Dead Reign

by T. A. Pratt

  “Such benefits make life in your service worthwhile.”

  After Marla arrived at the club, cutting around the line that snaked outside and nodding to the bouncer on her way in, she headed straight for the back stairs that led up to Rondeau’s apartment and her office, which once upon a time had been his spare bedroom. She wasn’t much for dancing, and the horde of college students and hipsters in the club never failed to make her feel old.

  Easing her way around the dance floor, she was first surprised and then annoyed to see Pelham tending the bar, moving with the precision of a Swiss clockwork figurine, pouring drinks and taking orders and eyeing the shouting customers with a combination of patience and concern. “Rondeau!” she shouted, and he was there, by her elbow, steering her toward a corner of the bar. He was dressed in a pin-striped suit that would have been tasteful if not for the giant fake orange flower dangling from his lapel, and the hideous polka-dotted bow tie. Once they were out of the press of the crowd, in the lee of one of the support pillars that dotted the floor, Marla snapped her fingers and said “Tace,” causing a field of silence to wrap around Rondeau and herself, cutting out the pounding beat of the dance music and the dim roar of the merrymaking crowd. “Rondeau, why is my valet working in your nightclub?”

  He winced. “I’m sorry! But one of my bartenders called in sick and the other one just flat no-showed. You know I’m useless behind the bar, and I was trying to find out if the bouncer knows how to mix drinks when Pelly just sort of appeared out of nowhere and cleared his throat and said that, being at liberty for the moment, he would be happy to serve. I knew you’d be pissed, but we were opening in five minutes, so I said sure.” He glanced toward the bar. “And I have to give the guy his due. He knows the whole bartender’s bible by heart! He may have never left the estate before, but he can mix a drink.”

  Marla sighed. “Call me next time you want to hijack my valet, would you? I mean, I don’t care, but I’d like to be notified.”

  Rondeau grinned. “I thought you didn’t even want the guy.”

  “I need somebody to hang crepe paper and to order the chocolate fountain and to sprinkle glitter on the swans, or whatever the hell rich people do to prepare for their parties. After that…”

  “What, you’re going to drive him to the edge of the woods and set him free?” Rondeau gestured. “Look at the guy. He practically begged me to put him to work! He’s over there smiling, and it doesn’t even look fake. He lives to serve. And you do need an assistant.”

  “I’m just not comfortable with the whole manservant thing.”

  “So pay him more than he deserves, if it makes you feel better. Give him lots of time off. Just as long as you pay me more, you know, on account of seniority.”

  “We’ll see,” Marla said. “I’m going upstairs. Holler if you need me.”

  “Sure you don’t want to grab a drink? Pelly mixes a mean Manhattan.”

  “Maybe later.” Marla went up the back stairs (which were invisible to casual observers, hidden under a look-away spell), and to her cluttered office. She switched on a brass lamp and dropped into the chair behind her desk, drawing her dagger of office from its sheath to set it on the desk before her. She idly spun the dagger on the blotter, and when it stopped twirling, the point was aimed at her chest. She grunted.

  Marla owned two magical artifacts, which were two more than most people ever even saw. The first was her cloak. With the pale white side showing, it healed her, protecting her from taking physical damage. With a mental command she could reverse the cloak, making the bruise-purple side flip to the outside, and when she wore the purple, she became a monster, a pure killing machine. She’d discovered the cloak in a thrift store soon after she became an apprentice in Felport. The cloak shouldn’t have been there—no one had sold it to the store, no employee had hung it on a rack, it was just there—and it had called to Marla, almost literally whispering to her. She paid the three dollars the clerk demanded, put on the cloak, and soon became something of a legend in the town, the ex-apprentice with an artifact, the stone-cold mercenary who would do almost any job, and who always demanded knowledge in payment instead of money—spells, tricks, secrets. At first, she’d been able to demand only a small lesson, but as she became more sought after and proficient in martial magics, she’d started acquiring tidbits of true power. Some people still grumbled that the cloak had the real power, not Marla, but if that was ever true, it wasn’t anymore; she hardly wore the thing these days. It was simply too dangerous.

