Dead Reign

by T. A. Pratt

  “Hello, Marla. I like your knife.” The voice was right next to her, closer than should have been possible—she hadn’t sensed anyone sitting next to her, and even immersed in her city sense, she shouldn’t have been that lax.

  “Do I know you?” Marla opened her eyes and gave the stranger a deep look. He was young, handsome, dirty-blond, with that just-out-of-bed messy hairstyle that probably took way more work than Marla’s own ragged shag did. He was dressed in a nice dark suit and blue shirt, classy and not flashy, but he had on a gaudy array of rings, one on each finger, each with a different gleaming gemstone. He smelled like nothing at all, which was part of how he’d managed to sneak up on her.

  “Not intimately,” he said. “Not yet. But you know my work. I’m Death. You can call me Mr. Death.”

  “I used to know a goth kid back in Indiana who called himself Death,” Marla said. “He got run over by a semi. That’s what you’d call a self-fulfilling prophecy. You might want to reconsider your nickname.”

  “Mmm. Why don’t you spare yourself grief and give me your pretty little knife?”

  “Why don’t you take a flying leap off a cliff? Piss off. You’re crowding my space.”

  He put his hand on her wrist. Well, that was that. Touching her was a no-no. She grabbed his hand, intending to put him in a vicious twisting joint-lock that would have him on his knees before her, crying.

  Instead, to her surprise, everything whooshed, and people yelled, and she was looking up at the sky, and she hurt. She sat up—pretty fast, all things considered, thanks to her old friend adrenaline—and realized she’d been thrown from the bench, and crashed into the low wall on the far side of the walkway. How had he thrown her? How had he gotten any leverage, sitting beside her? He was still lounging on the bench, cool as you please, and most of the passersby had taken off running, which was a reasonable response to sudden violence. Guess he’s a sorcerer. Why couldn’t new guys in town ever just introduce themselves? They all had something to prove. Marla stood up. “Bad move, out-of-towner,” she said. “I turn people like you into compost.” She launched herself toward him, spitting out a spell of deflection as she went, so if he cast another spell, it would bounce off her and back to him. He didn’t move, and she leapt, ready to deliver a kick—with her magically reinforced steel-toed boots, no less—to his face.

  He was up and out of the way faster than she could see, and before she even landed she reached into her pocket for the little vial of hummingbird blood she’d kept there. She crushed the vial, blood and glass stinging her hand, and all the light around her subtly blue-shifted as her metabolism and subjective time sense sped up a hundredfold. She couldn’t spend too much time in this state—the crash after extended use made coming off crystal meth seem gentle—but for now, it should make her an unstoppable fighting machine, faster than any other primate alive. She spun, and Mr. Death was lounging by the low wall behind her. Fast, but she was certainly faster. She raced toward him, ready to deliver a punch that, at this speed, would probably cave in several of his ribs, but he moved out of the way, which really shouldn’t have been possible. Marla nearly flew off the edge of the esplanade, which would’ve meant a long drop into the cold bay, but she corrected her course, landed in a crouch on the wall, and sprang back after him.

  He swatted her out of the air nonchalantly, and she hit the ground hard enough to bounce. “This is silly.” His voice wasn’t the slowed-down drone it should have been; he’d somehow accelerated himself to match her. “Just give me the knife and I’ll be on my way.”

  “You want the knife?” Marla drew her dagger of office and held it in a reverse grip, blade tucked up against her forearm. “You get the knife.” Fighting an unarmed man with a knife wasn’t sporting, but Marla was past the point of caring about sport. She wanted to kill this guy. If she needed to find out who he was later, maybe she’d bring Ayres out of retirement and get him to interrogate the guy’s corpse. She came at him, ready to flick out her blade and finish this, but he moved, still faster than her eye could comprehend, twisted her wrist so hard she cried out and dropped the blade, and tossed her off to one side like an empty beer bottle. The dagger fell in slow motion at first, then clattered to the pavement as normal time reasserted itself. Marla groaned. She hadn’t been tossed around like this in a while. She mumbled a little analgesic spell to numb the pain in her wrist, and watched while grinning Mr. Death bent down to pick up her dagger.

  His scream, though not unexpected, was quite gratifying. His right hand was a spurting bloody mess, with most of his fingers dropping, severed, to the ground.

  “My dagger,” Marla said. “It doesn’t like strangers.” She whistled, two low notes, and the dagger skittered along the ground and flew into her hand, hilt-first. After giving the blade a shake to cast off the stranger’s blood—every drop left the blade, which was part of the weapon’s magic—she tucked it into the sheath at her waist. Mr. Death whimpered and cradled his devastated hand. Sirens wailed, approaching fast. Somebody had seen the fight and called the cops. Marla wasn’t worried about the cops—she knew the mayor and the chief of police, and more important, they knew her, and what she really did for Felport—but she preferred to avoid the hassle. She considered trying again to kill him, now that he was wounded, but her time in the graveyard yesterday and the memories it prompted made her inclined to alternatives, like mercy. “You’re a good fighter,” she said. “That was a nice workout, and some of those tricks I’ve never seen before, but you better believe I’ll learn them soon. This isn’t the place to make a name for yourself, though. Leave town. If I hear you’re still hanging around later, I’ll make the loss of a few fingers seem like a pleasant morning.”

