by T. A. Pratt
“That’s it, then,” St. John said sadly. “She thought you might be able to help her, that you might be a champion. But she’s afraid of you now. I can feel her fear radiating down from the rooms above. Now she’ll have to rely on the green knight to protect her.”
“The green what?” Marla said. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Good-bye, Marla Mason. And good luck.” He disappeared, the glass of brandy in his hand falling to the floor.
“That didn’t go well,” she said. “I really wish Joshua had been here to smooth things over. I guess we keep trying to go upstairs—”
“You’d really kill her?” Ted said. “After everything she’s been through?”
“Damn it, it’s not my first choice, but if there’s no other alternative. What, you’d rather I let this Reave guy set up shop in the middle of my city? He calls himself the king of nightmares—you think his leadership is what Felport needs?”
Ted just shook his head. “It’s not right.”
“My job isn’t about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ so much as it’s about ‘necessary’ and ‘unavoidable,’ Ted. Now, come on—”
The tower tilted, and not gently. The floor became a ramp, and Marla and Ted both lost their footing and slid toward the open archway and the balcony. Now the inner courtyard was gone, and only clouds hung below. The tower kept turning, and Ted and Marla slammed into the low wall of the balcony. The tower kept going, and they started to slide. Marla grabbed Ted by the wrist with one hand and grabbed the railing with the other, and soon they were both dangling from the rail, only clouds beneath their feet.
The tower shook, like someone shaking a bag of potato chips to get out the last crumbs, and Marla lost her grip. She fell, and Ted screamed, and she lost her grip on him, too, and they plunged through the bank of clouds. She Cursed gravity again, but it had no effect—Genevieve had managed to wrest control of that spell in her domain, it seemed.
Marla’s next-to-last thought in that world was of Joshua, and his beautiful face, which she’d never see again. But her last thought was of her city, and how it would fare or fail without her when she splattered to death below.
12
Z ealand looked up from his book and saw that his rooms had disappeared. He was in a library now, with a decanter of brandy on a table beside him. “Sorcerers,” he said, and looked back down at his book. Nicolette was behind this, or Gregor, or Genevieve, or someone—he wouldn’t give any of them the satisfaction of watching him twitch.
“Mr., ah, Zealand? My name is St. John Austen. I work for Genevieve Kelley.”
Zealand closed his book. “I’ll need to get that back,” he said, setting it on the table. “Don’t go shelving it with all these other things, all right?” He stood up, scratching at the moldy patch on the back of his hand. “I assume Genevieve wants to see me?”
“Yes,” St. John said, seemingly relieved. “Come.” He led Zealand out of the library, into a hallway with photographs in dusty frames. Zealand paused to peer at them, and saw they were all of a girl at various ages, probably all Genevieve. He leaned close to one photograph—a teenaged Genevieve proudly holding a tray of cookies—and stepped back when the scent of chocolate chip cookies filled his nostrils.
“They’re happy moments in her past,” St. John said. “Frozen on the wall, so she can visit them when things are especially bad, when the sky turns black and monsters ride the currents in the air and siege engines assault her castle.”
“Nice trick,” Zealand said. “Shall we go on?”
St. John beckoned, and they walked down the long hall—Zealand caught whiffs of chlorine from summer swimming pools, the scent of pot and incense from all-night college parties, and the smell of oranges, of course. “You have a daughter, don’t you, Zealand?”
Zealand didn’t flinch. The existence of his offspring was a well-guarded secret. If the slow assassins knew he had a daughter, they would kill her just on the off chance it might bother him. “I’m not interested in women, I’m afraid, Mr. Austen, so natural children were never in the cards for me, and adoption is impractical for a man in my business.”
“You don’t need to lie. We’re not threatening you or your family. And Genevieve knows what’s in your mind.”
“Then why are you talking to me? Why waste my time, when you know it all?”
“You have a daughter, grown now. You may not be interested in women, but in your youth you tried, because it was expected, and you did have a child, though you hardly knew the mother. You’ve made sure she’s well taken care of financially. She must think she’s a very lucky young woman, winning contests she never entered, finding lottery tickets in her mailbox, receiving windfall inheritances from dead relatives she’s never even heard of—and who don’t, in fact, exist.”
