I’d betray my sister for the promise of a half sucked breath-mint, Lila said. But not here and not now.
The door vanished abruptly and her guards stood there.
“Lady Astar,” one said deferentially.
Astar stood up and preceded Lila out.
Tath, do you know anything about demons? Do you have any relatives? Lila asked as she followed, kicking the floor. It bent slightly. She thought that the water must transmit every sound and vibration quite well, and sighed.
You are talking about Zal, he said. I have heard of his theory that demons and elves are a bound aetheric duality, but it is heresy here, you must understand. I have no idea if it has any truth in it. Nobody in Alfheim knows what he did in Demonia. My concern with this lies in the salvation of Alfheim, from one destruction or another.
I guess I suit your purpose quite well so far. If we’stop Arie you get to save the world.
I guess you do. How does your arm feel now?
Lila hadn’t been concentrating and realised that she wasn’t feeling even slight discomfort. She tried her arm and found that it was well-healed. The plastic and metal damage was still there, but her skin, her bone, the human parts of her—they were fine.
You may thank Astar for helping me. I hope it is the last time.
The last time for the next five minutes, Lila said, acknowledging Tath’s own irony with a rueful smile. Don’t get too sweet now, Tath, or it’ll start feeling like we’re friends.
He didn’t reply.
“I had an idea,” Lila said. I know how we can get to Zal. She explained as they finished their short walk and arrived back in the lake hall.
It seems a bit convenient, Tath grumbled although Lila could feel a sly kind of gladness in him at the level of trust between them she would have to rely on. You will have to be very convincing.
Not me, Lila said. You.
Arie and her entourage were seated around low tables there, for all the world as though they were out for a picnic. Dar was close to Arie’s left side, changed, dried and cleaned up. He looked quite the part in his lilac and lavender finery. Lila felt completely sick at heart with what she was about to do because it was, as Tath said, very dangerous. She longed to cry. Instead she gave him a big smile and a wave. It was all she could think of that might act as a warning of any kind; a gesture so out of place that it must carry meaning. She saw Arie’s green eyes narrow slightly as she was marched up to the gathering. Astar walked quietly to her Lady’s side.
“I regret my entreaties were in vain,” Astar said and sat down.
Lila felt the strong andalune presence of the guards at her sides withdraw as they stepped away from her. Now was the moment.
Okay, llyatath Elenir Voynassi Taliesetra, she said inside. Sell me down the river.
Lila Amanda Black, I surely will.
“But the Lady’s effort was not in vain,” Tath-in-Lila said, as Lila felt her body change the way it moved, to his style. “I have gained the upper hand within our struggle thanks to Lady Astar’s strength.” Tath dropped the glamour.
Lila had to admit that the look on Dar’s face was quite gratifyingly astonished. The rest of the faces however, those that didn’t turn aside with revulsion, stared at her with the kind of expressions that it took all her courage not to react to. She supposed that her dirty state, her stolen clothes, her scars, her mangled hand and the metal tüat showed must be quite something if you were used to 1he ldnds of flawless beauty tüat decked lie halls around here. Still, as the silence rang on and twenty pairs of elfm eyes fliclced over her as though tüe sight of her were poison, it wasn’t so easy to bear.
Tath spoke quietiy, witü a surprise entirely of his own. He was surprised tüat he was surprised. I can feel their hate.
Welcome to my world, Lila said to him, staring straight ahead now, wanting to look at Dar but knowing she wouldn’t find any support there, most likely. Couldn’t risk it anyway. Then doing it. His face was rigid and intense, the face of her nightmares. What the hell was that look about.?
That look is Dar thinking at top speed. And… But Tath didn’t finish. Lila sensed his curiosity burning though she could not decipher its cause. Tath’s presence, which had been so all-consuming it had become natural, was now focused on the tiny space he occupied within her solar plexus and he was difficult to read. Suddenly she was on her own.
The Lady of Aparastil was first to rise and, as though commanded in silent languages, the others remained quite still around her as she came forward to inspect Lila more closely.
