Selling Out

by Justina Robson

  The small elemental stared at him with boulderlike calm and understanding.

  “Yeah,” Zal said. “I’m with you. I think it’s horseshit. I mean, if that was true how would you guys just trip in and out so easily?”

  The elemental kept its views to itself.

  “I like you,” Zal told it, trying not to notice how much its smell was making him want to squeeze it until a drink of water came out of it, no matter how muddy it was. “Strong and silent. Just my type. I like when the bartender just listens. I have a lot to say and other people’s comments just get in the way of my thinking. That faery, for instance, the one who tried to beat me at cards. That cat. I got the feeling he liked my woman rather a lot if you know what I mean. Now, she’s gone into Demonia on some mission all on her own and I was meant to help her but I had a little party with your fiery friends and I’m here instead. I was hoping the guilt would eat me alive before something worse happens but I have a nasty feeling it won’t.

  “Of course, the trouble with me not being there is that my woman doesn’t know about my wife. Or my other mates. Being a human she’s bound to assume it’s all about sex and that’s just going to make life a bitch when I have to explain it later and tell her why I didn’t explain it at first. I was hoping to be there, you know?”

  The potato-faced creature tipped its spud head to one side gently as if it couldn’t be more concerned.

  “Yeah, you see how it is. It looks bad. Probably it is bad. But there’s a lot worse things out there for her than just some horrible shock about demon lifestyles, as I’m sure you’ll be well aware. For a start there’s the vendettas. But she can handle them. The real shit in the fan is the necromancer she’s got stuck in her heart. Lots of demons will be able to see him. And he’s an elf. They’ll really like that in the worst kind of way. Ruins her status either as a journalist or a diplomat or even a party fiend. She could play it to her advantage but not if she doesn’t get some help fast and I don’t think she’ll tell Sorcha about it so that won’t be any good. Plus Sorcha’s obsessed with music and the Precepture problems she’s got so she might be busy. And that faery had the nerve to suggest that disco was unmanly. Can you believe it?”

  The elemental oozed some mud from a side bulge and a couple of pebbles fell out of its body and clitter-clattered to the ground.

  “Exactly. Total shit,” Zal agreed forlornly, pausing to put his head down and breathe. Internally, nausea and the foam of primal fire energy swirled and danced with each other. He felt blissful and disgusting at the same time.

  “And here I am, stuck in Zoo with you and no idea how to get out. Facing death. The end of what could have been a rather promising career in the music industry. Soon I’ll be some kind of green ooze, like you.” He wallowed for a moment in the luxury of total self-pity, but then took a breath and brightened slightly. “Still, could be worse. I could be in Hell.”

  Tea with Madame Des Loupes.

  Lila sat in her black combat fatigues, dripping a little lilac blood onto the marble tile and the soft velvet upholstery of the exquisite chair upon which she rested. At her side the imp crouched on a tas selled cushion, eyes fixed upon the elegant form of their hostess as her slim, black human arms carefully handled a fine porcelain tea set. She poured milk into cups first, from a wide-mouthed jug, then the tea after, before placing two lumps of sugar and a silver teaspoon on the side of each saucer. Her huge raven head tilted almost entirely sideways so she could see what she was doing, the beak always facing away from her guests. As she moved with perfect grace Lila photographed her, capturing her from as many angles as possible. She was the most extraordinary being Lila had ever seen.

  The sleek black feathers of her head fanned gently down to the base of her neck where their blackness, tinted with the oil sheen of many iridescent colours, became ever more blue and green until it blended seamlessly into the tiny vivid plumes of a hummingbird. These tapered along her spine, and branched out across the skin of her shoulders to become small wings that were tucked against her lower back and sides. At the base of her spine they fanned out suddenly into a broad bustle and train which Lila had at first mistaken for a dress but now saw was a train of real peacock feathers growing from Madame’s body. Where the eyes of an ordinary peacock feather would have glowed blue and purple as dark marks of reflective glory instead these feathers showed living eyes. They were not real eyes, they were images on the feather, but living images which blinked and looked about, every one differently coloured: human, animal, demon, fey, insectile, and of other kinds.

