Keeping It Real (40 page)

vibration quite well, and sighed.

You are
t
alking abou
t
Zal,
he said.
I have heard of his
t
heory
t
ha
t
demons and elves are a bound
ae
t
heric duali
t
y, bu
t
i
t
is heresy here, you mus
t
unders
t
and. I have no idea if i
t
has any
t
ru
t
h in i
t
.

Nobody in Alfheim knows wha
t
he did in Demonia. My concern wi
t
h
t
his lies in
t
he salva
t
ion of
Alfheim, from one des
t
ruc
t
ion or ano
t
her.

I guess I sui
t
your purpose qui
t
e well so far. If we s
t
op Arie you ge
t
t
o save the world.

I guess you do.
Ho
w
does
your arm feel now?

Lila hadn't been concentrating and realised that
she wasn't
feeling

even slight
discomfort. She tried her arm and found that
it
was well-healed. The plastic and metal damage

was still there, but
her skin, her bone, the human parts of her - they were fine.

You may
t
hank As
t
ar for helping me. I hope i
t
is
t
he las
t
t
ime.

T
he las
t
t
ime for
t
he nex
t
five minu
t
es,
Lila said, acknowledging Tath's own irony with a rueful smile.

Don'
t
ge
t
t
oo swee
t
now,
T
a
t
h, or i
t
'll s
t
ar
t
feeling like we're friends.

He didn't
reply.

J had an idea, Lila said. J
know how we can ge
t
t
o Zal.
She explained as they finished their short

walk and arrived back in the lake hall.

I
t
s
eem
s a bi
t
convenien
t
,
Tath grumbled although Lila could feel a sly kind of gladness in him at the

level of trust between them she would have to rely on
. You will ha
ve t
o be
v
er
y
convincing.

No
t
me,
Lila said.
You.

Arie and her entourage were seated around low tables there, for all the world as though they were out

for a picnic. Dar was close to Arie's left side, changed, dried and cleaned up. He looked quite the part in

his lilac and lavender finery. Lila felt
completely sick at
heart with what
she was about
to do because it

was, as Tath said, very dangerous. She longed to cry. Instead she gave him a big smile and a wave. It

was all she could think of that
might act as a warning of any kind; a gesture so out of place that it must

carry meaning
.
She saw Arie's green eyes narrow slightly as she was marched up to the gathering. Astar

walked quietly to her Lady's side.

'I regret my entreaties were in vain,' Astar said and sat
down.

Lila felt
the strong
andalune
presence of the guards at
her sides withdraw as they stepped away from

her. Now was the moment.

Okay, llya
t
a
t
h Elenir Voynassi
T
aliese
t
ra,
she said inside.
Sell me down
t
he river.

Lila Amanda Black, I surely will.

'But the Lady's effort was not
in vain,' Tath-in-Lila said, as Lila felt
her body change the way it
moved,

to his style. 'I have gained the upper hand within our struggle thanks to Lady Astar's strength.' Tath

dropped the glamour.

Lila had to admit
that
the look on Dar's face was quite gratifyingly astonished. The rest
of the faces

however, those that didn't
turn aside with revulsion, stared at her with the kind of expressions that it took

all her courage not to react to. She supposed that her dirty state, her stolen

clothes, her scars, her mangled hand and the metal tiiat
showed must
be quite something if you were used

to 1he ldnds of flawless beauty tiiat
decked lie halls around here. Still, as the silence rang on and twenty

pairs of elfm eyes fliclced over her as though tiie sight of her were poison, it wasn't so easy to bear.

Tath spoke quietiy, witii a surprise entirely of his own. He was surprised tiiat
he was surprised
. I can

feel
t
heir ha
t
e.

Welc0me
t
0
my wo
rld,
L
ila
sa
i
d to him, staring straight ahead now, wanting to look at
Dar but lmowing she wouldn't fmd any support there, most likely. Couldn't risk it anjway. Then doing it. H
i
s face

was rig
i
d and
i
ntense
,
the face of her nightmares
.
What the he
ll
was that
l
ook about.?

T
ha
t
look
is
Dar
t
hinking
at t
op speed.
An
d
. . . But Tath didn't
finish. Lila sensed his curiosity burning though she could not
decipher its cause. Tath's presence, which had been so all-consuming it
had

become natural, was now focused on the tiny space he occupied within her solar plexus and he was

difficult to read. Suddenly she was on her own.

The Lady of Aparastil was first to rise and, as though commanded in silent languages, the others

remained quite still around her as she came forward to inspect L
i
la more closely
.

Arie sa
i
d noth
i
ng but that d
i
dn't stop the rest. Lila heard a lot of elvish words that her Al-self

unwittingly translated before she turned off that function: hideous, abomination, monster, freak, disgusting,

perverted, ugly, repulsive . . . The sly giggles, gloats and sneers could not be erased so easily.

L
i
la held fast, as though Tath controlled her, and stared into the d
i
stance,
i
nto the deep green where

the fish suddenly darted and flashed their s
i
lver semaphore of alarm. They were replaced by a huge,

horned, tentacled face, long and triangular, with colossal golden eyes whose star-slit pupils gazed at her

for an instant before vanishing into the water and weeds. She saw golden scales and black scales in

diamond patterns winding on and on after it, seemingly for ever, long amber fins and powerful, clawed

feet: a water dragon. Because they were fixated on her, none of the elves noticed it, except
for Tath. He

reacted to the sight of it with intense excitement and fear, but he was soon distracted.

