by T. A. Pratt
“Terry who?” Zealand said.
“Reeves. He’s the, what would you call it, inspiration for Reave, Mr. King of Nightmares. He raped Genevieve, and she’s such a powerful psychic that his traumatic memory became a living thing with its own nasty hopes and dreams. Reave is like a monster-movie exaggeration of this genuine asshole Terry Reeves.” She shook her head. “Reave is the dangerous one. Help me find a way to stop him. And maybe let Genevieve know that I’m not planning to kill her?”
The spell died out, and Zealand fell to the floor, but he didn’t sprawl inelegantly as Marla had expected; the mold must have helped him somehow, because he landed in a graceful crouch, then rose and nodded. “Very well. But Reave is with Gregor. How will you reach him? Gregor’s building is a fortress. I know—they were hiding me there, to keep you from finding me, and I only escaped through Genevieve’s intervention.”
“Oh, we can get in,” Marla said, grinning. “We’re having a meeting there in about forty-five minutes. But first, Ted, bring me the red chalk and the jar of black sand from my office. I need to draw a binding charm here, so Zealand and I can cross our hearts and hope to die.”
13
W hen Joshua slid into the back of the Bentley, it took all Marla’s willpower not to jump him. He settled in beside her and gave her one of his dazzling smiles. “I missed you,” he said.
“Good. It’s good to be missed.”
“You lovebirds behave back there,” Rondeau shouted from the driver’s seat. “This isn’t some kind of taxicab-confessions mobile hedonism unit!” Ted, riding up front beside him, paid no attention, but just murmured into his phone, probably taking care of problems Marla hadn’t even noticed yet.
“So what’s the plan, my liege?” Joshua asked. “Hamil told me this is a big meeting of all the sorcerers. I thought that wasn’t scheduled for a couple more days.”
“This is something different. An emergency-session sort of thing to deal with the whole people-getting-sucked-into-dreamland thing.”
“I assumed such were the natural hazards of working in a city full of sorcerers.”
Marla snorted. “Most cities of any size are full of sorcerers. But we usually do a good job at keeping the magical disruptions to a minimum, and try to hide our actions from ordinary people. One of my main jobs is keeping a lid on things like mysterious disappearances and spontaneously appearing orange trees. Things are getting out of hand. There’s an end in sight—I hope—but it’s going to get worse before it gets better, and I need some damage control. In times of crisis, the chief sorcerer can compel the assistance of other sorcerers in the city. Think of us as a bunch of crime families, with alliances and allegiances to make it easier to do business. I’m going to call on the other big noises in town so we can lock things down before they get worse. What I need you to do is smooth the passage. Nod when I say something, frown and shake your head whenever anyone disagrees with me—nothing too overt, just enough to show that your support is unconditionally with me—and it should have a dampening effect on the usual explosive bullshit that happens anytime more than two sorcerers get together in a room.”
“Understood. Anything else I should know?”
She considered telling him about Zealand, who was even now approaching Gregor’s building from a different direction, and about Gregor’s alliance with Reave, but they were pulling up to the building, and there wasn’t time to get into everything—especially when it came to explaining that she was now allied with the assassin who’d tried to murder them the night before. “Just trust me, and if something unexpected happens, roll with it. And if something violent happens, get yourself out of the way. You’re not a fighter, and you’re no good to me dead. Okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and she couldn’t help herself—she leaned over and kissed his delicious lips. For luck, she told herself. Then she opened the door and stepped out into the cold.
Zealand broke into Gregor’s building without much difficulty, thanks to a combination of his natural skills and the ever-increasing genius of the mold, which managed to slip through a crack in the service entrance and crawl several meters down a hallway to disable the security system through the simple expedient of choking the wiring with vegetation; the mold wasn’t smart enough to crack keypad codes yet, it seemed. Getting back up to the higher floors was more difficult, since the elevators were monitored, and the stairwells, too. Zealand called his mold back until all that remained was a spot on each hand and a fuzzy cummerbund against his skin, hidden by his clothes. He made his way to the building’s kitchen and began rummaging through the big industrial refrigerators, finding a platter of roast turkey covered in Saran wrap, a commercial tub of mayonnaise, and a loaf of bread. He made himself a little feast at one of the big prep tables and waited.
