Blood Engines

by T. A. Pratt

  “Yes,” Marla said. “It’s you that’s doing the killing, too. Not the cloak, though the cloak will make the killing possible, and even enjoyable, in a way. The cloak isn’t the killer, though, any more than a sword is a killer. The weapon isn’t responsible. The one wielding the weapon is.” And you are my weapon, Bowman. She hated turning him into this, but it was necessary.

  B looked at her, his tropical eyes full of understanding, almost more understanding than Marla could bear. “Don’t worry,” he said gently. “I’m not your weapon. You’re not the one wielding me. I’m making this choice myself.”

  Marla nodded, though she didn’t believe it—she was setting B on this path, and the killings he did on her behalf would weigh on her even more than the lives she’d taken personally. She could stomach the killing she’d done herself. She never did so without good reason, not anymore, and as she grew older she found fewer and fewer reasons to kill, because there were almost always other options. But she was far less comfortable with making B—affable, solid B—into a murderer. “I just want you to understand,” she said.

  “I guess this is a big thing,” he said. “The decision to kill somebody. This isn’t a heat-of-the-moment thing. I’m going in there with this as my goal. It’s not quite as big a step as actually doing the deed, but deciding to do it…” He shook his head.

  Marla nodded. She knew what he meant. The first time she’d consciously killed someone, it had changed her entire understanding of the world. There was no act more monstrous than the taking of a human life; all the worse acts were merely matters of scale. The only real justification for such an act was to prevent greater bloodshed. And even then, it was philosophically uneasy ground, even for someone as relentlessly practical as Marla. She tried not to think about the killing much, which was, she knew, one of the few ways in which she was truly cowardly.

  “It’s going to be ugly, B. Go in heavy. Reverse the cloak as soon as you see the Celestial. You won’t attack Rondeau—you’ll recognize him as an ally, the same way you recognized me.” That last was as much a hope as a declaration. “Go for the sorcerer. And if they’re both there, go for the young one, because that’s the real enemy, in the apprentice’s body.” That would spoil Rondeau’s wish to restore the apprentice to her own form, but he’d get over it, if the end result was the preservation of his own life.

  B sat up, his injuries healed. He stretched his arms over his head, testing his flexibility. “What about, ah, magic? Won’t the sorcerer try to fight me?”

  “Don’t worry. Spells slide off the purple like water slides off a duck. You won’t have a problem. It’s…going to be messy, B. It’s best you don’t look back at the mess you’ll make of them when you’re done. Just take Rondeau, and come back to the hotel. Then wish me luck, because I’ll be tussling with Mutex by then, if all goes well.” She wanted to tell him to resist the moment of inhuman coldness that would come over him after he reversed the cloak, but why bother? Even she couldn’t resist it. She would just have to hope it wouldn’t last long.

  B frowned. “Shit, Marla, I just realized—if I’ve got the cloak, you don’t. You’re going to face Mutex without your best weapon.”

  “I’m my best weapon, B. Don’t worry about me. If I can get past Mutex’s frogs, and his hummingbirds, and deal with his tendency to move at mind-blurringly high speeds, I shouldn’t have any trouble taking him out, even without my cloak.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs,” B said.

  “This is an iffy business. Come downstairs. We’ll order room service. I know we ate already, but using that cloak burns calories like you wouldn’t believe.”

  Marla felt ridiculously like a mother sending her son off to his first day of kindergarten, but in this case, she was sending a seer and oracle-generator into mortal danger. She wanted to pat his cheek and tell him to be careful. Instead, she said, as gruffly as she could, “Bring my cloak back in one piece. And you’d better be in one piece inside it.”

  “How about Rondeau?” B said, smiling, still pumped from his first experience using the cloak. “How many pieces do you want him in?”

