Lila planned to go directly home, but the screamers attached to half the messages coming out of her office were so insistent that guilt, or possibly rage masquerading briefly as guilt, took her over and turned her wheels that way. She persuaded herself the detour would be nothing more than a necessary pitstop, although she only partly fooled herself. She was spoiling for a fight and it was better that impulse got some outlet here than at home. What was between her and Zal felt precarious; too much had happened too fast. But it was also precious—exactly how precious she didn't like to admit because it caused a fluttery, desperate feeling to rise in her chest—so she wasn't about to have a fight with him.
Inside the place was like a press room. For all the speed and ease of the communications technology that everyone had, there was nothing like really getting in someone's face to get yourself some attention, and everyone wanted attention, immediately. The corridors and rooms thrummed with activity and energy. Even her costume couldn't command much more than a second glance as Lila eased her way through gaggles of suited agents and their hundreds of milling contacts en route to Greer's office.
Bentley was at the door waiting for her by the time she made it, her smooth grey hand flat to the glass pane through which Lila could see Temple Greer hunched in his ergonomic chair in a cramped, troll-like pose. One arm was braced across his midriff to support his other elbow as that hand rubbed the stubble on his chin in a vexed manner. A uniformed police officer and a civilian agent were standing with him, both talking earnestly at great speed.
“Best wait,” Bentley said, easing back now that her mission was accomplished.
Lila made a disappointed noise. “Do you think they'll be long?”
“How long is a piece of string?” Bentley replied, making a tiny gesture with her chin at the open-plan areas behind Lila's back. “It's been like this all afternoon.”
Lila turned back from her second viewing of the chaos, a frown on her face, and saw Bentley's mildly amused smile. “The diner.”
“The diner. You may assume nobody is bothering you because they have been ordered not to.” She pointed over her shoulder through the glass door, indicating that Greer had been the author of that command. “I don't think he threatened them with death, but something about pay cuts was mentioned. On a similar note you can guarantee that all conversation out here is being severely earwigged.”
Lila switched into machine-only mode, their spoken words translated directly into coded digits. “What's Xavi been doing all day?”
“Sleeping mostly. She was piqued when she couldn't go out but she's gone back to poring over those ancient tomes you gave her, drawing, making notes, pacing up and down, attempting the odd bit of strangeness I can only take for spell-casting though nothing happens.”
“Sure?”
“If her face is anything to go by, I'm sure.”
“And she doesn't know about Sarasilien?”
“If she does, she hasn't heard it here. I don't like to vouch for supernaturals though. Haven't got access to the same methods so I can't say for certain. You know.”
Lila did know, and signalled as much. She expected that Xavi would try to break containment, and that she would succeed. The only uncertainty was when that would happen. She'd have given a lot to know the exact time on that particular clock. It made it all the more important to resolve her outstanding issues with Sarasilien right away, even if that meant dealing with the Lane clone.
Lila found herself grinding her teeth and had to work for a few moments to stop.
“You can AI-govern your chemistry so you don't get all that,” Bentley said, appending a vast and extensive catalogue of human responses to illustrate what she meant by “all that.” “You can have this instead.” She showed Lila a handsome bar chart featuring the entire rainbow, every emotion and response calibrated and displayed to twenty decimal places.
Lila, who had switched that feature off so many times she couldn't count it, nodded her thanks. “I like my inadequate human reactions the hard way. Keeps it real.”
“‘To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.’” Bentley said.
Lila mused on it a moment. “I love Oscar Wilde. But I was never sure if he meant you should become a spectator, so you don't suffer, or you shouldn't, because then you've missed out on something vital to the human experience.”
“I am certain it is the former.”
“And I'm sure it's not,” Lila sighed and leaned against the low divider full of plants that screened the main office from all the negative chi streaming its way across the open zone. “Though better for him if it were. Isn't that the enlightened position, to treat your life from the distance of an eternal perspective?”
