Crow Jane

by D. J. Butler

  Then Semyaz took his hand away from his weapon. “Call for a new vote!” he growled, banging the table again. “New vote!”

  “Point of order,” Ezeq’el said calmly. “This vote isn’t over until all participants have indicated their vote.”

  “New vote!”

  “Point of order!”

  Azazel smiled.

  Ezeq’el, the centauress, fixed Qayna squarely in the eye and arched one eyebrow.

  “Put me down,” Qayna said, and Baraqyel did so.

  Some of the Fallen stared at her, but most of them stamped, bellowed and shrieked at each other.

  “But … the vote,” Baraqyel said gently.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “The vote.”

  And then she turned and left the room.

  She crossed the bridge at a brisk walk, forged her way through the passages and found herself standing over the field of mutually-abusive dead, staring at their pain and wondering what she had done, and why something seemed to be missing.

  Then Azazel joined her, calm and quiet, with her crow on his shoulder.

  That was it, she thought. For one brief moment, the crow hadn’t followed her.

  “You tried to use me,” she accused him. She couldn’t look at him, just smelled the goatness of his presence by her side. “That was unkind.”

  “Was it?”

  There was a pause, but any silence there might have been was shattered by the shrieks of the sufferers below.

  “Did you win?”

  “The vote is suspended.” Azazel laughed. “Semyaz and his friends are poring over the rules looking for a way out. You’ve set us back quite a bit—I think we’re going to have to start over with a re-write of the rules from scratch.”

  “But you will win.”

  “I must.”

  “What about them?” She pointed at the sufferers below.

  Azazel nodded agreement. “They are the reason why I must win.”

  “Baraqyel said they were the unhappy dead.”

  “They are. Heaven has coined a new word for them, in fact. They are the damned.”

  “How are they damned?”

  Azazel sighed. “It means they have done terrible things in their earthly lives, and now that they are dead, they have to work it out.”

  “What does work it out mean?”

  “I don’t know.” Azazel’s eyes got a far-away look. “I haven’t worked it out yet.”

  “Must they suffer?”

  “They chose suffering themselves. What they need is someone to make their suffering worthwhile.”

  “Are you saying you’re going to save them?”

  Azazel stamped one hoof on the floor. “I definitely won’t save them, nor will I save anyone else. I am not the saving kind. What I’m saying is that pain can be healing. Pain can unlock what is inside a person, it can release him of the burden of greater pain and set him in the path of recovery. Pain can, for instance, bring remorse. And I am very definitely the pain-inflicting kind.”

  A splash of water on the floor at her feet startled Qayna. She looked up to see tears glistening in the giant’s eyes.

  “I killed your son.” She felt she had to say it.

  “We killed him together. We both wanted to save him.”

  “Is that why you want to help …” Qayna gestured without looking at the twisting pile, “these people?”

  “Someone must do this work,” Azazel said. “I … it has been decreed that I shall be the one to do it.”

  “That sounds like a commission. Like a trust.”

  Azazel laughed a single short laugh, like a bark. “It is what it is.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “I was tried. I was sentenced. I was condemned.”

  “You escaped.”

  “Here I am.”

  “Can I escape my punishment?”

  Azazel sighed. “Ah, Qayna, I don’t know. I think not. I think your life will last as long as this world’s.”

  “And then?”

  “And then a new heaven, and a new earth, and who knows what may be possible?”

  Qayna felt tears in her own eyes now. “I think I’d better go,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll come back this way again.”

  Azazel nodded slowly. “I will escort you out.”

  ***

  Chapter Ten

  “Stop!” the Legate commanded.

  From under his mantelletta, he produced a short stub of candle, burning red. Jane smelled cinnamon and blood, and froze in place where she stood.

  “Adrian!” Jim shouted. He couldn’t move, either.

  “I’m working on it!” the wizard called back. He mumbled furiously under his breath, but without the ability to move his hands, write glyphs or do anything other than speak, Jane knew the organ player’s arcane powers would be limited.

  Only Jane’s crow was unaffected. Bored, it flapped its wings and circled the rooftop among the various actors.