  In her younger days, when she was bodyguarding and freelancing for a living, she’d used the cloak often, although it did horrible things to her mind. The cloak possessed a kind of malign alien intelligence, and whenever she put it on, that consciousness struggled to seize her body; even after she reversed the cloak, the alien mind lingered in her head for a few moments, calculating angles, plotting the death and destruction and subjugation of every other living thing on Earth. Over the years, the cloak’s intelligence had grown stronger, and lasted for longer after each use, building up in her system like mercury poisoning. Marla had begun to fear she would lose her own mind entirely if she kept using it. These days she kept the cloak in a fortified wardrobe in her bedroom, a wooden monstrosity carved all over with dangerous runes and wrapped inside invisible spirals of binding. Mostly she kept the cloak locked up to prevent other people from getting it, but there were just as many wards to keep the cloak in as there were to keep intruders out, for in her darkest thoughts Marla sometimes wondered if the cloak was plotting its escape. She still occasionally brought it out of mothballs, in desperate situations, but she no longer depended on it, and even daydreamed about trying to destroy it, though most artifacts were as impervious to damage as they were mysterious in origin.

  She thought about the cloak a lot…but she almost never thought about her dagger of office. It was her constant companion, but while she regarded the cloak as a half-tamed animal, a war-beast just barely under her control, she basically thought of the dagger as a fancy pocket knife. Was that a mistake? Was it something more than a useful tool? Something worth killing her over?

  Maybe she should find out. She dialed Viscarro’s number, and one of the subterranean sorcerer’s lackeys answered, stammering that Viscarro was unavailable but would call back at his earliest convenience. “I don’t care if it’s convenient,” Marla said. “Just get him to call soon.”

  She hung up, annoyed, and pulled down a few books from her shelf that referenced death and the afterlife and necromancy. Her library was a mishmash of inherited volumes—some from her predecessor Sauvage; some from her old mentor, Artie Mann—half of those had ancient bits of pornography tucked into the pages; some from the late sorceress Juliana, who’d owned the nightclub before giving it to Rondeau in her will. Marla wasn’t much for books, having learned most of her magic in more practical ways, but she was interested in finding out what she could about capital-D Death, and sometimes sorcerous books had surprising insights. She began to read.

  Hours later, Marla didn’t have much more in the way of concrete facts, though she’d learned about the angel of death and his cloak of staring eyes and his venom-dripping sword, about death gods from Hades to Mictlantecuhtli to Hel to Eshu, and about realms of death from Annwfn to Sheol to Irkalla to the Ten Hells (including bee torture, the sixteen chambers of heart gouging, and the upside-down prison). Were they all just differing descriptions of the same being, the One True God of Death, and various cultural interpretations of a single actual afterlife, or were there dozens of squabbling death gods all wandering around down there (or up there, or over there), with their realms butting up against one another messily? Was there truly an afterlife at all?

  Her head was swimming with visions of torments, caverns, scales, blades, crocodiles, rivers, murmurings, ice. She hadn’t crammed like this since her days as an apprentice—and though none of the stories matched the description of Mr. Death precisely, there were stories of Deaths who walked the Earth, som
etimes to harvest souls, sometimes to better understand what it was to be human, and there were arrogant Deaths who thought humans little more than flickering flies to be swatted away. There was no way to tell what stories were rooted in truths and which were utter fantasy, and none of them mentioned Death losing his dagger in a card game. But then, that was hardly the sort of story a death god would want spread around, was it?

  She was opening a fresh volume, this one a collection of oral folktales from the Appalachians that was supposed to contain stories about outwitting Death, when a gentle knock came at the door. “Come in!” she called, and it opened to reveal Pelham, bearing a tray with three glasses. Rondeau entered after him. “Closed up for the night,” he said. “Gods, I didn’t know you had this many books! Where’d they all come from?”

  Marla lifted a few stacked volumes from her desk and set them on the floor, making room for Pelham to set down the tray. “They’ve been here all along. You just don’t notice books, unless they’re about techniques for seducing women or cheating at cards.”

