Going Under

by Justina Robson

  “So he carried it while he was there…” this was a statement, not a question and Lila didn’t say anything. Malachi’s expression was serious, his gaze drifting idly, it seemed, down to the spiral, though he kept his faraway stare so that he was both looking and not looking at it. “I’m supposing she didn’t say why or what it was for?”

  “A good luck charm,” Lila said, repeating what Zal had said, although he’d been so casual about it she never thought it was more than a bit of decoration with some faery twirl set on it, the kind you could buy for a few pounds at any fey roadside caravan or truck stop. They were magical items, of the only kind available in Otopia under the present laws, and usually held a petit-glamour of some kind, such as adding a little brightness to the eyes or, in the case of the famous Faeryware, enhancing flavour in food.

  “Aye, it was lucky for him to survive more than a few hours in Zoomenon, locate the only source of organised energy in that world, free a lot of ancient ghosts from millennia of torment and in so doing discover the one shameful secret of elven history that would give him proof that the shadowkin and the elves of light are blood relatives. So it was. Lucky indeed.” Malachi said quietly and let his hand drop without touching the spiral. Motes of carbon flirted with touching it and rebounded, as if repelled or frightened. He shook his head and broke his own trance, “Have you ever tried losing it?”

  “No, why would I?”

  “You should ask Poppy where she found it.”

  For the first time in a long time Lila thought of Zal’s kidnapping-faeries had been involved in that, though it was an elven plot. She was about to mention it when Malachi said, “And the other one? That’s not a faery thing.” His gaze was fixed on the talisman, narrowed.

  “Sarasilien gave it to me. Just a token,” she mumbled, knowing that it was the only thing keeping all the magical adepts in her proximity from discovering Tath. She had no idea what magic the old elf had used to make it, even though she’d seen it done. It had seemed a trivial thing, but then again, Malachi had more than once hinted that a big song and dance routine was just that when it came to the magical arts; a great spell or a small one was the work of a moment and for true adepts no props were required. She hadn’t entirely believed him, mostly because faeries liked slinging grandiose claims around, but now she wondered.

  “The understatement there is so low I’m starting to feel that I’m back in the old country,” Malachi said, straightening the hang of his jacket. Abruptly the clouds of scintillating black dust shot back onto his wings and skin, like iron filings to a magnet. “Next you’ll be telling me your new family are just like regular folks. I’ll be on my way. See you at the Agency.” His amber gaze was direct, meaning she’d better be there soon and that he was wise to her attempts to omit important information.

  “Sure,” Lila said, showing him to the door.

  As he turned to go he cast a last glance over the room, lingering on the huge rumpled bed. “A year since you first walked into Alfheim, huh? You’ve come a long way, baby.”

  “It’s not what it looks like.”

  He nodded and she wished to hell he would stop being so serious, like he was her sad and wiser father or something. Her own father of course… no, she couldn’t even imagine beginning to explain this to him—”Hi, Dad. Here’s my new husband. He’s an elf. And a demon. Yes, both. I know, isn’t it weird but yes, you can be both apparently. And this is my other husband. He’s just a demon and we all live together, oh, and this is a dead elf I had a hand in murdering six months ago—no, he doesn’t share the bed, just my body… and this is Thingamajig. Demon? Uh, yes, well just an imp. Like a cat but more irritating. He lives next to my head. Yes, husband in THAT sense of the word. Want some help opening that beer?” And then she wouldn’t be able to say any more because she would literally have died of embarrassment.

  The faery turned and looked down into her eyes for a moment. “You don’t need to defend yourself to me,” he said. “I just want you to be safe.”

  She didn’t like the implication in that and before she knew it said, “You’re not responsible for me. Don’t think about it.”

  His gaze hardened with a flash of anger and then he laughed. “Telling a fey to be free is like telling water it’s wet.” His anger returned and hardened out into resolve. “I am what I am. And I say you are into things deeper and stranger than you understand. You run in without a second glance, yes, like the children the faeries love the best. No hesitation. A child of the heart. Wedded to demons. But you don’t—”

  “I do so know about them,” she said, thinking of the Souk, the glamorous, deadly violence of every day.

