Dead Reign (32 page)

“Marla Mason?” The Walking Death struggled to his feet. “You—this can’t be. I banished you.”

“Yeah. About that. I came back. Son.” She drew the sword, and Death actually hissed, like a cat. “I came to cut you down.”

“You met the Sitting Death, then. I was afraid you might discover my secret, that my predecessor still reigns, when I heard you went to the underworld. Clearly Booth failed to stop you.”

“He tried. Just like you tried to take my city. Remember how I told you that was a mistake?”

“The throne should be mine,” Death said, anguish in his voice. “I emerged from the darkness, knowing my purpose, knowing my place, but I was attacked when I entered the throne room. He should have stood up, shaken my hand, wished me well, but instead he threw me out. You allied yourself with that monster?”

“You should’ve told me what you needed the dagger for. I might have agreed to help you.”

“It was not mortal business,” he said frostily.

“But you had to be an asshole instead. Frankly, I don’t like the idea of letting
either
of you rule down there. You’re an asshole, and he’s pretty much insane.”

“The land of the dead is fragmenting,” Death said. “Some of the spirits are developing their own autonomy. There are regions of the underworld that are not safe for
me.
And my father cannot leave his throne to take those regions in hand—he cannot rule, because he is too busy protecting his reign. But his reign is already over. It’s dead. It’s rotting. I just needed the dagger—the sword—to cut him out. He is a cancer, and reality will suffer if he’s not removed. Even his marriage to you won’t stabilize things completely, not for long. Please. It’s not too late. Give me the sword.”

“You’re cruel, vain, vicious, and egotistical.” Marla glanced at the cages hanging from the ceiling. “You display your enemies like party favors. You don’t deserve to lead, either.”

Death snarled and attacked her.

Marla lifted the sword, and using powers she didn’t quite understand, she cut through time itself, and made her enemy hang in mid-stride, much as he’d suspended her before banishing her, though Death was not conscious, as she had been. Marla walked around him. One clean blow. Strike off his head, fulfill her arrangement with the Sitting Death, get her city back, and try not to think about what awaited her after death.

But she’d just traveled through the underworld. She’d faced every life she’d ever taken. Some, she felt guilty about. Some, she felt justified in. But all of them troubled her, more than she would ever let anyone know. Did she want to kill again? She was now the queen of death, but the idea of spilling more blood did not appeal.

The sword hummed in her hand, and she thought about what Cole had said. The sword could cut through
anything.

This Death was a bad guy.
I could carve a better man out of a banana.
She didn’t want the Walking Death, cruel and vain as he was, to win. But maybe…

Maybe I can just cut out the bad parts.
Marla let her goddess vision fill her. She could see now a series of overlapping auras, in colors as diverse as the rooms at the ball. His cruel sense of humor, red. His insecurity, green. His sadism, black.

Carefully, with deft strokes, Marla began to cut out the most terrible parts of his character, carving away his hatred and his smugness and his villainy, like cutting the bad parts out of an apple, the moldy spots off a block of cheese. She couldn’t
add
things—not kindness, not wisdom, nothing—but perhaps, like pruning back a tree, he could grow stronger, better, and more healthy after she was done. Finally she stood back, examined her handiwork, and nodded. This sword…she could do amazing things with this sword. Go to the Blackwing Institute and cut the crazy out of the inmates there. Cut up the hatred in her enemies and make them support her. Slice off threats before they even became threats. Eradicate pedophilia, pyromania, and the more annoying forms of political dissent. She could make the world in her image, and it would be good.

She waved the sword, and time resumed, but Death did not attack her. He swayed. “You changed me,” he said dully. “You…you…”

“Made you suitable to rule,” Marla said, and tossed him the sword. He caught it, hilt first. “Take it. Go down there and kill the Sitting Death. It’s just a loan, though. I’ll want that blade back. I have plans for it.”

“I can’t bring this sword back to you,” Death said.

“The fuck you can’t. You have to. It still belongs to the chief sorcerer of Felport. I’m not relinquishing it.”

