The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) (24 page)

“Tell me who you are, and how you came to be here, or the death god will be the least of your problems.”

“I’m Markhat. I’m here because I flipped the magic coin a god of Fate gave me. I suppose I stepped out of time before my funeral. Buttercup met me here, I have no idea how or why. I figured if anyone lived through this mess you did, and I suspected you had a hidey hole down deep below Avalante.” I poked the slack-jawed skeleton in its bony chest. “Now either kill me or take me in. I’m tired of walking.”

“Is it really you?”

“It is. Be a shame if you killed me after being so kind as to attend my funeral. Please tell me you’ve got something to drink stashed away down there.”

Halfdead talons pricked my skin, but didn’t tear my throat out.

“Only Markhat would be so unnecessarily impudent.”

“So I’ve been told. Are we friends, or aren’t we?”

The tiny pinpricks of light deep inside the empty skull flickered.

The skeletal hand fell away from my throat.

“Follow,”
she said.
“We have much to talk about.”

The dead vampire turned, and I took banshee in hand and followed after.

Chapter Nineteen

I’d been right.

Stitches, who had once been the Corpsemaster, did indeed have a deep hiding place concealed in the vaults far below Avalante.

And she was using the plentiful dead to keep an eye on the devastation above.

We simply stepped through a fold in the shadows, and emerged into a steep, sloping tunnel that wound in a spiral down and down and down. The walls were curved and glassy smooth, as though formed by great heat. There were no steps, and even the corpse Stitches wore stumbled a few times when its bony toes caught on small irregularities in the fused stone.

She cussed, which I’d seldom heard her do. Her control over the skeleton seemed incomplete as well, though whether that was due to the condition of the remains or overtaxed powers I couldn’t say.

We walked in silence for the better part of an hour. As we descended, a mechanical throbbing began to sound, rising up from the depths, quickly growing loud enough to make the conversation we weren’t having impossible.

At last, we rounded a turn, and the tunnel simply ended. Before us stood a tall, black door, a door with no latch, knob, or visible lock.

“Welcome to my home, such as it is,”
said Stitches through her fleshless corpse.
“Enter, and be welcome here.”

The pile of bones simply collapsed at my feet. The skull came loose and rolled. I didn’t think Stitches would be using that particular body again.

The black door swung silently open. It opened inward, and it opened to darkness, but Buttercup giggled and skipped through it, and I shrugged and stepped through myself.

Stitches, sans stitches, greeted me.

“You never cease to amaze,” she said, using her mundane voice. Her lips showed no scars, nor her eyes. “I commend you. Such cleverness is rare among mortals.”

Buttercup skipped to her and then skipped away, inspecting the contents of the cavernous chamber.

I glanced about myself. The chamber was vast, and lit only here and there, so I had no idea how far back it extended.

Gleaming, metallic contraptions rose up all around. Some moved, pistons and levers whirling in the harsh spotlights. Sparks spewed and flew. Bolts of tame lightning danced from machine to machine, illuminating the whole cavern from time to time but doing so too briefly to allow for a good look at anything distant.

The throbbing was present too, but muted. I felt it through my feet more than I heard it.

“So what happened?” I asked. “How did it win?”

She surprised me by moving to stand near me, and then giving me a brief, chaste hug.

“Let us sit,” she said. “The telling of the tale will be no easier than the hearing of it.”

We wound our way through worktables and banks of humming machines. Papers and drawings littered the place, along with cast-off remains of meals and empty coffee mugs.

“Maid’s day off,” I muttered.

She laughed. We found a table. She shoved a stack of books onto the floor and sat on a rickety chair. I found a stool and did the same.

A pair of beers appeared. They weren’t cold. We opened them and drank them dry anyway.

“They’re all dead, you know,” she said after a time.

I just nodded. I’d known it, the moment I saw the charred, melted ground upon which my house once sat. But the words struck like a blow all the same.

“You died first. Then Evis, who survived the first battle with the god. Mama Hog was next. She nearly landed a blow with that cleaver of hers.”

She paused. Something glistened in her eye.

“Gertriss and your Darla led the resistance,” she said. I watched her search for words that would impart the truth without inflicting unnecessary hurt. “They were brave, Markhat. Brave and gallant and wonderful. You should be very proud.”

I tried to find words, couldn’t. She nodded, and in a moment she continued.

“But in the end, the godlet arose. Became a god. The resistance fell. Gertriss died at the south wall, leading a group of survivors out of Rannit.”

“Darla?” Her name stuck in my throat.

Stitches put her hand on mine.

“She had something. An artifact. Something Evis left for Gertriss, and Gertriss gave to Darla. Darla rushed the god, threw it in his face. She…did not survive.” Stitches swallowed, weighing her words. “I was there. I enhanced her attack, but my efforts were insufficient. When I awoke, I was buried in rubble, and Darla was dead. I am sorry, Markhat. So very damned sorry.”

“He killed her.”

She blinked but did not speak.

“Dammit. Tell me.”

“What good will it do?”

“I’ve walked out of time, Corpsemaster. I’ve watched Rannit die. I’ll be dead myself, shortly. I’ve earned the right. Tell me.”

Her gaze lingered.

“The necromancer took her life,” she said.

“How did it happen?”

“Don’t ask that, Markhat. I beg you, don’t ask.”

Buttercup snuggled up against me.

“All right. I won’t ask that. But there’s something I will ask.” I realized my voice was getting shaky, so I swallowed and took a breath.

The ghost of an idea had been born, out there amid Rannit’s bones.

“I left you a note, the day Avalante went after the godlet. Asked you to rob a crypt and hide a body. Did you?”