“My life is mostly about killing people, Mr. Austen. It amuses me to do some good with my time as well.”
“You sometimes kill women, but you never torture them,” Mr. Austen went on.
“I detest torture in general. It’s a bad way to get information, and it’s also uncivilized. Some people need to die, and I provide that service. Occasionally people pay for…extra services, it’s true. For a particular mode of death, usually an unpleasant or even gruesome one. If I never perpetrate such acts against women, it’s only coincidence.” Zealand followed his gut when it came to taking assignments, and sometimes he turned down jobs without fully understanding why.
“Well. At any rate, Genevieve believes you are a good man who does evil things, and she hopes you will consent to do some evil things for her, in the service of good.”
“‘Good’ being defined as ‘good for Genevieve,’ I suppose?” Zealand said. He wondered how long this hallway was.
“We all have our biases,” St. John agreed.
“Why are you telling me all this, and not her?”
“Her mind wanders. I understand what she wants, deeply and all the way through. She’s been in my mind for a very long time, and I in hers.”
“She wants me to kill Reave?”
“She wants you to protect her from Reave. Killing him is probably impossible. Keeping him away from her is important, though, and stopping his imperial aspirations in the mortal world is also a good idea. Driving him back if he approaches these walls is imperative.”
“Mmm. So I’m to be a palace retainer, then?”
“Well. There is one other thing she’d like you to do, if you can.”
“Which is?”
“Kill Marla Mason. She’s made it clear that she’ll murder Genevieve if she gets the opportunity.”
Zealand stopped. “Really. You know, killing Marla Mason is the reason I came to Felport.”
“We know.”
“Marla wants to kill Genevieve? Whatever for?”
“She feels she has good reason. We disagree.”
“Ah,” Zealand said. “You know, I’ve faced Ms. Mason before, and it didn’t work out well. And now she’s on the lookout for me. I’m not sure…well. I hate to deride my own talents, but she may be too much for me.”
“I’ve given you a present, though,” Genevieve said, appearing from nowhere, as if she’d walked in from a side passage, but there were no side passages. She wore yellow, and her hair was a crazy cascade. Her violet eyes were lovely, and, yes, they were the same improbable color as his own daughter’s; how had he not noticed that before?
He bowed to her, slightly. “A magical sword? A cloak of invisibility? One of the classics like that?”
“No,” she said, and touched his hand.
The green spot bloomed, and his hand was soon covered in a thick, crawling glove of mold. He shook his hand, and a strand of mold flew from his fingers and struck the wall, spreading over it, covering it in a green pool. He twitched his hand, and the mold pulled away, bringing chunks of stone with it, opening a hole in the wall, onto darkness. He stared at his hand, and the mold subsided, drawing in on itself, until it was only an itchy spot again. “A magic
sword might have been less disturbing,” he said finally.
Genevieve frowned, turned, and walked down the hallway, disappearing around a corner that wasn’t there.
“She gets distracted,” St. John said apologetically. “As for the mold…well, she doesn’t have very fine control. It’s all associative, symbolic, a jumble of images. Genevieve was attacked by a man, and that man had spinach or something in his teeth, and so she associates a bit of green with something profound, powerful, terrifying…it’s an odd weapon, I know, but it could be useful.”
“The man who attacked her, that was Reave?”
St. John hesitated. “Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“It’s complicated. But, yes, Reave assaulted her. He’s responsible for the way she is now, her mind wandering—”
“Her bad dreams spilling out into the world. Hmm. Which is why Marla wants to kill her, I suppose? Because they’re Genevieve’s bad dreams, and Marla only cares about saving her city, even if Genevieve can’t help what she does, even though she’s a victim herself.” He grinned at St. John’s stunned expression. “You see? I don’t even need to read minds to figure some things out.” He made a fist, and the mold crawled around his hand, twining in his fingers; it was a strange power, but power of any sort wasn’t to be scoffed at. “All right, I’ll kill Marla. But I plan to kill Reave, too. Being on indefinite guard duty doesn’t sound very appealing. Though I wouldn’t mind a permanent guest room in this lovely palace. I’m sure I’ll retire someday, and this is a pretty spot.”
