Selling Out (23 page)

His spirits sank as he said it. He hadn’t realised that he had been clinging to a fantasy of finding a trail of wild magic and using it to create a circle of either transit or protection. But his
andalune
, even damaged by radiation, was sure on that point. There was nothing wild here. He heard and felt the vibration of a small pebble being ejected from a lump of mud a few inches from the ground and coming to rest on something hard, but light and friable. With his fingers he felt out the shapes of what they were sitting on. It felt like light wood that had been carved into smooth shapes . . . he was holding a scapula. It was as big as his own. It was very much like his own. He put it down carefully and closed his eyes to wait for moonrise or dawn, whichever came first. To stop himself obsessing about scapulas and their previous owners and the possible fates of said previous owners he started to hum a little song and then, effortlessly, this became writing a song and that absorbed him entirely so that for a short time he forgot all about his troubles.

Lila reached the Ahriman mansion at dusk. She had taken a diversion via the communal bathhouses at Magisteria, a district of the Musicians, and used their escalating chain of increasingly hot and caustic waters to scrub every last bit of necromancer out of her hair and clothing. Her insystem had given her a corrosion warning and a lot of fine print about some kind of warranty violation and at that point she had given up. The imp was no more than a passing pain in her earlobe. Tath brooded, an emerald weight in her heart. Only her jet boots kept her floating high and safe above the evening masses of demon life, swelling the streets and the city air with their homeward-bound legions.

She could still smell the carrion stink of Madame’s companions. Or the wind was blowing from the charnel houses of the south shore where the butcheries lay open to the seaward air; meat drying, meat fresh bloodied, meat part buried and festering until it was ripe enough to sell. There was also hanging meat, flyblown meat, maggotted meat cultivating special kinds of fly and wasp larvae which could be served in the meat or on their own, live or dry roasted. They had done everything with meat that could be done. Of course they had. Cookery was an art and within it all kinds of other work was an art—cake icing, for instance, or extracting the important glands from bor wasps. Lila stopped dead in her tracks, momentarily paralysed by the enormous, lavish detail of demon cuisine, provided by her AI memory as it cued up on the charnel district. Cooking Precepture. And then, her olfactory module objected and said that the world didn’t just smell this way because Mama Azuga was cooking up blood sausage and vile ribs again. Some of the smell was coming from the house.

Lila slowed down, waking up with cautionary alertness. She zoomed the house on high res and saw the guards and servants were mostly stationed outside, or at doors and windows. Tath unwound as he sensed her dread and stretched out a little into her torso, connecting his spectral self with her enchanted alloys, tuning to her with a subtlety she belatedly realised he’d just about perfected. She hardly felt it.

Two demons in the brown sombre flares of officers of the government were descending to the mansion roof from the ladder of a small dirigible bearing the insignia of the Department of Official Justice. A figure emerged to meet them—Sorcha, her crimson and black body almost entirely hidden in the white robes of mourning, recognisable only by her emergent tail and its scorpion tip. They all went inside and the servants began securing the dirigible to the roof anchors.

Lila, still fuelled on righteous outrage at Madame, landed with care and began to march inward to discover what was going on. As she proceeded the servants all glanced at her and then busied themselves more fully with their tasks. They noticed her and then they turned away . . .

Are they—cringing?
Lila asked Tath silently in her thoughts, letting them channel to him however they did.

I believe that is not entirely accurate
, the elf said.
I think that what you are seeing is a shun. Whatever has occurred to the family within the House, they clearly blame you.

Her AI confirmed it. Those who brought disaster on their families were routinely ignored by lower orders and . . .

I believe you should exercise extreme caution in meeting any members of the family
, Tath said, cutting through the detail.
Whatever their personal feelings for you they may be honour-bound to exact vengeance.

But I’m not one of the family
. . . Lila said. She did slow down however, and allowed her systems to prime Battle Standard, the unique AI that would enhance and supersede her human limitations. She thought the best thing would be to find Sorcha, privately, and took some quiet passages and stairs towards her room in the hope that she could reach it without meeting anyone. She was in luck. The servants and household were distracted elsewhere and she navigated the maze of ways alone.

Sorcha’s apartment was open and airy—it had been recently cleaned and the smell of blood came from far away, closer to the heart of the house. Lila’s neighbouring room was open too—the door ajar. Foreboding closed on her like the touch of a cold hand. She didn’t let herself pause but went forward, pushing the door fully open with her fingertips and letting her AI and full senses scan for danger. There was none. There was nothing. She stepped through and there her momentum stalled.

There was nothing but an enormous mess. Everything in the room appeared to have been systematically destroyed, and in the middle of it, on the floor, lay the tangled remains of Teazle’s silver net. A closer glance at the door revealed the stain of shadows around the lock and handle. There was also a scattering of dust on the floor . . . Lila bent and touched it with a fingertip. She put the fingertip into an opened slot on her opposite forearm where a microanalyser waited. Steel dust. The lock had been fragmented.

Sub- or hypersonics
, Tath said.
Nocturnals are good with sound. They use it as a weapon.

Is that how she got out of the net?
Lila went forward to examine it, careful not to disturb anything, though it was difficult. Shredded bedding and the dust of other ruined items lay everywhere.

She lifted a part of the net carefully. It weighed almost nothing.

Looks torn
, Tath said uncertainly.

No, Lila corrected him, letting her eyes bring the ends of each fibre of the spider silk into absolute focus. Some strands were worn and frayed, warped with recoil shock, but most of them bore a clean edge. They were cut.

Maybe she had a concealed blade?

