by T. A. Pratt
“Yeah, send Nanook on back north.” Nicolette watched Marla leave, then grinned around at the others. “The rest of you toadies, Marla’s bootlickers... you’re welcome in Felport anytime. I love reminders of my ultimate victory. See you at the party.”
She ambled off, shouting at her people.
“Damn,” Marzi said. “Last time I helped save the world, nobody threw me a party.”
“Say what you will about Nicolette,” Rondeau said. They looked at him expectantly, and he shrugged. “Nah, that’s all. Say what you will. I don’t care. She’s something else, though.”
•
The afterparty was a rager, but Bradley drifted away from the crowd toward the office where Nicolette was hanging out, keeping herself occupied by drinking very good whiskey and being magnanimous. She was back in her tattooed body, behind a desk, legs kicked up. Perren and Hamil were there, and Crapsey and Squat, and Pelham and Rondeau, the latter two sitting in a corner playing cards.
“Bowman!” Nicolette called, sounding drunk and delighted. “What’s the word from on high?”
“I went and talked to myself in the mirror for a while, and the big me says, it’s all good. The Outsider is contained so thoroughly he can’t even sense the monster’s presence anymore. Beadle does good work.”
“Wisdom of the ancients with a modern twist.” Nicolette shrugged. “And also my leadership. Can’t forget that. Crapsey, pour this man a drink.”
Rondeau’s dark doppelganger dumped a couple fingers of something old and brown into a glass, and after only a moment’s hesitation, Bradley took it. Falling off the wagon was bad, but screw it, he was getting re-integrated into the collective pretty soon anyway – the over-Bradley had told him to enjoy the party first, so why not take him at his word. He took a sip, and the familiar burn was delicious. A little binge wouldn’t kill him.
He sat on the couch beside Squat. “Hey, man. I keep hearing how terrifying you are, but no offense – you don’t seem so bad.”
The toadlike entity on the couch shrugged. “Nicolette’s got me in therapy. Fixed my eyes this morning. She thinks she figured out a way to keep the strength and invulnerability but get rid of most of the worse effects of the curse. I’ll never be tall again, but screw it, I’d have to buy all new clothes anyway. You know, for a while there, I thought I’d made a bad mistake – that Nicolette had played me, sweet-talked me into turning on Marla.”
“Well, she did.” Crapsey dropped to the couch on the other side of Rondeau. “She totally played you, man. It’s just, after that, she reformed.”
“Marla probably never would have cured me, though,” Squat said.
Bradley nodded. “Maybe so, maybe not. She’s not a bad person, Marla, and she’s trying real hard to get better, but... she sees the things she wants to see, sometimes, and other stuff, she never notices at all.”
“Speak of the deposed leader.” Crapsey nodded toward the door. Marla came in, trailed by Regina Queen.
“I thought you sent the ice queen packing?” Nicolette said from behind the desk. “Pretty sure I didn’t invite you to this party, either, Marla.”
“Perren, you might want to move away from your boss.” Marla’s voice was grim.
“Nonsense,” Regina said. “I am very precise.” Regina waved her hand – and another icy globe formed, this one encasing Nicolette, the desk, and the chair. Perren stumbled backwards, and Crapsey and Squat leapt to their feet. Bradley just stared at the blue-white ice. His heart felt frozen in his chest.
Perren moaned. “Marla, no, all the people of Felport, they’ll freeze, they’ll die.”
Marla shook her head. “No they won’t.” She turned to Regina. “We’re done.”
“Mmm. A pleasure.” The ice queen turned and left, as elegantly as if striding down a catwalk.
Perren reached her hand toward the globe of ice and then winced when it got within a few inches – the ice was that cold. “What did you do, Marla?”
“Yeah.” Bradley couldn’t stop staring at the ice, which was so much more than just ice, the crystal threaded through with all sorts of peculiar magic. “How did you do that? Nicolette should have been impervious to all harm – wait. She’s not harmed, is she?”
