Lady of Misrule (Marla Mason Book 8)

by T. A. Pratt

  “That’s exactly why she should never have been made chief sorcerer,” Marla said. “Ignoring everything south of the river? Gods.”

  “To be fair, didn’t you ignore everything north of the river when you ran things?” Bradley said.

  Marla scowled. “Yeah, but those rich fucks can take care of themselves, and anyway, they had the Chamberlain looking out for them, chasing disobedient ghosts out of their attics and keeping succubi from seducing bi-curious debutantes. The rest of the city needs help.”

  “It’s been bad since you left,” Perren said. “But none of us had the power to oust the Chamberlain. You need a unanimous vote to kick out a sitting ruler, and she had Langford in her pocket completely, and the Bay Witch, too, for some reason – something about owing her a favor?”

  “Do a solid for the Bay Witch, and she’ll do one for you,” Marla said. “Even if it’s something like ‘never vote against anything I want to do ever.’ So the best you could hope for in any vote was a deadlock, and in a tie, the chief sorcerer gets her way. First among equals, right?”

  Perren nodded. “That’s when the Chamberlain even bothered to bring a vote before the council, instead of just doing what she wanted. Not good times.”

  “Ha. And then Nicolette showed up, and times got even worse. How the hell did a head in a birdcage take over the whole city?”

  Perren made a face. “She came in with heavy muscle, this guy Squat? Magic just bounces off the guy, he’s invulnerable. He’s about as subtle as a chainsaw murder at a shopping mall, too, but he gets things done. Somehow Nicolette got to Langford, I don’t know how – blackmail or black magic or simple persuasion. They flipped a few lieutenants to their side and kidnapped the Chamberlain, locked her up in the Blackwing Institute. Some of her people tried to stage a rescue, and Squat....”

  “How many of them did he eat?” Marla said.

  Perren’s eyes widened. “Only one. The others got the message and backed off. Do you know Squat?”

  “He used to work for me, but Nicolette recruited him. Seems like a not uncommon approach for Nicolette. I’m not sure how she does it. She’s not exactly charming.”

  “She’s not that, but she’s brave and audacious. With the Chamberlain gone, Hamil stepped up as chief sorcerer, but Nicolette got to him somehow, too, I don’t know how – only that it’s not mind control.”

  “How the hell,” Marla said. “Hamil is with Nicolette? Willingly?”

  Perren nodded. “Maybe under duress – I don’t know. He elevated Nicolette to his old position on the council, and then voted to let her take his place. We resisted, of course, but apparently Hamil had a favor to call in with the Bay Witch, too, so she voted. That was Hamil, the Bay Witch, and Langford on her side, so...” Perren shrugged. “Apparently that kind of voluntary transfer of power doesn’t need to be unanimous? Or so the bylaws say. Procedural shit. What was I supposed to do then? Resign in protest? Nicolette can’t be killed – we figured that out pretty quickly – and Squat can get to anybody. They are not people you want for enemies. Well, maybe you do, but I don’t. I figured I’d go along to get along, look for a chance to take control of the council myself, and make things sane again.”

  “Yeah, how’s that working out?” Marla said.

  “Well, the thing is... It’s only been a couple of weeks, but... Nicolette is doing a great job.”

  Rondeau couldn’t help it: he groaned. Pelham looked as alert as a rabbit in the presence of a wolf, and Bradley seemed to be holding his breath.

  Marla’s voice was low and utterly uninflected. “What.”

  Perren shrugged. “She just... she’s got it down. The changes are already obvious, and the plans she’s set in motion are going to pay off in a big way. Look, my territory is the inner city, you know? The place my gang comes from, my people. Drug use has plummeted. There haven’t been any murders. None, not drug-related, not personal grudge related, not even being-an-asshole related. Thieving is way down, burglary too, even vandalism. Services are being offered, and my people are actually taking advantage of them. Everyone’s just happier. It’s like a balance has shifted in the city. I’m hearing similar reports from elsewhere, the other at-risk neighborhoods. Government grants that have been held up for years are coming through. Ancient grievances are being sorted out. It’s like... all the things that used to work against each other are just working together now. Stuff that used to clash is running smoothly now.”