“Killing Reave could be—”
“Impossible, yes. Well, I won’t have anyone saying I didn’t try. Rapists offend me, Mr. Austen. But Marla first, you think? Fine, fine. Just let me out somewhere near downtown Felport. I’ll find my way.”
“We can’t thank you enough,” Austen said. “Truly.”
“Genevieve can make dreams come true, can’t she? I’m sure you’ll come up with some way of showing your appreciation.”
Marla fell into a snowbank, and Ted fell on top of her. The impact wasn’t bad—as if she’d fallen a couple of feet, not the thousands of feet she knew she’d fallen. They’d dropped for long enough that Ted had even stopped screaming, the uprushing ground beneath them changing again and again. First it was black ocean, then a vast plain of yellowish-white specked here and there with green, and later giant cobblestones. Ted had squeezed his eyes shut when the ground far below turned into red-and-yellow flames consuming the bones of a city-sized animal. Marla kept her eyes open, though, because a glimpse into any of the subcontinents of Genevieve’s mind could prove useful, if they were lucky enough to survive this fall. So she’d seen the vast forest of trees—doubtless orange trees—and the rolling hills dotted with black tombstones, and the crystal palace of broken domes, and the mushroom jungle, and a place with dinosaur-sized monsters made of segmented bones, stepping with the delicacy of water-birds through a swamp of steaming shit.
But when they landed, they landed in a deep bank of snow, in Felport, right beside Rondeau’s club. It couldn’t have been coincidence, but Marla wasn’t sure whether or not it was actually mercy.
She sat up, groaning, and elbowed Ted off of her. He sat up, teeth already chattering, and looked around. “I thought we were going to die,” he said, his voice a croak from all the screaming.
“The night’s young. We still might.” She rose, a little shakily, and offered Ted her hand. His cell phone was ringing, but they both ignored it as they brushed snow from their bodies and made for the sidewalk. The sky was darkening to dusk, which meant time had passed differently in Genevieve’s realm, or else they’d been falling for so long that Marla’s usually reliable internal clock had failed.
They reached the door to the club, and Rondeau swung it open. “Holy shit! Where have you guys been all afternoon, making snow angels?”
Marla grunted and shoved her way past him. “If you’d showed up for the meeting this afternoon, you would’ve been with us, and you could’ve seen for yourself. I need a drink, and so does Ted. Rustle up something. We’ve been working for a living.” She plopped down on a bar stool, and Ted settled in beside her while Rondeau poured them each a brandy.
“Look, about this afternoon,” Rondeau began, and Marla waved her hand.
“Explain later. I need to know what’s happened while I’m gone. And if you tell me ‘nothing’ I’ll kiss you on the cheek.”
“Ah,” Rondeau said. “Well, no, it’s not nothing. It’s a lot of things. Phone’s been ringing off the hook. It’s getting wild out there, Marla. A couple of castles appeared in the middle of traffic downtown. People are passing out right on the street, and when they wake up, they’re talking about crazy shit, places full of fire, places full of monsters, places full of nicer things, too, but mostly what I’ve been hearing about is the bad things. There are creatures running around down by the docks, things with too many legs and not enough eyes, and the Bay Witch says there are things under the water, too, and that there’s some kind of ruined palace down there, deserted as far as she can tell, but with a big black stone door that doesn’t open, and she hears a kind of thumping behind it. Ernesto called to say there’s a black tower in his junkyard—”
“Interesting,” Marla murmured, and waved her hand for Rondeau to continue.