He was halfway through his second sandwich when Nicolette appeared with a clatter of braids. She’d added several objects to those previously tangled in her hair—glass beads in the shape of tiny white skulls, knots of thorns wired together, coins with holes punched in their centers, a cat’s-eye marble bigger than a grape in a wire cage.
“Want a sandwich?” he asked.
“How the fuck did you get down here without security noticing?”
“Have we met? I’m Zealand. I was trained by the slow assassins.”
She shook her head. “If you were hungry, why didn’t you just ask for something to eat?”
He hazarded a guess. “There seemed to be a certain, ah, buzz of activity about the place, and I didn’t want to disturb.”
Nicolette picked up a piece of turkey and munched it. Her shoulders slumped, and Zealand realized with something like horror that she was about to confide in him—she must consider him a friend! Or else she was convincingly pretending she did, for her own reasons. She was a chaos magician, which made analysis of her behavior difficult. She drew her power from disorder, so she couldn’t be counted on to do anything, not even to act in her own self-interest. Zealand found her far more terrifying than Gregor, who was as predictable as a bullet trajectory.
“Things here are fucked,” she said. “Gregor told me to find you and make sure you stay out of sight. Marla Mason is coming here, in about fifteen minutes, along with every other big bad sorcerer in Felport. Some of those fuckers scare me.”
“Why the gathering? Monthly quilting circle?”
Nicolette laughed. “These are good times for chaos, Z. Reave has brought a whole lot of craziness with him, and things are getting wild out there. You wouldn’t know, being all tucked up safe and sound in here, but there are buildings appearing out of nowhere, people disappearing, monsters roaming the outskirts…it’s a big beautiful wonderful mess. I’m positively crackling with power. But Marla’s worried about the state of the city. So she’s called us all together to make a game plan, probably, or at least quarantine the mess.”
“Marla is coming here to figure out how to stop Reave, who is allied with your master? I suppose you’ll be keeping him under lock and key, too, hmm?”
“Reave is a free agent, but he knows it’s better to stay away for a few hours, yeah. The boss and me will pretend to go along with Marla—we already had to roll over and let the meeting happen here—and keep, ah, pursuing our own agenda on the side. Gregor figures it’s a calculated risk—the relevant prophecies say he’s safe as long as he doesn’t leave the building, so he thinks it’s unlikely that Marla will attack him here.” She shrugged. “Typical backstabbing sorcerer shit, but on a bigger scale than usual, I gotta say.”
“Your own agenda? And what, exactly, is Gregor helping Reave do?”
Nicolette waved her hand. “Conquer the world. Crush all opposition with iron boots. You know, guy stuff. Very linear, very top-down.”
“I see,” Zealand said. He didn’t think he could get her to be any more specific than that—Nicolette was no fool—but he knew enough. Genevieve was somehow the key to Reave’s ambitions, and Zealand would make sure Reave didn’t get to her. Simple, really. And
he was happier being on Marla’s side, for the moment, than he’d been fighting against her. He made another sandwich. “Shall I retire to my room, then?”
“Double-quick, and don’t come out until I tell you.” She escorted him upstairs.
Once he was alone in his room, Zealand settled down to wait. Marla had a plan, and he knew his place in it. He reached for his book—and realized he’d left it in the library in Genevieve’s palace. He sighed, but there was nothing to be done about it. It wasn’t as if he’d never read The Art of War before. He just found the familiar pages comforting.
Marla rode up the elevator with Rondeau, Joshua, and Ted. She tapped her foot and stared at the ceiling and thought murderous thoughts. She hated getting together with the other leading sorcerers. It always turned into a pissing contest.
“You look nervous,” Rondeau said.
“I’m not so good at diplomacy. But that’s why Joshua’s here.”
