Chasing the Dragon (15 page)

Tasha peered at him. "Many favours," she said grudgingly.

"I'm doing my best," Malachi replied, but it was difficult, Lila saw.
He was almost grinding his teeth. She could guess the story. Malachi
was responsible for bringing the Mothkin to Otopia and necessitating
the reign of the Hunter. The people here were outcasts as a result of
that reign, living in a prison more or less, reliant on government protection and handouts. Perhaps they had useful abilities or saleable ones even, but they weren't on any official plan or payment schedule and
they hadn't found any niche in Otopia that was safe from human fear.
They were just outcast, and he was here, asking them.

"We can come back another time if it's not convenient," Lila said.
Over Tasha's shoulder she saw the people watching them closely.
Around her feet the wind stirred the ground. The high pampas grass
that screened much of the garden soughed with the movement of
invisible things. Though she had no magical senses, Lila could plot the
positioning of the things that caused the movements easily, but that
was all. As to whether those things were real or just their scare tactics,
she couldn't tell.

"No, we'd like to meet you," Tasha said after her pause, and
abruptly beckoned them towards the waiting group and the house.
"Always interesting to hear another story." She waited, watching
Malachi.

He nodded and took a step forwards. They took the path to the
door, and from the garden the silent group followed them, breaking
ranks into a more natural ordering of ones and twos and beginning to
talk among themselves. Lila felt them at her back, keeping their distance, watching her so closely.

The house, white clapboard to look at, of the old-seeming style
that had become fashionable again, was a huge, rambling place, full of
the winding halls and odd nooks that Lila had come to associate with
faery homes. She was not surprised to be led for a distance that felt
upwards of a quarter mile along twisting ways, through rooms, across
corridors, and up brief staircases until they arrived in a large living
room whose expansive windows looked out on the same patch of
garden, grass, and yard that they had just vacated. Here a sizeable fireplace held a hefty grate full of smouldering logs, despite the fact that
it was warm outside and in. Sofas and chairs were at all angles. Tasha
took a seat in a group of six or so and pointed briefly across from herself. Lila and Mal sat down, and as if there was nothing unusual going on, the group following them came in and settled, talking quietly
among themselves though even at her most acute Lila could not make
out one word of what they were saying.

"So, you're Agent Black," Tasha said, biting her thumbnail and
spitting the result over her shoulder. "Mal told us about you. We figured you were a victim of a bad deal. But I see not." She stared at Lila
with unending interest, gaze roving over all of her.

"Enlighten me," Lila suggested.

"It seems unlikely that you would broker any kind of deal with my
... maker. The likes of him aren't moved by creatures of such brief
lives as ourselves. I couldn't figure that you were the one responsible."
She glanced significantly at Malachi, who sighed tersely. "Now I see
you're like me, hoisted to a rank you didn't aspire to by the whim of a
greater being." She smiled. It wasn't a pleasant expression.

"And what are you?" Lila asked. "Besides bitter."

Tasha shrugged and spoke in the manner of someone reciting lines.
"We Chosen are the humans the Hunter rode to do his work here in
Otopia. We were first prey, and when we passed his tests," she hesitated and rubbed her shoulder, then continued, "then we were his
mounts, his limbs, his voice. We were small and weak, so he chose
many of us, and after he had gone we were left with different changes.
Changelings, as you'd say, I guess."

"You said I was Chosen, but I'm not ..." Lila stopped and looked
down at the suit. It had done nothing new since she arrived and merely
lay immaculate and beautiful on her. She looked up again and Tasha was
staring at her with a half sad, knowing kind of gaze, slightly nodding.

"The Hunter is from a long way Under," Tasha said, crossing her
legs and leaning back. She examined the state of her boots as she
talked, turning them as if there was going to be something worth
seeing on the worn-out leather toecaps. Lila had seen Mal do this kind
of thing enough times to realise it was a faery habit, distracting yourself from what you were saying, turning attention away from it in the hope that you could speak without being overheard by forces you
didn't want around you. If he was going to say something important,
especially about Faery, he always started doing something else at the
same time.

