Going Under

by Justina Robson

  “Because there’s nothing you can do about other people’s reactions,” he said. “You be yourself and let them be themselves and if you don’t get what you want then tough, and if you do then good for you and that’s it. Everything else is manipulation and I spit on it. People waste their lives on that kind of shit.”

  Lila blinked at the finality and strength with which he said this.

  “Guh, this entire place revolves on manipulation,” Thingamajig asserted from a metre in front of them as he hopped over snow-coated rocks in his own small, steaming world. “Bonkers as a bunch of society matrons at a fancy pony show, these lot. You wanna watch it. Insecure attachment psychosis ain’t even the words for this kind of fiddling.”

  “You need all your attention for you,” Zal said. “Or you won’t survive. That’s what this lying scum is trying to tell you, and what you’re telling yourself, if you listen.”

  “Hey, that’s a bit strong!” the imp objected. “I’m on your side.”

  Zal snorted contemptuously, not even sparing a glance.

  Lila walked on in silence. She hadn’t really paid attention because she didn’t want to find out what had happened to her but the truth was that she had been in pain for a time, at the joints where the prosthetics were fitted and met her remaining human body, and now she wasn’t. In fact she felt better than she could remember feeling in a long time, certainly long before she’d ever heard of the Agency. But she had to admit to a creeping feeling, a kind of knowledge-that-was-ignored, that this was because of something new taking place. She knew, though she could not bring herself to put it into words, that the machine was growing. Cell by cell and silently it was creeping into her, taking her over, converting what remained. Maybe it was only a few millimetres now, just a little further in than it used to be, not significantly further, but there was constant change at the interface between her flesh and its strange alchemical metals. A single instant of calculation would have given her the calendar date, the hour, the minute, and the second of her final moment of existence as a human being.

  And after?

  She stopped on the path and pulled up her sleeve and showed Zal her arm, where the gleaming black metallic skin met her chilly, goosefleshed upper arm close to the shoulder. Between the two lay a fine line of greyish, blueishness. He knew her body well enough to understand and notice the change. He became very still, feeling the area with his fingers, and then just with his shadow body alone, as if it was Braille and he could read it. He stroked across her machine arm as gently and said, under his breath, “Alive.”

  “Seven months, seven days, seven hours, twenty-one seconds,” she said.

  He got that too.

  He put his arms around her and held her tightly, his head next to hers, face tucked down against her shoulder. He was so light that just the return of the embrace from her lifted him onto his toes but his body was vibrant and strong. “Don’t be afraid,” he said.

  “All sevens and multiples,” she said. “Of course. The faery numbers. How funny.” But in his arms for the first time in a long time she started to relax.

  There was a shiver in the air and in the ground.

  “That’s torn it,” the imp said expectantly.

  “What has?” Lila said through Zal’s shoulder, not willing to let go yet.

  “You and your game, I’m betting. We could run but s’prob’ly not worth it.”

  “As if we’d go anywhere on this road,” Lila said bitterly, her mind full of Gulfoyle, thinking back to the fact that the faery could easily have lied and left them there to be collected by whoever she’d contacted.

  “Yes. As if,” said a new voice, strange and low.

  Lila released Zal and spun around. Facing her from the top of the hill they had just slid down was a huge white wolf. Dark eyes, nose, and lips were all that stood out in its thick pelt as the wind blew against it. Its large head was low and one forepaw was half raised in an arrested forward motion. The thick ruff at the back of its neck was high though it had spoken calmly.

  Lila felt only the faintest shiver, as though talking animals and walking forests were second nature to her now. She made the conscious decision to trust nothing on its appearance and didn’t move or speak. She checked her ammunition load for the hundredth time. Eight cold iron shots. Three silver shots. Four explosive rounds. Thirty—two regular metal jacket—probably pointless to count them here but you never knew who you might run into. She had enough chemicals in her arsenal to make a few poisons, but the majority of her gear was back in her room sitting in the damned useless bag. At her side Zal took out his bow and nocked an arrow, drawing the string halfway and keeping it pointed at the ground.