The elevator opened, and Marla strode out into the hall. She wore more finery than usual, with her white cloak across her shoulders—the lethal purple side turned inward, for now—fastened at the throat with a silver pin in the shape of a stag beetle. Her white cotton shirt and pants were loose and allowed great freedom of movement. Her reinforced boots were shined, and she had six rings on her fingers (only half of them magically imbued). Her dagger of office hung in a sheath at her belt, the hilt wrapped in alternating bands of white-and-purple electrical tape. The other sorcerers would be pretty much equally armed, everyone more comfortable with mutual assured destruction in the event of a fight than they would have been with some bullshit restriction on bringing weapons, which everyone would have ignored anyway. Marla wasn’t wearing makeup—she still had her limits—but she’d washed her hair before coming over. Right now, she was the leader of the sorcerers of Felport, first among equals, protector of the city, and it paid to look her best.
The meeting room was appointed with couches, club chairs, and stools, and Nicolette was unfolding extra chairs as they arrived. The place was jammed with Felport’s most prominent handful of sorcerers and their retainers, and they all turned to stare at Marla when she walked in.
Viscarro sat in a far corner, peering at her through his gold-rimmed monocle, his skin paler than the snow outside. He wore a velvet smoking jacket from another era, though it might have been fashionable the last time he emerged from his vaults into the wider world.
Ernesto, a big man wearing a tuxedo with grease-stained lapels—for magical purposes, not just because he was a slob—sat on a stool popping olives into his mouth, and he grinned at Marla and waved. He was still happy with her because she’d given him a contract to clean up pollution in the bay, and allowed him to use the resulting filthy residue to make a pollution golem to patrol his junkyard.
The Chamberlain stood by the window in a long black evening gown that revealed the smooth length of her back, her skin dark and lustrous, and she turned to regard Marla with a glance of infinite pity and scorn; Marla never felt more like a dirty child pretending to be a grown-up than she did in the Chamberlain’s presence, but the Chamberlain wasn’t exactly an enemy. She hadn’t brought bodyguards, but she had the ghosts of Felport’s founding families at her beck and call, so she hardly needed backup.
The Bay Witch wore her usual dark blue wetsuit, her blond hair was disarrayed, and she dripped water in a spreading puddle on the carpet. She kept casting anxious glances toward the eastern wall—she didn’t often leave the bay, and was clearly uncomfortable this high up.
Granger—that idiot Granger—sat picking his nose, oblivious to the gravity of the situation. He was a hereditary sorcerer with no particular intelligence or wit, but his family had been the caretakers of Fludd Park back when it was just the village commons; he was tied to the land, and had power to go with it. Nature magic made Marla uncomfortable—she was a city woman by choice—but he was unquestionably important enough to have a seat at the table, even if he didn’t do anything with that seat but wipe boogers beneath it.
Gregor stood as far across the room from Marla as he could get, and he looked unhappy. If Marla hadn’t known about his plans to kill her, she would have assumed he was just pissed about the Bay Witch dripping all over his carpet—Gregor was a notorious neat-freak.
Hamil was here already, and he gave her a nod from the vast overstuffed armchair where he’d installed himself. He gestured toward another chair, apparently left unoccupied as a courtesy for her. The chair faced all the other seats, which meant she could address everyone easily, but it also looked a little like a hot seat.
“Hello, everyone. Thanks for coming.” Marla sat, and Joshua stood a bit behind her, where everyone could see him. Rondeau and Ted stood back against the wall with the other assistants, apprentices, and assorted hangers-on. “You all know why you’re here. There’s a woman named Genevieve Kelley wandering the city, and her bad dreams are intruding into our reality at an exponential rate, probably because of all the stress she’s under. Worse, one of her bad dreams has a mind of his own. Reave is dangerous, but if we can reach Genevieve and get her back to Dr. Husch at the Blackwing Institute, I think we can get Reave under control, too.” Marla wasn’t sure of that at all, but getting Genevieve out of the city couldn’t hurt the cause.
“Why don’t we just kill her?” Viscarro said, his voice harsh and grating from long disuse.
