by T. A. Pratt
“It is certainly a good match,” Pelham said. “Not a love match, no, but an advantageous one, a strategic one, and sometimes people in positions of power like yours must make such decisions.”
“Preaching to the choir, Pelly. But you do know he’s crazy, right?”
“Perhaps he only needs the love of a good woman to set him right,” Pelham said.
“And you think that’s me? Right. Let’s get this over with.”
Marla took her place on the hard, unspeakably uncomfortable turquoise throne beside the Sitting Death. Maybe the seat wouldn’t be so uncomfortable once she was, ahem, like unto a god. A shade glided out of the darkness and placed a crown of silver wire and tiny gemstones upon her head.
“Ready, my dear?” The Sitting Death tittered again, and now his other ear was bleeding, too. Marla figured this was a bad idea, but she was faced with a set of difficult choices, and this seemed like the best option at the moment.
“Yes, my…uh, you.”
Pelham and Ayres stood as witnesses for the living and the dead, respectively—though Ayres still insisted he wasn’t dead—and the Sitting Death performed the ceremony himself, intoning words that slithered into Marla’s head and then promptly vanished. Having the bridegroom do the officiating seemed questionable to Marla, but she supposed he made the rules. When the words were done, the cavern rang with thunder, and Marla didn’t feel any different at all.
“Say ‘yes,’” he prompted.
“Right. Yes.”
“Now you are my wife,” he said, and after a long moment’s deliberation, he lifted his right hand from the throne’s arm. The world didn’t end or anything, and he reached over to take her hand. His fingers were incredibly cold. “Marla Mason”—she’d insisted on keeping her last name—“queen of the underworld.”
“In absentia.” Marla hopped down from the throne and rubbed her numb ass. She didn’t feel a bit like a newly minted demi-goddess. “As we agreed. I’m not interested in staying down here with you, not even for six months out of the year.”
“But at your moment of death, Marla Mason, in the fraction of a second before your life departs, I will come for you, and bear you back here, and you will sit at my side, for all eternity. Until then, your mere existence will be enough to keep the seasons running their courses. The first night you join me here, we will consummate our union, and that will be the lushest spring in human memory.”
Consummate. Marla wondered if the rest of him was as cold as his hands. “That’s the deal.” Kind of a terrible deal, but you play the cards you’ve got, and make the best hand you can. “Now, how do I get back to Felport?”
“I will arrange transportation.”
“And the banishment won’t work on me anymore?”
The Sitting Death waved his hand. “You are the queen of the underworld. You cannot be banished by your”—he smirked—“stepson, the Walking Death. Would you like a cohort to ride out with you?”
Marla considered. Riding out with Hell at her back sounded good, at first, but then again, was that really the best place to stand in relation to Hell? She thought about how Rome fell, sacked by barbarian mercenaries who were once in the city’s employ. Bringing a horde of hell-spawn to Felport seemed like a bad idea. “No, just me and Pelham. Is there anything I, ah, need to know about…”
“Try it,” the Sitting Death said. “You are not mortal anymore. At least, not only a mortal. You are family.”
Marla took the dagger from its sheath, and it changed in her hand, the blade lengthening, the hilt thickening, and now she held a sword in her hand, a long slender shining rapier tipped with a single drop of some yellowish venom. The weapon was beautiful, but simple, the hilt still wound with bands of purple and white electrical tape. It was no heavier than the dagger had been. Marla wasn’t much of a swordswoman, but she thought she’d be able to do some wicked things with this blade.
“With that sword, you can kill the Walking Death, and secure my reign—our reign—forevermore,” the Sitting Death said. “The sword will give you an edge, but my son—our son—is still formidable. Be careful.”
Marla snorted. “I’m not worried about beating him. I could carve a better man out of a banana.”
“I wish I could go myself, but if I leave my throne while the Walking Death lives, he will flow into this spot like air rushing into a vacuum, instantly. So it must be you, my love.”
