Dead Reign (12 page)

“You did well. We need to get in touch with Marla. I tried calling her on the way over, but…” He shook his head. “No answer. I’m more disturbed by the fact that she hasn’t gotten in touch. If Death is truly what he says—and if he brushed aside Marla’s magics as easily as you say—then she could be anywhere.”

“How the hell can he banish her?” Rondeau said. “She’s the chief sorcerer of Felport! She is the city, right? So how can he keep her out of herself?”

“He has the power of a god. He can do most anything he wishes. But you’re right, Marla is the city. Even if Death tries to rule properly, Felport will suffer in Marla’s absence, stutter and shudder like a poorly maintained engine, but it will be a long time before the results become catastrophic. Death may attempt to take her place, but he’s inhuman. He can’t be chief sorcerer, can’t truly take her place—but he
can
become a tyrant, an occupier. We can only hope he doesn’t decide to burn the city down or kill all the inhabitants to make his point.”

“We’ll fight him, right? Until Marla gets back?”

“I will fight,” Hamil said. “In my own way. And you will do your part, I’m sure. But the other sorcerers…you know them, Rondeau, at least well enough. They’re intensely self-interested. Nicolette is a chaos magician, and Death taking over Felport will only cause more chaos and increase her power. She won’t mind. Granger moves where the wind blows. Viscarro will just hide underground until he has no other choice, then he will ally himself with whichever side seems strongest. The Bay Witch may not even come out of the water—honestly, she might not even notice if the city changes hands. The Chamberlain works for a consortium of ghosts, and who knows how those ghosts will feel about Death? As for Ernesto…if he were here, I would be more confident. But he seems to be dawdling, which worries me. He likes Marla, but I’m not sure how much deeper his loyalty goes. The fact is, Death is more powerful than Marla. If he wants to take over Felport, he can. I’m not sure what Marla can do about it.”

Rondeau sputtered. “Are you kidding? This is
Marla.
She’s a force of nature!”

“No, she’s not. You know I think as highly of her as you do, but Death…Death is
literally
a force of nature. An irresistible force. Irresistible to everyone except you, of course. You might be the only man in the city who can openly stand against Death, because he knows he can’t just end your life if you become too boring or inconvenient.”

“Fat lot of good it does me,” Rondeau said.

“Oh, it might do a lot of good.” Ernesto emerged from the shadows of some secret entry to the bomb shelter, axle grease shining on the lapel of his ragged tuxedo. “Sorry I didn’t get here sooner, but I have a bug in this room, so I heard everything.” He tapped his ear. “I’m hurt, Hamil. I’m a loyal Marlista through and through. There’s already some shit going down out there, and it’s not even dawn—Granger has sided with Death, and they’re visiting Nicolette now.”

“That was fast,” Hamil said. “They’ll be knocking on our doors soon.”

“Yep,” Ernesto said. “And I think we’d better be there to answer them, and we’d better play nice, too. Oh, we shouldn’t roll over
too
quick, but we shouldn’t be so much trouble he kills us.”

“You’re just going to let this guy take over?” Rondeau rose, clenching his fists. “Let him destroy everything Marla’s built here?”

“Now, now,” Ernesto said. “Settle down, kid. We can keep him from fucking up stuff too bad if we pretend to work with him, maybe. But
you
don’t have to play nice. I doubt you’ll be able to get close enough to him again for your Curses to work—he’ll be on the lookout for that—but there are other options. Since you’re the one guy old Skull and Bones can’t kill, you’re the perfect candidate to wage a little asymmetrical warfare.”

“What?” Rondeau said, bewildered.

“He means you should lead the resistance,” Hamil said, nodding. “And I think it’s an excellent idea.”

“Me?” Rondeau said. “Look, guys, I hate to put it like this, but I’m Marla’s sidekick, not Che fucking Guevara.”

“I should hope not,” Hamil said. “Che Guevara lost. You have to win.”

“Viva la revolución,”
Ernesto said.

