Going Under by Justina Robson Read Free Book Online

gave her a long, level look and then put the cup down. His voice became serious-as serious as it ever got. A few motes of dust scattered from his wings to the floor. "There's a lot of what you might call Trouble at the Mill, since we started our gang. The Otopians don't much care for the idea of you having so much freedom and are scampering through their paperwork for ways to make you come to heel. Things are tough for the Doc at the top and even more so because of the moths." He looked down for a second, and Lila wondered what was going on. In a human such a movement was a signal of guilt or dissembling, but it would be rash to read this into a fey. Malachi shrugged and continued, "They're proving more troublesome than it seemed at first. Doc was wondering if you'd return early and provide some help disposing of them. The boys too, if they're willing. Unofficially for them of course although Zal's manager is, I understand, regularly coming within inches of hospitalisation due to the lad's failure to turn up for band practice." He hesitated. "And I have someone you should meet. I was on my way here-halfway overwhen a little bird told me you'd be looking for a Strandloper."

    "A little bird?"
    "Mmn, about yay big," Malachi held up one hand over his head, about seven feet high. "Dark stinking cape, human body, long beak, maggots for eyes."
    "She's keen," Lila said with a sense of dismay. She hadn't even got home and Madame was pushing her on her way.
    "That's what I thought," the faery said, suddenly animated with interest, his casually aloof features losing their hauteur. Of course he knew all about Madame and her minions, it was only the humans who were ignorant about the "new" races, their ways, wiles, and celebrities. "D'you know why?"
    Lila shrugged. "I invited her. She wants me to find some information for her, and then she's going to tell me about this," Lila lifted her left hand and held it out between them. She knew that Malachi was familiar with what her hands could usually do, including growing new skin on demand and performing a variety of interesting mechanical tasks generally reserved for laboratory precision robotics and armaments, but these all involved a degree of ordinary human activities such as adding components like blades to achieve the desired effect. Now she was wearing black leather gauntlets as part of her ever-ready duellist preparations for regular Demonian life, which would ordinarily have got in the way of anything particularly clever. She waited until Malachi gave the hand his full attention, and then created a bottle opener out of the end of her middle finger. She then reassembled it as a finger, before shaking the hand as though it stung. It didn't, but she felt it ought to have. A feeling of creepy satisfaction snuck through her flesh; haunted but loving it. Who wouldn't love the ability to spontaneously accessorise? Who wouldn't wonder why the hell they couldn't do it two weeks ago?

    "Drinking bottled beverages is so important they made it a design priority?" Malachi asked, not really asking but covering the awkward moment with his best quip. His look was halfway between charmed and alarmed.
    "Strangely enough, no. Look," Lila made a can opener from the same finger, then a socket wrench, then a screwdriver, then set it back to a finger, blowing on it because it was suddenly hot from the changes. A silver nimbus of agitated metal elementals shone briefly around her hand and then sunk back into the matte black illusion of a leather glove. Her hip twinged with an ache, like an old athlete's joint sensing oncoming bad weather, and she frowned. She'd been ignoring small pains for a month, but there was no denying they were related to her new party tricks. She kept silent about them because worrying about it privately and suspecting the worst seemed better than coming out with it and having the worst formally confirmed by medical. Her own stupidity sometimes amazed her.
    "I'm thinking it didn't used