Down to the Bone: Quantum Gravity Book Five (8 page)

Of those beings who had provided the non-elf material nobody was able to say very much, because they knew nothing about it.
Xaviendra was the only one who would know, and she had stolidly refused to speak of it. This was one of the reasons for her
permanent imprisonment within the containment of the maximum security cells at the Agency. They wanted her where they could
see her, close at hand.

Lila repressed a shiver. ‘She can hear you.’

‘I don’t care,’ the demon said. ‘I’d say it to her face.’

But to Lila it seemed unfair, as if they were talking behind her back. At the same time, she felt an unerring curiosity prompting
her to demand answers from Xavi while her conscious mind was apparently incapacitated and thus unable to stop her from replying.

Zal beat her to it in any case. ‘Xaviendra,’ he said. ‘At the time you were made, what did they use to change you?’

Xavi replied with a piglike snort and rolled onto her back, sending bottles rolling and chinking. ‘Elementals,’ she said.
‘And ektaluni.’ Here she used a word that none of them knew.

‘What’s that?’ Teazle asked.

‘Primal spirits,’ Xavi said.

‘Where from?’ Lila tried to get more information as this wasn’t helpful.

‘Phantoms,’ Xavi replied with the exaggerated patience of someone explaining basic material to lazy students. ‘They are a
form of ghost, but a form generated by the application of disciplined and focused consciousness to the raw aether of the Void
rather than random accretions formed by the natural processes of mnemonic evolution within the nonmaterial planes.’

Teazle made a face. ‘Demons are made in a similar way at the moment of their conception.’ He glanced speculatively at Zal.
‘And here you are, elf in blood and demon by spirit. No accident that.’

‘My mother certainly thought it wasn’t,’ Zal said. ‘Though she never told me all the details. But why did the elves do it
at all?
’

‘They were under attack,’ Xaviendra said, smacking her lips as she settled down again. This above all made Lila convinced
that she wasn’t faking the sleep. Xavi was fastidious and had impeccable manners, the sort that would persist through death
rather than reveal anything other than someone in perfect self-control.

‘From what?’ Teazle’s tail lifted, cobralike, and swayed as he waited for the answer.

‘The sleeper within,’ Xavi said and abruptly rolled to her side and curled up again, hands tucked under her chin like a child.
She frowned briefly and shivered before falling into a deeper kind of sleep; softness overtook her.

As one they turned away to leave her in peace. Lila glanced at Teazle but he shrugged – he had no idea what that last phrase
meant.

Zal shook his head. ‘Never heard of it.’

‘I thought you guys kept impeccable records,’ Teazle said.

‘Maybe, but we also had impeccable rewriting skills,’ Zal replied, ‘and our propaganda services were second to none. Until
I found Friday back in Zoomenon all the elves I know thought the shadowkin were a naturally occurring race and not a genocidal
experiment. They were made a long, long time ago.’

‘Still,’ Lila said. ‘It must have been one hell of a threat to do what they did.’ She felt even less comfortable with the
idea than she had two minutes ago, before Xavi had put this strange label on the cause.

‘Or a hell of an opportunity,’ Teazle said, relaxing to roll on his back again. ‘Mages’ll fuck with anything for power. Elves
doubly so. Gzzz, I feel sleepy. This beer is useless.’

‘I’ll take her back,’ said Lila, cancelling the effects of the alcohol on her system with a filter. She bent down and gathered
the light form of the elf into her arms as unwelcome sobriety set in. She heard herself ask, ‘Are you sticking around?’ And
then she felt so off balance that she almost staggered and had to fight to keep her feet.

Teazle glanced at Zal and their gazes locked for a second, then got up slowly. ‘I’ll take a rain check.’ He shook out his
thick mane of white hair and composed himself, standing tall with his chin lowered in a manner Lila recognised as being his
pre-teleport orientation. He looked at her, his gaze blazing. His nostrils flared for a moment and she smelled brimstone and
the psychoactive tang of his personal poison as he said, ‘Have to be a dog about a man.’

‘Where will you be?’ She hated herself for asking, hearing her voice crack on the last word.

