by T. A. Pratt
He’s a ghoul, Marla thought, a vampire, something from an old story. She strained to keep her face composed. A monster, eating hearts to survive... and judging by that already-reopened wound, he needed to dine frequently.
Somerset looked almost fondly at Upchurch’s body. “I wish I hadn’t killed him. He must have been a remarkable magician, to raise me without a heart, even if I do have this... craving.”
“You killed Sauvage, too,” Marla said. “Didn’t you?”
“He ate my heart,” Somerset said querulously.
Marla’s surprise at his knowledge must have shown on her face. “A little bird told me that,” he said, smiling horribly. “I thought if I ate Sauvage’s heart it might restore me to my natural state, balance the scales.” He looked over the platform’s edge, absently stroking Marla’s cloak with knobby fingers. “His heart gave me strength, but it did not heal me. I also wanted to regain the dagger and my old position as chief of chiefs. Sauvage could not refuse my challenge. My birds helped. They remember me.”
The only creatures Somerset had ever shown mercy to were the birds, Marla remembered. He looked at her, his eyes turning hypnotically, and Marla realized they moved in perfect synchronicity with the wheeling birds. “You have my dagger,” he said. “I watched you take it.”
“Why didn’t you take it yourself, reclaim your place?” Marla shivered in a gust of wind. The night was too cold to go without cloak or duster.
“I’m dead,” Somerset said. “A new kind of monster, yes, but still a monster.” He held up his hand. A red stripe marred the palm, bone showing through in the middle. “When I touched the dagger, it burned me. Dead things may not handle such objects, I think. A dead thing cannot be the city’s guardian. I howled with rage, I assure you.”
“I believe it. Your point?”
“I saw you take the dagger, and the fat man’s brat saw, too, and spread the word that you’re Sauvage’s successor. That gave me the idea. I sent my birds to bring you, but you resisted. I didn’t know you’d come on your own.”
“The point, Somerset.” She thought she knew. She didn’t think he’d accept a polite refusal, either.
“Be my puppet.” He grinned, his teeth the color of the bone showing through his palm. “You aren’t fit to rule, you don’t understand the intrigues, the secret councils of the great sorcerers, but I can guide you. You’re just strong enough to be a convincing figurehead. You’ll rule in name, but I’ll rule in fact. You’ll be well compensated, Marla.”
She shook her head. “Things aren’t the same anymore, Somerset. You ran everything in the city in your day, and it’s not done that way anymore. The sorcerers are autonomous... sure, Sauvage had some ultimate authority, but he didn’t exercise it often. It’s more of a laissez-faire system these days.”
“I’ve come back to stop that kind of weakness,” Somerset said. “Accept my proposal.”
“If I refuse?” she said, outwardly cool, inwardly terrified. She could never do as he asked, pay fealty to a monster, implement his famously cruel policies on the city’s secret masters. She didn’t have it in her to be a puppet for anyone, especially not Somerset.
“If you refuse, I’ll eat your heart.”
Marla could do a lot without her cloak. She couldn’t beat him, but she could get away. “I decline,” she said, and stepped backward off the platform. Somerset screeched above her.
Falling, Marla focused all her will and wrenched space, tearing the air open beneath her. With a sickening lurch she passed into the in-between place, where she hit the ground running. There were things worse than Somerset here, which made this kind of travel horribly dangerous. Monsters with too many eyes and spiny limbs surged from the earth, hissing, speaking in nearly human voices. Marla tried not to look at them—they didn’t fit together, their anatomies were absurd, they had no more logic than nightmares—and wrenched open another hole in the air, this one back to the real world.
Marla emerged in a dark basement beneath a ruined building, one of her old boltholes, and the portal closed behind her.
The pain hit her immediately. Humans weren’t designed for that kind of travel—maybe nothing in the universe was—and even a few seconds spent in-between took a hideous physical toll. Marla fell to her hands and knees and vomited black bile, then collapsed, shaking violently, and passed out.
