All the Pomp of Earthly Majesty

by Michael G. Williams

  Iria ran, and kept running, and it felt like it had been miles, but they had gone only eight blocks. Throughout, random strangers would speak to them in Mammon’s voice, seeking to discourage, to delay, to throw them off-course. Each time, Iria felt more strongly the overwhelming desire to get back to Madge, to restore their mentor and teacher and lover and friend. Iria reached Golden Gate Avenue and turned right, running across it. Halfway down the block, Iria swung a left to dash through a massive and ornate wrought-iron gate—and bounced off of it.

  Iria looked up at the gate to St. Boniface Church. It was padlocked. With three locks.

  The sign posted to it on the inside was quite simple and entirely the opposite of the welcoming signage of St. Boniface’s Gubbio Project:

  NO TRESPASSING

  NO LOITERING

  NO HANDOUTS

  Chinatown, 1912

  Norton heard the signal: the whistling of a whippoorwill, common to the pine barrens inland from the Bay. Hatchet in hand, he walked forward toward the front door of the brothel. It was a shabby, gray building with the curved rooflines of a pagoda, intended to ward off bad fortune. He hoped that built-in protective aspect would assist all the people inside, not just the proprietor.

  A man in a long coat and a crisp white shirt stood by the front doors. Norton strode purposefully around the jade plant and toward the doors, hand reaching for the handle. The man stepped into Norton’s path and said something in Chinese. It sounded like a challenge, but Norton’s Chinese wasn’t good enough to pick up the man’s exact meaning. His understanding of the language was contained to polite inquiries, offers of assistance, and good wishes. He did not regret having never learned the brutish vocabulary of bullies and goons.

  “And a fine evening to you also, good sir.” Norton touched the brim of his hat and angled so as to move around the man, but the man put up one hand and flicked aside the tail of his coat with the other. He wore a hatchet there, and the body language was clear as the tolling of a church bell: stop, comply, or be attacked. “My heavens.” Norton paused and held up both hands, palms out. “I mean no harm to anyone in this establishment. I swear it.”

  The man pointed at the cavalry saber Norton wore on his own hip, poking out from under the coat. It was surplus given him by the staff of the army base at Alcatraz Island. He wore it proudly and had used it on occasion to bestow high office on the most loyal citizens of his empire, but he did not regard it as a weapon. Norton was, above all, a man of peace. And this man wanted Norton to remove it, lest he use it to do some harm.

  “I cannot give you my sword, sir.” Norton shrugged and shook his head and tried to seem apologetic, even penitent. “I would, sir, in a moment, but it is an implement of state. I cannot hand it over to the first person who asks it of me. I do hope we are not at an impasse.”

  The man continued to make eye contact with Norton, but he flicked his wrist a couple of times to jab his finger in the direction of the sword once again. He was quite insistent.

  “Perhaps there is a person in a supervisory position with whom I could speak on the matter.” Norton cleared his throat, warming to the role of problem customer. He spread his hands a little further. “Or perhaps a small remuneration could be made to assist you in failing to detect it on the Imperial personage?” Norton waggled his eyebrows. The greedy are all alike, and they all know the sound of money being offered even if they don’t understand the words.

  The hatchet man considered, eyeing him, perhaps to determine just how much of a bribe Norton could manage in his bedraggled and mismatched attire. He opened his mouth to speak, to say something Norton knew he would never understand.

  Theodora stepped from the shadows and hit the hatchet man on the side of the head with a hammer. He dropped to the sidewalk instantly, eyes rolled all the way back in his head.

  “Good heavens!” Norton cried out at the violence. “You could kill him!”

  “But I didn’t.” Theodora didn’t bother to feel the man for a pulse, but Norton could see the boo how doy’s chest rise faintly. “Now be ready, sir. We need to charge inside and create a ruckus. We’ve stopped this one from sounding the alarm, but we should still move fast.”

  “I am happy to provide distraction.” Norton’s voice was higher than normal, his eyes wide. “But I shall not be hitting people in the head with blunt instruments, thank you kindly.”

