Poison Sleep

by T. A. Pratt

  “Get all your defenses online,” she said.

  He cleared his throat. “That’s expensive.”

  “I’ll pay the bill.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Do you still want me to come to your meeting?”

  “No, I guess not. I figured I’d need you as a science advisor to assure them that everything we could do was being done, but you gave me an actual timetable, so I’ll be able to shut them up.”

  “Knock ’em dead,” he said.

  “How about our buddy Zealand? Have you tracked him down?”

  “Not yet. He is very effectively hidden. He hasn’t left the city, but beyond that, who knows. There are a few places in the city that are impervious to scrying, and he must have found one of them.”

  She sighed. “Which means he was hired by a sorcerer, who’s now hiding him. Well, I’m not surprised, but it sucks. You’ll keep trying? He has to go out sometime.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll let you know if he turns up.”

  “Good enough,” she said, and hung up.

  Hamil rang in soon after, to tell her the meeting was set for nine o’clock at Gregor’s, and he would meet her there. She thanked him, stood up, paced around the office, looked out the window at the snow, tried not to think about the crazy shit that might be happening out there, and even tried meditating, but she just couldn’t get her head straight.

  Screw it. She’d call Joshua, too, even though Hamil had already confirmed he would be at the meeting. After the day she’d had, she deserved a little lovetalk.

  But his phone just rang and rang, and he never picked up, and she couldn’t think of anything to say to his voicemail that wouldn’t sound desperate and weak.

  Zealand spent an hour at a construction site, seeing what his mold could do. It wasn’t all that disgusting, really. He felt a bit like Spider-Man, but when he gave in to the temptation to sling a rope of vinelike mold at a steel girder and swing, he nearly crashed into a pile of rebar. He had more luck using the mold to tangle things up and pull them down. He startled a nest of rats, and the mold went after them without his conscious thought, spraying out from his hand and immobilizing them, and a few moments later, when the mold turned brown and blew away, there was nothing left beneath them but tiny white bones. Creepy, but creepy was Zealand’s stock and trade. At some point, the mold had migrated to his other hand as well, which was faintly disturbing, but meant he could send waves of crawling fungus in more than one direction at once. He slammed his cocooned fists into a heap of cinderblocks and punched them into powder, without feeling the impact on his hands, the force of the blow absorbed by his furry green gloves. The mold kept him warm, too. It was a surreal sort of superpower, but he welcomed any advantage when it came to fighting Marla.

  “Not sure how it helps against knives, guns, and Tasers,” he said, musing, and the mold surprised him by crawling up his arms, under his clothes, across his chest, around his back, down his legs—covering him in a rippling green second skin that made his clothes flutter. “Huh,” he said. “Can you…hear me?” The mold didn’t respond, but how could it have? He thumped his own chest a couple of times without feeling any pain, but couldn’t think of a way to test the mold suit’s protective powers without endangering his life. “Guess I’ll just have to trust you,” he said. He checked his watch—the mold obligingly scurried aside—and saw it was going on eight o’clock. Marla surely had sorcerers magically searching for him, but that kind of work took time, so if he moved quickly, he should be able to proceed before being detected. He wondered if Nicolette and Gregor had missed him yet. He hoped not. He wanted to slip back into the building unnoticed and have a go at Reave, after he was done with Marla. It would be a long night, but something—adrenaline, or perhaps some quality of the mold—made him feel energized.

  The mold shot out of his sleeves and snatched something out of the air. Zealand drew in the tentacle of green and frowned. The mold had caught a shuriken, a throwing star, blacked so it wouldn’t reflect light. He sighed. “Hello, brothers.”

  “Zealand,” said Kardec, from somewhere near a heap of cinderblocks. “How nice of you to come out and play.”

  “I’m impressed. How did you find me?”

  “We have eyes everywhere. The sorcerers can peer into their scrying mirrors or crystal balls or bowls of mercury all they like, but we simply keep our eyes on the streets.”

  “Mmm,” Zealand said. “Antiquated. Inefficient. Sounds like the slow assassins. Push off, gentlemen, and let me do my business, and you will be allowed to live.”

