Going Under

by Justina Robson

  “What’s that?” the imp demanded in a shriek. “Your wife’s bowl… ah… oh… you stole it from her…”

  Jack stopped his work long enough to scowl and shout back at Thingamajig furiously, “I did not steal it! It’s mine. Was always mine!” Lila took a sudden breath. Then he abruptly remembered him self and started up again. He rubbed the blood off his exposed skin and began to smear it around the inside of the bowl.

  “The cauldron…” Malachi said suddenly in his half-human voice, bleak and semistrangled by his own beast shape. “I thought no magic like that was left here.”

  “I found it!” Jack gasped, laughing as he suddenly set the little bowl down on the fire and scooted backwards on his bottom like a real child. “And though Mad says it must be hers I say it’s mine now. Finders keepers.”

  The bowl grew as soon as it started being heated by the flames. Within a minute it was over a metre across and filled with an opaque, thick liquid of uncertain colour that surged and rippled as if full of fish.

  “Come on everyone!” Jack cried to those behind him, as if leading a game charge. “Put your hearts into it. Don’t you want to see what’s been smuggled in here in this cheater’s game? Come on come on! First the discovery, then the forfeits!”

  “Nuuuugh!” Lila thought she was dying. The pain in her chest became indescribably severe. She was aware of oxygen being dumped into her blood automatically by her skin but only because she didn’t feel suffocation and the information was blasted into her awareness by the AI. Other than that the only thing she could feel was this rending agony, and heat.

  What the hell? She said to Tath.

  It is the time, he said. I am not dead in this time.

  Through a red haze she saw a figure step out of the cauldron. It was a young diurnal elf, male and naked. The face with its chilly hauteur and fine, delicate bones, was unmistakable. It was Tath.

  There was a sudden, sharp sensation of ripping, and then the pain was gone. The elf staggered one step and then straightened up, blinking in surprise and shivering with the cold, his long, near white hair swinging around his shoulders. He gasped and clutched his arms about him, gripping his own body with sudden strength, an expression of wonder and pleasure evident on his face even as he backed away from Jack’s crouched figure towards Lila and Zal.

  “What the f…” the imp began, its mouth hanging open as wide as possible. Thingamajig turned to Lila, hands on hips. “You had that in there all that time and I never even knew?” His mouth worked soundlessly for a time before more words managed to come out. “Here I am trying to help you and you’re keeping entire people from me? Right in front of me? Gods, my poor heart!” It clutched its own chest. “I feel stabbed to the core! How could you? And while we’re on the subject, actually, how could you?”

  Lila held out Sarasilien’s amulet.

  “I thought that was junk,” the imp said, hugely disappointed. “Hideous too, though a gentleman never says such things.”

  Lila was busy ignoring him. She stripped off her T-shirt, which the fire had mostly dried now, and gave it quickly to Tath, who put it on backwards in his haste. It came down to his hips. He crouched down close to the fire, his hands held out in front of him towards the flames. He was staring at his own hands fixedly, jaw clenched as he inspected every finger, every nail with fascinated obsession. She stood, both hands pressed to her chest. She felt bereft, and confused, as if she’d had part of herself taken away. Her whole body felt lighter, and emptier. She stared at Tath with something like hunger and envy. She heard herself whisper a word under her breath so quietly nobody heard it, “No-o-o.” Shock froze her in the moment.

  “I notice you’re not surprised,” the imp accused Zal, who was staring at Tath with a complicated expression that contained both rage and envy. Then he glanced at Lila and Thingamajig started to say something but the imp was drowned out by the rising chatter and babble from the massed fairies beyond the firelight who had now seen what else Lila was wearing around her neck.

  “The key, the key!” came the cry, rapidly whispered and called from thousands of mouths. And then, not long after there were other mutterings which Lila could just hear…

  “It’s Tatty’s dress… look, it is… what’s she doing with that…” and more like it.

