Going Under (39 page)

"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 getting 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 shrieked in its caustic, creaking voice. "Then begin!"

ack 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.

"Excellent," Jack said. "Now you, cat. Step across. Don't be shy."

Malachi got up and stood on two legs. He looked at Madrigal and she looked back at him. Then he walked to Lila and stood before her, taller than she was but so much bigger and uglier than he had ever been. He smelled strongly of cat and his head was massive with his huge, disproportionate teeth hanging just over her head. His voice was soft as a whisper. "The elf is right. Don't make despair your path. If you do, then all is for nothing. Whatever happens."

"Are you going to tell me not to be afraid?" she asked him coolly, aware that she was being cruel now, not caring.

He licked his teeth to make it possible for him to keep talking without dragging his lips. "Will you say goodbye?"

"No," she said and put her arms around his strange body, burying her face in his thick fur until the bones of his ribs pressed against her cheek. She felt him sigh.