"We need a magical dampener," Bentley said, as if this was something every office had, like a fire extinguisher. "There must be one in here somewhere." She began to poke about rapidly among the clutter.
"A what?"
"It was after your time," the android said, her voice muffled as she went behind the desk and started lifting things. "When we were able to learn from the Signal we developed a set of antimagical tools. Dampeners are standard issue in the agency now. Weak ones, that is, but I'd have thought an agent like Malachi would have the best.... Ah, here it is...." She straightened up. She was holding something that looked like a short black baton, studded at one end with metals of different colours. She pressed something and it beeped. "Batteries are still good. Should be enough."
Lila watched with surprise and some envy as the grey, plastic figure moved up to the sextant, pointed the baton and pressed some more things. There was a beep. "Tuned now, very difficult ranges ..." and another beep. Then a kind of shiver in the air. Lila recognised it from the first moments she had been attacked by the rogues. They had used it on Teazle and nearly killed him.
The tendrils of crystal forming on the sextant stopped and then began rapidly to melt.
"Can I see that?" Lila held out her hand.
Bentley passed her the dampener. "All aetheric activity relies on frequency modulations of matter at the superstring level. This instrument matches waveforms and feeds back the mirror image, cancelling the action. Of course, it's no good if you have to keep retuning a lot, if you have multiple attackers, or if you are in a wide area of effect. Too slow and too weak. There are bigger ones. But it is some protection against the initial magical attacks we might face. We have to keep this one tuned to that object or it could revert any time. Or if it's a cipher, then the user could figure out what we're doing and start a different approach. It will detect changes every few seconds, though again that's kinda slow."
Lila handled the baton carefully, testing, analysing, taking copies of its schematics. There was a familiarity about its construction. She handed it back to Bentley, confident that she could reproduce one if necessary. "How much else have I missed?"
"You'll catch up," Bentley said, and for the first time Lila saw her face change its perfectly smoothed bland expression into the semblance of a smile.
Lila looked back at the sextant. "Now what? We don't even know what that is. Except that if Jones was looking for it she's the worst finder in the history of finding, which I doubt very much." She sat back on her haunches. "We should wait for Mal. What do we do with it until then? Just leave it here?" She had a clue who this belonged to, but she didn't want to say. Maybe Mal's superstitions were rubbing off on her. She doubted Bentley was up enough on the day's events to piece it together, but the sextant had to be related to the Fleet, Jones was deep into the Fleet, her own office was temporarily a last resting place for some of the Fleet, and Mal was haunted by the damn Fleet: it didn't take a genius to put all that together and get a set of vitally important, connected yet meaningless facts.
Maybe, she thought, maybe if I put all the magical things together in a pile and sneak out very, very quietly it will all go away.
She straightened up. "Stay here and keep an eye on it. If I don't come back in an hour get someone to relieve you. Call me as soon as Mal shows up."
"Yes, ma'am."
In the offices the day staff were packing their things and exchanging work with the night shift. The cleaners were just getting a move-on. It was busy, almost hectic. Lila went back to her office and installed some new warning tape across the door, as much for a telltale as a deterrent; then she took the long route to the armory, just to look at things, at people, to be with them a few minutes longer.
Inside the armory she met a pleasant young man who was glad to show her the full range of magical suppressant items. He demonstrated how they worked, powered them up, and let her take them into a safe room for testing.
She'd never been in a safe room before. In her day there was the range, where you shot things in various ways, and that was all. Now she was in a peculiar version of the same thing, standing on a platform that allowed her to do close work, water tests or range tests using an array of shields and modifiers that she had to spend ten minutes learning before she could do the first little thing and check whether or not the personal-sized baton was able to do anything with the pen.
The trouble was, she didn't know how the pen worked. Not exactly. She put the baton in a clamp and set it to Auto as she'd been shown, putting herself in the attacker's position. How did you attack with a pen? Write a nasty letter? She tried to flourish it, to force it to change into the sword, but it did not. After a few more attempts she gave up and uncapped it instead, holding the golden nib close to the tip of the baton. A big screen readout on the wall behind it displayed the results in glowing colours. "Threat not present."
She found the negative mildly amusing. Why didn't it just say, "Safe"?
But the pen was not safe. Not really. She wanted the baton to work, so that she could find out exactly how unsafe it was ... safely. She wanted the baton not to work, so that she could feel that much more protected by the dread power of the pen. This stalemate thing was no good at all.
Pens write, she reasoned, so she must write something. Teazle had said this pen was the weapon of intent, and of course there was that saying about "mightier than the sword" to bear in mind. If only she were an elf who had spent a lifetime choosing the right words. But she was only a human, and right words had come to her rarely, and never timely.
Besides that, there was no paper. In the old days there had been quite a lot of paper, but now there was none, she'd found, except toilet paper and various kinds of absorbent cloth made from wood pulp. Speak-to-text was popular, using any household device, and the most cheap and nasty personal organisers had the ability to project readable text on any surface; so now she was stuck unless she wanted to vandalise the table. She considered it, sure the pen would be able, but then she thought she would just try writing it where she wanted it....
