of Maidens & Swords

by Melissa Marr

  He held out a bag, and she tried not to see the wrinkles on his hand. It always seemed wrong to see the Undertaker grow old when she was frozen at the same age.

  “I brought a few surprises.” William’s expression was the same bold one that he’d worn as a young man, and Alicia knew without asking that the bag he passed over to her contained items sure to upset Charles. She didn’t pressure William to cross the old bastard as she had a few decades ago when William had first become the Undertaker, but that didn’t mean that the temptation had passed—only that her affection for William had grown.

  A little shiver of excitement rippled over her as she peered into the bag. Inside was a thin book on homemade explosives, a bunch of wire, assorted gadgets she couldn’t identify, and various packages wrapped and labeled with only numbers.

  “There’s a key to the numbers in the book,” William said.

  “Not that I don’t appreciate it, but what gives?”

  “Just thought I’d settle up and buy myself a little credit.” He walked toward her little corner of the land of the dead with the comfort of someone who’d trod this path more times than either of them probably liked.

  Alicia fell in step with him.

  In the alleyways of the old wooden buildings, her boys waited and watched. Milt and Mickey were nearest, but a good half dozen more were scattered about the area, standing guard and keeping order. The streets of the land of the dead weren’t always safe . . . truth be told, they were rarely safe. Any illusion of an afterlife filled with sweet cherubs and fields of flowers had been shattered long before Alicia died, but sometimes she regretted the loss of those idealized fancies. She supposed, sometimes when she was feeling a bit more hopeful, that those things might exist beyond this land. Most of the time, though, she wasn’t given to hopeful musings. The fact was that this world was a strange one, and she had no way of knowing if what came next would be better or worse. Here at least she occupied a singular position: she was the only Graveminder who had not moved on after her death. Out there, presumably, her long gone husband waited, but the idea of facing him after she’d killed him was reason enough to stay where she was.

  “Alicia?” William voice interrupted her reverie. “Are you well?”

  She forced a smile. “Well enough.”

  He nodded. “Understandable.” His grandfatherly face wrinkled with lines as he frowned. “Does the love for your partner change after you pass?”

  There was no question as to which partner he meant. Every Undertaker had a Graveminder, a woman who could lead the Hungry Dead to this world. He lived as her partner, her guard, and often her lover. They were a pair, bound together more surely than any marriage contract. It made living a life with anyone else nearly impossible. William had done it, but only because both his wife and his Graveminder accepted the inevitable division of his heart. Alicia couldn’t have done so. She’d have gleefully murdered anyone who took her Conner’s attention away from her for even a moment.

  “Course it does,” she lied. “It’s just a part of the contract, William, but even if not, your Graveminder won’t ask to stay here in this world. She’ll move on like all the rest.”

  “Except you,” he amended quietly.

  After years of steadfast refusal to talk about who she was and what she was, she’d given in recently. William knew what most of the Undertakers before him hadn’t: she was a Graveminder, same as his beloved Maylene. She’d served Death in her life, minding the dead, keeping them in their rightful place, just as the women before her and after her. Telling him was probably why it was on her mind too much of late. Her life was long since over, and any hope she had of a peaceful afterlife was quashed by the reality of the land of the dead.

  “Soon, my son . . .” William’s words dwindled, and he steadfastly didn’t look her way. He’d been almost fifty when he had his son and heir, Byron.

  William had delayed for a long time on passing on his duties, not by choice, but because his Graveminder asked it of him. William would do anything for her. It was why he’d carried on his duty long after he should’ve passed it on to Byron.

  William cleared his throat and said, “I’ve been talking to Maylene about telling the kids about the contract. It would be easier if I knew that you were . . . amenable to rolling my credits on to him.”

  “You know better,” she chided him. “He has to find his way here just as you did. It’s the way of it. I can’t offer him any special consideration any more than I did when you were young and stumbling around here.”

