Lady of Misrule (Marla Mason Book 8)

by T. A. Pratt

  “Concentrate on making it more human.” Bradley felt the strain of Marzi’s psychic pressure, and suspected that, if she’d been doing this on her own, she would have popped a blood vessel in her brain by now.

  Even so, the Outsider was easily evading Marla’s attacks, and its wounded arm seemed entirely healed. Marzi was pressing her vision of reality on the Outsider as hard as she possibly could, and boosting Marla into an avenging badass at the same time, and they still weren’t making a dent. The Outsider had leveled up. If Nicolette’s plan didn’t work, this world – and possibly all other worlds in the universe – was doomed.

  The Outsider got in a lucky shot and knocked Marla’s legs out from under her, sending her sprawling to the ground. It walked over her, literally stepping in the middle of her back, and came toward Marzi and Bradley.

  Marzi lifted her pistol, her mind surged so hard that both hers and Bradley’s noses began to bleed, and she shot the Outsider in the eye.

  The monster clapped one heavily ringed hand to its face, howled, and raced down the street, moving with inhuman speed and grace – but at least it wasn’t eating them, and if they were lucky it would reach Fludd Park bloodied, in pain, and disoriented.

  Marla pushed herself to her feet. “Gods damn it!” she shouted.

  Bradley handed Marzi a couple of tissues – he’d come prepared – and put one to his nose, too. Marla staggered toward Sierra, and they joined her. Bradley said, “I guess we could flip her over. I think I remember a temporary strength spell.”

  “Nah, fuck that. A door’s a door.” She shoved the big iron key into Sierra – the car squawked in Bradley’s head, but only in surprise – and tore yanked open the upside-down door, climbing inside.

  Marzi leaned down and looked through the door. “Should I keep my eyes closed this time?”

  “It’s kind of unpleasant in there, but it’s your call. We should hurry, though – I don’t know if she’ll wait.”

  “In we go.”

  Bradley crawled inside first, Marzi on his heels. The foyer was different, this time. The floors were uneven, bulging in places and sunken in others, and the paneling on the walls was cracked. Half the flickering wall sconces were dim or extinguished entirely, and there were great blooms of mold on the ceiling. Marla was already disappearing through the door at the far end, so they ran to keep up with her, Bradley terrified of being stranded in this place. Why was it so ugly now? Did its physical nature respond to Marla’s mood or something? If so, she was in an even fouler temper than he’d supposed.

  They emerged from the door to the women’s bathroom in Fludd Park. The broad expanse of green meadows, stands of trees, lichen-covered boulders, and the duck pond – the green natural heart of rusty soot-stained Felport – was filled with easily four-score people, including every remotely offensive sorcerer the city had to offer: Perren, the Bay Witch, Hamil (not in a scooter anymore, but leaning heavily on a cane), Mr. Beadle, Langford, and all their lieutenants and retainers and enforcers and button-men, along with the mad dog types kept locked in cages in basements and only brought out when bodies needed to be dropped, the poltergeisters and other wild, unreliable talents. Perren’s old gang the Honeyed Knots was there, along with their rivals the Four Tree Gang, eyeing one another with open disdain, but kept in check by the treaties and rules that made everyone in the city bind together for mutual protection in times of bad outside trouble.

  The only obvious missing piece was the Chamberlain and her crowd of ghosts... but now that Bradley looked, there were ghosts, back by the amphitheater, milling around under the eye of a Latina woman in a gentleman’s morning coat, shouting something incomprehensible through a megaphone.

  “Who’s that?” Bradley said.

  Marla shaded her eyes and squinted. “Oh. Evelyn Park. One of the Chamberlain’s lieutenants. Looks like she’s taken over the ghost-herding. If Nicolette’s letting her walk around loose, I guess that means she betrayed the Chamberlain, which doesn’t say much for her loyalty.”

  “At least she knows how to pick a winner,” Bradley said, and Marla made a disgusted noise.

