by T. A. Pratt
12
I ’ve been thinking about our current situation,” Booth said.
“Silence.” Ayres led his zombie army along the esplanade, much to the confusion of early-morning joggers who passed them by. “I’m enjoying myself. Don’t spoil it with your blather.” The day was already warm, and the chill that eternally seemed to grip Ayres was fading. Life, after all, was sweet. He was the greatest necromancer who had ever lived. He had power. So what if he sometimes still smelled rot, if the people around him appeared waxy and dead when he saw them from the corner of his eye? They were mostly dead, after all, and when the Cotard delusion asserted itself too strongly, he could use the therapeutic techniques Dr. Husch had taught him to overcome the sensations.
“I feel our accommodation cannot be sustained,” Booth said.
“Shush.” If Death didn’t periodically voice his preference for Booth’s continued presence, Ayres would have disposed of him by now.
“Ayres. Look at me.”
Annoyed, Ayres stopped, the zombies around him lurching to a pause as well. He turned.
Booth had one arm flung out, extended so close to Ayres’s face that, for a moment, he couldn’t recognize the item in Booth’s hand. The smell of metal and oil made it click for him; Booth held the gun he’d taken from the would-be mugger a few nights ago, the snub barrel pointed at Ayres’s face. “What—”
“Thus, always, to tyrants,” Booth said, and without hearing a sound, or feeling a thing, Ayres’s whole world went silent and black.
The revivified mummy of John Wilkes Booth lowered his pistol and looked at the crumpled body of the man who had brought him to life. Ayres, head fatally pierced, lay among the collapsed bodies of his zombie army, and they had all lost their illusions, so they were nothing but bones and rot and ruin. Booth looked at his own hands, and whimpered; they were brown and black, shriveled, wrinkled. The illusion of his old flesh had died along with Ayres. Booth supposed the only reason he still stood while the other corpses had fallen was because he had his own spirit inhabiting his body, and had been more than a mere marionette controlled by the necromancer.
“Well done, young man,” Viscarro said, and Booth turned, surprised, having almost forgotten about the subterranean sorcerer, but by then Viscarro was racing away with surprising speed, robes flapping as he went. Booth began to give chase, but knew he couldn’t overpower the sorcerer—he’d only been able to stop Ayres thanks to surprise. He wondered if Death would be angry, if he would send Booth back to Hell. Booth decided that would be all right. He had always contended that he would rather die free than live a prisoner. Still, better to know one way or another than to suffer uncertainty. Booth knelt, felt around in Ayres’s jacket, and found the tiny silver bell he’d used to summon Death. Booth rang it.
Death appeared from an alleyway and cursed. “What the hell happened here? My troops are fallen! Where’s Viscarro?”
“Escaped, my lord,” Booth said. He thought about blaming the death of Ayres on Viscarro, but didn’t like the idea of others receiving credit for his deeds. “I shot Ayres, sir. I could no longer tolerate his cruelty and disrespect.”
Death sighed. “Damn it, Booth, he was useful.” Death moved his hand, and the zombies rose up, clothed again in their old illusions, and Booth was pleased to see his own artificial flesh returned as well—this time, he even had the tattoo of his initials on his hand, an improvement over the illusion Ayres had provided. “I could restore his spirit to his body but his complaining and bellowing would be endless. He already had some confusion over whether he was alive or dead, and I don’t want to hear him playing Hamlet, in an agony of uncertainty, do you? Fine. All right. You’ll have to make yourself twice as useful to make up for killing him, Booth.”
“I shall try to give satisfaction, sir,” Booth said.
“Good. Though this won’t satisfy you. I’m sending you back to the underworld.”
Booth shivered, though he felt no chill, except a mental one. “Sir, I am sincerely sorry for—”
“Quiet,” Death said, which angered Booth—so peremptory!—though Booth knew he could not dispatch this tyrant as easily as he had Ayres. “I’m not sending you back to whatever tiresome torment your mind created for you. I’m sending you on a mission, not as a spirit, but in this body you’re wearing now.” Death placed both his hands on Booth’s shoulders and looked into his eyes. “I’ve just received word that Marla Mason has entered my kingdom. I have no idea what prompted her intrusion, but I don’t want her there.”