  “Please. Those are subjects I could write books on.” Rondeau sat down in one of the chairs across from her. “Have a seat, Pelly.”

  “I really shouldn’t,” he murmured.

  “No, sit.” Marla gestured. “I mean, you brought a drink for yourself, so you might as well drink it.”

  “Rondeau insisted I prepare a cocktail for myself. I’m perfectly happy to drink it elsewhere.”

  Marla sighed. “Look, we’re informal around here. I know that’s not really your thing, but if you want to work for me, you have to do things the way we do them, right? So drink with us.”

  Pelham nodded and sat down, though he stayed on the edge of his chair, ready to leap into action at the least signal, it seemed. “What’s the drink?” Marla sniffed her glass. She didn’t drink much, preferring her faculties intact, but Rondeau had gotten her into the habit of a glass of wine or a cocktail to help unwind at the end of especially difficult days.

  “Pelly invented it,” Rondeau said. “He won’t tell me what’s in it!”

  “My grandfather invented it,” Pelham said modestly. “And it’s a family secret, which I regret I cannot share.”

  Marla took a sip. It was faintly sweet—though not cloying—a mild fruity flavor that bloomed into pure spreading warmth as it went down her throat, hitting her belly like a belt of brandy. “That’s a hell of a drink, Pelham. What’s it called?”

  “A Red Aloysius, after my grandfather,” Pelham said. “Valet to Hollister Corbin, may his spirit persist.”

  Marla grunted. Hollister Corbin was one of the last late great badasses of the founding families, a mean son of a bitch and a war profiteer, she’d heard. His ghost was doubtless grumbling up in the Heights with his fellows.

  “Hey,” Marla said. “What did you end up doing with that goat, Rondeau?”

  “Locked it in the special conference room with a tub of fresh water and a head of lettuce and some old carrots and stuff from my fridge. We’ll get rid of it tomorrow. I’m sure somebody could use a goat.”

  “It’d better not crap all over my conference room,” Marla said.

  Rondeau grinned. “Well, you do have a manservant now, to clean up in that eventuality.”

  “I was never tasked to muck out stables,” Pelham said. “Though, of course, if such services are required—”

  “He’s just taking the piss out of you, Pelham,” Marla said. “Don’t worry. Rondeau knows he’s the only one I trust with cleaning up hypothetical goat shit.”

  “Good to know I’m useful.” Rondeau slouched back in the chair, sipping his drink. “So Marla, I’ve been thinking.”

  “I already don’t like where this is going.”

  “Oh, I was more just wondering, like, where do you see us in thirty or forty years?”

  She snorted. “I’ll probably be dead.”

  “Perish the thought,” Pelham said.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Rondeau said. “Still, though, I mean, I’ve been thinking about goals. When I was a kid, my goal was to find enough to eat. Then my goal was to have a place to live, then to get a good job running with a crew like yours, then to have a business of my own…” He shrugged. “I got all that. Here I am, right-hand man to the chief sorcerer of Felport—”

  “More like the little finger on my left hand,” Marla said.

  “—and proprietor of a nightclub that never goes out of style.” It was true. There was a very minor come-hither spell on the club, just enough to tempt patrons into checking out the place, though Rondeau had to make sure the club was fun and inviting, or they’d all just walk right back out again. “But, I mean, what next? Should I meet a nice girl or boy or both and settle down? Try to become the world hot-dog-eating champion? Stop fucking around and apprentice myself to some sorcerer, try to learn some magic besides Cursing and a few knife tricks and how to open locks with spells?”

  “I didn’t realize you were so dissatisfied,” Marla said. It would be a shame to lose Rondeau to some sorcerer. No one quite knew what Rondeau’s magical capabilities were. He wasn’t even really human, but an immortal parasitic psychic entity that had possessed the body of a homeless boy in Felport long ago. Rondeau didn’t have any memories of his life before taking over that body, except for floating around in the air aimlessly, but he had some intrinsic magical ability, particularly the ability to Curse in a primal language that could literally change the world. Some thought Rondeau was mispronouncing the original Words that had created the universe, but Marla thought it was more likely he knew a few fragments of some basic programming language of magic, a fundamental language most sorcerers accessed indirectly through rites and incantations. There were certainly sorcerers who would be willing to teach Rondeau the mysteries in exchange for the chance to study him, but Rondeau had never seemed interested before.