  “Listen to me!” the Legate of Heaven hissed. “Stop struggling. We are on the same side!”

  “Let me go, and we’ll test that proposition.” Jane struggled with the spell that bound the muscles of her body in place, but her ka was too weak to shatter the magic directly, and she couldn’t reach anything in her saddlebags or her pockets.

  “Piss off!” Jim phrased it more succinctly.

  “I will leave you alone,” the Legate said to the rock and roller. “I cannot promise what your father will say or do, but join me, and we will negotiate with him together.”

  Jim growled like a dog confronting a trespasser. “You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?”

  The Legate turned his face to Jane. “Give me the gun.” His voice and face were soft. “You have walked a long and a hard road, Qayna, and I have the power to release you from it.” His two golem sedan-slaves towered over him, and the Swordbearers towered over them all.

  “I don’t care to go to Hell,” Jane said. “That seems like it would just be more of the same, with less variation in the scenery.”

  “Oblivion,” the Legate promised. He nodded to his own frozen hand that held the sealed sheet of parchment. “You countersign the death letter, and you will cease to exist. Only give me the gun, so I can face the seraphim.”

  Jane’s heart pounded in her ears so loud that she almost didn’t hear the man’s last words. This was a moment she had dreamed of for thousands of years, now, literally, within her grasp. She could lay down her heavy burden and just sink into nothingness. All she had to do was what the Legate asked. It wasn’t even obedience to him, not really, it was just a trade like any other. She didn’t think he could even use the gun anyway, though maybe … maybe he had some magic up his sleeve that would make him the Horn’s wielder.

  “Can I kill Raphael first?” she asked.

  “Qayna, please,” the angel protested. He couldn’t move, either. None of them could, below the neck, until the candle burned out.

  The Legate looked closely into her eyes. “Do you really want to?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do. But I’d prefer he get the Hell treatment, rather than oblivion.”

  “I can’t do it.” The Legate shook his head. “But I can promise you that in one minute, if you give me the gun, you won’t care anymore. You won’t care, you won’t worry, you won’t remember. You won’t anything. You will simply vanish.”

  Jane wanted it. She wanted it really, really bad.

  But in her heart of hearts, she knew she couldn’t take the offer. Instead, she cursed.

  Her Adamic swear-word snuffed out the candle, and she shot her hand for the Calamity Horn.

  Raphael went for his gun.

  The golems rushed forward.

  Jane grabbed the Calamity Horn, knowing that she had only moments before the Legate re-lit his candle and also certain that the Messenger would clear leather first. That was fine with her. She never dished out what she couldn’t take.

  Bang! Bang!

  The angel in the Depu
ty’s body got off two shots and Jane felt them both hit, two mule-kicks to the chest. Then she had the Model 1910 in her hands and began firing, only not at Raphael—she shot at the Swordbearers.

  She threw the first bullet over Raphael’s shoulder, right at the chest of the Bearer behind him. More of Raphael’s shots struck her as she fell spinning, shooting arm extended and throwing out thirty-two caliber rounds like a centrifuge of madness and spiritual plague.

  Jim shrieked and staggered away, wrestling with the sounds in his head, and gunfire exploded from where the rest of the rock and roll band stood. Twitch burst into falcon form and sprang away from the meat packing plant.

  The Bearers of the Sword were gigantic, imposing, more like towers than like men. That made them virtually impossible to miss. Jane focused on each shot as she took it and not on the damage the preceding shots had done, but she couldn’t miss, out of the corner of her eye, the bright red streaks that appeared in the flaming white persons of the Swordbearers. Nor could she miss the shattering shrieks of indignant pain.

  The Bearers of the Sword weren’t used to being hurt.

  For Ainok’s sake, she enjoyed their surprise and indignation.

  As Jane fired the seventh and final shot, she crashed to the gravel. Another of Raphael’s bullets hit her in the shoulder and she grunted in pain, and then a bright red spark kicked the Legate’s candle again into flame.

