Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9)

by T. A. Pratt

  “Just don’t get overly full,” Elsie said. She was wearing a dramatic white dress, the sort of thing an evil fashion magazine editor would wear in a movie. “The toilets in the underworld are simply not to be spoken of.”

  “Like in that Bosch thing, the Garden of Earthly Delights,” Bradley said. “The beaked devil in the night chair, eating a guy and pooping out another guy.”

  “We might literally see that. I peeked into the afterlife of a very guilty art historian not long ago and saw exactly that tableau.” Marla picked at her chicken fried steak, prepared almost exactly the way her favorite diner in Felport used to make it. Rondeau’s gesture was thoughtful, but she couldn’t help but think of condemned people on death row getting the last meal of their choice. “Skully said something about Bosch as an inspiration before he kicked me out, too. Expect to see an environment drawing heavily on the classics.”

  “But you need fear no devilish beak!” Elsie produced a pillowcase from somewhere and began pulling out helmets and passing them out. “Marla stole these from a god’s workshop. They’re the hoity-toitiest of haute couture in the area of godly, uh... millinery. Put them on and the New Death won’t be able to eat your brains quite as easily.”

  Pelham put on his helmet, of a modified Spartan design (the actual Spartans wouldn’t have included so many ornamental curlicues) without hesitation, and Bradley and Rondeau made noises of surprise when it shimmered and vanished. Rondeau reached out and thumped Pelham on the head with his knuckles. “Do you feel that?”

  “Regrettably,” Pelham said.

  Elsie gave a heavy sigh. “These helmets protect against mental attacks. And attacks on your perception of reality.”

  Rondeau put on his bucketlike knight’s helm, and Bradley his golden ornamental helmet, feeling their own scalps after the helmets vanished. “Weird.”

  “Do I get one?” Genevieve emerged shyly from one of the suites, one foot pointed behind her, like she might retreat at any moment.

  “Certainly.” Marla took the last helmet, an ivory one that looked like something a comic book supervillain would wear, and took it to her old friend. The helmet flickered in Genevieve’s hands, giving way to the imposition of her own reality, changing into a fedora and back. She looked at it for a long time. “Hmm. It shields me from the outside, but doesn’t inhibit my insides turning into outsides. That’s good.” She put the helmet on, and it faded to translucence before vanishing. “I am garbed for war. Do we go soon? I don’t like being in the world like this for too long. I get distracted and things start to turn into birds when I don’t mean them to.”

  “Birds are okay,” Elsie said. “You should try beetles. God loves them. Darwin said so.”

  “One time Genevieve turned my TV into a lemon,” Rondeau said.

  “That was deliberate,” Genevieve said. “You contacted me for a frivolous reason.”

  Rondeau held up his hands. “It’s mea culpas all the way down, ma’am. Happy to have you on the team, by the way.”

  “If everyone’s done eating, we should go,” Marla said.

  “If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly,” Pelham murmured.

  “That’s the benefit of a classical education, right there,” Bradley said. “A quote for every occasion.”

  “My thing about beetles was classic.” Elsie’s remark was generally ignored.

  Marla turned to face her cohort. “Since we’re getting all Shakespearean, this is probably the part where I should do my St. Crispin’s Day speech. You know I’ve always been long on action and short on eloquence, and it turns out, getting a spark of the divine hasn’t made me any more articulate. But I’ll do my best. We’re going to attempt something that might be impossible, but if anyone can do it, we can. I’ve known some of you longer than others, but I’ve known you all for a while, and I know all of you well.”

  She tried not to think last words, but it was hard. Maybe best to proceed like they were, though. There was no telling what awaited them in Hell. “Rondeau, you like to play at being the world’s laziest fuck-up, but you’ve got more heart than a dozen decks of cards, and even when I’ve been furious at you, you’ve always been my best friend. You’d die for me and I’d kill for you, and maybe even vice versa.”

  “How can you not be attached to the girl who ripped off your jaw when you were a kid?” Rondeau said.