Carefully, as if using a sparkler slowly, she wrote her challenge to the baton in the air in front of it. The lines ran thick, black and true, as lightless as the pits of eternity. Try me.
The baton exploded. Shrapnel rang and whined around the room as she ducked and wrapped her arms around her head. But she was smiling, because there had been a moment when she felt the pen move in her fingers, as if it was surprised, and a moment when the baton had flashed up a signal that said Evasive Action Required.
Gradually she undid herself and got up and found she had only minor cuts. The words that had cut into the air itself were gone. For a few minutes she gathered up the broken bits of the dampener, using the time to contemplate a couple of things.
The first thing was that she wasn't about to test the pen with bigger hardware-she doubted there would be a difference and she was feeling something like smug contempt radiating from the thing as it lay capped in her hand. How a pen could emanate an emotion was beyond her, but its energy, like the energy of the dress, was powerful and remorseless. She could no more have mistaken the feeling than if Max had just beaten her at cards, again.
The second thing was that Sarah Bentley must be at least seventy years old. In generational terms that made her Lila's age, but in real terms it made her akin to Lila's grandmother, and Lila had been offhanded and arrogant with her. Bentley looked ageless, but certainly not old. The grey plastic that had replaced her skin was utterly smooth and she moved with normal youthful vigour. And yet, the question that seeped on and on through Lila's tired brain wormed forwards: the reason she kept thinking of Bentley as an android was the flatness of her emotion as well as the blankness of what remained of her expression. It was a human fancy that machines must be emotionless, because they had things that were very like minds if you liked the metaphor of hardware and software, brain running mind, but clearly no hearts or anything like flesh with all its chemical foibles. They were col
d, metallic, logical, calculating. But all these features were simply literally true of their components. It was the fancy to read a poetic extension into it and attribute the same intents to machines as you would to humans with those features in their makeup. By rule of poetry machines were psychopathic, at best indifferent, as puppets were wooden and dolls plastic and teddy bears cuddly and soft, fluffyheaded, loving. The material determined the spirit. Was it so? Was it more than human creation and myth?
And the third thing that came to her as she straightened up and put the pieces on the table, seeing their workings quite clearly in the powerful overhead lights-the third thing was that these machines were not human creations.
And the fourth thing was-did they jump, or were they pushed? In Faery, when the machine had grown so far it had eaten her all up, Lila had been sure it was the end of her. But it was not so. The only legacy of the change was the ability to be quite plastic, physically and to some degree emotionally, strong enough of mind to override almost any trauma in its moment. The hardware made that easy to achieve, but the willingness to achieve it was down to Ilyatath Voynassi Taliesetra, the elf, who had said with such conviction as she was dying, "It's all right." Elf magic was words, and she had clung to those words when they were all there was left.
She poked at the smouldering bits of baton and mapped their lost connections: she didn't feel invaded, or cold, or used. All of that had come to her by human hands when they attached her to the machinery and didn't care about the outcome. Had that happened to Bentley, and to Sandra Lane too? Not that it mattered if it had. What they'd done since mattered. What they were. Who they were. She could feel Sandra Lane's unspoken promises like an itch in the bone. No, she wasn't going to belong to the rogues, whatever sense of kindred they thought ought to move her.
Lila tucked the pen back in her bra.
Meanwhile the Signal hissed, black static. She amplified her response to it as she set up the clamps again with a sniper rifle. She connected the rifle's piffling and human-made Al to the largest of the dampening systems-this one barely portable, a thing the size of a drinks crate with handles and a power cable that had to be attached to a mains source. She made a few practice shots, checking the reaction times of the gun to the dampener's feedback and ensuring it was able to get a shot off that would impact at the correct moment, when the dampener oscillations would theoretically be timed to cut any magical interference dead.
When she was satisfied she adjusted the sighting and aim on the rifle so that it would discharge into the water tanks beyond the target area and reloaded it with a fully jacketed live round. Finally she checked her own connections to the various AIs involved and picked up a set of ear-defenders from the rack on the wall, fitting them carefully onto her head.
It was a short walk to the end of the alley. She took away the foam targets and put them into a storage bin, then built up a small platform out of target support boxes that were stacked against the wall. Finally she adjusted the height, checked their stability, and then stepped up onto it. The rifle was aimed directly at her heart.
"Fire," she said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
oftly, softly the snow fell. It blanketed the forest and the fields, the (slopes of the mountains and the frozen rivers of the valleys. Gently, gently it touched the face of the elf who stood on the hillside, glanced aside from those chilly, upright contours, and tumbled to the white fur of his enormous coat, or down through the delicate tips of the hairs, bending them as it went, until it settled on the top of his white boots or the even white surface around him. It sparkled in the weak daylight, and in its near-infinite facets the faces of all the dead of ever stared back at him in silence.
Ilyatath Voynassi Taliesetra did not feel the cold, or, rather, he had felt it so much that it had become a part of his nature. His eyebrows and eyelashes were ice, his face mostly numb. It was good that he did not need to eat or drink. That might have been painful. Besides which, there was nothing, only the snow, the land, and the grey clouds with their circling cargo of souls.
