Keeping It Real

by Justina Robson

  Dar was awake and sliding his second sword into place, its hilt above his shoulder at his back, when she came in, pushing her prisoner ahead of her. In the lantern light their visitor’s wide eyes showed green, his hair as fine and blond as Zal’s, skin a fine porcelain white. He was Light, Lila thought, pleased at being able to classify him. He was not very good in the dark. Maybe that was why his party had been caught.

  Dar’s eyes widened in surprise and then narrowed. He glanced at Lila, displeasure evident all over him, “What is this? Are you mad?”

  “Dar,” the prisoner called in elvish. “Who is this? Why are you here?”

  “Do not seek to explain yourself,” Dar told him, his eyes never leaving Lila’s face.

  “He can talk,” Lila said, sticking to Otopian in case it was an advantage and the other didn’t know it. “The others won’t be so forthcoming. Something’s eating them.”

  At these words the blond elf jerked his bound hands out of her grasp and staggered forwards, away from her and towards Dar. “You will not speak of them so lightly,” he hissed in perfect Otopian, glancing back at her. So, not an advantage.

  “Shut up,” Dar said offhandedly, still not looking at him. “And now what are you going to do? Torture him? He won’t talk. Well, only to lie.” His gaze to Lila was strangely desperate, she thought, almost afraid.

  “We were trying to reach you, in order to warn you that the Daga have completely split,” the captured elf said rapidly, switching to elvish in an effort to exclude Lila. “It is openly in conflict over the Lady in Sathanor.”

  “I said shut up.” Dar stepped forward and kept his gaze locked with Lila, returning to Otopian and the first streak of sarcasm Lila had ever heard from him. “Do you hear him? Good news. The Resistance is unmasked.” As he talked he worked at unbuckling the other’s weapons and carefully drawing them off him. Lila put her gun away.

  At the sound of her armour rebuilding itself the strange elf looked around in spite of himself and flinched visibly. He gave her the look she’d long been expecting from Dar, the one that said, that is disgusting! “This is the Otopian agent,” he said to Dar. “The one you…”

  Dar’s backhanded blow cut his voice off. He staggered and Dar snatched something from around his neck, a talisman, Lila thought, jerking it clear and almost dragging him off his feet. Dar was glaring at Lila, in a real rage as he stalked around to her behind the other’s back and hissed, “You should have saved one of the other ones. Do you see this?” He showed her the silver amulet he’d torn clear. It looked like a Greek letter omega to Lila. “This necromancer is more dangerous than twenty other agents.”

  “Ghalada of the Dark is dead.” The elf turned around. Blood ran freely from the side of his mouth. He fixed quickly on Dar and Lila saw Dar flinch inwardly and guessed that this was the name of his conspirator, his friend, more than a friend perhaps. “She died to save you and Zal. I can help you free Zal from Arie. You know it is true. Without me you stand little chance. You have fair skill in magic, but nothing like hers. And she has an army of sorcerers with her. This machine cannot help you, even if it feels no pain and suffers no magical bond upon it.”

  “This machine saved your sorry one-candle ass,” Lila said quietly in perfect elvish, adapting the words to her natural style in a way she hoped annoyed him. “And it can put you right back with your friends.” She met his gaze with an even one of her own and enjoyed his obvious discomfort when he did not know where to look—the surface of her eyes having no iris or pupil upon which to centre attention. He lifted his head and looked down at her.

  “They were not my friends in this campaign, even if they were friends of my heart. Do you think I would have let them die in the grip of monsters if they were?” His emerald stare was piercingly direct, viciously sincere. “No. I led them into danger and I watched them die. As you did from your hiding place before you chose to act. But they will not have thought you should help them as they suffered. I know they thought it of me, for I saw their faces full of heartbroken surprise.” He turned to Dar, leaning towards the taller, darker elf, licking his own blood from his lips. His voice was clear and heartfelt, “You know me of old, Shonshani Dusisannen. You must believe I am your ally.”

