Chasing the Dragon

by Justina Robson

  "There is only a chance of that," Ilya said. We are here and ready to fight because we have been used and fought. It is possible those things are unhappy chances that came in the wake of deeds done for a greater good, but they did not feel that way at the time. But look, they are here. We have stopped. You got your wish as usual, Zal." That bitterness touched his mouth again. "Now we will see who is right or wrong in their guesses." He reached out almost compulsively to touch Zal and their hands met and Ilya's passed through Zal's.

  "Tingles," Zal said, sorry. "I'm only partly material enough."

  "All material form here is largely illusory," Ilya said. "And the longer we all remain present in planes not suited to us the worse it will get."

  "I thought you were right at home."

  "I am still relatively low on the rank," the elf replied with wry humour. "I am not an angel or a Titan"-he discreetly flicked an eyebrow as he glanced over Zal's shoulder-"to be dotting around at my whims without a price."

  Zal looked back at Glinda. She was sitting with her feet up, glass in hand. She waved him back regally to his conversation. He glanced at Ilya and whispered, "Can you see her?"

  Ilya shook his head. "No. I see only you but I know what happened to you in Under, so it is no surprise to me that you are ridden by the Three."

  "It isn't like that," Zal said. "There's only one of her."

  "Of course there is," Ilya said.

  By now they were surrounded by the Temeraire's freebooter crew holding various weapons pointed at them. Other vessels of the Fleet were so close they also could have boarded, but they held off with poles and ropes, tying up the ship fast so she could not move.

  "Take them below," the demon said from the Temeraire's deck. "Except that one." It pointed at Ilya. "This one is too dangerous."

  "Ah no," Zal said, mouth ahead once more. "If he stays I stay."

  "Three for me," added the faery, as though he were lengthily and heartily bored of such affairs and would much rather have done something else.

  Glinda whispered in Zal's ear, her breath warm on his neck. "Get me closer to it. Closer."

  They were marched across a narrow board, on either side of which the infinite Void fell away into forever. Zal would have liked to stand on it longer, but he was between Ilya and Malachi so he crossed. This route took him past Xavien, so he pretended he was interested in Ilya's back, stepped closer, and tripped himself on Ilya's heel, falling sideways against the demon. Xavien leapt aside with great speed but he wasn't fast enough and Zal's hand touched him. Immediately he felt a shock go through his arm. As he made to get up he found the angels on either side of him, pushing him back, but he knew then and there what was going on. As he got up he was looking into the demon's face, seeing it for what it was, a mask ... and the demon was staring at him with horrified shock and a loathing so intense that it was difficult to meet it and still rise to his feet. In that second the Fleet wavered, a ripple of dissent running through it like the weak buck of a trapped animal's one free limb.

  "No," the demon said, backing away one step from Zal as he straightened. "No. Stay away from me. For that you shall die." His gaze swept around quickly. "All of you." Its hand shot out, fingertips pointing at them. Zal felt a dark thing like a doubt or a question skitter around in his chest, find his centre, and take hold.

  The drawing on the combined powers was so fast that none of them could counter it.

  The demon's fingers clawed and it had them. "Die," it hissed and drew its fingers slowly into a fist. And Zal was dying, his connection to everything pouring away, scratching away down the thread that bound him to the shadowkin's hand. She was so strong there was no counter to it. Beside him he felt Ilya's hand and took it in his own. He felt himself falling on the faery's collapsed body and inside him the roaches of his own words, all the things he had said, went rushing around talking about him, babbling his short, dull life away before they poured across the line into the demon's closing hand. He saw the light of the angels and wondered why they had taken to her and abandoned him. And along the line he felt how much his slayer hated him, how she had let him live only out of morbid curiosity and now she was glad that she was undoing the last of him, pathetic as it was.

  At that second he felt the last thing he expected to feel. He knew her. He knew her because she was like every rotten high elf that had ever hated him and she was like all the darkness that they had hated him for, with power enough already to make anything of herself that she wished, and she made this. Her genius dream was so small she had nothing but death to give him. And he already had death. He saw Glinda step in front of him.

