Going Under Page 7

  Why do you not?

  There was a scuffle as onlookers and casual fighters suddenly rushed forwards in the usual frenzy to appropriate another’s possessions. She sidestepped them.

  Because then it’d kill me, she said and took off, going back for what was left of the other demon corpses.

  She smiled for the photographers. She put the heads of the defeated demons on the Telltale poles outside the Library, for the benefit of browsing students of the Vicious Arts. There were a large number of poles by now, most of them featuring heads she’d put there. It was extremely unpleasant, thick with flies and the stench was unbelievable. The little Hoodoo priest who oversaw the place briefly looked up from his popular romance novel and gave her a friendly nod, “Miss Friendslayer.”

  “Hi Shabaoth. How’s the headshrinking going?”

  “Great. Thanks to your persistence I have nearly perfected the art. Soon I will be able to leave this place and move to the country.”

  “Great.” She had no idea what the shrunken heads were for. She didn’t want to know.

  With grim patience she paid her Victory Tax to the City Courthouse politely and then she went to the Mousa District, where she’d been headed all along to find Zal because he would surely be there playing. And he was there, in the classical concert hall, fooling around on a full-size golden harp while a bunch of other demons practised alongside him, jamming a little with their violas and bassoons and other things she didn’t know the name of. She tiptoed up into the gods of the auditorium, took a seat, wrapped her freshly washed hands around her knees, and listened.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sunlight streamed through the high windows, falling through a faint sparkle of dust before lighting on the orchestra. The reds and ochres of the vast concert hall glowed with warmth and Lila’s mind was filled with the soothing beauty of variations on Sicilienne, a popular piece by the human composer Faure. The demons’ nontraditional instruments only added to the serenity of the piece as she watched the light fall on the straight, near-white hair of the lone elf at the side of the stage. He sat among the string players with the harp a darker shining gold against him and his burning demon-wings softly moving in time, their light shimmering on the harp. He was quite lost in the playing and the music, his longer than human fingers plucking their way easily along the huge wall of strings between them. Occasionally he smiled or nodded as different sections of the makeshift orchestra took a new variation upon themselves and led the melody away in another direction. The cellos and basses and forzandas sang and then a green demon came in, opened the case on the piano, sat down, and the music shifted towards his sudden new improvisation; a song both wonderful in its calm and piercing in its sweet sadness.

  Lila listened with tears falling down her face. She barely moved to breathe. If she did she felt that she would fall apart. The strength and self-discipline that had maintained her resolve not to dwell on the events of recent days could not stand against this music. Her throat hurt as though it was being broken from within and she felt that if she moved it would not hold down what it had to hold down. She had thought she would just wait here until the practice was finished, that’s all. She’d never expected anything like this and now she was fixed to the spot. Anyone could have shot her dead without trouble; she’d almost welcome it.

  In front of her Thingamajig had crept forward, leaving her to sit on the railings looking down, his small feet and hands wrapped around the bar. His fires were barely flickering. He was as hunched over himself as she was. She wondered if his chest hurt as much as hers did, just there beneath the breastbone.

  Tath was motionless, a sargasso of quiet power. She’d never felt him so acutely. Usually her own activity blocked out his presence—something she practised since it kept them notionally apart. Now she realised how strong he’d become from eating the souls of the demons she had killed. She suddenly saw an image of two reactors in her mind, one the tokamak that had replaced her womb, the other a sphere of strange atmosphere around her heart, filled with its own weather systems.

  Tath noticed her noticing him, and the image too, but didn’t speak or change his state. He watched Zal with the same fixity that she did, through her eyes.

  The music changed as they played on, moving faster, gaining intensity, shifting into a suddenly more charged and forceful mood as though all the players had had the same turn of heart from sorrow to a sadness sublimated with joy and determination. It was a mystery to Lila how they knew to move that way. Nobody had the lead, but everyone went. She clung to the music yes, pull me away… I want to forget… and I don’t want to feel anymore. Let there be only the music and not myself.

