Pandaemonium (3 page)

Having an Aspect is – well, not like anything else. It’s not at all like having an old coat, unless that coat is a suit of armour with biofeedback loops and seven-league boots beneath and the aggression of a tank besides. It’s really not like shrugging into an enhanced levelled-up version of yourself, or swapping your body for a Terminator’s, or having your system flushed with adrenalin on demand, or any of the other shoddy comparisons we come up with, those times we find ourselves trying to explain. We all do it, every daemon comes up with helpless similes; and all of them are honest, and none of them is true.

Just, here I am, a healthy young and human woman, with all the limits that implies – and I reach for my Aspect and not one of those limits applies to me. It is not at all like having godhood as an optional extra, but I can run all day and not break a sweat, I can break steel chains and push my way through walls of brick, I can free-dive for a frighteningly long time without breathing and seduce adolescents just with a glance and...

Well, actually I could probably seduce the adolescents anyway, without a hint of Aspect; that comes free under “healthy young woman.” But the rest of it is a bit special, and there is still more besides. This happens every time; you start out trying to describe what an Aspect is and you end up with a list of symptoms rather than a diagnosis.

Mostly what it is, though, is real. And accessible. And earned. We call it a gift, maybe, but that’s just the politeness of the mortal to the Overworld. Most times an Aspect isn’t even a tip, given in gratitude for service; it’s wages, payment in kind.

Wages of sin, as often as not. Never ask a daemon what they did to deserve it.

W
HEN
I
SAY
I was running – well. I had a prince of Hell at my heels; this was not a jog. I passed some startled joggers, a giggle of schoolgirls and a string of seriously big young men in training, probably from Leander or one of the other rowing clubs. They had the look of Argonauts, all sun-bleached muscle and magnificence. They’d put you in mind of Greek gods, if you’d never actually met one.

I scudded past them all in jeans and jacket, boot-heels pounding into gravel and mud, and left them no doubt gaping in my wake. I didn’t look back. This was all about speed and distance, not being there or anywhere near when Jay eventually got by his parents and came after me. I was taking that to be inevitable. Also that he would pick up my trail readily. I didn’t actually know whether he had bloodhound skills, or eagle eyesight; I did know that he’d spent long years living on the streets, learning how to hide and how to run, how to lose pursuit. He’d be just as good playing for the other team, on the hunt. I was heading for London – and following the river – because we’d done that selfsame thing before in my poor abused boat, and just maybe he’d outguess himself and think I wouldn’t go the same way twice. More, it was because I knew he’d spent those same long years avoiding London. It wasn’t natural territory for him; that might give me an edge. For a while. A little while. It might be long enough.

Besides, I did at least have somewhere to go, that just might be a place of safety. What Robert Frost called home: that place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

It wasn’t my home, not now, not for a while now, but it had been once. And I didn’t deserve the shelter it might offer, but I was back to Frost again, banking on him:
something you somehow haven’t to deserve.

I didn’t waste my time at school, oh, no. Not if I learned to depend on the bitter sentimentality of an American poet long dead.

Not if he was right, at least. If I didn’t get Frost-bitten, flung out into the Frost.

R
UN, RUN.
R
UNNING
girl. I used to run with earbuds and music, but that was long ago. Recently my running had been more metaphorical, more hiding. Hiding and hunting, trying to find Jordan without getting found myself. Then I did find him, and – well. Things changed.

Now I ran and all my music was internal, old songs going round and around my head in snatches, earworms timed to the pounding of my feet. Songs of betrayal and guilt, songs of loss and heartbreak; if I knew any songs about a strong young woman striking out on her own, I couldn’t remember them, or else they just didn’t apply.

I might have been crying a little, perhaps, as I ran. Turns out that love and families make a zero-sum game: Jay’s change was his parents’ gain and my loss, by definition. However it turned out, whether he came after me or caught me or didn’t care, I still had to lose.

Whether it was a gain or a loss for
him
– well, he’d have to sort that out for himself. His new self. I’d forced him to grow up, all in a rush, and I had no idea how he’d take to that. The only certainty now was that I wouldn’t be there to help. Which had been the only thing I’d counted on. A friend in need, a
girl
friend, a strong right hand and a voice of experience, someone to stand between him and his parents if they tried to ride roughshod over his choices and desires...

Stupid of me, really. However he came out of this, what I’d done had been unforgivable to the old Jay, my Jay; and this new Jordan, whoever he was – recovered, rediscovered, son of his father and his mother’s joy – he was not and never could be that boy who was half in love with me. I lost either way, I had to.

One thing about having an Aspect to draw on at will, one drawback to all that strength and endurance is that you can’t wear yourself out, run yourself ragged. I used to lose myself utterly in the relentless work and the rhythm of the road, grind myself down to nothing, leave all my troubles behind me for as long as I was hurling one foot in front of the other, on and on, all heat and sweat and breath and effort. Run hard enough and far enough, there was just no room left for words or worries, for any thought at all.
I run, therefore I am
: that was all, and it was enough.

Not any longer. If I couldn’t exhaust myself physically, if I couldn’t even sweat, running offered no kind of escape beyond the obvious. Everything I was, I carried with me; everything I’d done was still right there in my head, in my memory, accusing. All the damage: Jay’s raw open wound, and my own where he had ripped himself away from me.

I ran, and bled internally, and maybe cried a little; and hated myself for being so strong, for running so easily, for allowing no escape. I had my Aspect dialled right down, just a trickle-charge, just enough – and even so, I was hyper-aware of my own body and still cruelly tuned in to the world around me.

Which is how come I noticed, how come I knew immediately when the crows moved in.

I guess it was a blessing, then.

