Pandaemonium (19 page)

So no, the City Airport it was, and dump him too. Be on my own again, with everyone that I could trust.

He dropped me at the terminal, and I thanked him, and tried to tip him, but he wouldn’t take my money. “That’s all covered, love. Don’t worry.”

And then I stood and watched him drive away; and as soon as he was gone I walked boldly into the terminal in case he had some degree of farsight and was still watching. Suddenly I was utterly paranoid, trusting nobody even in their humanity, let alone their motives or their loyalties.

Paranoid might save my life, maybe. It might save more than mine.

First thing I did inside was turn my phone off, like a good airline passenger ought to.

The second thing I did was pull the battery and dump the phone in a waste bin. It was still new to me, untouched and empty – but it had been through Julie’s hands, and I had no idea what she might have left inside it, an extra microchip or a hidden instruction, anything. All phones are bugs, when you don’t know who might be listening.

Then I buried myself in a sudden surge of people, enough – I hoped – to confuse any watcher, whether or not they were physically present, whether or not they were a bird peering in through a window; and then I followed signs to the Docklands Light Railway, rather than the planes. No way I was flying anywhere today.
Sauve qui peut
, but I had someone else to save first.

Not a martyr complex, no – but a massive guilt complex, oh, yes. I’d brought down trouble enough on other people; just once I was going to get ahead of it, do somebody some good.

If I could manage that much, if I wasn’t only fooling myself one more time, dragging trouble one more time in my wake.

I’d never know, if I didn’t go.

I
LOVE THE
DLR. No driver equals one person fewer to distrust, one way less for something wicked to come at me. There’s still a ticket inspector, and there’s still all the other passengers, but even so. It’s a step.

And I’m sure there are plenty of ways to make an automated system betray me, and I know it has CCTV so it was watching me anyway, and even so. I still rode away from there with a lighter feeling in my heart. Slightly lighter. I’d shed that sense of being crowded by spies; I’d done what I could to make people safer, by leaving them behind me; I was doing what I could for one person more, heading that way.

Convolutedly. I did still need to be sure I wasn’t being distantly followed, or caught up with. Jacey would be prompt; Jordan could be devious; Oz was... Oz. Which didn’t mean ubiquitous, he only wanted people to think it did. Eyes everywhere, though, for true. Too many people too nervous to be anything other than sneaks and stool pigeons. Stool crows.

I really did need to be sure that I’d lost them. And then keep my head down, not let anybody pick me up again. Discretion, thy name must be Desi.

Maybe I should’ve brought Julie along. For the ride, for the lesson. Discreet has never been my middle name.

(Maria. Since you ask. Back when I was Fay, I was Fay Maria. Desi? Doesn’t have a middle name, unless that’s the
daemon
bit. Mostly she gets by on just the one, and you don’t get to shorten it without consent. I guess Julie had picked up on that; she didn’t know what to call me, so she didn’t call me anything. If we met again, I ought to do something about that – but I wasn’t planning ever to meet her again, so.)

So anyway. DLR, sweet little toy-train, carrying me away from anyone who might be watching.

I hoped.

I was planning to ride it all the way back to Bank and jump a bus from there – no more Tube trains, not for a while, not if there were wyrms in the system – only the thing about the DLR, it runs above ground, sometimes quite high above, so you can look down and see the people in the streets, and...

I
JUMPED OUT
unexpectedly at a station halfway, surprising even me; and ran down to street level and stopped a total stranger and thrust money in his face.

Discreet, yeah. Tell me about it.

But he was a young man in the kind of suit he shouldn’t have been wearing yet, all pinstripes and formality. The jacket was slung over the strap of his messenger bag; the trousers had costly kneepads buckled over them, and the cuffs tucked into a serious pair of rollerblades. “Inline skates” we’re supposed to call them, but nah – these were blades. Designed to cut through traffic, cut through anything.