  They sat for a long time until at last the musicians closed the melodies and slowly, a few at a time, packed up their things and wan dered off. When Lila checked the time, she saw that hours had passed. Her tearstained face had become dry and crackly but she felt better.

  She stood up—even after all this time she did it cautiously, expecting her knees to crack—but only her back felt stiff. She gave it a stretch and then vaulted lightly over the rail and floated down to the stage on a cushion of warm jet air, making sure to drop the last metre so she didn’t burn the wooden floor.

  Zal, tall, willowy, and thin, was standing and talking to one of the viola players. His wings had disappeared into the flare on his bare back and he looked slightly out of place among the luxuriantly coloured demons. At this short range and in such company his ears—their long mobile tips level with the top of his head—could be easily mistaken for horns until they moved, which one did now, like a horse’s, picking up on Lila’s footsteps. He turned and his shadow-dark eyes glanced towards her.

  “Hey, Metallica,” he said in a low, quiet voice with his usual teasing tone. “What’s up?”

  “I have to return to Otopia,” she said, going up to him, feeling unaccountably shy suddenly. She took his hand when she had intended to kiss him.

  He frowned slightly, “Already?”

  “You were supposed to be there days ago,” she said, feeling annoyed by the defensive edge in her voice. “Malachi came,” she added. “The Agency are asking for us all to do something about the Mothkin.”

  “Hah!” Zal said. His fingers gently caressed the backs of hers. “I knew the life of an interdimensional superhero would be a thrill a minute.” He paused to say goodbye to the violinist who had sat beside him and then let go of Lila’s hand to place the harp back in its box. When he had done it, he walked with her to the door, “You don’t look happy.”

  “Oh, I was jumped on the way here by three desperadoes. They only had an MV and nothing much else after that. I feel like a mur deter,” she found herself wiping her hands on the dull black leather finish that she’d made instead of shiny chrome machine legs and stopped. “And…” she glanced around and then up and saw Thingamajig still asleep up in the roof. Zal followed her gaze and frowned.

  “One day I will have you all to myself,” he said. “Speaking of which, where’s Teazle?”

  “I thought he was with you.”

  “He said he had to see a man about a dog,” Zal said. “He was still in the house when I left. So, you’re still going to jump when the Agency speaks?”

  Lila frowned, irritated. “I have to keep up a semblance of loyalty if I want to stay in their good books long enough to learn anything of any use. Besides, I’m not giving anyone an excuse to remote control me until I find a sure way of stopping that in its tracks.”

  Zal nodded, “And the aches and pains?”

  Lila’s annoyance deepened. Zal smiled—he knew she couldn’t stand any suggestion that she might be weak.

  “They’re the same,” she said.

  “Wanna play rock-paper-scissors?”

  “No.”

  Zal stretched and yawned, “I suppose I could go back to Otopia.” He made it sound like the dullest chore in the world.

  “You could ask Poppy and Viridia what they know about moths while you work on the next trac
k.”

  “Bleah!” his stretch collapsed into a slump, strings cut. “Yes, I could, though your partner could be more forthcoming about why he hasn’t tidied up a few moths. Big Hoodoo guy like him should have some plans. You should ask him.”

  Lila didn’t miss the slight narrowing of Zal’s eyes that indicated he was thinking very acutely even though he gave no other sign of it.

  “Faeries,” Zal muttered and shook his shoulders out as if shaking them off.