“You must relinquish it,” he said, gently. “You changed me, Marla. You made me better. You made me a better person than
you
are, and you know it. If you had this sword in your hands, here, in the world…you would have the powers of a god, but you are still a mortal, and so you would not be bound by the rules of a god.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe my father gave you such power. It proves he’s gone mad. Why, you could use this to change people, to change whole populations, to make the world your slave.”

Marla shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t want slaves,” she muttered. “I just wanted to make some adjustments.”

“You know what absolute power does. I will keep this. I will have a dagger made for you, which has the same powers this did, in human hands—to cut through ghosts, to cut through all matter, but without the true sword’s terrible capabilities.” He leaned forward then and kissed her full on the lips, and though he’d startled her, Marla didn’t draw back. “You have your city, Ms. Mason. Be good to her.” He bowed, and then stepped sideways, through nothing, away.

Marla stood, stunned, for a moment. It had worked. She wished she’d kept the sword a little longer, made some fixes, but…

Around her, the founding fathers (and mothers) were clapping. She’d forgotten they were there. The fiercest-looking one of the bunch came up to her and shook her hand, which was a bit like shaking hands with a skinned eel, all slipperiness and give. “We like a good fight,” he rumbled. “And we like a good kiss. Best Founders’ Ball in years. All those pompous asses running around like fools. Ha! Good show. Good show.”

“Thank you,” she said, then added, “sir.” The ghost clapped her on the shoulder and sauntered away, and the other ghosts went with him, right through a black-draped wall. Marla went to Rondeau, who was just waking up. “Hey there, kid. What’ve you been up to?”

“Marla?” He smiled up at her, and she’d missed that smile, she really had. “I was a revolutionary. I kicked
ass.
”

“I bet you did. You’ll have to fill me in on everything I missed. But first, let’s get this nasty cloak off you, what do you say?”

“I
t was good of you to pardon Viscarro,” Hamil said, sipping a glass of brandy.

Marla looked up from the mess of reports on her desk. “Are you kidding? I
had
to pardon him. He’s the only one—including you—who never swore loyalty to Death. Granted, he hid in his spider hole out of cowardice, but he didn’t outright betray me, like nearly everyone else did. I don’t like having that thing in my highest councils, and if he ever gets that crazy vacant my-humanity-is-gone look in his eye, I’ll have him exterminated. I made him give me the phylactery that holds his soul. He’ll be on his best behavior, believe me.” She shuffled the papers before her. All the sorcerers had submitted explanations to her in writing, trying to cover their asses. She’d had an amazing number of secret conspirators, it seemed—
everyone
was really just spying on Death on her behalf, waiting for contact from the revolutionary force, or acting as sleeper agents, and none of them were actually collaborating with the occupier—oh, heavens, no.

Marla had decreed a general amnesty for all collaborators with Death, in a spirit of forgiveness and goodwill—and also because if she’d banished or jailed or executed all the collaborators, she’d be damn near the only sorcerer left in town. Then she’d gathered a few of the sorcerers she had special concerns about and reminded them that it never, ever, ever paid to back her opponents. Ousting the god of death had given Marla tremendous cachet. Even the irreverent chaos magician, Nicolette, was in awe of her now. None of them knew exactly what she’d done to get rid of Death, but the ghosts of the founding fathers spread increasingly outrageous stories of an epic battle among Rondeau, Marla, and Death, and Marla let the rumors fly. They only enhanced her legend. For the ones who’d actively helped her cause—Rondeau, Beadle, Partridge, Langford, and in their advisory capacities, Ernesto and Hamil—she saved special rewards. Taking a page from the Bay Witch, she offered each and every one of them a favor. That might come back and bite her in the ass at some point, but they’d all risked their lives for her (and Partridge had lost two toes to frostbite), and they deserved boons. The Chamberlain, for her part, was content with the way the party had gone, psychic stink bomb and all, because the founding fathers had enjoyed it—though she was irked that they wanted to see gladiatorial combat incorporated into the next Founders’ Day ball. That, she’d suggested darkly, was going to be
Marla’s
job to organize.

“Things are back to normal, then?” Hamil said. “For our usual values of normal?”

