Down to the Bone: Quantum Gravity Book Five by Justina Robson Read Free Book Online Page B

justified it with the survival of Alfheim as the necessary greater good. Because of Arie Lila had stabbed her friend and
     lover Dar to death. Because of Arie Dar had killed Ilyatath in cold blood. All in the name of survival, but that didn’t make
     any difference.
    The guilt and horror of that moment, the shame and misery of it, erupted as if it was happening again. Tears filled her eyes
     and she felt as though she had taken a hammer blow to the solar plexus, so hard that she was forced to cave in around it,
     hunching protectively over her heart. She saw Teazle react to her movement with strange understanding dawning in his face.
     But she never took her eyes off Arie. She wanted to carve that face off. The level of her own hate and how good it promised
     to make her feel should she act on it was a shock that rendered her motionless so that she lost the initiative.
    Arie ignored her in any case.
    ‘Hello, Zal,’ she said, her golden hair shining, her blue eyes giving him a look as if he were her favourite toy. She shrugged
     eloquently at his returning gaze, which was slowly moving from stunned emptiness towards wary loathing. Arie smiled, ‘I wager
     you did not expect to see me again.’
    ‘No,’ Zal said quietly. ‘I hope you put a lot of money on it. What do you want?’
    ‘I thought you might like to know what happened to me after youruined my efforts to save our world.’ Now she did flick a glance at Lila, as though the effort of ignoring the architect
     of her downfall had finally proved irresistible. Her loathing and repulsion were unchanged from the first second that she
     had first seen Lila for what she was – an ignorant human welded badly to an incomprehensible machine. It was an expression
     that made her beauty ugly in a moment.
    Lila wished she had a mirror but there was no avoiding the ill wish of that stare. Added to the shock of her arrival it lanced
     other old wounds open she’d thought were long done with. She felt a freak, worthy of spite.
    By her feet Teazle hissed. He was amused and alert, keen with anticipation as he watched them fight.
    Zal did something with his hand, some arcane gesture that flicked Arie’s attention right back to him and at the same time
     released Lila from the grip of the sorceress’s intent.
    His voice was a rock star’s disinterested drawl. ‘State your fucking case and be done. I’d be content to see you twice dead.’
    Anger flashed through her green eyes. ‘Very well. I assume you thought the dragon of the lake had eaten me up. And it did,
     in a way. But a dragon is not a blood and bone creature, some monster of the elements made flesh. I was consumed but I was
     not destroyed. It kept me in its belly.’
    She spat the words out as if each one was a bullet given her to bite on for a separate pain. ‘It took me to the edges of existence
     and there it showed me the source of the destruction that is ripping all of our worlds into shreds. A point of stillness,
     of opposites meeting, where energy spits from the mouth of nothingness. It showed me that all I would have done was speed
     the destruction.’
    She had become stonelike in her resistance to what she had come to say next. Her fixation on Zal remained, the only thing
     that was keeping her self-control in place. Her lips worked, narrowed and finally she said, ‘I have come to offer you my aid
     in what is coming. I owe it to Alfheim. And I was convinced that I am in some part to blame, so it must be paid back. I am
     no longer Arie of the Lake. I am Arie of the Waters. You may summon me through that element, when the time comes.’
    With the mention of her titles some dignity returned to her, though she was unable to conceal her loathing of Zal behind aloofness
     any more. Lila realised that even though she considered him a traitor, Zalwas the only one Arie could stand to look at. She and Teazle were abominations too far. Without another word Arie turned
     on her heel and walked back the way she