  “You were ever the Lady’s slave,” Dar said shortly, still facing away from him, and from Lila. His hands twitched. “Such allegiance as you claim would be the best hidden secret in all Alfheim.”

  Lila wasn’t sure of it but she thought she detected a moment of weakness in Dar. She could tell from his tone that he longed to believe. She watched their prisoner lick his lips again—was he doing something magical to add weight to his words? She couldn’t feel it on herself, but perhaps it wasn’t directed at her.

  “Everyone kept their colours hidden until the last days,” the fair elf insisted, ignoring Lila as he moved past her to come easily within andalune range of Dar. “We all had to. You know that is the way it has always been. Nobody can be trusted when the stakes are so high for individual and caste alike. It is the way things have been since the demon wars. Sila and Elyn lie dead and consumed behind me. Not because I did not love them, but because we are in a war for the future of the realm, and they would not take my side, nor I theirs, though they did not know it until now.”

  “You were freaking out,” Lila reminded him, determined to push a wedge into whatever charm he was managing to exert on Dar. “If you had power, you didn’t use much of it.”

  He glared at her with a loathing that almost made her step back with its force. “Have I not said? They were my friends. Silalio was at one time the woman of my heart. You saw what I did. Perhaps you could have done it with more courage than I and slain them yourself?”

  Dar glanced at Lila, looking for confirmation. She shrugged, deeply concerned now by the scale of his doubts and the way that seeing this shook her own conviction. There was a moment when they looked at one another and she felt that all the trust they had ever shared was slowly beginning to crack. In a moment it would break apart, pressed down on the block of uncertainties by the considerable exertion of willpower emanating from their captive. She switched to aetheric sight, wanting to touch Dar’s aetheric body for some reassurance or at least know his state, but instead she saw the andalune of the necromancer reach towards Dar’s and touch it briefly. Dar jolted as if he had received an electric shock and his face contorted with anguish which was suddenly mastered. His face became smooth and hard.

  “This is why you must never let him talk,” Dar said finally and with a speed that Lila could not block he spun around. There was a knife in his hand and it buried itself up to the hilt in the blond elf’s chest.

  Shock and pleading crossed the other’s handsome face as Dar let go. The vivid light in his grass-coloured eyes went out. His body hit the ground with a dull, soft thump, his bound arms preventing it rolling onto his back.

  Lila turned to Dar, sick in gut and heart, and he screamed into her face, a sound of shrieking, intense agony that wasn’t even a word. He silenced her shock and doubled it in the same instant. She was paralysed with the sudden turn of events, could hardly believe them.

  “What did you think this was? Some game?” he cried hoarsely at her, though she felt that he was saying it as much to himself as to her.

  “Was he lying?” she yelled back, frightened and momentarily out of control with the sight of Dar’s own loss of it though at least this broke her free and let her start acting again.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know!” He stared down at the body and abruptly bent down to pull the knife out of its chest. It wouldn’t come and he had to wrench it free over several tries. As soon as it was out he dropped the blade as if it was on fire and buried his face in his hands.

  All sense of adventure and pleasure that she had felt earlier in the day was gone now. She felt a fool for even having lost her concentration that long. Lila bent down and picked the elf’s corpse up. It was a little lighter than Zal, a little heavier than Dar. Its golden hair
hung free and brushed her legs softly as though it didn’t realise its change of state. “Sorry,” she said quietly, pushing her emotions aside, like she had to when she thought of home. She would never get used to this, she thought, never do anything but hate what she did in those moments where the job had to come first.

  She glanced at Dar, wanting him to see that she shared the burden of it. After a second’s thought she said quietly, “They don’t go easily into that good night. I guess elf necromancers are no different to demons or faeries or humans in that respect.”

  “No,” Dar said. “And he will be no easier to deal with if he comes back from Thanatopia, though that will change him in ways we cannot know.” He took a deep breath. “We are not thinking. He is the same size as you are. We should use his clothes and weapons to make you less obvious here, though at close range your metal structure will always give you away to us.”