Tasha continued, "Low enough it's before they have names, proper
names. Before language is really up and running. Even calling him the
Hunter is just a way of naming something that is really more like
hunting, an active pursuit. Wanderer is the noun, but wandering is really
the nature, and wondering. Tatterdemalion is a name that came later
after the king took to naming things and in so doing began to fix their
natures and move them from being actions into objects. Even so, it's of
the ancient first forms, the kind that Malachi here would get to if he
dropped out of the arse of Faery. Not that he would. Might forget who
he was. Always they do, if they fall far enough. Lose their minds, who
they are, all the stuff of higher things. That's right, ain't it? Fall back
into the old times and lose your connection to the worlds of later." She
transferred her half-friendly gaze to Malachi, who nodded, his face
weary and resigned. "Till someone points the way for you, course."

"Or if you find a way up," Malachi said. "By accident on purpose."

Tasha nodded as if she supposed that were possible. "Finding by
Getting Lost. Yes. That'd be the only way. To learn the first tricks."
They both looked at Lila's suit.

"But where is she?" Lila asked. "If this is her dress, then ..."

"You have it wrong," Tasha said, her smile becoming broader.
"That's her. Not her dress. She is the dress. You're wearing her."

Confirmation was worse than she'd thought. Everyone else seemed
to agree. The room had gone silent and all eyes were on her.

"Mal?" Lila said, damned if she was going to buckle, though she'd
have liked to leap up, tear the suit off, shred it, and jump on the pieces
before burning them and then burying the ash.

He exhaled and shook himself loose, trying and failing to unsettle
the weight that was bending him forwards. He set his elbows on his knees and held his palms up apologetically. "I thought it was true....
I came here to be sure."

Lila's skin had gone cold. She saw faces turn towards her, cautious,
and for the first time noticed that they were not really human. As soon
as she saw this on one, it immediately became apparent on the others
too. Their eyes were too large, their chins too pointed, their hair wild,
or missing, or instead of hair the wings of butterflies and moths
opening and closing.... She tore her gaze back to the Chosen as the
woman spoke again.

"She dealt you your fifty-year delay," Tasha added. "She was the
broker. Just like he dealt me ... what I got. He came out at her
bidding. You were just the agent setting terms, offered him a year
and a day. I guess you didn't know what he could do in that time."
She paused and the room paused with her. "So that's not your fault."
She looked as if it ought to be somebody's damn fault, and ground
the tips of her fingers into the tough sofa arms, almost ripping the
material.

"But I'm not changed like you," Lila said, ignoring her own acute
discomfort to press on while she was able. She stared into Tasha's
amber, lion-coloured eyes that a moment ago had been green and knew
she was looking at a caged animal, one that was prowling behind its
bars. What it took to open the cage door she didn't want to know.

"I never saw anything as changed as you," Tasha replied, snorting.
"But you're right. Tatter has a form here, so she didn't need to make
you hers in the same way. But you're hers. Perhaps she's yours too.
Both. The old fey are like that. They don't care for boundaries. All that
matters is the play."

"How old is old?" Lila sensed the potential suddenly. "Three sisters old? As old as the Moirae themselves?"

If the room had been silent before it was deathly now. All the
assembled gazed at her like so many statues, and then abruptly they
each found something much more compelling to do: stretching, adjusting their collars, looking at their watches, picking up discarded
magazines, or plumping cushions. The hair on the back of Lila's neck
prickled. On her legs the dress shifted and the dragons' eyes were suddenly shot with silver threads.

She glanced at Mal, who was waiting like the others, as if an
asteroid were going to fall on them. He was searching his pockets.

Lila pulled up a game of tic-tac-toe on her hand quickly, the crosses
and circles forming like tattoo marks on her palm as she played against
the Al part of herself. "I know, I know," she muttered, testy. "But I had
to ask. You know I did."

Slowly the agitation around them softened as they puttered on
with their little tasks. Finally she sensed them starting to relax as
nothing untoward happened.