  Evelyn waved her arms, and the ghosts shuffled forward. They seemed nervous, which was understandable. They were the founding families of Felport, bound to the city, and if the city fell, they’d be claimed by whatever inimical afterlives awaited them. The ghosts moved reluctantly along at Evelyn’s shouted directions, forming a defensive perimeter around the white gazebo – the structure itself was barely visible beneath a dome of coruscating violet light, protected from some kind of hyped-up forcefield. They didn’t want the Outsider slipping through it while they were trying to wrestle him into Beadle’s box. Which... Ah, there it was, resting on a patch of green some distance from the gazebo: the box for the Outsider, like a coffin for a giant, made of exotic wood, carved all over with eye-watering runes, surrounded by Beadle’s order-mage apprentices.

  Nicolette stomped over to them, and Bradley blinked at her. She was wearing the ‘roided out body of a male bodybuilder, and she was even more wreathed with protective magics than usual. She was so protected that a nuclear bomb dropped on Felport would have left a glass-bottomed crater with Nicolette standing unharmed in the middle.

  “Huh. The Outsider’s coming and you didn’t even die trying to stop it.” Nicolette clucked her tongue. “Nobody’s got any resolve nowadays.”

  “Where do you want us?” Marla said.

  Nicolette stared at her, flexing her pecs and making them bounce under the tight white tank-top she wore. “What, no smart mouth, no talking shit, no excuses?”

  “This is a war, and you’re the general. Today, right at this moment? I’m a soldier, and I’ll take orders.”

  Nicolette seemed genuinely taken aback. “Uh – I – Hell. Join the second rank.” She pointed. The sorcerers were lining up behind the ghosts, forming semicircular rows to defend the gazebo, each row spaced about ten yards apart. After the ghosts in the front lines, it was all apprentices and mad dogs – the expendable and the cannon fodder. The gangs, battle-hardened but independent and formidable, were next, and then the lieutenants and enforcers to the city’s leading sorcerers, and then the council members themselves in the back rank.

  Marla nodded and started to walk over. Nicolette ground her teeth. “Wait, wait – fuck it. Marla, the rest of you, get in the back with the Bay Witch and Perren and them.”

  Marla looked at her levelly. “Are you sure? Wherever you need me. I’m here for Felport.”

  Nicolette waved her hand, irritated, and Bradley almost smiled. “Yes, in the back, shit. If you were up front, the kiddies would get distracted, standing with legendary-ass Marla Mason. I need them focused. Get in position.” She stomped off, shouting orders.

  “You guys have a serious frenemy vibe going,” Marzi said.

  “You’re half right.” Marla headed across the park, and they followed, joining the loose knot of heavy hitters closest to the gazebo. Bradley greeted the Bay Witch, who’d once hit on him pretty regularly, but she just looked past him to the east, and the Bay. She didn’t like being on dry land at the best of times. Hamil limped over, leaning on his cane. “Bradley. Ms. McCarty. Marla.”

  “It’s stronger now, Hamil.” Marla did a few stretches, limbering up. “I couldn’t even make a dent. The Outsider has been eating its Wheaties or its spinach or whatever. More gods, probably.”

  Pelham and Rondeau were in the back row, too – whether they’d been assigned here or just drifted to the back, Bradley couldn’t say. Pelham was good at following orders, but Rondeau followed whims instead. They both came to stand with Marla, silently nodding at her. Pelham had his walking stick. Rondeau was holding a bicycle chain, which was kind of funny: a straight-up street gang weapon, nothing that would even put a dent in the Outsider, no matter how it was enchanted, but he was here, and he was ready to swing.

  Perren joined them too, her face unreadable behind her sunglasses. “This is it, huh? We stop this thing, or it eats us, and
then the world?”

  “The multiverse.” Bradley shrugged. “The world, I mean, shit. At this point, I’d give up the world if it spared the rest of creation.” Did anyone besides himself, Marla, and their closest allies know the stakes here? If the Outsider reached the gazebo, that was it: the over-Bradley would have no choice but to cut them off. This world would be severed from the tree of the multiverse before the Outsider could reach the place at the center of the multiverse. Their universe would be sacrificed to spare the greater tree of the multiverse. Anyone the Outsider didn’t devour would soon die anyway, as the rules of reality broke down and metaphysical gangrene set in.

  “It’s here!” Nicolette’s voice boomed, godlike, and Marla winced and drew her dagger. Everyone settled into place, the great crowd murmuring.

