by T. A. Pratt
“The Chamberlain called to remind you that the Founders’ Ball is rapidly approaching, and she hopes you will have sufficient time to prepare.”
“Those ghosts have her whipped, don’t they? Remind the Chamberlain that I’m a god, and that I’ll make sure the party is the greatest this city has ever seen.” He started to go, then paused. “That thing I told you to take care of.”
“Chained, bound, passed on to the Bay Witch, sunk to the depths.”
“Good man.” Death actually slapped Ayres on the shoulder on his way out the door.
Ayres took a deep breath. He made all the zombies stop, turn, and stare at Booth, who lounged against the wall. “Oh, Booth,” Ayres said. “I need you to run a message over to the Chamberlain for me.”
Booth straightened, sputtering, “That uppity colored—”
“Shh,” Ayres said, pressing a finger to his lips. “I’ve told you, don’t bad-mouth your betters.”
A lock of dark hair fell into Booth’s eyes, and he brushed it away, his eyes damp, his expression partway to madness. “You could contact her over your telephone,” Booth said, carefully pronouncing the last word. “That would be faster than sending me afoot.”
“Mmm, but sending you takes so much less effort than dialing a phone. Get a move on, and tell her the Walking Death has the matter of the Founders’ Ball well in hand. Be polite, Booth. Obey the Chamberlain as you would obey me.”
The assassin slunk away, and Ayres leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes. Only mid-morning, true, but he needed a nap. Being the greatest necromancer in the world was tiring work.
Beadle had a magic mirror slaved to a pair of spectacles Langford was wearing, so he and Rondeau could watch Death head for his date with high explosives. The two hid out in an alley two blocks from Marla’s apartment, huddled around the hand mirror like schoolkids sneaking a portable TV into math class to watch a ball game. Langford was on a rooftop across the street from the target location, looking down on the likeliest approaches to the warehouse.
“I think that’s him,” Rondeau whispered, as if Death might hear him. The tiny image on the screen sharpened as Langford adjusted the glasses, and the god jumped into clear focus, strutting along the deserted street as if he owned the place—which, increasingly, he did.
Death rapped on the warehouse’s side door, opened it, and stepped inside.
“Here we go,” Beadle said.
There was no sound from the mirror, but they heard the explosion distantly anyway—it was only a couple of miles away. Langford ducked out of the way, but smoke and dust wafted down around him, and Rondeau and Beadle cheered. The image jerked as Langford moved across the roof, probably crouching and scuttling, but then he paused, focusing on something on the rooftop. “What’s that?” Rondeau squinted.
The image came closer, and Rondeau gasped. “Shit. That’s Death’s hand.” The hand was blackened, torn off about an inch below the wrist, and missing its pinky finger, but it was unmistakable—there were still rings on all the fingers that remained. Langford’s own hands, clothed in white surgical gloves, entered the frame, reaching for the severed hand.
“No, no,” Beadle murmured, and Rondeau sucked air through his teeth. Langford was curious. He was a scientist. The idea of having the hand of a god to study would be irresistible to him, even if the hand was just the equivalent of a glove for a being of such power. But before Langford could pick up the hand, it rolled over, stood up on its fingers like something out of a bad horror movie, and scurried away across the roof, presumably to reunite with the other fragments of the god. Langford held up his hand in an A-OK sign and the image on the mirror went dark.
“We’d better get to Marla’s before he puts himself back together again,” Beadle said.
“I know we didn’t do any permanent damage,” Rondeau said, breaking into a wide smile, “but doesn’t it make you happy, knowing we just pissed off that fucker bad?”
Death slammed into the penthouse, startling Ayres and Booth, who sat in gloating and tense silence, respectively, watching the flickering images of a black-and-white movie on the enormous television. “Someone will die for this,” the god growled, and Ayres and Booth exchanged glances.
“What’s wrong, my lord?” Ayres struggled to his feet, using for leverage the stick Booth had fetched him. It was a good stick, though he hadn’t cast any enchantments on it yet.