  “Tyranny,” Marla said. “Despotism. Fascism. Right? Everyone behaves well when there’s an iron boot on their neck.”

  “I admit, Nicolette came in hard,” Perren said. “She was all murder all the time and we figured we were in for nightmare times going forward. But once Nicolette took the big chair, I don’t know, it’s like something in her changed. She started making deals, giving people what they wanted, and even better, what they needed. She asked my advice, and she took it. She couldn’t be more different from the Chamberlain.”

  “This is bullshit,” Marla said, voice still flat. “She can’t run things well. It’s not possible. Chaos witches can’t run cities any more than dogs can play piano. She’s a fucking head in a cage!”

  “She’s got a body now,” Rondeau said. “Actually several, I think.”

  Marla glared at him, and he shrugged and looked away.

  Perren spread her hands. “I don’t know how to explain it. I agree, from everything I know about Nicolette, she should be awful at this job, but she does it like she was born to and trained for leadership.”

  Marla sank back into her seat. “How long before we get where we’re going? I want to see this amazing enlightened philosopher-queen for myself.”

  “Not long,” Perren said. “We can –”

  “Shut up then,” Marla said. “I need to think.”

  Your thinking looks a whole lot like brooding, Rondeau thought, but sure as hell didn’t say.

  “Okay,” Marla said after a while. “Pelly and Rondeau, you guys are going to get out of town.”

  “You don’t want our help?” Rondeau said.

  She shrugged. “I’ve got B, and no offense, Rondeau, but anything you can do, he can do better.”

  “He’s had more time to learn how to use our powers,” Rondeau said. “I’ll get there.”

  “Given how little you practice, I don’t think you’re ever going to make it to Carnegie Hall. You guys could certainly be helpful, but Nicolette’s demonstrated a willingness to use you as leverage, so let’s take that tool out of her box, okay? Besides, you should get back to Vegas.”

  “Uh,” Rondeau said. “There’s this big demon, see, and – “

  Marla shook her head. “That’s all taken care of. The Pit Boss has agreed to pay you a fair rate for taking over your interest in the casino, and he’s giving you back the rest of your shit.”

  Rondeau grinned. “Marla. Really? I’m rich again? I like being rich.”

  “It’s occasionally useful for me to have a rich guy who owes me favors. You might not want to hang out in Las Vegas, though. Take your money from the Pit Boss and then go to San Francisco. Sanford Cole will set you up someplace. Try not to do anything apocalyptically stupid in his city, all right?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Mrs. Mason,” Pelham said, “I would very much like to remain here to assist you. What Nicolette has done...” He winced, clearly skirting too close to the boundaries of his magical restrictions. “You might need all the help you can get.”

  “I need you to keep Rondeau out of trouble, Pelly. Do a better job this time, all right? Perren, tell Beadle to pull over and let them out – they can make their way from here.”

  “You’re the boss.” Perren’s tone was only mildly ironic.

  “Damn right,” Marla said. “The once and future boss.”

  Marzi in Conversation

  After Marla and Bradley left, Marzi did her best to get right back to real life, but somehow washing dishes or doing laundry or setting up the Kickstarter campa
ign for the next print collection of her webcomic seemed less necessary or compelling than usual, what with all the world-saving she’d just done.

  “Damn it.” She closed her laptop and went to the little round window, looking down at the street.

  “What’s up?” Jonathan said from the bed, where he was sitting surrounded by books festooned with bookmarks. He was working on an essay for an art studies journal – he hadn’t entirely given up his academic side for the fast-paced world of café ownership.

  “You remember after we defeated the Outlaw, how for a while afterward, everything seemed, I don’t know...”

  “Drab, washed out, grayscale, or maybe sepia at best?”

  She nodded.

  “Yup,” he said. “Being flooded with adrenaline, having crazy focus, even magic I guess, it all makes for heightened reality, and after that goes away, everything seems a little bit flattened for a while. There’s probably a name for the phenomenon, but if you want to know what it is, you should’ve shacked up with a psychologist instead.” He rose and went to her, putting his arms around her waist and resting his head on her shoulder, so they were both looking out the little window at the dark street. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that alone today. If I’d had any idea, I would’ve stayed here. I wish I could’ve met this Marla character. She sounds like something else.”

