Titans of Chaos

by John C. Wright

  "I know L.A. is, that's for sure. And one of the gods of L.A. says that no one gets in the Bull's-Eye Club unless they're properly dressed. We have a dress code."

  I watched a couple go by. The man had glasses shaped like the number 2008, with an eye peering through each zero. His date was wearing see-through plastic pants.

  "What about them?"

  Tall and Dark said, "They're on the list. Dress code does not apply to Mr. Archer's special guests."

  Victor said, "Leader, why don't we simply leave a cell phone number? Archer can call us, once he gets Boggin's message."

  Before I could answer, Tall and Dark said, "Listen, you seem like nice kids. You go away and come back dressed properly, you can come in."

  I said, 'Then we can see Mr. Archer?"

  A shrug. "Maybe he'll see you, maybe not He's not here right now, but he might be back tonight."

  Vanity said to me, "Amelia, my nice outfits are on the boat. And where are the boys going to get tuxedoes at this hour? We don't have that much money left, after all."

  Tall and Dark said, "Kids, if you are not the kind of folk who can afford expensive suits with your pocket money, you're not getting into this club."

  Vanity's face was flushed with anger. She stamped her foot and demanded, "What? Is there a tailor open at this hour?"

  Her rosy-red features and low-cut blouse, well, they attracted his attention, and his craggy face softened once again with a smile. "Look, like I said, I'm Mr. Nice Guy. I stop fights, see? We like to have good-looking girls in the club. Here."

  He took a card out of his pocket, leaned his harpoon against the wall, took out a ballpoint pen, and scribbled on the back. He proffered the card to Vanity. "Go to this address. Tuxedo shop, dresses, that sort of thing. Upscale, very nice. They keep late hours. Show the manager my card, and he'll fix you up, give you ten percent off. He owes me a favor. And meanwhile, you there, Little Miss Blond Girl." He offered me the pen and a blank card. "Write a message. Any crazy thing you like, gods blowing up the world, whatever. I'll put it on Mr. Archer's desk. I can't guarantee he'll read it, I can't guarantee he'll believe it, but write what you like. Don't bother putting down your phone number. He never makes calls. Hates phones. Likes to talk to people face-to-face, you know?"

  I knelt down to use the pavement for a desk. I forget what I wrote: something about how Boggin sent us, we were not from Mavors or Mulciber, but we have urgent business to discuss. I was kind of coy about saying too much, but I wanted to drop names so he'd know we were not humeys.

  Wolves, not cattle.

  Then the huge guy politely escorted us to the curb, smiled, ignored whatever else we said, and stomped back to the club, his ring mail glittering and chiming at every footstep.

  Vanity, staring at the broad back retreating said, "Why was he carrying a harpoon?"

  Quentin said, "Because that was-"

  Without warning, Vanity jumped into Quentin's arms and landed a big, wet, sloppy kiss on his lips.

  After a moment or two, Colin said, "Are you guys going to come up for air?"

  I slapped myself on the neck. "Damn these mosquitoes." Then I said, "Let's go to this tux shop, whatever it is." And I began marching down the sidewalk. Vanity and Quentin broke their hold and followed.

  After a short bit, we turned a corner, and Vanity said softly, "All clear."

  Colin said to Vanity, "Red, if I am about to say something stupid, would you kiss me, too?"

  Quentin said, "Down, hormone boy, down!"

  Vanity smiled sweetly. "Each time you are about to say something stupid? Well, I'd have no time for anything else!"

  I looked at Vanity, "If we are now in the clear... ?" She nodded.

  To the group: "First, in the future, let the Leader do the talking. That was just disgraceful!

  Everyone jaw-jawing at once. If I had been the bouncer, I would have had us all arrested." I drew a deep breath and gave them all the basilisk eye. No one decided to talk back to me, not then.

  To Quentin: "And what were you about to say, Quentin?"

  "Deimos. That was Deimos, son of Mavors. Terror is his other name. Miles is just a word for

  'soldier.' He stops fights because he is the god who causes one side to panic and rout, so that spearmen can cut them down from behind as they flee." Quentin breathed a sigh and wiped his brow. "He is not Mr. Nice Guy. Really. Not. Did none of you recognize him?"