Lila straightened up, frowning. She was sure not. Someone else did this . . .

Several pairs of footsteps sounded on the tiled floor outside and with them came the murmur of voices. Lila turned and saw Sorcha and one of the officers standing in the doorway. They were both surprised to see her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A
s if the drinking could get any heavier, just when Malachi thought they must have run out of beer, the demons produced a fourth keg. The Mode-X music had been replaced by Vivaldi’s genius at maximum volume. Malachi felt them all soothed by alcohol and music. They were nearly ready to talk to him.

The bubble station drifted in the I, calm and collected. No ghosts were near. The machines hummed, a vibration he felt in his bones as he lay on the rough decking with the others, huddled in their sleeping bags around a mess of opened fast-food containers. He had no idea how much time had passed in his office but he was reasonably sure—contrary to his expectations—that he was not in any way in his office any longer. He was with these people, entirely in the I, floating in a bubble within the tides and flow of Akashic space. It was the fey term: Akasha. I-space. The Interstitial. The Void. The Aether.

The female demon—Rhagda—held the beer barrel (an entire hogshead! Malachi noted; they would not rise for a week) firmly and the male demon who had been the captain on the
Matilda
’s abortive voyage took up a mallet and bashed in the tap unit with a single, slow resigned blow, as if he were putting the final nail into a coffin. Malachi felt that the time for explanation might be upon him. “About the Fates,” he said and they all lifted their heavy heads to look at him. “They’re well known to us.”

“Us too,” the male demon grumbled, setting his cup to the tap and drawing off an expert stein of ale. He licked the froth with his thick, pointed tongue. “But they not demons.”

“Nor elf kind,” said the female elf scientist, sniffing and wiping her nose on a delicate handkerchief. “But we have met them in Alfheim from time to time.”

“All ghosts cross over,” Jones said firmly. Malachi thought he detected the zealot’s conviction in her tones and hesitated.

“We know what they are. You know too. If they’re connected to the
Tem
and the Fleet then, even if they are limited here by their ghostly forms . . .” Malachi trailed off. He didn’t know what he was talking about, he realised suddenly. Could the Fates be limited by form? Insight rushed him like a mad bull and he looked at Jones with his faery sight. He could see a thin wall of grey and red around her head and shoulders, the shield of deception. “You wanted them. Not the
Temeraire
.”

The gazes that had been on him switched to Jones. She glared at the floor.

“By the Namer,” said the Demon softly. “Is it so?”

“Jonesy,” said the elf man. “You would not risk us . . .”

“We have to get something incontrovertible,” Jones said, glaring at them defiantly through her fringe. “You know that.”

“Humans!” Rhagda snarled, flinging her beer away with a grand, angry gesture that sent the cup and most of its contents sailing straight out of the room, through the fields of the bubble wall and out into the great magical nowhere. “No sense of danger. No wisdom!” She spat at Jones, hitting the girl where her hands clasped her bony knees. “The
Matilda
sails no more until you are back home in Otopia where you belong!”

The silence that followed was acute, desperate, and final. They all felt it, none more keenly than Malachi. Jones stared at him with dismal loathing as she wiped her hands on her jeans. He shrugged helplessly. Fey had no tact. He wished it was not so at that moment and got up, swaying slightly on his feet.

“I should go,” he said. He turned to Jones. “Don’t go chasing them again.” The sullen quiet was waiting for him to depart so it could erupt. He felt that he was throwing her to the lions. “Not until I get you some decent protection for that barge.” Oh, where had that come from? As soon as he was saying it he was already regretting it but he was back at the centre of attention again. Seven hopeful gazes on him.

Well, he thought, he could use the family charm and probably blag something out of someone, even if it wasn’t Incon. He probably could. He could convince the fey that they should support the Ghost Hunters’ science. Just had to not actually mention the Moirae as such, only more generally in some bigger and more vague kind of mention of the Others. Curiosity would drive things forward where his convictions faltered. He knew enough of his own race to momentarily welcome their greatest weakness as his advantage. Nothing would stop them wanting to find out more on that one subject. And since he could pretend a degree of ignorance with reasonable cause he would not be in personal danger, most likely.

How was it, he wondered, that one always thought of these excellent schemes AFTER one had committed to them and not before?

Jones was giving him a mixed look of gratitude and annoyance. He made some awkward farewells to the others and then slunk away as unobtrusively as he could to the far corner. He hated to be seen shifting. Maybe it was a cat thing.

He slipped his humanoid skin with haste, barely felt the split instant of I-immersion, and was back in his offices in the flat atmosphere of Otopia before he had time to blink. There was a brief but unpleasant itchy feeling inside his skull, like a badly tuned frequency crossing his awareness. In Otopia with its endless deluge of radiowave shit polluting the entire electromag spectrum it was common but for a horrible moment he rather fancied it had followed on as something which had started in I-space. Then it was gone and he stretched out in his wonderful chair, made sure all his comms were turned off still, and took a well-earned forty winks.

It turned out when he awoke that it had been more like a hundred and forty winks, and, reading the clock, that his stay with Jones and her crew had consumed thirty hours. No wonder he had been sleepy. Time shifted too, if he had any say in it, because he’d spent at least two days with them. He made his notes for Incon dutifully and then, finally, switched on his messaging systems.

“You’re late,” his secretary said with her regulation slightly addled anxiety. He didn’t blame her. With him as a boss she had a lot to keep up with and she was only human. “Delaware wants to see you,” she added. “I’m afraid there’s some bad news.”

She paused and Malachi waited. When he didn’t prompt her she said, “Lila Black’s parents are dead.”