Chasing the Dragon (49 page)

As she was speaking he had already changed form, and even
though it was freezing and he was naked without a stitch to enhance
his style he was holding her tightly and kissing her on the lips. Her
clothing was cold and damp and she was trussed up like a burrito, but
holding her was as satisfying as he had always dreamed it was. He was
pleased to find he had surprised her.

"Well," she said after they were done. "I will look forward to your
return much more eagerly now." She stepped back and observed him
with a huntress's eye. "Really."

"Good," he said. "Come on, Ilya. Try not to die as we get to the
other side. Would be really inconvenient."

Madrigal put one of her apples into Ilya's hand and whispered to
him to eat it as they passed her. Malachi hoped it would be enough
magic to survive Otopian climes and that his clothes were where he
had left them. They stepped onto the soft earth between the stones and
it swallowed them up.

And ejected them in Malachi's car. The hood was up, but he felt
ridiculous as he fought into his shirt and trousers. The traffic had returned
to the street. The cordon was being taken away. He had been longer than
he intended. He flipped on his phone set as Ilya sat in the passenger seat
and ate his apple slowly. In his ear Temple Greer said, "All quiet on the
western front. He got his wish. We got our dead. What's the score?"

"I'm just here to pick up some gear," Malachi said, pinning the
phone with his shoulder and backing out of the lot. "The game's not
up. Score not available."

"Setting's open then?"

"I wouldn't put a dollar on us."

"Bad as that?"

"Worse."

"Did you hear from Lila?"

"Nothing."

"Goddammit. I don't want to send agents to Demonia after we got
this beating here. Nobody to spare. And she's started up some war with
the rogue agents. Or was that just to keep me busy and off her back?"

"I'm guessing it is."

"Crafty bitch. I could almost propose to her, if I knew where she
was. Keep in touch."

"Yes, sir." He turned his head as he flicked the phone into his
pocket just in time to see Ilya flip his booted feet up onto the dash and
lean back in the seat. His long white hair whipped around his head. He
ate his apple in thoughtful bites and watched Malachi in turn.

"So this is a car," he said after a moment.

Malachi sighed and wound down his window, resting his elbow on
the door. "Yeah."

"Noisy."

They turned onto the freeway and headed out to the bridge. "She's
a good girl."

Ilya looked around the interior pointedly and stroked the upholstery. He smiled and ate the apple core, then spat the seeds out on his
side. "I have missed such things. I miss her."

Malachi knew who he was talking about. "We all did." He tuned
the radio to a rock station and watched Ilya's long ear tips flick as the
tough bass came blasting through his state-of-the-art speakers, hidden
in the dash. He was usually a soul or a blues cat, but today that didn't
seem the right mood.

The elf sat back and let the wind drive into his face. He looked like
he was enjoying it. Malachi put his foot down and they sped out over
the glittering water of the bay.

He avoided the house and drove them farther down the coast where
they could walk up the beach and find Jones's ship without going back
to the Folly. As they got out of the car the sun was starting to slide
down the sky. It was warm, balmy. The sea was quiet and a few people
were out walking. A kid was flying a kite with a long tail, and they
both paused to watch it for a moment before they turned and Malachi
led them along the tideline and around the headland.

The ship was waiting, ground into the sand, her decks at a thirtydegree angle, her bodywork already starting to rust. The ghost glow
was gone, but she had been Jones's ship and real enough before her capture by the Fleet's massive quantum gravity, so she hadn't fallen apart
yet, though she looked more wrecked than many a vessel on the scrapyard and nothing like seaworthy. Her hull was more hole than metal,
and the gaping spaces where her aetheric charms had been ripped away
to leave bare wires promised no protection from the Void either.

But when Malachi turned to see the faery elf's reaction he found
Ilya staring at the beach and the sea, at everything but the ship. He
looked inland.

"That house," he said slowly, moving his long fair hair out of his
face with one hand and shucking his fur coat with the other, letting it
fall to the sand. "The shear is strong here, very strong."