  The front of her body was no less unique. Her neck feathers lay flat over dark, smooth skin that was faintly mottled with a pardlike pattern of spots in an even deeper, duskier hue. Generous breasts were supported in a delicate filigree of the loveliest green and blue lacework, like the wings of dragonflies, their cleavage a rich, warm, and sensual promise that played out down the length of a flat, powerful belly adorned with a single emerald placed in her navel. Her skin there was dusted with a kind of golden pollen caught in fine hairs that gathered and once again became feather along the length of her naked groin. Here their tiny prettiness jewelled her upper thighs where an open-fronted skirt of silk let her body show through to display, at their centre, a handsome, relaxed phallus covered in shining emerald scales and marked with rattlesnake diamonds in sapphire blue. Its head had scales of red that denoted eyes, but they were only markings, like those found in nature intended to deceive. Beneath the silken skirts shapely legs ended in soft, cloven feet like those of a camel, meant for walking in the desert. The two large toenails on each were painted and decorated with sugar pink varnish.

  Madame Des Loupes lifted and held out a cup and saucer towards Lila. She kept her head with its massive beak averted but nonetheless managed to convey the tea with a gentle bow. Her voice was soft and warm, “You come battle-clad in the gore of your enemies. It is a high honour I will not forget, Lila Goredad.”

  Lila stopped taking pictures and focused on the teacup. It rattled in the saucer as she took it and she had to cue some robotics to steady herself, trying and failing not to know she was alarmed by the presence of the demon itself. “Thank you.”

  She watched as Madame went through the same process of giving the imp his tea, but seeing as the cup was half his size and he had no chance of holding the saucer without tipping himself onto the floor she settled it in front of him in the fullness of the cushion. Although she had only the beak, Lila could have sworn she was smiling as the imp immediately seized hold of a sugar lump in both hands and began crunching on it.

  Madame returned to her special seat—an embroidered stool—and picked up her own cup. “I know you don’t take sugar,” Madame continued, “and usually I don’t either . . .” She added two lumps to her own cup and stirred gently. “But I find that after trying moments or in new situations a little sugar doesn’t do any harm.”

  Lila glanced towards the door of the room, where the two stinking raven demons still stood, then across to the open balcony where she had first seen Madame from a distance. She kept tracking in order to try and control her thoughts, even though a lot of different concerns fought for her attention. But they were always suppressed by the idea of Madame’s powers. Beside her the imp crunched frantically, spraying sugar everywhere. Lila put a cube in her tea, then the other one. She tasted—it was delicious and just what she needed. Then she half remembered something about not eating the food in the netherworld and glanced guiltily at Madame.

  “You’re not there yet,” Madame said in her plummy, fruity voice—that warm mature woman’s voice that had no business issuing from a bird’s throat or a beak. “Merely in the waiting room. No need to go, if you don’t want to.” She sounded slightly teasing, because, Lila assumed, she really did know exactly everything that was going through Lila’s head.

  “Can you just skip to the part where you answer my questions before I have to ask them?”

  “Of course,” Madame said, “although I do r
ather prefer to have some small talk before we get down to business, you see, despite the fact all I wish to know is open to my sight it interests me much more to learn what you think about your situation, and mine, and the world. And that is something revealed only in your choices, about what to say and what to remain silent over. Do you see what I mean?”

  “But can’t you see that too?”

  “Perception is an act of creation,” Madame said, pouring some of her tea from the cup into a wide, shallow dish that Lila had thought was an empty biscuit plate. “And creation happens in the fall of the instant. It is unpredictable. Unknowable before it takes place. So no. I cannot. My talent only allows me to see what is, and some of what has been. But the truth of what is . . . appears differently to all who perceive it. I get close to its fundamental reality, but even my gaze is coloured and focused by what I am—an imperfect being in a perfected universe.” The demon bent down and laid her beak sideways in the dish, imbibing tea and then tossing her head back to swallow it down. She wiped her beak clean with a lace-edged linen napkin and composed her hands upon her lap, head to one side, listening.