  He didn’t answer, just stared at her and bled.

  “You take care now.” She walked away, leaving Mr. Death to gather up his fingers. A good magical surgeon could reattach them like new. Maybe he knew somebody who could do that back where he’d come from. Wherever the hell that was. She’d make some inquiries.

  “I hope you’ll forgive me for saying so,” Booth drawled, “but this place has the distinct odor of age and staleness.”

  “The dead man complains to me of odors?” Ayres said from his folding chair by the window. “Make yourself useful by cleaning the place, then. I didn’t bring you back to life so you could bitch and moan.”

  “Men of quality don’t clean.” Booth was looking at himself in a full-length mirror. He’d been doing that ever since Ayres cast a glamour to cover his hideousness. “This really isn’t a very good likeness, Ayres. The tattoo on my hand is absent, for one, and I think my cheekbones should be higher.”

  Ayres had conjured Booth’s illusory form from vague memories of the assassin’s photograph in documentaries about Abraham Lincoln. He could make Booth look like anyone, but the assassin wanted to appear as he had in life. Vain bastard. “You’re welcome to return to your prior state, and go around looking like an overdone piece of bacon, if you prefer.”

  Booth joined him at the window. “My apologies, sir. You’ve done a great kindness for me, and I won’t forget that. May I ask, what are you looking for out that window?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A plume of smoke. An earthquake. People running and screaming. Some sign of the titanic battle between Marla Mason and Death. Though I suppose it’s likely to be a quieter affair.”

  “Mmm. If I’d known there was a duel in the offing, I would have offered my services as Death’s second. Seems the least I can do, for his allowing me to leave…that place.”

  “I’m the one who brought you out of that place. And don’t forget it.”

  “But you derive your power from his,” Booth said, undeterred. “Much as a statesman derives his power from his constituents. Remove the goodwill of the people, and a politician is just a liar in a suit. Remove the goodwill of Death, and you’re just…well, courtesy forbids elaboration.”

  “I can send you back to Hell,” Ayres said.

  “Not if I send you to He
ll first,” Death said, and Ayres rose as quickly as he could.

  “My lord!” he cried. Death was spattered in blood, and his right hand was a crippled ruin.

  Booth stepped forward and offered an illusory handkerchief, but Death waved him away. As Ayres watched, Death lifted his arm, making a fist with his remaining two fingers, and when he opened his hand, all his digits were back and whole.

  “You might have mentioned that her dagger is enchanted.” Death visibly seethed, dark energy crackling from his shoulders.

  “I…my lord?” Ayres had never been more terrified.

  “When I took the knife, it cut me,” Death said. “Nothing cuts me.”

  “Due respect, my lord, but…I thought the whole point of that blade is its ability to cut anything.”

  Death grunted. “I didn’t seize it by the blade. It turned in my hand and…bit me.”

  “I had heard rumors to that effect,” Ayres said. “My apologies. I did not think any mere enchantment would hinder you, my lord.”

  Death seemed to consider that. “Indeed. It shouldn’t have worked—mortal magic is no more than sparkles and light to me. Perhaps it’s no mere enchantment, then. Perhaps it’s a fundamental quality of the weapon, that it cannot be taken by force. My father would…would have known. The sword was lost before my time, and I don’t know its whole nature.”

  “Some artifacts must be given willingly.” Ayres took the risk of sitting back down. Death didn’t seem offended. “They bind to their owners, and can only be given away willingly, or passed down through some other protocol. I know this dagger has passed from hand to hand for generations, from one chief sorcerer to another, since Felport’s founding.”

  “So even killing Marla might not be sufficient,” Death said. “It would just pass to her successor?”

  “That is my understanding.”

  “Hmm. What if I became chief sorcerer? With the blade in my rightful possession, I could strip away all the enchantments that govern its conditions of ownership.”

  Ayres shook his head. “There is precedent that suggests only mortals can become protectors of Felport.” He was thinking of Somerset’s resurrection and attempt to regain control of the city. Somerset had been a heartless undead monster, and according to the stories, the dagger of office had burned his hand when he took it from Sauvage’s corpse. After Marla killed Somerset, she took up the dagger, and with it the mantle of Felport’s protector. Several of the other powerful sorcerers had supported her claim, and her position had held.

  “I just want the blade,” Death said petulantly, and Ayres thought, again, that he seemed very young. “How can I get it? I’m afraid peaceful negotiations are probably out of the question. Marla Mason and I…clashed.”