  They worked together to strip him down. Lila said, “It feels very wrong. All these are his own things.” She found vellum in the inner pockets and handed it to Dar. She found a sprig of heather, old and flattened. She found a piece of Otopian silk crepe de Chine, patterned with beautiful Chinese dragons. All its edges were neatly hemmed by a tidy hand—a loving hand? Each item deepened the discomfort and hurt she felt for the dead elf, enemy or not. They left him his undergarments, more delicate and well-fashioned than even the most expensive treat Lila had ever gotten herself from Agent Provocateur. Blood had ruined them.

  Lila folded his arms across his chest. She glanced unwillingly into his face and saw that his eyes were still open a fraction, as green as Poppy’s hair. He was very handsome, and his face had the same kind of shapes and angulation as Zal’s. They might have been brothers. She missed Zal suddenly. He wouldn’t be dead. Maybe he was in a worse state.

  Without thinking about it she bent down to brush the corpse’s eyes closed and found herself kissing the smooth, ivory forehead. A zinging tickle ran across her face and a warm, vibrant sensation like a tiny and concentrated swarm of honey bees darted down her throat and lodged in her chest She leapt back, but it was too late.

  Dar stared at her, aghast, as she clapped a hand over her mouth. “What did you do?” he asked, his voice faint. “What have you done?”

  Lila’s Al-self did not recognise the situation, running diagnostics and finding nothing, but Lila’s much-abused human heart knew the truth immediately. It was as obvious as a clear green day. “His andalune,” she said, staring at Dar and wishing it was not so, unable to believe it. “In my chest. In my—heart—that chi thing there, whatever it is.” She could hear the dead elf laughing at her, but from the inside, where her laughter came from, only she wasn’t laughing at all.

  She grabbed hold of Dar’s jerkin and pulled him so close and so hard that she lifted him off his feet, “Get it the hell out of me! Right now!”

  Dar’s blue eyes stared into hers, appalled and afraid. He didn’t even try to make her let him go, “It is beyond me.”

  The honeybees chuckled in tones of grass and leaf and swirled in upon themselves, to a concentrated mote of unhappy triumph. After a second or two Lila released Dar and conducted another, much more intensive, survey. X-rays and ultrasound, she remembered, and put her hand to her chest, emitting first one and then another. The bees’ response was immediate and furious.

  Out, she instructed, or I’ll irradiate you to nothing. I mean it.

  Then you will kill me twice, said the blond elf’s voice, as clear as a bell inside her mind. I cannot live outside you. So if you are going to exterminate me, do it quickly..

  “He’s talking to me!” Lila repeated what had been said, filled with revulsion and wonder in equal parts. “What should I do?”

  Dar groaned and his grief turned to anger. “He was ever trickier than even Zal, this one. Long he was beloved of me, before these days became so short and the light of Sathanor so dim inside him. I thought it was too easy to take his life with a simple blade. I should bear the diverse pleasures of his possession, if any should at all. He had a sweet and passionate nature once, but ruled by a cold mind which grew to perfect ice after his mastery of the dark arts. Such a combination is quite deadly when combined with the tasks of a Jayon agent. He agreed to it of his own will, for the service of Alfheim and to demonstrate the depth of his loyalty to the Lady.”

  During this speech Lila handed over mostly to her Al-self, keeping just enough of her feelings going to keep her sharp. She rerouted her . panic and decided to roll with things. So, she was possessed, how bad could it be?

  “Necromancy isn’t evil,” Lila said, attempting to soothe Dar, longing to believe it herself, still shocked at the strange but not uncomfortable burning and thrumming she felt inside. Her Al-self didn’t even recognise the presence of anything untoward. She wasn’t exactly being harmed. Her words came from a book her AI had read. “It’s only very very stupidly dangerous.”

  “It is the most difficult road and an invitation to wake the evil within, . because its powers are very great,” Dar said. “And for that alone I would never have seen him touch it. As for what this means for you and us and for him, I have never come across it before and know not.”