  “Then your distraction should be very good, or you should stay outside.” Theodora faced the door and lifted one of her booted feet. The door smashed inward at a kick, slamming loudly against an interior wall. Norton heard something shatter, some objet d’art just inside.

  Someone screamed, and then someone else. Feet began running toward them.

  Theodora drew the hammer and dashed into the fray.

  Norton followed after her, the axe in his hands but turned sideways. He had absolutely zero intention of using it for violence. In fact, his intention was exactly the opposite.

  Madge’s Alternate San Francisco, Tonight

  Mammon smiled at Madge’s confidence—no, cockiness, not mere confidence. She knew the small smirk she gave Mammon was meant to suggest she was better at playing this game than he was. But he was a demon, and she couldn’t forget that. And she’d just made a deal with him, and she sure as hell couldn’t let herself forget that.

  Madge’s mind clicked over into witchcraft mode, and she drew tiny tendrils of power toward her and began braiding them together.

  “Clever girl.” Mammon winked at her. “Most people love to hear themselves talk so much they’d give away the whole farm on one question. They wouldn’t be able to resist lecturing me to show how much they know about a topic. But you? Straightforward answer, limited to precisely what was asked. Nicely done.”

  “Buttering me up won’t do you any good.” Madge stifled a tiny yawn with the back of her hand. It was theater, purely meant to annoy him, to make him think he failed to impress her, and she could see it worked. This Mammon had never been opposed by witches before or, at least, not by powerful ones, or he would be more cautious. This Mammon had yet to assert mastery over this particular domain. He wasn’t sure of himself the way the other was. This Mammon would no doubt prove a powerful and mysterious being, sure, but Madge could tell he was also a puppy who smelled a patch of land where no one had pissed yet, and that had him excited in a way that might leave his guard down.

  Madge thought for a moment. What else was different about this world? If Mammon had never been here before now, she never would have opposed him. Neither would Iria. Maybe they never would have met. Maybe she and Iria weren’t a couple in this timeline. And of course, if that were the case—well, even if the only difference were that they never would have summoned Norton—then Madge felt an all-powerful desire to get back. She needed a return ticket to the timeline where she and Iria were lovers and collaborators and witches and… Madge thought of Norton. And parents? Babysitters?

  “Okay, so what does Cuckoo do?”

  Madge adjusted her stance for a moment. Energy climbed her legs, like twenty tiny spiders positioning themselves within a web and awaited her command. “It’s an app.”

  Mammon sighed a little and smiled again. “Ah, but that’s not what I asked. You answered what is it. I asked what it does.” Mammon waved a finger at her. “Don’t get cocky, kid.”

  Magic spiraled in invisible tendrils toward Madge’s fingertips. She spread them out just a little as she talked, and if her gestures happened to draw a powerful sigil in the air, well, who was this self-centered demon to recognize them? She just needed to keep his attention on how much he loved to hear about himself. “Cuckoo attracts venture capital to buy out residential properties in the city and flip them.”

  Mammon looked at her with his eyebrows knitted together. “What?”

  “That’s three questions.” Madge sighed and fluttered her lips.

  “Technically, perhaps, but it isn’t. Not really. I need some context to make sense of that answer. The se
cond answer makes no sense without that, so it doesn’t count.”

  Madge smirked again. Got to keep him off-balance. “It doesn’t? Okay, which part did you not understand?”

  Mammon gestured vaguely at the universe all around them. “Literally any of them? Shouldn’t supply and demand keep the housing market at an even keel? Why would venture capital care about it? What’s an app?”

  Madge’s eyes went wide. “Wow, things are really different here.”

  Iria’s Alternate San Francisco, Tonight

  The exterior of St. Boniface—of this one, anyway—had seen better days. No, scratch that: decades. It was crumbling, the beige and faintly salmon-pink paint long since peeled away in great sheets—some still hanging by a thread—to reveal a plain stucco exterior bleached and stained and bleached again by the elements. The church hadn’t merely closed up for the moment: it was condemned. Iria spotted an official-looking announcement pasted to the main door.

