Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9) (11 page)

Marla shook her head. “I can’t ask them to help me with this. Cole’s a friend. Marzi’s an acquaintance. You’re....” She scowled. “Are you going to make me say it?”

“You’re my family, too,” Rondeau said. “Anything you need, always.”

“That was uncharacteristically earnest and sincere,” Marla said.

He shrugged. “I thought you were lost forever. Turns out that’s the way to make me miss you.”

“Even so, guys... you should know my ultimate goal here. I want to overthrow the new god of Death and take his kingdom away from him. You’re family, okay, but I can’t even ask
you
to do that. Which isn’t to say I won’t take volunteers.”

“I have followed you to Hell before, Mrs. Mason,” Pelham said. “I will do so again.”

“I’m not sure the ‘Mrs.’ applies anymore, since my husband died.”

“Widows are addressed by the same title they used when their husbands were alive, Mrs. Mason.”

“Suit yourself.” She relaxed into the couch, or tried to. Her muscles still ached from the months of working in a diner, being on her feet day after day, and even a long session in Rondeau’s palatial shower this morning hadn’t washed all the kinks away. She could have used magic to soothe the hurt, but she wanted the reminder of all the time she’d lost. She tried not to think of the collective hours of suffering her period of amnesia had caused the denizens of the underworld.

“I’ll go, too,” Bradley said. “I’ve only really been to the underworld once, and I didn’t get to see much of the place.”

“You know I hate to be left out,” Rondeau said. “Count me in.”

Marla smiled. She’d expected them all to say yes, but it was gratifying to be right. “Thanks. With your help, I’m only facing almost certain defeat, instead of absolutely certain defeat. I should tell you what happened, after I saw you all last. How I went from the reigning monarch of the land of the dead to the queen of nothing. After that business with the Outsider in Felport, I was supposed to meet Bradley and Marzi at their hotel. I decided to take a shortcut through Hell, because it’s safer than teleporting and faster than walking or taking a cab. But when I opened the door to the underworld...”

•

Marla stepped through the office door, leaving her angry friends behind. They disapproved of how she’d dealt with Nicolette, freezing the witch into a lump of magical ice, keeping her in stasis forever—they thought Nicolette deserved her chance at redemption, but Marla had made the hard decision, and done what she thought was best, just like she
always
did. If they didn’t like it, they could fuck off.

Her mind was a seething mass of misgivings, doubts, and even a treacherous thread of something that might have been regret –

But when she stepped through the door, cool serenity descended as always, and the part of her that fretted about the opinions of mortals receded into a tiny unilluminated portion of her mind. Her intellect became cool, vast, and not even remotely amused. Marla Mason was no more: she was the dread queen of the underworld now, the Bride of Death, and it was just a shame there was still time left on her mortal month in the world, because there was so much
work
to be done here below. Still, a bargain was a bargain, and had to be upheld.

The queen paused in the foyer that wasn’t really a foyer at all. The walls were cracked, the ceiling a moldy ruin, the floor pitted and splintered. She’d noticed the disarray the last time she passed through the underworld, but hadn’t thought much of it—the underworld’s appearance was just a convenience, after all, because it had to look like
something
. Now, though, she could sense a deeper wrongness. Something about her realm was... broken.

She looked around, and the walls dissolved, shimmered, and became her throne room, a cavern of obsidian, onyx, and black marble. There were two chairs there, carved of sapphire and emerald. Once upon a time, one chair had been smaller than the other—the smaller chair belonged to Death’s consort, a mortal raised to godhood to rule beside a creature more purely divine, to temper the cold reign of death with a spark of human warmth—but the queen had put a stop to
that
nonsense. She and her husband were co-regents, equal halves of a whole....

But Death wasn’t here, now, and his emerald chair lay toppled on its side. She reached out for him, tried to sense him, which was normally as easy as sensing the position of her own left arm.

Nothing. Where could he be? Was
he
out, walking the Earth, for some reason? He’d come to Earth to help her, during the battle with the Outsider, but what other business did he have among the living?