  The Outsider walked into the park, hands in its pockets, looking the same as it had before, except it had a piratical black eye patch now. Bradley felt a little surge of pride come from Marzi through the residue of their link.

  “Why, hello. What a nice welcoming committee.” The Outsider spoke in a low, even voice, which was somehow as audible as if it were standing right beside Bradley’s ear. From the way the crowd shifted, it was the same for all of them. “I see Marla made it back up on her feet, and is lurking in the back. I –”

  Evelyn Park shouted through her megaphone, and the ghosts charged forward, bellowing as they half-ran, half-floated. The Outsider suddenly burst into a cloud of shadow, and the grey insubstantiality of the roaring ghosts disappeared into that inky, roiling darkness. After a long moment, the shadows vanished, drawing inward, like footage of a smoke bomb going off, played in reverse. The Outsider stood there, still in its suit, its hat not even askew. “Mmm. That was impolite. I was in mid-sentence. They tasted disgusting, too. Like eating a bowl of dust and cobwebs. Some of you seem juicier – but this is ridiculous. Those who run away now, I promise, I will not pursue. I have no interest in you. Only interest in that.” It pointed at the gazebo – and the force field around it popped like a soap bubble, vanishing.

  “Forward!” Nicolette yelled, and the cannon fodder moved, apprentices throwing bullshit cantrips, wild men transforming into animals or scaly monsters, poltergeisters causing the ground to erupt or stones to fall from the sky. The Outsider walked through all that mayhem, strolling as if no one was attacking at all. It didn’t deflect, and it didn’t dodge: it just didn’t get hit, by anything. The wild men stumbled into one another, and some of them even fell into the paths of destruction wrought by the poltergeisters, and got torn apart in the process. Some of them regrouped and ran for the Outsider’s back, but without even looking back, the monster gestured with its hand, and the attackers flew through the air, crashing into the dirt or breaking against trees or landing in the duck pond.

  The Outsider paused and looked at the box Beadle had made to contain it. “Oh, no, that won’t do at all.” It extended one hand, then closed it into a fist. The order-mage apprentices jumped as the box they surrounded shattered, cracked, and fell into sawdust and splinters.

  “Fuck this!” one of the gang members shouted, and the Honeyed Knots and the Four Tree Gang both broke ranks and fled. The lieutenants and retainers wavered, looking over their shoulders at their leaders, but as the Outsider implacably walked toward the gazebo, most of them fled, too, and the others shrank back out of its way.

  “Very smart, very wise, save yourselves, scuttle away. I am the eater of all things, swallower of souls. I am the unmaking. I am death in a stylish hat.” That insinuating voice, in everyone’s ear at once, was enough to make Bradley’s legs tremble.

  The rulers of Felport stood together, Nicolette at their head, and Marla’s crew around them. Marzi lifted her pistol, and Bradley could tell she was ice-water calm, even knowing they were doomed. Marla had her knife. Pelham and Rondeau brandished their weapons. Okay then. It was a “die valiantly” situation. Well, if you had to go, go standing tall.

  Then Regina queen stepped out of the gazebo, yawned, and flicked her fingers toward the Outsider.

  Marla and the others gasped as all the moisture was sucked out of their mouths, and the duck pond emptied itself, too, as Regina’s magic pulled moisture from the area. The Outsider was instantly encased in a crystalline shell, a globe of magical ice several feet thick.

  “Beadle!” Nicolette shouted. “You’re up!” Marla looked at her in confusion, but Bradley smiled. Damn. Nicolette had a plan under her plan. That was like something Marla would do.

  Beadle gestured, and several of his lieutenants ran forward, carrying ice picks and chisels and knives toward the globe of ice. Beadle set them to scribbling symbols on the icy shell, shouting orders, sometimes stepping in himself to correct or refine their work.

  “Whoa.” Marla walked over with Bradley and Marzi and the others to join the knot of sorcerers congratulating Nicolette. Marla shouldered them all aside and stood before the new chief sorcerer. “That was the plan? You never intended the box to hold it at all?”

  “If that had worked, it would’ve been great, but yeah, there was a backup. Plans within plans, Marla. I know my shit.”

  Marla crossed her arms. “Sure. I’m the one who brought Regina, though. Your backup wouldn’t have worked without me.”