  Kardec chuckled. “It was a nice trick, snatching the shuriken from the air by magic. I would have simply used my hands. You’ve been consorting with sorcerers too long. You’ve forgotten the fundamentals.”

  Zealand lifted his hands and threw out a rope of fungus, smashing through the cinderblocks, powdering a few of them to dust. Kardec grunted, and Zealand raced in his direction, leaping over the blocks, but the slow assassin was gone. “You’re a bureaucrat,” Zealand said, looking around the dark construction site. “You haven’t been in top fighting form for years. I trust you brought a few others to help you?”

  Someone gurgled behind him, and Zealand turned to find a black-clad man scrabbling at his own throat, trying to pry off the mold that choked him. Zealand smiled. The mold had sprung from the back of his neck. He did have eyes in the back of his head. The assassin fell, either dead or unconscious, and the mold drew back to Zealand’s body.

  A great whizzing filled the air, and tentacles of fungus shot out from his hands, his throat, the cuffs of his trousers, through the buttons of his shirt, in all directions, snatching crossbow bolts, arrows, poison darts, and even a couple of bullets from the air. “The same back at you,” Zealand said, though he wasn’t sure it would work. He should have had more faith in the fungus, he realized, because the tentacles reared back and whipped their lethal projectiles through the air, back toward their original owners, and he heard a few gasps and cries that suggested at least some of the weapons hit their targets. “Really, brothers, you’re wasting my time,” Zealand said. “I’ll tell you what. I know the death of your operative was distressing. I certainly didn’t wish for that to happen. I’ll make a generous donation to your organization, what do you say?”

  “Money is not our object,” Kardec said, perhaps from the direction of a backhoe, perhaps from behind those steel barrels. “You betrayed us. You must be punished. We must make an example of you.”

  “I’m sure it’s hard, after all those centuries of being the most feared and dangerous killers in the world, to have me come along and outclass you,” Zealand mused. “Why don’t you stalk—me for twenty years, hmm? Let everyone know you’re pursuing me, and that my comeuppance will come—oh, yes, in a time of your choosing. You can save face that way. Truly, Kardec, you annoy me. How many of your men must I kill tonight to make you leave? I know each is a tremendous investment of time and effort. Why waste them just to waste me?”

  “I will slit your throat, Zealand,” Kardec said levelly.

  “Poor Kardec,” Zealand said, almost sad for him. “You want to be my nemesis, don’t you? My archenemy. But you’re so unimportant to me, I can scarcely believe I’m bothering to talk to you now. You think your pursuit of me is the story of my life, but you’re barely a subplot.” While the words were true, Zealand also hoped they would be upsetting enough to make Kardec attack him directly, so Zealand could kill him. The slow assassins were a conservative organization, and if Zealand killed one of their top operatives, they might hesitate to send another force against him. But Kardec didn’t answer, and Zealand sensed that he was now alone. They would wait for another opportunity. Well, good for them. Zealand hadn’t worried too much about his former brothers before, and now that he had the mold protecting him, they were barely an irritant. Still, Kardec and his killers had wasted Zealand’s valuable time, and he needed to get a move on, before Marla’s seers and diviners discovered him.

  He walked the few
blocks to Rondeau’s club, the mold shifting eagerly across his body. The building was nondescript, marked only with a sign that read “Juliana’s” over the door. It wouldn’t open until nine at the earliest, so—assuming Marla was here, as she usually was in the evenings—he had time to slip in and dispose of her without drawing a crowd. And if she wasn’t here, he’d beat her location out of Rondeau or one of her other associates. Charging in through the front door didn’t appeal, so he crept around the alleyway, looking for a side door with a lock he could pick. Unfortunately, the only door he found had no handle or lock on the outside, just a buzzer, which didn’t help him. He started to turn away when his hands began to tingle, and fine threads of mold spun down from his fingertips and began waving toward the door. He pressed his hand against the door, and the mold slithered through the cracks around the jamb; a moment later it clicked and opened far enough for him to hook his fingers on the edge and swing it wide. There was only darkness beyond the door, and the murmur of voices, and he slipped in quickly, letting the door shut behind him. A wire dangled loose above the emergency door, and he realized that it was alarmed. The mold had thought—could it think?—to pull loose the wires and prevent the alarm from sounding. Extraordinary. It was like having an accomplice he could carry with him.

