Selling Out

by Justina Robson

  If there was a response from the shocked camp it came too late to bother them. Zal worked the line until the net was within the streaming wake of the drake’s flight and aether stream, then they screamed their silent way home, leaving the fresh air of Alfheim’s beautiful day before anyone could find them. The elves had no smash and grab equivalent of drake riders, no airborne terror, and now that they were gone, no proof of anything. It had been a matter of contention among elven sorcerers for centuries—why would the drag onkin favour demons and the fey? Some said it was a crime against nature, but it was never clear whose the crime was or what and, besides, dragons themselves favoured parts of Alfheim whether their relatives did or not. It didn’t matter to Zal, only that he had the person he had to question.

  At his request they steered away from Bathshebat and dropped him down at the Place of Stones, on the mainland, a region of bare rock that provided no cover of any sort for many miles. The marks of old duels were littered around like splashes of paint and he knew there were places where the ground emanated all the pain and dread of the defeated. With a shudder he felt himself reminded of Zoomenon as he dismounted.

  “Return for me at dark,” he said as the drake hovered impossibly above the ground on shivering wings that shattered the air into tiny ripples all around. He felt her energy beating the ground away.

  The rider nodded as he slid down and landed on the rock some twenty metres from the motionless net. He watched the drake glide away several miles along the shore and then settle down to bask in the sun. Then and only then did he turn to the net. He switched off the Songster and put it in his pocket.

  “Did you think you would escape?” he asked quietly in the old language, taking a dagger out of his boot as the words forced him to a genteel precision of baiting he so rarely enjoyed, coming as it did from the ancestry of manipulation and spite he despised. “Or did your master persuade you it could be done and you were fooled? If that place was your home then you’re poor and stupid enough to be persuaded of almost anything. Tell me about your employment and maybe you can get out of this with your life, go back to foraging like an animal.” He could see the body inside the netting stir and struggle to perform the magical movements of the Shadow Dance wherewith it could make the spell to become shadow but it was effectively trapped.

  Zal sat down where he was and waited, turning the knife over in his fingers. The blade was cool and the point shining with a lacquer of Sorcha’s venom—a poison that was harmless to him without her will to make it deadly. Not so for any of his enemies. For them it was attuned to his instruction. He could feel a fine thread joining him to its inimical substance, his heart to its aetherically bound molecules. There was so much about demons that was truly amazing. He found his interest focusing there for a time, to pass the moments as the elf in the net struggled with herself. The metal blade cut his andalune where it touched but he didn’t mind the weakening—had learned to heal himself rapidly from all the assaults of metal. Besides, the injuries seemed deserved, he reflected—he had failed Adai, and an aetheric flaying was less than worthy of the offence. But then he caught himself and stopped. He hadn’t become demon for nothing. The honour code of guilt and redemption was a futile path. Let the elves cling to it and their game of manners. He did not come so far to fall into it now.

  He turned impatiently. “Must I wait forever?”

  The sun was further advanced than in Alfheim and beat down with increasing vigour as it burned off the night’s hazy fug from the shore. The captive elf writhed in discomforts of various kinds.

  “You will kill me anyway,” came the sullen reply at last.

  “Do not count on it,” Zal said, reminding himself suddenly of his father. “I do not have a merciful reputation in these parts. Now tell me who sent you and to do what. I have no doubt Adai was not your target, since her death seems almost a misadventure. Sorcha informs me you attempted to murder Lila but after making so much effort to enter a vast gathering of demons you bungled your single rotten shot and made a pathetic getaway attempt across the water—which anyone might have told you was the worst possible course.”

  “Anyone close to you!” the elf spat.

  “I don’t think so,” Zal said smoothly. “Everyone in Alfheim could say that, although I suppose that if you had succeeded your reputation as an assassin might have come high enough to find the attention of a ruling family back at home. After all, for a little dirt grubber like yourself there’s hardly any easy way to get a name for yourself. Nobody in Alfheim would take a challenge from you, being shadow and of low caste and from nowhere and of no family. You wouldn’t even have been hired as a guard on a trade caravan.” He pushed the line as hard as he could, sure that at least he was right about that part of her story. “A pity your archery is so weak.”

  “The white demon took my arrow!” she hissed. “My aim was sure. That creature had no way to avoid it. My poison was perfected. Nothing could have saved her.”

  “Then it was a careless act to shoot when someone like him was standing next to her. Wasting all your life’s work on a moment’s bad observation.” He tutted.

  “How was I to know he would sacrifice himself? He was of the family . . .”

  Zal pounced. “Ah, he was of the family who set you up, you mean?”

  “She had already killed the son. She was due to die. It was my job. There was no dishonour in it.”

  “But the family in question has bred the most deadly killer in all the worlds for ten generations. Do you think they would hire some filthy little elf for a task of honour? What were you to do when you failed them?” He could feel her hatred of him like a second sun, and knew he was right again. He felt sorry for her innocence and answered for her. “Of course, you’d kill yourself, like a good assassin, leaving some great death poem about your tragic little life so we could all have a good laugh over it. Did it not strike you that you might have been the evening’s entertainment?”