  “No more than two,” Marla said. “As for the Chinese guy, you can break him into as many pieces as you want.” She hesitated, then decided to give in, a little, to the protective impulses she was feeling toward this man, her newest brother-in-arms, who had so recently been a stranger. “I appreciate your doing this. You don’t have to.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Don’t die.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He sketched a salute, kissed her cheek—impulsively, and she accepted the kiss gladly—and opened the door. He walked out, the cloak looking strangely right on his shoulders, absurd yet regal. The door swung closed after him, and Marla turned back to the bedroom to meditate a bit, and prepare for her own confrontation—with Mutex, what would be their last meeting, unless things went improbably wrong for both of them.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “B?” Marla said, thinking he might have returned, thinking better of his mission, or to ask for advice, or to take this last opportunity to go to the bathroom. But when she peered through the peephole, it was not B, but an old man with a long face, wearing a beaver hat.

  Her mystery follower, here. Was it an attack, then, or something else? She’d never seen his face before, not this close, and there was something oddly familiar about it.

  Marla eased the door open, keeping her foot braced against the door so she could slam it and hold it closed if the old fellow tried to shove his way inside. “Can I help you?” she said, looking at him through the crack between the door and the frame. He was short and slim, but held himself with tremendous dignity.

  He looked at her, his face blank, then nodded. “I think so,” he said, his voice scratchy and attenuated, as if he had not used it in a long time. “You are the most powerful sorcerer in this city, except for two others, who are both palpably mad, and therefore made weak by their own faltering minds.”

  “I know you,” Marla said. “You’ve been following me since I got to the city.”

  “I have been following lots of people. I have been trying to figure out a great many things.”

  “But there’s something else…you’re familiar. Where have I seen your face?”

  “I can’t imagine,” he said, as if the question amused him. “Unless you are much older than you seem—and I don’t smell that kind of age on you—you were not born the last time I walked in this city. It is an impossibility that we have met. But I do need your help, I think. There are two mad sorcerers at large in this city, and now that I am here, there are two who are sane, which rather improves the odds, I think.”

  Marla stared at him, trying to place his face, and then she found it—she’d seen his face only yesterday. But not in the flesh—in stone. In a statue of his younger self, in another universe, where his exploits were known in the world at large—as opposed to this world, where his history was known only to initiates of certain Mysteries. “I know your name,” she said.

  “I’m flattered.” He took off his hat. “But allow me to introduce myself all the same, for I would hate for you to think me impolite. My name is Sanford Cole.”

  “You were the court magician for Joshua Norton, the nutcase who declared himself emperor of America and protector of Mexico,” Marla said. “In the 1800s.”

  “The 1870s, mostly,” Cole said. “It’s not as if we dominated that entire century. But, yes, I knew Joshua, and helped him, as he helped me. It is a curious thing, but when a land has a monarch, even one of such peculiar pedigree as His Majesty, that land gives up certain secrets, and allows itself to be molded in a way wild lands and places governed by more enlightened forms of government do not. As the court magician to a reigning emperor, one at least humored if not exactly obeyed by the public and the government, I was able to shape things in this city that might have otherwise been beyond my power to change.” He frowned. “When I decided to…rest…I thought things were in
fair shape. The city had survived an earthquake and a fire, and risen like a phoenix from the wreckage to enter a new century. But now, in the next century, I find that things are very dire indeed, with all but one of the city’s protectors murdered or fled—so many of the cowards fled!—with the surviving protector mad with vengefulness and neglecting his duties, and with a madman set to open the mouth of Hell. This pending disaster woke me, and I had been comfortable in my slumber. And here you are, a stranger, doing what you can to stave off the destruction of the place I hold most dear.”

  “I didn’t come here to interfere in this city’s business,” Marla said, still holding the door. She couldn’t tell if Cole was pissed or not, and if this was him, returned—and she suspected it was—she didn’t want to face his anger. “But I’ve been swept up in things.”

  “I understand,” Cole said. “Your help is most welcome. This has always been a city of immigrants, after all. A place where people come to make a new life.”

  Marla snorted. “I’m happy with my old life, thanks. I’m here to keep my old life from ending, actually.”