  The imp leapt back between them and then up onto Lila’s back.

  It began to snow gently—big wet flakes that collected quickly and moved in deceiving veils across the visible air, brushing gently across their faces. Lila opened the apertures in her eyes and set her AI to filter out irrelevant information and things cleared a little for her. The wolf stepped forwards just inside the ring of glimmering light cast by the imp’s heatless fires and a shadow leaped behind it and stood tall against the wall of falling snow; a wild and thin beast that flickered in and out of different shapes, as big as a hill. Lila saw cat, bear, wolf, hound, weasel, hawk… all the predatory creatures that she knew. But this was only part of the show. Behind the veils of shifting snow she could almost make out another shape in the dark, one that consisted of all hunters that had ever trod any realm, something that was all their spirit, all their cunning and wiles.

  “What are you doing here?” the wolf asked, standing with its head low, eyes simply a shine of glass over empty spaces.

  Lila chose an iron round. She didn’t think this was the silvering kind.

  “Looking for a way,” she said, which was truthful enough. What had Malachi always said? Tell the truth, no matter how many lies you use to tell it.

  “To where?”

  “What’s it to you?” Zal said easily, as if he couldn’t care less.

  “You are walking on my path,” the wolf said. “You’re in my land. You’re strange and new in a place that has no strange or new things to me. You taste strange. You’re not true forms. I haven’t seen your like in more ages than I can name. But here you are, going somewhere, looking for a way.”

  “We’re lost,” Lila said, truthfully again.

  “So you are,” said the wolf, and stepped closer. “Maybe I can help you.”

  Zal released his bow and straightened as though he was relaxing. “We’re here to meet someone.”

  “I know everyone. Name them and I will point you in the right direction.”

  “There’s no need,” Zal said, easing his shoulders. “He’s right here.”

  This is dangerous, Tath said suddenly, his anxiety spiking through Lila like an unexpected jolt of electricity.

  “Jack wouldn’t come in person,” the wolf said. “I’m the captain of his guard. Moguskul is my name.”

  “Zal,” Zal said, putting his weapons away in a leisurely fashion. “Since when did he need a guard?” He spoke as if he’d always known Jack.

  Lila felt out of her depth. The wolf ignored Zal’s question and looked at her. “And you?”

  “I am Lila Friendslayer.”

  “Are you indeed?” The wolf came closer and inspected her minutely. “And is this shirt your tabard of office?” Its voice was mocking now.

  “It is,” she said, meeting its gaze and seeing it struggle with the perfect mirror surfaces that were her eyes.

  “You look like a vagabond,” the wolf said finally. “And either you are wise or stupid to go masked here. But your mask seems yourself and that is most odd. In any case, it doesn’t matter. To Jack’s court we will go and he may decide your fates.”

  “How did he capture you?” Zal asked, conversationally. “I mean, I can see how he could trick Gulfoyle—she doesn’t have a lot of guile for a faery—but you… you’re the Pack Leader. Would
n’t you rather be a lone hunter again than Jack’s pet dog?”

  All the shadows that had been twisting off Moguskul’s body shot back into him and he bared his teeth in the ugliest snarl Lila had ever seen, saliva and hatred spooling off it in equal measure. She spun to counter the direct line of attack between it and Zal but she was too slow and only caught a handful of rough fur as the huge beast tore past her.

  “I should rip your throat out for that!” The wolf stopped a half an inch from Zal’s face and Zal staggered backwards under the weight of its paws planted on his chest. He didn’t flinch, just said, “But you don’t.” Then he gave a strange kind of twist of his body and the wolf fell forwards onto its nose at his feet. Though he hadn’t moved, Zal was standing over it, transparent and utterly dark, a two-dimensional film of grey and black. The runes on his armour lost their light and vanished; he had become shadow.