  Flat on her back, Jane froze again. A few feet to one side, she heard Jim screaming. The Legate’s kilt-clad golems hulked over her, eyes dull and fists clenched and raised to punch her.

  “Foolish!” the Legate snapped at her. “Do you know what you risk?”

  Jane coughed blood into her mouth and spat it at him.

  Then the first of the Bearers’ swords crashed down into the rooftop of the building. Chunks of concrete and steel, and bushels of wet gravel, exploded in all directions. In the violence of the suddenly-thrashing air, the candle snuffed out once more.

  “Stop!” the Legate shouted.

  Jane whipped a knife straight up into one golem’s face, rolling to the side as she did. It collapsed backward with a wet murmur, and she came up with a second blade in her hand, which she snapped into his companion’s face. She holstered the Calamity Horn and stepped past the magical creatures. She moved briskly; she’d taken them by surprise, but not seriously injured the golems.

  A circle of flaming white and red closed in on Fine Cuts, Inc. The Swordbearers’ faces were hidden behind their blank helmets, but they expressed their surprise and anger—or perhaps their mechanical, reflexive self-defense instincts—admirably with their upraised weapons.

  Jim struggled to his feet, gripping his head between his hands. He hadn’t lost his grip on the hoof, which was good. Raphael ejected a spent clip from his gun and fumbled to slot in a full replacement.

  “Stop!” the Legate cried again. He incanted something, raising his hands against the advancing Swordbearers. In one hand he held the candle; in the other was Jane’s death letter.

  Roaring, Jane charged.

  She almost tripped over her own saddlebags, but grabbed them on the run. Raphael fired at her again—idiot, he was wasting ammunition—and Twitch, now in her horse form, had clamped her big horsey teeth into Jim’s shirt and was dragging him away.

  Another flaming sword plunged into the rooftop, this one spiking down like a hammered nail. It missed Jane by several feet and the shockwaves made her stumble. She dropped her shoulder and rammed it into the Legate’s belly.

  “Oomph!” he barked.

  She wrapped her arms around him and kept going.

  The rooftop beneath Jane’s feet buckled and twisted; she ran faster, gaining strength as she went. Fire at her heels scorched her, and she had no more attention to pay to what the rock and rollers were up to.

  She only hoped she had enough fire within her, in her ka, to get where she wanted to go.

  The Legate pounded on Jane’s back with balled fists. She ignored him, except to squeeze as hard as she could, until she felt soft snaps that might have been ribs giving way. If the man had no breath, he wouldn’t be casting any spells on her.

  She incanted, murmuring words in Adamic as she reached the lip of the roof. Below her stretched the pocked and pitted asphalt, the water in the craters trembling with the shocks of the violence being inflicted on the building, but reflecting wavering images of the burning columns that were the Swordbearers.

  Perfectly serviceable mirrors.

  More bullets chomped into Jane’s back as she jumped from the building—

  arced through the air head-first, squeezing the Legate tight as any girl ever squeezed her teddy bear, saddlebags flopping awkwardly around them—

  struck a puddle the size of a small garden pond—

  and fell through, slamming to the ground on the hard stone floor of the Outer Bounds of the Mirror Queendom.

  “Uuuununnnnhnhhh,” the Legate wheezed in breathless pain.

  Jane rolled away from him in the patchy gray light, aching all over from the exertion and from the gunshot wounds. She wondered how many times Raphael had been able to hit her; she owed him that much more revenge, the next time she caught him.

  She ejected her clip and groped in a pocket of her duster for bullets.

  “You broke all my ribs,” the Legate whined.

  Jane ignored him.

  “Welcome,” she heard a cold voice say.

  Jane looked up. “Not again.” Her words were wet, incomprehensible through the blood bubbling from her lips.

  A woman stood before her, tall and slender and fair. Hair like peacock feathers swept back in an iridescent halo from her high forehead. She didn’t appear to be dressed so much as to have leaves plastered to her body, all over, and in her right hand she leaned on something that shimmered and was slippery to look at, but might have been a spear or a bolt of lightning.