Death glanced at the television, and the channel switched to a breaking news report, a glossy brunette at a news desk speaking seriously about an explosion in a warehouse down by the old train yard, no injuries, fire contained, officials investigating, possible gas leak. “That,” Death said, “was the site of my rendezvous. Someone tried to blow me up.” He stalked through the room, toward the bar, stepping on the glass-topped coffee table as he went, not even noticing when it shattered beneath his boot. He poured a glass of vodka and sucked it down. “That hurt. I lost most of my old body, and had to make a new one. It was inconvenient. I have to get the flesh from somewhere, you know. Fortunately there were lots of rats killed in the explosion, so I just harvested their cells.” He held up his hand and stared at it. “I thought the knife cutting off my fingers was bad. This was…fire. Sharp things. Heat. My flesh melting, fusing to my bones, bits of me falling from the sky and thumping down…” He shuddered. “I’ll never forget that. I want to make someone else feel that. That bitch tricked me.”
Ayres opened his phone and called Hamil. “Mary Madeline Monroe tried to kill Death. She must be brought to justice.”
“Mary Madeline Monroe is in Thailand studying the sexual culture of ladyboys,” Hamil said. “I rather doubt she’s even aware of the Walking Death’s existence.”
Ayres closed the phone. “Sir. My lord. The sex magician is not in the country. You were betrayed. Some conspiracy.”
“Fools,” Booth said. “They should know you cannot be assassinated. You are Death. Death does not die.”
“No, they can’t kill me,” the god said. “But I can kill them. Better, I can make them wish for death, and then withhold it. Who was it, Ayres? Who could have done it?”
Rondeau? Ayres wondered. Could he have arranged something like this? Rondeau struck Ayres as basically a spear-carrier—capable of improvising, of course, but to plan something like this? Before Ayres could speculate aloud, however, Death answered his own question.
“Viscarro. The one sorcerer of note who hasn’t pledged himself to me, who thinks he can hide from me. It was him.”
Ayres wasn’t so sure, but he nodded anyway. “He does despise change, and he has many apprentices to help him plot such a scheme. It could have been him, my lord.” Viscarro was also somewhat protected from Death, since his life was hidden away in a stone somewhere in his vaults. Ayres wanted to tell the god that Viscarro was an undead thing, but he couldn’t—he’d sworn secrecy in a circle of binding, and to speak now would be the death of Ayres himself.
“We’ll deal with him, then,” Death said.
“Now, my lord?”
“Let him think I’m dead, or driven off,” Death said. “Let’s see if he comes out of his hole, see if he makes contact with any other conspirators. We’ll go see him, either way, at first light tomorrow. In the meantime, Ayres, take your slaves here to the nearest cemetery and start opening graves. Set every corpse you dig up with the task of digging up another corpse, and animate those. I want a little army of corpses at my back. I can’t be everywhere at once—not without giving up these bodily delights I’ve come to enjoy—and it’s time this city respected me. I’ve been too kind to them, but if they want to fight me…well, we can fight.”
“The ordinaries might notice hordes of skeletons on the street, my lord,” Ayres said.
“So drape them in illusions,” Death said, waving his hand. “Give them the semblance of life.”
“My skills at illusion are not so powerful, I fear.” Ayres hated to admit any weakness in front of Booth. “I could not disguise so many.”
As Booth and Ayres left the building, trailed by half a dozen undead slaves, Booth said, “I thought he was just a coddled and privileged boy with power, but it seems he’s a man, after all.”
“He’s more than a man,” Ayres said. “He’s a god.”
“What I mean to say is—”
“Shut up,” Ayres said. “Go stand with the other slaves.”
Booth withdrew, but Ayres took no pleasure in the assassin’s subjugation. He preferred being the vizier to a happy, rutting dictator. An angry Walking Death meant hard work for Ayres, and he was an old man, and behind on his sleep. Still, he thought, raising a whole cemetery. That’s the sort of act that leads to legends.
“The wardrobe isn’t here,” Rondeau said. “It’s normally right here!”