M
arla sat up, sneezing in a cloud of pollen and shredded flowers. She’d landed on her back—though where she’d fallen from, she wasn’t sure—in a patch of wildflowers beside a two-lane blacktop road. The quarter moon was high, crickets were chirping, and she felt like she’d been shoved into a burlap sack and rolled down a rocky hill while people ran alongside and hit her with sticks. “Death, you fuck,” she said, and sneezed again. She activated her night-eyes so she could see in the darkness around her, but there wasn’t much to see. Suddenly panicked, she looked around for her dagger, and found it in the blue and white flowers at her side. She snatched it up and sheathed it at her belt, then stood up, wincing as her knees popped. There were flowers on the shoulder on both sides of the road, and pine woods beyond. The only other item in the landscape was a battered metal sign ten feet in front of her that said “Welcome to Felport.”

Death had picked her up and dumped her on the outskirts of town, on some road she didn’t recognize. She wasn’t even sure if she was north or east of the city; there were lots of woods on the outskirts in both those directions. Dumped in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. Death would pay for that. She gritted her teeth and started to walk toward the sign, when someone grunted and moaned across the road.

“Pelham?” She hurried across, to find her valet sprawled half in a drainage ditch, his neatly pressed jacket smeared with dirt and rucked up, revealing his pale soft belly. “Are you all right?”

“I am…battered but whole, Ms. Mason.” She helped him to his feet, where he futilely tried to brush grass and weeds off his coat. “Ready to aid you however I can.”

“What are you even doing here? Did Death toss you, too?”

“I am linked to you, Ms. Mason.” He bowed slightly, then climbed out of the ditch. “I suppose when he…sent you here…he sent me as well.”

“Okay, I’m going to call Hamil and get us a car.” She opened her cell phone and dialed, but it only hissed and crackled static in her ear, and she cursed in frustration. “Damn it, no reception.” Yet the phone’s display showed a clear, strong signal. That was troubling. “We’ll have to go on foot until the phone starts working.”

“Of course.” Pelham took a tentative step. He would have fallen straight into the ditch again if she hadn’t grabbed his arm.

“You can’t see, can you? Damn it, you should’ve mentioned.”

“I’m sorry. Of course you’re right. My apologies.”

Marla sighed. “I just meant…here.
Fiat lux.
” He gasped as her spell increased the effectiveness of his vision, allowing his eyes to slurp up stray moonlight and dim reflections so he could see almost as well as in daylight. “Let’s march.” She started down the road at a fast clip.

Her pace slowed considerably when she passed the edge of the “Welcome to Felport” sign, fell to her knees, and began vomiting. Pelham hurried to help her, but he started puking, too, though he still tried to crawl toward her. Marla attempted to move forward, but with every inch she moved into Felport, her convulsions became more severe. It was hard to think about anything while noisily voiding her stomach contents, but she had little doubt this was Death’s doing—he’d banished her, after all, and he’d apparently chosen a very visceral way to keep her out of the city. Cursing—not magical Curses like Rondeau’s, but mundane, if vociferous, ones—as she heaved, she lurched and dragged herself back beyond the perimeter of Felport, followed by Pelham. The nausea and pain stopped immediately, but the aftereffects lingered. They both lay shuddering on the shoulder for a while, and finally Pelham spoke up. “That was most unpleasant.”

“Yeah.” Marla wiped her mouth with a handful of pulled grass. She didn’t even have any water to wash her mouth out. “I guess you are linked to me, the way you were hurling there. Death probably didn’t realize you’d get dragged along, but if I get banished, you get banished.” She sat up. “Let’s inventory. No phone. Can’t get into the city. Boots and nothing to kick. A knife and nothing to cut. I’ve got this bell Death gave me, and maybe Hamil could do something nasty with it, but I don’t have his expertise with sympathetic and contagious magic.” She considered ringing it and trying to attack Death again when he appeared, but one definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result, and Marla may have had her issues, but she wasn’t insane. “Altogether? Not so good.”

“Just let me know what I can do to help.”

She laughed. “I’m at a bit of a loss myself. Maybe if a car comes by we can hop in and ride into Felport, but I think we’d just hurt worse the farther in we got. I’ve got a few talents, Pelham, but kicking ass while puking my guts out isn’t one of them. Whatever this magic is, I doubt I can beat it. Death must really be a god. Such powers are…resistant to intervention. I think the only reason he couldn’t just take my dagger is because one of his ancestors, or incarnations, or whatever, made the thing, and lost it fairly. The gods have to keep their promises and follow certain rules, the same way you and I have to breathe and eat and sleep, and there might be a way to beat Death if I can figure out what rules govern his actions. But gods don’t like telling you what those rules are, unfortunately. Have you ever played the card game Mao, where the other players don’t tell you the rules, and you have to figure them out as you go along? I hate that game.”