  “You know what they like to show you,” Malachi said, suddenly more gentle so she wished he was angry again. “And we’re the same. And the elves, and that’s all.” He glanced at her forehead and hair, where they were stained scarlet by the deadly magical energy which had destroyed her limbs.

  “I’m not under any illusions,” Lila insisted, angry in spite of knowing he was only being thoughtful. “I don’t need protection. I’m not a little girl.”

  His look said he thought otherwise and she scowled at him.

  “Sling yet hook,” Thingamajig muttered from her hair. “I’d have thought you’d have more sense, faeryman. The lassie doesn’t like to know what she knows.”

  “Spoken like a pro,” Malachi retorted. He leant down and kissed the air next to Lila’s cheek. “Tell the lads I said hello.”

  She closed the door after him and leant against it for a moment. It put her opposite the balcony and the huge sprawl of beribboned baskets but all she saw was Malachi’s deadly seriousness. She would never have believed he could be spooked by anything if she hadn’t seen it for herself.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Putting short her holiday was something Lila wanted to do about as much as she wanted a hole in the head, but on top of her burning desire to get the information out of Madame was the uncomfortable feeling she’d got from Malachi. Add to that the mention of a Strandloper and Zal’s discoveries during and after his last visit to Zoomenon, and suddenly the idea of sitting around doing not much of anything was too annoying to bear. She decided to leave as soon as possible and went to ready her backpack so she didn’t leave anything behind her which the demons could tamper with, like artillery shells, bullets, or the slim vials of various biochemicals that were the precursor compounds for all the drugs and treatments she was capable of manufacturing. It was an intricate and methodical task that left her just enough time to bring her memories of the Mothkin out of storage in her AI module and into her mind. She read as she worked.

  The Mothkin were a form of Fey. They were suspected of crossing into Otopia in times prior to the Bomb, in ones and twos, and they were pencilled into the annals of cryptozoology as the most likely culprits in the Mothman incidents in the USA. Of course there was no USA now, only the myriad small islands and their tiny gulfs—independent states, cities, and townships packed into the endless channels of the mighty river system, Fluvia, and known collectively as the Millefoss. On a good day you might attempt to crossmap the old USA and the Millefoss. As for Europe, Asia, and Australia, nothing very recognisable remained of their seemingly permanent geography and even the oceans and their currents were all changed about—so much so that doubt was regularly cast on the whole Bomb story, and not only by the denizens of the other five Revealed Worlds. Lila wasn’t interested in fitting history together though, she just wanted an update on how to handle human-sized fey with big wings when they weren’t being ordinarily friendly like Malachi or the hundreds of other faeries who legally worked and lived in Otopia.

  The Mothkin were a part of the fey world which was least human and most animal-like, including many beasts previously featured only in cryptozoological tracts. They were counted by the faeries as “sluagh,” a term they used for certain fey.

  Fneh, Tath said, figuratively reading over her shoulder. The Sluagh are no faeries. Trust fey to throw names and in
formation about carelessly. The Sluagh are Death’s gleaners, the souls of the restless dead.

  People who didn’t cross over? Lila asked, recalling her brief visit to Thanatopia; its vast harbours and anchorages filled with ships and each ship the destination of a long line of slow marching people. That scintillating ocean of light.

  Yes. They include those who cannot let go of their mortal business, but also necromancers and others who went willingly to band together and live on the shores between life and death.

  What for?

  The power. The elf shuddered with a strange mixture of anticipatory pleasure and revulsion. The sluagh enjoy the company of many magicians, shamans, and other crafters who have many chances to cross over from Thanatopia to other worlds to gain power and to use it for whatever ends they desire. They seek out the living in order to hunt them and suck their souls to ride. He hesitated, Much as I did to get us into Thanatopia.