At
close quarters Arie's allure was almost overwhelming. Lila could feel Tath melting with the very idea

of being so close to the Lady. Lila

was melting in a different
way, every piece of her attention focused on maintaining calm homeostasis on

her skin, in her muscles, in her breathing, in her energy patterns, giving away nothing of the seething

molten anger that
made her want
to activate all weapons and bury Arie and her retinue in the muddy

bottom of the lake. And as she held the line and gave nothing away, as she burned, she felt
Tath inside

her chest, a new kind of sensation from him that she didn't expect or look for even in allies at times like

these: respect.

Jus
t
don'
t
fucking say any
t
hing,
T
a
t
h, ei
t
her way,
she thought
. Don'
t
make i
t
harder
t
han i
t
already is.

He didn't
.

'Are you able to show us what this . . . thing ... is capable of?' Arie asked.

'Yes,' Lila said, quite herself and trying to talk Tath-speak. "Though I advise you to stand aside.' With

hands that
didn't
sweat
or shake she began to undress
.

She took off Tath's baldric and belt, his dagger and his bow. Arie took them from her, holding them

reverently. Lila took off Tath's jerkin and his shirt, revealing her stained singlet underneath. She removed

what was left of his boots, undid the laces that
held his britches closed and took them off- careful not to

think of the last
time she'd done that, although she would have loved to see Arie's expression if her liaison

with Dar were to become public knowledge. She stepped out of them to stand in her regulation

underthings, stinking of human sweat, as naked as she ever wanted to be again. The prosthetic arms and

legs, the rivers of interrun flesh and metal, their unhappy pairing, the scarlet
stain of Dar's magic . . . she

let
Arie take a long look and thought she saw the stirring of pity in the elf queen's face. She wanted to hit

that face.

'What manner of terrible surgery has been foisted on this person?' Arie demanded
.
'It cannot be

intentional that - she - has found herself thus made so abominably malformed. Look at her eyes! Nothing

but metal. What
could she see with those except
the hardness and coldness of things?'

I see you, you
t
ri
t
e bi
t
ch,
Lila thought. She activated all her weapons systems into attack configuration

and watched with deep satisfaction as pieces of her arms and legs which had seemed to be a flush

surface with her skin lifted out
and apart, flicking into new positions, her limbs a blur of moving metal

parts, the air filled with the sound of a thousand snicking precision-made components shifting like a

storm of mechanical insects taking wing
.
Battle armour, multi-functional self-adapting guns, missile

launchers, an extra five inches of height
.
. .

Lila watched the elves recoil from her flat silver eyes as her hair activated and became charged sensory

and comms transmission sys-tems. Blades grew out of her hands. From her heels, killing spurs emerged,

coated in poison
.

Arte was the only one who did not recoil. She looked Lila up and down. 'Can you operate these

things, Tath?'

'I do not have complete access to that. The machine . . .' Tath said in his own voice, trusting that
Arie's

imagination would fill in the blank.

'How is it
powered?'

T cannot
ascertain the method.'

'As you were,' Arie said thoughtfully and Lila returned to her civilian self in less than a second; the

incredible shrinking girl.

'There is something else,' Tath added at
Lila's prompt, making no move to take any of Lila's clothing

back. She turned her head and stared into Arie's green eyes with her solid silver ones, knowing the elf

would only see herself in them. "This agent was one of those assigned to Zal in Otopia to protect him

from the Jayon Daga. She and he were involved in a Game which is unresolved.' It
was her final card, the

only card she had. If Arie didn't
pick it
up they were all done. She had to bet that Arie could not resist

using this information.

'What
kind of Game?' the Lady demanded softly.

Lila hesitated. Tath took over seamlessly and used her mouth for her, 'A love match.' Her voice. Her

mouth. Tath's words. Suddenly they were too close for comfort and she almost panicked at the notion

she would never get out and that he could take her over so easily if he wanted to . . . Tath felt it too. For

a second they were on the brink, each realising the other's power.

But if the atmosphere had been bad before it was as nothing to the depths it
plunged to now. Someone

actually gagged. Lila saw Arie's face tighten compulsively.

'To the death?'

Tath did not know the answer
.
He was watching Arie and made no attempt to seize power
.
Lila

supplied it
.
'The death of love,' she said and resumed command, turning her face back to its attention

position so that she didn't
have to see the triumph and hate and loathing flood Arie's beauty with a whole

new kind of vertiginous attraction, every

strong mood of here magnetic and charged with mag
i
c. As she reveded her secret
she heard Tath say,

You're full of surprises, Lila.

You shou
ld
see me on a goo
d d
ay, L
i
la told h
i
m, liiough
i
t
was only words to her, she felt
nofting of the assert
i
veness she pretended to. She longed to be unconscious, to be an^here but here.

'Such a Game,' the Lady mused, tlie company there hanging on her every breath. 'Such a dangerous

Game with such as th
i
s. Surely . . . but there
i
s no end to h
i
s degradation it
seems. Tmly, you did not

retam him a moment
too soon, Dar. Now come, Ta1h, you have suifered long enough in such an