  She looked cross. "Not that close, you arse," she said, jamming her cigar stub into her mouth.

  "Is this the end?" he asked her.

  "Yeah in a minute." She flicked her shot glass out into her hand and then, in a mockery of the demon, closed her fist on it so that it burst into shards. She shook the pieces out of her hand and cut the cord.

  Xavien screamed with rage. He turned to the crew. "To the Deep with all speed!" They rushed to obey and the Fleet began to re-form about them as they got under way. Ilya and Malachi lay on the deck, still not moving though their presence was enough of a sign they had been spared along with him.

  "Hey Zal," Glinda said, picking the rest of the glass out of her palm. "Gimme that book a second."

  He abruptly felt his jacket on him and that it was heavy on one side. The book was still there. He reached in and handed it to her. She opened it and read. "Excellent," she said. "Now, in order for me to fulfil my promise to that wretched girl there remains only a little more trouble." He felt she was talking to herself there and tried to look at the book though she twitched it away from him with an arch glance that dared him to try peeking again. "Good of Mr. V to be so perspicacious and find me such a volume," she said. "I knew he would. Only needed the right incentive. Going to miss his Friday night chilli though."

  Zal thought he'd take the opportunity to ask a question that was on his mind while she wasn't making sense. "If you and an angel were in a fight who would win?"

  She stared at him, her golden eyes narrowed, and then shook her head with a frown, relit her cigar on her tongue, again, and went back to her book, vanishing slowly. He looked over his shoulder and she made a filthy gesture at him. If he'd been corporeal he'd have been embarrassed at his reaction.

  He looked up to find the angels standing beside the three of them. They seemed so beneficent it was hard to imagine they were there to enforce Xavien's will. On the foredeck Xavien, still disguised, orchestrated preparations for her master stroke.

  The Fleet, gleaming, shining, sailed into the precipitous dark. Zal left Ilya and Malachi and went to the rail. Above and below him and to the sides the ships were fully formed in every detail, running lights and lanterns shining in the absence of stars. He looked forwards to Xavien, now seated in meditation alone on the bowsprit. Ilya was right. These things did feel different on the receiving end. It was one thing to kill someone who had been given fair warning and who still chose to stand in one's way. It was another to torture them to death. Xavien had a taste for cruelty that was high-caste in its casual manner, a primal hunger for information and knowledge that was vampiric in essence. Her longing was much more easily understood by him. He had felt the same things, and turned to the demons in order to find a way to them, long ago. In spite of everything, he felt sympathy for her in her lonely journey. He knew how stupid you could get when you hurt badly enough. He knew how much damage he had done. Glinda had told him. The Dragon Mantle was a lovely idea but something only a drunk or a desperate soul would aspire to find. Sober it wasn't possible to believe in it, although he had already come much further than he would ever have believed possible, so he felt no confidence in his judgement on the chance of it being real. In spite of his admiration for the heroic spirit of the effort and his initial enthusiasm, the last few minutes had robbed him of his naive conviction and left in its place a cold dread and sadness. H
e remembered in Glinda's story that he had always been slow to see the negative, and it was comforting.

  He moved forwards, leapt onto the rail, and walked its length as the sails bowed out above him as though filled by a strong wind. In the mizzenmast the harpoon's angry spike was still fast. The figure on the bowsprit was immobile, alone, facing the blackness.

  "I know what you are," he called out from a good distance away. "I mean, that's kind of rude to say so, I don't know your real name, but I know what you are besides being a cold-hearted murderer."

  There was no response. Zal looked back along the deck and saw one angel crouched over the elf and faery who lay senseless as they had fallen. Close to him the other one hovered, casting a reasonable amount of light. Zal saw most of it pass through him. He wondered if it was trying to communicate with him but he was too low-level to understand or even hear it. Then he felt the telltale itch of the vampire's cast as she trawled for his thoughts.