  William nodded, and they walked the next few blocks in silence. He’d needed to ask, and she’d needed to refuse. The transition as the Undertaker prepared for death was always hard. The question of the passing on of the duties of Undertaker was raised by every generation. Some focused on the “what next” question, as if being in this land of the dead gave her special insight into what happened in the next plane. It didn’t, and she told them as much. The other, harder questions were the sort she expected of William. They were also the sort she couldn’t quite answer.

  A warning whistle from her left made her stop and shove William to the ground.

  She felt the sharp sting of the bullet a moment after she’d heard the warning from one of the boys.

  “Damn it.” The bullet grazed her shoulder, tearing through her jacket and bloodying her skin.

  The Undertaker stood, gun in hand, eyes scanning the shadows where the shooter could hide.

  Milt arrived a few moments later. He exchanged a nod with William, and then both men turned on her.

  “What were you thinking?” Milt snarled. He pulled his shirt off and wadded it into a ball that he pressed to her shoulder.

  “William could’ve been hit.” She knocked Milt’s hand away, but kept the shirt. Now that it was already bloodied, there was no sense in trying to use it for clothing. She’d buy him a new one and add this to the always-growing pile of rags they kept. Infection wasn’t a problem once you were dead, but bullets still hurt, and blood still stained. Some things were truths regardless of the world around you.

  “Thank you,” William murmured as he slipped an arm around her. She didn’t need his protection, any of theirs actually. Death could only truly kill her twice.

  And although the old bastard had done just that over a century ago, he wasn’t likely to kill her now that she was here, and no one else in the land of the dead had the power to cause a second passing. In the land of the living, everyone can kill. Bullets, animals, illnesses, the causes of death were myriad and omnipresent. In the land of the dead, there was only one person who could end a life. The rest of them had to settle with taking a person out of commission for a few days.

  Still, she wasn’t going to rehash it with the boys—or the Undertaker—again. They were always surly when she got shot. It was far less hassle to let them have their moment of worry.

  “One of Charles’ people?” Milt asked. “I didn’t think there was any trouble brewing right now.”

  “Look into it.” Alicia hoped so, as the pleasure of another quarrel with him would be welcome, but it seemed unlikely. Charles usually didn’t do anything underhanded. With them, the exchange of gunfire was more a matter of habit than of maliciousness. He found it a necessary evil, a thing that helped remind her that she was under his domain, and she tended to resort to it because . . . well, because it simply made her feel better. Some women took up needlework, and some took up arms.

  Over the next few weeks, Alicia threw herself into creating the explosives that she’d sought. It wasn’t that she had any particular need for them, but they were new. New was a rare and valued commodity in the land of the dead. She did what she could to stave off boredom, but after so long in the land of the dead, excitement was harder to come by than she’d like. Her sole source of dangerous thrills was provoking Charles.

  After what she considered sufficient experimentation, Alicia bribed a delivery boy to take an innocuous looking box to Charles’ house. She timed it on a
day when he was busy with a few quarrels she’d set to brewing in the Depression Era section of the city. They were often the easiest to rile. Their steadfast desire to live in houses that resembled shanties seemed tied to some sort of religious theory about Purgatory and completing penance. For the most part, those citizens weren’t even people who’d lived during the Great Depression, but Charles allowed them their peculiarity—and Alicia leverage it for distractions time and again.

  Milt and Boyd stood on either side of her as they waited to “field test” the explosives they’d made. They weren’t scientists, and no one on their employ had made homemade explosives before now, so they weren’t entire sure of the ratio. Their small-scale tests were successful, so they’d used that as the basis.

  “Do you think it’s big enough to even hear it?” Milt asked.

  Alicia shrugged.

  “Maybe there will be a vibration,” Boyd suggested. “Dynamite shakes the ground. This is like dynamite, so—”

  His words were abruptly cut off by a deafening boom! Dust and debris scattered outward as a wall crumbled. It was a much, much larger explosion than they’d planned.