Bentley laughed in silent zeroes. “I guess it is. The machine makes it much easier than I remember it being before though.”
Lila stared through the glass, watching Greer argue forcefully in his own special silent movie. “Will we get old and die?”
The grey android shrugged slowly. “The machine has kept me in perfect restoration. So far.”
Lila spent a moment or two deliberately listening to the susurrus of the machine whispers that continued eternally throughout her body, the soft promises of forever from the Signal. She didn't feel convinced that it was a personal promise. She might not last forever, though it would. It might not be conscious except through beings like herself and Bentley, but that didn't mean much, although she took some comfort in the fact that her screw-ups weren't going to be global mishaps, just like Zal said. (Oh, Zal, how neglected he was! A burst of guilt and longing flared hot across her skin.) And yet her entire existence felt like it had been engineered to be pivotal. Why else bother? Super agents were rare. All-powerful ones, much more rare. Which left only the question—would she jump or would she be pushed? Greer suddenly caught sight of her in the middle of his rant and paused for a full second, halfway through the word “and,” causing the two policemen to turn and look as well. He finished his line as he stood up and they gave way before him as he shouldered past them to wave at the door. It opened and, with misgiving and curious looks, the officers reluctantly let themselves be waved out as she was ushered in. The glass walls turned themselves an opaque white at their backs so nobody could see inside anymore.
“Black,” he grated. “Nice of you to show up.” The sarcasm was made all the more effective by his overused voice growling like a bear's. His eyes raked across her, taking in Tatters's display of gory justice with frowning disapproval. “I can see the headlines already…because here they bloody well are.” He flicked out his hand and the walls obediently filled with the text news as delivered on the Otopia Tree's fastnet.
It was pure hallmark drama to which Lila didn't respond, having already dismissed the hysteria as uninteresting the second it came zipping along into her AI's inbox, and thence into the junk file and instant deletion. To humour him she looked across the largest typefaces where they stamped themselves across his potted palms and sofas and read them aloud.
“‘Red-headed Knight Templar Saves Diners from Fate Worse Than Undeath.’”
Greer was glaring at her. “And yes, I did see the Hot Nun one, before you ask.”
“‘Cuffs leader with own gun,’” Lila said and then turned to face him. “See, no killing. Superman-clean action.”
“And this one?”
The lettering changed and she obediently turned to read, managing not to hesitate.
“‘Inhuman droid agent chops up dead-butchers; twenty-eight arrested.’” I hope you penalise inaccuracy,” Lila said, surprised by the jolt she felt at reading it. A hot burn of injustice boiled quickly up from her belly into her face so that it was hard work to maintain the lightness of step that dancing with Greer required. She knew what the problem was from his perspective—it was the D word. Otopia had never revealed the existence of its few cyborg creations to the public: it was a subject relegated to the pages of conspiracy blogs. This headline had come from one of the most prominent of these.
Temple Greer, dishevelled even in an expensive, pressed suit, black hair flopping on his forehead, moustache bold, went through ten kinds of calculating behind his fixed stare. Lila supposed it would have unnerved her if she were younger.
“What I don't like about right now is that it's a god-awful untidy mess,” he said. “Agencies leaking all over each other. Strangers treading my carpets, whining. Boss on my back, stamping feet. Dangerous creatures everywhere, and most of them in this goddamned building where I have to hide them, protecting them from execution whilst I wait for them to break my security, escape, and cause even more hell. Meanwhile you, pageant queen, are out eating burgers and getting involved in publicity stunts from which you dash off like Cinderella leaving nary a shoe behind.”
Lila's chin had gone down several notches during this mini lecture and now she regarded him steadily. “And how you love it,” she folded her arms.
His gaze became gelid for an instant. “If you had killed them, you would have looked like a normal agent at least.”