  “Everyone likes them,” Lila said, remembering the faeries who had been involved in Zal’s kidnap and who were now trading in the Souk for magical items on an unusual scale. But everyone in Otopia did like them. Faeryware had brought an end to recycling problems and excess waste, not to mention boring and unpleasant food. Faery entertainers and gamblers kept to every letter of every law and never failed to charm. Faeries performed a lot of services for the humans in Otopia. There were stories of the usual things—changelings and so forth—but since it had become a requirement that the faeries deal fairly with humans in accordance with human understandings, as part of the negotiations to permit migrations, there had been surprisingly little disturbing activity. However, as she was thinking this she couldn’t help recalling Poppy and Viridia changing from their beautiful humanoid shapes to the vicious, slime-cold horses with their tangling manes that had sincerely tried to drown her and Zal in Aparastil Lake. She shivered.

  “They’ve got features,” she mumbled. You didn’t speak ill of the fey. That had been the first thing drummed into her when she started her first agency job.

  “Not many people have them as friends though,” Zal observed, almost offhand.

  “They do. You do,” but even as she spoke Lila wasn’t so sure. People did have faery acquaintances and colleagues but real friends? Were she and Malachi real friends? They’d only been working together for a year and outside of that—well, she had no outside of that and truthfully she didn’t know much about him personally at all. “Well, what about you and the girls, and Sand? You’ve been together for years.”

  “And they are as shallow, devious, and unreliable today as they’ve always been,” Zal said. The living flame “tattoo” on his back where his wings lay when they were idle flared orange.

  “Shh,” she said automatically. Lila looked up orange on her large AI chart of Demon Palette Communications and discovered that orange in the flare indicated a burst of creativity. Or possibly madness.

  “Why would you say that if you thought they were perfectly safe?” he demanded, eyebrows raised at her contradictory ways.

  “They’ve always liked and been loyal to you,” she said.

  “In their way,” he replied. “I’m not saying they aren’t friendly. I’m saying they’re faeries. It won’t do to be your too-human trusting self around them. I know you think that’s some kind of affront, but it’s the only advice about them I’ve got. Even they’d tell you that. Even Malachi. Even about himself.” He pressed his mouth into a flat line as he saw her stubborn expression. “I’m not badmouthing them, Sprocket. They’re completely fair and honest. As they see it, it’s other races who can’t manage the truth. Trust isn’t something they deal in. At all. Trust is for idiots, they’d say, because trust is like debt. Sane people nail down every detail of a deal and idiots go on trust. And an idiot, to a faery, is someone who is ripe for the picking. Fair fruit, they say. They’re not like us. You have to trust me on that.” He laughed at himself.

  Lila rolled her eyes. “Think we can leave a note for Teazle?”

  “Itching to go already?” his gaze became more serious and assessive.

  A faint heat crept under her skin and she realised with anger that she was caught. She did want to go. Guilt made her want to bluster but she didn’t want to lie so she kept her mouth shut instead. How could she tell him she wanted to get back to the distractions of the Agency and its problems rather than stay with him here?

  Marriage of convenience, she repeated to herself earnestly, as she had every day since it had taken place. Political thing. The Smart Thing to Do.

  The faeries are going to eat you alive, Tath said with arch gloom.

  Zal offered a half shrug when she didn’t answer him. “It’s okay,” he said but she thought she detected disappointment in him as he turned towards the door. Zal was never just okay about anything; demons didn’t do okay. He was for or against and saying “okay” was really him signalling his disagreement with her failure to own up to her decision.

  She stood behind him as he walked off, feeling inadequate. Surely she, who had taken on the whole mantle of Demonia and its power, should be able to stand being there for more than a few weeks at a time? But the idea of the relentless fighting and jockeying and politicking of every day made her furious and exhausted. She did want to go. Maybe Zal could take it better—after all, he’d come here and adopted demons out of pure choice before anyone else had. Perhaps they just fit him better than her. She wondered if that made him stronger. She’d always suspected that it was this sense of his being strong, because he’d go anywhere, do anything, that made him so magnetic to people of all races. Not for the first time she considered whether her own decision to take up Teazle’s ridiculous offer and marry him wasn’t entirely down to a sad attempt to equal Zal’s massive natural charisma. She had to equal him, in daring if nothing else. At first, when they’d been mutually attracted antagonists, the fight had felt fair. But then, after the romance and then the love came… well, now she wasn’t so sure she could handle the competition.