  Nicolette threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, yes, because I’d never be able to find anybody else who could do containment magic, Regina’s the only one in the whole wide –”

  The shell of ice exploded, raining fragments down on them, and Regina Queen screamed, a terrible keening sound, and fell to her knees, as if the breaking ice hurt her physically – and maybe it did. The Outsider strode out of the icy remnant, shaking frost off its limbs, and stormed toward the gazebo. The monster was sweating shadows, growing taller with every step, and Bradley’s heart sank. They were doomed. This world was going to be cast adrift to rot and die.

  Marla drew her blade and started toward the Outsider. Bradley glanced at Nicolette – and she was smiling. He couldn’t read her mind, not without some effort and getting a headache in the process, but he had a sudden flash of intuition. He looked at the gazebo, really closely, and this time, he saw it. He rushed forward and grabbed Marla’s elbow. “No,” he said, voice low. “Watch.”

  She looked at him like he was crazy, but she waited.

  The Outsider howled in triumph and raced into the gazebo.

  A sound like a thunderclap rolled through the park, and where the gazebo had been, there was an immense bulbous clay pot, the size of a small car, covered all over with sinuous scribbles. Mr. Beadle shouted “Forward!” and his coterie of lieutenants and apprentices raced to the pot. This time, they didn’t draw anything, just peered at every bit of the scrawl-covered pottery, then nodded, one by one, stepping back. “We have full integrity!” Beadle called. “We’re good!”

  “What,” Marla said. “The ever-loving fuck?”

  “We knew it was going for the gazebo,” Nicolette said. “So we just gave it a different gazebo: basically the kind of jar you trap genies in, but big. We covered it in illusions so strong they almost became real, to make it look like the old gazebo. Took about twenty illusionists working non-stop. I knew the illusion was good when even Bowman here couldn’t see through it.”

  “You put the outsider in a jar?” Marla said.

  “Ha. It looks like pottery, and it started out that way, but it’s indestructible. We’re going to bury that jar like nothing’s ever been buried before, and we won’t let any stupid death cultists get near it.”

  “I noticed it, right at the end.” Bradley nodded. “That it wasn’t the real gazebo. Not because the illusion wavered, though, that was amazingly solid – the fake gazebo is just a foot or so to the left of where the real one used to stand.” He frowned. “But where’s the real gazebo? That’s, like, how I get home.”

  Nicolette waved a beefy hand. “We disassembled it. Don’t worry, Beadle numbered all the pieces, he’s going to put it back together just like it was, down
to the last nail. I like having the entryway to the ruler of your realm in my city. You owe us a favor, now, right, Bowman? Because we stopped this monster for you?”

  “I will take that question upstairs, but my inclination is, for sure.” He shook his head. “Damn, Nicolette, what got into you? You used to just fuck stuff up. Now you’re ruling and schooling.”

  She kicked at the dirt. “You know how it is, movie star. I’m finally where I belong. I figured it out. All this time, I’ve been about the hating, the wrecking, the revenge. Don’t get me wrong – doing what Marla failed to do warms my cockles and lots of other places, and if you’re miserable about it, Marla, I’m even more glad. But... I’ve got a purpose, now. A place. I’m the witch queen of Felport. This is my city, and my people live here.”

  Marla took a deep breath and then held out her hand. Nicolette stared at that hand like it was leprous, but then she took it. Marla gave Nicolette’s hand a single shake. “You did good,” she said. “I was wrong about you. You’re a worthy adversary – and you’re a hell of an chief sorcerer.”

  “I need your approval like I need pubic lice.” Nicolette’s voice was as sneering as ever – but Bradley could tell she was pleased. She turned and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey, all you chickenshits! Good job looking terrified and running away – I was totally convinced! You’re natural cowards! Afterparty at the club for everybody, and get medical attention for the ones who were too dumb to avoid getting injured in this little pantomime!”

  “Were the ghosts fake?” Marla said.

  Nicolette snorted. “Hell no. Those were the actual founding families of Felport. I was happy to get rid of them. Parasites. When I went all Fisher King I trumped their magical connection to the health of the city anyway. Fuck the past. This is the new Felport. Welcome to the Age of Nicolette.”

  “Long live the queen,” Marla murmured. She glanced around. “I have to go talk to Regina.”