  He replied in kind and felt her snatch herself back as if she'd been burned, then turned his back on the angel and walked up to her. "Won't work twice," he said, standing behind her. "I learned how to do it now. You know, I just wanted to say that perhaps this isn't such a great idea. I mean, it looks like a royal high road to self-actualisation and union with the divine, but I have to ask you: Don't you think it's easier than having to wade out here at the beginning of things and doing some ... actually, I don't know what you have to do but it seems to have got a lot of people killed so it must be really good, involve some really hot gear. Don't you? I hope it's worth it."

  "It is," Xavien replied. "It will be."

  "How do you know?" Zal didn't know how long he could keep it up. He longed for inspiration. He kept thinking of the girl with the silver eyes. He sighed. "I think I did something once like this, and it wasn't. Thought you should know. Have these angels been around long? They're a bit pesky."

  "When I am like them they will not bother you any longer."

  "No no they're not bothering me. How will you know when we're there?" The Void was impressive, he had to admit it, but in a way that quickly faded from awe and left a strange emptiness in its place. He didn't like the way it suddenly shifted in his sight from enormous depth to complete flatness. It was not darkness. It wasn't anything. He longed to be home. "Do you like songs?"

  "Leave me alone. It will be done soon. Then you can go."

  "I can't though," he said, sighing heavily. "There's a problem."

  Xavien did not reply. He saw her shift uncomfortably. The tentacles didn't move much on their own. He should have seen it was a suit the first time. "Since you ask so nicely I will tell you," he said, not believing himself although he wasn't behind his mouth on this one. "The problem is that there is no way that you are going to turn into one of those. And you know it."

  "I realise you think you are going somewhere with your talk," Xavien said, "but I do not expect to be transformed in that manner. What I will be is akin to angels only in that it is a higher power. As you say, such as we do not possess the ability to change ourselves so utterly."

  "We have infinite choice, and that has to do," Zal said. "I'd have put you up for angelhood before I saw you move."

  Now she did start slightly. "Are you threatening me?" She was incredulous. In her position he would have been too.

  "It's difficult," he said. "As a fellow monster I feel we should help one another. I can only count myself sometimes among the lesser evils and I regret the membership of that club, but I can't undo it. But your problem is that you have no problem with being a monster."

  "Ah, your moral concern is so charming," she said. "But your compassion is misplaced. Just because I have no compunction in overruling those who stand against me I have no interest in those who go about their business and allow me to mind my own. Surely a true evil or a just victim in my position would seek to avenge itself on its creators for the pain of its unique position as a sentient abomination, an exile, an eternal outsider. But I will not take revenge. I have no interest in it. I wish to leave my torment."

  "Very noble," Zal said. "But you're not alone."

  "The angels have aided me. Their presence has affirmed my intent."

  "Not them. The rest of us."

  "You're nothing like me. A shadow nature, ease in the Void, subtle energies, tuning to frequencies of lesser kind, ripping sustenance from material things ... you are almost a true elf of a darker nature, hardly a bastard born that isn't able to call Alfheim home. Even the Saaqaa, brutes as they are, have their place in your world. As for your label, be careful whom you call monster. I took no part in the atrocities that birthed us. Those who did are worthy of a swift end."

  "Spoken like a true elf," Zal said. "But your theoretical high ground isn't going to be worth jack. Intention doesn't matter. Actions are everything, and the consequences. Surely you agree. And your actions are everything your makers intended-focused on extinction. You should be stopped if you won't stop yourself."

  "So, do you threaten me, shadow? What will you do? What can you do except worry over the state of my soul like some weak-kneed priest? The only one among your group able to harm me is lying useless at our backs after breaking my grip. Why don't you go and preach to him? You should be thanking him for your life."

  "He can't hear me," Zal replied, pondering that she didn't even know it was not Ilya who had stopped her. "But you're right. I have nothing."

  "You were not worth killing then."

  "You've got that the wrong way round," Zal said. "What you mean is I am worth keeping alive."