  Cole nodded, though he looked a trifle hurt. “This is also a city that admires a healthy self-interest, and so long as the needs of San Francisco are congruent with your own, I would appreciate your assistance. And, in return, I will do what I can to help you achieve your own goals.”

  Marla thought about that. It didn’t take much thought. She stepped aside, and Sanford Cole, the closest thing to Merlin this age had ever seen, came inside.

  18

  M arla didn’t have anything to offer Cole, except crappy coffee brewed in the little four-cup coffeemaker the hotel provided. Sipping from a Styrofoam cup, Cole made a face. “I can say in all honesty that this is the best cup of coffee I’ve had in decades.”

  “Right,” Marla said. “Suspended-animation humor. If I survive the rest of the day, I’ll buy you a grande latte. Coffee’s come a long way since your day. But we’ve got other things to do first.”

  “You seem to have a plan of action in mind already,” Cole said. “Which is more than I’d hoped for. What can you tell me?”

  “Mutex is making his move today, this afternoon or evening.”

  “And what is his move? Remember, I slept through all the rising action. All I know of this Mutex is that he is a powerful sorcerer—I have a talent for sensing that much, which is how I found you—and that he’s killed or driven away all the sorcerers who are meant to be protecting this city. What is Mutex’s goal?”

  Marla was a bit surprised, having thought of Sanford Cole as a near-omniscient being, but upon reflection, it made sense—even the greatest sorcerers were just people. When they stopped being people, they stopped being sorcerers, and became monsters. Marla filled him in on Mutex’s religious notions, and his plan to raise Tlaltecuhtli. While she spoke, she had a hard time ignoring the digital alarm clock on the bedside table, every minute eroding the little time she had left to act.

  “Mutex must not succeed,” Cole said. “And you say he intends to complete the ritual today? How can you be sure?”

  “Have you ever heard of the Possible Witch?”

  “I have heard,” Cole said. “But the path to reach her has been closed since the days when the Ohlone Indians fished the waters of the bay.”

  “I had some help getting to her,” Marla said. “I know an oracle-generator. An opener of the way.”

  “Astonishing! Emperor Norton had similar powers, but they drove him mad.”

  Marla filed that tidbit of information away. As far as she knew, no one knew that Norton had possessed such powers, and she liked to impress Hamil and Langford with such esoteric trivia. The thought made her painfully homesick, and she turned her attention back to the matter at hand. “My guy isn’t insane. He’s a little weird, but that’s normal for a seer. We went to see the Possible Witch, and she gave us the best likelihoods about Mutex. He’s going to be at the Japanese Tea Garden today—possibly soon—and if I don’t stop him then, it’s going to be too late for anyone to stop him.”

  “What is your strategy?” Cole asked.

  “Strategy. Right. I can handle Mutex, pretty much, except for his poison frogs. I had a way to get around that—I sent a…ah, an associate of mine to find me a snake that’s immune to the frogs’ toxins—”

  “And you planned to use sympathetic magic to make yourself immune as well, of course. But…?”

  “But my friend hasn’t shown up yet, and I’m running out of time to wait for him.”

  Cole frowned. “Is your friend, by any chance, shall we say, a non-human?”

  “I think he’s an ancient Chinese snake god,” Marla said. “And he’s not my friend. He owes me a favor, but he considers me an enemy, and wants to kill me.”

  “Your enemy? I’m sorry to hear that. You should have said you were waiting for a god. I’ve been sensing a god within the city’s borders for nearly an hour now. He appeared rather suddenly, but then, gods do that. He’s south of here. It may be—”

  “South of here?” Marla slapped her forehead. “Shit. I bet he’s at the airport. Rondeau was supposed to pick him up. Damn it. Cole, come with me. I’ve got to do something I swore I’d never do again.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t believe it’s come to this,” Marla said. “But there’s no other way. I’m going to have to drive.”

  Cole looked appropriately horrified by the notion.

