Pandaemonium (6 page)

“Not that way. There’s two of them, remember?”

“I know. What makes you think the other one’s not out there?” A nod to the street-door, where I already had my other hand on the latch.

“Because they know where I am and who I’m with, and everybody knows you.” Poor little rich boy: Jacey had been a petrolhead since he was fourteen, since his parents allowed him his first roadbike. The law didn’t, but the law was not an issue for the Cathars. It was Jacey who taught me to ride, and to drive. He never walked, unless he really had to.

Come to think of it, neither did I. Sometimes I ran; but I’d been run to ground here, and everybody knew about Jacey. Nobody would be expecting either one of us to venture out on foot. The second Corbie would be watching the garage door in the side-alley, I’d bet my life on that.

Literally, perhaps.

“We’ll still be safer –”

Poor Jacey: I really wasn’t listening to him, and he really wasn’t used to that. Not from me, historically; not from anyone. If he’d seriously stood against me,
no, we’re going this way
, I could never have shifted him, but this was all outside his experience. Stubborn, determined disagreement. Running away. He didn’t have the resources for either one. So he let himself be bullied, and more; he let himself be bundled, still protesting, out through his own front door and into the exposure of the street.

I was just pulling the door closed when there was a squawk and a flurry, down about ankle-level; a sudden dark streak on the pavement, there and gone.

I stared after, dismayed.

“Oh! Tybalt...!” A Corbie in the flat must just have been too much for him, too much bird.

“Not to worry.” It was Jacey’s turn to take the initiative, and he didn’t waste it. He took the door from my hand and slammed it, punched numbers into the keypad, talking over his shoulder about something else entirely, our cat. “He’ll go down the alley to the Chinese supermarket and be fluffily distressed by their back door, until the Misses Feng have fed him calming giblets. How do you think he got to be so fat? It’s not by hunting pigeons.”

“He’s not fat; he’s just big-boned. What are you doing now? Come
on
...!”

Actually, I knew what he was doing now. I could hear strong locks hurling themselves from door to jamb, acting on instruction. He had hundreds of thousands of pounds’-worth of cars and bikes on the garage floor; of course he had protection. With luck, he might have added something more esoteric than magnetic bolts.

Even so, I didn’t really think there’d be anything fit to stand against a man who could walk through armoured glass. We could hope, but we couldn’t take the time to learn. I snatched his hand and hauled him away.

“So are the Misses Feng any relation to the Fengs you bought the building from?”

“Daughters of. That was the deal. It was a quid pro quo; they gave up their warehouse and I bought them a retail business for the kids. Where they could fatten our cat up, apparently. Don’t change the subject. I still say we’d be safer in a car, with a metal lid over us.”

He was watching the sky anxiously, and no blame to him for that. Me, I was more caught up with watching behind, waiting for the moment when a Corbie came busting through the door to chase us down the street.

I could talk and hurry, so long as I had hold of his sleeve, so that I knew he was hurrying too.

“You weren’t with us in poor Asher’s car.”

“No,” he said. “What happened?”

“That was the time we didn’t make it, to meet you in Salomon’s club. Harpies happened. A car was no defence at all. Okay, that was a soft-top, but even so. What are you going to back, against both Corbies with that much oomph behind them, all those birds we saw?”

“Well,” he said judiciously, “not us out in the open, at any rate. And not me barefoot without a jacket or a wallet.”

Oh. Thing is, usually my Aspect makes me hyper-competent, but this time? Apparently not. I hadn’t thought; I hadn’t even noticed.

I didn’t stop moving, but something must have shown. Maybe it was just that I stopped talking. He may have taken that for an OMG-I’m-sorry, I’m-such-a-featherhead moment; at any rate he shrugged easily. “It’s okay, I’m not hurting. My feet can take it. But where are we
going
...?”

Initiative: you snatch it when you can. “This way.”

Up to the main road, but only for a minute. Dash between the cars, no time for the lights to change; and here on a traffic island, isolated in grandeur, was a tiled building untouched by redevelopment, a gateway, a mystical transition-point from the world above to the world below.