“She’s safer than she’s ever been.” Marla kicked the block of ice with one cowboy boot. She seemed tired. “I got the idea from the Pit Boss, actually. He wanted to put Rondeau in a medically-induced coma, because if Rondeau dies, the Pit Boss might die, right? So I thought – why not put Nicolette in that kind of stasis? And when it comes to putting people on ice, nobody’s better than Regina. Tweak the ice magic a little to make it more like a cryosleep, suspended-animation deal, and bang. Problem solved. Nicolette will live forever, invulnerable, so her psychic link to everybody in the city doesn’t matter.”
“Marla.” Bradley shook his head. “I... she was doing good. Nicolette.”
Marla turned on him, clenching her hands into fists. “You’re giving me that shit? She could never do enough good to make up for the bad she’s done. She doesn’t get to win. I can’t have that.” She looked at Perren. “You want to be chief sorcerer?”
“I – what?” The woman tore her eyes away from the block of ice.
“I’m not giving it to Hamil, that fucking collaborator. But you had some backbone. I’ve bested the chief sorcerer of Felport in combat, more or less, and right at this moment I rule the city by right of conquest. I’ll give you the job if you want it, though, if you promise not to give it back to the Chamberlain. She’s nothing without her ghosts, anyway. You can become Fisher King if you like – maybe Hamil can find a way to transfer the spell from Nicolette to you. I honestly don’t care.”
Perren nodded slowly. “I’d... better inform the rest of the council. You might want to leave town, Marla.” She left the room.
Marla turned her gaze elsewhere. “You two lackeys have objections?”
Crapsey and Squat exchanged a look. Squat sighed. “Fuck it. I’m used to being ugly. I won’t make a fuss about this if you don’t come after me for helping Nicolette escape in the first place.”
Marla considered for a moment, then nodded. “All right. We’re square, Squat. Bygones and all.”
Rondeau, in the corner, lifted his hand. “Hey, boss? I’m having a little trouble reconciling things here. You put Nicolette in suspended animation because her crimes were too vast to let her walk free, right, even though she was in the midst of majorly redeeming herself. But in order to stop Nicolette, you agreed to free Regina Queen, a woman who murders people completely without remorse, and is no more interested in redemption than a cookie-cutter shark would be.”
Marla nodded. “Yes. I made a deal with the devil, or the icy equivalent. And that sucks. In the circle of binding, I very specifically said that I, Marla Mason, would not try to stop Regina. I was very specific. Really quite specific.”
“Oh, sure, so someone else is free to stop her –” Rondeau stopped and stared at her, frowning. “Wait. Like who?”
Marla just looked at him, entirely expressionless.
“No,” he said. “No, no, no. Me and Pelly? Hell, no.”
She shrugged. “You’ve got experience dealing with her.”
“Hey, you’re rich again, right?” Crapsey said from the couch.
Rondeau narrowed his eyes. “Uh. Yes. But I’m not looking to hire an evil body-double, thanks.”
“No, stupid-but-handsome. Me and Squat are out of work all of a sudden. I think we’ve proven here that we’re morally neutral, yeah? Pay us enough and sic us on a bad person, and we’ll be the good guys, at least comparatively.”
“Sure,” Squat said. “So why not hire us to go kill Regina Queen? We should probably get out of here, anyway. We’re not real well-liked by the supernatural populace at large, me because of stuff I did for Nicolette during the takeover, and Crapsey because... he’s Crapsey.”
“It’s an idea,” Marla said to Rondeau. “Worst case, they succeed and get rid of Regina. Best case,
they fail and she kills them. It’s one of those no-lose situations. But whatever you decided to do, Rondeau, I’m making Regina your responsibility. It isn’t right, but.” She shrugged. “It’s necessary. You’re who I trust. “
Rondeau stood up, swaying. “Come on, Pelly. I’ve lost my stomach for celebrating.” He looked at Marla and shook his head. “You know I hated Nicolette. Hated her up one side and down the other. But what you did here... I don’t know, Marla. I don’t think it was right.” He left the room, Pelham drifting after him.
Marla put a hand on Pelham’s shoulder as he went by. “Do you think I made the wrong choice too, Pelly?”
“It is not my place to condemn you, Mrs. Mason.” He bowed his head and left the room.