  Vanity said, "Why a harpoon?"

  Quentin said, "Not sure. Maybe as a symbol? Terror, once it strikes, leaves its hook in your heart, and slowly pulls you in. Even the hugest creatures on earth cannot escape."

  Victor said, "What now, Leader? I suggest we break into the club and wait for Mr. Archer to return-assuming he is actually gone."

  I said, "Why would Mavors' son help us against his father?"

  Quentin said, "Greek gods don't love their dads. Saturn castrated his father and ate his son, or tried to, and he, in turn, threw him into Tartarus." Quentin shivered again. "I have no love for the White Christ, but at least the God of Jerusalem was adored by his son."

  Victor said sardonically, "Who adored the son enough in return to have him tortured to death for crimes he did not commit."

  I said, "We are shelving the theology discussion. Advice on a course of action? We have one vote for break in and surprise him."

  Colin licked his lower lip and said in a thoughtful tone, "That big guy? I think I can take him.

  Let's break in."

  I had sudden insight into male psychology. My theory: Guys are idiots. Keep this theory in mind. It explains the phenomena while assuming no unnecessary agents.

  Vanity said in exasperation, "Beggars can't be break-in-ers! We're trying to get ourselves free from Mavors' curse. If we disobey his direct order, then it's a Quentin thing again, right? Like poor Mr. Finklestein looking at Phoebe bathing. So we are coming to this guy for help." She turned to Quentin. "Deimos is really Archer, right? There are not two gods running around in L.

  A."

  Quentin did not answer her, but said, "Leader, I cannot trespass, or break rules like that, or else my Art will endanger me."

  I said, "If you were wearing a tux, could you break in? Think about the words Deimos said. He invited you back in, if you were dressed right. He did not say anything about going in through the front door."

  Victor said, "So what's the plan?"

  I said, "Let's go shopping! You know, I have not spent a single dime of my money yet, and I think I need a new dress."

  "Upscale" he called it. The place was huge. Glittering aisles of goods were piled deep as the rooms of gold the Aztecs gathered to ransom Montezuma. Fabrics, jewelry, more shoes than an elfish cobbler's shop. Sporting goods for sale in the back of the store. (I made a mental note to buy myself a shooting iron. I was in America, after all.) Electronics. Televisions. Musical instruments.

  Everything.

  The store was strangely deserted-or, not so strange, considering the late hour-but the manager came hurrying down the empty aisles when the five of us entered the front door.

  He smiled and inclined his head when we showed him the card Deimos had given us. "Gentlemen's apparel is on the second floor..." He gestured toward the grand-ballroom-style staircase leading up to a sort of elevated courtyard surrounded by several departments or shops on the right.

  "Women's evening wear, yes? On the left..." A twin of the first staircase led up to an area the size of a small town, but one where an impatient sorcerer turned every inhabitant into a dressmaker.

  There was no balcony or bridge between the two departments: To cross from one to the other required descending one grand staircase, crossing the wealth-crowded aisles of the main salon, and ascending another.

  Victor said, "Leader, I am not sure we should split up."

  Colin said, "He's right, I mean, you girls might need help tucking your mammary glands into brassieres or something."

  Vanity took me by the elbow. "We don't want to miss Archer
; besides, this is still within screaming distance. And how fast can Victor fly? Mach twenty-two or something?"

  I said, "Just stay alert. Go get your tuxes." But for some reason, Vanity and I started giggling as we tripped up the stairway to the palace of luxury atop. Here were mannequins in poses of grace, and acres of soft fabric hanging from padded hangers.

  Vanity whispered: "The money! It is still folded up in your fourth dimension."

  But there was a clerk watching. The young lady walked across the shimmering marble floor toward us, the only other person in sight, and it was not the time to pull my energy-shining wings down into this plenum.

  A man in purple pulled open the door of my little dressing room. Of course, the way this world works, it was just at the moment when I was wearing nothing but bra and panties, and I was bent over, pulling my toes out of a collapsed skirt.

  I should explain how he sneaked up on me: I was not looking. Hyperspace in this area was dark, and I would have had to ring my sphere, sending not-light out in all directions, to keep an eye on what was happening around me, and I was wary of showing a light, not knowing if there were eyes like my eye watching. So, surprise!