  Marla turned her head. “Pelly, you came to me as an employee, but it didn’t take long for you to prove yourself the bravest man I’ve ever known, willing to lay down your life and your sanity for the things you believe in, and now I’m proud to call you a friend.”

  “It is an honor to serve alongside you, Mrs. Mason,” Pelham said.

  “Bradley, you were my first, last, and only apprentice, and I was a terrible teacher, but you were an amazing student—and more than that, you became a better brother to me than my actual brother could ever be.”

  “Maybe that’s why Jason doesn’t like me,” Bradley said. “Metaphysical sibling rivalry.”

  Marla looked at Genevieve, who ducked her head. “Gen, when I first met you, I thought you were my enemy, but then I realized you had more generosity of spirit, more basic human kindness, than anyone I’d ever met. You made me want to be a better person. I don’t have a sister, but I wish I did, and I wish she was you.”

  “We can say so, and it can be so,” Genevieve replied.

  Marla faced Elsie, who looked at her coolly, and with a sort of detached curiosity. “Elsie Jarrow. First you were a sick person I had to keep locked away for the safety of the world. Then you were an assassin, doing your best to kill me, and an enemy I defeated at a greater cost than I realized at the time. Then you became a dragon, gnawing at the roots of my world, yet another monster for me to slay. Except, instead, I gave you a part of myself, and it’s possible—just possible—that we both became better for it.” She paused. “You’re also dangerous and terrifying and I’m afraid you’re going to stab me in the kidneys when we get down to Hell, just for the lulz.”

  “I won’t now, not when I know you’ll be expecting it.” Elsie smiled. “You’re somewhere between my midwife and my mother, Marla, but we both know I have all the loyalty of a spider to its ten thousand children, which is to say, not a whit. I still say the world is more interesting with you in it, and there’s no higher compliment I can give.” She brandished Night’s Plutonian Sword. “Before the stabbings commence, do you have an actual plan?”

  “Something like one,” Marla said. “We’re off to overthrow the god of Death. Weirdly enough, this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to do that... but it’s going to be a lot harder this time. Our goal is to cause enough trouble to get Skully himself to come for me. Then Genevieve will try to trap him, Elsie will hit him with a pickaxe, and I’ll... work my magic. The rest of you are support staff. I don’t know what the New Death will throw at us, but Rondeau and Bradley have the psychic sphere covered, and Pelham is pretty much panic-proof, so just keep any demons or Boschian weirdo-monsters off us. There’s no point in making a more detailed plan than that, because the terrain could literally change around us. If we fail, billions of souls will suffer for eternity. So. No failing. Are we good?”

  “Fate of the world shit,” Rondeau said. “Always it’s fate of the world shit with you.”

  “I wouldn’t show up for anything less, darling.” Elsie brandished the blade in a more-than-usually terrifying way. “Can I stab now?”

  “Stab away.” Marla picked up her battered leather bag, with its precious cargo, and slipped the strap over her shoulder. “Start with me.”

  “Yay!” Elsie shouted, and plunged the blade into Pelham’s heart. His eyes widened an instant before he disappeared.

  “Uh,” Bradley said. “A little warning would be –”

  She stabbed him next, then spun and slashed the blade through Rondeau.

  “Elsie!” Marla grabbed her elbow. “I said start with me!”

  “Sorry, sorr
y, I got linear time all backwards again.” Elsie stabbed Marla, and winked when she did it.

  Hell Is Some Other People

  The transition was instantaneous, and not at all painful. One moment Marla was in Rondeau’s suite, and the next, she was in a grove of twisted black trees, under a sky where, instead of stars, burning embers glowed. The trunks of the trees enclosed the bodies of damned souls, faces twisted in anguish, and the branches shook and rattled. Marla was conversant enough with her Dante to know this was his Wood of Suicides, with the souls of those who’d killed themselves entombed in bleeding trees where vile harpies roosted, and shat, and pecked. Skully really had embraced the classics.

