Poison Sleep

by T. A. Pratt

  Viscarro scowled, rose from his chair, and stalked off. The others left, too, most pausing to shake her hand and exchange a few words, taking their entourages with them. When only Marla, Hamil, and their people were left, Gregor approached them, frowning, with Nicolette at his side. “If you’re done imposing on my hospitality, I have to clean up the water puddles and grease stains left behind by our esteemed guests.”

  “We need to chat, Gregor,” Marla said. “You’ve been a naughty boy.”

  He had enough self-control to keep his expression calm. “I’ve been nothing but cooperative, while you’ve let the city fall apart. I have half a mind to—”

  Marla kicked him in the knee, and Gregor fell, gasping and clutching at his leg. Nicolette reached for one of the charms in her hair, but Hamil was already winding a piece of string woven with a stolen strand of Nicolette’s hair around his finger, and the sympathetic magic bound up the chaos magician, too, freezing her in mid-motion.

  “What’s going on?” Joshua said, alarmed.

  “Don’t worry, baby,” Marla said. “Just taking care of some traitors in our midst. Gregor here hired that assassin to attack us.”

  “Lies,” Gregor grunted.

  “I got it from the man’s own mouth,” Marla said. “I made him repeat it in a circle of binding, and he told the same story even under the truth-compulsion.”

  “Impossible,” Nicolette said. “You couldn’t have talked to him, he’s been here the whole—” Her eyes went wide, and Marla couldn’t help but grin. Nicolette probably had a lot of fine qualities, but apparently she wasn’t the sharpest arrow in the quiver—at least, not under stress.

  Gregor snarled. “You idiot!”

  Marla crouched down beside him. The rings on her fingers would vibrate if he tried to cast any spells, but he wasn’t much of an offensive magician anyway—he was much better at plotting from the shadows. “I don’t mind you trying to kill me, really. It’s part of the business. I mean, I’ll squash you flat for it, but that’s part of the business, too. What I can’t condone is your alliance with Reave. He wants to destroy the city, Gregor, and remake it in his own rather fucked-up image. What were you thinking? What, did he promise you land and titles and all that usual dark-lord-of-the-night bullshit?”

  “Of course he did,” Gregor said, sounding rather subdued. “But that’s not why I did it. I did it because I had no choice. The auguries were clear. If I didn’t ally myself with Reave, my death would result. I won’t apologize for trying to preserve myself.”

  “Well, I gotta tell you, things aren’t exactly looking good for you now,” Marla said. “Nicolette doesn’t have to die—she’s in your employ, and I understand loyalty—but shit, Gregor, what choice have you given me? I’d banish you, but this is basically wartime, and you’re an enemy collaborator. The rules about that kind of thing are pretty clear.”

  “You will release them now,” Reave said, stepping from a dark corner of the office. He had those long knives in his hands, and the expression on his mushroom-white face was one of profound annoyance. “They are in my service.”

  “Baldy!” Marla said. “I was hoping you’d show up. Now, Zealand!” she shouted.

  That should have been the cue for Zealand to come leaping from concealment, fungus flying, with enough force to at least distract the king of nightmares while Marla and her cohort piled on.

  But Zealand didn’t appear.

  The floor-to-ceiling windows behind Reave shimmered like water and vanished, revealing a ramp that led to darkness—a darkness that contained scuttling, onrushing things. The king of nightmares grinned. His teeth were horrible, and flecked with green.

  While the meeting droned on beyond the door, Zealand waited in the closet. He’d hidden himself there just before the guests arrived, and he was waiting for his moment. If Reave arrived—or if Gregor and Nicolette put up more of a fight than Marla was prepared for—he would step in. Simple enough, really.

  Then a light appeared behind him, and with a sinking feeling, Zealand turned. The back of the closet was gone, and a new path extended before him, a long narrow footbridge over dark water, leading to a small wooded isle. There were two moons in the sky, and the smaller of the two was threaded with red, like a bloodshot eye. Something flew over the water off in the distance, a seabird the size of a small plane. A tall dark tower rose on the horizon, disagreeably phallic.