“The Tube?”

“Yes, of course. How many birds do you see down there?”

He grunted, thought about it, said, “Pigeons.”

“The occasional pigeon, sure. Hiding from Tybalt, I expect. No wonder the poor boy has to go and beg scraps from the Fengs. But pigeons aside. Crows don’t come underground.”

“Men do.”

“Yes – but are the Corbies men? I think they’re crows in man-shape.” I thought we’d just seen that proven. Many crows make a man. “I don’t think they’d like it down here at all, even if they did manage to see where we’ve gone...”

All the time I was talking, I was keeping him moving, steering him towards the barrier.

Where he checked, looked around him in that charmingly vague way that privileged people like to pretend is entirely natural, and said, “Aren’t we supposed to, oh, buy a ticket or something?”

“Oyster cards,” I said. “Remember? You just touch your card to the pad and it lets you through. Jacey, I
taught
you this, years ago...”

“You did. I’ve probably still got the one you made me buy then.” Of course he hadn’t used it since; I don’t think he’d been down the Tube once before he met me. A lifetime spent in London, and he’d never joined the lifeblood of the city. If he was too drunk to drive himself, he’d take a taxi. The habits of the hyper-rich: I showed him what he was missing, how young people ought to get about town, but he’d have gone straight back to his old ways when I left. I wasn’t sure if that was sad or something else. If he was browbeaten by his clan, or seeking comfort in the familiar, or avoiding what he’d discovered with me because, well, he’d discovered it with me.

“But if I do still have it,” he went on, almost triumphantly, “and if it’s still valid or loaded or whatever, then it’s in my wallet. Which is in my jacket, which...” Which was, of course, not on his shrugging shoulders. “So you’ll have to treat me. I don’t have any cash either.”

It was all new to him, being out without money or cards or phone, none of his insulation against the world. Or shoes, but I think they were symbolic. I thought he was enjoying it, even: relaxing a little, now that there didn’t appear to be big dangerous bird-men at our backs. Dumping his problems in my lap, waiting to see if I was outfaced. Waiting to be treated, right now. That would be new too, having a girl pay for him.

I flipped out my own purse with one hand, reached the other into my back pocket and said, “No problem. I always carry a spare.”

I did, it was true. With two cards you can pick up an ill-prepared stranger, see a stricken friend safe, run in company. Lose your purse or leave your jacket behind and still get home, so long as you’ve still got your trousers.

So I equipped Jacey and hustled him through, stood him on the escalator – “Moving stairs, remember these? You just stand still, and they take you where you need to go” – and stood myself on the step behind him, my hands on his shoulders and my eyes checking behind us where I knew he couldn’t see.

He said, “So where are we going?”

“Down, sweetheart. Then on a train. It’s a special kind of train, it runs under the streets, and when we come up we’ll be in a different part of London, it’s like magic.”

“Seriously. Where are we
going?
”

Here was the bottom of the escalator. I left my hands on his shoulders and steered him from behind and found that I was quite enjoying this too. Not least because it meant I could avoid the question, at least until we were on the right platform; and then the train came and I could do more steerage, through the hissing doors and down to an empty pair of seats and squash up together like we used to when we were dating, before the world turned bad.

By then, he’d decided to stop asking and make his own decisions for the pair of us. “Does this train stop at Knightsbridge, or do we need to change? We’ll get off there, and I’ll take you to my parents’ flat. I can be sure you’re safe then, no damn bird is going to come after us when there are three Cathars in residence. Well, actually my mother’s likely out, but Dad will be around and he’s enough. All by himself, he’s enough for anyone.”

He was way too much for me. He always had been. And, “Jacey, love – you’re not concentrating. Your parents are the people I’m running away from. The Corbies are just... messengers. Envoys. Trouble along the way. They’re incidental.”

“No. No, I told you, you’re wrong. Oh, not about the Corbies, but it’s not my parents now. Not any more. I called them off. You
know
that.”