  She looked down at her clothing, frowned, and changed into the raiment she’d worn when she went down to battle Elsie. Only her leather bag remained unchanged, and she slung it comfortably across her back. A rod of lapis lazuli appeared in her hand: not necessary to channel her power, but a useful prop, and it was enjoyable to point it at things and make them explode. Then she looked around for her friends.

  Rondeau was nearby, talking to a tree that appeared to hold a pretty young woman. She gazed farther afield, and there was Genevieve, approaching from the outskirts of the wood, gazing up at the sky with a look of concern and concentration.

  There was no sign of Elsie, Pelham, or Bradley. Had they been separated already? “Fall in, troops,” she called.

  Rondeau turned toward her, and the moment his back turned, something dropped from the branches toward him: winged, with an avian body and claws, but the head of a woman, with long, scraggly hair, and a mouth that was somehow both beaked and fanged. The harpy squawked, and Rondeau spun, raising up his hands to ward off the attack –

  A lemon fell at his feet. He stared at it for a moment, then looked up. “Guys. Guys, I just saw a harpy turn into a lemon. That just happened. This is going to be a pretty fucked up day, isn’t it?”

  “You and your lemons.” Marla smiled at Genevieve. She’d never felt affection for anyone but Death when she was in the underworld before, apart from that interval when Elsie had stripped her divinity away. Bradley’s memory-restoration had integrated her mind, mingling her mortal sensibilities and her godlike perspective. She could feel the arctic cold of the Bride’s aloofness under the surface of her mind—assessing her friends only as potential tools to be used for her goals, to be sacrificed as necessary—but there still was a surface, and the capacity for human fondness. She’d been a little worried the Bride’s aloofness would take over when she returned here.

  “I don’t know why it’s always lemons.” Genevieve shook her head. “I just like the smell, really.” She gestured, and the grove of suicides transformed, black trunks turning brown, black leaves turning green, and countless bird-women shrieking and howling, briefly, before they turned into lemons, too. A thoroughly convincing sun bloomed in the sky, banishing the blackness and embers, and clouds scudded past. They could have been standing in an Italian lemon orchard. Marla took a deep breath. The air smelled... heavenly.

  “So where are the others?” Rondeau said.

  Marla shook her head. “I don’t have my full awareness of the underworld, not with all Skully’s interference, so I can’t sense them. I saw Elsie poof Bradley and Pelham, though, so they’re down here somewhere, unless Elsie’s sword malfunctioned and sent them back to Pluto.”

  “Or she made it malfunction,” Rondeau said. “Because she thought it would be funny.”

  “I landed in a graveyard full of burning tombs,” Genevieve said. “I didn’t like it there, so I turned it into a carnival I liked as a child. Then I crossed a boiling river of blood before I found you here in the wood. The others might have simply landed farther afield.”

  “With luck, we’ll find them. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I hope Elsie’s with them. I’d feel better if they had a god on their side, too.”

  “I’m glad I ended up on your team, Marla,” Rondeau said. “Though I do wish I had a tommy gun or something.”

  Gen started to gesture, but Marla touched her wrist. “Wish harder, Rondeau. You should get the hang of manipulating things here.”

  Rondeau nodded, squinched up his face, and a moment later, a long-barreled black gun with a round drum attached appeared in his hands. “All right.” He looked the weapon over, then frowned. “Hey, this is just, like, a block of wood and metal. There’s not even a hole in the barrel, or any place to load the ammo, and the trigger doesn’t move....”

  Genevieve clucked her tongue. “You either have to imagine very thoroughly, or you have to use your psychic powers to reach into the minds of those nearby who have a complete understanding of whatever you wish to create, and let their knowledge fill in the conceptual gaps. Here, when we are near so many of the dead, there is surely someone who knows the workigns of such a mechanism intimately....” She held out her hand, and a tommy gun appeared there. Her garb shifted, too: stockings, a tight skirt, a blouse under a gray suit jacket, and a fedora. Her hair went black, and a beauty mark appeared on her cheek.