  I kept a cool head. I straightened like a diver jumping, and jumped a direction at right angles of all directions, neither right nor left, forward nor back, up nor down. My arm should have simply moved "past" his fingers, but instead he kept his grip. He was like Colin, at least a bit, a creature of passion.

  But he did not shut off my powers; perhaps he could not. Instead I reared up into the fourth dimension, and he, keeping his grip, was lifted partway out of the "plane" of Earth's continuum.

  His feet were still in Earthly space, but his upper body was curled into the fourth dimension. To me his body looked like a streamer of bark peeling off a tree.

  He had some thickness in the fourth dimension, not so much as Miss Daw and her body, which looked like a wheel of eyes within a wheel of eyes, but there was something feathered with strands of music, serpentine, with scales of alternating gravity and levity rippling down the solids that formed the surface of his snakelike body.

  But he was not full, not like I was. I sensed his fourth dimensional extensions were of limited utility; their internal nature was artificial rather than natural. I was looking at some sort of living armor: a thing he wore, not a thing he was.

  I screamed then: a loud, sustained, ear-piercing scream. In theory, I should have merely shouted, or struggled in grim silence, as a boy would do. Well, this was no time for theory. I needed help, and it was automatic anyway. Think of this as Nature's siren.

  "Hush, Princess!" came the sharp command, which he flicked to me on a strand carrying an essence of meaning.

  "The boys are coming!"

  "Not unless they can hear sound waves in a volume skewed to the continuum, they aren't. Now, hush, or I'll make your true love a man with a jackass's head."

  He moved his feet and pushed me in the "blue" direction, so that I landed in the changing room one or two over from where I had been. He was straddling me, pinning me down. He did not look like a snake in three-dimensional cross-section, but like a winged boy, and his vast purple plumes filled the cabinet above and to either side. He was dressed in gold-trimmed purple robes, and on his thick, dark, ambrosia-dripping curls of hair, he wore a diadem of woven poppies and red roses, thorns and all. Slung over one shoulder was a Turkish bow of rosy wood, shaped like a woman's upper lip. At his other shoulder was a quiver of ivory, in which arrows fletched with peacock feathers rattled.

  He was strong, and very handsome, and he smelled good. What is wrong with having evil people be ugly guys with wormy features, eh? How come all the Greek gods look like, well, like Greek gods? It seemed unfair.

  "You saw me naked," I said. "I get to turn you into a stag now, and have your dogs rend you."

  He looked down at my cleavage. I was wearing a lacy black bra. And I started to blush. I am convinced it was a blush of rage, but it was so unfair.

  "You're dressed in love's proper hue," he said dryly. "It is fitting. Besides, I've seen women with less on at the beach." But he stood up and-if I were in a good mood, I'd call what he did helping me to my feet. In a bad mood, I'd call it hauling me to my feet. With his bulky purple wings filling the changing closet, he was standing much too close. "You wanted to see me," he said.

  I looked at this youngish fellow. "Are you Mr. Archer?"

  "I'm the archer," he agreed.

  "Who are you? Apollo?"

  "Pshaw! Mightier than Apollo," said Archer with a quirk of his lips. "Ask Hyacinth about that.

  Apollo rules during the day; I rule day and night. Omnia vincit amor! All things I conquer. Even Death is not as strong."

  I said doubtfully, "You mean the Rich One? I saw him- didn't see him, actually-once. Hades? Lord Dis, you call him?"

  He nodded, and smiled at some pleasing memory. "We were in the library, arguing, and he claimed he was stronger than I, despite that he was blind. I lifted up the Great Weapon and shot, just as he donned his dread helm and vanished, and I had no more sight of him than he of me. The curtains billowed and the candles blew, so for a time I thought he had escaped my shot, for (as well we know) the Great Weapon often goes astray, but the next day he outraged the Maiden as she gathered flowers in the fields of Enna, and carried her down through sunless crevasses into the House of Woe, so I knew my bolt struck home."

  "Death is blind?"