Anything except me, slamming into his way, slamming him to a sudden halt just in time. I didn’t even need to use my Aspect; I guess blading through London hones your reactions.

He was good; he didn’t even wobble, let alone grab at me to keep himself upright.

He was also furious. That was probably part of his technique, to hate all pedestrians and all cyclists, all roadworks and all traffic-lights and all vehicles indiscriminately. And then he’d weave and slice around them and think himself even better than he was, leaving empires in his dust.

He worked in the City; his suit said so, and so did his trendy satchel, and so did his vicious attitude, his hurry, his contemptuous skill.

That’s how I knew he’d stop, when he saw money.

He did stop. His lip twisted in a sneer; his eyes glittered scathingly; his belly – I was sure – boiled with indignation, that somebody should deliberately seek to stop him. And that they would know the way to do it.

I said, “Sell me your skates.”

“What?”

“Your skates. Take them off your feet, give them to me.” He’d be my height, more or less, if we were standing level. I was fairly sure they’d fit me, more or less. “I will give you money.”

“Don’t be absurd.” He tried to slide around me, but it’s hard without momentum; blades are awkward to get going, if you’ve got no room to move. I was deliberately standing too close, denying him that room.

“No, I’m serious.” My hand on his arm said so, startling him back into stillness. I still didn’t need my Aspect, this was just my regular physical self. I’m quite springy. He could feel that. Enough at least to let him know that he didn’t want to wrestle me. Not on skates. “You’ve got regular shoes in your bag there” – I could see the shape of them beneath the fabric – “so I’m not going to leave you barefoot in the street. You’re not far from your office, or you wouldn’t be wearing your business suit; wouldn’t want to spend the day at your desk all sweaty and smelly, your colleagues wouldn’t like it. Your boss would get complaints. You couldn’t live with that. So. Sell me your skates. Chop-chop.”

I tried a smile, to make this easier on him:
you’re right, this is absurd, but let’s just do it anyway, shall we?

He wasn’t playing. “Have you any idea how much these skates cost?”

“Yes, actually. Which is why I’m offering you this much” – a ruffle of notes under his nose – “which is more than you will have paid. Come on. It’s called profit. You’re supposed to be keen on that.”

He said, “What do you take me for?”

It’s an old joke, but I cracked it anyway: “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just dickering over the price.”

I didn’t say,
Would you rather I simply turned you upside down and stripped them off your feet for you? I could do that. I’m trying to be nice.

I didn’t say it, but perhaps I let him glimpse it, just a hint. I might have twitched oh-so-reluctantly at my Aspect, just a touch, enough to have it show itself in my face, to have him feel it in my fingers.

He buckled then. And bent over, unbuckled the boots; said, “Do you – do you want the kneepads too?”

“No, that’s okay, thanks. I don’t fall. I’ll take your shades, though, if you can spare them.”

G
IVE HIM CREDIT
– or maybe just give him cash – he even lingered while I tried them for size. I don’t know what he would have done if they hadn’t fitted: claimed them back again, perhaps? Offered me a refund? Maybe an apology? No worries, though: warm insoles embraced my feet, sturdy boots supported them, and I stood three inches taller than I had been.

Three inches and a hell of a lot faster, freer, happier.

Technically more exposed, sure, but hell: you take what you can get. I may love the DLR, but it’s still a tin box on rails. Now I was on my own in a different way, fuelled and wheeled and fit for anything, my regular boots hung from their laces around my neck.

“Thanks,” I said. “Have a nice day.”

And then I was off, and whatever he offered in return – wishes, curses, gestures; pheromones, maybe, if I’d showed him a little more of my Aspect than I’d meant – was wasted in the wind of my departing.

D
ID
I
MAYBE
suggest that he was arrogant, did I, as he incised his perfect line around all obstacles in his path?

You should see me.