  She actually sobbed. “No! I had orders to kill her and if I could not then to kill you, your sister, or your wife. Any would do.”

  He felt inspiration come, as if she was willing him to know everything and was passing it to him, which, in a way she was . . . “But if you succeeded, what would happen? Lila would be dead. You’d vanish back to Alfheim with something and never darken their doors again. The Principessa would have given me a mortal insult and I would be obliged to challenge the house of Sikarza. Teazle would have to take up the challenge and I would die. Lila would be dead so the Otopians would have lost their most useful agent, the only one with any potential to become powerful in Demonia. The elves would have lost the only one with any sense, me. And then the Principessa would be able to rightly say her family had saved Demonia from an influx of foreign power and would move up to the top of the ruling families. That was a risk worth taking, even on someone like you. But you failed. Because of Teazle. That’s very interesting. Like mother, like son, but a different game I’d bet. Teazle gains nothing much if his mother becomes a power in the region. Like her he’d be glad really to get rid of someone as annoying as his brother. His interests aren’t remotely served by assisting his mother’s schemes or Lila’s death. He’d be much better off trying to marry her. Then he’d have foreign power and influence first in Demonia, plus the kudos of the most powerful partner who was already significant before she even got here. He’s young enough to have a strategic brain left so of course he’d try that, and he’d be enough to scare off any other suitors for the time being. Except me. But I could be an added bonus if I also persuaded Lila to join with me. The combination of him, Lila, and myself would be a power structure unlike any other here, and possibly unassailable. It would be sufficient to found a new family line, one without any ties to previous or existing lineages. No more obligations to fulfil. And of course there would be Adai, the only one of us capable of producing heirs. What an interesting plan. The Principessa wanted you to forestall that, I’d bet, and you have. Anything you did she can claim is
vengeance for that little runt of hers. She loses nothing no matter what happens and she stands to gain a lot. Unless Teazle does make it clean away, in which case she stands to lose her head. Of course, all that would rely on Lila being in any way marriageable, a thing the Principessa has probably failed to account for because she can’t imagine anyone turning down Teazle whereas I can’t imagine Lila saying yes to anyone. But whatever the reasoning, you’re nothing but an embarrassment, a living endorsement, and unless you’re prepared to make a full testimonial in court to clear Lila from any link to Adai’s death, you’re my business to dispose of.”

  There was a moment of sobbing misery from the net.

  “Cheer up, it might never happen. I’m notoriously insane. By the way, what was that poison on the arrow you used? I didn’t see too much of your shack but some of the totem poles had a medicinal look to them suggestive of some serious pharmacological interest. You’d find a very lucrative trade relation over here if you took the time to investigate it, should that be the case.”

  Between sobs came the words, “You are an abomination.”

  “Oh, you’re not a believer, are you?” Zal summoned the energy not to groan and began to play with directing light beams over the surface of the rocks from the dagger blade, sending tiny focused golden glows over the netting. “Zal is a traitor to elves because he went off to discover what demons were all about and decided he preferred making music to waging war on his own people. Vulgar and tasteless . . .”

  “You abandoned the shadowkin cause and the White Flower.” There was some fumbling and then the elf poked her grey fingers out of the net. Held between them Zal saw a small white daisy, quite dried and flattened. “You were one of us.”

  Zal suppressed a shudder as a cold flicker went through him. “I started us,” he hissed back.

  “Lila murdered Dar. Everyone knows. He tried to save you from the worst of the Jayon Daga and now he’s dead and you’re gone. You left us to rot. Who do you think remains behind to champion anything?”

  “Nothing’s stopping you,” he said, aware it was weak even if it was true.

  “Dar begged you to come back but you stayed here for . . . for what? Music?” Her contempt was like a knife in his side.

  “The music is important. And the cause is just another problem featuring in the same tired old drama,” he said. “If we won we’d only take up power in the same form it has now and do the same wrong things over again. Besides, there was nobody with sufficient influence on the diurnal side to help us. We needed a better reason than simple injustice to turn them.”

  “Yes, and now that the cracks are spreading there is even more reason to stamp out the shadow filth for they all know we follow the wild streams and where do they come from but the cracks to the Void and surely we are farming the cracks to gain enough power to topple the light! Arië was their great hope for stability and you took it away. Now they have no reason not to openly exterminate us and that is exactly what they are starting to do. But you wouldn’t know about that, since you are too busy singing songs and being adored by stupid humans who don’t even care their world is falling apart. I was glad of a chance to kill you. Seeing you like this is worse than having you dead.”

  Zal didn’t reply. He already knew everything she said was true, of course, and he was used to the truth and its pain so it didn’t have the power to upset him now. He was thinking about Mr. Head, and his mother.

  “Do you know how the shadowkin were made?” he asked, watching the sun’s heat make Sorcha’s poison gleam pale red. He moved across the rock to the net and poked the dagger through, making a small wound in the elf’s thigh with the point.

  She flinched, “What is that?”