"Not that old," said Tasha finally through clenched teeth. She was
tracing the pattern of roses on the sofa arm over and over again. "But
close. We must not speak-"

"Yes, we must," Lila said, flipping out of the endless stalemates of
noughts and crosses to a less discrete game and struggling to keep
focused on it as she tried to say what she wanted. "I want to know
about how things are made, where they came from, in Faery. Where
you come from. Who is the oldest?"

"You can want it," Mal said, taking out the pieces of his grooming
kit and cleaning them: tweezers, nail clippers, buffer, comb...... That
doesn't mean you get it. We can talk about this later."

"We are always talking about it later and never now," Lila said,
losing chequers. "Where can we have this precious talk, when? Now is
as good a time as any."

Mal's black face darkened and his orange eyes became narrow. Coal
dust shivered from his skin. He placed the items back in their leather
case. "I didn't come here so you could interrogate them. Shut up
already. After all this and you won't trust me when I say to keep quiet.
You don't know what you are-"

"Fine," Lila snapped. "Fine. Then let's get your business done with
and go."

"You are the business, so just stay there and be quiet," he said. "I
brought you because Tatter predates me. All right? I know a lot, but
here is where my firsthands run out. Tasha is the only person we can
talk to who knows something about ancient fey, and that only secondhand."

"I don't get it," Lila said, losing again. "Why can't you talk to it
... to her, yourself?"

Malachi scowled and broke from his fussing to look at her briefly.
"Because it is a suit of clothes, Lila. It doesn't have ears or a mouth or
language. It isn't that kind of a thing. The Hunter wasn't that kind of
a thing."

"He spoke," Lila protested, and when they waited just repeated it.
"When we did the deal. He spoke. It was kind of like the wind spoke,
or something. He said Tatter. That's the last thing I knew before I got
back here. He saw the dress and he said her name. And then he said
yes. And here we fucking are. Anyway, it communicates quite well
enough without talking." She swiped crossly at herself, slapping the
cloth as if brushing off lint as she swapped chequers for backgammon.
"The trouble is that I don't see what it adds up to. Elf this, faery that,
don't talk about these people, don't use words, don't write things
down, don't send life.... Why give me all these things and then say
no? Why bug me twenty-four/seven with endless whiny messages and
then try and spring me in the middle of the night like they're the
Mafia and I owe them? I'm sick of it." She regretted the speech
instantly and bit her tongue.

Slowly the distraction work died back. Lila let her hand return to
flesh tones and the usual head, life, and heart lines.

"I used to work in a diner," Tasha said. She was relaxed now and
her eyes were a dark green. She smoothed the sofa arm with her hand.
"Two kids in high school, mother in hospital-Alzheimer's, father god knows where, and boyfriends called by the days of the week. I weighed
a hundred and twenty-one pounds, wore heels to make five-five, and
the only thing I knew I was good at was making Key lime pie. That
was a long time ago." She smiled suddenly and this time it was genuine. Lila felt that they had crossed some line into friendship, but
exactly how was unclear.

Tasha said, "We don't talk about those old folks back home because
we fear them, Lila, and we're right to fear them. They don't know
modern ways. They eat their own young. The ones that talk do a show
of acting like you and me, but don't be fooled. The one thing you have
to remember about all the faeries is the glamour. It's an illusion. All
what you see here." She pointed around at the gathered faces. "Even
what you think you see of us now is an illusion. It's what you like to
see, the kind of thing that makes sense when you think of half-faeries,
bogeymen, spooks. What you put in pictures, in movies. Just light and
tricks. Anything to put you at ease and put you off. We even fool ourselves with it. Hell, most of the time we're so pleased with ourselves
because of it we'd rather die than give it up. And what you're wearing
doesn't need to talk or hear to know everything she wants to know. The
only reason we talk in front of her is because she's one of the few who
never did harm, far as we know. She's part of us all. She's one of the first
things to have a name, but we don't know when she got it. She's part
of the glamour."

"The ones I want to know about?" Lila began hesitantly.