For the moment, Horse at least was going to run, and I was going to ride him. That was easy. We were going where he took me; that was easy too.
We knew we were being spied on. Nothing we could do about it, here and now. Easy, then.
Thom was hot in my hand. That... would probably not be so easy later, but it was easy enough right now. Even without my Aspect, I have asbestos fingers. He was dialling back the energy anyway, calming down, thinking things through. Not burning me. Not even trying to. I could probably put him in my pocket safely, but – nah. I didn’t want to. There’s attentive, and there’s dismissive, and even if he couldn’t tell from inside the case it did still matter. It mattered to me.
Which made it a little awkward, what came next. What had to come next.
Which was when I reached into my pocket with my other hand – trusting Horse to keep me on his back, pretty much; but he’d done well so far, and this wasn’t a hellride through the undiscovered landscape of his mind, just an amble up into the hills; we’d been found already, so there was no point in hurrying, once we’d set the bad land behind us – and took out my phone.
Not my own phone, of course, that was slimed and bemired somewhere under London, but never mind. Back when we’d started dating, Jacey had never let me load his number into memory. “Don’t outsource your mind, Fay. What if you lose your phone, and need to call me? It’s you that needs to know my number, in your own memory. Learn it and punch it in, every damn time.”
So I always did that, and I could still do it. His own mobile was lost, of course, in the same mess; his flat had been invaded and I had no idea where he’d be by now; but he’s tech-savvy, is Jacey, geek from his fingertips to his machine-readable QR code tattoo, not so much linked in as plumbed in, hook line and kitchen sync. One way or another, he’d have his system up and running, he’d be online and available.
So I rang the old number, the landline to the flat. He was safe to have some kind of uplink, some virtual voicemail accessible from anywhere, that at least.
In fact, the number didn’t even ring. A calm reliable-sounding robot told me that my call was being transferred; I pictured my voice being tossed across London from aerial to aerial in pursuit of my wandering man. Never mind that I hadn’t actually said anything yet, I’m a simple girl and that’s the way I saw it.
What I heard was a hush, a muted buzz, a couple of clicks and then a soft purring kind of ring before finally Jacey said hullo.
He sounded a little cautious, a little curious: sans his usual data, not knowing who was calling. Not of course recognising this number.
“Jay, it’s me.”
Nobody else had ever called him Jay. That had been a treasure once; it was a security blanket now. I’d spoiled it a little by using the same name for Jordan, but we could sort that out. Later. Too busy now.
I heard his indrawn breath; I think I heard him blink; I heard him catch one name on his tongue and use another. “Desi. What’s happening?”
“Lots. Where are you?”
“At my parents’ flat.”
“Can they hear you?”
“No.”
“Good.” He had his own suite: bedroom, bathroom, lounge. He didn’t need a kitchen, he didn’t know how to open a tin. When he wanted to eat, he went out. It’s a rich-kid thing. “So, is your own place...?”
“Trashed? Yes.”
“And the cars?”
“And the cars. Everything.”
“Oh, lord. I’m sorry, Jay.” I didn’t need to say
It’s my fault,
that was evident.
“Ah, what the hell. I get to start again.” He sounded the wrong kind of determined, trying to force himself through the loss and the shock of it. It was what we did, I guess. Probably what everybody does, only it comes more easily to some. Or else some just have more practice. “So where are you, and what’s up?”
“I... came north.” And I was still being natively cagey, but there really wasn’t any point. We’d been found already. So I bit back a question,
Is this a secure line?
– of course it was, it was Jacey’s line; he’d have all the security of a government agency, just for the hell of it, because he could – and instead said, “Hang on a sec.”
If I tucked Thom’s lighter between my two smallest fingers and my palm, I could hold that safely and the phone too, which freed my right hand to stab at keys while my legs held on to Horse. I hoped.
It seemed to work. I didn’t fall, at least, and a minute later, “I’ve sent you the GPS. Can you get here?”
Without your cars, without your bikes
– I didn’t want him to think it was his transport that had me calling him, though it was halfway true, maybe.
“I’ll find a way.” For a moment, he almost sounded amused. Of course he’d find a way; golden boys always do. He didn’t even say
Why should I?
– apparently I was still allowed to take him for granted. “What do I need to bring with me?”
“I don’t know. Just the wheels, maybe. Oz is onto us, but...” But what?
But I think we can hold out till you get here?
I had no cause to claim that, it was only a hope, and a threadbare one at that.
“Us?” he said.
“Um. Yeah.” Me and the original white horse, and a fire-spirit in a Zippo. I said, “Can you hurry?” I’d offer to meet him halfway, only I didn’t think Horse’s ways were known to GPS. I thought we’d slide past each other like two ships in fog, just lethally out of phase.
“Sweetheart, I am hurrying. The only way I could hurry faster would be if I stopped talking to you, and started talking to someone else. Which I will do, as soon as we’re done. Are we done?”
“I guess.” Actually I wanted to talk him all the way here, like a traffic controller talking down a pilot – but that was Fay wishing for the comfort of his voice, and Desi couldn’t afford it. Desi was busy.
Desi hung up and put her phone away and looked about her.
Was that first hint of dawn, on the horizon? It had to be, surely; not even this night could last for ever. Even so, I couldn’t see much beyond that milky stain where it leaked upward into the sky. Light should be more use than that, I felt. I missed my Aspect badly; I’d grown used to it, I guess, and felt pretty much useless without it. Dependent. I didn’t like that, but there wasn’t much I could do. You either have night sight or you don’t, and simple human, unenhanced? Simply doesn’t.
Not this human, anyway. I didn’t worry where we were going – Horse’s eyeless sockets found his way for him, and I just went along for the ride – but I did worry what might be out there round about us, waiting to strike. We knew there was something keeping an eye out, holding a watching brief, but that was only the beginning.