“Pathetic,” she said. “If that's the best you can do, I've got betraying bastards coming out of my ears back in my own office, not to mention their back-chatting, grudge-holding, bitch-clone sidekicks and a monster in the vault pretending to be a cute little goth girl who never done no wrong 'cept to ease the pain in her sweet, tiny emo heart. Do you think some headlines from a few humans is going to make a dent in that?”
Greer broke his righteous stance with a sigh and raked a hand through his hair as he walked restlessly across the few paces between himself and the sofa. He threw himself down into it and lay there, as if poleaxed. “You think Xavi is a fraud too?”
“I don't know what I think about her,” Lila said honestly. “Mostly I don't think about her.”
“She gives me the creeps.”
“Zal gives you the creeps.”
“Yes, but in a wholesome, rock and roll kind of way. I'm making her Malachi's special responsibility, not yours. I think you should stay away from her.”
Lila was so used to his non sequiturs that they made sense to her now. She let this pass without comment. “What about dead duty?”
“They can patrol together.”
“Did you have a feeling about this or something?”
“No,” he said with a rising groan of reluctance that let her know he was about to admit something that he hated to tell. “A hexxing doll we seized during a raid on a demon nest down in Palm Beach said you had to stay away from her.”
“Say what?” Lila frowned.
Greer flung an arm across his eyes, playing even more the fainting dandy although she wasn't sure the exhaustion part was much of a joke. “A doll. One of those voodoo things the faeries and demons make. They had one. When we broke in, they were busy destroying it—it had finished whatever work it was supposed to be doing.”
“And what was that?”
“Faery dust, smuggling information, nothing to worry about. Not my point. Point is: we get in, they get arrested, the doll's on the table sitting on the drugs, falling to bits and we're in the middle of leaving when—”
“Why are you there?” she said.
He sighed. “Have to personally oversee all supernatural arrests. Black, stop interrupting me with stupid questions. Point is, doll sits up and speaks to me. Tells me some blessed rubbish about a thing called an assemblage point in the future at which you, a shadow, and the angel of death make a very unfortunate combination promising untimely demise for all if you deviate from something it called the path of the heart. I don't have such a good memory for these things but that did rather burn into the synapses. A message. From…I don't know who it was from.” His look at her said he knew only too well and they were not going to mention the name, ever, because pulling its attention was the last thing anyone wanted. The Hoodoo.
Greer sniffed and rubbed his moustache violently. “I thought only the maker of the doll could order it to do anything. Demon that made the doll didn't like it much either. Freaked out. Broke the arresting officer's arm, ripped its own hand off making an escape. And now there we are, stuck with this hand: should we keep it on ice in case it returns for it or should we just burn it? You're the expert, so what's the etiquette on this kind of thing?”
“Serve it with a side salad,” Lila said, all her attention on reprocessing the important part of his speech. “Angel of death?” she wanted to be sure.
“Xaviendra, it said. I was extemporising.”
For a doll to be speaking without a making was indeed unheard of, but the cause seemed reasonably clear to her. Beings like the Hoodoo needed a vehicle. She remembered the ugly faery at her garden gate, devoting some time to delivering the same message, although with different details. No mention of Xavi in that one but still a vague promise of end-times, and her love of horror stories was long gone.
She set the information to the back of her mind to compile itself into sense. “Is Malachi in?”
“As in as he ever is,” Greer said, feigning a state somewhere close to his last breath. “You kids, you'll be the death of me.”
Lila smiled in spite of herself. She couldn't help thinking of Zal at times like this, because Greer's humour was just like his, and Greer had learned it off Zal's albums and escapades in the way-back-when, six months or sixty years ago. “What did Sarasilien say to you?”
“Well he didn't mention anything about a time machine or a dimensional polarity shift if that's what you mean.”
“No explanations of his lost years?”
“Nothing. Just wants to see you. Prepared to wait apparently, although it's only been a few hours. I think you could easily let him stew for several weeks, see what pops out of him in the meantime. Unless the end of the world is tomorrow. But no. I'm sure he would've mentioned it. Actually, he seemed very sad to me, down about something, like his dog died.”