“It is your realm, sir. Can you not simply expel her?”
“There are rules concerning living pilgrims in the underworld. I cannot strike her directly, but you—you are half of the world of the dead, and half of the world of the living. The rules that bind me will slide around you, your twilight status providing a certain freedom of action.”
“What would you have me do, sir?”
“Stop her before she reaches the heart of my realm. Kill her, if you must, and I’ll try to wrest my dagger from whichever sorcerer replaces her—Hamil, I suspect. He will be scarcely more tractable than Marla was, but I doubt he would try something as audacious as sneaking in the back door of my realm. Your intercession may not be necessary—my realm has many terrors and dangers for those who enter unprepared. But, just in case…”
“How will I find her?”
“You’ll wait, like a trapdoor spider, in the corridor before my throne room. If she never arrives, fine.” He shrugged. “I’ll hear of it if she dies, or goes mad and becomes trapped wandering in my realm. But if she does enter that corridor…”
Booth drew his knife and his pistol. “I shall dispatch her, sir.”
“Good man.” Death frowned. “Well, horrible, small, vicious, arrogant man, actually. Better to say ‘useful man.’ You are that, at least.”
Booth’s anger began to rise again, but he bit down on a sharp retort. “‘I must obey: his art is of such power,’” Booth said, and bowed low. “How shall I journey to—”
But before Booth could finish his question, he fell through space, and landed with a crash in a narrow corridor of dusty gray stone. He struggled to his feet and looked up and down the length of the corridor. It seemed to stretch on forever, but it was lined with little niches, some of which held ancient statuary of men with the heads of animals; or men with beards, sitting on thrones, or banker’s scales, or miniature boats. Some few of the niches were empty, however, but for plinths, and Booth found one such, and sat down. He knew he might be waiting a long time—such was the nature of the underworld. But he knew how to occupy himself. Booth began to recite Romeo and Juliet, all the parts, but in a whisper, so as not to startle Marla, should she come along. Perhaps she would arrive at the moment when Juliet took her own life. There would be a certain poetry in that.
Rondeau burst from the water and hauled himself up the ladder into the boat. He wanted to flop on his back, but the oxygen tank made that impossible. Lifting his mask from his face, he shook his head at Beadle. “No good,” he said. “Are you sure it’s down there?”
Beadle, who in his neat suit looked strangely out of place aboard a fishing boat, nodded. “It’s hard to pinpoint. Salt water dulls the divination, I think—salt is traditionally used to confuse spells, you know.” He pointed to the topographical map of the bay, circling one spot with his finger. “It’s just down there, probably.”
“That’s great.” Rondeau opened a bottle of water and chugged it down. He’d been given a crash course in scuba diving by Langford, but he wasn’t an especially powerful swimmer, and the waters of the bay were cold, even in summer, even through his wetsuit. “It’s tough to know where the hell I’m going when I’m down there, though, it’s so murky, and it gets dark faster than you’d think. I could use a beer.”
“I don’t believe beer and scuba diving mix.”
Rondeau squinted at the sky. “We’re going to lose the light. I feel like we’re wasting time.” He sighed. “But I don’t
know what our next move is if we don’t get the cloak. I feel like we didn’t even dent the Walking Death with that explosion.”
“I think we made a dent in his sense of well-being. I hear he led an attack on Viscarro’s vault this morning, but I haven’t heard how it went, as I’ve been out here on this boat with you all morning. Oh, I wanted to show you this.” Beadle reached into his jacket and withdrew a thick cream-colored envelope. “Since you’re damp, I’ll just give you the salient details—I’ve been invited to the Founders’ Ball at the Chamberlain’s house this weekend. A grand masque, to be hosted by the new ruler of Felport, the Walking Death.”
“It says that?” Rondeau said. “About the ‘new ruler of Felport’?”
“Oh, yes. Langford and Partridge were invited as well, along with every notable person in sorcerous society. All the members of the ruling cabal, their better apprentices, and noble freelancers like myself. You, of course, were not invited.”