  Zealand considered leaping out of the closet, but that didn’t seem prudent. Better to sit tight, and see what happened. In the past he’d been swept up and taken to Genevieve’s dreamland whole, but this was different, a bridge built between the real world and the dream. Perhaps that was Reave’s approach, making connections, loosening the boundaries, making reality and nightmare blend ever more easily together.

  Then the king of nightmares himself stepped onto the far end of the wooden bridge, and Zealand didn’t hesitate, just raced forward, the mold flowing over his body and giving his muscles extra power. He snarled, his teeth bared—

  —and Reave waved his hand, making a wide section of the bridge ahead vanish. The water began foaming, alive with things Zealand couldn’t see, but which he suspected were full of teeth. He stopped short, two steps from plunging off the end of the broken bridge, the mold helping arrest his motion just as it had helped propel him. Reave regarded him across the gulf, and sighed. “We could have been friends,” he said. “You seem more a thing of nightmares than sweet dreams, Zealand. It’s not too late. Join me.”

  “Never. I detest your kind.”

  Reave didn’t have eyebrows to arch, but he looked surprised. “My kind? What kind is that?”

  “Rapists.”

  Reave waved a hand dismissively. “The seed of my creation may have been a rapist, but I have transcended that. I have no interest in the flesh of women; I despise women. My greatest regret is that I owe my existence to a woman, a weak vessel like Genevieve. You find no appeal in the flesh of women, either, isn’t that true, Zealand? We are not so dissimilar.”

  “Being gay isn’t the same thing as being a misogynist, you ass,” Zealand said.

  Reave shrugged. “I suppose you’ve told Marla about my relationship with Gregor?”

  Zealand grinned. “Does that worry you, mushroom man? Are you scared of a woman like Marla?”

  “Not at all. I’m not afraid of buzzing flies, either, but they can be an annoyance. I’ll brush her away. But I am disappointed in you, Zealand.” He turned his eyes skyward, contemplatively. “You could have—”

  Zealand saw his chance and threw out his hands, flinging ropes of fungus across the gulf, striking Reave and binding him, dragging him down off the pier and into the foaming water.

  But Reave didn’t sink, and the things thrashing beneath the surface didn’t harm him. He stood on the water as if it were concrete, and tore the vines away from himself contemptuously. “This isn’t your world,” he said. “This isn’t Genevieve’s palace, either. This is my territory, and you are at my mercy.” Knives dropped into his hands from his sleeves—or from nowhere, since reality was his to alter—and he climbed up onto the pier. Zealand backed away, recognizing that he was outgunned, and turned to run down the bridge, back toward the closet. But the closet, of course, was gone, with only an endless expanse of bridge before him, stretching over the water as far as he could see. Reave was behind him, his feet slapping wetly against the boards, and even with the mold giving him a burst of speed, Zealand couldn’t run forever, and how long before Reave made the boards in front of him vanish, too?

  It didn’t come to that. Reave’s knives went into Zealand’s back, right through his kidneys. Zealand had been stabbed before, but this pain was indescribable, a pair of hot lances transfixing him. He went down face-first on the boards, and Reave crouched on top of him, pressing his knees against the wounds. The world faded, went black, returned in a burst of white agony. “My dear Zealand,” Reave said, right in his ear, intimate as a lover. Or an assassin. “You will be missed, by someon
e, I’m sure.”

  Then the world tilted, a vertiginous twist that was becoming as unpleasant and familiar as a red-wine hangover, and Zealand could see just enough to know he was back in the library of Genevieve’s palace. St. John Austen was there, reaching out, looking pained and anxious, and Zealand wanted to say something, make some apology or explanation, but the darkness returned before he could.

  “Back, guys, get back,” Marla said, drawing her dagger of office. It wasn’t really a weapon for streetfighting, but it could cut through anything. She held the knife in a reverse grip, like an ice pick, the blade up against her forearm, where she could flick it out without Reave seeing where the strike was coming from. Reave held his own weapons in a straight-up grip, and didn’t carry them like a knowledgeable knife-fighter, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be dangerous. Rondeau tossed her a dish towel—who knew where he’d gotten it?—and she wrapped it around her other forearm, so she could absorb some of Reave’s knife-strikes. “Rondeau, Hamil, stand with me. Ted, you and Joshua get out of here.” Nicolette was still bound, and Gregor was in no position to walk, not with the kick she’d given his knee. They would keep.