“And you didn't mention Xavi.”
“Hello? Head of the Secret Service here, not eager-beaver placement student.” He huffed and put both hands to his face to rub his eyes in a gesture that looked as though he might rub them out entirely. It looked painful. “He isn't really an elf is he?”
“I don't think so,” Lila said. Her prospects for getting out of the place anytime soon were beginning to look dangerously slim. Queue notifications, red alarms, message streams were popping up in her AI like fireworks on Chinese New Year. She knew that Greer had an implant not unlike hers and that his inbox could only be much worse. “Seriously, are you okay?”
There was a pause. She thought he'd fallen asleep. Then he said glumly, “The ex-Mrs. Greer has a gentleman caller. He didn't take too kindly to my serenading her at four o'clock in the morning with a rousing march on the bagpipes.”
“Don't you ever sleep?”
“Only at Christmas and birthdays.” He lifted his ragged, lengthening hair and showed her his ear, which had a narrow cut across it and a medium-sized bruise beside it on his cheek, mostly hidden by his sideburns. “Cat's dish. He throws like a girl.”
Lila nodded, as ever unsure what to say to this. “I'm sorry.”
“So am I, Blackie, so am I. You won't forget to phone me and tell me what's going on if you find out, will you? I know how distracting black ops elves in spandex can be to you young girls.”
“No, sir.”
He turned at this and looked at her, a pained expression on his large, rugged features, making him look like an alarmed basset hound. “Sir? What's this? Has that Bentley woman been talking to you? Sir. I'm not a goddamned policeman. Sir. Sir!”
“Sorry.”
He made a grumbling sound and slowly, painfully, sat up, resting his elbows on his knees. “Get lost, would you. Oh, and congratulations on the new house. Etcetera.”
“Thanks.”
This time his grumbled response was more of a grunt, accompanied by a vigorous attempt at a soapless shampoo. Lila fought an inclination to go and kiss him as if he were some lovely grumpy uncle, because even though that was the effect he was going for she wasn't buying it, and this last ordinary step of their defensive dance took her breath away as its turns revealed their common pain.
She took a few steps backwards before turning on her heels and leaving via the already open door. Her throat hurt her and she shook her head crossly, almost hitting Bentley, who was standing, rock steady and rock patient, just where she'd left her.
They flashed machine messages at each other, verifying and exchanging news not important enough to put into words. A burst of rapport strings finished the moment, one misplaced digit in a key position sounding their common bum note about Sandra Lane.
Anxiety ticked in Lila's mind, repeating the suspicion that Lane had gone and evolved when nobody was looking, and now had a capacity they couldn't detect that was going to get them. She knew things like that were possible. It was in the Signal's whisper.
She had to fight the paranoia that wanted to gallop away with her. Now was not the moment. Now was so not the moment.
She passed the queues of people outside doors, the huddles at corners, the quickly sidestepping aides with nods of recognition, watching the surprise on their faces as their AIs and links updated each one of them personally with her replies to their enquiries. She created links and groupfeeds on the run, forming new collaboration teams, which she couldn't personally oversee, designating chairpeople and delegating her authority, notifying them that her AI would be acting for her, a subself, never sleeping, never tiring as it passed only the important news to her waking mind.
The AI whispered to her as she walked, digging out its little secrets from the hoards, assembling its bombshells from scattered debris: all magical and supernatural activity in Otopia was accelerating in frequency and magnitude; fracture lines in the Otopian space-time fabric were opening in proportion to their proximity with Returner origin points; Hunter children and the humans made psionic by moth exposure were falling in number, but gaining in their particular aptitudes.
