Down to the Bone: Quantum Gravity Book Five by Justina Robson

short-wave radio was more than enough.
    The yurt interior had been tidied. Of the ocean of empties there was no sign, and the icebox had its lid back in place; the
     faeries had been in and cleaned up. Zal was sitting on the rug where she had left him, his fingers moving on the pattern in
     a piano action. He was wearing his headphones and his eyes were closed.
    Lila sat down beside him, without disturbing him. The headphones tracked his hands. She guessed from the movements that he
     was playing a replica of Mozart’s piano – a favourite of his recently – though he hated using the virtual instruments as there
     was no feedback to his hands. After a moment he opened one eye and slid the ’phones off one ear.
    ‘Trouble?’
    ‘Yes, of course, what else?’ she said. ‘Xaviendra’s father’s back. With a robot sidekick. And a conspiracy theory. At least,
     I think that’s what it was.’
    He nodded, as if this happened every day. ‘Oh yeah? What do they want?’
    ‘I get the impression they want me to help them against something big and scary. They have a stick, which is that they’re
     already in my offices pursuing me like a pair of mad aunts. And they have a carrot, which is maybe finding out that Sarasilien’s
     sticky fingers were in all our pies. And he’s maybe here to create one big pie. For some reason.’
    ‘Carrot pie?’ Zal wrinkled his nose, rabbitish. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
    Put like that her analysis sounded crazy. She smiled. ‘I’m glad I learned to analyse so clearly from you, oh master. Anyway.
     Zal, do you know where Friday is?’
    Now he took the headphones off entirely and looked at her with both eyes.
    Friday was a golem. Zal had created him, accidentally, when he got stranded in Zoomenon, the dimension of the elements. Friday,
     rudimentary as he was, had saved Zal from disintegration by hauling him through Voidspace to the Fleet. But the reason Lila
     mentioned him now, the only reason he was important, was because his clay was embedded with the bones of the long dead. They
     had been murdered in the experiments when the Shadowkin had been created. They were the ones who didn’t survive to become
     the elves’ weapon against the terror Xavi named as ‘the sleeper within’. Besides the bones Fridayheld the remnants of their spirits and voices. Ignorant of this at first Zal had brought him to Otopia and used him as a
     hatstand and general prop. Lila hadn’t seen him since Zal’s last concert when the golem had stood on the stage as part of
     the set. Since Friday couldn’t be moved against his will she’d assumed it was okay.
    The only other thing Lila remembered about Friday was that the faeries had wanted to lose him. They said he was a chalice,
     a grail. They had been very interested in that. She would have asked Malachi now but he wasn’t there.
    Zal’s dark aura bloomed suddenly and made the room seem brilliant. It drew shadows towards him, as if they were comforters.
     Lila had to work for a moment not to start and recoil. This was new to her, new to him; she even saw his own surprise and
     they shared a look in which each silently acknowledged their discomfort. They were strangers in their own skins these days.
    Zal reached out and took her hand. She watched her fingers darken, her wrist submerge into the blue-black tinge halfway to
     the elbow. She couldn’t feel it, only the gentle pressure of his fingers and thumb as he stroked her knuckles. ‘I left him
     behind.’ She knew that he meant he had left Friday in the past, on the day they’d gone to Faeryland and thought they’d be
     back in under a week. Fifty years ago.
    ‘Yeah, but where?’ She slid close to him and they leaned on each other. She put her head on his shoulder and wriggled until
     she could rest half across him, ear flat to the top of his chest. He stroked her hair and she listened to the strange sigh
     of his heart.
    ‘At the Folly,’ he said. ‘In the basement.’
    She