The next day, still recovering from her trip in-between but strong enough to keep it from showing, Marla stood before Hamil. He sat in a huge armchair upholstered in electric blue velvet, and his clothes were wine-red with blue buttons. Tufts of gray hair poked from the sides of his otherwise bald head. “My liege,” he said. “So good of you to come.”
Marla resisted the urge to touch the dagger at her waist. “I don’t want fealty. I want help.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How may I be of service?”
“The one who holds the dagger is the city’s guardian, right?”
He nodded. “When something threatens the city as a whole, the dagger’s owner traditionally musters defense. That doesn’t happen often.” He looked pointedly at the clock on the wall. “What can I do for you, besides answering simple questions?”
“You sent for me yesterday,” she reminded him.
“And my messenger never returned. I trust you didn’t do anything to... delay him?”
Marla sensed his tension, and knew she had to step carefully. “I had nothing to do with what happened to him. I’ll tell you what I know, but why did you send for me in the first place?”
“To see if you were worth making an ally. The word is that you have a sorcerer’s strength, but none of the usual connections, the followers and sycophants. Your challenging Sauvage came as a surprise. People are curious, Marla. They wonder if there’s more to you than they know.”
She nodded. Garnish the big lie with a truth, and hope he swallows the whole thing. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know about the high councils, the businesses, the nets of intrigue. I thought I’d have time to learn after I took Sauvage’s place, but I see now that I went about things all wrong. I want your help. Not to be a figurehead for you, but to benefit from your knowledge and experience.”
“A consigliere,” he muttered, thoughtful. “High advisor. A very old position, but most sorcerers are too paranoid to fill it these days.” His eyes sharpened, locking on her with a nearly physical power. “You didn’t hurt my messenger?”
“No, but that’s part of why I need your help, why I can’t wait to learn things on my own. A flock of birds killed your messenger. I fought them off, but I couldn’t save him. I investigated the birds, trying to find out who sent them, and... well... A necromancer has revived Somerset.” She told him about finding Somerset, about his ghoulish nature, about trying to stop him on her own and losing her cloak.
“That’s... quite an unlikely story. You understand I’ll have to look into it?” Hamil gestured to a few of his brats, who scampered away. “But if it’s true...”
“Somerset constitutes a threat to the city, right?”
“Yes. If it’s true, I’ll be your consigliere... and we’ll take care of this. If we can.”
That evening the gathered sorcerers regarded Marla with expressions ranging from contempt to courtesy to curiosity. Gregor, chief sorcerer of the South side and head of the drug trade, smirked at her, sitting on an aluminum chair he’d brought himself. Susan Wellstone, one of the few prominent female magicians, regarded Marla dispassionately with her mismatched eyes, one green, one blue. She was a fashion plate, blonde and elegantly dressed, in contrast to Marla’s chopped-short reddish hair and ragbag clothes. Marla didn’t know the other half-dozen sorcerers by sight, only by reputation. They filled the sparsely furnished room at the back of Juliana’s Bar, a place traditionally used as the site for such councils.
Marla introduced herself, but at Hamil’s direction she didn’t show the red-wrapped dagger. “A real leader doesn’t need to flaunt her power,” he’d explained. “They all know y
ou have the dagger; that’s enough.”
Marla told the sorcerers about Somerset, and Hamil confirmed her story. His spies had reported a scuttling monstrosity living on the broken tower’s upper floors, a monster that communed with the birds.
The sorcerers argued, but Marla remained firm, Hamil patient, and in the end the sorcerers agreed to bind together and strike against Somerset.
After they departed, Marla slumped in her chair. She’d worked for some of those people before, but never faced them as equals, and she remained continually aware of the false nature of her position. She hadn’t bested Sauvage, and she didn’t deserve to call a meeting like this, but she felt a personal need to deal with Somerset. After that... Hamil was a good man. She’d pass the dagger to him. Abdications were rarer than assassinations, but not unheard of.
“You did well,” Hamil said. “You didn’t let them intimidate you.”
“They intimidated me, all right.”
“It didn’t show. You could be a good leader.”
She laughed bitterly.