Arie said nothing but that didn’t stop the rest. Lila heard a lot of elvish words that her Al-self unwittingly translated before she turned off that function: hideous, abomination, monster, freak, disgusting, perverted, ugly, repulsive… The sly giggles, gloats and sneers could not be erased so easily.
Lila held fast, as though Tath controlled her, and stared into the distance, into the deep green where the fish suddenly darted and flashed their silver semaphore of alarm. They were replaced by a huge, horned, tentacled face, long and triangular, with colossal golden eyes whose star-slit pupils gazed at her for an instant before vanishing into the water and weeds. She saw golden scales and black scales in diamond patterns winding on and on after it, seemingly for ever, long amber fins and powerful, clawed feet: a water dragon. Because they were fixated on her, none of the elves noticed it, except for Tath. He reacted to the sight of it with intense excitement and fear, but he was soon distracted.
At close quarters Arie’s allure was almost overwhelming. Lila could feel Tath melting with the very idea of being so close to the Lady. Lila was melting in a different way, every piece of her attention focused on maintaining calm homeostasis on her skin, in her muscles, in her breathing, in her energy patterns, giving away nothing of the seething molten anger that made her want to activate all weapons and bury Arie and her retinue in the muddy bottom of the lake. And as she held the line and gave nothing away, as she burned, she felt Tath inside her chest, a new kind of sensation from him that she didn’t expect or look for even in allies at times like these: respect.
Just don’t fucking say anything, Tath, either way, she thought. Don’t make it harder than it already is.
He didn’t.
“Are you able to show us what this… thing… is capable of?” Arie asked.
“Yes,” Lila said, quite herself and trying to talk Tath-speak. “Though I advise you to stand aside.” With hands that didn’t sweat or shake she began to undress.
She took off Tath’s baldric and belt, his dagger and his bow. Arie took them from her, holding them reverently. Lila took off Tath’s jerkin and his shirt, revealing her stained singlet underneath. She removed what was left of his boots, undid the laces that held his britches closed and took them off—careful not to think of the last time she’d done that, although she would have loved to see Arie’s expression if her liaison with Dar were to become public knowledge. She stepped out of them to stand in her regulation underthings, stinking of human sweat, as naked as she ever wanted to be again. The prosthetic arms and legs, the rivers of interrun flesh and metal, their unhappy pairing, the scarlet stain of Dar’s magic… she let Arie take a long look and thought she saw the stirring of pity in the elf queen’s face. She wanted to hit that face.
“What manner of terrible surgery has been foisted on this person?” Arie demanded. “It cannot be intentional that—she—has found herself thus made so abominably malformed. Look at her eyes! Nothing but metal. What could she see with those except the hardness and coldness of things?”
I see you, you trite bitch, Lila thought. She activated all her weapons systems into attack configuration and watched with deep satisfaction as pieces of her arms and legs which had seemed to be a flush surface with her skin lifted out and apart, flicking into new positions, her limbs a blur of moving metal parts, the air filled with the sound of a thousand snicking precision-made components shifting like a storm of mechanical insects taking wing. Battle armour, multi
functional self-adapting guns, missile launchers, an extra five inches of height. . .
Lila watched the elves recoil from her flat silver eyes as her hair activated and became charged sensory and comms transmission systems. Blades grew out of her hands. From her heels, killing spurs emerged, coated in poison.
Arte was the only one who did not recoil. She looked Lila up and down. “Can you operate these things, Tath?”
“I do not have complete access to that. The machine…” Tath said in his own voice, trusting that Arie’s imagination would fill in the blank.
“How is it powered?”
“I cannot ascertain the method.”
“As you were,” Arie said thoughtfully and Lila returned to her civilian self in less than a second; the incredible shrinking girl.
“There is something else,” Tath added at Lila’s prompt, making no move to take any of Lila’s clothing back. She turned her head and stared into Arie’s green eyes with her solid silver ones, knowing the elf would only see herself in them. “This agent was one of those assigned to Zal in Otopia to protect him from the Jayon Daga. She and he were involved in a Game which is unresolved.” It was her final card, the only card she had. If Arie didn’t pick it up they were all done. She had to bet that Arie could not resist using this information.