  Archer nodded. "As Justice is: He makes no distinctions, plays no favorites." Now the boy took me by my naked shoulders and lowered his face toward mine. I thought he was about to kiss me, but instead he merely looked deeply in my eyes.

  "You are in my realm as well," he said. "There is a boy you love, who steps across the threshold into manhood. I can grant your wish. But you must ask it, and be in my debt."

  "Wait! When you said you could make my true love have the head of an ass, did you mean you were going to change Victor, or that you would change me?"

  He said, "Is that your boon? Is that what Boreas sent you all this way to pray from my court?"

  "Your... your court?"

  "Know you not who We are, little daughter of Chaos? We are Cosmos itself. The throne is Our own, granted by the Three Goddesses, confirmed by the Fates. Our Royal Person is no less than the Imperator of Heaven."

  "Do you have-I don't mean to seem rude or anything, but-do you have a badge or anything?"

  "A what?"

  "A letter signed by your mother, or a driver's license, or something to prove you are the Emperor of Heaven? A golden stick, a fancy chair, a shiny hat?"

  "I have the Great Weapon. Do you want to fall in love with a goat?"

  Goat? I already had enough trouble with Colin. So I said, "Okay. You are the Cosmic Emperor and King of All Gods. Let's posit that. And you are talking to me, naked in a closet, because...

  Why?"

  "I've never had a boring conversation with a girl in her lacy things. But once she puts on clothes and opens her mouth, then..."

  I favored him with a withering look. "It's the 'in the closet' part I was wondering about. You are afraid to talk to five children in a group, aren't you? You are not really an emperor of anything, are you?"

  "Well, that depends. I was pitched off the throne by my uncles, but I never formally abdicated. My realm is shrunken somewhat, so only my brothers Fear and Dread keep faith with me. My sister Trouble is with me, too, sort of, but she's almost more trouble than she's worth. Well, it's not much, but it is something." He shrugged. "Every leader has some setbacks from time to time. So?

  We are the sovereign power that rules the ordered universe. You have a petition to ask. Ask."

  "Can I ask for peace between Cosmos and Chaos?"

  "Petitions for peace can only be granted by both parties in contention, not by one. But I am pleased, very pleased, that you thought to ask for that before you asked for life or freedom. Lord Terminus had you raised together, as Earthly children, and instructed in t
he histories and arts of man. Have you never wondered why?"

  "I have wondered," I admitted.

  "Boreas told me the reason."

  "You trust him?"

  "Indeed. But I don't like him. Likeable and trustworthy are not the same thing, are they? But Boreas, even after Terminus died, kept faith with the orders he was given, kept his promises.

  Which is why I trust him now, that cold bastard, and I let him know where I was, despite the people hunting me-"

  The door swung open. There was Vanity, wearing a sheer peach evening dress with the tags at the neckline. "I thought I heard voices. Who the heck are you? Leader, is someone molesting you again? I swear you give off a scent that attracts perverts."

  Archer, startled, let go of me and straightened up slightly. Then he swung his gaze back toward me, but the moment he took his eyes from me, the wall behind me gave way, and I had fallen through a trapdoor that snapped silently shut behind me. I was in a little crawl space that ran behind the dressing rooms.

  Smoothly done. I had no idea Vanity was so smooth. I was in a crawl space: so I crawled.

  Archer said, "Where'd she go?"

  Vanity was saying, "You're Cupid, aren't you? The one who lost the throne?"

  "I know exactly where is it, Lady Nausicaa." Through the wall, I could see him smile an ingratiating smile and place his hand on his heart. "It is merely that armed warriors stand between me and it."

  Vanity did not smile back, which was rare for her. Instead she said in a businesslike tone, "Boggin says you can overrule Mavors. Is that true?"

  "The matter is complex. Each god has certain terrain that is his own, a realm where his will rules fate. But if events occur where two influences overlap, there is considerable controversy, restrained, to a degree, by precedents long ago established, and to a degree the conflict is restrained by a gentlemen's agreement among ourselves to avoid an open fate-war."

  "Mavors ordered Amelia to lead the five of us back to an island where we would be attacked by Lamia, a blood-drinking vampiress, who wants to kill us as the quickest way to break the truce between Cosmos and Chaos. Can you stop this decree?"