“Leaders lead,” he said simply. “There’s no magic to it; they simply do what must be done. We’ll see if you’re capable of that.” He stood ponderously, two of his brats rushing to assist him. “We strike at dawn tomorrow. Get some rest.”
Marla went home. She looked at the dagger for a long time, touching the flat of the blade, leaving fingerprints on the red tape. That red was Sauvage’s color, as bright blue was Hamil’s. Marla had no colors of her own. She’d remain a pretender long enough to stop Somerset, but then she’d pass the burden to someone more deserving.
Marla slept, and dreamed of spiders with purple wings.
The other sorcerers didn’t come personally, but they sent their best, and Marla was impressed, seeing them all gathered together at the base of the unfinished skyscraper. Partridge, the bald, scarred poltergeister from Susan Wellstone’s crew, twitched with uncontrolled tics. Gregor’s dark-haired twin nephews, no more than fourteen-years-old, were already renowned sadists and could inflict pain with their thoughts. Mr. Beadle sent his tall red-haired torcher, drugged into dull obedience and led by a polite attendant in a business suit. The torcher was pryokinetic, and would ignite anything she perceived as a threat; her attendant could rouse and direct her fury. They joined Marla at the McCandless tower at dawn, along with representatives from the other sorcerers. Hamil was the only sorcerer who didn’t send a representative. Instead, he’d agreed to dispose of Somerset’s body, afterward, in such a way that he could never be revived.
“Ready?” Marla said. They just looked at her, and she realized the question was absurd. These people were weapons, engines of destruction. She had only to activate them. “Let’s bring him down.”
The poltergeister stared at the building until the iron framework began to hum, rattle, and finally twist. He gritted his teeth, sweat rolling down his head, running down the scarred channels in his cheeks. His own body vibrated, resonating with the skyscraper like a tuning fork humming with a harp strinkg.
Looking up, Marla saw a flash of purple and white, her own cloak, and then Somerset jumped from eight stories up.
He landed in a crouch, Marla’s cloak fastened at his throat, the white showing. His chest wound looked smaller, partly healed by the cloak’s magic.
The shriek of twisting metal stopped, and Gregor’s nephews ran toward Somerset, their grating voices rising in unison. Somerset flinched as they hurled painful incantations, but then his pink skull-face smoothed out. His birds streaked from the sky, hundreds of them, wings back, beaks and claws pointed down.
The torcher’s attendant stuck his charge in the arm with a long hatpin and shouted “Birds!” The startled torcher looked up and screamed, the loneliest sound Marla had ever heard, and the falling birds burst into flame.
Brilliant, Marla thought in horror, now they’re firebombs.
The torcher went quiet, and the flames vanished. The birds, reduced to blackened lumps, thumped on the ground all around them. Marla glanced at the torcher, and her attendant waved with a grin, holding up the hypodermic he’d used to sedate her.
Marla turned back in time to see Somerset rip open the chest of one of Gregor’s nephews and pull out his heart. Somerset squeezed the organ, then bit down on it, as if biting into an orange. Grinning through blood and meat, looking at Marla, Somerset reversed the cloak.
A purple shadow sheathed him, and he tore off the other boy’s screaming head.
“Kill him!” Marla shrieked.
The Leather Boys, Sharkface Joe, and the Bloody Widows all attacked for Somerset. Their powers were not subtle—they could kill violently, emphatically, with glee.
They provided no challenge for Somerset, especially not while he wore Marla’s cloak with the purple showing. He tore through them like tissue paper.
The poltergeister, the torcher, and her attendant retreated, knowing they had greater worth at a distance. Fire danced around Somerset as the torcher screamed, but the flames couldn’t penetrate the purple shadow. Somerset danced and whirled to avoid the poltergeister’s thrown rocks and hunks of metal.
We’re losing, Marla thought, shocked. Somerset was destroying these people, with her cloak’s help. She’d led them to disaster.
Marla couldn’t save them, but she could join them... and maybe keep things from getting worse.
“Somerset!” she shouted, and held up Sauvage’s dagger. “You’ll never have this!” She spat toward him. “You’re dead! Find a hole and crawl in!”