“You want to make it our policy to kill insane sorcerers, instead of confining them to the Blackwing Institute?” Marla said, and Viscarro flinched. He’d been confined in Blackwing himself for a few months after having a nervous breakdown many years before, but he’d recovered.
“Of course not,” the Chamberlain said, and everyone turned to give her their attention. She could have been chief sorcerer, if she’d wanted, but she wasn’t interested in the job—she only cared about the Heights, the historic and hoity-toity area of the city where her ghostly extended family lived among the oblivious yuppies and nouveau riche. “Killing the mentally ill is bad policy. But if there are no other options…”
“There are other options,” Marla said. “I have a good lead on Genevieve, and expect to have her in hand tomorrow afternoon.”
“What lead?” Ernesto asked.
“You all know Langford, the technomancer. He’s found a way to track Genevieve, and—”
“Nonsense,” Gregor said. “I’ve been trying to track her myself, and she only pops out of her dream world for a few minutes at a time. She can’t be found.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Marla asked, and she noticed Joshua from the corner of her eye, frowning and shaking his head at Gregor. Good boy. “Langford uses different methods from yours, Gregor, and he’s got some of Genevieve’s personal possessions to work with, too. You’re the best when it comes to traditional methods of divination, no doubt, but Langford’s got a gift for improvisation on the fly. He says he’ll have Genevieve’s location by tomorrow—actionable intelligence, info we can use—and he’s not the type to boast.”
“All right,” Gregor said. “My apologies. Go on.”
“The more immediate problem,” Marla said, “is the whole city going to hell. We need to deal with containment and quarantine. Right now, Genevieve’s little reality-alterations are confined to a few areas, but they’re spreading, and we don’t want them to get beyond the borders of Felport. We need to cut off communication with the outside world, and keep people from getting in or out. Any ideas?”
“The border guardians can whip up a blizzard,” Hamil said. “Bad enough to close the roads. And if things get really bad, beyond the ability of our own forces to contain, we can always activate the secret oaths—the police force will help us without even realizing why they’re doing it.”
“Cutting communication is easy,” Ernesto said. “Consider it done.” Marla nodded; Ernesto was good at infrastructure.
“I’ll secure the sea route, not that there’s a lot of oceangoing traffic in this weather,” the Bay Witch said.
> “It would be good to get more of our people out on the street,” Marla said, “to deal with shit before it gets too bad. Things have been glimpsed in alleys and back-streets, and while they haven’t attacked any people yet, it would be good to have defenses ready.” Marla outlined the neighborhoods she wanted defended, and delegated people to cover each, and the grumbling was surprisingly minimal, thanks to Joshua’s nodding and beaming at her every word. He was worth his weight in platinum.
“I’ll get the mayor to declare a state of emergency, ostensibly because of the blizzard, and advise everyone to stay home,” Marla said. “We’ll close the airport, train station, bus depots, everything. It wouldn’t kill us to get some sort of soothing stay-home vibe going through the city, too.” None of the current ruling cabal was particularly adept at such mental magic, but many of them had projecting empaths and the like in their employ. “Not that people are necessarily safer inside their homes, but so far most of the big interruptions in reality are happening outside.” She went over a few more specifics, assigning tasks and offering compliments or incentives or threats where necessary, but by the time she finished, she felt things were well in hand. Damage control was never fun, but it could have gone a lot worse—without Joshua’s silent yet charismatic support, there would have been a lot more bitching and moaning.
“If we’re done here—” Marla said.
“When are you going to divide up Susan Wellstone’s assets?” Viscarro said. “Her property, her interests in local business, it’s all just sitting, going to waste. Making money for you.”
“The income from Susan’s businesses is held in trust, and you know it. We’ll meet on that subject in a couple of days, assuming the city isn’t a smoking hole in the ground by then. Perspective, people. I don’t want Susan’s shit, so stop suggesting otherwise.” She didn’t bother to hide her irritation. Viscarro wanted everything. He was a classic hoarder. Rumors said he was part dragon, but Marla didn’t believe in dragons. He was just a greedy fuck.