She realized the compulsion to return to Earth, normally so overwhelming when it was time to fulfill her bargain and spend a month as a mortal, was gone. She felt no pull toward the mortal realm at all—as if the deal she’d struck to spend six months of each year on Earth had been broken. The bargain she’d made with her husband, Death. But what could break that arrangement?
“Marla.”

The queen spun. There was another god here. That happened, sometimes: they could reach this place more easily than mortals, by passing through certain places that meant death to humans. Volcanoes, trenches in the deep oceans, miles-down caves teeming with blind monsters. The other gods came for favors, or to socialize, but Death and his queen routinely turned them away, too busy with their business overseeing the world’s cycles of death and rebirth—without which there would have been no gods at all.

“I don’t have time,” she began, and then recognized him. “Wait. You’re Reva. The god of the lost and displaced.”

Reva bowed his head, not that he had a head, exactly. His form was purer, here, than when he appeared on Earth, and he was a man-shaped fog of mist and longings. “I am. I was... not friends with your husband, exactly... but acquaintances, certainly.”

“You
were
? You aren’t any more? Did you have a falling out?”

Reva shook his head. “Marla. The Outsider... when Death opened a door from this realm in the Outsider’s presence, on that beach in San Francisco, the monster could sense the path to this place. The Outsider could find the passageways, and pry them open, and pass through. After I encountered the Outsider I could sense his actions, you see, because he was an exile himself, one of
my
creatures, as far from home as it is possible for anything to be. I felt him come here, and I pursued, to warn your husband, but I was too late.” Reva sat down on the stony floor and put his head in his hands. “I’m sorry.”

The rings
. In Felport, fighting the Outsider, she’d noticed it wearing ostentatious, ornate rings. The monster hadn’t worn jewelry in their earlier encounters, but she’d thought the rings were merely an ornament, a refinement of its human costume.

Her own husband, when he chose to appear in human form, often appeared wearing rings, each holding a precious stone from the wealth below the surface, each gem imbued with strange magics. The Outsider’s increased power, its new abilities, in the final battle... It had stolen those powers from Death, consuming the god and gaining his strength.

“He is dead?” the queen rasped. “My husband is dead?” She touched the necklace at her throat, where her wedding ring dangled.

Reva didn’t raise his head. “You’re the only god of Death, now, Marla. I’m so sorry. This realm is yours alone, now... and it’s incomplete. I don’t know what happens next—if you should take a mortal consort, or if another Death will rise to replace your husband, or –”

In the back of her mind, the mortal part of Marla, the part that still longed to do good in the world, to care for her friends, to make amends, to make a difference, to kill monsters, to
do better
, howled in agony at the loss of her husband, and in fear at what the uncertain future might bring.

The greater part of her, the part that was now the only ruler of the land of the dead, howled in agonies of her own.

The agony of being cut in half, and left alone, to reign in Hell.

She snarled at Reva. “
Go
! Begone from this place!”

“There’s no need to kill the messenger, Marla –”

“Don’t call me that. Marla is a seed. I am the tree that grew from her. Her time is gone. New burdens have been laid on me, and I no longer have the luxury of bothering myself with mortal concerns. Begone, or I
will
kill you.”

Reva held up his hands. “If there’s anything I can do to help you, just let me know.”

“You are the god of exiles. I am not an exile. I am
home
.” She turned her back on him, and he wisped away, back toward the volcanic vent or undersea cave he’d used to come here.

The queen trembled, clenching her fists, her diamond-sharp nails drawing blood. Where the droplets fell, dark red flowers sprang up from the floor, and she howled and stomped them into the stone. Her husband had always handled the rebirth parts of their reign: he was the one who brought back the sun and raised the flowers from their slumber. She was the black-tongued destroyer, bedecked with a belt of skulls, bringer of ice and winter. But now, flowers grew for her, because she was the only one, because she was the
all
.

She gestured, summoning the shade of a necromancer named Ayres who’d once thought to command the dead, and even made demands of Death himself. He appeared as an old man in a black undertaker’s suit, head bowed, duly deferent. “You have my sympathies on your loss, majesty,” he murmured.