No, you should. Me on skates, I’m an object lesson in how to be objectionable. That same perfect line, shaved to a finer hair’s-breadth: carving heedlessly by you, close enough that you feel my slipstream like a tug on your sleeve, your feet stutter and you shy at that sudden body in your eyeline and maybe you cry out but there’s really no point, I’m long gone already. That same seething fury, aimed equally at you and everybody else, everything else, every lamp-post and letterbox, every bollard, every car. That’s half the fun, is the bottled rage that drives me; and oh, yes, it is fun. I love it.

I love how good I am and how mean, how fast and how disturbing, how close to peril and how neat in recovery. Blades feed everything about me that’s selfish and unkind and elitist. They almost fit me to join the Overworld, for what little time I’m wearing them.

That day, they were just what I needed.

F
OR THE FIRST
mile or so, I simply let myself play. Get up to speed, get in the groove; rediscover just how entitled you can feel when you’re the fastest thing on the street, just how much of a dick you can be.

Spot the pensioner couple holding hands up ahead, see how they’re blocking the entire width of the pavement. Hate them.

Hate them
but
. See how the woman’s hitching up her handbag, about to let go her husband’s hand so she can rummage. Ride the moment, trust yourself. Glide up behind them, and, yes: now. Now a gap opens between them, barely wide enough. Turn side-on and seize it, slam between them like a malevolent breath, nudge each just a fraction as you go: not enough to topple them, just to teach them. To the victor, the spoils; the sidewalk is yours. They ought to know that. Now they do.

Young mothers, with their buggies on parade. They feel entitled too, but they’re not. So they reproduced; so what? It’s not big and it’s not clever, it doesn’t qualify them for special consideration. They’re still in the way. Except they’re not, of course, because you can slalom. Twist, crouch, turn: all grace and power, the opposite of what they are in their awkward indignation, their screeching protests as they react too slow and too late, pointlessly jerking their buggies this way and that when you’re already on your way and gone. Never mind that they end up with a wheel in the gutter and a wailing baby; they deserve it, if only for not being as cool as you.

Dogs. Dogs on leads, let dash unpredictably from wall to kerb. Be ready to cut around them, this way or that; be ready as a last resort to leap stuntwise over that taut tripwire of a lead, or else fall in a tangle of legs and leather, chain and dog and moron.

I don’t fall.

No, indeed.

Besides which, the leap is fun. Kicking off without warning, soaring high above the street, tucking your legs up one side or the other to pass over the dog rather than hit their human, however much the idiot deserves hitting. Timing is everything, timing and speed of attack, speed of reaction. Don’t even think about your Aspect, not for this. Do it yourself, it feels so much better that way. Having an Aspect is nothing to be arrogant about, though a lot of people think it is. Having this, now, this seething lava-rage that drives you to excel: oh, yes. That’s worth all the fuss and all the effort, all the sweat and the cleaving wind, the grind of wheels on paviors and the shrill of exaltation that you hold behind your teeth because really, let’s be cool, okay?

T
HAT, ALL OF
that; a mile of that, just to get warmed up and work through the thrill of it, make believe that I was only doing this because I could.

Then I got serious, because I had to.

The Twa Corbies had found me before, when I’d been out loose and running free. Granted, it had hardly been a tricky thing, just then. All the Overworld would have known it, the moment I cut Jordan free of his amulet. Call it the Jordian knot, if you like. I cut it, and his mother’s cry of discovery must have shivered mountains to their roots. For a little while there, I must have been famous. Or put it another way, say I was exposed, in that same light as Jordan was; and one person at least turned out to be looking for me, and sent his henchbirds after me straight off. Rubbing his hands, no doubt, with satisfaction, if his hands had still been free to rub.

And we ducked the birds and the henchwyrm too, we found shelter for the night; and now here I was, out again in the open. This time at least I knew that he was looking, and I’d played three-card monte just a little, this way and that under cover of cabs and carriages. Even so: I might have been betrayed, deliberately or otherwise. I might be spied on even now, and chased, and caught, and...