  “Gun moll Genevieve. I like it.” Rondeau gritted his teeth, and his own outfit shifted to a suit a forties mobster might have worn, with a fedora of his own. His gun subtly changed, too, into something functional instead of merely decorative.

  “I’m not sure I like the outlaw theme,” Marla said, “but it’s good practice.” She looked around. “What happened to the souls trapped in the trees?”

  “Oh, they’re over there. I think I shrank them?” Genevieve pointed, and Marla noticed a rising cascade of colored bubbles in the center of the orchard, floating from the ground into the sky. She went closer, and recognized the tiny self-contained worlds of the dead. Peering into a few, she saw some scenes of torment, but also scenes of pleasure, delight, and soft-focus tranquility. For the moment, Genevieve had freed these souls from the pains imposed upon them by the New Death.

  That would piss him off.

  “Where to?” Rondeau said.

  “Oh, I think we should pick up a couple of assistants.” She watched the rising bubbles carefully until she saw one roiling with flame, then took it in her hands, set it down in the grass, and whispered to it.

  The bubble burst, and Jenny Click stood before her, dressed in flames, hair a whirl of fire. Jenny hugged her, hard, and it didn’t burn. “Marla! You’re back! I was a tree, it was terrible, birds pooped on me and I couldn’t set them on fire, why was I a tree?”

  Marla pulled back and smiled at her old friend, who’d immolated herself so many years ago in the extremity of her grief. “The underworld’s under new management. The new boss has some strange ideas about rehabilitation. We’re here to overthrow him. Want to help?”

  “Ooh. Maybe. I had fun last time you brought me along for a conquering.” She looked Rondeau up and down. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Rondeau. Uh. He’s gay.”

  Jenny grinned. “So? That’s okay. I’m flaming.” She turned on Genevieve. “Whoa. What are you a goddess of?”

  “It varies,” Genevieve said.

  Jenny rubbed her hands together. Smoke rose from her palms. “Are we going to go get Daniel now?”

  Marla started to say no, they needed to press on and find their friends and assault the palace, but then she paused. Daniel’s ability to affect life force, including the spark of divinity, might be useful... plus, it would be nice to see her dead boyfriend again. “I’d like to, but I’m not sure where he is....”

  “What’s he guilty of?” Rondeau said. “We’re in, what, the seventh circle of Hell in this living Dante fanfic here? Jenny committed suicide, and she was right where you’d expect her to be. So what was Daniel’s defining sin?”

  “Nothing, he was a sweetheart, he always tried to do the right thing, he even died trying to do the right thing.” But to the New Death, everyone was guilty of something, so what would he consider the core of Daniel’s guilt? For some people it was easy to figure out: the old pornomancer Artie Mann, for example, would
be in the second circle with the other lustful dead –

  Ah. “Oathbreaking,” Marla said. “Daniel was trying to fulfill a vow, to bring our mentor Artie Mann back from the dead, when he died. He didn’t fulfill his promise, so I bet Skully considers him an oathbreaker.”

  “That’s, what, lake of ice?” Rondeau said. “Circle nine?”

  “I had no idea you read Dante,” she said.

  “I figured since my best friend was queen of Hell I should study up,” he said. “So I read a graphic novel, and played a video game. There was this cool photo set online, too, some guy recreated all nine circles of the Inferno with Legos. I got the general outlines.”

  “I’ll conjure us a ride.” Marla concentrated, and the first monstrous steed that appeared was a reasonable facsimile of the flying monster Geryon, which had ferried Dante and Virgil across the eighth circle of Hell in The Inferno... but that was playing a bit too much into Skully’s iconography, even if it was amusing to hear Rondeau squeak in alarm at Geryon’s monstrous, multiform appearance. Instead she recreated a chimera she’d flown on, once, when Genevieve’s exothermic nightmares were transforming her city: a large creature with the body of a bull and the wings and head of a seagull. Once it had precipitated fully into existence, the chimera turned its black-eyed head to her, then settled down on its forelimbs. Marla remembered her dream. If you squinted, it looked a little like a white raven. She climbed on, patting its neck, then looked to the others. “Coming?”