  Seeing him change that way made the cold spread through Lila’s skin and body in a way it hadn’t before. The wolf snarled in rage and flung itself onto its belly, then up to its feet. It disregarded Zal now and stalked towards Lila. The snow thickened and then around them and all about Lila saw prints appearing in the white ground as though they were surrounded now by many invisible others. She smelled wet dog, a sudden and oppressive stink, and then the wolf hit her in the chest. She hadn’t even seen it spring.

  On instinct alone she went with the force of the blow, but turning to the side as she did so, letting the natural forward motion of her arms catch hold of the huge body as it rose above her so that both of them rolled. With her AI in Battle Mode time seemed to pass slowly. She felt the wolf recoil from her touch and writhe in the hold even as its jaws snapped millimetres from her face, pouring their hot and eager breath over her. She saw runes carved on its teeth, one on each small incisor, three to each canine, and two on the rest, and recorded the sight in case she ever discovered what they meant. Then they had turned and fallen, she ending uppermost. With a gouging of claws and a whine that split the air the wolf powered out of her grip and turned, snarling and growling in rage, to face her.

  “What is this?” he raged. “Your flesh is iron! Abominable witch! What charm could hold the deadly foe to itself and live?” His pristine fur was singed with grey and brown where she had burned him with her touch.

  She looked down at herself, feeling and seeing no difference, except perhaps a slight greying of her natural armoured metallo-leather skin. In a split second of cool self-revulsion her AI gave the answer: her skin had spontaneously altered its molecular structure to mimic that of cold forged iron, had exuded those molecules like a sweat as soon as the wolf attacked.

  “Jack’s smith may have use for you,” it rumbled, recovering fast. Without warning it changed its own form and in an instant a Kodiak bear, pale and monstrous, reared up, taller by far than either of them, its mouth open in a roar.

  “Heh,” Thingamajig said beside Lila’s ear with genuine approval. “You’ve really pissed him off. Sweet!”

  “Uh!” she was reeling. She saw Zal moving around her, his andalune body taking on the shape of a blade at the edge of his forwardreaching hand. As it struck the bear a streak of energy shot through it from bear to Zal, flinging all three of them apart by several metres with the same elastic push as if two opposed magnetic poles had come too close to one another.

  “Vampire…” said the bear in a voice like boulders grinding and its shape flickered and changed again, this time to that of a tall, powerfully built man wearing furs, armed with sword, dagger, and spears.

  Zal faced up to him again, condensing. “You never answered my question. Why be tame? What happened to you?”

  “Too late,” the hunter said, his angry face tanned almost black above its rough beard. Snow caught on the high curve of his waxed pony tail of hair, on his spears, on his massive shoulders and the fragile tips of the furs that wrapped him. It was so thick now that they were barely visible to one another.

  “It’s never…” Zal began.

  “It is,” and for the first time Moguskul was quiet, his body trembling with the effort it took him to become subdued, though he managed it. As she watched him in her mind’s eye Lila saw a slumped figure, trudging towards a dreaded doorway, feet dragging more with every certain, unavoidable step. For the first time she noticed that he was wounded. Blood leaked from a long gouge on his leg where the bare shin protruded from his rough clothing. He looked down and away from them to the ground as he said in a voice of resignation, “I enjoyed our meeting. Yet it is too late for all of us, I regret. He is here.”

  Lila looked around, seeing and feeling nothing but the soft, white deadness of the snow. Even as Zal reached down to give her his hand for the second time in a few minutes she detected no presence, but as she straightened her knees and rose to her full height the snow abruptly stopped falling, as though a switch had been flicked. The last flakes came dancing down, lightly as feathers, and revealed that they were standing in a circle between high buildings; houses and halls of stone and thatch, limewash and pitched timbers, the tiny leaded panes of their windows glowing with yellow lamplight.