  “She’s that, all right,” Marzi said. “Well, it’s all over now.”

  “Do you miss it?” he said. “You want to get back into monster-fighting? You said Marla gave you a number you could call, if you want to find out about... all that stuff. Frankly it scares the shit out of me even thinking about it, but you know I support you in whatever you want to do. If that means you want to become a wizard or something, well, okay. I’ve never made out with a wizard before. It’d be a new one for the life list.”

  “I don’t know. It seems like making that call would be like dropping a bomb on my life, for maybe no good reason.” But if learning about magic could make her as self-assured and effortlessly badass as Marla, wouldn’t that be pretty amazing? Except she’d seen Marla as the Stranger, and the Stranger was not exactly a happy archetype. Being a brooding, damaged loner, at home nowhere in the world, always drifting – that went with the job, didn’t it? Was it better to have a big life that was full of potentially awful things as well as awesome ones, or a little life that was mostly good?

  Usually her life didn’t feel too small for her. She had imaginary worlds in her head at all times, after all. But now the real world was starting to seem weirder than any fantasy realm, a sensation she hadn’t experienced in years. “I think I shouldn’t make any major decisions right after trapping an extradimensional monster in an imaginary desert behind a nonexistent door in the storage room of my café. Probably I’m not entirely in my right mind.”

  “So how’s that different from any other day?” Jonathan said.

  She elbowed him in the gut, and pretty soon, they went to bed, and a while after that, they went to sleep.

  •

  Her dreams, predictably, were terrible.

  That sky-spanning serpent of shadow was back, but now it rippled over a desert landscape, gliding above pyramids and towers of silence and temples carved out of cliff rock.

  The perspective shifted and Marzi was looking down through the shadow creature’s... not eyes, obviously, but some analogous sensory apparatus. She flew closer to the sand, where a scurrying rodent darted for safety, and then enveloped the animal, all the poor creature’s organic material broken down and transformed into a sort of delicious-to-inhale vapor. Feeling stronger, she flew on, devouring a hare, a snake, and even a cactus next. Flying faster, she spiraled up to the heights, looking down for juicier targets. A pride – no, a riddle – of sphinges crouched together, belying their solitary reputations, gnawing on what looked like severed human legs, complete with gold ankle bracelets, except the legs were covered with black hair like a dog’s. The jackal-men, Marzi thought distantly, but the tentative sort of body she was now inhabiting or riding-along with took no notice of her comment. At least she wasn’t sharing the thing’s thoughts, if it even had any.

  She glided down to the sphinges, but they snarled and swiped and little whirlwinds of fire rose from the sand, making the shadow creature shy away. She moved on in search of easier prey, and eventually found a pack of jackal-men slouching toward one of their pyramids. She waited, watching, until one of them fell behind the others, distracted by a wounded foot – or paw, or whatever. Then the shadow dropped, and engulfed the jackal-man, the gold jewelry it wore tinkling to the sand when its tissues and bones and teeth were consumed. Then the shadow moved on, chasing after the others, feeling faster stronger better more real, adapted to this new place somehow now. The jackal-men raced into the pyramid and tried to roll a stone across the opening, but the shadow twisted and squeezed thread-thin and slithered through the gap, pursuing the howling jackal-men down torch-lit stone corridors. Hungering, satiated, hungering again, always chasing the next bite of reality –

  Marzi sat up in bed, gasping, and Jonathan groaned and rolled over but didn’t wake. She glanced at the clock. Just past midnight – she’d been asleep for less than an hour. She got out of bed, shivering – the nights were getting cool, and like most houses in this part of California, her place didn’t have much in the way of insulation. That dream was just typical anxiety crap, right? It wasn’t necessarily what Bradley called “one of those dreams” –

  NOOOOOOO

  An anguished syllable tore through her head, and she dropped, gasping, to her knees. It was a cold, alien, but familiar voice – the voice of the scorpion oracle.

