back with the Green King there." She stabbed a thumb out to indicate the slowly rising form of Ilyatath. "Via Faeryland. And wait there. Or you won't get your body back. Understand?"
"Yes." He grinned at her. "You sang well."
"Uh-huh? Fuck that," she muttered, producing an enormous cigar from her sleeve. She stuck it in her mouth and looked pleased with herself. "Until later."
Lila was not surprised to see her fade out, patting her pockets, and, as she was halfway gone, producing the pen, at which she raised her eyebrows and then waved at Lila as if to say Well look at this! Then she laughed, put the pen into a pocket of her war tunic, took the cigar out of her mouth, stuck her tongue out, and lit the cigar on it. She sucked hard until the thing was almost flaming, before jabbing it back into place and winking as the last trace of her vanished.
Lila looked at her hand. Sure enough the pen was gone. She sighed, relieved, and then Malachi was running towards her, slowly, limping a little, but running. He was in his giant catman form, as big and ugly as any nightmare, but she hugged him as he arrived and felt his thumping paw on her back. Tath was behind him.
"You look scary," she said, unaccountably shy. The last she had seen of him he had been naked except for her DO YOU WANT FRIES WITH
THAT T-shirt, facing down the Giantkiller. Now he was almost as intimidating as Jack himself.
"I do my best," he said, and smiled at her. "I missed you."
"I missed you," she said.
"Hey, who missed me?" Teazle had put his swords away and strode across to them.
"Turn it down," Malachi grumbled, shading his eyes with a paw. "Some of us had night vision."
Zal looked at Ilya uncertainly. "Was I supposed to miss him?"
Ilya shrugged elaborately. "You married him."
"I what? She didn't mention anything about that! Are you having me on?"
Malachi's tail lashed side to side. "Zal has a small memory problem involving everything except Ilya. And an invisible friend. We should go. None of us are made for this."
Beside them on the open deck a circle slowly bloomed vertically in the air. It held a picture of a land full of snow, the sky grey and promising more. "Faery awaits," Ilya said.
"We have to go another way," Lila said. "We left from Demonia. It'll be tricky to get out alive, so I'll come and meet you in Faery, if you can take me there, Malachi. We'll be at Madame Des Loupes old house."
Malachi nodded at her.
"Zal, with us." Ilya moved towards the portal he had made.
"I will," Zal said, "just a minute." He stepped past Lila, kissing the top of her head, and crossed the few metres to the prow rail, where Xaviendra stood. Of the two angels there was no sign.
"They left," she whispered. She wouldn't meet his eye. "They were with me so long."
"Come with me." He held out his hand.
She looked at it, half turned away from them. It was clear at this angle that she had a long, saurian tail as well as her horns, and although the shadow that made her had shifted its colours from black to the blue spectrum, she was no less shadow than she had been, no more elf. Her gaze wandered often to the dark, but wandered back again without finding help. "Where?"
"Anywhere," he said. "We'll look for your father. He can't have gone far."
Still she hesitated. "He never came for me," she said. "I don't know." She kept glancing at the rail. It was clear that she was considering jumping it. "Where did it all go? My resolve, my power, my will? What happened to me?"
Lila held out the book. "It says in here."
Zal took it and passed it across. Xaviendra took it with shaking hands and opened it, fumbling the pages. She took a while reading and then looked up. "I don't understand. I am no different. I feel no different. And I wanted to."
"What were you going to do?" Zal asked.
"I was going to be ... I would have found my father," she said slowly and deliberately, "and I would have made him love me."
"And now?"
"And now ... it's gone. And there's nothing." She turned and gripped the rail and stared out at the nothing. A few seconds passed, and then she began to laugh, weakly and ironically and in a hurting way but laughing. "And I am free."
"I'm going home," Zal said. "Come with us. We're all unredeemable to the core."
"And free," Lila added.
"And magnificent," Teazle said.
"And late," Ilya and Malachi insisted, and then looked at one another suspiciously for speaking at the same time. Then Malachi stepped through the portal and Ilya followed him, calling, "Zal, hurry up."
"I am," said Zal, staying where he was.
"Zal," said Lila gently, pleading.
"All right." He turned and walked to the gate, at the last moment turning back to Xaviendra. "Let the Admiral out before you come find us. He deserves to get his ship back. He's a good kid."
Xaviendra watched him go and the portal closed. Then only Lila and Teazle were left. "You were kind," Xaviendra said.
"How many chances did you get in your life to write a happy ending?" Lila asked her, taking Teazle's hand.
"I di
d not deserve it."
"Elves," muttered Teazle under his breath. He kissed Lila's neck.
"You can still deserve it," Lila said; then she put her arms around Teazle's neck and closed her eyes. "Do you think we can wish ourselves back there?"
"You said you didn't need the bloody sword anymore," he murmured, sliding his hands down her back and under the ribbons on her bottom. "I'm only repeating your very words."
"I should talk less," she said, but she was confident. She lost sensation for a moment, felt a strange discontinuity, as though seconds had been lost; then she was standing in the dank, stinking blackness of the labyrinth. Somewhere just ahead of her she heard Teazle swear horribly, and then there was a crashing and smashing sound as he fell over and knocked into the standing statues and they broke on the floor.
"Come on," she said. "Let's see what's left of your empire."
"Hah." He got up and found his feet, and shook his head. "Excellent. Let's get in a fight." She slapped him as she ran past him, sonar for vision. "Can't catch me!"
"Stay naked and I'll get you before you reach the exit," he promised.
Around her the faery ribbons didn't change themselves. She ran, feeling the wet stone, the chilly air, laughing.
Zal looked over his left shoulder, but he saw no sign of Glinda. Ilya sat beside him, as solid as he was not.
"How long will it take?" Zal asked, staring into the fire. He couldn't stop thinking about Lila.
"Not too long," Ilya replied, as he had replied steadily to the same question for the last few hours. Malachi had left them as soon as they arrived, bounding down the hillsides without a backwards glance. Ilya had explained that Madrigal was down there, and it was probably summer by now. Zal inferred the rest without asking any details; it seemed obvious.
"Explain the marriage thing again," Zal said. "What was our relationship like?"
"No. I have done that three times and three is the limit." Ilya banked the fire and lay down on the thick furs before it.
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