Someone had posted images of Zal behind her on the bike in that traffic jam downtown. He looked dark, surrounded in private shadow. She was only partly visible, just the line of her back and the edge of Tatters's embroidery crusade tattoos. It was different to the way the dress had become when they had fought later, at the diner, but it was too close a resemblance to go entirely missed. As she finished her polite circulation among the agents, she turned into her own corridor, finding a pocket of calm and a moment in which her heart hammered and her breath tried to choke her.
They found Zal. They saw us together. The diner. What will it mean?
Fear for him flooded her. Without thinking she infiltrated the network and erased the pixels that showed her hair, the shape of her head, the colours and patterns of the faery on her back. She got out undetected. Priority protocols helped a lot. It wouldn't last, she knew. Eyes had already seen it. Copies were out there. She must assume that her anonymity was finite. Zal's celebrity, faded as it was, would be enough to expose her as the diner knight. Eventually someone would wonder how it was that some Returner rockstar's girlfriend had bent a shotgun into bracelets. And after that it would be open season.
By the time she reached her own door, she had resigned and Greer had deleted the resignation and filled the reply space with expletives.
“It's too late,” he said, his voice left of centre in her head as the AI relayed it. “Ops will fudge the information as much as they can. We might get a few more months before we have to come clean-ish in the public eye. That's a long time.”
Lila said nothing to this but sent a sad face emote and closed the line. She remembered how much she'd wanted to kill everyone in the parking lot, the pulse of blood in her veins loading the magazines in her arms, changing her hands into guns. Then she opened the door to her offices.
The anterooms were full of Bentley's exquisitely packed and filed boxes where she had been collating evidence from old cases and clearing magical items that were too dangerous or outdated to be left around. Their monumental order rebuked her silently. The lab was spotless, surfaces gleaming. Lila moved quietly between the stacks of items, following the path to the last room, where the door was ajar and lights glowed in soft, moving colours through the gap.
Sarasilien, as elven as any creature she'd ever seen, was standing watching the wall where a display of the solar system was slowly revolving. Besides the nine planets, sun, and moons, a host of other objects were drawn in, some small and distinct, others streaks and strips. She recognised none of them. Behind his tall figure, the broadcaster of these images, Lane's clone, stood impassively, her hand held palm forward. Light shone out of it.
Lila knew that there was no need to speak as they were both well aware of her entry into their company, but she wasn't the girl who would once have waited patiently for them to give her their attention. A feeling like Greer's world weariness—a rumpled, tired feeling—spread over her as she kept her composure. She crossed to the couch where Sarsilien had once laid in splendour with Sorcha the Scorcher's foot in his hands and sat down, crossing her own booted feet up onto its elegant cushions.
“Spill it.”
“We are here because of a crisis in Alfheim,” Sarasilien said, turning to face her with that little polite bow of his coming automatically, though he didn't duck his eyes. They sought her gaze and held it steadily. There was real force in his look. She matched it, pushing back strongly across the gap between them.
“Not just Alfheim.” Lila quirked an eyebrow in the Lane clone's direction—she wouldn't be here for something like that.
“Its effects will most likely be felt everywhere,” he said. His face was compassionate again. It made her angry and she didn't appreciate the suspense.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Not you,” Lane said, closing her fingers into a gentle fist and letting her arm fall to her side so that the projected cosmos swept across the room and vanished.
Lila turned up the lights, brilliant. No softness for you, she thought, and saw the elf blink and squint for a second.
“We need Zal,” Sarasilien said in his most gentle voice, the one that had calmed and soothed her through hundreds of pain-filled nights in the first days of her machine life.
“Oh?” Lila tipped her head to the side and folded her arms across her chest. She noticed the Lane clone adopt the same posture as Sarasilien, hands folded gently in front of her black and grey shining form, chin down, like children obediently ready for the lesson. Her teeth closed against themselves.
“A great tragedy has befallen…” Sarasilien began, but Lane interrupted him with her more precise articulation.
