Malachi gave a broad smile and an expansive shrug. “Bet me for it.”
“Bah!” said the doll, disappointed.
Zal sighed. They played again. Zal got a five and a nine on the original deal and things never improved. He lost. Malachi had made impersonal extreme importance.
“What are you attempting to do to the people of this realm, through your music?” Malachi asked.
“No circumlocutions,” the doll snapped, still annoyed. “I can detect prevarication and dissembling at forty paces.”
“That’s not impersonal,” Zal said.
Malachi looked at the grass doll.
“Sadly, he is correct,” the Hoodoo confirmed, rustling. “And you’ve lost your go.”
“So, not a state matter. Not a Daga matter . . .” Malachi said, watching Zal scoop up the cards as he privately cancelled his long list of possible activities that the Jayon Daga, the elven security agency, might have been attempting through Zal. Since the outbreak of the civil war in Alfheim it was a mystery as to whose allegiance lay where. He had doubted the claim that Zal was Charming with his voice but now he wondered what it could be for. Money, fame, what?
The questions that followed took three more hours to play for.
Zal won an impersonal acute. “Who are you really investigating me for?”
“Human security and faery interests. And Lila’s interests are something I feel I have to look out for, inside the agency, her family, her partners . . .” Malachi gave Zal a long direct stare. “I don’t know if I think you’re such a great choice. You probably push every button she has and a few more. If there was a more unreliable character in the seven realms I find I can’t recall the name. Hardly what I’d call supportive material.”
Zal felt his hackles rise. He was not sure if Malachi was taunting him or interested in Lila for himself but he knew that Malachi could use influence with the agency to do pretty much anything he liked in terms of getting Zal incarcerated or exiled or whatever. He didn’t like the threat. “Stay out of it.”
“Unlikely,” the faery said and dealt the next hand.
Malachi won personal minor. “Do you love her?”
“It’s not minor,” Zal said.
Malachi looked to the Hoodoo doll.
“Have another try,” it said.
“That’s cheating,” Zal replied angrily. “That was a critical answer for a minor stake, and he gets another go?”
“Sue me, or offer me a limb,” the doll snapped testily.
“Are you truly demonic in nature?”
“Yes,” Zal said coldly.
The Hoodoo doll got up and began to shimmy with power.
“And no,” Zal said, feeling a stabbing pain in his right eye.
It sat down again.
Malachi raised an eyebrow.
He won again. “What’s your next single to be?”
“Disco Inferno,” Zal said without a flicker of irony.
“Do you not feel that’s selling out?”
“What am I, chopped liver?” the Hoodoo doll piped. “No extras. Faery eyes are as good as elf eyes any day of the week . . . better for some purposes. They last longer too, before they rot to mush.”
Zal smiled with half his mouth. It wasn’t a look Malachi really liked.
“I’m doing it with my sister,” Zal added in an ambiguous tone of voice.
“I heard that from the brownies,” Malachi said smoothly, “but I didn’t believe it.”
Zal dealt. Zal won.
“How many deep ambient faultlines have you found in Faery since the human bomb?” Zal asked.
The faery’s jet black face darkened in expression and for a moment its fine lines, smooth angles, and handsome features shifted into something at once more animal and strange. Zal had just assumed Malachi would be some kind of cat-spirit with his style and manners, but that was not what he saw in the form that revealed itself for an instant as the faery’s surprise beat his wit. He couldn’t have said what Malachi was, not that every faery wasn’t always faking something up for the sake of it and, as usual, that pissed him off. He listened to Malachi’s answer with a bad humour.
“There are six,” the faery said.
“An unstable number,” Zal remarked.
Malachi gave the slightest nod.
Zal shrugged, “There are nine in Alfheim, far as I know. Even less stable.”
The Hoodoo doll attempted to shake its head with disgust and fell over onto its side with a tiny, silent bounce.
Malachi conjured a vesper sprite with a wave of his fingers and sent it around the room, looking for bugs or telltales. When it returned and vanished he added, “Demonia has eight. And lucky old Earth has a hundred and nine. Mostly minor. So far. We haven’t really finished counting.”