  Reave seemed in no hurry to rush them. He was waiting for his backup, which came slithering, scuttling, and wetly dragging themselves along a ramp from another universe. They were childish nightmare things, jumbles of spider and crab and squid and serpent, all pincers and eyes. Marla was confident she’d be able to squish them. Rondeau stood at her shoulder, his butterfly knife open in his hand, and Hamil murmured to his bodyguards, enormous stitched-together corpses that only passed for real humans at a glance. They were actually more of Hamil’s sympathetic magic, puppet-bodies guided by his real employees, who were safely ensconced several blocks away. Each meat golem had a little vial of hair and blood from its operator sewn deep inside its armored chest, and they’d all go on fighting until those vials were destroyed. They were blunt instruments, but that was fine with Marla. She didn’t want to join combat until Ted and Joshua were safely away, but Joshua was arguing with Ted, and she didn’t want to wait too much longer, so she launched herself at Reave, leaping over Gregor.

  Who reached up and grabbed her ankle, sending her crashing into Nicolette, and knocking her down. Marla kicked backward viciously at Gregor, hoping to cave in his skull with her magically reinforced boots, but her foot didn’t connect. Nicolette was still paralyzed at least, still in her same posture, but now supine on the floor. Without looking back, Marla regained her feet and went for Reave, who wove his knives around in a lazy pattern. With a thought Marla could reverse her cloak and become an implacable killing machine, but the cloak’s magic was intensely dangerous, and it had to be a last resort—while in that haze of violence, she would just as likely turn on her friends as her enemies, and she couldn’t risk hurting Joshua. Or the others, she thought, only a little belatedly. Besides, she figured Reave was all flash and no substance, though the blood on his knives worried her—who had he been stabbing before this? And where the hell was Zealand? The thoughts fit together uncomfortably well.

  Reave came at her with the knives, and it was just too easy. She stepped in, blocked his knife-strike with her towel-wrapped arm, grabbed his other wrist, turned, and used Reave’s own momentum to plunge the knife into his belly. She pressed down on his arm, expecting to feel the hot spurt of blood against her own stomach, but Reave just grunted and shoved her back. She went, putting her weight on her back foot, bringing her dagger up.

  Reave wrenched the long knife out of his stomach and poked at the dry, open hole. “Bitch,” he said, almost meditatively, and Marla’s heart sank; he wasn’t human, he didn’t bleed, and sticking a knife in him had been like stabbing a loaf of bread. Maybe he was soft enough to tear into pieces, to decapitate and dismember—would that stop him? She’d need a bigger knife, or an axe, or sword, or machete….

  Then the monsters arrived, most the size of large dogs, squishing and lashing and squealing as Hamil’s bodyguards and Rondeau stomped and stabbed and wrestled them. Reave faded back, as if content to let his monsters do their work, but Marla wasn’t going to let him off that easy. It would be hard to get his head off his shoulders using only her dagger of office, but she was up to the challenge.

  “Marla, watch out for Gregor!” Ted shouted, and Marla turned, annoyed that he was still here. Gregor was moving in her direction—he dragged himself over to Nicolette, and reached out to snatch a charm from her hair. Marla swore, and went to stop him, but then Reave was coming at her again, taking advantage of her inattention to stab at her, and it was all she could do to deflect his blows. There was a tinkling crash behind her, and she kicked out at Reave, forcing him back a step, long enough to steal a glance. Gregor had unleashed some little charm of Nicolette’s, and now Hamil was on the ground and groaning, the magic strand that bound Nicolette dropped from his fingers. Nicolette rose and snatched another charm from her hair, dashed it to the ground, and swept up Gregor bodily—she must have given herself a burst of strength. Nicolette ran from the room, carrying her boss, and Marla didn’t have time to be pissed, because Reave was on her again. She dropped and swept his legs out from under him, sending him toppling, but before she could leap on him for the coup de grâce, one of his tentacled nightmare things tangled up her legs and tried to pull her toward its slavering maw. She doubled over and hacked at the tentacles—wait, were they tongues?—with her dagger, severing them and making the monster squeal and draw back on itself.