“Alfheim has gone dark.” She didn't need to append details of the meaning of this phrase. Lila knew what dark meant: out of contact. The humans wouldn't have noticed it; Alfheim had gone dark for them decades ago. Only the elves who stayed in Otopia and Faery remained to act as reminders that the place existed, and there were few of them.
She glanced at Sarasilien. “You know why.”
He gave that slight nod again and this time his eyelids followed suit. “For every action an equal and opposite reaction. An age ago when the shadowkin were created—that was an action of great aetheric force, a collective action using techniques that were fraught with dangers. In an effort to mitigate the effects—”
Lane broke in again. “They used dampening systems that absorbed the backlash of the worst mistakes that they made during their research, but these only had the effect of deferring the results, perhaps altering their nature.”
Lila narrowed her eyes, “Deferred to the future?”
“Yes,” Sarasilien said. “It was thought at the time that this delay period could be extended—”
“Oh wait!” Lila held up her hand. “I'm ahead of you. The Lady of the Lake, Arie, that's why she wanted Zal isn't it? She said it was to separate Alfheim…”
“…from the other dimensions, yes,” Sarasilien finished for her. “That was not exactly honest, however. She was intending to divide Alfheim from the rest in order to protect it from her real intent, should it fail, which was to continue deferring the backlash of that earlier act indefinitely into the future. And when you took Zal back, then she had no way to maintain the disjuncture and her efforts failed indeed. So it was left to others to isolate Alfheim as best they could, once it was certain that the reaction could not be put off. She was the only one with the resource to even attempt such a thing.”
Lila raised her eyebrows, “Except you, I take it.” She was unable to conceal her bitter disappointment or continue the cool act in the face of it.
“Except me,” he bowed again in agreement, unbending in every other way.
“And this…whatever you want to do…”
“Will be the final attempt, that is correct. The last attempt to prevent a catastrophe.”
“And you want Zal's blood for your evil little spell?”
“No,” Lane said. “That method cannot work any longer. Circumstances have changed. We want Zal to go into Alfheim as our operative. We think that he will be immune to what has happened there because of his demon nature.”
Lila's mind worked fast. “And I guess it doesn't hurt that he got reprocessed by Jack and the Fates, does it? Or were you behind that?”
Sarasilien was shaking his head.
“Never mind,” Lila cut off what he was about to say with a slice of her hand through the air. “I think it's time you took me back to the beginning and told me the whole sorry story. And then we can see if there's a shred of evidence in any of it that would prompt me to believe a word you're saying.”
Lane took a half step forward. “There is no benefit to bringing your personal grievances into this matter, sad or difficult as they may be.”
Lila leaned back on the chaise and looked at the cyborg. She could see herself in the polished reflectiveness of its vinyl body. She looked stretched and deformed in different ways depending on the part. Lane herself was smooth and perfect as a doll. “Were you this much of a bitch when you were human?”
“Coming from you I take that as a compliment,” and for the first time there was an edge in the voice that sounded comprehensively pissed off.
“Finally we have liftoff,” Lila said, rolling her eyes. “And before he starts, just fill me in on your part of this beautiful diorama.”
“Sandra is my scientific advisor,” Sarasilien said, impeccably gentle. “In your absence she has been invaluable in relating my aetheric knowledge to the laws that govern the strictly physical.”
But Lila was still paused on the words “in your absence.” She held them, filed them, considered them and their potential meanings very carefully, and then said, “I'm mad as hell at you.” She pointed at him. “And I am about as likely to warm to you as liquid nitrogen,” she pointed at Lane. “But I'll shove it where the sun doesn't shine if you can make the next twenty minutes I'm spending away from what I want worth the wait.”
“Your petty personal grievances!” began Lane with spite but she was cut off by the elf putting a hand onto her shiny arm.
“Are long overdue for attention is what you mean,” Lila said into his restrained silence. She stared at Lane, all her outlets closed, all systems shut, with real dislike. Sarasilien paused and she knew it for carte blanche to continue. Very well then, let it be done.