  “Eh, I’m not dissatisfied,” he said, waving his hand. “And being an apprentice sounds like a lot of work and not much fun. Things are going pretty good. A new person in my bed every week, hanging out at the club every weekend, and there’s never a dull moment with you when serious shit starts going down. But even though I’m no master of divination, I can kinda see the future when it comes to myself, and I think someday I might get dissatisfied, you know, and start to wonder, What’s it all for?” He shrugged. “I blame Pelly’s drink here. It’s making me all philosophical. But you, you always seem so sure, so I just wondered…”

  “I want to make Felport a great city,” Marla said. “It’s my home.” She ran her finger around the rim of the half-empty glass. Maybe the booze was making her a little expansive, too. “Growing up, it was just me and my brother and my mom, and Mom’s boyfriends—the less said about them the better. I never felt safe in my own place, not even in my bedroom, and I spent a lot of time pretty much running wild. I came here when I was a teenager, and Felport…took care of me. It was rough, sure, but I discovered magic here. I met people who challenged me, excited me, got me interested in something besides just working so hard I could sleep without dreaming. I love Felport more than I love myself. So as for what I want, I want this. The ongoing project. Using my magic to help the city prosper. Protecting it from those things that threaten it. I’ll keep doing it for as long as I’m able.”

  “So we’re not going to retire to the tropics and sit on some nice deck looking over the ocean in our old age?” Rondeau said.

  Marla grinned. “Anything’s possible.”

  “What about…family?” Pelham said, as if afraid to broach the subject.

  “What about it?” Marla said. “Like I said, I don’t have much family.”

  “Well, but you could marry, have children…I think family is very important.”

  “It’s crossed my mind.” Though her last lover had betrayed her and killed her friend Ted in this very room, not far from where Pelham sat now. “Let’s just say I’m married to my job, and as for family, I’ve got Rondeau, and I’ve got Hamil, and a couple of other peopl
e you might meet someday, if you stick around long enough.”

  “Like who?” Rondeau said. “Since you’re waxing all sentimental?”

  Marla shifted in her seat, not quite squirming. “I don’t know. People I can depend on. People who, if they called and said they needed me, I’d go help them, without any bargaining or bullshit, and who I know would do the same for me. Bradley, out in San Francisco. I guess Dr. Husch, though she’s more like an older sister who pisses me off a lot.” Marla took another sip of her drink and cleared her throat. All those relationships were relatively new—even Rondeau, her oldest friend, had been close with her for only seven or eight years, since before she became chief sorceress. She was used to fending entirely for herself, and she’d only gradually come to believe that having close allies could be as much an advantage as a liability. “I didn’t draw a great hand when it came to natural family, so I’m a big supporter of making your own family where you find it.”

  Pelham sat with his mouth pursed, clearly disapproving of the notion of invented families, but then, he would be, wouldn’t he? “How about you, Pelham? You want to meet a nice lady or gentleman and settle down?”

  “Now that I have gainful employment, such a thing is a possibility, Ms. Mason. It would have been inappropriate in my previous circumstances. Though if you do not plan to have children, it is not imperative that I have children to further serve your line.”

  Marla shook her head. “So your whole ancestry is really intertwined with the founding families?”

  He nodded. “They protected us. They brought us over from the old country and gave us a home. We have been with them ever since. Alas, the lines are sadly withered. I am pleased to be with you. The Chamberlain explained that you are the new aristocracy.”

  “When I hear the word ‘aristocracy,’ I reach for my knife,” Marla said. “I’m a servant of the city, and the people who live here.”

  Pelham inclined his head. “It is a useful distinction, Ms. Mason. I, too, understand what it is to serve.”