“Ha,” Marla said. “But if it was his place, he would. He disapproves of violent regime change. Even though this really wasn’t all that violent. I wonder if Nicolette has enough loyal partisans around for me to worry about reprisals? Word’s gonna get out soon that she’s an ice cube.”
“Yeah.” Bradley nodded. “You might want to leave town. I guess we should pick up Marzi – she’s at the hotel. She didn’t want to party, just pack up to leave for home. I’d hate for this... thing you did... to blow back on her.”
Marla held up the key. “We can go straight to her room from here.”
Bradley shuddered. “Tell you what. I’ll walk.”
“I can walk with you.”
He held up a hand. “How about I just meet you there. I... need a few minutes to process all this.”
Marla leaned against the wall by the door, tilting her head back. She seemed so exhausted. “Did I fuck up, B? Should I have left Nicolette in charge? Forgotten all her crimes and just let her run this city, my city?”
“What’s that tattoo on your wrist say?”
She didn’t answer. They both knew.
“You didn’t give Nicolette much of a chance to redeem herself,” he said. “She was trying. She was changed. People don’t often really change.”
“Some things are beyond redemption.” Marla’s voice was stiff and unyielding.
“Okay,” Bradley said. “Good thing we have you to make those decisions for us.”
Marla opened her eyes, looked at him for a long moment, and said, “I did what I thought was necessary. I’ll see you at Marzi’s hotel.” She opened the door with Death’s key, and stepped through, pulling it closed after her.
After a few minutes spent gazing at the frozen globe, trying without success to see some hint of Nicolette’s shape in the cloudy ice, Bradley left the office, and the party. Sierra was waiting at the curb, all upright and repaired. She offered him a ride to the hotel, and on the way they talked about a few things. When they arrived, he went into the lobby, and then into the men’s room. He knocked on the mirror over the sink, and his own face appeared, but different.
“Little B!” the man in the mirror said. “What’s up?”
“Can I get a little longer on Earth? I want to get Marzi safely back to the west coast, and I am done takign shortcuts through Hell. I was thinking me and Marzi could take a road trip in Sierra. Maybe take Marla, too, if I feel like I can put up with her that long.”
“Huh. You aren’t going native on me, are you? We miss your wisdom and perspective up here.”
“Yeah, sure you do. If only you had a billion minds almost exactly like mine to talk to.”
“You know, since you’re there in a body, and that universe is part of the multiverse again, your current incarnation is actually multiplying and splitting throughout the realities... which means you’re making the collective more robust. We’re not infinite, after all, and having more of us in the multiverse isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We can always call you guys up later if we need you, after you’ve multiplied a while longer. So sure, stay a while.”
“Huh. You mean after more than thirty years of being gay, now I’m a breeder?”
“Basically.” The man in the mirror shook his head. “That’s some shit with Regina, huh? Freezing Nicolette like that. Can’t say I think it’s a bad idea – in most of the universes where Nicolette is still wandering loose, she’s a force for awful things.”
“Yeah, I know. But in one of the few universes where she wasn’t terrible, she got frozen in a hunk of ice. That’s fair?”
“Ha. Well, Marla Mason, right? Look up ‘unforgiving’ in the dictionary.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Big B. I’ll be in touch.”
Bradley went to the elevator and rode up to Marzi’s room. She greeted him effusively, wearing a fluffy bathrobe. “Hey! I thought you’d be partying.”
“It wasn’t much of a party. How you feel about heading home tonight instead of waiting until morning?”
“Oh. Sure. I miss Jonathan. Are we flying?”
“I was thinking we could ride in Sierra. She can drive non-stop, so it’d only take maybe a couple of days, maybe a little longer since we’ll want to eat and pee and stretch our legs occasionally. I mean, we could get a plane, but you said you wanted to talk to me about some stuff anyway, right? We’d have plenty of time to talk on a road trip.”
Marzi nodded. “I wanted to ask you about some things, for sure. Magic. Being a sorcerer. Maybe setting up a meeting for me with your old teacher, Sanford Cole? I’m a little nervous about just cold-calling the guy, if I decide that’s what I want to do.”
