Keeping It Real (19 page)

Sathanor it's not an interface
.
In Sathanor the elves are part of Alfheim - there's one big
andalune,
I

suppose. I could see why it's called the water bridge -andaiune's meaning in Otopian. It flows between

everything. It
makes

all relationships potentially very intimate in ways we humans don't
have at
all.

'Well, we were at
this big party thing in one of the mountain halls -all so gorgeous, I can't tell you - and

Vincent overheard some elf princes talking about a necromancer that they'd heard of, operating deep in

Sathanor, at some place very remote
.
They were jumpy about it, not paying attention to much else, and

he thought
this was a good lead, so we decided we'd pretend we were going out on a hiking trip for a

few days whilst the rest
of the talking was going on, and we set out and tried to find this place
.
We had

an elf guide with us, an ordinary Alfheim agent, who'd agreed with our bosses in the regular NSA that we

should make a joint trip to find out what was going on in secret. Harad, her name was. And we made a

long journey into the big country but
we didn't
get
as far as the place we were going. Dar and the other

Jayon Daga agents came after us.

'I didn't understand all the distinctions then. I couldn't see why they weren't exactly on the same side as

Harad, though they clearly didn't think themselves her allies. Sarasilien told me later that they're a kind of

law unto themselves, like a priest
caste, the grey eminences behind a lot of the apparent Alfheim ruling

classes. Anyway, they intercepted us in the mountains and ordered us to go back in no uncertain terms.

We agreed of course, and Harad was very worried about them being there and knowing where we were

but Vincent and I didn't understand the situation and we thought it was such a good opportunity that we

managed to persuade her . . . Well, we didn't go back. We went on and then the Daga came after us

again and . . .'

Lila faltered
.
This was where she wasn't sure of a solid narrative any more, only of isolated events
.

'They used magical weapons
.
I think there was some kind of struggle between Harad and the first of

them
.
They captured her, and she was sent away with some of their number, I don't know where to, I

never saw her again
.
The rest of them, under Dar's command, decided that they couldn't let me or

Vincent go and they discussed what
they were going to do about
it
.
While that
was happening the one

who had been set on to guard us fell asleep
.
Something came out
of the trees and he just - it
emptied him

- he keeled over on the ground just like that
.
And then it got to Vincent, because he was closer, and it

was some kind of.
.
. I think it was a ghost of some kind: an inhaler, not an exhaler . . . um ... I didn't really

see it, just something greyish and our

guard falling over. Vince and I had been tied up, hands and feet, and I managed to roll away, but he

couldn't do it in time because he had his back to it, and he just... I guess he must be dead. I don't know.

I was trying to get
away and I didn't want to shout because I thought
they were going to kill us anyway,

but then Dar saw me and he must have thought I'd done whatever it was to his soldier and to Vincent.

He was furious
.

They picked me up and ran with me. I don't
know where. Then they threw me down.'
Fire.
'Dar cast

this spell and it
hit
me and it
burned ...

T see his face a lot
in my dreams
.
I saw him then just
a few times, different
times. And there was this

pain. And he was looking at
me with that
cold face. It
must
have been different
times, because the back-grounds were different. He never did anything else. I heard him talking to the others and asking me

questions but I couldn't answer them. And then I don't remember anything, except the hospital here.

'But that's not the worst. The thing I wanted to say was that what burned me was Dar's
andalune
and

it burned me with hate. I felt
it because it was everywhere and the spellcast came from it and it carried it

into me. I could hear him in it. The way he despised humans, loathed demons, feared ... he was afraid of

a lot
of things. He was afraid of the magic he used to stop me. He was revolted by what he saw happen

to me. He made himself sick. Every time he looked at me afterwards I could see how much he wished I

didn't exist. He'd ask me questions about what we saw, and I'd say nothing because we didn't
see

any-thing, and he'd be furious. I would have told him anything. If they hadn't
wanted to keep me alive to

ask me questions, I'd have been dead. I'm sure of it. Dar kept
me alive. As long as I was conscious he

never stopped asking questions.'

Lila stopped. She glanced around the hotel room. Next
door she could hear music and voices. She

looked at
the time and saw an hour had passed.

'Did he recognise you in the woods this time?' Dr Williams asked.

'Yes,' Lila said, grateful for Williams' calm, able to be calm in return. 'And then he shot me. And I

meant to say it was worse because Dar is very - handsome - but that sounds ridiculous. Why would that

be worse? Only it
is. When I looked at him, all I could see was how beautiful he was, and all he saw was

how horrible I was. He could feel me, because the magic in his arrowshot carried the charge of his

andalune,
and he couldn't
stand it. It
made him physically sick.' Lila bit
out the last words and then clenched her jaws shut. She felt
as though she had swallowed acid. At the time, in the thick of the action,

she hadn't even noticed it, she thought, but now that she had to say it aloud, her mind was only too keen

to supply clear details.

"Thank you, Lila,' Dr Williams said. 'You should rest now. You must be very tired.' She had put her

kind voice back on.

'Yes, I will,' Lila said. She didn't really suspect the doctor of hypnotism, but the suggestion seemed so

welcome. She went
and lay on the bed's cover and then pulled the pillows into her arms and shut her

eyes as she closed the phone link down. But
this didn't work. She didn't feel better. She felt
worse. She

could hear Poppy laughing: no happier sounds than faery laughter, kind of crazy and twisted as it was,

and Lila felt a smile turning up her own mouth against
her will.

