Chasing the Dragon by Justina Robson Page B

Otopia had ever seen anything like it before.
    Lila's mind skipped back uneasily to the day years ago when she
had followed Zal into the woods to watch him tripping out in an elemental frenzy. Aside from the sheer weirdness of witnessing that odd
event, there'd been a ghost present. It was a large forest spirit of the
kind that experts liked to refer to as Archetypal, as if that helped. In
the form of a stag it had crept up on the flipped-out Zal and put its
nose against his hand. When ghosts touched living beings bad things
happened. For elves, their entire form was susceptible to being consumed, and Zal had lost some of his hand. Now the fundamental
bizarreness of it struck home. The outline of his hand had remained,
but it was like it was glass and the contents had been vacuumed out.
But an elf was blood and bones, as well as aether. What had happened
there? She could kick herself for not paying more attention.
    And then there was her own close encounter with a thing like that.
It was before she was this cyborg Lila. Far away in Alfheim, when she
was just an overexcited assistant to a diplomat, thinking she was getting into the daring world of espionage.... Anyway, in the forests there she'd got caught by the infinitely more experienced and cunning
elf secret service. They'd tied her and her "fixer," Vincent, and left
them in the dark at the edge of their camp, apparently unguarded,
though she was too much involved with the conviction she was about
to die to bother trying an escape. And then, at some point in her terrified reverie she'd felt the bitter chill and the unmistakable icy touch
of a ghost approach. There was movement in the pitch darkness,
bushes moving, twigs snapping, and some sharp cries in incomprehensible Elvish that had let her know she'd had a guard all right, and now
it was running off in terror. An eldritch flicker illumined the ground
for a second or two. Screams then and Vincent shoving at her, getting
to his feet, starting to run blind into the woods. She was too slow. She
hit a tree. She fell over. There was the singing note of an arrow over
her head, a thump, an outbreath and she knew Vincent was dead. It
was her first day in Alfheim. Her first day at being a spy.

    Brushing aside the memories that wanted to swamp her anew with
their horror she realised that their guard had been the one attacked by
the ghost, if attack was the right word. She knew nothing else about
it. Zal had recovered quite easily from his incident and she'd never
asked any details. Now the only people she could interview about her
own experience were the remaining members of the Elf spy band, and
she had no idea who they were, but surely someone in Alfheim knew
something about ghosts? Sarasilien, she thought ... and then remembered he was gone. She was in his place. Time she checked out what
he'd left her more closely.
    But first ...
    "Hey." She followed Malachi to the far edge of the cordon, where
he was making a call back to the office. "What's got you freaking out?"
Fey didn't concern themselves overly with ghosts, and as far as she
knew faery didn't really experience many of them.
    He finished talking and closed the call. "That was Greer. We're to
see the rest and head back. He's gonna let the juniors keep an eye on things." For once he met her gaze and his lips made an unhappy shape
as he thought over what he was about to say. His seriousness was almost
enough to make her smile. "The last time I saw the Fleet I was standing
on the deck of a Hunter ship out in the Void. They ran from it. And I
keep hearing ..." He paused, and his discomfort became acute on his
face. "The damn thing haunts me. I don't know why. Ever since I was
out there. It's got something to do with the three sisters." He made a
warding sign as he mentioned the Fates "The middle sister was in the
admiral's boat with Zal. She's the one fished him out of the Void before
he was killed, just like she's the one using