Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9)

by T. A. Pratt

  “Oh. Right. I guess that’s not the worst imaginable plan.”

  They crouched and watched from the trees. Rondeau swung his briefcase back and forth, whistling, then shouted, “Yo, Dave, seriously, who has all night? I do not have all night. I am running out of night.”

  The gate in the wall didn’t open... but a figure appeared on the watchtower above the wall. To someone with conventional eyes, he would have been a shadow behind the floodlights, but Bradley’s enhanced vision revealed him clearly: he was tall, broad-shouldered, hugely bearded, dressed in Army-surplus camouflage, and holding a large and ridiculous sword in both hands. The sword was so elaborate it looked barely functional, the sort of thing cosplayers would wear to a comic book convention; the kind of sword characters with outlandish pastel hair wielded in anime. The Blade of Banishment had a curved blade etched with meaningless runes, a jeweled hilt, and a crossguard that curved and swooped and had enough spikes and pointy bits to offer more danger than protection to its wielder.

  Rondeau shaded his eyes and looked up at the man. “You’re Dave? Oh, hey, you’ve got the sword, too. Just what I wanted. Let’s start the bidding at five thousand dollars, what do you say?”

  “Perhaps it’s best if we send Mr. Dave to sleep now?” Pelham murmured.

  Bradley reached out with his psychic senses... and struck something that felt like a wall, smooth as glass, hard as diamond. He could see Dave’s consciousness, an untidy swirl of shiny black and pulsing red and wet pus-green, but he couldn’t reach it. “Uh oh,” he said.

  The man lifted the sword over his head. “I!” he bellowed. “Am! Not! Named! Dave!”

  Then the man jumped off the watchtower, screaming, sword raised over his head. When he landed before Rondeau, he brought the sword down in an uncomplicated and inelegant overhand strike, like a man splitting a piece of wood—with Rondeau as the wood.

  When the sword touched the top of his head, Rondeau disappeared.

  Out on the Edge

  The swordsman crouched for a moment, breathing heavily, then rose and looked at the spot where Rondeau had been. “Why do people keep calling me Dave,” he muttered before turning toward the wall and trudging to the gate. “I’m Drew.” He thumped himself hard on the chest. “Drew Drew Drew.”

  “Shitting shitty shit fuck,” Bradley said.

  Pelham fished around in his bag. “Yes. My sentiments precisely. Where did Rondeau go? Do you think... did the sword send him to the underworld?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Dave, or Drew, knows. But he’s psychic-proof, Pelham, I mean seriously protected, some kind of magical force field wrapped right around his brain.”

  “We will see, then, if he is everything proof.” Pelham drew a pistol from his bag.

  “Whoa, wait, are you going to shoot him?”

  “Tranquilizer dart.” Pelham fired at the swordsman before he could reach the gate. Drew spun around, then groped at his shoulder, fingers touching the dart. He snarled, took a step forward, and then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed, falling on top of his sword but, fortunately (or unfortunately) not impaling himself.

  “There,” Pelham said. “We will disarm him, and then question him regarding Rondeau’s whereabouts.” He put the pistol away and walked toward the prone man, Bradley following close behind.

  When Pelham got within a foot of Drew, the man rolled over and jabbed the sword into Pelham’s right leg. Pelham vanished instantly. The swordsman got to his feet, grinning. “Tried to put me to sleep, but I don’t sleep any more. The sword sleeps for me. I keep watch all the time. All the time. Who sent you? The Vatican? The UN Security Council? The Denver Illuminati?”

  Bradley backed away, though it didn’t help much, because Drew advanced to match him, step for step. “Uh... A woman named Elsie Jarrow sent me, actually.”

  That made the swordsman stop, and even lower the sword. “Elsie? I never knew her last name, but... Of course she sent you. She called me Dave, too. She’s the one who gave me my sword.”

  Of course she did, Bradley thought.

  The swordsman pressed the flat of the blade against his cheek, closed his eyes, and smiled... but then his eyes snapped open again, and he pointed the absurd blade at Bradley. “You can’t have my sword back. She can’t have it back. You won’t take it from me!”