  B took a bus to Chinatown, feeling self-conscious in his cloak, though he didn’t draw more than the usual number of stares—only this time it wasn’t people looking at him because he seemed vaguely familiar, but because he was wearing something outlandish. He kept thinking of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movie (there had been a rumor in certain circles that B was being considered in the lead role for that back when it was being cast, but it had been groundless, as all such rumors were since he’d left the business). In B’s opinion, the best scenes in the film were those where Peter Parker was exploring his newfound abilities as Spider-Man, the simple glee he’d demonstrated as he leapt and spun and deadlifted tremendous weights. How many kids hadn’t imagined having just such powers? B certainly had. And, unlike most kids, he’d grown into a person who did, apparently, have powers of a sort, though B would trade all the second-sight and oracle-finding prowess in the world for, say, invisibility or the power of flight, straightforward powers that didn’t necessarily create more questions than they answered. Now B did have such powers, though they were borrowed from the cloak—speed, strength, and a will to violence. He wanted to feel that Spider-Man kind of joy, and he had, while he was up on the rooftop, trying out his moves. But now he was on his way to use those moves, to commit an act of violence against a living person, and he didn’t feel joyful. He’d seen Marla in action, watched her fight while wearing the cloak (though he hadn’t been able to follow the action in any useful way; Mutex and Marla had both been blurs during the battle on the train), and watched her kill without using the cloak at all. B didn’t know if he was capable of killing someone that way. The advantage of the cloak was that it removed such conscious concerns from the mind—once B reversed it, his logical, coherent mind would recede, and he would attack whomever he perceived as an enemy. That was liberating, but B didn’t think it would ultimately provide much comfort. He had put on a brave face for Marla, but he was terrified both of failing and of succeeding. Still, he had to save Rondeau. B lived a mostly lonely existence, because he suffered visions and afflictions that normal people couldn’t understand and that he didn’t dare share, and he’d found a friend in Rondeau. If it was in his power to help a friend, he would.

  B got off the bus near Chinatown, and walked to the street that hid the Celestial’s shop.

  “I don’t know when I’ve been more terrified,” Cole said, as Marla slipped into a narrow space between a bus and a taxi.

  “I hate driving,” she said, and changed lanes again to get around the cab, which wasn’t going fast enough for her taste
. “I’m not very good at it.” She reached for the gearshift, which wasn’t there, because the minivan she’d stolen was an automatic. She nearly threw it into reverse before she noticed. “Shit,” she said. “I wish you could drive.”

  “Automobiles were essentially novelty items when I last had occasion to travel,” Cole said. “I have never been inside one before, and I can say with assurance that I have never moved at such speeds when I was not actually flying. Even if you were a good driver, I would be terrified.” He gripped the edges of his seat with both hands, but otherwise didn’t seem particularly frightened.

  “We’re safe,” Marla said. “I cast a strong repulsion on the car, to keep the police from bothering me for speeding, and also to help prevent accidents. See?” She swerved left, dangerously close to a silver SUV, which braked suddenly and jigged away from her. “It’s literally impossible for another car to hit us. Though I could still conceivably slam into a wall or something—you know, hit stuff that can’t move out of the way.”

  “I am quite relieved,” Cole said. Marla saw a sign for the airport and zoomed across two lanes to take the exit. Cole looked out at the system of overpasses and shook his head in wonder. “It’s amazing. I haven’t really looked at the city in almost forty years. Half my time walking around was just spent gazing at the changes, as much as looking in on you and the other sorcerers. Things have been built up tremendously.”

  “I thought you went to sleep in 1910 or something.”

  “Around then,” Cole said. “But I have, from time to time, opened my eyes and looked around to make sure the city was still standing.”

  “What made you choose hibernation?”

  “This city is my legacy, the only worthwhile thing I ever helped create. I wanted to see it flourish through the ages.” He looked at her sidelong. “Surely you can relate. You have a city of your own, don’t you?”