  So these fey are like that; same power source?

  It seems so, the elf admitted. Though they do not sound particularly intelligent, unlike the sluagh.

  Lila read on. Faeries working in the Agency had insisted that Mothkin be classified as part of the Soul Traders. The key difference between sluagh fey and others was twofold. First, sluagh fey had magic that was primarily focused on the psychic and spiritual planes, and secondly they were much less ready to adopt a human form when manifesting across worlds.

  Mothkin were quite low among the sluagh, according to Lila’s carefully cross-referenced pointer to The Fabula, the Agency’s unofficial guide to all outworlders. They were regarded on a par with animals in terms of their level of consciousness, occasionally getting up sufficient acuity to mimic humans or even become briefly human in form, but usually simply working on the basics of eating, sleeping, and causing trouble. They had a purely psychic form that was considered their “worst” manifestation, since it had no physical element and could not be trapped or bound by ordinary means. This form of the Mothkin was a secondary stage in their lives—a late development, when they shed their bodies entirely after a successful mating and/or egg laying. In addition, the dust shed by adult Mothkin wings had a mildly narcotic effect. Among the dust were spores that, if inhaled, opened the carrier’s spirit to infestation by the psychic adult form.

  There is a saying among the elves that the bodiless fey are the same as the devils, Tath said quietly as they both absorbed this piece of news.

  “The devils?” Lila said aloud, surprised by the name. “Shouldn’t they be here then?” She meant in Demonia, instead of Faery.

  There was a sudden pull and pain on the side of her head and a voice muttered, “You metal-headed glowwit. It ain’t the same thing. Just very similar.”

  Lila scowled.

  The Fabula had a footnote appended with official stamps by human agents:

  Note: this was a faery entry written by faeries. Faery information should be regarded with the due degree of suspicion.

  That was close to one hundred percent suspicion, Lila reflected and Tath’s green became lime with laughter.

  Note 2: Officially the “psychic” form of Mothkin is to be disregarded as an hysterical fabrication by humans. It is assumed not to appear in Otopia or in human subjects, due to their demonstrated lack of magical affinity. At best is simply a term that might be used to apply to any mental affliction. Agents encountering claims of Mothkin interference by subjects should refer the subject to ordinary medical and psychiatric care.

  After skimming this part, Lila paused in a moment of consideration. She was used to the bull-headed atheistic rationalism of the Agency, which plodded grimly onwards with its revisions of magical and supernatural explanations no matter what. Everything had a scientific label and a theory. She was mostly able to shrug this off as a necessary defense for people with fragile minds who had to make everything they encountered conform to their vision of how the world was supposed to be. Otopia, prior to the Quantum Bomb, had been filled with all kinds of religions and so forth, but since the bomb the Agency and its governmental allies had become ruthlessly materialist, perhaps as a reaction to the huge influx of simply inexplicable, and untenable, things that had hurtled its way ever since. But however you chose to read the cause and effect they were pussyfooting around, from this one bleak, dry note she reckoned that a plague of Mothkin meant a plague of madness.

  Her hand pushed the last magazine of explosive rounds into its place in her pack and she sat back on her heels giving the whole thing a final shake to settle the contents and test its weight. No wonder Malachi had been looking hangdog at her—reporting the Mothkin was akin to reporting a covert declaration of war between his homeground and hers.

  She zipped up the pack as she read on.

  Exposure to Mothkin is rarely fatal. There was a link to official databases, which showed clearly the number of facts backing up this last “statistic.”

  There were none. Not simply no deaths. No data.

  The last sentence read: At worst it is reported that a Mothkin assault on a human subject could result in a type of coma, therefore these creatures are not regarded as a High Alert threat.

  After this there was an addition with a faery signature, underlined three times: Stupid human. Mothkin are soul tappers. Coma=as good as dead unless a necromancer or shaman can rebuild the soul well enough that it can recharge itself in the old form. What is it with you people and this denial business anyway? Sometimes I wonder why we bother. Anyway, you’re not likely to encounter many Mothkin in Otopia. They don’t have the power to cross worlds unaided so just don’t do anything stupid.