It saved my life, at least. One more time.

Which might not have felt like it was worth much right then, even to me, but, y’know. It’s the only one I’ve got. I’m not a cat. Or an immortal.

Or a crow.

You see one rook on its own, it’s a crow. See a whole lot of crows together, they’re rooks.

See two crows? See them in parallel, in consort, tracking you? They’re the Twa Corbies, and now you’re in trouble.

Or rather, you’ve been in trouble for a while, with somebody else, and now you know it. Now it’s caught up with you.

Stupid of me, really. Stupid
more
. This was clearly my day for it. I’d been so taken up with this new grief, I’d forgotten that I had old enemies of my own; so focused on forcing Jay to stop running, it had slipped my mind completely that I might still be hunted myself. Still be chased by others, still carry a bounty on my head. Jacey had promised to call off the dogs, stop his family coming after me – but it would take time for that to bite, and longer for the word to filter out to all the freelances who would still be keeping one eye cocked for any glimpse of my shadow.

Like the Twa Corbies, for example. True freelances, mercenaries, they might be working for anyone, but the impulse and the money would be coming from the Cathars. From Jacey’s parents, ultimately.

I should have been scared, but no. Really not. Was I weird, that I felt a sudden fierce joy in me? This was an enemy I could understand, and better: an enemy I could fight, if it came to fighting. I might not win, but that was another matter. I couldn’t fight Jay. All I could do for him was run.

For these two? I almost stopped running.

Almost.

It was thoughts of Jay that kept me going. The most best gift I could give him now was not to let him catch me, until he didn’t want to do it any more.

If that gave them a gift too, if it let them think I was scared of them – well, that did me no harm.

It should have been true, anyway. I ought to be scared of them. The Twa Corbies were lethal. Folk wouldn’t hire them else.

So I ran, and they did formation flying ahead and behind and around me, wingtip to wingtip, swoop and rise, circle and glide, barely a twitch of a feather to guide and lift them as they soared on unlikely thermals, black birds of ill omen, ominous to me. Ominous and welcome, just because they were very bad indeed but everything else was worse.

These two? Couldn’t make me cry. That was a step up.

Muninn and Huginn they like to call themselves sometimes,
Thought
and
Memory
, but they’re not. Odin’s ravens are birds of class. I should know; I’ve met them. These two were just crows.

Crows who came swooping down one more time and divided, to fly one on either side of me as I ran. I just ran on, still intent on distance. I couldn’t outrun birds, I couldn’t lose them so long as I was out in open country. One thing at a time, then. Make sure Jay stayed behind me, before I started worrying about the Cathars up ahead. They must be somewhere ahead, so long as the Corbies were happy just to escort me, like two fighters shadowing a jumbo jet.

That was how I felt, big and lumbering and solid next to them. Crows aren’t the most graceful of birds ordinarily, but these two had a sleek guided-missile determination to them and more, a tight and pretty way of flight, a sense of lightness in the air that spoke of time and practice more than nature. Cultivated crows. If you listened to Jay – if you caught him off-guard or drunk, those rare times he allowed himself to be either one of those – he’d tell you that I embody all the feminine physical virtues, even with my Aspect off. You wouldn’t want to believe him, but I did sometimes like to listen. Light-footed as a dancer, he liked to call me. Even in my boots. There may be some justice to that; I do have good feet – and good boots – and I always did like to dance. Beside the Corbies, though, that day? My feet stamped into the ground like piles driving deep, my bones felt like iron bars inside the roughcast walls of my flesh, I’d never been so aware of my body as a crude made thing.

I dropped my head and watched my feet pound the pathway, sooner than watch my two black companions where they hung in either corner of my sight, head-high and keeping place as effortlessly as they kept pace. Lord only knows what other people thought, the dog-walkers and holiday-makers, the boatfolk heading to and from the shops or pubs along the river way, the kids drooping over the parapets of a bridge or fishing hopefully at the river’s edge. Lord only knows what they saw. A girl not dressed for running, sure, running hard and easy, but did they see the birds? The Corbies might have a gift to hide themselves. Or they might not care, and people might not see them anyway. Too weird: human brains can blank out what they can’t encompass.

I didn’t lift my head to look. I watched my feet.

And then suddenly there were two pairs of feet, then there were three.

This, now. This I could deal with.

They still had that crow-look about them, even man-size, man-shape: tall and ageless, bulky, long black coats flapping about them as they ran.

“You guys are even less properly dressed than I am,” I said cheerfully.

They just smiled at me in unison and matched me step for step, speed for speed.

Sooner or later, no doubt they’d want to steer me away from the river. Probably sooner, if they were shifting already into human form. Bird was easier for hunting or for keeping track, human for enforcing.

I... didn’t intend to let myself be forced. Not anywhere, not into anything.

Not again.

I didn’t wait, then.

The really cool thing about my Aspect is that it’s just there, whenever I want it. Nothing like a coat, that you have to carry about or go and fetch, that you hang up or leave behind or lose. Really, nothing like a coat at all.

Not like anything, really.

I’d had it dialled low, but now I didn’t. I felt the surge of it in blood and bone – like water in a mill-race, a seething flood, irresistible – as my arms lashed out, slamming into the Corbies on either side of me.

Perhaps they thought I’d given up. Perhaps they thought they could do this by threat and terror, those alone; or that the Cathars’ name alone would overmaster me. Whatever they were thinking, they weren’t ready for this. In bird form, they could have ridden the gust of air I made, risen above my flailing arm or skimmed below. As men, though, even these rough sketches of men, shaped by movement more than skin and bone –

W
ELL.
A
S MEN,
they couldn’t duck or dodge. I hit out, and they went tumbling.