  Across the fireplace Jack was laughing. “A hidden soldier and a stolen dress equals a hefty lie. All our deals are annulled. Hear my new offer, then!” He jumped to his feet, his limbs stiff with gleeful violent energies. “One of you must find the courage to ask my question and take the consequences. One of you must surrender to join my gleaming throng. One of you must provide me with a worthy hunt. One of you must give up your heart’s desire to me. For nothing less will I let you live until the midnight hour when that,” he pointed at the key, “will be the sole object of my interest regardless of our former sport.”

  “And if we say no?” Lila asked into the stillness that followed his declaration.

  “Then you can die here and now and I will take the key and have no more trouble with you,” Jack said.

  Malachi sidled around the fire, keeping himself between his companions and the slavering bulk of Moguskul until he was with them. They turned to each other.

  “He’s impervious to iron. He took the charm of the Tinky-wink…” the huge cat made a nod in the direction of the faery throng. “… among countless other small but important powers.” He looked at Lila and she saw he’d read her thoughts accurately. She let the cold iron rounds slide back into the magazine silently. “Much as I hate it, I have to suggest you agree to his deal. This way there’s a chance to return later, to find new trades, to make new courses and tricks. Otherwise you will find yourselves fighting all the fey.”

  “Might they turn against him?” Lila asked.

  “They will not turn,” Jack called mockingly. “Do you want to know why? But of course you do. They came as you will come, to ask my question. These here are the knights of old. Not all of them were up to the job. But they would risk it all for freedom. As more of them came, so the problem grew, for it was no longer my question. Every one of them that joined me in my fate bound to the land complicated the question with their own mystery.”

  Lila watched Malachi during this speech and saw his face furrowed deeply with lines as he thought. He kept staring at the symbols on her armour. “One at least didn’t ask,” he said. “Tatterdemalion is not here. Nor those of us who were in exile from this place.”

  She moved closer to Zal and found herself in his embrace, surrounded by him as if he were her shadow. At the fireside Tath examined his arms as if none of them existed, his gaze intent, teeth braced against chattering. His ears and feet had gone purplish blue with cold.

  “And I never asked!” a new voice rang out, accompanied by a gunshot. A bullet streaked past Lila’s head, struck the rock at Jack’s feet, and ricocheted off the stone in a line that would have hit his leg except that something invisible encountered it and turned it to powder that fell on the ground in a silvery shower.

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. He stood straighter and puffed his chest out, a boy trying to look too much like a man and instead looking slightly ridiculous. “Mad. How nice to see you. Friendly as always. I got your sprite,” and he produced a tiny glowing figure on his palm from nowhere, apparently. Then with almost the same movement he slammed his palms shut and ground them together until a dribble of glowing liquid came out of them and fell dark to the ice.

  From the cave mouth Lila watched a tall woman clad in heavy furs dismount from a wolf that was almost her own height at the shoulder. The creature growled with a rumble that made the entire cave resonate.

  “Now, now,” the woman said lightly, reloading her gun as she came with the ease of old habits. “Don’t be petulant. You should be happy, with so many new things to play with.” She came slowly but surely towards Lila’s side of the fire and took a moment to look them over, lingering on each one of them with her dark eyes to get their measure, Tath gett
ing her longest assessment. She stopped beside Malachi, close enough to touch his massive beast form.

  “Siding against me, Mad?” Jack asked, with a curl of his lip that made Lila want to laugh, it was such a teenage boy expression.

  “I am merely evening the odds,” she said. Her skin glowed like appleskin under a warm sun and the smell of lush, ripening sweetness spread out around her. Around their side of the fire the air began to warm up and dampen.

  “You can’t take their side,” Jack said with fierce importance. “No cheating.”

  “I will make sure things are fair,” she replied calmly, not paying him much attention. Lila saw Malachi lean slowly towards her, his red and orange eyes closing, but she was too absorbed in trying to feel Zal’s ephemeral warmth enclosing her to think about it.

  “Alone at last,” Zal whispered to her.