  “Me neither,” Lila said. She felt so isolated and scared that she wanted Dar to hold her suddenly, but could not and dare not ask it.

  Tell gentle Dar he was always too sentimental for this work, the spirit said, the voice’s sudden appearance in her mind jolting her with fresh shock. But her Al-self was processing at top speed and it kept on finding peculiar advantages in each new discovery, ones which Lila didn’t personally like at all, though she saw their sense. Even if her inhabitant was a liar, he was potentially extremely useful.

  Lila said aloud to Dar, “He doesn’t blame you for what you did. He thinks it was the only smart thing to do.” She felt the bees vibrate crossly and added to them, Can it. It roiled with anger but said nothing.

  “Do you say that or does he?”

  Name, Lila demanded coldly of the andalune in her chest, or nuke.

  I am Tath.

  “Tath says it,” Lila said quietly. She let her hand fall to her side, removing the threat as she realised the extent of the aetheric elf’s dependency on her.

  “Tath. He keeps his true name from you and gives you his use-name only,” Dar observed wearily, his hands still full of Tath’s clothing.

  “You must know it,” Lila said. “The real one, I mean.”

  “I do. It is not something I would use lightly, but use it I will to defend you if he tries to command you against your will. Do not give yours to him either. It may not have the same effect on you as it would an elf, but he will use it against you if he can.”

  Tath had curled up into a still and silent emerald jewel inside her heart. With great misgiving Lila realised that as long as he was present there she would never know how much he was able to spy on her. Perhaps it had been a lucky break for him, when Dar’s nerve held. She might never know peace again.

  Lila was not sure of the extent of true naming’s power in Alfheim, only that it had a greater power in this realm than any of the other magical realms, and none at all in Otopia, unless you were an elf. “One minute you love him, the next you talk about him like he’s born evil,” she said.

  “I do not know what Tath’s real nature is, any more than I know yours, and in any case, affection is rarely ruled by such distinctions,” Dar said with guarded weariness. He handed the clothing to her. “Here. You have run around in your underwear long enough.”

  “This isn’t really underwear,” Lila said defensively, alert for any reaction from her new passenger, finding none. “This is army issue vest and pants. For work. Under all the heavy gear. It’s not like my personal smalls.”

  “I feel better for knowing that.” Dar watched her, and she thought he was finding it more than amusing.

  As she dressed she was continually aware of the new feeling of carrying Tath. Her heart felt stronger, lighter, brighter, with its new
resident bees and their greenish gold finery. She was on her guard for more invasive measures, but she sensed that this was beyond the power of the spirit. It was not of her body and it could not possess it. Just as well. She didn’t want to be run around by a crazy elf.

  At that thought she felt an angry zap shoot down into her diaphragm. Only kidding, she said, and then to herself thought, What the hell am I doing? But just as she and Dar had changed as they shared the experience of Sathanor’s healing, it seemed that she and Tath were in a new relationship now, well, in a one-way dependent relation, as opposed to being in a situation of wishing the other did not exist. She could feel Tath’s appalled, revolted displeasure at having her his host, and told him firmly, You can put up or shut up. Were you lying by the way?

  The reply was affirmative. But it was unclear which part of it was a lie. Not all of it certainly, for the green spirit was full of grief. It recognised this in her own feelings, and was both distraught and comforted. In spite of his regrets and anger, Tath could not but be in some degree of sympathy with her, and she with him. They were too exposed to the truth of one another.

  I don’t want or like this, she told him firmly.

  Neither do I.

  I won’t exploit it if you don’t.

  Accord.

  Lila was in tears as she straightened and closed the buttons on the outer tunic. It was still warm. Magical sigils fluttered to the surface of it and submerged again. She didn’t know what they were. Then she began equipping herself with Tath’s weapons. Each one was a fine piece of work by human standards, but she knew from experience that the arcane crafting of them made them objects she might never wield to their full power, if she could wield them at all. Incon training had not run to daggers and bows in the last century but her Al-self assured her it had the knowledge of how to use them. She reached for his dagger…