‘I’ll check the dropbox,’ he said and she felt kicked in the gut once again. Then he gave the merest downward flick of his
eyelids in Zal’s direction, baffling her entirely because she’d assumed his submission to Zal would end now there was no more
need for them to fool around with who had the power. He vanished from Otopian space with the finality of a gunshot. The sharp
crack retort of the air closing on his space made Xavi jolt.

‘Bad dog,’ she murmured, her head lolling against Lila’s leather-clad shoulder.

‘I’ll be here,’ Zal said, lying down flat on the rugs. The ink spill of his aether body shifted around him like a restless
pool and where his fingers came into contact with the empty bottles he tapped out a brief rhythm.

Lila swallowed down to prevent the hole in her chest opening any further and stooped to clear the yurt’s low-slung doorflap.
Outside the night was cool and a faint drizzle was falling. She could hear the soft murmuring swish of the city, a breath
instead of the roar she kept listening for and never finding.

The whispers of the machine, which had haunted her a long time from the edges of her mind, were also absent these days. They’d
translated into silent knowledge. It was this, and not her connection to the Agency’s powerful AI systems that made her back
shiver with sudden cold as she walked towards the lit doorway of the building’s garden exit.

Tightening her grip on Xavi’s ragdoll form she picked up speed, linking briefly to the building’s internal sensors. The doors
opened for her, mechanisms spinning into reverse at her command as she approached because she would pass them before they
were even fully open and she wanted them shut at her back. As they swung wide she began to run.

Xavi’s cell was a long elevator ride away. Lila felt two choices emerge from the silent knowledge as she started to pass through
the open-plan office section where administrative staff processed the Agency’s billions of daily documents. She could run
to where she perceived trouble coming, and take Xavi with her to save time, or she could dump Xavi beyond the reach of all
physical and most magical harm first. She chose the second option for a host of calculated
reasons that had already bypassed her conscious mind several times on their way through her AI synapses.

At the elevator doors a secretary was standing, yawning, her tray of cups indicating that she’d picked the short straw and
was on the coffee run. The elevator car was a couple of floors above, descending. Lila bypassed the control system and opened
the doors to the empty shaft. The secretary staggered forward on automatic and jolted as Lila shouted, ‘Stand still!’ on her
way past.

Lila turned as she jumped and saw the cups falling with her, the sight of their impact on the carpet cut off abruptly as her
head passed the floor level. Only the lingering cry of the swearing woman trailed after them down into the abyss. Above them
the car eased down and stopped. Lila turned her attention to the sub basement and opened its doors up. Jets in her boots slowed
them down with a deceleration she had to be careful of – she was pretty unbreakable in this gravity but Xavi was twiglike
– and then she was in the corridor of the security wing, sprinting for Xavi’s door, the guards already plastering themselves
to the walls in accordance with orders that she’d sent belting through their earpieces moments before.

The only hitch in the matter came in the form of the duty shaman who had been woken from a catnap to release the aetheric
binds that master mages had emplaced upon that part of the prison. She was stammering her way through some chant, trying to
get something out of a bag and shake a fetish stick all at the same time. A plate of half-eaten biscuits lay on the floor
next to her. Lila was sympathetic but had no time to show it, nor did she feel the need as Blondine was one of the greater
shamans of the post-Moth era, even if she did look like a frazzled housewife from the Bay. She shoved Xavi at the woman, more
or less dropping her directly into her lap, and said, ‘Pack her in tight. Come to my office soon as you’re done.’

The journey back was a blur, executed on automatic as Lila fine-tuned to the sensation that had upset her in the first place.
It centred on her office – the place that used to house Sarasilien, the elf mage who was Xaviendra’s father and who had been
Otopian liaison to the elf world since the Quantum Bomb had burst Earth and opened up the hidden worlds.

But Sarasilien was long gone and there was no sign of him anywhere. He hadn’t left a note, just a big fifty-year-old hole
where he used to be. He was another one Lila missed every day, the office a memorial, mausoleum, reminder, storehouse, hideaway,
library of
secrets and epicentre of residual energy that was the obvious hotspot for any aetherial interventions to occur, or invasions
to strike. Her only true aetherial helper was the flimsy scrap of ra-ra skirt around her hips: Tatterdemalion, the faery.