  Ayres mused. “I know little about her. She has a few loyal friends, but I suspect she might even let them die before bowing to you. She’s stubborn. But perhaps…” Ayres hesitated.

  “What?”

  “I…” Should he say this? He loved Felport as much as Marla did—it was perhaps the only thing they had in common. But the opportunity to cement himself in the new Death’s good graces could mean great power for him. Cities rose and fell, but power was eternal. He made his choice. “Marla loves the city above all else. If Felport itself was at stake, she might be willing to make a deal. Remove her from power and take over the city yourself. You may not be able to rule as chief sorcerer, but you could become a sort of dictator.”

  Death smiled. “You may be on to something there, Ayres. Perhaps you’re worth keeping around, after all. I’ll go for her just before dawn, when she’s tired and unprepared.”

  “Just let me know if my—” He almost said servant. “My associate Mr. Booth and I can be of service. He has some experience toppling heads of state, if I recall.”

  “Sic semper tyrannis,” Booth said agreeably.

  4

  S o who the hell was he?” Marla said, and Hamil shook his head, peering at his computer screen.

  “There’s nothing in the most recent edition of Dee’s Peerage.” Hamil scrolled through the digital database. The laptop was like a toy under his big hands. “The eight rings seem like a good unique variable, but no, I’ve found nothing.” The great compendium of notable magic users didn’t include every sorcerer in the world, but it damn sure should have mentioned someone capable of beating Marla in a fight, at least by an alias. Marla’s own name had appeared there as soon as she found her magical cloak in a thrift store, though at first the description hadn’t mentioned much besides her possession of the cloak. Her entry had grown considerably longer over the years. No one knew who updated Dee’s Peerage, but new editions appeared mysteriously on every sorcerer’s doorstep each year, once upon a time bound in paper that dissolved after twelve months, more recently on computer discs that decayed each year. Since the Peerage contained only widely known biographical information—no real secrets—no one was sufficiently motivated to track down its creator. It was also rather useful, usually, in cases like this.

  “Crap.” Marla leaned back in the leather chair. “Do you think…I mean, is there any chance…that he’s really Death? Come to reclaim his property? We’ve all heard the stories, that my dagger’s really a shard from Death’s scythe, or that some sorcerer won the blade off Death in a card game, but I always figured they were bullshit. Could they be true?”

  Hamil pushed his great bulk back from the computer. He had a specially designed high-end office chair that could have probably seated a polar bear comfortably. “The issue of the afterlife is a tricky one. There are plenty of stories of sorcerers going to the underworld—or places they believed to be the underworld. Ghosts exist, though most ghosts are just stuttering repetitive psychic stains, doing the same pointless things over and over. Persistence of personality after bodily death is also possible through magic—liches and the like. That proves there is something inside us, a soul or a spirit or a force of will, which can outlive the body’s death. For those of us who don’t become conscious ghosts…where does that spirit go? Some say to the afterlife, or to one of many afterlives, depending on the individual soul’s beliefs and expectations. Most necromancers claim to know the truth about the afterlife, but their truths all contradict one another. Some theorize there’s only a single underworld, a sort of malleable space that appears in whatever form the dead person—or, in rare cases, the living explorer—expects, consciously or subconsciously. If such a realm does exist, it’s reasonable to assume it has a ruler, some ancient being or series of beings that is—or at least styles itself to be—Death personified.”

  “Thanks,” Marla said. “That was nice and definite. Just what I needed.”

  Hamil shrugged. “It’s not my area of expertise, I’m afraid.” Hamil was a master of sympathetic magic, not corpses and ghosts. “You could ask the opinion of that necromancer who just got out of Blackwing. I know you have reservations about him, but he clearly wants to prove his usefulness. All necromancers interact with something that claims to live in the underworld.”

  “I’m not ready to eat my pride just yet,” Marla said. “We’ll see if Mr. Death decides to come back. With luck, the loss of a few fingers will give him pause. On to the other turd in the punch bowl of my day: I met with the Chamberlain. I guess it wasn’t a total disaster.”

  “Good. I’m having a new tuxedo made for the ball.”

  “Oh, yeah? I didn’t know there was enough fabric in the world to make a new tuxedo for you. Prices for cloth must be soaring all over the world, what with you sucking up all the supply. I should make some investments.”

  “A fat joke, Marla? Isn’t that beneath you?”

  She sighed. “Probably. Sorry. You just reminded me I have to find something to wear. I’m not looking forward to shopping for a dress. The Chamberlain was very specific about that. I gotta wear a dress. The ghosts of the founding families are particular about what women should wear. And if I send Rondeau to buy something for me, gods, can you imagine the slutwear he’d buy
? I’d look like a stripper.”

  “I’m sure your new valet can help you find something suitable.” Hamil gave the slightest of smiles.

  Marla groaned. “Word travels fast.”

  “I won’t mock you further. It’s too easy.”

  “Thanks, Hamil. I’ll make sure the caterers have plenty of those little shrimp puff things you like.”