  “Shit, boss!” Milt muttered.

  Immediately, a crowd began to gather.

  “Move,” she ordered Boyd and Milt. “Now.”

  She’d never done something quite this . . . extreme. Charles wouldn’t hurt her, not really. She counted on that. It enabled her to poke and prod at him in a way no other resident of the land of the dead would dare. Her people weren’t impervious though.

  “Get moving before he gets home and sees . . .” She glanced back as the second floor of his beautiful mansion started to slope toward the ground.

  “Holy fuck,” someone nearby muttered.

  Gazes were turning to her. There was no doubt who was responsible. No one else would be foolhardy enough to blow up Charles’ new parlor. Alicia strode through the crowd, hoping that she hadn’t finally gone too far.

  She glanced back as that second floor section of wall came crashing down.

  “Faster,” she urged her people.

  When Charles returned to his home to find flames, debris, and dust, he shook his head, but said nothing. What was there to say? Alicia, no doubt, had either been irritated by something he’d done or was in a mood again. Sometimes he thought he’d be lost when she finally moved on to join her own Undertaker. Right now, fear and guilt kept her here—in the land of the dead that he ruled. Eventually, she’d realize that she should go.

  Ward, his right-hand man, muttered a curse that included the oft-uttered phrase “damn Barrow woman.”

  “It’s unexpected,” Charles said.

  Ward snorted, but didn’t engage in an argument. He was respectful of Charles’ strange friendship with the dead Graveminder even though he had told Charles years ago that he thought it was twelve shades of stupid. Charles, for his part, respected both Ward’s loyalty which resulted in his opinion of Alicia and his willingness to mostly keep silent on that opinion. He was a good man.

  “How much shall I repair?” Charles mused. He liked to let the destruction she wrought stand, but in this case, there would have to be repairs made. He couldn’t have his house collapse or allow a gaping hole in it. The repairs would give focus to some of his citizens, and the reminder that he was unpredictable served his purposes too.

  He visualized the building once more intact, and with that thought, the walls were replaced. The rubble from the original walls remained—both inside and outside the building. It was a concession to both his practicality and Alicia’s destruction.

  “Hire some workers, Ward. That part of the house was due to be remodeled anyhow. Have them submit designs and teams, and I’ll pick among them.” Charles made sure his voice carried, and then he smothered the smile their excited murmurs evoked. He might not be able to relieve all of his citizens’ unhappiness, but he saw no reason that being dead should have to equate to being miserable.

  Charles was sure that he had more than enough patience to manage the Land of the Dead. He’d been doing it since before the humans had built proper cities over on the mortal side. Dealing with emotions was an altogether different situation. The peculiar nature of his domain was that every era in history existed within the reaches of the Land of the Dead. Boomtowns and modern cities vied for attention within the space of several blocks. The inhabitants of each area were all sure that the way the world had looked during each of their lives was how it should be.

  And Charles had the unenviable job of keeping order among the lot of them.

  For the past week, he’d been concentrating on the tedium of just that—instead of going to Alicia’s General Store and demanding answers. She’d come when she was ready. Until then, he’d concentrate on the business of the dead, including choosing a new design for the section of his home that she’d destroyed.

  “Sir?” Ward stood in the doorway of the study; the steady man was as patient as the statues that sat in the alcoves of the room.

  Charles rubbed his eyes again. “Did I have an appointment?”

  “Of a sort.” Irritation flickered over Ward’s expression so briefly that Charles wouldn’t have noticed if they hadn’t spent the past two centuries together. Only one person evoked such irritation in his right-hand man.

  Charles rolled up the blueprints on his desk. “I gather Ms. Barrow is finally here?”

  A curt nod from Ward answered the question without Ward himself having to find polite words.

  “Where is she?” Charles asked.

  Ward hesitated before admitting, “The west parlor. . .” He paused, cleared his throat, and amended, “The remains of the west parlor, sir.”

  Charles’ smile became a laugh. “How long has she been there?”