  Stupider.

  The file ended there.

  I wonder what not doing anything stupid means in this context? Lila thought, hefting the pack in one hand and setting off for the roof with a light step, glad to leave the apartment behind.

  I will forgo the obvious reply and say simply that it means that you should not anger people who have the power to aid the Mothkin across. One might suspect that this is exact what has happened in Otopia.

  So, to get rid of the moths I have to find out who sent them over and what their problem is?

  One would assume. But being a faery matter I doubt it will be so simple. And do not forget that the fey do not dabble in diplomacy as you know it, whatever that sly black cat might be pretending. Any human could have annoyed any faery and got this result one way or another. Will you interview your entire species?

  Well, it would have to be a big annoy, Lila said. Surely? And then she remembered the kinds of things that annoyed Poppy and Viridia and Sand, Zal’s fey backing singers, and she sighed.

  Quite so, said Tath.

  Lila had reached the roof and the landing deck where the sizable number of Sikarza vehicles were parked at her disposal. She nodded to the deck officer and tucked her pack neatly into a corner of his warm little cubby where it was safe. He was used to her leaving things with him and not taking any of his craft. Stretching out her shoulders and taking a deep breath, she strolled across the long flat top of the palazzo to the edge.

  Thingamajig put his head out of her hair, “Where are we going?”

  “I’m looking for Zal,” she said. She initialized her jets, running through a little safety check to pass the time as she scanned the city. There were many possibilities for two demons out there but she was pretty sure she knew where Zal would have gone, whether or not Teazle was in a mood to follow.

  She kicked off from the roof with a stamp of her right foot, not because it helped the jets any but because it felt good. Her arms swept back towards her sides as she let the AI and the propulsion power take care of her flight path. The warm breeze turned cold as it buffeted her face and whipped her hair around. She went up high, rolling and turning lazy circles, experimenting with moving her arms into different positions and seeing how they affected the flight. All the while she slowly moved closer to her target in the district of Muses and kept a little of her attention on radar, watching for signs of immine
nt attack. Her wedding had brought her a fresh list of duellists, no less than three hundred and forty-seven at the last count, and she had been crossing them off at a rate of four per day on average, excluding days spent entirely at home. She grinned at the sky as she swept a curve on her back, arms wide as a diver, and pretended she wasn’t dallying, her blood starting to rise with the anticipation of a fight.

  Sure enough, she had been airborne only a minute before she picked up signs of pursuit. Without thinking about it she began to change course, taking herself away from her planned route and out over the waters of the lagoon. The pursuit followed, lingering over the shoreline where the warehouses of the cargo district were squashed cheek by jowl to the water’s edge. It was airborne but low and she almost lost it amid the masses of boats shuffling for position at the quays, thick as autumn leaves in a forest stream. But her tracking systems were tenacious as only machines could be. A pleasing flicker of hunter/hunted shivered through her and her mouth spontaneously formed a small grim smile. When you were good at something, no matter what it was, there was a pleasure in doing it. She preferred airborne fights. Flying demons had wings and wings were a distinct liability.

  By the time she had reduced her speed almost to a loiter and was waiting testily for the attack, wondering if she could legitimately take a first strike before making a positive identification of the demon as a bone fide duellist, she was beyond the range of all the airtrade lanes except the major circular bus route and its huge, ponderous balloons. These were so stately that as far as she was concerned they were virtually stationary objects and thus were useless as anything except temporary cover, though for that they were very useful indeed as it was a capital offence to damage a public transport vehicle or its passengers in a duel.

  Thingamajig put his head out of her hair and said, “Another fight is it? Well let me tell you, Missy, you’ll be paying for it with yet another devil for me to talk about if you’re not careful—the one who sits up late at night in your older years making you curse your stupid youth and the joy you took in the death you dealt.”