“You,” Lila turned fully to the cyborg. “You are the voice of the machine. That's why I don't like you and why I don't trust you. I see vested interest whether or not I understand it. I see a devil's pact.”
Lane's nonfunctional nostrils flared. “I went where you fear to go.”
“True. But I'm still not going there and no cheap shot about my courage is going to make me. Scientifically speaking you're excellent. I don't doubt that. But you're not on my side and killing you can't have made you any more likely to move there, so unless you have a reason I don't know about to make you attach yourself to him and me, then we're done.”
The android figure made a very human micromovement of frustration, weight jerking back and forth slightly. “And what exactly is your side, Black?”
“Lila Black is my side,” Lila said, and for once her conviction was faultless. “What's yours?”
“I go where the interest is,” Lane said. “Where things aren't certain and don't add up.”
“And this elf story doesn't add up.”
“The energy transferences between aether and matter, between the nonbaryonic and baryonic, as we understand them, do not accommodate the claims made concerning what is passing in Alfheim,” Lane replied crisply. “Nonetheless, what is occurring is causing the structure of our information to undergo an unforeseen entropy acceleration, which, if it continues, shall begin to compromise the organisation of our fundamental materials. If you were attuned to the machine instead of shutting it out all the time, you would already know this.”
Lila considered it. “None of the other cyborgs seem bothered. Just you.”
“They do not have my levels of synchronisation,” Lane said pointedly, but Sarasilien stepped forward at the same time, holding his hand out to the side a little so that it came in front of her, warning her off and protecting her at the same time.
Lila's heart seethed with jealousy.
“Lila, she is telling the truth, but what she is saying is only a machine interpretation of what I am trying to say also, from a different perspective. The aether backlash is affecting all of the realities at the most fundamental level, that of energy. However, there has been a result in Alfheim that was not foreseen in any way, and this is what I require your help with. And Zal's.”
Lila finally managed to swallow the worst of her resentment. Maybe it was the pleading attitude he had, the way he looked like a picture-book Jesus with both his palms held towards her, though he was looking down at her face and not up to empty blue heaven. Maybe. “Go on.”
“I cannot risk an entry into Alfheim myself,” he said slowly. “In case what has happened there affects me too. However, after some reconnaissance taken by Sandra here, I believe that Zal may be immune.”
“May be. Hmm. Why can't she do this work you have to have done there?”
“I'm not an elf,” Lane said. “I can't perceive their psychic reality. And neither can you.”
“And what did you find?” She directed her gaze at Lane.
“Nobody,” Lane said. “And nothing.” She meant the entire population.
“Where are they?”
“We think they have gone into the forest,” Sarasilien said.
Alfheim was made of forest. Aside from its few civil centres, which barely registered on the scale of cities, they were a scattered lot. Into the forest meant only that the cities must have been abandoned. But his tone now was pressing and she got the feeling he was willing her to go along with him, not to ask Lane for more, though the reason why he wanted this was something she couldn't even guess at. That the two of them were slightly divided was enough to satisfy Lila for now.
“And there are no other elves you can ask?” she said, but she knew the answer. No elf was like Zal. There was no other elf to ask. “Teazle could go.” If she knew where he was. If he came back. If. Thinking of him made a pang of concern knot her brows.
“I think, given the pressing nature of this matter, that it would be a good idea if you all went,” Sarasilien said.
She decided to omit telling him about the divorce. “And you'll babysit the undead while we're gone? Safe and sound in the bunker? Because I sense more than a hand of yours in all this.”
Apparently her mercilessness wasn't satisfied yet. She was still interested in all the things he so delicately didn't want to say. She gave in to the delicious desire to nail him.
