Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9) (16 page)

“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 the 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.”

“You’re nothing if not inconsistent. So. Greece. My usual method of long-distance travel is no good right now. I can’t just take a shortcut through Hell, like I used to. There’s teleporting, but... is it safer to travel that way for gods than it is for mortals?”

“Heavens, no. More dangerous, actually. The things that dwell in the spaces in-between are drawn to life force, and you and I are practically brimming
over
with life force, we’re supercharged. Humans are kerosene and we’re rocket fuel. Your boy Bradley has been dabbling with mirror travel, as I understand, but that’s also more dangerous for the likes of us. We can make unreal things
really
real.”

“So, what? Do we steal a plane?”

Elsie waved her hand. “Back when I was mortal a Sufi mystic taught me the secret of Tayy al-Ard, ‘the folding of the Earth.’ It’s a way to travel without actually going anywhere. You stay in one place, and the Earth moves
under
you, and stops once your destination is beneath your feet. If you do it wrong, you get smashed against a wall or a mountain along the way, but we’ll do it right instead. I’ll teach you.”

“I’ve never been the quickest study with magic, Elsie. I’ve always gotten along through sheer stubborn refusal to quit.”

“Oh, I know, you’re notorious, all grit and no sparkle. But I think you’ll find certain things come more easily now that you’re fully in touch with your goddess-hood, darling.”

•

An hour later, Elsie and Marla crouched behind an immense anvil and watched a dog-sized bronze mechanical spider pick its way across the relic-strewn floor. They were in a stone-walled workshop, lit only by low-banked forge fires. They’d traveled to Greece using Elsie’s method of folding the Earth—it was disorienting, but also beautiful, seeing a whole hemisphere whip past at high speed—and they’d landed on a rocky island overlooking a night-time sea that was, in fact, fairly wine-dark. From there, they’d descended into a crack in the ground, leaving behind the ordinary world, at some point, and entering the palace of a god. Marla had paused to marvel at the decorative urns and the oversized statues of majestic figures (though it was creepy how all their facial features were smashed off, like someone had gotten drunk and angry with a hammer), but Elsie had called her a tourist and dragged her down a set of stairs into this sweltering basement workshop.

Marla elbowed her fellow god as the spider scuttled around a corner and out of sight. “Elsie. This doesn’t feel like a visit.”

“When I said ‘visit,’ I thought it was clear I meant ‘burglarize,’” Elsie said. “My apologies if I was imprecise.”

“Who even worships Hephaestus anymore?” Marla demanded.

“A few neo-pagans, probably. But he still has a lot of juice in popular culture. Wasn’t he in a Disney movie or something? He slumbers, though, mostly. Not a lot of demand for his wares anymore, I gather, and his hot wife never visits. He won’t notice if we nick a few things from his workshop. Probably. He never has before.” Elsie lifted her head, peeking over the anvil. “All right, I don’t see any more guardians. I’m sure they’re very lazy and unobservant anyway.”

“Can god-made automatons even be lazy?”

“Anything can be anything, Marla. They just have to believe in themselves.”

“Every time I think I can’t hate you any more, I hate you a little more.”

“Shush. Hephaestus makes the most darling little helmets.” Elsie scurried from cover toward a doorway, and Marla followed, trying to curse only to herself. Beyond the door was a room of seemingly infinite length, filled with gleaming racks of weapons and dark armor.

“The armory of the gods,” Elsie said. “Do you like it?”

She picked up a dagger with a blade that shimmered with dark swirls of color, like oil on water. “It’s starting to win me over.”

“I’m going to get a helmet with wings on the side,” Elsie said. “Like the imaginary Vikings used to wear. I am going to be adorable. Hmm. We’re going to need, let’s see, six of them.”

“There are only five of us, Elsie. Me, you, Rondeau, Pelly, and B.”

“So
far
. It’s always good to have an extra. You never know when you’ll pick up a tagalong.”

“What are these helmets supposed to do for us, anyway?”

“Oh, things.” Elsie wandered off down an aisle and disappeared around a corner. Marla gritted her teeth and followed. Being annoyed with her was pointless. Elsie
lived
to irritate people.

Marla put a hand on Elsie’s shoulder before she could turn another
corner. “I have gone along with you, with hardly any complaint, because I am an enlightened being with a widened perspective, now. But there are limits even to my cosmic patience. What. Are. The. Helmets. For.”

Elsie reached out and picked up a green gladiator’s helmet decorated with a motif of vines and flowers: oddly pretty, for something designed to be hit with a club. She blew a layer of dust off the helm. “The gods used to pit their champions against one another, for the proverbial shits and giggles, and these were designed to give certain mortals an edge. They make the wearer... not god-
proof
, certainly, but let’s say god-
resistant
. If your mortal sidekicks wear these, the New Death won’t be able to simply stop their hearts with a glance. He’ll have to kill them more conventionally. I’m also
fairly
sure he won’t be able to trap them in bubbles of hostile reality and wipe out their minds, though only time will tell for sure. If your new husband conjures a giant man-or-woman-eating demon, the demon could still eat them, of course. But, still, the helmets might shift this from an absurdly unfair fight to a merely horribly unbalanced fight. Wearing them will improve our own natural resistance to the New Death’s interference, too. We’ve both got mortal cores that makes us a little less agile when it comes to shaping reality than those who are all the way god.” She gave Marla a significant look. “Though I like to think we’re stronger for our mortality, the way an alloy is better than pure metal.”