  Lila was not sure but she felt an exultant stab from Tath, somewhere near her solar plexus, and trusted that he would be able to fill her in at an easier moment. She took a second drink of tea and did begin to feel a little better. She let her thoughts spill out since there seemed little point in concealing them. “Are you married, Madame?”

  “No,” Madame glanced, following Lila, at the raven demons. “Ah no. Such alliances do not interest me as I stand little to gain from them. I would marry for love, but I have not met the creature who stirs that passion in me. These demons in my house and who serve me in the world are minions, ones who came to me in the spirit of a marriage in spite of my refusal. Unrequited suitors if you will, they desired my compact at any price and so they willingly became my creatures. Once they were independent beings like yourself, but now their will is mine. They are enough of a responsibility that I do not require more.”

  “Lonely at the fuckin’ top!” snickered the imp, coming to the end of the first cube and plunging his head down into the teacup with greed. Slurping and gulping sounds choked off his remark.

  “No doubt you face the same problems,” Madame added, looking closely at Lila. Her black eye, so large for a bird’s, so dark, narrowed slightly from the bottom in an almost human expression of wry knowingness.

  “Me?”

  “One may marry or enslave anyone for business purposes, but true partnership can exist only among equals.”

  “That was a compliment, ’case you missed it,” the imp said to Lila, scrubbing its face on the cushion to dry itself and starting in on the second sugar lump with gusto.

  Lila found herself taken aback. What the demon said sounded so callous, as much of their culture seemed, and she had images again of the dead fetuses in their pots and jars, of the death she had dealt herself. She looked down and suddenly felt the sticky, congealing goo of blood on her hands, her shoulder, her face. She leaned forward abruptly and put her teacup down with a rattle and slam on the occasional table to her left. “I’m not your equal. I’m nothing like you. I’d never marry anyone like you. I couldn’t. I . . .” She stopped. Words jammed in her throat. For an unaccountable reason she was reminded of the shadow elf, tangled in silver netting, trapped in her mansion room. What time was it? How late was it? She looked outside at the sun and inside at her clock at the same moment.

  “How interesting,” Madame Des Loupes said with more than a trickle of condescension. Her head did one of those sudden, birdlike motions that made both Lila and the imp start involuntarily.

  Inside Lila’s chest Tath somersaulted with fear.

  “What do you mean?” Lila stalled, grabbing inside for something chemical, something machine she could use to shore up her sudden and inexplicable sense of falling. Her AI came online and decanted stimulants into her bloodstream, and serotonin, to reassure her.

  “You are a liar,” Madame said. “You are already bound to the elf-source demon of the Ahrimani. Not to mention the alfidic spirit with which you share your body. Further you entertain the marital interests of Demonia’s beloved son, the phase-shifter Teazle. Yet you speak with the passion of truth. You conceal much from your self. You use your alchemical power to enforce it. A strong will. It will be hard to break, more’s the pity for you.”

  Lila was frozen with outrage, literally frozen, a thing until now she had considered something that only happened to people in books. “I’m not married to Zal! I certainly have nothing like that to do with . . . with . . . the elf spirit . . . and I never had any intention of accepting anything from that white monstrosity!” She stood up and involuntarily glanced at the imp who was cramming his mouth as full of sugar crystals as he could, hands clamped to his face. She gathered from his fear that one did not speak like this to the most powerful of demons but she wasn’t bothered by it. She was furious, but the drugs were taking hold too, and she knew that if nothing else this was no way to further her greater aim; to discover the truth of Zal’s demonic making. She mastered herself and sat down, the effort costing her any remaining ability to speak. Though she didn’t want to notice it she couldn’t help feeling that her responses were nothing short of racist, intolerant abuse but she pushed this notion down hard.

  Madame casually poured herself another draught of tea and took it down. She was as lovely and studied as a geisha as she picked up a tiered tray of small iced cakes and offered them to Lila. “Petit fours? Dinner is served very late in Bathshebat.”