“What kind of Game?” the Lady demanded softly.
Lila hesitated. Tath took over seamlessly and used her mouth for her, “A love match.” Her voice. Her mouth. Tath’s words. Suddenly they were too close for comfort and she almost panicked at the notion she would never get out and that he could take her over so easily if he wanted to… Tath felt it too. For a second they were on the brink, each realising the other’s power.
But if the atmosphere had been bad before it was as nothing to the depths it plunged to now. Someone actually gagged. Lila saw Arie’s face tighten compulsively.
“To the death?”
Tath did not know the answer. He was watching Arie and made no attempt to seize power. Lila supplied it. “The death of love,” she said and resumed command, turning her face back to its attention position so that she didn’t have to see the triumph and hate and loathing flood Arie’s beauty with a whole new kind of vertiginous attraction, every strong mood of here magnetic and charged with magic. As she reveded her secret she heard Tath say, You’re full of surprises, Lila.
You should see me on a good day, Lila told him, though it was only words to her, she felt nofting of the assertiveness she pretended to. She longed to be unconscious, to be anywhere but here.
“Such a Game,” the Lady mused, tlie company there hanging on her every breath. “Such a dangerous Game with such as this. Surely… but there is no end to his degradation it seems. Truly, you did not retain him a moment too soon, Dar. Now come, Tath, you have suffered long enough in such an unbefitting prison. Give me a token of your necromancer’s soulbond with Deaft and I will give you back to your sister, or to whomever you wish, of my retinue will serve you.”
That damn flower!
Stop moaning and think, Tath snapped.
“I think it would be more interesting if I remained here,” Lila said “that Taith, passing him ideas as she had them, not even sure how she did it. Zal will not know that I am not the real Agent Black, after all. Maybe we can be useful. Zal will be diffkult to manage. He was at the best of times. But the Game and his affections for this creature may make him ductile.”
Ductile? Lila shot at Tath. Nobody in their right mind uses words like ductile.
Nobody but me. That is why she is still going along with this madness. You do the thinking and leave the talking to me.
The Lady smiled. “You reason prettily enough, Tath. But give me the token, so that I can restore you immediately if things go ill. Neither of us can trust a being such as this one, whose spirit such as it is has been infiltrated and bound by the impenetrable blankness of metal and electricity.” Her smile was like the sun coming out of the clouds after a long, dull day of grey sides. Tath and Lila both felt its warmth and promise of goodness.
Oh crap, Lila thought. She was out of ideas.
I could not have put it better myself
“I have it,” Astar interrupted quietly, coming forward with a daisy in her palm. “He gave it to me for safe keeping.” She gave it to Arie and the Lady closed her fingers over the token.
Inside Lila, as she felt a rush of gratitude for Astar’s quick thinking, Tath became extremely dense with tension.
“That is well then,” Arte said, clearly relieved. “For I would not have you used against me, Tath. I hold you very dear.”
Sure, that’s why she sends you into Thanatopia against your nature when she won’t go herself.
I am aware of my position, Tath said ambiguously. And if you want her to swallow this you had better leave the rest to me. You have not the graces yet.
“You do me great favour, Lady,” Tath said, and performed the elegant, supplicating bow that Lila didn’t have in her. Lila was slightly nauseated by Tath’s deference—at the way it made him feel so good. Tath did the andalune equivalent of pulling a face at her.
Arte gave Astar Tath’s gear. “Please dress and resume your glamour for the time being if you would, Tath,” she said. “I must say that I prefer your fairness to this mockery of life and beauty. You were always most comely.”
“Thank you, Lady,” he said and Lila felt the surge of Tath unfolding over her like a comfortable old coat.
How peculiar, Lila thought, to be more comfortable as somebody else. How nice to know you are pretty and how nice not to draw the wrong kind of attention.
Lila looked down at herself as Tath getting dressed. There really was not much comparison. Tath was sculpted muscle and acres of smooth, perfect skin. It was quite startling to see how much the sight of that apparent physical health calmed the others in the room. Even Dar was relaxing and that sense that the whole place was about to shatter had gone. Beauty junkies, that’s what you are, Lila thought sadly, even Arie, especially Arte, who has never looked in a mirror that didn’t like her or a face that wasn’t humbled by her.
