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

put her back, we can’t fall asleep here with her like that,’ Lila said, using her AI to subvert all her natural
     reactions and replace them with steady confidence. Above all she had to get out of that moment and move into the next. Any
     movement would do, so she wouldn’t have to ask Teazle if he was going now, if Zal was going now, if there was nothing left
     to keep them there now that the bond was broken. It helped not a bit that the two men seemed far less affected, almost as
     if it happened every day.
    She got up and went to stand over Xavi, wondering if she really was asleep or was pretending. The thing about Xavi was that
     she was new to them, and a daughter of someone they had learned to be far from the simple elf he had made out to be. They
     didn’t know her or what she was capable of.
    Teazle looked over at Xaviendra. In the light of his eyes they were all able to see her clearly but she made no move to indicate
     she was anything other than unconscious. Her mouth was open and she was snoring lightly. ‘I don’t trust her,’ Teazle said,
     his tone much less drunk and more thoughtful than had seemed possible a short while ago.
    ‘Having your life threatened by someone can do that to you,’ Lila said.
    ‘No, it isn’t that,’ the demon smiled. ‘She’s no threat to me whatever she may have thought. I can’t pin down what bothers
     me but I feel bothered, when I look at the two of you and her with you. On the surface we know her story but only what she
     has chosen to tell. It’s what she hasn’t said that itches my spirit.’
    ‘Think she’s dangerous?’ Zal asked.
    ‘Of course,’ Teazle replied.
    Zal frowned and his expression was very sad. ‘She is a creation of avery bad moment in elven history. Possibly the sole survivor of that time.’
    ‘All the shadowkin come from that time, though, right?’ Lila asked.
    ‘Yes,’ Zal said, ‘but the ones alive today, including me, are the descendants of the originals and a lot of us are half-breeds
     or some mix of shadow and light. She looks so young.’
    ‘Heh, and not like a badass raptor on speed either,’ Teazle said, referring to the Saaqaa, shadowkin elves who had been spawned
     far from their geneline and who were less elf and more of what they had been forcibly crossed with.
    Of those beings who had provided the non-elf material nobody was able to say very much, because they knew nothing about it.
     Xaviendra was the only one who would know, and she had stolidly refused to speak of it. This was one of the reasons for her
     permanent imprisonment within the containment of the maximum security cells at the Agency. They wanted her where they could
     see her, close at hand.
    Lila repressed a shiver. ‘She can hear you.’
    ‘I don’t care,’ the demon said. ‘I’d say it to her face.’
    But to Lila it seemed unfair, as if they were talking behind her back. At the same time, she felt an unerring curiosity prompting
     her to demand answers from Xavi while her conscious mind was apparently incapacitated and thus unable to stop her from replying.
    Zal beat her to it in any case. ‘Xaviendra,’ he said. ‘At the time you were made, what did they use to change you?’
    Xavi replied with a piglike snort and rolled onto her back, sending bottles rolling and chinking. ‘Elementals,’ she said.
     ‘And ektaluni.’ Here she used a word that none of them knew.
    ‘What’s that?’ Teazle asked.
    ‘Primal spirits,’ Xavi said.
    ‘Where from?’ Lila tried to get more information as this wasn’t helpful.
    ‘Phantoms,’ Xavi replied with the exaggerated patience of someone explaining basic material to lazy students. ‘They are a
     form of ghost, but a form generated by the application of disciplined and focused consciousness to the raw aether of the Void
     rather than random accretions formed by the natural processes of mnemonic evolution within the nonmaterial planes.’
    Teazle made a face. ‘Demons are made in a similar way