Zal was privately astonished but he didn’t show it.
“They grow like weeds here. Spread like lines on a crone’s face come winter, and all the while in our old countries they creep on slow as ice marching, but still, creeping and listening to the whisper from the new land that talks of shredding and decay and the sundering of things to chaos. Ssssss, the web of the worlds undoing like silk slip-sliding and nothing to stop it yet,” the faery said matter-of-factly as he collected the cards, shuffled, and dealt.
“Fucking indignity,” the Hoodoo doll squeaked, “you don’t understand or respect my powers, you imbeciles!” If it had had a fist it would have shook it.
Malachi set it upright again and it quivered with unexpressed feelings.
“It’s nothing personal,” Zal said to it.
“Save it for someone who cares,” the doll hissed. “I’m drying out.”
Zal walked across to the suite bar, opened the refrigerator, located ice, cracked it into a tumbler, poured scotch on it, and then set it down on the table. He lifted the doll by its head and put it into the glass.
The doll snickered and leaned back as though in a jacuzzi. “Take your time, boys.”
This time Malachi took the cards and shuffled and did not deal. “I’m worried about Lila,” he said. “I think she’s cracking up.”
“She was fine,” Zal said defensively, thinking the same thing now that Malachi had said it. “Fine.”
The faery stared at him.
“Maybe I’ll pay a visit to Demonia.”
Malachi nodded slowly at him and Zal felt manipulated and grateful.
“Thish time itsh for your HEADZ!” the doll squeaked in glee.
Zal reached over without looking anywhere but at Malachi, picked the doll up, and jammed it head down in the liquor between the ice cubes. “If you and your gang of fools does anything to harm or cause to be harmed by accident, omission, or stupidity, one tiny little bit of Lila inside or out I will make you all wish you had never been born.”
“Likewise,” the faery agreed with a smile.
They stared at each other and the grass in the glass slowly came apart until it was floating weeds.
Malachi glanced at it with a moment’s regret. “I can’t take responsibility here. You may pay for that.”
“I pay for everything,” Zal said sourly. “And I sell out to no one.”
CHAPTER SIX
Sorcha was thrilled to hear of Lila’s situation when she returned from rehearsals that evening at a quarter past six. Her apartments were next door to Lila’s guest rooms and in typical fashion she wandered between both of them as she went through the lengthy process of undressing, drinking a hot tea, taking a bath, dressing, and changing her makeup for the evening. None of these activities rooted her for more than an instant except the bath, during which she insisted that Lila circulate around the tub, handing her sponges, loofahs, soaps, towels, and alternate glasses of the tea and some cordial she was taking to improve her voice. After the bath, as she patted herself dry and showed no inclination to notice the clock moving inexorably towards half past seven, she stopped interrogating Lila on every detail of the day, flicked her long, black mane over her shoulders, and smiled with w
arm approval. “I knew you wouldn’t let us down.”
Lila felt her spirits sink another notch. She kept finding herself daydreaming about good reasons to return to her own world as she stood there, stinking faintly and feeling demon blood go dry and crackly on her skin. “I’m in this on my own,” Lila said. “Your family aren’t related.”
“Mmmn,” Sorcha hummed as she rubbed scented oil into her skin. “You’re our guest, honey. And we don’t let guests die. Not on the premises at least. You’re safe here. Safe as you can be.”
Lila tried to look comforted. Through the open window of the bathroom she could see the glowing orange sun setting over the lagoon. Party boats and flotillas of pleasure craft dotted the open waters with beautiful colour and twinkling lights. In the skies flying jalopies, small personal air balloons, and winged individuals flitted and drifted. Close to the town the canals were alight with lamps and lanterns and the buildings were all outlined in electric fairylights of rainbow hues. Statues stood in arrested motion all along the skylines. The humid air was filled with the hum and swagger of coming night against a background of wild insect thrumming and the chorus of bull-frogs and other creatures inhabiting the darker regions of the vast delta that stood at the city’s back. Occasionally the pulse of so much life was interrupted by the piercing shrieks of unexpected death.