He rested his hand on the head of a huge hound that sat beside him, one of two flanking their master. They were as white as the snow, except for their long ears that stood out like splashes of blood, coppery and vivid. His other hand was tightly closed inside the pocket of the huge coat, but now he brought it out and slowly undid the grip of his fingers one by one until the knuckles eased and he could look at the strands of red hair that lay in his palm and the blackness that twisted around them like flowing water. One of the dogs whined, a thin and restless sound.
Far away from him a shadow moved among the tall pines on the hillside where the forest edge came to stony ground and was forced to give way to rock. A narrow pass was there, following the path of a long-frozen stream all the way up to the glacier, lost in clouds. On the other side of the mountains it zigzagged into a lake valley, broad and easy, where Ilyatath Voynassi Taliesetra had last seen the woman whose hair he was holding; the same place where he had been reborn, and died again.
He had been watching the shadow for some time, had come out of the cave that he used for shelter to watch it in fact, dragging the most loyal of the dogs away from the meagre fire and out into the soft white and greys of the soulfall. Now the dark shape paused midflit between the trunks and in its moment of stillness became distinctive for the first time. Its long, thick tail twitched irritably as it surrendered to being seen, and then the enormous black tiger came forwards with insouciant slowness, as if it had meant all along to shed its cover. From its heavy, rounded face the two orange eyes blinked, and it shook its head twice to rid its wiry whiskers of snow.
The dogs got up, their hackles rising, but the elf stood a little straighter and they circled him, whimpering, and then ran back into the fall and vanished from sight. The tiger continued its advance until the last few metres and then with an effort it reared up and stood on its hind legs in a most uncatlike fashion, flesh rippling with changes that forced it closer to the shape of a man. Finally, neither one nor the other, it opened its mouth to reveal shockingly pink gums and white teeth and said, "I wondered what would happen to you. I didn't think you would cross over. I doubt any faery knows of this path through the mountains anymore."
"Then how did you find it?"
"Madrigal showed me the way. She said she tracked you when you left, discovered the way for herself. In fact, she said you must have made the path when you came because there hasn't been a faery ruler in the land of the dead as far as anyone knows."
"Nor an elf," said the elf. "But now there is both."
"Another worldwalker. It's like some kind of rash these days."
"I cannot return to Alfheim," Ilya said after a moment or two.
The faery hesitated and then conceded, "I am sorry to hear it."
The elf shrugged. "Malachi, do you still go by that name?"
"Better something borrowed than the true," Malachi replied smoothly.
"And in the first days we had none of course," the elf added.
Malachi shivered. Tath had always been a spooky kind of elf, the highest sort from the longest line of scholars and sorcerers, quick to quirk an eyebrow or give one of those chilly looks beside which all the ice of midwinter seemed cheery and warming. Now however he had mellowed. Whilst he wasn't in any way soft there was something about him that reminded Malachi of ancient scotch glowing in a cut glass at sunset, that kind of mellow. His spirit was distilled, he supposed with a grin to himself, as befitted the inheritor of Jack's fey throne, the new King of Winter.
Unlike Jack, Tath had already been a necromancer, not to mention the little matter of being twice-born and twice-dead-a mystic and literal requirement met that enabled him to walk the realms of the dead and undead at will. Malachi didn't even know if the position had ever had an occupant before and suspected that Tath would have had no idea he was eligible until it was too late. Stories of death knights had died long ago, even in Under. They were so old and so forgotten-ish that the memory of
them made Malachi's skull itch. Thanatopia (not its real name, of course) was one place and lore he didn't care to know too much about; but now he needed to talk, and Tath was here and he knew him already, well vaguely, and so here he was. In fact, Tath had been Lila's friend, if that was the right word for a person you had occupied as an itinerant spirit. Malachi was relying on the fact that they had been friends and not something else. However, there was no denying that what had once been Tath was no longer that simple a person, but something as close to a true avatar as Malachi wanted to get near.
"How's the godhead going?" he asked, to allay his nerves somewhat.
The elf's green gaze darted from its absorption in the distant snow and lit on his own with a flick. After a painful wait he said, "It is cold."
"Shoulda chosen a different specialisation," Malachi said with feeling.
For a second the elf's mouth flickered. "Woulda shoulda coulda," he said, and smiled.
It was the saddest, most knowing expression Malachi had ever seen.
"Shall we play chess?" he asked.
"I am an elf, I am not Swedish," Ilya said. "I prefer cards or, failing that, something musical."
"Cards it is." Malachi knew what his singing sounded like.
"Come this way." The tall, wintry figure led the cat along the hillside a short way and then turned a corner around a thick column of snow that Malachi had simply taken for a part of the ground. Without transition they were inside a high-roofed cave lit by hundreds of flickering candles of all colours, and full of dogs.
The hounds-a vast tide of white and red fur-remained slumped around the walls in various hollows lined with furs as their master appeared. Green eyes blinked at the catman and some tails went up, but there was no barking, no approach. They were faery dogs, the CuSith that Ilya had inherited from Jack, and although Malachi was feline they were not interested in him as a cat, only as another fae. He was one of them, so they were content to let the master's word keep them mute and sleepy.
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