“Viscarro called from the Bank of the Catacombs to say two extra vaults have appeared, and the doors won’t even open for him, and he’s pissed. The little border gods say something’s straining against the edges of the city from the inside, and they wonder if they should try to expel it, or what—I told them to just hang tough until I heard from you. That moron Granger says sinkholes are appearing in the park, and do we have a magic shovel he can borrow to fill them in faster? The Chamberlain even called down from the Heights to say the ghosts of the founding fathers are sensing a disturbance in the ether, and she’s worried about property values. The—”
“Wait,” Marla said. “Tell me who hasn’t called.”
“Gregor,” he said promptly, then winced.
“Huh. And one of those towers appeared right next to his building. You’d think he would’ve been the first guy on the phone. Kinda…suspicious.”
“Ah. I might have an explanation for that,” Rondeau said.
Marla raised an eyebrow. “Do tell.”
“The reason I missed the meeting is Nicolette kidnapped me.”
Marla sat up straighter. “What? Why, to get to me?”
“Oh, no. When Gregor found out she’d taken me, he threw a hissy fit and sent me on my way, and probably gave her hell. He seemed pretty terrified that you’d be pissed.”
“He may have good reason. So why did she take you?”
Rondeau looked down. “I mentioned that bad run of luck I had gambling….”
“Shit, Rondeau, how much do you owe her?”
“See, the bitch of it is the compound interest…. She wants my club. This club. That’d just about cover it. I think she must want the special conference room.”
Marla put her head in her hands. “I don’t know why I ever stop slapping you, even for a minute.”
Rondeau cleared his throat. “Yeah, so she was pressuring me, and I invoked your name, you know, to encourage her to give me a little more time, but I guess she got impatient, so…but Gregor told her to ease off, not to bother me, because bothering me bothers you.”
Marla frowned. “It’s not like him to be that considerate, but fuck it. We’ve all got bigger things on our minds. If we get through the next few days in one piece, we’ll figure out a way for you to square things without losing the club. Maybe you can do some work for Nicolette. Ted, you fill Rondeau in on what happened to us today, okay? You took notes, right? I’ve got to make some calls.”
“Want me to make them?” Ted said. He sounded exhausted, and it was a wonder he hadn’t pissed himself during their long fall—or maybe he had, and the wind had dried it. Marla shook her head. “No. These calls, I have to make on my ow
n.”
She headed upstairs as Ted began to tell Rondeau about their adventures in dreamland. He’d probably get St. John Austen’s speech word-for-word. Ted wasn’t magical, but he was pulling his weight anyway. She called Hamil from her office. “We need a gathering,” she said. “Everybody.” Hamil said he’d see to it—he didn’t need to ask why.
She sat at her desk, wondering if she should call Joshua. She wanted him for the comfort he gave, and she wanted to make sure he was okay, but she was afraid that calling him would be a show of weakness she couldn’t afford. She would need him for the meeting, but Hamil knew that, and would make the arrangements. She’d just wait.
Hamil called back twenty minutes later. “Gregor says he can’t come, something about a delicate spell that needs his physical presence in the building.”
“Fuck that,” Marla said. “Tell him we’ll meet at his place, then.”
Hamil didn’t speak for a moment. “And if he refuses?”
Marla picked up a silver letter opener from her desk. It gleamed in the lamplight. Anything could be dangerous in the right hands. “Tell him I’m not asking. It’s a matter of Felport’s security, so he doesn’t get to say no.” She hung up, sighed, and called Langford.
“Your city is undergoing some unpleasant transformations,” he said.
“I noticed. Any luck finding Genevieve?”
“She’s in the city. Intermittently, though, and not for long. I’m narrowing the parameters. I have my search protocol slaved to a minor oracle, and so far it’s been hit-or-miss at predicting her next location, only accurate five percent more often than chance. Wait, six percent now. It’s getting more accurate on an exponential curve, though, so by…hmm…tomorrow in the early afternoon I should be able to predict her next appearance with better than ninety percent accuracy.”
Marla whistled. That was better than she’d hoped for. “Langford, you’re a genius.”
“Sometimes, when the wind is right,” he said. “Get a strike team ready to mobilize. I may not be able to give you a lot of advance notice about her materialization.” He paused. “And, of course, all bets are off if an army of monsters from a nightmare destroys my lab.”