  “Yeah, I get that.” Bradley held up his hands in pointless placation. “Just, before you do your thing, can you tell me, where do people go when you hit them with the sword?”

  Drew frowned, a look of genuine bafflement crossing his features. “Go? They go away.”

  “Gotcha. But... where is away?”

  A look of sly delight appeared on Drew’s face. “I don’t know. But you know who’s about to find out?”

  “Oh, no,” Bradley said, and then Drew hit him with the sword.

  •

  “Hey, hey, the gang’s all here.” That was Rondeau’s voice, so he wasn’t dead, at least.

  Bradley groaned, opened his eyes, and stared at the sky. Apparently he was on his back. Okay then. The sky was... black. Blacker than black. There were stars, bright and sharp, in unfamiliar configurations. He sat up and looked around. Rondeau sat on the gritty gray sand a few feet away, and Pelham sat beside him, sorting through his bag. There were four other people sprawled in the vicinity, all obviously dead, all dressed in the same sort of camouflage the swordsman had worn. Some of them had ice and blood crusted in their beards, and there was a general blue-ness to their skin that made Bradley think of death by exposure.

  He looked farther away, and saw... gray, rippled ground. Low hills in the distance. This didn’t look like any place he’d ever been on Earth.

  Bradley got to his feet... and almost floated, rising up until his head bumped against some invisible barrier. He felt around as his body slowly settled back to the ground, and his fingers touched something smooth and curved overhead, like an invisible dome. “Wha—where the fuck are we? Why am I so light?”

  “Pelly thinks we’re on Pluto,” Rondeau said. “Which, you know. Kind of makes sense. ‘Plutonian Sword.’” He closed his eyes. “Man, this barely-there gravity is messing with my equilibrium.”

  Pelham didn’t look up from the bag. “It is difficult to see how the sword would be of any use to us, as it sends its victims to the planet Pluto, instead of to the underworld. Perhaps Miss Jarrow is simply amusing herself.”

  “Pluto’s not a planet anymore,” Bradley said.

  Now Pelham looked up. “It will always be a planet in my heart. Ah, here.” He removed a handful of candles from the bag and set them gently on the cold ground.

  “Why are we not dead?” Bradley said. “I mean, obviously: there’s a dome, some kind of magical habitat, though not a very big one, judging by how I banged my head. But those guys, the dead friends of Dave, don’t look like they had this kind of protection.”

  Pelham said, “I assume this dome is Miss Jarrow’s doing—that she foresaw this eventuality and preferred to spare us from death.”

  “She gave Drew-Dave the sword, apparently, too,” Bradley said. “This is all her way of amusing herself.”

  “More fun than tearing the legs off spiders,” Rondeau muttered.

  “All right, she kept us from dying, but how do we get back?” Bradley said. “I can teleport, but the odds are pretty good I’ll get torn apart by the monsters that dwell in the in-between on the journey, and I can’t drag you guys along with me anyway—group teleportation is an advanced skill I never learned. Normally I’d say, wait here while I go get help, but, well.” He shrugged. “It’s a long trip for a rescue helicopter.”

  “There is another way.” Pelham brushed away the soil beside him, uncovering the corner of something flat and man-made. “Miss Jarrow left this, too.” He lifted the edge of the obejct, revealing a large mirror turned face-down. Bradley helped him stand the mirror upright, propping it against one invisible wall of the dome. The mirror’s frame was elaborately carved to resemble a lion’s head, the
reflective surface held in its jaws. “I have candles,” Pelham said. “Can you prepare the ritual?”

  “You guys made traveling by mirror sound so fun,” Rondeau said. “Do we have some other alternative? Like, say, waiting for major advances in space travel and hitching a ride home on the eventual manned mission from Earth?”

  “Unless the air in this dome is somehow magically self-replenishing, we have rather less time than that,” Pelham said. “And if we travel by mirror... we may be able to take Mr. Drew by surprise.”

  “We’re still finishing the mission?” Rondeau didn’t bother to hide his disgust.

  “Given that Elsie Jarrow sent us to Pluto when she wasn’t mad at us, do you want to see what she’d do if we pissed her off?” Bradley said.

  “Bleah. I concede the point.”