  Meanwhile Jack’s wife took out some dried grass, sticks, and fur from a fold of her clothes and began to make something out of it, her brown fingers bending and shaping expertly. Jack watched her with reluctant fascination, his face full of longing. At her feet Tath continued his compulsive self-touching, rubbing his face, stroking his ears, pulling at Lila’s old shirt. He seemed utterly absorbed, so much so that everyone started when he suddenly unfolded and let his long pale hands fall to his sides.

  “I will ask your question,” he said to Jack in a flat declaration, as though it was something he’d thought about for a very long time and had been waiting to say.

  Lila felt she ought to say Are you sure? Are you crazy? But his presence was so set that she couldn’t disrupt it. It would have been sacrilegious. A sense of falling came over her inside. “I’ll give…” she was about to offer herself for the hunt, confident she could at least spare one of the others from that, and have a chance to survive it, but before she could finish Zal overrode her firmly. “I will be the hunted.”

  Malachi opened his eyes and stared at Jack with unequivocal hate. “I will join your unwilling guests.”

  “And you can have my heart’s desire,” the imp piped from the fire at Tath’s feet. “For what it’s worth, which ain’t much let me tell ya. But have it if you must.”

  “Wait a minute…” Lila began, feeling the moment slide away from her too late, too late. “No.”

  “Yes!” Jack said, his eyes alight with glee. “Offers accepted.”

  “Are you NUTS?” Lila turned on Zal and would have struck him if he were solid enough. Her hand smacked through his shoulder. “What are you doing? I’d have a better chance than you. Surely .. her voice cracked but Jack interrupted her.

  “It is done. Your part in all this will be at my side along with my lovely wife, the fair and treacherous Madrigal, and her puppet. You may see that all is dealt with fairly and we keep our word. All of us.” His dark eyes snapped back and forth, to the imp, Tath, Zal, and Malachi. “What a lucky woman you must be. In other times I might have paid you more attention to see such as these fall at your feet so readily. Even my wife’s cat.” He cast a sly, winking look at Malachi who bared his teeth in return. “There Madrigal, betrayed by your own for another. How does that feel?”

  “Better than listening to more of your self-regarding cant,” Madrigal said drily and Lila saw Jack visibly wither for a moment, before checking himself and swelling with wrath once more. “He is not my cat. Nor yours. Enjoy him while you may.” She took out a pipe and lit it, drew smoke a few times with an air of unconcern, and then held up the doll she had made—as big as her forearm—and blew the smoke into it. She repeated this a couple of times and then tapped out the unsmoked portion of the pipe into the fire. The imp flung himself into this, rolling around in the fume, and the doll gave what Lila recognised as the characteristic shiver of the Hoodoo and stood itself upright on her hand.

  “A bargain made, a promise kept, no cheating and no weeping,” said the doll. “Death shall be the forfeit to cheaters, rooks, swindlers, chiselers, and scoundrels, with no pleading. What say you all to the terms?”

  “I say wait a goddamned minute,” Lila said. “What are the limits on these things? How long must Malachi stay? What is the end of the hunt?”

  The doll spun to face Jack and made a movement like a shrug. “Forever, and death I presume. Lest of course some other new circumstance comes along and changes things as change must.”

  Jack nodded.

  “No,” Lila said, barely aware of herself talking. “This is crazy. This is the stupidest thing I ever came across. How can you all stand here and take part in it as if it made any sense? All we wanted was to come here and find someone to ask to get the damned moths back, that’s all. And now it’s guns at dawn or whatever, and you’re all looking at me like I’m the one that’s crazy and this is what happens every day and it doesn’t, it doesn’t ever happen as far as I’m concerned. Can’t we talk about it? What does everyone have to suffer for…” she turned on Jack furiously “… because you’re crazy and alone here. Just because of you! Why don’t you let them go and just ask me nicely for the key instead of staging all this drama?”

  Jack gazed at her with narrowed eyes, unwavering. “And if I did ask you, and said I was to open all of Faery to the lowest vault of Under and let forth all that lingers there, known and unknown, would you give me the key?”

  All the fey present turned as one to look at Lila and in their faces and bodies there was a terrible tension which she hardly had to be psychic to read as “No,” although she didn’t understand why it must be no, or why it couldn’t be a good thing to undo the lock as he said. She hesitated, feeling stupid, and twisted up inside with anguish.