  He was in a dark corner of the club, near the stage; this door was probably used to load in the DJ’s gear. The only lights came from the vicinity of the bar, which was invisible from here—the club was in the shape of an L, and the bar was situated along one wall of the short arm, with the main dance floor here before him. Voices came from around that corner, along with the light, and Zealand slipped quiet as a cockroach across the floor, the mold swarming out over his shoes to soften each step. He paused in the shadow of the wall, right around the corner from the bar, and listened.

  Marla said, “It’ll all be over tomorrow afternoon, one way or another, unless we fuck things up seriously.”

  “You’re going to try to help her, aren’t you?” Rondeau said. “I mean, killing her…that’s a last resort, right?”

  Marla sighed. “Ted, when I asked you to tell him what happened, I didn’t ask you to editorialize.”

  “Sorry,” said a stranger’s voice—presumably Ted. “It seemed important.”

  “I’ll do whatever I have to do to save Felport,” she said. “If that means killing Genevieve, well, that sucks, but better her than everybody and everything else.”

  Zealand scowled. He didn’t pretend to understand much about Genevieve, but he had no doubt she was a victim, not a villain. He took a dentist’s mirror from his pocket and used it to look around the corner. Marla was at the bar, her back turned, and Rondeau was standing behind the bar, messing around with bottles. Ted was hunched on a bar stool several seats down from Marla, effectively out of the picture. If Zealand timed it right, he could get to Marla before Rondeau knew what was happening. He reached into his pocket for a garrote, but the mold flowed across his hands, forming a tough strand of choking vine. He grinned. This was truly versatile stuff. He crouched, and felt the mold tighten, acting as a second set of muscles. Marla didn’t stand a chance.

  A phone rang, then stopped. Marla said, “Yeah, Langford?” Her voice changed, becoming more intense. “You got a fix on him? Well, then narrow it down. Tick-tock, Langford. What do you mean he’s right on top—”

  Zealand launched himself around the corner.

  Langford, on Marla’s phone, said, “I mean Zealand is right there,” and then Rondeau was shouting and pointing, and Ted was turning around on his stool in her peripheral vision, and she started to turn, just fast enough to see Zealand flying through the fucking air toward her, his fingers dripping some kind of green shit, more green creeping up his cheeks and neck. He was going to hit her, and there wasn’t time to dive out of the way, there was barely time to flick a dagger out of her sleeve and into her hand, and to raise her hands to meet him, before the impact—

  Which never came. Zealand hung still in the air, arms outstretched, ropes of slimy green spiraling out toward her, the nearest one inches from her face. A dozen tendrils, budded from the end, waved impotently, and she knew without a doubt that they were going for her eyes, her nostrils, her mouth, ready to fill her and suffocate her. Marla slid from the bar stool and off to the side, Zealand’s eyes the only mobile thing in his body, tracking her, wide and furious. “What the hell,” she said.

  Ted held up his hand, which was bleeding, and winced as he picked bits of glass out of his palm. “The glass vial you gave me, with the spider in it,” he said, almost apologetically. “You told me if we saw Genevieve or Zealand, I should crush it—”

  Marla grabbed Ted by the shoulders and kissed him on the lips; he was so startled he emitted a little peep. “You get a raise,” she said. “Rondeau! See this man gets a raise! Did you see that?” she said, turning to Rondeau. “He crushed that thing and cast that bug-in-amber spell like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Ted caught that motherfucker in midair.”

  “Good shooting,” Rondeau said. “Do you think we should, I don’t know, restrain him before the spell wears off?”