  Bradley set up the candles in the appropriate configuration, arrayed around the mirror. In theory, their incredibly vast distance from the Earth shouldn’t matter—mirror-space didn’t have a lot to do with physical space—but it was still unsettling to contemplate the journey. They were now farther from home as any human had ever been, except maybe that one 19th-century sorcerer who’d launched himself from orbit, but he was probably dead by now.

  The mirror sparkled, and Bradley said. “Okay. I think we’re good.”

  “Excellent,” Pelham said. “Here are your blindfolds.” He handed Rondeau and Bradley thick strips of dark cloth.

  “What?”

  “After our... unfortunate experience... last time, I did some research,” Pelham said. “Some metaphysicians theorize the mirror creatures take strength from being seen.” He uncoiled a length of rope from his pack, tied a loop around his waist, and then matter-of-factly tethered Bradley and Rondeau to the same line. “They stare into you, as you stare into them, in the hopes of switching the directionality of gaze, and turning you into the reflection, and themselves into the one who looks. Apparently there was a blind sorcerer who could traverse the mirror realms without fear of being attacked... though he took a wrong turn once and got lost, or so the theory goes. But you don’t need eyes. You have me. And I have all the focus we need.”

  Bradley blindfolded himself, and Rondeau followed suit. A moment later, the rope tugged, and Bradley stepped forward, plunging through the mirror.

  Gravity returned with a sudden downward yank, and his inner ear complained, making him lurch and almost fall.

  “Gonna barf,” Rondeau muttered behind him.

  “Please don’t,” Bradley said.

  “The way is clear.” Pelham sounded perfectly calm, and began walking forward at a steady pace. The floor beneath Bradley’s feet felt gritty, and sometimes bits of glass crunched under his soles. In the absence of vision, his psychic senses tried to compensate, reaching out, but the only minds were his, Rondeau’s, and Pelham’s. He considered tapping into Pelham’s senses, and looking through his eyes, but what if that triggered the feral reflections to attack? Instead, he shuffled along in the dark, turning when Pelham murmured instructions, occasionally pausing as Pelham considered the path, and then continuing on.

  After somewhere between fifteen minutes and ten thousand years, Pelham said, “We’re here. I think it’s safe to look. We were followed by feral reflections for a time, but they grew frustrated, I believe, and have since withdrawn.”

  Bradley removed his blindfold. They were at the end of a narrow corridor, lined by mirrors, and before them stood a narrow, tall window: a full-length mirror propped in the corner of what looked like a slovenly sort of barracks, bunk beds and metal footlockers, with camouflage netting hanging from the ceiling like bunting.

  “I bet that’s the mirror Dave poses and flexes and practices his last words in front of,” Rondeau said. “Can we get out of here now?”

  Pelham stepped through, and the others followed, stepping silently from the mirror realm into the squalid room. On the right side of the mirror, everything smelled of old sweat and unwashed foot stench. They untied themselves and stowed the rope, and then Pelham whispered, “Psychic recon?”

  Bradley nodded, closed his eyes, and sent his mind seeking. The swordsman’s distinctive consciousness was easy to find, buzzing and churning away in the next room. Bradley nodded, then eased the door open, peering out. There was something like a living room out there—it had a couch, anyway, along with many, many racks of guns and crates of ammo—and Drew was sitting in profile, hunched before a low table, furiously talking to himself and tearing pages out of a phone book. He crumpled each page into a ball and threw it over his shoulder, where hundreds of similar paper balls had accumulated. The Blade of Banishment rested across his knees.

  Closing the door again, Bradley said, “Well? Ideas?”

  “Mmm. Yes.” Pelham reached into his bag and drew out a black, coarsely-woven sack. “Please be ready to assist me.” He opened the door and crept out, moving in a crouch, making his way around the back of the couch. Bradley was sure the field of crumpled paper balls back there would rustle and give him away, but Pelham moved with such slow deliberation that the littler barely whispered, and any sound he did make was covered by Drew’s grumbling and occasional curses.

  When Pelham got close to the back of the couch, he sprang, bringing the black bag down over Drew’s head and immediately falling to his knees and pulling the bag with him, forcing the swordsman to arch his spine and tilt his head sharply back over the edge of the couch. The swordsman shouted muffled curses and flailed his sword wildly, but he couldn’t strike Pelham, or lift his head, or get any leverage to pull free.