“I’ve heard it. I don’t believe it. Maybe I can’t let myself believe it, after so long being so afraid of what they’d do if they ever caught me. Even if you’re right, even if it’s only that the word hasn’t filtered down yet so everyone still thinks they want me – even then. I couldn’t just walk through their door, even with you. I
can’t.
”

“They’re not that bad,” he said weakly, helpless in the face of my own weakness. “Honestly, they’re not.” They were, though, and he knew it; and shrugged at last, and said, “Well. All right, then. I won’t take you there. So where, then?”

He wasn’t taking me anywhere. I was taking him. If I could trust him. He was still a Cathar, still his father’s son; I eyed him warily, and said, “Can you be good?”

“I’m always good.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” And then, on a deep breath, “Fay – no, sorry. Desi. See, at least I’m trying. Also, take a look at me. I’m barefoot and out with nothing, sitting on a Tube train with wet hair, kind of like a crazy person only cleaner and less shouty. And why am I doing this? I am doing this because my ex-girlfriend came busting into my place an hour ago, looking for protection; and whether there’s actually someone still after her or not, someone thinks there is, and I’ve left him smashing my place up and very likely my garage too, all my precious motors. And why have I done that? Because my ex-girlfriend thought she needed to run, and I thought I needed to go with her, rather than staying to defend my home. I’m not looking for praise or congratulations or anything like that, because of course I did it, because that’s what you do when you care about someone – but yes, I can be good. I’m
being
good. Okay?”

Just for a moment there, I wanted to cry, and hug him, and make all kinds of tender and dangerous promises for later. There was something about the way he said
ex-girlfriend
, and something about
when you care
, and the way his voice tore a gulf between them.

But I still had my Aspect on, and it helps to keep me focused. Sometimes I can make like it gives me tunnel vision, I can use that.

So I just said, “What, you think you could take the Corbies?”

And he said, “Honey, I
know
I can take the Corbies. Eventually. Whatever they are, they’re made men; I was born to this.”

He was a Power, he meant, the son of Powers, and for a little bit I wanted to believe him. Then I remembered Asher, and how he’d died. I said, “You’re not immortal. Not even you. It might be smart to remember that.”
It’s smart to run.
And then, “And don’t get all high and mighty about crazy people. Not here, not now.”

“Why not?”

“Because of where we’re going. Where I’m taking you.” I’d made the decision, apparently. Perhaps there had never really been a decision to be made, only a foregone conclusion to be recognised. A conversation to be had. “I do know you can be good, so – yeah. You do that, be good, and don’t ask too many questions. I don’t suppose you can hide who you are, but – well, don’t trumpet it about, okay?”

“Oh, great. You mean I get to sit through someone else telling me how my family are barbaric shitheads and should all be done away with? And me too, because of course it’s all in the genes and I couldn’t be good if I tried?”

“No,” I said, “that’s not what I meant,” though I did think at least half of it was true, and where we were going most people would vote for the other half too, just to be safe. Safer. “It’s not about you or even your family, so much as the whole Overworld. You’re just a symbol. I’m afraid you’ll have to live with that today; but keep your mouth shut and your ears open, maybe you’ll learn something that’ll make it easier to be good later.” Later and for the rest of his life. He could rewrite family traditions and make the Cathar name something to be proud of, rather than something to be feared.

Meantime he didn’t look any too happy, and I couldn’t blame him. I hadn’t really thought before, how much it must grind you down if half the people you know spend half their time talking about how evil your family is. Even if they don’t do it to your face. Small wonder if he chose to spend his time with the other half. I might not have noticed when we were together, when I was young enough that everything about him was bright and shiny and immaculate, but the people he hung with weren’t the best advertisement for the Powers in their new generation. Playboys and party girls, rich and loud and frivolous and heedless: oh, it was fun while it lasted, but all that superficial glitz and glamour was founded on a grimmer reality that I was too slow to see. Now I thought maybe he’d been deliberately trying not to see it either. If that meant that his own behaviour only bolstered his family’s reputation –
Jacey Cathar? He’s just like all the rest, he doesn’t give a shit
– then so be it. He could at least pretend not to hear the whispers that followed him from restaurant to nightclub to party, not to care what was said openly, just a little lower down the social scale.