  A passing bicyclist screeched to a halt on a bright turquoise bike. “Ah, yes, that place. Finally about to get rid of it.” The cyclist had been an Asian man in his twenties with the generic more-on-top haircut and clean-shaven face Iria had come to associate reflexively with software developer bros. As the bicycle stopped, the rider swelled and stretched, his features twisting into those of Mammon. The demon stepped off the bicycle lightly and parked it using the kickstand. Iria noticed the crossbar and down tube both bore a logo with a typically startup-ish clever-but-not-really misspelled name: Spead. The motto was written underneath in bright white letters: Your wheels are ours.

  Mammon followed Iria’s gaze and allowed himself a small smile. Outside the herbalist shop, Mammon had been a glib grifter, but this one—no, this one was all business. Iria wrapped one hand around a bar of the rusted, disintegrating gate barring entrance into the yard of St. Boniface.

  “Spead is one of my new ventures.” Mammon gestured at the bicycle like a salesman showing a mark the bike he already knew they would buy with exactly the right nudge. “Cheaper per mile than any other bike share in the city, with run-flat tires and a full twenty-one gears. They’re shoddy, of course. I had them made at a facility that lowballed the price because I knew they would break down more often. And most people don’t really know how to handle a geared bicycle, and the chains are flimsy, and the run-flat tires are expensive as hell to replace compared to a regular bicycle tire.” Mammon turned to Iria and smiled at them, but without mirth. “But that’s not my problem, is it? No, it’s the problem of the person who used the app to rent the bike in the first place. And I get to charge them a premium for all the replacement parts. Word is starting to get around, but they’re so much less expensive than the other bike shares. What are the odds you’ll be the one who has an expensive problem on one, right?” Mammon spread his hands in a flirtation with a shrug. His exquisitely tailored green and gold and silver jacket shifted easily with the movement.

  “You own everything here.” Iria’s voice was very quiet as they spoke. Their hand wrapped even more tightly around the iron bar in the fence. Rust flaked off against their skin with every twist of their fingers.

  “Pretty much.” Mammon nodded at the church behind Iria. “But not that. Until next week, anyway. I finally got it condemned. I choked off their parishioners one by one—pushing them out of neighborhoods, eliminating on-street parking, you name it.” He turned and gestured at the surrounding blocks: spotlessly clean, almost gleaming, and completely devoid of life. Nothing remained of the sketchy convenience stores and charity facilities and residential hotels like the one where Madge and Iria lived—along with countless thousands of other people who made up the soul of what was, in Iria’s normal San Francisco, the last working-class neighborhood in the city. Iria had been so focused on running, they hadn’t at first noticed the absence of all the usual landmarks: Boeddeker Park, the community centers, the churches. The whole backdrop to normal, vibrant, organic life in the Tenderloin was missing, along with the people who lived it. They had been replaced with office blocks and apartment buildings so empty and generic Iria didn’t even really see them as they ran past. Iria tugged on the iron bar in frustration. The last familiar thing they hoped to turn up—the one place Iria might have found hallowed ground—and the demon had beaten them to it by mere days.

  Mammon was still talking. Iria wondered if this version of Mammon was glad to have someone new to whom he could explain his victory on the brink of its completion. “But next week, the bulldozers move in, and the place goes up for…” The demon chuckled. “‘Public’ sale. But, let’s be honest: no one else will bid on this place.” The smile disappeared from Mammon’s face as his mouth turned into a flat line and the light in his eyes dimmed. “They wouldn’t dare. I own it all now. That’s the dream, you know: that no one owns anything they use. I own it all. I’ll own the housing, the bicycles, the ride shares, the private transit system, you name it, it’ll be mine. I’ve got a venture going for clothing rental. The people of this city will literally give me the shirts off their backs, and they’ll think they’re getting a deal.” Mammon huffed out the last of the breath without forming words: not quite a chuckle, not quite a sigh.