Somerset leapt at her with a snarl, and Marla wrenched space again, stepping through the potentially deadly in-between.
Marla couldn’t do what Somerset had done to her, couldn’t reach out and tug off the cloak pin and neutralize him. It would be like sticking her arm into a threshing machine, and anyway, Somerset was lethal even without the cloak.
But with the cloak, he had to act in certain ways. Marla knew well the feel of that addictive madness, that single-minded ferocity, which came from wearing the purple. Somerset had taken strength from the cloak, and a tremendous capacity for violence, but he’d lost subtlety and caution. Marla had done the same thing, many times.
So she knew he’d follow her through the in-between space, that he would chase her without thought. She paused in that strange gray null-place, despite the seething mass of tentacles and teeth surging toward her, and she held the portal a moment longer than necessary, so Somerset could pass through, blind to anything but the thought of destroying her.
Marla passed through the other side, into her bolthole in the basement. She could have closed the portal behind her, trapping Somerset in-between long enough for the monsters to devour him, perhaps. When the cramps and weakness hit her, she wished she’d done just that, but she’d worried that Somerset would find his way out again, and of course she wanted her cloak back... but ultimately, she’d held the portal open because a leader couldn’t simply close a door and hope for the best. A leader had to see things through.
So Marla held the portal open, a ragged oval of pearl light in the dark. She swayed in the dark basement, fumbling for the dagger at her waist as her gorge rose and the strength drained from her body. It only took a few seconds for Somerset to come emerge from the portal in pursuit, shrieking and furious, baring his teeth, draped in purple shadow.
Marla let the portal close, and at the same time she lifted the dagger, bracing her arm and holding the blade head-high, parallel to the floor.
Somerset ran headfirst into the blade. The dagger had burned his hand, and now it burned through his face, the blade glowing dully red in Marla’s hand. Somerset screamed but couldn’t stop his forward motion, and as he fell forward the dagger cut through the middle of his face, slicing his skull off from just above his lips.
The purple shadow that enveloped him disappeared, and he flailed, stumbling over a pile of bricks and concrete. His body twitched for a moment, then lay still.
Marla dropped the dagger. She looked at the top
half of Somerset’s head, his pinwheel eyes turning slowly, slowly, then stopping.
Marla collapsed. When she woke some time later, still weak, she crawled to her cloak and put it on, white side out. That gave her enough strength to cut Somerset’s body into pieces. She felt a sudden, strange urge to shove his severed head into the still-gaping chest cavity, but she didn’t. Instead, she crawled out of the basement, found a nearby pay phone, and called Hamil.
“Acceptable losses,” Hamil said, leaning toward her at the banquet table. “You needn’t worry about the ones who died. None of the sorcerers truly resent you. Somerset would have cost them more than a few assassins in the long run... and I told them that if they had gone to deal with Somerset personally, as you did, they might not have lost anyone. You’ve already made a name for yourself as a courageous and clever chief of chiefs, and they all feel vaguely guilty for not being there personally. Lesson one, my liege: Pride is an engine, and so is shame.”
She nodded, still weak from two in-between jumps in such a short time, even with her cloak’s healing help. All around her, street children sat at long tables, noisily eating meat pies. Hamil had ground Somerset’s remains into a fine powder, and each of these children consumed a tiny portion of the sorcerer’s body. Hamil assured her the remains were harmless in such small quantities, and this way, no one would ever be able to reassemble Somerset’s parts.
The time had come for Marla to pass her burden to Hamil. Not to come clean about the fact that she hadn’t killed Sauvage—she didn’t trust Hamil that much, and the sorcerers would resent being called to battle by someone with no right to command them—but simply to tell him she couldn’t do it, wasn’t cut out to be a leader. She opened her battered knapsack, where she’d shoved the dagger after cutting up Somerset. Blood and a foul, black substance had covered the knife, and she hadn’t felt up to cleaning it. Maybe she should wipe it first, before handing it over... but no. Better to be done with this. Hamil would be happy enough to take the dagger, she thought, dirty or not.