“Shut up about love, or I might just try cutting you.” It was a tempting idea. Widow herself and get the crazy guy out of power. But if she killed the Sitting Death, the other Death would take over, and he was an evil, entitled little fuck. Should she support the old, mad, stagnant regime, or the new, violent, nasty one? Neither one appealed, but she’d made her choice. “Let me get my real clothes back on, and then you can send me home.” She swung the blade through the air, and it hummed. She’d go to Felport. She’d kill the Walking Death and let her—shudder—husband retain his power. And then she’d sit down with Hamil and have a very, very serious talk about life-extension. She’d never feared death, not as a concept, but she wasn’t too keen on the notion of sitting forever on a throne made of jewels next to a guy who was, even for a god, pathologically megalomaniacal. Better to put that off as long as possible.
Pelham helped her get dressed, and as she was tying her boots, he whispered, “I knew you’d become an aristocrat.”
“I like you, Pelham. I do. But you better cut out that aristocrat shit, or I might leave you down here.”
Ayres shuffled toward them. “Take me with you, please,” he pleaded. “I don’t like this place. The smell…”
“Nope,” Marla said. And then, after a moment’s reflection, she added, “Fuck you. This is all your fault anyway, Ayres. I’m glad you’re dead.” Not very queenly, she supposed, but she’d resisted the urge to kick his ghostly ass, and that was a little bit genteel, wasn’t it?
15
H ow do I look?” Rondeau struck a pose as best he could, given the fact that they were standing in a damp steam tunnel.
Langford eyeballed him. “Like a man in a white-and-purple cloak. So a bit like a gay Latino Elvis.”
“I like you better when you don’t make jokes.” Rondeau adjusted the silver pin that held the cloak closed at this throat. The pale white side was showing now, the purple lining inside, but with a mental command he could reverse the cloak, and make the purple show. That would turn him into…well, into a badass killing machine, more or less, one capable of soaking up tremendous amounts of damage and dealing out absolutely hellish punishment. He’d seen Marla destroy an armored car with her bare hands once while wearing this cloak. He wouldn’t be able to use it with as much finesse as she did, but he figured he could get the job done.
“I joke when I’m nervous. I get nervous when death is imminent.”
“Just give me, oh, fifteen minutes, then set off the stink bombs, okay?” Rondeau put on a black Zorro mask and shot the cuffs on his ruffled tuxedo. The Founders’ Ball was a grand masquerade this year, which made matters of disguise easy anyway. The cloak was recognizable, but after Marla first became chief sorcerer, when she wore the cloak all the time, several of the suck-ups in sorcerous society had commissioned similar but nonmagical garments, so if anybody noticed, they’d probably assume he was some upstart sorcerer wearing his master’s hand-me-down knockoff. “You think they have those little crab-puff things at this party? I love those things.”
“Perhaps you’ll survive to eat one again someday,” Langford said, which was probably as close as he was going to come to wishing Rondeau luck.
Rondeau proceeded down several branches of the steam tunnels, up a ladder along a vertical shaft, through a hatch, and into a by-god escape tunnel that one of the founding fathers had built from this mansion—more intel from the Chamberlain’s rogue apprentice. The tunnel was well maintained, but currently unoccupied, which was good. Invited guests weren’t likely to pop out of the false back of a coat closet. Rondeau figured once he
got mixed in with the milling mass of Felport’s finest, he’d be less noticeable. He hoped.
Rondeau came out of an empty closet and carefully closed the false panel behind him. He wasn’t familiar with the Chamberlain’s mansion, but the party was in full swing already, so he just followed the noise, going down marble hallways until he encountered a group of young apprentices lounging in a corridor. They were dressed in fine garments and small masks, except for one, who’d gone for a full feathered-and-sequined carnival mask that covered his whole face. One of them, a woman in a lemon-yellow mask and a slinky dress, berated the others. “Don’t you idiots read? It’s a reference to ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ by Edgar Allan Poe. The whole party, with the rooms draped in blue, purple, green, orange, violet, and black. The red-tinted windows in the dark room. ‘The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine.’ You know?” The other apprentices looked at her blankly.