Beadle nodded. “There are still traces of the magic, but it’s gone, and has been for hours, at least.”
“Can you track it?”
Beadle shook his head. “I can only sense the spells because they sat here, on this spot, for so long, it’s like a wine stain soaking into a carpet. Now that’s it been moved…No. I have no idea where it’s gone.”
“Maybe Viscarro stole it.” Rondeau paced around Marla’s bedroom. “He’s always coveted her artifacts. Or maybe Death recognized it as a threat and took it. But who knows?”
“So what now?”
“How should I know?”
“You’re the leader,” Beadle said, gently.
Rondeau stopped pacing. “Right. Yes. The leader.” He considered. He pondered. He looked at the ceiling. “Shit. I don’t know.”
“All right. Let me know when you do know.” Beadle glanced at his pocket watch. “But let me know soon. There may be repercussions from our assault on Death. We should be prepared for possible retaliation.”
Rondeau groaned. Marla always said “plan” was a four-letter word for something that didn’t work, but Rondeau hadn’t really understood that; he’d been prepared for success. And he didn’t have Marla to bail him out this time. He had faith she was out there somewhere, working an angle of her own, but he was the one in Felport, and he couldn’t just wait for her to come charging back. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got an idea.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll tell you later. I need to check something out first.” Which spared Rondeau from admitting he didn’t really have an idea. But there was no reason to diminish the morale of his troops.
“I can’t wait to hear it,” Beadle said.
11
M arla, Pelham, and B drove into downtown Berkeley near midnight and parked on a side street not far from the nearby commuter train station. “Last train arrives pretty soon,” B said. “Then the place closes down, and when it’s deserted…assuming things work like they did last time I did this…the train will come along shortly. I had to slip by the tracks and hide halfway down the tunnel last time, and that was kind of terrifying. That was before I really knew about magic, though.”
“Yeah, a look-away spell should be enough to keep the three of us from getting noticed,” Marla said. “And it’s lots more hospitable than crouching in a tunnel, hoping no late trains come along.”
“May I carry your bag, Ms. Mason?” Pelham said as they got out of the car.
“Nope,” Marla said, pulling the black messenger bag over her shoulder. She missed her battered leather satchel, which she usually filled with nifty ordnance for field operations, but B had loaned her this bag, and she’d raided Cole’s office for a few items infused with magic. Cole was a seer, not a battle-sorcerer, so he didn’t have much in the way of weaponry, but Marla had found a few useful tidbits, and glass and metal and porcelain clanked gently together when she shifted the bag. They walked into the train station, which was pretty much empty, and Marla cast a look-away spell, which was easier than true invisibility and just as effective; it simply kept people from noticing them. They slipped through the gate without buying tickets, then rode down the escalator and had a seat on a long, low, wooden bench. “I like escalators,” Pelham said. “I never rode one until yesterday, at the airport. They’re fun.”
“The world’s full of fun stuff,” Marla said. “Let’s hope we get to come back and experience more of it.” The day had been full of big and little pleasures, and she might even have enjoyed herself, if not for her constant worry about Rondeau, Hamil, and Felport itself. She figured if the city burned to the ground or sank into the bay, that would make the national news, but otherwise, how could she know what was happening there?
“Anything I should know? About the train?”
B nodded. “I did think of one thing—time. When I rode that train before, the trip didn’t seem to take much time, and I didn’t stay down there long at all, but when I came back, it was nearly sixteen hours after I left.”
Marla nodded. “Variable time. Gotcha. Supernatural stuff does weird things to your subjective time sense. Death and his minions can probably bop back and forth in an instant, but for living people, it’s a more momentous trip. Time and space are probably pretty wonky down there.”
“So how long do I wait to panic?” B said.
Marla shook her head. “A few days? Though I’m not sure what good panicking will do you. You can try calling Hamil every day. There’s a spell preventing any news about me from getting into the city, so if you find yourself able to tell him about my plan, you can pretty much guarantee my plan failed, and I’ve gone from a tourist to a permanent resident of the underworld.”