“Hell,” Rondeau said. “I hear it’s a great party, if a little stuffy. I really thought I’d get to go this time.” He sat in a swivel chair bolted to the deck and squinted at the sky. “You know, maybe I should go anyway. Crash the party.”
Beadle was silent for a moment, though Rondeau imagined the faint sound of flywheels spinning and gears meshing and ticker tape unspooling. “Hmm,” Beadle said. “Elaborate, please.”
“If the ghosts of the founding fathers get pissed off, they can make big trouble for the leader of the city, right?”
“They can make big trouble for the city, a symptom of which is trouble for the city’s leader, yes.”
“No, hear me out. I figure, the ghosts probably don’t like Death much anyway. I mean, hell, they’ve avoided going to his realm for decades. I bet if something fucked up the Founders’ Ball but good, they’d blame Death, and make things tough for him. If nothing else, they’d cause so much trouble in the city that it wouldn’t be fun for Death anymore. They could stir up such a ruckus that a little thing like being exploded would start to feel like a fond memory.”
“The kind of ‘trouble’ the ghosts could cause in the city might be more than you’re counting on,” Beadle said. “Only one Founders’ Ball has ever been skipped, during the disastrous war of succession when Candlewick fought Butcher for possession of the dagger of office, and that was the year of the Great Fire of Felport. Much of the city was destroyed. You can still see burn marks on some of the stone structures in the historic district.”
“I’m not talking about skipping the party. The party will still happen. I’ll just sneak in before it’s over and spoil Death’s fun. If we can spin it right, if we can direct the attention of the ghosts toward Death in particular as the reason the party went bad…”
“That’s a lot of ifs,” Beadle said.
“I thought your whole talent was turning ifs into definites?”
“I’ll examine the idea further,” Beadle said. “It’s a bold plan, certainly. Decisive.”
“Marla says the Founders’ Ball is the social glue of the sorcerers’ world. It’s where alliances are made, displeasure shown, rewards given out, all that. It’s where a leader shows how rich and awesome and powerful and suave she is. If we let Death throw the party, and it goes well, I think he’ll be more deeply entrenched than ever, and he might make real allies, instead of just people who are afraid of him. What if Marla can’t ever come back while he’s here? What if Death doesn’t get bored and go away, or if he only gets bored on geological time scales, and he stays in control of the city until we’re all old? I don’t want that. I can’t allow it.”
“All right,” Beadle said. “I’ll examine the idea very carefully. Fair enough?”
“Yep.”
“Good. Get back in the water. Whether you crash the party or not, things will be a lot easier for us if you’re wearing Marla’s cloak.”
“True.” Rondeau put his tank back on. As he slipped into the water, he knew he’d already decided. He was the leader of this miniature resistance, and the ultimate choice was his. He was going to crash the party and wreck up the place. He was going to make a fool out of Death.
“What is this place?” Pelham said, as the train behind them—their only link to the world of the living, apart from their own beating hearts—pulled away.
Marla crossed her arms and surveyed the platform, illuminated by floodlights, the only obvious form of egress a spiral staircase with copper pipe rails. “It looks like the Tenderloin Station. A secret subway stop underneath San Francisco.”
Pelham sighed. “So it didn’t work, then? We just took a train to some station in San Francisco? All that darkness was the tunnel under the bay?”
Marla shook her head. “Tenderloin Station isn’t connected to any other rail lines. The only track here runs in a circle. It’s like a toy train set writ large. It was the lair of a sorceress named Bethany. No, this is the underworld. It just looks like a place I’ve been before.” Marla had been prepared for any number of Hells, but not for one based on her life story. “I don’t know what’s waiting for us up those stairs, but I think we’d better go.”
“All right.” They started for the stairway, and somewhere deep beneath, the station machinery ground to life, and the spiral stair began to twist widdershins with a terrible whine, turning like a barber pole or the point of a drill, unspooling downward. Marla swore, but by the time she reached the stair it was turning eye-blurringly fast, an apparently infinite spiral she couldn’t possibly climb, and when she squinted upward, it only disappeared into deeper darkness anyway.