“I see,” Pelham said, not very helpfully.

“Sitting still bugs me.” She stood up, wrapping her grass-stained cloak around her body. She wished, fleetingly, that she’d been wearing her lethal purple-and-white cloak when Death barged in on her. She would have kicked the asshole up one side of the world and down the other if she’d been wearing the artifact, though using it again might have driven her permanently insane.
Small price to pay to be spared this embarrassment,
she thought sourly. “Can you walk, Pelham?”

“Yes, Ms. Mason.” He rose, too.

“Don’t you want to know where we’re walking to?”

“I will follow wherever you go, of course.”

She sighed. “I don’t know where we’re going.”

“Do you have any allies outside the city?” Pelham asked. “Who might be able to get a message back to your associates?”

“I had the same thought. Dr. Leda Husch, head of the Blackwing Institute. She can help. Blackwing’s like an hour drive outside of the city, it’ll take forever on foot. But I don’t even know where exactly we are, so I’m not sure which way to start the forced march.” It was frustrating. In the city she always knew her location, but out here…she was in the wilderness.

“We’re on Asleid Road, on the north side of the city, Ms. Mason,” Pelham said.

Marla blinked. “How do you know that?”

“I have examined all the maps, Ms. Mason.”

“Yeah, but I mean, maps don’t show, what, trees? What’s your landmark?”

“There are very fine satellite maps that contain a great deal of detail. And my sense of direction is very good.” He pointed. “That sign indicates sharp curves for the next eight miles, which is consistent only with Asleid Road. I can lead us to the Blackwing Institute—though, as you’ve said, it is approximately fifty miles away, which is, hmm, about twelve hours of walking time?”

“We can make it in ten,” she said. “It’s—gods, it’s almost four in the morning, and I haven’t slept and neither have you. Well. I’ve got spells that can keep you going even when you think you’re going to collapse. We’ll have to eat like pigs when we get to Blackwing to recover the calories. It’s mostly hospital food, but it’ll do. And maybe we’ll get cell coverage on the way.” Marla doubted the last, assuming Death had somehow put the kibosh on her phone, but figured voicing some optimism wouldn’t hurt Pelham’s morale. Not that his morale seemed even slightly dented. He was proving pretty stalwart so far.

“If I may lead, then?” he said, and she nodded, and fell into step behind him.

After a few miles, the sun began to touch the edge of the sky, and Marla
finally
got her sense of direction decently oriented. They’d seen a couple of cars, but none were going the right direction; all were headed toward Felport, not away from it. Marla considered a carjacking, but she didn’t think she’d fallen quite that far yet. They were sure to hit a little gas station or something soon, and maybe she’d have more luck with a pay phone than her cell.

“Look, a motorist in distress,” Pelham said, and up ahead there was indeed a little sedan with its hood up and the flashers on, a guy sitting on the back, smoking a cigarette and looking at them with interest. “Do you need assistance?” Pelham shouted.

The man was young and tired-looking, dressed in a T-shirt that said “Allison Wonderland” over a stylized picture of a guitar. He tossed his cigarette onto the pavement. “You look like
you
need assistance, guys,” he said. “Like you slept in a field last night. I’ve just got a broken-down car.” He looked Marla up and down. “Cool cloak. Do you work at a Renaissance fair or something?”

“Or something. So is help on the way?”

He nodded glumly. “Called for a tow truck twenty minutes ago. They weren’t sure when they’d get somebody out here. I’m at Adler, taking summer classes, trying to graduate, and I got an early start today to go see my parents for the weekend. I thought my car would make it one more round-trip, but no such luck.”

“Bad luck,” Marla said. “Hey, can I borrow your phone?”

He passed over his cell, and Marla tried to call Hamil, but she got squeals and pops and static again. “No answer,” she said, shrugging, and gave the phone back. Damn it. Death was thorough.

“Tell you what,” Marla said. “We’ll get you on your way and save you the cost of a tow truck, if you’re willing to give us a ride to Annemberg.”

“Annemberg? Isn’t that, like, one stoplight and some cows?”

“Yeah,” Marla said. It was also the home of the Blackwing Institute. “I’ve got a friend there.”