Malachi recognized the term for a place of thinning between realities. "Yes. Earth sink, some say."

"It will need to be. This world is more dead than I remembered to
my senses." He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his
nose. His eyes flashed open. "Who is there?"

"Just one of the walkers," Malachi said.

"She is in many places at once."

"You're starting to freak me out, and that's something."

Ilya's smile was bleak. "I see a lot more than I used to. She is the
Hunter's get. What do you know about her?" His eyes were alight
with interest. His nostrils flared.

"Ilya, we don't have time for this. After, then we can pay a visit."

"I will insist."

"We have to go."

The elf suddenly turned to the ship. "What is her name?"

"She is the Matilda."

Ilya nodded and went down to the water. In the sunlight of the bay
afternoon his rough clothing looked even more primitive and worn, his
glory changed to ordinary without the glamour of his faery home. He bent
down and put his hands in the shallow water as the waves came to shore,
and when he lifted them out he was holding a disc of ice he had made. He
held this up, dripping, to the sun's low gaze and focused the sharper light
that came out of it on the Matilda. Malachi saw him murmuring to himself, words in every elven magic, and then he had to jump back because
the ship righted herself and lifted clear of the beach in one unencumbered
move. A soft ghost glow began to appear around her points and edges.

"Hurry up," Ilya said, pointing with his nose to the gangway, which
was dropping sand and water into the edge of the surf. "Get aboard."

Malachi ran up and grabbed the narrow rail, ignoring the bite of
its iron touch as he leapt to the deck. Light began to spill from her
frayed cable ends and the million eyes of broken wires. Ilya walked
after him, keeping his focus on the melting ice in his hands. "To the
Fleet then?"

Malachi took a last look at the beach, the house, the hill, and the
woods. He took a breath of the air that swirled around, mingling scents
of the sea and land. He knew why he stayed here. He liked these things,
and he'd had no reason to go home. Until now. "To the Fleet, Master."

Ilya put the lens down on the control desk where Jones used to
stand, her helm a smashed-up set of instruments nobody would read
again, and placed his hand flat upon it. Malachi felt the ship shudder
deep within itself. The elf's palm reddened at the edges with a thick
line of blood, and the warm air of the day was cut in two by a savage
chill. The water lapping at the hull stilled and the vessel groaned as
she contracted in the cold. The sun and the beach faded away slowly
and left them afloat in the darkness Malachi had grown to dread very
well. A spherical shield of faint, blood-coloured light surrounded
them, keeping their air in, he assumed, not that he was sure they
needed air now. The Fleet's charm worked on its own to sustain its
host. He looked up and around him and saw lights everywhere, heard
the tolling of bells, the sharp call of those ships who were alive
speaking to one another across the empty gaps and the lonely foghorn
yodel of beasts farther out. Up, down, left, right, in all directions he
could see nothing but the vessels of the Fleet. They seemed to go on
for eternity.

"Where the hell is she?" He spoke now about Temeraire, the
Admiral's ship. He couldn't see any sign of her anywhere.

"I cannot see her," the elf said gently, "but I can see him. They are
higher up, to starboard and moving. His angels are with him."

"Moving?" Malachi looked at the destroyed remains of all the
ship's instruments helplessly.

"The other ships part to make way. It looks as if he will take a
leading position. The others form up behind him as he passes."

"Can you get close?"

In answer they began to rise slowly through the ranks. "I will aim to
get into his draft and below him. Did you have a plan for after that?"

"No. You?"

"No."

"Good." He held the helm with his clawed hands, and the cold
tore through him but didn't damage him. His fur was limned with the
ghost hoar, and it stood on end as he turned around to the mouth of
the cabin and saw the dead come walking out soundlessly and take
their posts at the research stations. Where they passed the ship grew
whole, and where they touched her ruined controls glasses and lights
came to life under their fingers and feet and then spread their restoration across the decks and up the mast, along the deckhouse and into
the stub of the harpoon gun until she was whole again, aether filling
what material had lost. When he turned back he saw Ilya holding
someone's hand. Then the elf turned and released his hold, the lens
melting to watery blood as another pair of hands took the helm.