“Okay,” Marla said. “This isn’t exactly like the Tenderloin Station, then. There must be another way out of here.” There was precious little on the platform, just a transit map and a blank train schedule, because Bethany’s train came and went as it pleased, and there were no obvious ways to escape. Marla considered going into the tunnel to look for some sort of maintenance exit, but what if a train came and squashed them?
“Perhaps it’s a puzzle,” Pelham said. “Mr. Cole warned you that the dead would try to trick and befuddle you. Tell me, this Bethany…is she dead?”
“She’d better be. I killed her. I killed her here, or in the real-world equivalent of this place.”
“Ah.” Pelham swallowed. “It was self-defense?”
“Well, broadly. Bethany was allied with a serious enemy of mine, and if I hadn’t killed her, she would have made trouble for me, yes. And she did try to kill me first.” Bethany had been strong, decisive, sardonic, and Marla had liked her, until her betrayal was revealed. “She wasn’t a very nice person, Pelham. She was a cannibal.”
“Good heavens.”
Marla shrugged. “It was a magic thing. She only ate the willing—believe it or not, there are people who want to be eaten, it’s their kink—and I was going to let that slide, disgusting as I found it, but when she tried to kill me…” Marla shrugged. “I did what I had to do. I don’t know why I’m here.” She kicked a wall. “We need to move forward. Shit.”
A rumbling arose from the tunnel, and Marla cocked her head.
“Is that the bone train, coming back?” Pelham said.
“I doubt it.”
A train screeched into the station, an engine of black metal and stainless steel with smoked windows, followed by a similar passenger car, the whole thing an elaborate techno-fetishist fantasy. Bethany was a builder, a creator, a modifier, and she’d fabricated her own train by hand. Only this was a ghost of that train, or an illusion of that train, or…or something.
“Should we get on?” Pelham said. “Maybe it will take us out of here.”
“Maybe,” Marla said, and then the doors whispered open, revealing an inviting golden light inside the car.
“Marla.” The voice had the timbre of a whisper, but was very loud. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Oh, fuck.” Marla hadn’t known Bethany long, but she recognized the voice. Bethany had been into extreme body modifications, and in addition to the subder
mal implants in her forehead that gave her stubby goatlike horns, the multiple body piercings, the scarification and brands and tattoos, she’d also bifurcated her tongue, making it forked like a serpent, and that gave her voice a distinctive quality. “Hey, Bethany,” Marla said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“I will eat you. Then I will live again, I will have life inside me, I will assume your life.”
“Oh, dear.” Pelham stepped back, partly behind Marla.
Marla wondered if Bethany had somehow become the train. She was a fabricator, a lover of elaborate and strange machinery, and perhaps in the afterlife she got her wish and became a built thing rather than a born thing. “I don’t think so, hon,” Marla said. “I killed you once. I’m not afraid of you.”
“Only one of us can die now,” Bethany said, and then, dashing Marla’s theory that she had become the train, she emerged from the open doors of the carriage.
She had to stoop to get out, because she was much larger than she’d been when she was alive, and she wasn’t human anymore.
Pelham whimpered. Marla couldn’t blame him.
Bethany’s bodily modifications had continued after death, and she’d transformed herself—or been transformed—into a monster. Her stubby horns had grown, bursting from her bloody forehead as great curling pointed horns, and she had wings now, of leather and wire and gleaming bolts. Her upper body was much the same, though she was bare-chested, her nipple rings glinting, the tattoos on her chest revealed as elaborate abstract designs. But her lower body was no longer human at all. She was like a centaur now, but with the elongated body of a clockwork lizard, all scales of hammered brass and spines of wickedly sharp volcanic glass, metal seams releasing little puffs of steam when her tail twitched. Her face was different, too, her jaw a hinged thing of blue glass and silver joints, her teeth stainless steel triangles, but her eyes were the same, yellow with horizontal slits. “Marla. You did this to me. But I am a greater predator now than ever before.”