  Struggling to her feet, she turned back to Reave, and saw Joshua walking up to him as if they were old friends. Reave looked startled as Joshua laid a hand on his shoulder, leaned in, and whispered in his ear. Reave’s eyes glazed over, and he began to nod. Marla felt a brief stab of jealousy and mentally kicked herself—being mixed up with a lovetalker led to all kinds of inappropriate feelings. Once she pushed the jealousy down she felt relieved—Joshua was lovetalking Reave, distracting him. She beckoned to Ted, and they helped get Hamil to his feet. Rondeau joined them, his outfit spattered with black-and-green streaks of nightmare blood. The two bodyguard meat-golems held off the remaining nightmares. Marla hesitated in the doorway, but Hamil said, “Joshua can take care of himself. Come on, we should go, before this gets any worse.” Reluctantly—she hated leaving Joshua even more than she hated leaving a fight unfinished—she followed. Reave didn’t even glance after them.

  “I’m sorry, Joshua just wouldn’t leave,” Ted said as they hurried to the elevators. “He said he could help, and I told him it was too dangerous, but he insisted.”

  “I guess it’s good he stayed,” Marla said, “or some of us might not have made it out of there alive.”

  “That was pretty much a disaster, wasn’t it?” Hamil said, puffing to keep up.

  “We’ve had finer hours,” Rondeau said. “But once we get hold of Genevieve tomorrow, we’ll be able to shut this guy Reave down, yeah? Dr. Husch can pump Genevieve full of heavy-duty sedatives, put her down so deep she won’t dream, and Reave will just fade like…well, like a bad dream in the morning, right?”

  “I hope so,” Marla said. “If we find Genevieve before Reave does, yeah. I’m just glad Langford is better at divination than Gregor is.”

  They rode down to the lobby, Hamil lamenting the likely loss of his meat-golems, hoping they might survive in enough of a state to stumble home. Their death would be traumatic to their operators, too. As they left the building, Marla’s phone rang; it was Joshua.

  “Are you okay?” she said.

  “I had to promise Reave I’d sit at his right hand when he takes over the world, but yes, I’m okay. Are you out?”

  “We just left the building.”

  “I’m halfway downstairs now. I convinced Reave that he can destroy you at his leisure, and told him I’d meet him later.” He paused. “Men really will believe anything, won’t they?”

  “You’re a treasure. Come back to the club as soon as you can.” She snapped her phone shut. “That wasn’t exac
tly a win,” she said, climbing into the Bentley. “But we haven’t lost yet.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Joshua is the greatest guy ever, even though he totally ignored your order to leave, and never mind that I got spider crab squid goop all over my pants,” Rondeau said. He sighed. “Of course, the worst thing is, whenever I see Joshua, I think he really is the greatest guy ever.”

  “Jealousy is such an ugly thing,” Marla said. “Envy, too.”

  Nicolette hid with her boss in their deepest subbasement, the equivalent of a well-appointed bomb shelter. “That was close,” she said, working on Gregor’s knee. Her chaos magic wasn’t just about increasing disorder, it was about shifting disorder, and tilting the balance. She drained off the chaos of his shattered knee into a series of highly ordered crystals piled in the corner. As the crystals shattered and snapped into dust, his knee jumped back into place, his wounds knitting, stealing the order from the crystals. It worked fast—Nicolette was positively thrumming with power. There was a lot of uncertainty for her to feed on in the current situation in Felport.

  Gregor grunted as his knee realigned. “There’s no turning back now,” he said, flexing the leg. “Marla knows I’m her enemy, and I’m sure she’ll get word to the other sorcerers soon. If Reave doesn’t win…” He shook his head. “He has to win. We have to find Genevieve before Marla does.”

  “We can’t outpredict Langford,” Nicolette said. “He does some seriously weird mojo, you know? I don’t know how we’ll locate Genevieve before he does.”

  “I know I can’t predict where Genevieve will be as accurately as Langford can,” Gregor said, “but I can predict what Langford will predict.”

  Nicolette frowned. “You taught me yourself that you can’t predict predictions—even trying to do so introduces too much uncertainty into the system, and the results are lousy, worse than plain guessing would be. Right?”