Bradley smiled. “Yeah, I can definitely do that.” He looked around. “Marla’s not here? She took the shortcut through Hell, I was sure she’d beat me.”
Marzi shook her head. “No sign of her.”
“Huh,” Bradley said. “Maybe she’s sulking. She did something... I’ll tell you about it later. We’ll give her a little time, let you get ready, and if she’s not here when it’s time to go, we’ll leave her a note. She can always catch up with us – she can pop right through Sierra’s passenger door any time she wants.”
Marzi put her arm over him. “Road trip with a dead movie star. Look at me coming up in the world.”
“Oh, you could go far,” Bradley said. “In fact... I was going to leave town, but maybe I’ll stay in California for a while, and teach you a few things.” He liked the idea. He’d never been a teacher – he’d always felt like he still had too much to learn himself, whether it was acting or magic – but helping Marzi along... that would be doing good in this world, a kind of good that might ripple out through all the possible worlds that sprang from this one.
They ended up waiting a long time, into the wee hours of the morning, talking in Marzi’s hotel room, but Marla never came.
Epilogue: The Dread Queen in Her Realm
Marla stepped through the office door, leaving the icy hulk of Nicolette and her disapproving ex-apprentice behind. Her mind was a seething mass of misgivings, doubts, and even a treacherous thread of something that might have been regret –
But when she stepped through the door, cool serenity descended as always, and the part of her that fretted about the opinions of mortals receded into a tiny unilluminated portion of her mind. Her intellect became cool, vast, and not even remotely amused. She was the dread queen of the underworld, now, the bride of death, and it was just a shame there was still time left on her mortal month in the world, because there was so much work to be done here below –
The queen paused in the foyer that wasn’t really a foyer at all. The walls were cracked, the ceiling a moldy ruin, the floor pitted and splintered. She’d noticed the disarray the last time she passed through, but hadn’t thought much of it – the place’s appearance was just a convenience, after all, because it had to look like something. Now, though, without the distraction of those living things in her presence, in a place where they did not belong, she could sense a deeper wrongness. Something about her realm was... broken.
She looked around, and the walls dissolved, shimmered, and became her throne room, a cavern of obsidian, onyx, and black marble. There were two chairs there, carved of sapphire and emerald. Once upon a time, on
e chair had been smaller than the other – the smaller chair belonged to Death’s consort, a mortal raised to godhood to rule aside a creature more purely divine – but the queen had put a stop to that nonsense. She and her husband were co-regents, halves of a whole....
But he wasn’t here, now, and his emerald chair lay toppled on its side. She reached out for him, tried to sense him, which was normally as easy as sensing the position of her own left arm.
Nothing. Where could he be? Was he out, walking the Earth?
She realized the compulsion to return to Earth, normally so overwhelming when it was time to spend her month as a mortal, was gone. She felt no pull toward the mortal realm at all – as if the bargain she’d struck to spend six months of the year on Earth had been broken. The bargain she’d made with her husband, Death. But what could break that arrangement?
“Marla.”
The queen spun. There was another god here. That happened, sometimes: they could reach this place more easily than mortals, by passing through certain places that would mean death to humans. Volcanoes, trenches in the deep oceans, miles-down caves teeming with blind monsters. The other gods came for favors, or to socialize, but Death and his queen routinely turned them away, too busy with their business overseeing the cycles of death and rebirth – without which there would have been no gods at all.
“I don’t have time,” she began, and then recognized him. “Wait. You are Reva.”
He bowed his head, not that he had a head, exactly. “I am. I was... not friends with your husband, exactly... but acquaintances, certainly.”
“You were? You aren’t any more? Did you have a falling out?”
Reva shook his head. “Marla. The Outsider... when Death opened a door from this realm in the Outsider’s presence, on that beach in San Francisco, the monster could sense the path. The Outsider could find the passageways, and pry them open, and pass through. After I encountered the Outsider I could sense his actions, you see, because he was an exile himself, one of my creatures, as far from home as it is possible for anything to be. I felt him come here, and I pursued, to warn your husband, but I was too late.” Reva sat down on the stony floor and put his head in his hands. “I’m sorry.”