“Your sympathies are unnecessary. What is the state of my kingdom?”

“The dead are uneasy in their afterlives, but nothing has fallen apart; the center holds. An untended garden does not turn immediately to wilderness, and the same is true here. The realm you and your husband built is strong.”

“You will be my steward, for now,” the queen said. “You are duly empowered. Set to right those things that have fallen out of true, and if you encounter something beyond your powers, tell me.”

“Yes, majesty.” She could sense his glee at the newfound responsibility and the powers that came with it, but she’d chosen him because he’d been a man of little imagination, and death had not changed him: he would do as he was told and wouldn’t dare try to exceed his remit.

She looked at the toppled chair, and tears of blood welled in her eyes. She dashed them away. There was no time for mourning. She gestured, and the chair settled itself upright again. Let his throne be a memorial. Another gesture, and the cavern became blackness in all directions, full of stars, each star a mortal life. Some burned bright, and others guttered. She and Death had largely automated the process of death, and the migration of souls had continued even in the brief absence of a guiding mind. There were always complex situations, though: snagged souls, troubled passings—and she spent an interval setting those problems to right, easing paths, unsnarling tangled lifelines, and knocking down the flimsy magical structures of a few sorcerers who believed they’d found ways to confound, or capture, or elude death (the cessation of life) and/or Death (the deity who oversaw those processes).

When all the lights were taken care of, she brought back the throne room, and collapsed onto her own chair. She and Death used to take turns decorating their palace, expressing their will to create surroundings decadent or severe, Gothic or whimsical, as the mood struck. Now her unconscious mind (for even gods have hidden seas of thought) had decorated her throne room for a funeral, with red curtains, shrouded mirrors, black-blossomed flowers, and scores of candelabras.

She put her face in her hands and sobbed, allowing herself a few moments of wracking, ruined release. Death. Her Death. She thought of the first time she’d seen him, a swaggering tough, newly birthed from the primal womb of chaos where the gods grew. He’d come to threaten the mortal Marla Mason, to take her dagger of office, which unbeknownst to her was actually Death’s terrible sword, won from a previous incarnation of Death by a sorcerer long years before. The Walking Death, they’d called him then, because he walked in the world. He’d worn his rings, and his sharp suit, and his blade of a smile, and he’d threatened her city, casually exerting cruel power to make her bend to his will.

But Marla Mason didn’t bend, and had a streak of the contrarian as wide as the river Styx. She’d resisted, and so Death had exiled her from Felport, and taken over the place as his own, holding an entire city hostage. Rather than meet his demands, Marla had chosen to invade Hell, taking her friend Pelham to the underworld with her, planning to seize control of the underworld and hold
it
for ransom instead. An audacious plan, and one that didn’t work out at all the way she’d intended. Before their fight was done, she found herself married to Death himself, and transformed into a god-by-proxy, because she needed access to that level of power. Then she’d used Death’s terrible sword, a blade capable of cutting through time and dreams and abstract concepts, and performed surgery on the smug new god: she’d cut away the Walking Death’s cruelty, his caprice, his savagery, and left behind only the parts of him that were
good
: his mercy, his sense of duty, his sense of humor, his flirtations, his gift for dry understatement. She’d carved him into a man she could love, and into a god fit to rule the land of the dead.

Who said you couldn’t change a man? You just needed the right metaphysical tools.

What began as a marriage of magical necessity turned into a love match, in time. Death had sometimes joined her in the mortal world for travels and adventures. She’d learned the ways of gods in the underworld with him. They made love as mortals did, and as gods did, and if pressed, she couldn’t have said which she preferred. Both the mortal Marla Mason and the dread queen of the underworld were closed-off creatures, unwilling to let anyone come too close, devoted to protecting themselves so they could better protect others. But Death had been the greatest exception to that, the only one to truly breach her defenses. He had become the home of her heart.

Now he was gone. She was a widow. A jagged half of a broken circle, with a realm to rule alone.