  “This? This is an aetherically attuned intelligent protein which will perform whatever work on you I ask it to, within reason. A poison, if you like. I could even tell you what I was going to have it do, supposing you’d tell me what poison you tried to use on Lila. Was it demon, like this one, or one of your own devising?”

  “I made it,” she hissed, trying to reach her leg and failing. She could barely breathe, the nets were so tight.

  “And is Teazle carrying it now?” Zal asked languidly, as though they were enjoying the light and heat and the day. “Because killing him would be quite a coup. As much as a coup as finding out that the Saaqaa are elfkin, blood and aether, and that there could be no shadow if there wasn’t light.”

  “How do you know that?” She gulped for air, beginning to pant now that the sunlight shone full on both of them.

  “I found something.”

  “Your word is not enough.”

  “I have proof. And I will you to believe the truth when you hear it, just so we don’t waste what time we have left on any unfortunate misunderstandings.” He looked at her a long time to be sure she understood what he meant, that the poison was to have this effect, and as he saw her breathing calm he knew that she did. He could have lied about it and she wouldn’t know, he knew that too, but he felt too jaded by the day’s business to lie.

  She waited, thinking, and then said, resentfully because he made her wait and ask, “So, how were they made?”

  “By crossing light elves with ghosts. At least, I think they were ghosts. It’s hard to say. The language she was using when she told me was so very old. I might have got the words wrong. Something that came out of the interstitial after they opened a portal onto the akashic plane and made people stand in the way. It’s not always ghosts, is it? Anyway, the survivors were bred with various cocktails of other elves until they got the shadowkin. The by-blows who didn’t fit the expected mould are the Saaqaa. Everything else got ported to Zoomenon and dumped, dead or alive. That was the Winnowing part. I guess the first bit must have been the planting part, and then the harvesting part or whatever . . .” He stopped, feeling nauseous.

  “Why?” she said after a long pause.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “But I’d like to. I have enough evidence, if I ever get time to go through it. That however would rely on me not being killed in the next few months. And we need to present it somehow in Alfheim. For that, people with brains will have to be alerted to the opportunity by people who know I’m telling the truth.”

  “You were right. I don’t have any influence,” she said, taking his point.

  “I didn’t say you could do it. I’m telling you this so you know I mean it when I say that either you get up on the stand and admit to killing Adai to save Lila from having to face a public trial or I will kill you. Your choice. The only one that interests me. I could care less about the shadowkin story. It’s waited for millennia, it can wait some more.”

  “They will torture me until I confess the whole story,” she said bitterly.

  “Then you can just tell it all straightaway. They’re not barbarians about it.”

  “And then what will happen?”

  “The Principessa has her get-out clauses lined up. She won’t care. She may take out some policy against you for failing to meet professional standards but given the thoroughness of the legal proceedings in the case against you I doubt it. Your shame will be enough for the demons. They’ll consider you a fallen creature, beneath notice, so after that you can just leave. They won’t pay you any more attention unless you fall foul of an imp. You can go home, do some gardening, brew a few more potions, turn into the mad lady who says the night hunters are elves too.”

  The sun was burning hot now. Zal could feel her waves of agony at the intense radiation and he sympathised with that.

  “Take me where I must go to speak,” she said.

  He stood and signalled the drake rider.

  “The drug was not a poison as such,” she informed him as he cut the net free just enough for her to stand by herself. “It was a thana tritic, to collect the mind after death and distil it. A necromancer’s tool, to extract information from corpses. It wasn’t mine. The Principessa’s agent gave it to me. The demon will carry it but it won’t harm him. It ma
y not even be enough to be active when he dies.” She let Zal pull her to her feet and gave him a look of tired resignation. “I do make poisons. Just ones that kill.”

  The drake landed a short distance away and feigned interest in the horizon as they approached and made their way to its harnesses. Zal set the elf in front of him and held her in position since she was unable to use her arms or hands. Exhaustion and fear made her andalune body weak and he let her lean on him, her black hair soft against his cheek, her long ear twitching gently against his neck. She gave him a sad look as he set her down in the company of the demon police and made the necessary statements. Before he left he glanced at her and saw her vulnerability suddenly. It made him angry with her. He didn’t intend to but he found himself saying, “I loved my wife,” in a strangled tone, before turning and leaving on foot to begin the long walk to the Otopia portal.

  The drake had long since departed and the afternoon was hot and humid. He was tired and sweating by the time he crossed over.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  There was a shiver, as if the world had shuddered, and then Lila found herself inside the sitting room, just as before. But it was as she had never perceived it before. The room moved like an ocean. Everything that had been solid and material—the furniture, the walls—now possessed a quality she could only think of as subtle; their material certainty gone and their true nature as objects temporarily composed of energy in harmonious vibration exposed completely to her. And she was the same. And so was Tath. There was nothing in existence that did not have this evanescent charm. She saw at once how truly fragile everything was, how miraculous, how strange. And through everything that was surged deeper waves and movements, currents and flows, so slow and majestic in their tides that in an age of human time they would barely move at all, yet she could perceive their vital power, their unstoppable force.