Lila turned from the view. “You don’t have any words up in lights. Just lights.” She thought a change of subject was in order.
Sorcha threw everything she had used or that displeased her into the draining bathtub and put on an almost demure outfit of white miniskirt and blouse. She placed a diamond on the arrow point end of her tail and glued it down firmly. “We don’t need words. The colour says it all. Just like on us.” She inspected herself in the mirror and smiled with satisfaction. Her living flame hair moved with a slow motion flow all its own and her eyes gleamed like scarlet coals. Where her skin caught the light it glowed a soft crimson and where it did not it was a soft, pearly black. Superficially she reminded Lila of Malachi and reminded her that she ought to call him back and check in.
Lila shot a glance into one of Sorcha’s many mirrors and saw herself standing like an automaton. The chrome metal of her legs was streaked with gore and the synthetic skin looked as waxy and ashen as the real thing. The stain on her hair and face where she had been magically scarred stood out in livid contrast to the blue-green demon blood that had splattered her from head to foot. Her arms were draped with towels and Sorcha’s discarded clothes, each one sticking out to the side like a rail. She looked like a demented robot maid. She let her arms fall and everything slid off them. “What do my colours say?” she asked, having a dim memory of going into a department store with her mother and some woman there talking about colours. Something to do with what you should wear. The demon world was saturated with colour and everything meant something. It was not what you wore. It was what you were.
Sorcha gave her a critical look from top to toe. “Your colours say, Here comes some bad-ass bitch!” She laughed and slipped her elegant little clawed feet into high-heeled ruby mules. “That doesn’t make you smile?”
Lila thought it over. “What do your colours say?”
“My colours say I am a raw creative force of nature—that’s the impasto statement, the primary colours, always. Black is the colour of the Void, the final and the eternal, the ever-rising and the ever-falling rhythms of life and death. But I’m not just black; it’s a rare thing to be one colour. I have this red sheen which is all good luck and friendliness. It’s a dark red so I have lots of passion, but it’s still red so I’m a civilised queen of what she surveys, not some green-hide barbarian. Then my hair is the fire of the day, showing my mood—that’s where my flare is, where you read today’s menu of Sorcha; what am I going to be like . . . changes all the time. Some demons have these on their backs, on their wings, wherever, but you have to show it so others can know it, right? And I wear white to show that demon mother whose party we’re going to that I am sorry her son is dead, even if he was a lily-livered piece of scum from the bottom of a bog not fit to wipe my shoe on.” She ended with emphatic contempt, then added demurely, “That’s just politeness.”
“Your eyes are red.”
“I have an intellectual bent,” Sorcha said with pride. “I am a scholar.”
Lila decided not to mention that red eyes on demons in human terms usually signified insatiable evil though she wondered at it. “What about feathers?”
“They count as impasto—the portrait of the aetheric self. But you can wear or paint your bad self with secondary colours to say more about you; lime, indigo, that kind of thing. And those colours show up in the flare always . . .” Sorcha put on a purple necklace. “For my strong spirit,” she said. “Don’t worry. Nobody expects you to read the palette. They’ll tell you what you have to know.”
“If red isn’t the danger colour . . .”
“White,” Sorcha said without hesitation. “Always be wary of demons with white. It’s also the colour of grief, hence my outfit. But you go as you are. Ready?”
Fantastic, Lila thought. She pulled out the feather that Teazle had given her. “Light this.”
Sorcha held out an imperious hand and twitched the small thing out of Lila’s grasp. She inspected it closely, smelled it, and licked it.
“It’s white,” Lila said helpfully.
“I see that,” Sorcha replied, quietly. Her hair had turned to a brooding maroon storm of flame, lit with lightning flashes of alarming blue. “You didn’t mention it was this brother that came in the window. What did he say?”
Lila told her.