  There was a heavy thump on her shoulder and the scent of burnt hair. “Gah, I can hear you second guessing yerself a mile off,” Thingamajig said, accompanied by the ripping sound of claws shredding themselves fresh purchase on her flak jacket. “Match made in hell, you and me, kid. Forget that willow-limbed tune-brained lunatic.”

  Lila swept her hand to her shoulder, fingers fanning out with razor edges forming at their tips. Thingamajig leapt away wildly with a “whee!” of sudden fire and she walked forward slightly lighter. Inside her chest Tath snickered.

  Ahead of her Zal was humming a tune and trying to fit words to it, oblivious to the many demons they passed who paused to glance at him and then stare at her. Behind them she could hear the imp apologising and excusing himself through the halls, and the growls and snappings of those he was irritating. On all sides musical instruments and the neat scrolls of songsheets were stacked and carried. Things twanged and rang and clanked and hissed and rattled and hummed. Amongst the noise voices trilled and carried. As they passed other rooms and, later, other buildings a vast variety of sounds came and went.

  There was no music not being practised here, Lila thought, struggling to keep up with Zal’s long-legged pace and the delicate silence of his footfalls among the cacophony and the sheer mess of it all. The solid smack of hide on hide and a clash of small cymbals followed by a peevish “waahh” and a thud indicated that someone with a tambourine had taken a solid dislike to Thingamajig. No sooner had the small moment of discord occurred than she heard a drummer somewhere start to riff on the rhythm of the incident. Around them demons sang operatically at each other instead of talking. It was only because she was filtering it all that she was able to separate out the sounds sufficiently to hear one trill, “… say what you like but she’ll never be one of us. Look at that freakin’ imp.”

  “Teazle’s new little pastime,” agreed another, and chuckled. “Wonder how long she’ll last?”

  “I bet you my guitar won’t be longer than any of the others.”

  Lila felt her mouth curl into an ugly line and for the first time in an age the scarlet scars of the magical attack that had almost killed her flared with a fiery pain. She’d heard it before, so why did it hurt now?

  Stupid question.

  The answer was easy. Teazle had had a lot of proto-spouses, none of whom had lived long enough to marry him.

  He hadn’t killed them all himself. He’d only done that when they had proved
themselves more keen to pursue their ambitions and climb the social ladder than to care about him. It seemed he was a romantic to the bone and didn’t take kindly to being exploited for other people’s advantage.

  Lila was cautiously fond of Teazle, although no more than that. There was a strange tension between them. She wasn’t sure she liked him. She didn’t dislike him. And he had a lot to gain from being matched to her, so she didn’t think she was exploiting him.

  Nor did Lila have any ambitions to do with Demonia—except the lasting ambition to be out of it as long as possible, which was growing rapidly in scale and appeal with every step she took. She wasn’t the kind of party animal to thrive here. She liked reason too much. But the cause of the pain that stabbed into her chest at the demons’ bitching was her suspicion that because of this very fact Teazle and Zal would both be better off rid of her. She wasn’t sure she wouldn’t be better off dead too some days. It was all very well to go around making jokes about can openers and cigarette lighters and being a robot, but there was a point at which the humour fell flat. And her joints hurt. And now her heart hurt her, because there was also the keen knowledge that she had been plucked at random to be this special agent, while Zal at least was some kind of genuine, self-motivated political superhero, and Teazle… well, he was heading towards becoming a Maha Anima—a great spirit of Demonia.

  She, Lila, by her own efforts was simply alive and doing what she had to. It had pleased her to marry on impulse and she had. That seemed a bit… well… shallow, compared to Zal’s global virtues and Teazle’s supreme self-composure. Demonia dealt in these kinds of values and she felt that the musical demons had seen her coming a mile off and correctly assessed her as a wannabe.