Shyly she looked over her shoulder, her shadowed eyes glowing and
a brief smile for him on her lips. "Hello, Mal. Back with us again?"

"Jones," he said, finding something painful jamming his throat.
"Captain."

"Thanks for looking after her," Jones said, turning her face towards
the higher Fleet. "So. He got it back."

Malachi swallowed awkwardly. "I had to."

"I understand," she said, sniffing and wiping her nose on her
sleeve. "S'okay. But we're going after him, en't we?"

"Yes." He reached out involuntarily and touched her. His fingers
passed right through. "Oh, Jones."

"Don't worry," she said, and looked up at Ilya with a smile that was
warm and feeling. "It was all right. I'm where I oughta be. Ironic,
don'tcha think?" She rested her tough little hand on the elf's arm for a
moment with more tenderness than Malachi had ever seen her possess
in life and then let him go and took hold of her ship. "I get to sail one
more time, right?"

Ilya nodded at her.

"Then we'll make it worth the trip, eh faery?" She gave Mal a sidelong glance. Her eyes were almost lost in their deep black sockets.

"Aye-aye," he said, and clipped his heels together and saluted.

"Aye fuckin' aye," she said, laughing at him. "You daft bastard."
Then her voice hardened to its natural gritty state as she shouted orders
to her crew. "Power the generators, full throttle. All logistics online.
Prep the 'poon and make fast the lines. Shock wave cannon to standby.
Man your guns, babies, man your fuckin' guns!"

al landed on the rear deck of the Temeraire just as she got under way,
when the sough and sigh of her sails lifting and the slide of rope
on wood was enough to cover any sound he might make until he was
used to his new shadow body. Her crew was busy and he was able to
steal past them easily. Beneath him was the Admiral's cabin. He went
over the side and climbed down to the struts where the leaded-glass
windows were deeply set. There was a lot of fancy woodwork to hang
onto. He tucked his hand around the figure of a leaping porpoise and
bent close to the glass to see inside.

"Careful!" Glinda hissed, but she was too late. He'd already seen
the figure at the chart table, compasses in hand, and around it the two
figures that were barely more than rudimentary forms with heads,
shoulders, and, possibly, wings. They were swirls of pale colour and
they were restless. As soon as he looked they turned their heads and
began to drift towards the windows.

"Away!"

"Ahead of you," Zal said, landing silently on the deck above. He
crossed quickly, slid down the handrails that bordered the stairs to the
main deck, and jumped through an open hatch into the lamplit gloom
of the hold. He was delicate, light as a feather. He paused to peer at the flame of one of the lamps in its cage and lifted the glass so he could
put out his finger towards it. He could see the fire through his own
shadow flesh. He touched it to see if Mr. V had been lying.

For an instant he was transported from the ship's hold to a wooded
glade. He was lying on his back staring at a pink-and-purple sky and
a sun that wanted to undo him. He saw an arrow fly overhead and miss
the girl with the red flash in her hair. Her silver eyes looked at him.
She seemed horrified.

"Tsk!" Glinda snatched at him but he'd already pulled his hand back.

"Didn't she like me?" He felt confused. He was sure he liked her.
The feeling of the fire connected him up. He felt stronger, lighter, if
that were possible, more able. He wanted to carry on, but he could hear
footsteps coming towards him and he flitted away, along the gangway
and down another stair, searching quickly for any sign of the brig. He
assumed that was where the Admiral would be. He was only hampered
slightly by not knowing what a brig looked like. At least he knew Mr.
V was good for his word. He carried on his way, hiding in the shadows,
of which there were many, whenever someone passed him. At last he
discovered a wooden room in the lower decks that had a locked door and
a small openable porthole in the door. A bored sailor was apparently the
guard, but he soon fell asleep at his place as the ship got under way and
began to rock them. Zal moved to the porthole and opened it.