  Between Jane and the woman, and encircling Jane and the Legate, was a ring of fey fighters, leather-clad spear-warriors with animal tails. They all snarled at Jane, and she ignored them, slowly thumbing bullets into her clip.

  “You’re Mab,” she said, when her lungs had cleared of blood enough to talk.

  “You are the Marked Woman.”

  “I’d prefer you let me pass in peace.”

  “I’d prefer that you not shoot me.”

  “Fair enough.” Jane snapped the clip back into the gun, reholstered it, and stood. She was shaky on her feet, but stayed upright. She found a handkerchief in one pocket and spat blood into it, to avoid spitting on the floor.

  No point being gratuitously disrespectful; surely, enough opportunity for genuine disrespect would arrive unaided.

  “Idiot,” the Legate cursed her. He lay crumpled on the floor, breathing fast and shallow and holding an arm that looked shattered.

  Beside him lay the letter. Jane stooped, picked it up, and popped the seal with her finger.

  Inside, the parchment was blank.

  “Liar,” she said, and dropped the parchment on him.

  “My cause is just!” he insisted. Shuffling and wheezing, he managed to tumble to his knees. “It’s the greatest cause of all.”

  “You want to be God.”

  “No, that isn’t it!” The Legate’s eyes blazed bright. “I want there to be a God! I want a Heaven that is compassionate, a God who cares, a throne room that isn’t empty!”

  “Like I said,” Jane muttered.

  “Have you no feelings?”

  “No,” Jane lied. “I did once, and you people stomped them into nothing.”

  “I can get you a death letter,” the Legate promised. “Yes, this one was a fake, but I can get you a real one. I need your help. We need your help. The whole world needs you. Won’t you show mercy? Would you rather that the seraphim run Heaven than me?”

  “I would rather,” Jane said heavily, “that you stop. If you need a cause, sell cookies for the Girl Scouts.”

  “You insult me!” The Legate ro
se, limping, to his feet.

  “Take him away.” Mab gestured with her glittering spear and her soldiers closed in around the Legate.

  The Legate’s face turned purple with rage as fairy weapons prodded him and fairy hands grabbed. “You insult Heaven!” he spluttered.

  “That’s rich,” Jane grunted, and then the Queen’s Rangers whisked the Legate away. The echoes and faraway sounds of the arrest continued for some time.

  The two women were left with a much smaller retinue of Rangers.

  Mab examined Jane closely. “There is fairy blood on your hands,” she pronounced.

  Jane sighed. “Okay,” she admitted.

  “I am not familiar with the okay defense.” Mab frowned. “Do you mean that you rejoice in the death of my Rangers?”

  Jane chuckled.

  “I am not amused. Do you find it acceptable to kill my people?”

  “I rejoice in no death, Your Majesty,” Jane said. “Sometimes I get a little tickled by the prospect of my own.”

  Mab considered this. “I understand.”

  “Are you going to get in my way?”

  “Are you going to attack my people?”

  Jane sighed. “I just want out. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “Ever?”

  “Well, for six thousand years.”

  Mab shared an expression with Jane that was close to a smile. “I understand.”

  Jane reached for her quicksilver.

  “I was going to make you an offer,” Mab said. “I was going to bring you to your horse in exchange for the hoof of Azazel.”

  Jane arched an eyebrow. “I don’t have the hoof of Azazel.”

  “That’s why I can’t make you the offer,” Mab agreed.

  “What do you want the hoof for?” Jane asked. “I thought you people were friends of Hell? Or are you just doing the Morning Star’s bidding now?”

  “That is not your affair.” Mab stared coldly down her slender nose at Jane.

  Jane shrugged. Her bleeding had stopped. The crow perched on a stone lintel over her head and stared down at her cruelly.

  She felt like she was taking bait, but she had to ask. “Does that mean my horse is alive?”

  Mab grinned. “What would it be worth to be led to her?”

  Jane tapped the bead of quicksilver into her palm, feeling a small grim note of satisfaction that Mab pulled back slightly at the sight of it. “Nothing,” she bluffed. “I’ll find her on my own.”