  Iria ran a mental reel of images they kept stored up for moments like this: of carnival strongmen lifting impossible weights, of women in MMA championships kicking opponents in the face, of Soviet bodybuilders heaving iron into the air, of the old intro sequence to the 1970s Incredible Hulk television show with Bill Bixby turning into green-painted Lou Ferrigno and flipping over his own car in frustration. Iria felt energy gathering, and their muscles flexed.

  Mammon lifted his hand to point a finger at them. “Now, now. None of that.” The words were those of a scolding nanny, but his tone was as flat and cold as a sarcophagus. “No magic without my permission, remember?”

  Iria favored him with a grimly determined smile and recalled scenes from Pumping Iron, of cartoon characters tying iron bars into bowties, and of Chun-Li from Street Fighter. “You sad bastard. No one gets between a queer witch and their magic. We’re the best at it. Let me show you.” With those words, Iria cast the spell. Their magic moved at the speed of memory, which is faster than anyone or anything else in the world.

  Iria tore the bar from the gate and stabbed it, knife-like, directly into Mammon’s chest, right where the heart would be on a human being. The bar was iron, and Iria recalled that being very bad for any creature from another realm, whatever realm that might be. It works in D&D, they thought.

  No blood spurted from the wound. No ichor ran free from it. Rather, light shot out around its ragged edges while Mammon opened his mouth to scream.

  Iria spoke, shaping magic around themself with every word, every letter, as fast as possible, before Mammon could recover to dispel it. “I call on Hecate and Hermes, on Cardea and Portunus, on the Menshen Qin Shubao and Yuchi Gong. I call on Attis, on Ishtar, on Osiris, on Legba.” Iria’s voice rang out in the night. A passing cyclist stopped short and screamed. A wind gusted from nowhere and fired down the street with a howl, pushing against Iria as though they stood in a rushing river. Iria grabbed the snapped-off length of rusted iron with their other hand and, using all their strength, twisted it back and forth to widen the gap in Mammon’s flesh.

  The light emerging from Mammon’s chest brightened as the wound expanded, and a second later, Iria let go of the iron from the fence to grab the edges of the jagged, massive hole in Mammon’s body, pulling and tearing at it to make it wider.

  Mammon, screaming and paralyzed, utterly taken by surprise, slumped to the ground and lay on his back on the sidewalk outside the church.

  Iria stuck one jump boot through the hole in the demon’s chest.

  The flesh of Mammon’s face began to wither and tighten and twist, mummifying in seconds.

  “I call on all the gods of the portals, of boundaries and borders.” Iria stuck their other boot through the hole, now standing in the shaft of bright white light emerging from Mammon’s mortal
wound. “Get me the fuck home!”

  Lightning struck the nearest street lamp. Thunder clapped so hard burglar alarms rang.

  The cyclist fainted.

  The light flickered out where Mammon’s chest had been.

  Iria was gone.

  Madge’s Alternate San Francisco, Tonight

  Madge met Mammon’s gaze directly, staring him right in the eye, and tapped the tips of her index fingers against each other in rhythm to her speech. “In my world, you’re taking away people’s homes. You let them continue to own them on paper, of course. And that means they get to do all the things like pay the taxes and fix what breaks, but they let others stay there some of the time, preferably most of the time. Sometimes you buy them out entirely and turn what used to be their house into a space used only for tourists and other people just passing through. Either way, the place they live stops feeling like home. And so does their neighborhood. So does the city overall.” Madge narrowed her eyes at him and pulled her hands apart. “And that’s why I need to get back home and stop you.”

  She clapped her hands back together abruptly, loudly, causing this less-cocky version of Mammon to jump in startled surprise.

  Madge lifted one foot and slammed it against the ground. “All under Heaven,” she said aloud, her voice ringing as she spoke the words on the Chinatown gate in her native timeline, “is for the good of the people!”

  Mammon’s eyes went wide for a moment, but he wasn’t fast enough. Madge had her silver ritual dagger in her hand before he even knew it, and, with a flick of her wrist and a swing of her arm, she plunged it deep into Mammon’s chest.

  Light spilled out around her hand, as though propelled with great force, and as the demon screamed, Madge spoke her intent. “Get me the fuck home!”