  Lila declined with a barely managed shake of her head. The imp leaned over and seized the nearest, a lemon square, and plunged it directly into his tea cup where he watched as the soft cake soaked up the dark liquid, his face a rapt picture of pure, avid lust.

  “Do you know my favourite human story of the devil?” Madame went on in a skilled effort to preserve social calm. “It goes like this: god and the devil are observing Adam as he takes his first foray out of Eden and into the wider world. Adam has recently eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, thanks to his wise wife, and is taking stock of all the things he is able to see. God says to the devil, ‘So, what will you do now? Steal all this marvel away from him and create in its place a chaotic nightmare?’ And the devil says, ‘Oh god, no. I’m going to help him organise it!’” Madame put her tea dish aside and cleaned her beak. “I mention this because you want to know about Hell, Ms. Black. I can tell you plainly all you wish to know, though it will not help you one bit because you are a liar.”

  Lila stared with a terrible combination of loathing and attachment at the beautiful creature that was talking. The tension between her and Madame was a thing she could feel, like a long flat blade, resonating. She was not able to stop herself listening. She had to, but she didn’t want to. Of course a demon would play this game . . .

  “I do not play with the aether, Ms. Black,” Madame said quietly. “I have no need to. I see what is, and that’s all. You feel I have insulted you, but I am only telling you what you already know. You are a liar, a cheat, a thief, a traitor, and a murderer.”

  Lila had become still with fury. She wanted to move but the stillness sat upon her like a lead jacket.

  Overcome by anxiety and desire the imp leaped up, grabbed two fistfuls of soggy cake from in front of him, and then sprang to the table in one froglike bound. He hopped into the wide, white maw of the milk jug and vanished from sight with a small splash. The jug wobbled briefly and then stabilised. In the ensuing silence piglike noises of gluttonous eating and drinking carried quietly across the room.

  “You are untrue, reckless, and careless. You rage. You are love’s bitch, in heat as it is in heaven . . .”

  “Enough!” Lila was on her feet. Her voice carried much further and louder than she knew it could have.

  Madame looked at her from a single, gleaming eye. That eye stared at her, unbending, unblinking, uncaring. “This is all you need to know about
Hell,” the demon said after a long moment. Neither of them looked away, though Lila’s eyes were burning. She would not, would not give in to this stupid fight . . .

  “What are you talking about?” Lila said scathingly. “Stop talking in ridiculous riddles and slander and trying to get me off balance. Open the gate and send me to Hell. I don’t have time for this crap.”

  Madame Des Loupes sighed. “As you wish,” she said, spreading out her hands upon her knees and sitting more upright. She gazed out of her balcony a moment in what might have been composure, though she looked as though she were listening to a distant drum. “Though you ought to know that there is no special entry point into Hell. And when you enter the world of the damned you enter it alone. Your companions may be with you, but they cannot help you in any way. Isn’t that so, Thingamajig?” And she looked at the milk jug.

  The imp’s face appeared for a second over the rim. “You know my name,” he said, accusingly.

  “I cannot tell it to you,” Madame shrugged.

  Lila felt she was starting to lose her mind. “What? What has that to do with it?”

  This time when the demon’s head turned to her it gave her a direct gaze from both bulging black eyes, the beak aimed squarely at the centre of Lila’s chest. “Because, Ms. Black, the fact is that it was never in my power to send you or anyone else to Hell. Thingamajig here is in his state because he entered that place and will not or cannot return. His only way out is to remember his name. If I tell it to him he will not be better off. And you, like him, like all the rest, need no portal to enter the realm of the lost souls, for you already have all the necessary prerequisites, to whit, you are a liar. My role here is not to show you the way into a great test or trial whose success I might judge and whose rewards I can bestow. My only power is to be the one who sees what is. I will be the one you come to when you are ready to leave. I am the one everyone comes to when they are ready to leave Hell. I am not the way in, I am the way out.”