  “Lila,” Zal said quietly, the warmth of him brushing her cheek gently. “Can’t you feel it? Maybe not. But this is how the aether works. Deals. Trades. When it’s a big deal, it has to be all or nothing. He can’t ask for the key, because it didn’t come to him. Objects like that aren’t like mundane objects in the material world. They are part of the structure of things in a much more important way here. If Jack wants to use it he must better it—that is, he has to steal it or bargain it away from the person it chose. It is a thing of power and will go to the most powerful wielder. That’s how it is. Hard to explain if you…”

  “Yeah, I get it,” she said bitterly. “If you haven’t got a fucking clue. Here,” she pulled the necklace up off over her head and held it out to Zal. “You take it.”

  He looked at her with misgiving and sadness, took it from her, and closed his hand on it. Immediately she felt it at her neck again, put her hand there, and touched it. She looked at him for a long moment.

  “How I hate you for knowing it all and being right,” she said. “Why did you take my place?”

  “Jack’s right,” Zal said easily. “I’ve lost my demon self, blaming Tath, then myself. The hunt will be good for me. If I lose it’ll be because I don’t want to live enough any more. It’s fitting. Now we’re here I feel like I was always coming here, ever since it happened… since she died.” He seemed perfectly calm about it.

  “But you’re talking about dying!” she said, voice cracking. She looked around but nobody else seemed to think it strange. They were just watching her. She stretched her hands out but she couldn’t feel anything of him at all, even when she should see herself touching him. “You can’t…”

  Zal’s face hardened, to her surprise. “I have.” He stepped back and his eyes were powerful, warning her. “You will be our judge to see it’s fair. We all chose. It was nothing to do with you.” He stepped away once more and she felt her heart break absolutely in pieces but at the same moment she knew she had to agree, or she’d be making all of them into fools and weakening every chance they had. So she let her face freeze and stood back and upright and nodded.

  “As you say,” she said stiffly, turning away from him and to the doll on Madrigal’s hand. “We agree to the terms,” she said.

  “Aye,” Jack said almost immediately and much louder. “And I too.”

  “Agreed!” the doll shr
ieked in its caustic, creaking voice. “Then begin!”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Jack clapped his hands and summoned Moguskul with a jerk of one arm. “You,” he pointed at Zal. “All you must do to best me is remain alive until midnight. I will give you an hour head start. Run.”

  Zal glanced at Malachi and they shared the briefest of nods, through which Lila clearly saw them acknowledge one another and say farewell. Then the shadow elf looked down at the imp. “I’d like to know what your story is, but it will have to keep. Don’t fail this time.”

  “I know, I know!” Thingamajig whined. “I got the memo. Don’t deal with the faeries. Don’t welch on the terms. See you in hell.”

  Lila watched Zal turn to Tath. His body was already poised for flight, full of a restless, fierce energy that he held in check as they faced each other. “Ilya. You chose Lila. I would have done the same.” Tath looked slightly startled, unable to stop shivering as the ghostly Zal embraced him once. “Goodbye.” Then he turned. “Lila…”

  “Don’t you goodbye me, you son of a bitch.”

  “Never,” he said and winked at her though she could see it cost him to do it, and it had never cost him before. He stretched out his lilac shade fingers, their two-dimensional edges glimmering with black, and touched the fine line close to her neck where the slick black of the machine crept slowly ever upwards, his eyes fixed on the point. “Cold iron, girl. Don’t be afraid.”

  “Fuck you!” she said honestly, her eyes filling with hot tears she couldn’t have stopped for anything at that moment. She struck out at him weakly, uselessly, her fist falling short of him, opening into fingers that brushed through his blacklight body and felt only the vibration caught by the machine.

  Zal smiled at her, warm and real, and then before she had time to react he was running, up over the fire, past Jack—giving him a semisolid clout on the shoulder that flung him half around—past the faeries cheering him where they massed in the cave mouth and out into the snow.