  Bradley and Rondeau moved then, spreading out to come at Drew from both sides, almost as smoothly as if they’d planned it. The swordsman was trying to tear the bag off his head, but he wouldn’t let go of the sword, and with only one hand, he couldn’t overcome the tension Pelham was exerting. Bradley grabbed Drew’s sword hand below the wrist, leaning away from the waving blade, and Rondeau pinned the man’s other arm to keep him from fighting. Bradley gritted his teeth and twisted, using all his weight and leverage to turn the swordsman’s wrist farther, farther... too far. The tension became too great and, with another hearty curse, Drew’s grasp popped open and the sword fell free.

  The barrier protecting the swordsman’s consciousness from Bradley’s influence instantly vanished, and so he reached out, soothed the fiery mind, and sent the man to sleep. “It’s okay, he’s down.”

  Pelham rose, and plucked the bag from the man’s head. “Poor man,” he said, gazing down at the filthy face, the matted beard, the gaping mouth. “Can you do anything for him?”

  Bradley shook his head. “This guy’s mind is a snake pit. If I take out the violent paranoia and murderous fantasies, there won’t be much of a mind left.”

  Rondeau carefully lifted the sword by its hilt, laid the weapon on a dirty army blanket, and then wrapped the whole thing up into a bundle. “You know, originally I’d planned to leave that briefcase full of cash as recompense for the sword, but fuck this guy. He killed his own friends.”

  “He might not have known he was killing them,” Pelham said.

  “Maybe not, but I doubt he would’ve cared either way.” Rondeau tucked the bundled sword under his arm and looked around, wrinkling his nose. “Can we get out of shitland now?”

  “Not just yet,” Pelham said. “I have tool kit, and I’d like to render Mr. Drew’s arsenal less operational. Once I’ve minimized the danger, I’ll make a call to some of my acquaintances in federal law enforcement. If they aren’t aware of this gentleman’s activities, I think perhaps they should be.”

  “Look at us, just a bunch of do-gooding do-gooders,” Rondeau said. “After that can we go somewhere and eat very large steaks?”

  Stealing from the Gods

  After the boys left for the airport, Elsie and Marla took the elevator downstairs to the casino, so Elsie could be “energized by the random,” as she said. They hung out by the wheel of fortune, and Elsie did seem to draw some sustenance or pleasure from t
he environment, her eyes sparkling and her smile widening as she looked around. Marla saw mostly desperation, poor choices, and a deficient grasp of basic math in the customers here, but there was no accounting for taste. Or maybe Elsie just liked those qualities.

  “So first we should go to Greece.” Elsie slurped the cocktail onion up out of her martini glass.

  “What’s in Greece?”

  “A small defense against our total annihilation and subjugation by the New Death, mostly,” she said. “Also olives and sheep and Greek people.”

  “Elsie, is there any chance at all I could get something resembling an itinerary from you?”

  “Oh, Marla, isn’t it more fun when you don’t know everything? I’ll tell you this much: I’ve given your situation a lot of thought, and as you know I’m somewhat familiar with the lay of the land down in Hell, so I think I’ve covered most of the bases. At the very least, if we run these few errands, and if your boys come through with the sword, we’ll have about a fifty-fifty chance of defeating the New Death and putting a crown back on your slightly oversized head. Can you trust me that far?”

  Marla considered engaging with various parts of that response, then opted for simplicity. “How many errands are we talking about?”

  Elsie scrunched up her nose. “Must you put a number on everything? Fine. We have to go three places. Well, sort of five places, or arguably six, but in terms of movement through the world of plain gross physical reality, we have three locations to visit. Three errands. Three acquisitions.”

  “Just going around, dropping in on gods.”

  “Not all of the gods. Some. The useful ones.”

  “Right. Hmm. I think it’s going to be four errands, though. There’s something I want to get my hands on, to push our odds a bit past fifty-fifty.”

  “Oh, fine, but let’s do mine first. I have it all planned out, unless I change my mind, which, knowing me, you never know.”