Is that other daisy a big mojo spell daisy or just a daisy? Lila asked Tath, trying to keep matters practical.
It is only a flower, a siqn of her solidarity with us and nothing more.
Too bad. Anyway, you like Arie an awful lot, for an enemy.
My heart is my own problem, Tath said coolly.
Lila took the silver Thanatopic amulet from Astar last and put it on. As she did so, Tath sighed inside her, a heavy, long-suffering sound, and her chest felt as though it sank a degree. The office hurt him. It was a literal weight in his spirit.
“Come with me now,” Arie said to Tath. “Tell me of how you came by this robotic nightmare and the spells by which you hold it under mastery. Dar has told me of how it was he came to Alfheim in mortal pain, but I would like to know what happened to the lovely Silalio. Why is she not with you? Her heart would break to see you so.”
Tath switched command position with Lila again, as though they’d been a tag-team doing it all their lives. He was graceful about it, and only Lila felt the sadness and the anger as he said lightly, “Her heart lies with my body in the woodlands south of Sathanor. The Lady Silalio is dead, killed by Saaqaa as we travelled fast by night to catch up with Dar. Wild magic was everywhere around us, indeed, I have never seen so great a concentration of it as I did that night. It led us astray from the path and we were surprised by the hunters. She fought,” Lila felt a catch in his thinking, in his emotions, like a stumble, “very well, but the beasts were too powerful for all of us. Their ferocity and numbers have grown like wildfire in the last few months. They slaughter across Alfheim with impunity.”
Sighs and sounds of grief and surprise broke across the gathered elves around the Lady Arte, not least from Astar, who walked quickly away from them all and left the Hall. The sight of it cut Tath to the core but he held his position and Lila felt her face change only the slightest amount
, sinking at the corners of the mouth. Lila wondered if Silalio had carried a daisy too, forgetting how easy it was now for Tath to hear her.
Indeed she did not, he said acidly. So put away that pity you were beginning to feel, unless it was for her.
“I am grieved to hear it,” Arie said. Tears stood in her eyes and she displayed her emotions so openly and with such force that to look at her was to feel the epitome of all sorrow. Lila didn’t look. She let Tath carry on and tried not to experience the way that Arie’s expression tore at him.
“Tath,” Arie walked forward and put out her hand, then hesitated for a fraction of a second, and let it down again. Her andalune body touched his for the briefest of moments and he almost swooned in the combination of pleasure and agony. Lila felt the strange charge it carried, more than sympathy and more than attraction. She knew that heady, intoxicating rush—Arie and Tath were involved in a Game that went beyond the obvious one of political struggle! The citrus, effervescent tang of wild magic sparkled in her mind.
She betrayed you with love?
Tath did not answer.
“If you will not be undone from this creature then I cannot offer you any further consolation, though your self-command does you great honour in my presence,” Arie said. “Come, before we continue this difficult task, eat with us. There is someone I would like you to talk to.”
She turned and her retinue got up quickly and silently to follow her. Dar hung back, but not enough for either of their aethereal bodies to make contact, and Tath would not meet his eye.
Lila reconsidered the wisdom of her position as they passed out of the lake hall and into another glorious room of glassy walls and living wallpaper. Either of the elves would kill anyone for the stakes that she was still only dimly aware of, all tangled about them like weeds here in this room; politics, families, magics, love. She only wanted to save Zal’s skin, not create an international incident. Those two things seemed impossibly far from her control. And then they sat down at a beautiful curving table shaped like the curl of a gentle wave. It was laid out with a feast. In spite of her revulsion at the idea and the knife-edge they were balancing on she was very hungry, so Lila ate the food of Sathanor and, just for the moments that she did so and before guilt had time to manifest, she forgot everything but the sheer pleasure of being alive. And then she watched and waited, and hoped that Arie would not be able to overcome temptation.
Keeping It Real Page 26