“Pretty much. Except for the goat shit. We forgot we left Ayres’s goat in the conference room. It crapped everywhere and ate the phone. I’m making Rondeau clean it up, but he thinks that should be Bradley’s job, because apprentices live to get dumped on, he says.”

“Ah, yes. Bowman is coming next week, correct?”

“Unless he comes to his senses before then.”

“It will be interesting to meet him, after hearing your stories.” He appeared to contemplate the contents of his brandy glass. “And, of course, though I expect you to rule for many more years, it’s never too early for you to start grooming a successor.”

Marla tapped her fingernails on her desk blotter. “What makes you think I’ve got B in mind for that?”

Hamil shrugged one of his eloquent, tectonic shrugs. “I find that brushes with mortality tend to make chief sorcerers contemplate their legacies.”

“Well, Felport could do worse than B, once he’s all trained up, which will take a while anyway,” Marla said, unwilling to outright confirm Hamil’s suspicions. “He’s kind, he considers things carefully, he’s brave, and after being trained by both a seer like Sanford Cole and an asskicker like me, he should be pretty well-rounded.”

“As I said, I look forward to meeting him, and helping you any way I can. He
will
be your first apprentice, so if you ever need advice on the care and feeding of such—”

Rondeau came in, carrying a long box. “Marla, this package—the, ah, return address here is pretty messed up.”

She looked at the package. She sighed. “Hamil, Rondeau, will you two excuse me?” They withdrew, shutting the door and leaving her alone, and she considered the box. The return address said “Hell,” and Marla figured that didn’t mean Hell, Michigan. She opened the box, and there was her dagger—or, at least, something so similar to her dagger that she couldn’t tell the difference…and neither would anyone else. She tested the edge against an industrial diamond in her desk drawer, and it sliced through the stone neatly. Death had promised it would have the same properties and enchantments as the old dagger. She missed the terrible sword, but maybe she was better off without it.

There was a letter in the box, along with the dagger, written in a rather childish hand. Marla read it. Then she read it again, and swore. She pulled open another desk drawer and rooted around until she found the silver bell the Walking Death had given her when he first banished her. She rang it furiously.

“I was hoping you’d call.” Death strolled in from a door that didn’t usually exist. “Ayres is driving me mad. He still insists he’s alive, even though I got a mirror and showed him the wound in his head. Compliment your Dr. Husch on her cure. The man is fixed in his delusion of life. I’m thinking of sending him to a perfect facsimile of Felport and letting him wander among illusions of all of you, just to calm him—”

“Shut up,” Marla said. “I don’t care about Ayres. Now, what the fuck is this about us being
married
?” She shook the letter at him.

“You married the Sitting Death, Marla.”

“Yes, and I’m a very sad widow woman, since you killed him.”

“The Sitting Death is a title, Marla, not a person. I was the Walking Death when I wandered, but when I took the throne, I became the Sitting Death. As in the
presiding
Death, you see. And, yes, by the laws of the gods, you and I are married. My father and I are, shall we say, magically identical. We were never meant to overlap the way we did. That’s why I couldn’t give you back the dagger when I was done. It’s too dangerous in your hands. You are still the queen of the underworld, though it’s strictly a ceremonial position, for now, while you’re above. Apart from the power to see through illusions at will, you have no more powers than you did before. I think it’s better that way. The arrangement you made with my father stands. At the moment of your death, you will be taken to the underworld, there to rule by my side.” He went down on one knee. “I would have asked for your hand in marriage anyway, if my father had not done so first. You made me what I am today.”

“I don’t want to be the queen of the underworld, a pretty ornament in an uncomfortable chair. I don’t care if spring is especially lush—I like the winter better anyway.”

“My father was not truthful with you, Marla. The position of queen of the underworld is far more than ceremonial. He told you it was a role of no consequence because he was so jealous and possessive of power. You will have great strength, and great responsibilities.”

“Like what?”

He told her. It took a while, and he had to repeat parts of it several times because of her interruptions. When he was done, she stared at him. “You…you’re serious? All that?”

“Yes. But you’ll forget what I just told you, I’m afraid. It might weigh on your mind otherwise. You’re still mortal, for now, and it’s not right for mortals to know such things.”