“I’ve read that story,” Rondeau said. He’d spent several months reading all sorts of things, in an effort to impress a smart woman he’d had a crush on, and he’d discovered a certain pleasure in the experience. “A prince throws a big party for all his nobles in a fortress, while outside everybody dies of a plague, the Red Death. But then there’s an uninvited guest at the party, a guy dressed in a gray robe and a mask of a dead guy’s face. Turns out, he’s the incarnation of the plague, and he kills everybody at the party.”
“Finally, somebody here who knows something,” she said, still cranky.
One of the other apprentices glanced at Rondeau. “He doesn’t know much about fashion. That cloak, really! Unless you mean it ironically, since Marla Mason has been deposed. Is that it? Is it irony?”
Hipster apprentice. Rondeau ignored him.
“Anyway,” the woman said, “my point is, we should all take off as soon as it’s halfway polite to do so. That guy in there is Death, and he’s decorated the place to look like the setting of a story where all the party guests die. Aren’t you even a little worried about that?”
One of the other apprentices belched. “You worry too much, Cherie. Nobody would be dumb enough to spoil the Founders’ Ball, especially not the guy throwing it. The ghosts would never forgive him. I’m gonna hit the punch bowl.” He beckoned, and his friends followed him back toward the party.
“It’s your funeral!” Cherie called. “I’m leaving!” She glanced at Rondeau. “You?”
“Nah, not yet. If there’s going to be a plague of blood-sweating instant death, I need a little free champagne first.”
She looked at him quizzically. “So whose crew are you with?”
“I’m freelance at the moment.” Rondeau excused himself, following the other apprentices so he wouldn’t accidentally wander into a bedroom or something. They led him straight to the ballroom.
The vast space had been subdivided by immense cloth hangings that draped the walls and hung in swoops and arcs from the ceiling, and the first room was sky blue. Medieval-sounding string music drifted in from deeper in the ballroom, and the smells of sweat and incense and rich food mingled in the air. Dwarves in tasseled costumes jumped and tumbled on a stage, and a crowd of living people stood at one end watching, while at the other end, a good selection of the ghosts of the founding fathers watched them, too, with deadly seriousness.
Rondeau had never seen the ghosts before. He’d been expecting a sort of spectral version of the cast of the musical 1776, all waistcoats and spectacles and beards. There were a couple of prosperous-burgher ghosts, but others looked more like thugs in nice suits, faces craggy and scarred. The women wore enormous skirts. Why the hell did nobody ever mention the founding mothers? They were here, too. The ghosts all looked a bit like figures in a fog—grayish, not exactly translucent, but fuzzy at their edges. Marla said that even those rare ghosts who retained consciousness and sense of self were still basically forced to assemble their ectoplasmic forms constantly from memory, and after so many years of death, their mental visions of themselves got a little frayed. The dwarves executed an impressive series of flips, crossing one another in the air, and a couple of the female ghosts clapped, and the men gestured with what appeared to be real cigars. How the hell did they hold them? Ghosts were supposed to be immaterial, except maybe for dampness, or slime. Did they get extra physical definition on the night of the Founders’ Ball?
“You shouldn’t be here.” Hamil appeared at Rondeau’s elbow, pretending to watch the dwarves. He wore a mask, of course, red and black, but his size made him unmistakable. “It’s dangerous.”
“Not as dangerous as it will be,” Rondeau said.
“He must know you’re coming,” Hamil said. “Even the theme of his party, the Masque of the Red Death, it’s as if he expects an unwelcome visitor. Striking here, now, it’s not wise.”
“Yeah, but it’s happening. He doesn’t know I have the cloak, at least. Go on. You probably shouldn’t be seen with me, in case I fuck things up and get caught.”
Hamil started to move away, then paused. “Be warned. In the last room, the black room, two of your associates are…on display.” He hailed someone across the dance floor and moved away.