She nodded. “I did. The corpse showed signs of consciousness and rudimentary animation. It was mother to both the giant and his sister, whom you know as the necromancer.”

Pay dirt. Now for one more stroke of luck.

“Do you still have the body?”

“Yes. Despite their efforts to locate it, I have kept the body hidden. It has lapsed into a state of inactivity, without the ministrations of the female. I fear it is little more than a pile of bones by now.” Her eyes bored into mine. “Is this relevant?”

I sagged in my chair.

At the very least,
I thought,
I will see Darla avenged.

A dog barked, somewhere back in the shadows. I heard the unmistakable sliding click of a dog’s paws trying to gain purchase on the mirror-smooth floor.

“Doris, over here,” said Stitches. She smiled, weary and somber, but it was a good smile, the first I’d seen on her. A little dog yapped.

“I keep my promises,” said Stitches. “Let him loose, Doris. Come, Cornbread.”

Cornbread came running, his leash trailing in his wake.

He leaped up into Stitches’s lap and licked her face. A limping, halfdead corpse shambled into view and stood motionless beside our table.

Stitches scratched Cornbread behind his ears.

“You died before I could return him to you,” said Stitches. “So I kept him. He has endured wrack and ruin, the fall of Rannit, the rise of the death god.” She nuzzled him, face-to-face. “He chewed my last pair of slippers to bits as well, didn’t you, boy? Didn’t you?”

Cornbread licked her chin and gave her a big, toothy doggy smile.

Stitches put him gently on the floor. He sat on his haunches and looked up at me, ears lifted, tail wagging. I held out my hand, and he came forward and sniffed it and then we were friends. “I sent Doris for him as soon as I was convinced you were Markhat,” she said. “Now. The dead woman. What use is she to you?”

“Bait,” I said. “I want to use her as bait. But you have to know this. What I’m about to ask will probably get you killed. And even if it works, I’m not sure you’ll live. This whole world could just go poof. Or not. I just don’t know.”

She nodded. “You intend to step back in time.”

“Can’t kill the death god now. Am I right about that?”

“The giant, the man you knew as Vucik, is no more. The godlet rose within him, consuming him in the process. It is now a god, and as such is functionally invincible.”

“So I go back. Back to when Vucik was an Ogre half-breed being worn by an infant godlet. It’s the only way.”

Stitches shook her head. “You died, Markhat. Nothing can change that. I am sorry. But that is truth.”

“I’m here. I left before I died.” I held up the fate god’s coin. “This lets me walk outside of time. The other me has one too. The death godlet doesn’t know about either.”

“May I see it?”

She held out her hand. I tried to place the coin in her palm, but it passed through her and landed in my lap.

She raised an eyebrow.

“Is that significant?” I asked.

“The talisman is only for you,” she said. She thought for a moment, her brow furrowed in concentration. “You stepped outside of time before your death, you say.”

“I did.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know if you can change your destiny. I don’t know if the presence of two such coins will allow you to merge two paths of time. Frankly, I doubt even a godlet could craft such a talisman, given the energies involved.”

“You were surprised to see me come strolling to your door,” I said. “Maybe I’m not done surprising you yet. If you’re willing, knowing you could die, or unravel the universe, or both.”

Stitches was silent for a moment. Cornbread stirred and she idly rubbed his head. Then she shrugged. “It’s not much of a universe these days. If it unravels, so be it. Let the gods amuse themselves with an eternity of vacuum.” Her eyes took back their old steel. “What sort of a surprise do you have in mind, Captain?”

Chapter Twenty

Preparations took three days.

It took Stitches and me and a dozen of her animated corpses an entire day to reach the dead woman’s burial site. A day just to get there, and half the night watching her skeletal servants dig.

Stitches kept watch on the sky. She said the death god was vigilant, always sweeping his gaze across his dead domain.

Finally, a shovel struck something solid. It took the dead a couple of hours to unearth a lead-lined box. Etched sigils and hex signs covered every portion of its surface.

We waited for nightfall before setting out for Avalante with the box. Stitches said her spells would conceal us from the death god, but not the necromancer’s keen eyes, and she had no way of telling where the old witch might be lurking.

We lost one of our dead on the way back. It simply collapsed, bones falling apart. Stitches stumbled, and I caught her arm, and her hood fell back just enough for me to get a glimpse of her face.

She was pale and covered in a sheen of sweat.

She shook off my arm and marched on.

Cornbread greeted us with barks and a little dance back at Avalante. Stitches bent and hugged him, then hurried off with her prize to make ready for the night’s festivities.

I decided I wasn’t going to unravel the fabric of reality without a nap, so I settled into a corner and slept. Cornbread curled up with me, just as Petey had done.

We slept until a pair of skull-faced humans poked us awake.

“It is done,”
said Stitches.
“Shall I prepare for us one last meal?”

“Let’s call it an early victory feast instead,” I muttered, rising. Cornbread yawned and rolled over for a belly-rub.

“As you wish. My larder is somewhat bare, but I believe I can manage. Ernst will lead you to a washroom, if you wish to make yourself presentable.”

The closest of the desiccated corpses nodded and motioned for me to follow.

“Come on, Cornbread,” I said. “Let’s go make ourselves handsome. We’re dining like gentlemen tonight.”

The dog pricked up his ears and followed at my side.

As was befitting the last supper before the destruction of the universe, we enjoyed a damned good bottle of wine.

I was dressed for the occasion. My own clothes were tattered and soiled beyond any hope of laundered redemption. Stitches had her corpses lay out clothes by the armload, and I rooted through the stacks until I managed to clothe myself.