They waited. The last train, a short one of only three cars, pulled in, disgorged its passengers, and left. A transit employee walked through, looking under benches for who-knows-what, and Marla and company had to draw up their feet so he wouldn’t feel them. Finally he left, and gates rattled closed somewhere in the distance, sealing off the station from the world above, and the lights went out.
Marla took her friends’ hands and said, “Fiat lux,” and they all blinked at the sudden grainy brightness of their night-vision. “More waiting. I hate waiting.”
“I know,” B said. “I brought a deck of cards.”
They played Oh, Hell for a while, with Pelham keeping score in his head. “What if it doesn’t come?” B said.
“You dreamed about Pelham and a train,” Marla said. “It’ll come.” B was an oracle-generator, a magical catalyst, and maybe the train to the underworld was just a ghost of a potentiality most nights, but B’s presence here would drag it into immanence.
A distant whooshing sound filled the air. Pelham efficiently picked up the cards before the onrushing train-wind could blow them away.
A headlight appeared in the dark, a strange pale light that made Marla squint, and then the train slid to a stop before them—a single car, the front compartment all dark glass, the driver hidden. The train was white, not the usual silver, and it was streamlined, organic, all of a piece, as if carved from the thighbone of a leviathan. The windows on the side were trapezoidal, and the doors, when they slid open, seemed to have tiny triangular interlocking teeth. “All aboard.” Marla impulsively grabbed B and kissed his cheek. She glanced at Pelham. “Last chance to stay behind, Pelly.” He shook his head, though his face was as white as the bone train.
“Be careful!” B said, but Marla didn’t answer him, as it was hardly a promise she could make in good conscience. Marla and Pelham stepped onto the train. There were no seats, just gently curving walls, and instead of metal handrails, there were hooks of bone hanging from the ceiling. Marla and Pelham grabbed on, and a cold dry voice over the loudspeaker said
, “Doors are closing.” B waved at them as the doors hissed shut, and the train lurched and began to move forward. Marla and Pelham swayed for a moment, then Marla said, “I’m going to go talk to the driver.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“Probably not. But as you get to know me better, you’ll realize it’s kind of a bad habit of mine.” She walked toward the front of the train, where only a crack in the wall indicated the presence of what might be a door. She knocked. “Hey,” she said. “I’m Marla Mason. Mind if I come in?”
The loudspeaker clicked on, but there was only silence for a moment, a blank hiss. Finally the voice said, “Door is opening,” and the entryway to the compartment clicked open with a hiss, swinging inward half an inch. Marla glanced back at Pelham, gave him a nod she meant to be reassuring, and pushed through the door.
“Psst,” Rondeau said from his chair in the corner. “Heh. I’ve always wanted to lurk in the dark and go ‘Psst.’”
“You shouldn’t be here, Rondeau.” Hamil looked around the darkness of his bedroom. “How did you get in here?”
Rondeau shrugged. “For the security system, Marla gave me the code. For the dumb locks—hell, Hamil, I’ve been breaking into places since I got this body. Don’t worry, I wasn’t seen, I crept like a mouse. Been waiting for freaking ever for you, though.”
Hamil sighed. “Yes, well, Death is howling for blood. Someone—I won’t speculate—tried to blow him up today. Nice effort, by the way. He seems to be blaming Viscarro, which is good for our purposes.”
Rondeau grunted. Part of him was glad his little group was still secret for the moment, of course, but another part of him wanted the credit. “Well, see, the big boom was mainly a distraction. We were planning to get Marla’s cloak.”
Hamil whistled and settled onto the edge of his bed. “That might be powerful enough to actually damage him. It’s dangerous, though, that cloak—too many uses and you begin to go mad.”
“I wasn’t planning on wearing it every day,” Rondeau said. “I’ve seen what it does to Marla—when I was a little kid, she ripped off my jaw while she was wearing that cloak. It made her so cold and crazy, she didn’t see a little kid, she just saw a potential object of power, a jawbone she could use as an oracle. I’ve got no fondness for the cloak.”