My eyes were useless for the moment and Horse wasn’t communicative, intent on his own purpose, just moving – it occurred to me that he only had two states, moving and not-moving, no middle ground between them; moving might be purpose enough, until he came to ground somewhere he chose not to move from – but the two of us weren’t on our own any more.
Zippo lighters are cool by definition, but any fool can buy one. If you want to look anything better than a fool with a cool toy, you need to earn it. You need to
own
it.
I’ve never smoked – Fay never did, and Desi was too smart to start – but I can still play cool with the tools of the art. I danced that lighter between my fingers, flicked it open with my thumb, went to spin the wheel and of course didn’t need to, because of course there was Thom making with his own dance, bright on the wick in the little windproof chimney. Not that he need bother about the wind. Not that any Zippo ever had burned with so bright a flame as his, as him.
Not that we needed to worry about his visible spark, when we were being tracked already.
I said, “Hey. Want to take a look around? I can’t see a thing, and Horse just sees his own path.”
I said
take a look around.
I meant
use your eyes, your fire eyes, your brightsight
. I could have held him up like a girl at a concert with a thousand others, swaying to the beat, waving our little flames like a prayer to whatever gods we hoped for, that they would grant whatever wish we dared.
He took off like a rocket from a bottle, like a firework shedding sparks. Like a stupid damn sprite who didn’t know what was out there, who thought he was invulnerable, immortal. Safe.
I could have shrieked. I might have shrieked.
Okay, I shrieked.
What’s the point in being cool, if others are idiotic?
I didn’t yell his name after him into the night, I’m not that stupid. No point trying yet harder to draw down trouble, if by some fluke it hadn’t noticed us yet, or hadn’t hung around to watch our course.
Conversely, though, there was small point trying to hide with Thom dancing bright patterns in the dark like a firefly with jets, like a self-propelled bullet zooming hither and yon, leaving an after-image that burned behind the eyes like a signature, like a gloat.
I hadn’t known he could do that. Fly, I mean, of his own volition, with nothing to ride on and nothing to burn. I wondered why anybody ever caught him – but hell, there are fly-traps, fly-paper. Cages. Skins and feathers, dead birds stuffed and displayed. Flying things get caught all the time.
We waited, Horse and I – or at least I stayed sat where I was, on his back, and he kept moving, waiting in motion – until Thom came back to us. And shifted into human form and paced beside us, hot and naked and laughing in the dawn breeze, and said, “Nothing that I can find, nobody about. Where are we?”
“Here.” I thought Horse was always
here
, it was the land that changed about him. “And somebody’s out there, somewhere: and now they know just exactly where here is. It’s called tracer for a reason, Thom.”
“I don’t – oh. Yes, I do. Sorry, didn’t think.”
Well, no. Somewhere in the world maybe there are fire-spirits who work at a slow smoulder and aren’t mercurial at all, who are soul-scorchingly thorough and think things through intensively until there’s nothing left of them but ash on the carpet and a discarded slipper still with a foot inside it. Maybe there are. I’ve never met one, though, and Thom for sure has never been one.
“Flibbertigibbet,” I said. He laughed again, and matched Horse stride for stride. I didn’t offer him a ride in the lighter, and he didn’t ask for it. I don’t suppose he’d liked being pent up in there, and I did like to have him in the corner of my eye.
Three out of two’s not bad
. Any suggestion that our army had suddenly and visibly grown larger was as spurious as the notion that he could find any safety in a Zippo, but still. A girl could fancy that she had support, as well as wheels. Heels. Hooves. Whatever.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
H
EAT RISES.
I could feel his from here, smell the scorch of him on the air like one of those space heaters that bars put outside for the benefit of smokers, keep them warm while they indulge.
Horses also rise; they have an irresistible fondness for heights. This one took us up and up, until here we were on the high moors, and the sun – which also rises – gave us long views down the valley to the smokestacks and beyond.
I guess Horse was done with moving for a while. At any rate he stopped, in an absolute kind of sense. Of course I didn’t kick my heels into his ribs, or click my tongue at him, or any other impertinence; it wouldn’t have made any difference if I had. This was it, we were here, and he’d stopped.
He barely gave me time to slide off, before he lay down and settled onto the turf.
Into the turf.
This was more rugged ground than he had come from, tussocks and bogs with no chalk beneath, but even so. He showed up pretty well, I thought. And wondered what they might think down the valley, if anybody actually lifted their heads to look, to see the great symbol etched on a hillside that really was not there yesterday evening. Then I wondered the opposite thing about the valley that we’d left, but actually it wasn’t the same. He might not be there right now, but people would still see a design cut into a ridge. They wouldn’t see the emptiness of it, meaningless in absence.
Actually, unless they were up bright and early, people in this neighbourhood wouldn’t see anything either. Here came a fog, handy and right on cue, billowing up the valley like a puff of pollution from inexhaustible chimneys somewhere further, out of sight. I watched it swamp the shadowed refinery like milk clouding coffee. Even the chimney-flares blurred and disappeared, not fierce enough to cut through that dense determined blanket.
As I watched, it filled the valley from one high ridge to the other, and kept on coming. I reached out a hand for my own splendid chimney-flare, and didn’t need to look around to find him. I could do that by heat alone, my open palm a detector. I could have found him in a coal mine without a torch, except that he’d probably set a coal mine ablaze just by being there.
His fingers closed over mine with the kind of impulsive contentment that I didn’t know I’d missed until here it was again. Thom had always been like that, it’s why he was so easy to set up and – as it turned out – so hard to let down. He wasn’t like a child grabbing sweets, exactly; just uncomplicated, and prepared to take joy where he found it. Which, between Jacey and Jordan – oh, Lord, yes. Yes,
please
.