Shit. On display? What did that mean? Heads on pikes? Rondeau hurried through the other rooms, noting that the servers moving about with trays all wore costumes that matched the colors of their chambers. He almost paused by a groaning buffet heaped high with delectable-smelling food, but decided to move on. He saw the Bay Witch—who had a clump of seaweed sitting on top of her head, which was maybe her idea of a costume? Someone who might have been Ernesto, wearing an elaborate mask of hammered metal. The Chamberlain herself, standing by a troupe of musicians, laughing with a crowd of ghosts who seemed to be having a merry time. For now. Rondeau moved on, weaving among the dancing, chatting, eating people, and finally reached the black room.
This is like being on the inside of a cancerous colon. There were slits in the black cloth, with crimson light pouring through. And there, suspended above the center of the room, right in the intersection of three beams of red light, were two metal cages. Beadle’s cage was an asymmetrical tortured teardrop of metal, all eye-wrenching curves and angles, probably covered in symbols of chaos magic. He lay at the bottom of the cage, pale and weak, and he was probably responsible for the puddle of vomit on the floor below. Partridge’s cage was square, but rimed with ice, and Rondeau saw the pyromancer’s teeth chattering, and puffs of cold air coming from his mouth. They were both hung just high enough that Rondeau couldn’t quite touch the bottom of their cages, and they were guarded by a row of undead, including the Lincoln zombie. This room, perhaps because of the prisoners, perhaps because of the color scheme, was nearly empty. The only people here were a few dozen ghosts….
And, way in the back, almost hidden by overlapping folds of black cloth, Death. He seemed incredibly bored, and sat on a throne made of something glittery and black, with a number of pale, dark-haired goth girls in black lace and shredded white wedding dresses sitting at his feet, gazing up at him. Guess none of the guests like hanging with the host.
Rondeau started to turn and leave the room, unwilling to be spotted, but then he heard a scream in one of the other rooms, and the sound of people gagging and retching. He didn’t smell anything—with his nose or his mind—but then, his mask was enchanted to protect him from the psychic stink bomb. Sounded like people were stampeding out there. He worried briefly that someone might get trampled, but these were sorcerers, or at least apprentices, and they could probably protect themselves. Those who couldn’t, well, call it sorcerous Darwinism. Magic was a tough business.
“What’s happening?” the goth girls said, and then gagged, and fled the room. Partridge and Beadle, in their cages, seemed oblivious, their binding spells making them numb to the world, no doubt. The zombies guarding the cages didn’t even twitch, but Rondeau wasn’t too worried about the
m. If they came at him, he could cut them up like a chainsaw through rotten logs. The ghosts were also unaffected by the psychic stink bomb, though they frowned and gestured in a little clump. That was too bad. Rondeau wasn’t thrilled to have an audience.
Okay. Moment of truth. Viva la revolución. Nothing to lose but everything.
“Hey, Death!” Rondeau called. “Nice party!” The ghosts all turned and looked him.
“Finally.” Death stepped down from his throne. “I didn’t think you’d ever show up. The leader of our local revolution in miniature. I’ve got a cage all picked out for you. It causes pain without killing. It’s wonderful. I’ll clean out this stink and then bring all the guests back, so they can throw things at you for spoiling the party.” He came around the cages and got his first clear look at Rondeau. He went even paler, if that were possible. “What…what is that on your back? Where did you get that?”
“This old thing?” Rondeau said, and reversed the cloak.
Though there was no apparent way in or out of the throne room besides the door they’d entered through, a fine carriage pulled by four black horses came rolling in. The driver was the same man, or thing, who’d driven the bone train, and now Marla could see him for what he truly was, without the knowledge skittering out of her brain right away. Such vision was part of being a goddess, she supposed—seeing the truth of things. The driver was a terrible being, but he had a certain dignity, too. Pelham carefully avoided looking at him.
Marla glanced at her—oh, crap, really—husband. “A limo might have been more inconspicuous.”
“Why not make a grand entrance?” the Sitting Death said. “The carriage will take you to the Founders’ Ball, which is a grand masque this year, I’m told. There are costumes in the coach.”
Marla swore. “It’s the Founders’ Ball already? We were down here that long? So, wait—the Walking Death threw the party?”
“Indeed.”
“Huh. I’ll have to thank him before I kill him. That’s something I won’t have to worry about for another five years.”