  Where there had been open ground there was now a street, and streets beyond it. They turned, supporting one another, and saw not only the place where they stood but all the land beyond that. Yet further on winding streets, bridges, avenues, and lanes lay mantled in white snow. They were standing high above most of it, looking over a low wall and cliff side where their little hill had been. And then they turned, and at their backs saw the grey granite and blue ice of a fortress with white gulls wheeling around its ramparts.

  A herald in striped clothes went running past them suddenly, ringing a bell. “Night fall is come! Nightfall! Two nights until Midwinter! Two nights to the turning point!” They were alone after he had gone, and then they were not alone. But although the difference was profound and unmistakable, still there was nobody else to be seen.

  “What’s this Mog? Has my wife been taking pot shots again?” said a voice; a silky, warm, and rich man’s voice with a crafty ring to it. It came from all directions at once.

  “She missed me, sir,” Moguskul said in that odd, quiet way of his. He was lost, Lila knew it. He, like Gulfoyle, had thought for seconds of his old freedoms, but then thought of this creature, this faery, Jack, and had given themselves up. Just like that. She ought to be afraid of Jack, but she wasn’t. She didn’t even despise him for what he’d done.

  It was curious to her, and she held this feeling close to her heart as she stood, feeling Zal’s hand in her hand no heavier than a spectre’s touch but the strength and heat of him was intoxicating still.

  A sparkle of bright lime scattered between them. It got up Zal’s nose and he sneezed. Lila laughed, and the city, and Moguskul, looked up.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  They reached the Twisting Stones at moonset. Madrigal was waiting for them, a small dark shape hunched over a tiny fire, her guns sticking up at her back like wayward posts in a fallen scarecrow. She showed no sign of noticing them until they were right up to the firelight themselves, then looked up, as if they had always been there.

  “Their tracks vanish at one of the hidden crossroads,” she said, picking up a twig that hadn’t burned through and poking it about in the flames. “My guess is that I was too slow. They must have been overtaken by Gulfoyle or Namaquae. I saw Moguskul out searching for them too. He found the same trail and I was set following him but he got away from me. Jack’s storms…” She sighed. “The city is set for night now. If they’re not there then they’re close to it.” She pushed the twig into the heart of the fire, twisting it in her fingers. As it caught light a burning image of a tiny tree appeared just above it and she whispered to it, “Somersfal. Plague our dear one, melt his bones, let him know we mean trouble.” The tree flickered, became the figure of a tiny dryad, and zipped off over the snow; a cinder soon lost to sight.

  “What was that?” Malachi asked.

  “A spirit of ancient
summers,” Madrigal said. “I like to tease him.” She smiled to herself and frowned at the same time, then looked up at him. He felt himself grow warm though she was doing nothing. “What is this group of yours, Cat? Why so long since you came here?”

  He introduced the others briefly and avoided answering her second question because he didn’t want to say that it was easier not to see her, when she couldn’t or wouldn’t leave and he wasn’t ready to find out which. Madrigal remembered the fey once she heard their namesbecause they were undying it was common to meet and then lose contact with others over ages, forget them, then remember upon meeting again, and none of them minded. She lingered over Teazle, looking at him closely.

  “What is your fire?” she asked him after a moment, breaking into Malachi’s explanation of their sooty disguises.

  “Death,” he said. “And yours?”

  She reached inside a fold of her furs and brought her hand out, held shut. She turned the palm up, held it towards him, and opened her tawny fingers to reveal a single perfect strawberry, shining with the old golden sunlight of a long-ago day. The smell of the ripe berry filled the icy air for a second before the wind snatched it away. “Fruit,” she said, smiling slowly, her eyes looking up from low lashes.

  Malachi prickled with envy and irritation. She had given him an apple once, and he had kept it safe. Even now it was hidden away up the years in his bower, in the jungle; red and green apple, fresh with dew that tasted sweet and salty on his tongue every day when he licked it. He was astonished when Teazle grinned, reached out and took the berry, and bit through it with his sharp white teeth. Juice ran down his chin and he licked it off with his unseemly large tongue, then ate the rest with a single bite.