Now Tatters was a worn-out relic from an age where Zal’s music had held sway. She was worn and washed out, but as Lila ran
through the open plan again, dodging staff, she felt the sudden shift of fabric around her waist and within a few moments
the skirt was gone and she was wearing a doublet and surcoat, stitched with the symbols and signs she had learned to associate
with protection charms.

The locks and bolts on the door shot back at her approach along the lengthy corridor that separated this volatile place from
the rest of the human offices. The foreboding weight in her shoulders increased as she made herself slow down to a walk and
survey for traps. There was nothing she could detect, nor did the faery cloth react, so she pushed the door open with a flick
of her fingers and crossed the threshold.

The office was made up of three rooms, each leading to the next. Lila kept the doors open because she knew the place could
guard itself without her help and besides, she liked it to look friendly. Now she could see a light in the farthest room,
one she hadn’t left on. It was something cheap to decorate boudoir side tables, and she thought it was a present from Sorcha,
the succubus, to the office’s old master. It had a rosy, golden gleam that made everything look warm and comfortable and it
cast a direct path of fading beams to Lila’s feet.

She felt her teeth slide together. Invitation plus invasion – that really rubbed her up the wrong way. But at least it meant
intelligence and not the wholescale space-time disruption disaster movie that had started playing itself in her head on the
way down here.

Never one to be cautious when she could be bold, Lila straightened her shoulders and put her chin down. She walked forward
along the designated line, though she’d have preferred to do anything but obey the summons. Even this irked her. As she turned
the final corner around the study door she wasn’t ready for what she saw or the blood-draining shock that it started before
her mind had even put names to the faces. All she could think of was that it was two in one day. Two.

Sarasilien was standing in the corner, reading at his lectern. His long fox-coloured hair was loose and his clothing was unfamiliar
to her, though it had the cast of elvish fashion about its skirted coat and leggings, its cloth boots. He was surprise enough
to her, but nothing
had prepared her to respond to his companion and the pair that they made. Beside his tall, rangy figure stood the shorter,
sleeker and infinitely more plastic charcoal female form that Lila knew to be the rogue leader she had beheaded and doomed
with the sword of Night months before.

It was Sandra Lane.

No, she thought a second later. It was Lane’s clone.

A perfect clone. So, which one of them was Lane? And how many of the things were there? But there wasn’t time for that thought.
They were turning to her now.

Lila might have forgiven Sarasilien if he’d reacted with heartfelt emotion, with something other than the grim seriousness
that he offered as he raised his head, but his look was calm, self-contained, businesslike, as though she were just some official
he’d come to see on an important matter. She didn’t want him to run across the room in hysterics or anything, but this left
her with the feeling, once again, that she could stand with her guts out and he’d be passing her a tissue. It struck her there
and then just how one-sided their relationship had been. She’d needed him so badly, anything had seemed like it must be enough.
How cheaply she’d been bought. The revelation washed through her like ice water, freezing what was left of her heart.

Meanwhile Lane stood there with her hands grasped together like the master’s toy. Her immaculate, basic features held no individuality
but they managed an expression of grave disappointment as though she were a teacher who had caught Lila out in a naughty prank.
Only the confirmation of her machine self, one robot to another, convinced Lila this was the real deal and not some other
creature in masquerade, because she’d been sure Lane was beyond the reach of the material world and finding her in one piece
was disconcerting to say the least. But she recovered fast from her disappointment.

‘Well,’ she heard herself say with a cool bite in the words, ‘if it ain’t the returning dead.’

‘Lila,’ Sarasilien said, a beat too late, not warm enough, not anything enough to make up for his defection. ‘Don’t be alarmed.
We can explain.’

In response Lila manufactured guns from her hands and raised them in a single, exacting motion.

‘Yeah?’ she aimed one at his forehead, one at Sandra’s. ‘I’d like to hear that.’

She looked him in the eye and saw there the same warm
compassion they’d always held only this time she wasn’t grateful for it. Maybe it was getting to see Xavi and her pain, hear
her crazy thoughts, or maybe it was the feeling of being treated like a caretaker, left in the cold on a need-to-know basis
that was burning her gut. No, it was all of them. ‘You got twenty seconds.’