She looked at
her internal pharmacy registry. There must
be some-thing here that wouldn't hurt to

take; something that would do what her silly song-lyric game with Zal had been meant
to do and leave

her feeling like she was in control. Nothing too strong, nothing that
would slow her down or make her

mad - she looked at
the CNS stimulants, an array provided for Full Armour situations when she had to

drive her human self to the limit
to keep up with the machine
.
She could take those
.

'Hey Lila,' Poppy said from the door. 'We're gonna order takeout. You want
some?'

'No,' she said. 'I mean. Yes. Sure. Whatever.'

'Are you okay?'

'Yeah. I'm glad you came in,' Lila sat up and swiped at her face, clearing it of tears.

'Bad news?' the faery said, tentatively coming closer
.

'Just work stuff
.
Really
.
Nothing to worry about
.
I'm tired
.
You know
.
'

'Sure, honey,' Poppy said. 'He's difficult.'

For once Lila didn't bother trying to correct her. 'You have a soundcheck in an hour.'

'I know. We're gonna eat
and go. Sure you don't
want
a drink?'

'Water.'

'I'm on it.'

Lila used the time to wash and fix her face. She felt a strange kind of high after all that, because she

hadn't taken anything and was still

functional. She avoided Zal for the rest
of the day, accompanying him with her dark visor on like every

other idiot bodyguard, keeping people at a distance and doing the dull things with Jolene that
had to be

done; scheduling, cars, bike, green rooms, backstage vetting, meeting up with the rest of the security for

the site and making sure they were all briefed on the kinds of negative attention that the band could get

and who to look out for.

Lila handed out pictures of Dar and the other known elf agents in Otopia, some straight
and others with

them made up as human. 'If you think you see any of these people, you need to call me straight away.'

'Are they like, dangerous?' asked one.

'Yes,' Lila said. 'But they won't give you any trouble if you don't approach them directly. They want
to

get
in. They don't
want
to attract attention to themselves.'

'I heard this band were having trouble with extremists,' another added. 'Are these the ones?'

'Maybe,' Lila said.' You'll see that in T
he Herald
this morning they reported on the kind of hate mail

that
Zal's been getting
.
Humans, demons, faeries and elves; all send it in various kinds. The loud ones, in

my experience, aren't the ones you need to worry about. If you see the people pictured, don't try to stop

them, just
call me.'

'Man I hate this shit,' she heard one guard mutter. 'Stupid race-hate bigots. Ruin the whole fucking

world.'

'Amen,' Lila said under her breath. She found herself looking through the stadium camera systems,

looking for Dar. She didn't
see him.

She located the other NSA agents and went through the call signs with them for the evening show and

then caught up with Zal, taking a seat in the front row of the auditorium as they walked a rehearsal with

sound and light cues. She practised tuning her ears to block out the band sound so that she could hear

around it, picking frequencies and neutralising them. They messed about with dance beats and silly

covers of other people's songs. She envied their easy virtuosity.

As they finished up, Lila checked everything she could think of that
might
matter; weather reports,

police radio, traffic, communications
.
She didn't know what she was looking for. Then Malachi called her

from Sarasilien's office
.

'I got some early forecasts on your tape,' he said once the security

encryption on their link had authenticated
.
"That sub-audible signal is definitely coming from a bomb fault

that
runs under the studio
.
'

'So, not band-related at all?'

'Could be bootlegs with this other thing piggybacking by accident, can't
say
.
Anyway, the 'leggers have

legged it, so I'm going to go back and see if I can find out
more about
the noise trace by taking better

samples. The lab monkeys think it sounds like some library recordings of theirs which go back to the

Fallout. Someone mentioned the words Seventh Realm, but
they always say that when they find stuff they

don't
understand.'

'Okay. If it's not
directly Zal-related then I'm going to have to leave it
with you,' Lila said. 'We're good

here so far. But
I've got
a bad feeling. I don't
know. Maybe it's the stadium architecture
.
There's a lot of

hiding places around here for anyone with an ounce of magic'

'You'll have to wear the full kit then,' Malachi said cheerfully
.

'I intend to
.
' She hung up and stretched
.
The work had done her good. She felt tired and wrung-out,

but no longer out of control
.

She shepherded the band back to the hotel and took only enough time out
to open her bag and install

the remaining armour that she'd checked out
days ago. She treated her skin where it hurt, swallowed the

nasty, slimy goop that
contained the nanocytes to maintain her integration with her machine body, and

took the doses of drugs that
were marked up in her system-vision to support the extra load of the arsenal

she was carrying. Her exhaustion paled and her attention sharpened.

There was a knock on her open door.

'Yeah,' she said, zipping the bag closed.

'Cool suit,' Zal said. He did not come in. 'And didn't you used to be shorter than me?'

'Maybe,' Lila said, at eye level with him. 'What's up?'

'Nothing.' He held out a can of Coke. 'Thought you might want this.'

'I have a fridge full of Coke.'

He reached through the door and put it down on the sideboard where an unnecessarily large and

ostentatious display of flowers used up almost all the space. His tone was dry and ironic. 'I know. I

understand that the offering of a dead badger is a more traditional symbol when apologising to mere

humans, but hell, there aren't many badgers left in Frisco. The elves have insulted their way out of this