  He knew he had failed. It wasn't ever likely that talk was going to touch her. She was the success of the experiments that had produced hybrid failures like himself, and her self-absorption was the only thing that had kept her going. It was hundreds of years past the time for talking.

  She got up suddenly and walked back to the deck. "At last," she said. "The waiting is over."

  Zal looked around but saw nothing. Then, above them, a yellow light winked on and began to grow in size. He peered at it with difficulty. He thought it was another angel, a brighter one, with less colour change. There was a dark heart to it.

  "Were you alone all that time?" he asked, as they both watched and the crew and all the Fleet stopped.

  "Yes," she said. "They cast me out when I would not work for them. Forever." As she spoke she looked at the angel between them. Zal saw what she expected. She would be one of them, whether or not she was the same.

  Then the descending light began to take on form and he saw it was much more defined than the angels of the ship. It was a tall male human figure, with enormous wings whose pinions were blades of white, blue, and gold like shafts of sunlight on a cloudy day, their rays spreading far beyond their form. In his arms and slightly in front of him, so that it had looked as if she were carried, was a woman in dark blue and purple armour. She was holding a huge sword with an odd grey blade. A red flash shot through her dark brown hair and over her shoulder, and her eyes were silver. As they neared the Temeraire they separated and she descended by herself, the angelic figure drifting to the rigging where he took a position, buccaneer style, one arm and one leg hooked casually in the ropes. His face was handsome and fiercely arrogant as he lounged there, glowing, naked to the waist with his long hair falling around his shoulders, and resplendently full of himself. He reminded Zal of something, but he couldn't remember what it was. It didn't matter. He only had eyes for the woman, whom he had thought of as a girl but who now had nothing much of girlishness about her except her size. She was petite and beautiful in her fierce metal suiting, silk strands and scraps tied and banded all around it, floating as if she had fought her way through a fabric emporium so that she trailed gossamer strips of beautiful colour. Relief filled him. Here she was, the girl with silver eyes, his love. If only he knew who she was.

  Xavien seemed expectant, her attention focused on the woman and the sword.

  But the silver eyes ignored her in her demon guise
and looked at Zal instead. She touched down on the deck and walked towards him. Her lips parted and she hesitantly smiled. "Zal? Is that you?"

  "Yes," he said eagerly, coming forwards past the demon.

  "Finally," he heard Glinda mutter behind him. His nose filled with an alcohol shock of whiskey and he sneezed.

  They stopped a few inches apart. He could see the angel moving closer to them, backlighting him into a ghostly silhouette.

  Her eyes changed suddenly, the silver resolving like a developing photograph into human eyes that were blue, tinged with the strange violet of the ribbons on her armour. She lifted her fingers up to his face, and the spiked gauntlets on them melted away.

  "Oh!" she said as she tried to touch his cheek. "Zal." It was his name, that was all, but the way she said it made his heart burst into fire.

  He couldn't feel her hand.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ila couldn't feel Zal but she stood on tiptoe and kissed his mouth lanyway, closing her eyes. The faintest shiver passed through her lips. She looked up and saw him doing the same. His arms were around her. She released her armour and suddenly was touched where he pressed by a tingling rush.

  Zal was grinning at her. "I must be a better kisser than I thought." He looked down and she saw herself naked except for the ribbons of Tatter, no hint of leather or metal anywhere on her. She still held the sword lightly in her free hand. She was even shorter without the armour, and even with the point of it resting on the deck her hand on its hilt was by her shoulder. She blushed, but not for the nudity or the onlookers. She looked into Zal's eyes, black on black as they were and nothing like his former solid, blonde and brown-eyed self. She couldn't stop smiling.

  The demon started talking. Lila heard it on automatic. That voice. That hissing scratch. So they were the same. And the maker of that zombie ... here it was. The cold strength of the Signal filled her, the knowledge that everything mattered and everything changed, nothing lost but nothing the same. She kissed Zal, and then, keeping herself between him and it, she turned on the demon.