  “Oh, sure,” Marla said. “We’ve got a few minutes, though, and he’ll fall straight down like a rock when it gives. All his momentum’s gone.” She walked around Zealand, prodding his body, frowning. She lifted up his coat and tugged his shirt out of his waistband; his skin was swarming with fungus. “You hooked up with some kind of crazy herbomancer?” she said finally. “That’s…weird. I heard you weren’t a big fan of magic.” She circled back around to his front, took out her dagger of office, and cut the vines of vegetation away from his fingers. The severed mold began to turn brown right away, and within seconds it was just flakes of gray dust, impossible even to hold in her hands. She brushed it away, frowning, then met his eyes. “Look, why are you so determined to kill me? How much can they possibly be paying you? I believe in taking pride in your work, but if you keep this up, I’m going to have to execute you, but only after I have my friend Langford put his nasty mind-reading helmet on you. It doesn’t kill you when it sucks out your thoughts, but it makes you wish you were dead—it’s like a hangover turned up to eleven.”

  “You can’t kill her,” he said, speaking through his involuntarily clenched teeth. “I won’t let you kill her.”

  “Kill who?” Marla said. “What are you—” She stopped. “Shit.”

  “The green knight,” Ted said.

  “You’re the green knight,” Marla said, cocking her head. “You work for Genevieve? Why would she hire you to kill me? I only decided I might have to kill her a few hours ago!”

  “She didn’t hire him,” Rondeau said, and Marla turned, because this was information from a quarter she had not expected. “Not at first. I didn’t recognize him right away with that green crap crawling up his face, but this guy was at Gregor’s today, when Nicolette had me tied up. She brought him in to torture me, or at least to scare me into thinking he would.”

  “Now, that’s interesting. You work for Gregor?”

  “Once,” he said. His lips moved a little more now, which meant the spell was fading. “No more. He’s working with Reave, and I won’t let them hurt Genevieve, either.”

  “I’ll be godsdamned,” she said. She’d been suspicious of Gregor, but he was an expert in divination, a jumped-up fortune-teller who’d gotten rich by abusing the stock market. She’d never taken him for a thronetoppler. “What’s gotten into him? He’s allying himself with my enemies, trying to kill me? No wonder he hasn’t been returning my calls—though if he had any sense, he’d be pretending everything was normal. Hell. This is a whole new wrinkle. Look, Mr. Z, me and you shouldn’t be enemies, all right? We have some common ground here—we both want to stop this Reave guy.”

  Uncertainty flickered in his eyes, but only for a moment. The green on his hands was beginning to move by itself again, just a little. “You lie. You want to kill Genevieve.”

  She sighed. “I’ve been willing
to kill Genevieve, because she’s the root of all the crazy shit happening out there. Look at you, Zealand—you’re covered in magical mold, and I’m guessing that’s her doing. There are towers appearing and disappearing on the streets. There are monsters running loose, people dropping unconscious on the street and disappearing and reappearing, bringing bits of Genevieve’s nightmares back with them. From an urban management standpoint, it’s a bad situation! But I don’t want to kill Genevieve. I want to help her.” She sighed, rubbed her forehead, and said, “Look. Will you help me if I promise not to kill Genevieve?”

  “How can I believe you?” The spell slipped another notch, and he dropped an inch, but still hovered some height above the floor.

  “I’ll swear it on the name of my city,” she said. “I’m a sorcerer, Zealand—we don’t go around breaking oaths. We do our best to never make them, but our word is all we have. You must know that.”

  “Oaths are nice, but hardly unbreakable. You may even be sincere now, but circumstances could change your dedication.”

  She sighed. “Okay. We’ll draw a binding circle—I’ll swear not to kill Genevieve, or cause her to be killed by my actions or orders, or allow her to be killed by my willful negligence, and you’ll swear not to kill me or cause my death, etc. And if either of us breaks our word, poof, it means we die. Big magic. Okay?”

  He considered. “That is acceptable. Why the change of heart?”

  She shook her head. “Well, for one thing, I can’t get much done with you constantly trying to kill me! You’re pretty badass, and an alliance with you could do both of us a lot of good. For another, these two have been giving me shit for the whole killing Genevieve thing, too, and I’m starting to think maybe all of you have a point. My first loyalty is to Felport, but if I start committing atrocities to keep the city safe…that’s a pretty slippery slope. You think I don’t feel for her? Hell, I wish I had the time to track down Terry Reeves and punch his face into a crater, just for the principle of the thing.”