“You know why white is so difficult? Because white is all colours in one. You don’t know what the hell is going on with somebody who is white, all you know for sure is that they could be anything they wanted, no power they wouldn’t draw on, nothing they wouldn’t do. White is blindness. White is the display of power that hides every motive, every move.” Sorcha spoke with a cold dislike that Lila could never have imagined was in her repertoire. “That assassin you were so worried about . . . this is his.” Her tone became thoughtful. “But it has no evil charm. I can’t feel a thing but a summons on it. It’s like he said. A party invitation. Even so, strange to pull something like this off your own butt.”
“From his arm . . . under his wing . . .”
“Whatever.” Sorcha smiled and with her free hand struck an imaginary lighter. A yellow flame shot up from the tip of her thumb. She stepped next to Lila so that they were touching gently at shoulder and hip and put the feather to the flame. It went up with a pfft of white and blue, the world blinked, and the two of them were standing at the head of a grand staircase.
The ballroom was huge, a natural cavern lit by crystals and torches, by dancing werelights and slowly drifting globes of feylight. Frosted crystals in the rock roof and on the branches of the petrified forest glade that acted as columns in this natural cathedral glittered and reflected everywhere. A grand table below them stretched out for almost half a mile, festooned with garlands, laden with sculptures in ice, in fruit, in other foods. Champagne and other drinks played in fountains and fell in cascades as though born of nature. Sublime, itchy-footed dance music played and instantly Lila felt Sorcha start to gently bounce to the infectious rhythm. The place was full of elaborate, saturated, incredibly coloured and decorated demons of every imaginable shape and size. Faeries were there too, their spectral wings visible in the thickened demon aether. Lila and Sorcha were atop a high dais—where arrivals all must come in. There was a queue forming at their backs between two white plaster statues of heraldic, naked dragonmen . . . when a beautiful baritone voice boomed out . . .
“Welcome the Magnificent Sorcha Azlaria Ahriman, Diva of the Nine Deities of the Fundamental Groove of Mousa. Welcome the Otopian Ambassador, Lila Amanda Black, Friendslayer, Lover of Azrazal Ahriman of the Cursed Race, Killer of Azarktus the Beloved Son of Our Glorious Hostess, the Principessa Sikarzi!”
The room went utterly silent. Every face and body turned to face Lila. Every movement stilled, except for the gentle dancing of Sorcha who went on quietly bopping as though nothing had altered, the model of relaxed enjoyment and pride at Lila’s side.
Sorcha murmured with sultry assurance, “We rule, darling.”
Lila’s AI took a picture of the frozen throng.
You are famous, Tath whispered, hidden deep in her heart, pulled as tight on himself as any magic would allow. It didn’t lessen his sarcasm.
The demon who had taken her photograph at the library was there, just starting to run away through other figures Lila began to recognise as guards and servers. Before he could get very far he was caught and, to her utter disbelief, ripped limb from limb on the spot by two lithe, red guards. They snarled and spat at each other over the little body, then let go of the dripping bits and started to fight over the camera like dogs.
She had just turned to confirm what she thought had happened when, as though released by that instant of savage punishment, the pent-up feelings of the crowd ripped forth in the form of a hail of missiles, all aimed at her. In the time it took for her to turn back from her sideways glance her AI-self had come into full capacity. Time seemed to slow down to give her enough time to relax into a defensive stance. As part of her turn to face the threat her left arm knocked Sorcha down and behind her. Her right arm and hand opened out and activated an emergency deflector that was usually housed in the back of her forearm. It opened out, as big as a tent into a shield of diamond-fine filaments which, like the airbag of a vehicle, would provide adequate defence for a split second before collapsing. Her legs shifted into combat mode. She got taller. She got stronger. In a blur of white and black metal her defensive and assault systems armed, targeted their most likely opponents, and offered a bewildering array of weapons to her hands. Hormones rushed her so that she felt almost like she was flying, was superhuman, could take on anything. Her left hand, coming back, caught the gun from its holster at the side of her leg and brought it around to bear.
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