“You were in at the start, weren't you? You were one of those who made the mess. And now you have to clean up, but you don't want to get dirty.” She looked him in the eye and then she got up in one, clean, fluid rise that wasn't entirely human in either its speed or its elegance so that they were face to face. “Level with me. All those machine parts magically appearing here, at the right time, in the right place, pushed on people with so many good reasons—that was your hand, right?”
She felt Lane's entire electrical signature change as she said this and saw the pupils of his fox-brown eyes dilate fractionally, darkness increasing inside their perfect rings.
Grim satisfaction ran through her even as the confirmation of betrayal bit deep.
“What else have you made over the years? What for? Come on, spit it out, don't be shy.” She made an expansive gesture with her hands and smiled to show her teeth, the smile as hard as iron. Inside its metal prison a little girl screamed and beat her fists against the walls. But the time for crying was over and that, more than anything, fuelled her rage and hardened it into ice. “We're all friends here.” And we all know what happens to my friends, don't we? In her mind's eye she saw Dar before her, friend and lover. She saw the resignation and sadness, the shock and disbelief in his face as she pushed the dagger into his heart. In Sarasilien's arms she'd cried her misery, thinking he was safe and solid when all along it was his hand on her strings.
And she was still here, wanting so much to hear how she was wrong, that it was a mistake, a comedy of errors that just looked bad, that it all had explanations that didn't add up the way it seemed. She could see the window for this explanation as if it were a progress bar in front of her, the rising colour slowly eating up the time, counting down to the moment when there couldn't be any more room for credulity. She willed him to say the magic words, the perfect line that would undo all that disappointment and set her free. She looked at the soft brown colour of his hair that had meant comfort.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I did it. I made you to go where I couldn't go.”
Beside her she was vaguely aware of Lane stiffening for a microsecond. Lila wondered if it would change things between them that the cyborg hadn't known this extra truth behind her own genesis in the bowels of this miserable building, but at the same time as she thought this she dismissed it.
She felt her shoulder push him aside as she walked between them and out of the room. The laboratory was dark, silent. She closed the door behind herself firmly and stood for a moment with it at her back.
In the corridor a line of hopefuls was waiting to see her, and a cleaner was there, quietly and wearily pushing a vacuum cleaner around their stepping feet, head bent low, looking for dust. Lila walked past them, avoided the vacuum, ignored their voices, went up along the familiar route to the garden, and bent down to fling open the door of the yurt there, ducking straight under.
Malachi was there, sitting in his chair, feet on his desk, asleep. The place was a mess, like they'd left it that morning.
Lila slapped his foot with her hand. “Did you know?”
“What?” he shook his head slightly, groggy. He peered at her in the room's natural twilight, slowly putting his feet down as he leaned forward to turn on the lamp. He rubbed his face, looking around him for the little moondial that told him the time wherever he wanted to be. “Know what?”
“Did you know who made me?”
The tone of her voice made him stop and be still. His orange-red eyes blinked and his wings briefly manifested around him in shimmering clouds of anthracite dust. His skin darkened to the true black of his faery form and around her the dress became lissom and floaty, rising in waves of bloodstained white fabric. The strips coiled slowly, taking on the movement of snakes.
“I was sent—” he began.
“I said—did you know?”
His face was a mass of changing emotional reactions but she held his gaze as he struggled, although that delay in itself was almost good enough for an answer.
“Yes, but…”
Lila took a step back, straightening up, and flicked out the fingers of her right hand, changing them into blades. His slit pupils widened and he jerked back. The chair bumped the yurt's back wall.
Lila stuck her fingers into Tatterdemalion's high collar cut straight through from top to bottom. Her edges were so sharp they made only a whispering sound as the cloth parted. She didn't know if the dress was surprised or not, but it wasn't important. She tore it off her shoulders and legs and bundled it up into a ball before flinging it at him. It was heavy and it sent him toppling backwards off his seat, although she didn't stay long enough to see what happened next. “Lila!” he shouted after her, sounding hurt and angry. She ignited the jets in her boots.