  Something was wrong. She had to get to the door, the door that had disappeared, but which she instinctively knew had returned. She got to her feet, glanced at Jonathan, and decided not to wake him. He was wonderful, he was her rock, but this was not his territory. Like it or not, this was her problem to solve, and bringing him into it would just give her something else to worry about. She was, apparently, the goddamned sheriff in this town.

  Marzi grabbed her cap pistol and put it in the pocket of her robe, then went down the outside stairs in her slippers, letting herself into the café through the back door under the stairs. She stepped into the Teatime Room, trying to use her magical senses to get some idea of what exactly was happening – when her perfectly ordinary senses alerted her to the fact that someone was sitting in her closed and dark café.

  She flipped on the light switch, one hand in the pocket of her robe.

  A man sat at one of the tables, smiling at her. He looked exactly like the sphinx Marla had killed, except he had curly black hair, and one of those ridiculous hipster mustaches, with the ends waxed into curved points. He was dressed like an Old West dandy, in a fine gray suit, and there was a felt John Bull top hat on the table beside him. “Evening, ma’am,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind my making myself comfortable.” He sounded like the sphinx, too. “Sit with me a while, would you?”

  “We’re closed.” Marzi didn’t move.

  “Sit with me, or I’ll eat you now,” he – no, it – said matter-of-factly.

  “How did you get out?” she said.

  “I’ll tell you, if you sit. I’m trying to learn to pass for human. Manners matter, don’t they? Shouldn’t you be more polite?”

  Marzi moved toward it, though everything in her screamed that doing so was like walking toward a wild tiger. She pulled out a chair and lowered herself into the seat, never taking her eyes off the Outsider, or her hand out of the deep robe pocket that held her pistol. “Sure. I’ll be as nice as you are.”

  “Isn’t this better? I just wanted to thank you – before I eat you – for sending me to that wonderful place. It was like a buffet. And the main course! That immense scorpion! I have never felt so real as I do now, even in my home universe.”

  Marzi shook her head, not so much disbelief as unwillingness to believe. The scorpion oracle wasn’t exactly a
friend, but she had certainly saved Marla’s life. “You... there’s no way you ate her. She’s a god.”

  “She was, yes. And all the more delicious for it. Oh, she was too much for me to take on immediately, I admit. My teeth, if you like, were too weak – my jaws could not open wide enough to accommodate her. But there are little spirits beyond that door, and I devoured those first, you see. Then I ate bigger things, like the jackal-headed men. When I was strong enough, I ate the sphinxes, too.”

  “Sphinges,” Marzi said automatically.

  “Quite so.” The Outsider nodded as if she’d made a good point. “I learned a bit about manners from them, actually, even more than I did from the humans I ate before you showed me the way through the door. Sphinges are very sensitive to rudeness, did you know that? I have chosen to adopt that idiosyncrasy. Once I felt sufficiently strong, once I’d grown enough, I tracked that immense arachnid you call a god through her burrows and temples and tunnels. She altered reality in her attempts to escape me – the world over there is so much more malleable than this one. But I watched what she did, and I learned – I am always learning – and soon I could change things there as easily as she did. So I shrank her to something the size of a shrimp and picked her up and popped her into my mouth.” The Outsider leaned across the table and smiled. It had rows of fangs, now, like the sphinx they’d faced beyond the door. “I’ll eat you, of course – why wouldn’t I? But I confess, I won’t enjoy the taste as much as I would have a few days ago. I am a thing that eats gods, now. I have developed a taste for caviar, and you, my dear, are tuna salad at best. I want to eat more gods. I can feel them, out there in the world, like the magnet pulls to iron. I can smell their divinity, like roasting meat on the wind. I just wanted you to know, before I eat you, that you failed. I will eat all the gods of your world, until I become strong enough to eat the rest of you creatures in a single bite, every living thing on this planet. It’s too tedious to think of eating you one at a time – really, it would take years. You should be honored I’m attending to you so personally.” It opened its mouth, showing all those teeth, and its mouth seemed to grow, widening impossibly, and she knew it would soon be big enough to eat her in a gulp.