  “She did not have an appointment, sir.” Ward stared directly at his boss. “She decimated the parlor, and today, she arrived wearing boots with . . . dung on them again. The foyer will need scrubbed, and the new rug”—Ward let out a pained sigh—“will need laundering. There is nowhere more suited for that woman than the ruins she created.”

  “I see.” Charles stood and came around the desk. “So . . . she’s been waiting a while then.”

  “She doesn’t get more difficult with waiting,” Ward muttered.

  Charles walked toward his valet-bodyguard-friend. He clapped Ward on the shoulder. “I trust that the chairs that are not in the room will arrive not long after I do.”

  “Of course.” Ward gestured for Charles to precede him down the hall. “Would you like full tea?”

  “I suspect a bit of whiskey will be more useful.” Charles didn’t admit that the weight of the day slid from his shoulders as he left Ward behind and headed to the ruined part of the house, and Ward, likewise, didn’t remark on the fact that he knew exactly how much Charles didn’t admit.

  Alicia might be the one dead person who always irritated Ward, but she was also the only person in the Land of the Dead who surprised Charles. If she ever decided to get over her anger and fear and move on to a better realm, Charles feared he’d be inconsolable. They weren’t friends in any traditional sense, but she was valuable to him in the way he had rarely known.

  Alicia sat in the center of a debris-strewn room. One knee was pulled up to her chest, and the other leg was extended in front of her. She didn’t like sitting in the dirt, but it wouldn’t make her jeans much filthier than they already were. The old bastard had left her in a chairless room for over an hour. Idly, she studied the space she’d been forced to occupy while she waited for him to decide he was done making her stew.

  Never get tired of showing me who’s really in charge, do you?

  She had to admit that the punishment was fitting this time: her boys had detonated the charges that resulted in the debris around her. It was just business. She grinned. Charles might be the law, but she had become more than adept at provoking him—and getting results on a few key reform areas.

  Alicia tensed at the sound of footsteps behind he
r. Without turning around, she knew the old bastard had arrived. No one else walked with that same cadence. He moved across the stone floor with music in his footfall. She wasn’t sure he even noticed the song in his step. She did. After over a century of dealing with him in the land of the dead—and a few years more when she was still alive—she knew Charles better than she knew any person alive or dead.

  Despite her best efforts, her spine stiffened, and her every nerve was on alert. It wasn’t that she was frightened. Much. It was simple caution. He was the one person—thing—here that could end her existence. The land of the dead was his, absolutely and completely. That was why there had been no competition to setting up her business: no one crossed the old bastard.

  Except me and mine.

  “Alicia,” he murmured. “Lovely to see you, as always, my dear.”

  She still didn’t turn around. She wiped her hands on her jeans, but she didn’t rise.

  “I would’ve had lunch prepared if I’d known we had an appointment.” Charles stood just behind her. “Perhaps you’d care for a drink since you’re here.”

  Finally, Alicia looked over her shoulder at him. She patted the dirty floor beside her. “Have a seat, Charlie. It’s quite cozy here.”

  “Ah, yes.” He looked around. His gaze slid over the charred bits of wood and tile. He frowned as he spotted a painting that had been made unrecognizable by the blast. “I liked the room a bit more before you left that little package here.”

  “The explosives are a new item,” she said softly, drawing his gaze back to her. “We made it ourselves, and I didn’t realize how much damage it would do.”

  Charles didn’t smile, not quite, but his expression softened. “That almost sounded like an apology, Alicia.”

  She shrugged. “Near to one as I’ll get.”

  “Thank you,” he murmured.

  Alicia nodded. They couldn’t exchange civilities as well in public, but here behind closed doors she knew she’d make more progress with Charles if she tried to be cordial. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever admit that she preferred their civility to the hostility they needed to embrace if there were witnesses, but the rare quiet conversations she shared with Death these days reminded her of long gone times, back when she was alive and only visiting this realm.