Dead Reign (30 page)

The rebel becomes the establishment, always, inevitably. People in power come to believe their power is deserved, and not just a quirk of luck, and they convince themselves that power equals wisdom. This guy was violating the laws of the universe because he thought he
knew
better, and who knew what the ultimate consequences would be? The scary thing was, Marla could see where he was coming from. She didn’t think there was anybody more qualified to run Felport than herself. But as nasty as the Walking Death was, this was supposed to be his throne, his realm, and if he were here, he wouldn’t be aboveground, fucking with her city. “Listen, this is nice, but I’m going to take off. I’ll miss the knife, but at least now I know what the fuck is going on. He’s not messing with Felport just because he’s bored, or because he’s pissed that some mortal has his family heirloom. It’s about his life and his future and his place in the world. I can respect that. If the Walking Death gets this dagger, he can come back here and kill you, can’t he? It will transform into a sword in his hand, a terrible sword, and I’ve heard about that sword. It can slice out hope. Carve up dreams. Even kill Death. It won’t work in my hands—I’m only human—but if I give the dagger to the Walking Death, you’re lunch meat, am I right?”

“Don’t threaten me.” His voice was a cold wind.

“You’re supposed to extend me
every courtesy,
right? Then give me the courtesy of an elevator back to the world of the living.”

The Sitting Death laughed—not a creepy titter, just a laugh. “Oh, you’re wonderful, Marla Mason. I wish you’d been alive when I first went looking for a wife. You’re as sharp as my bride was. I didn’t go looking for her, you know. In all my travels, I never found a suitable wife, but my bride fought her way down through the underworld to ask for a boon, and I fell in love with her straightaway.”

“What boon did your wife ask for?” Marla asked, genuinely curious.

The Sitting Death’s face changed. All the liveliness and vigor he’d just shown drained away, and his expression was like the abyss staring back, all emptiness and void. “I don’t remember,” he almost whispered. “When she left, when she moved on, I lost so much, so much of her…I only remember that I miss her.” He shook his head, looked at Marla, and began to nod. “Perhaps we can make an arrangement. I think we can each provide something the other needs.”

“I’m listening.”

“Good. Good. Marla Mason, will you consent to be my bride?”

Marla blinked. “Why the hell would I want to marry you? So I can be first lady of Dustville here?”

“Because if you marry me, you would heal me, I think, and help stabilize things. I might be able to stand up from this chair again in a few years, if you were seated in your throne beside me.”

“Bully for you. What’s in it for me?”

“If you became my bride, you would be something like a god,” he said, sounding saner than he had before. “And your dagger of office would transform into the terrible sword of Death in your hand, and you could use it to return home and slay the Walking Death.”

After Marla’s initial shock, and her understanding of what he was really offering, and why, they negotiated. It took hours, but they finally agreed to terms.

Two pale shades of women emerged and erected a screen of some dark substance that looked like woven smoke, and—though she was no more modest than an alley cat—Marla went behind it. The shades presented her with a pale gray wedding dress and tried to strip her, but she shooed them away and said Pelham would help her dress.

Pelham assisted her with the spiderwebs and moonbeams and dust—it itched, of course it fucking itched—and murmured congratulations. “It’s not how I imagined ever being proposed to,” she said. “Back when I was, oh, ten years old, and occasionally imagined such things.”

“It is certainly a good match,” Pelham said. “Not a love match, no, but an advantageous one, a strategic one, and sometimes people in positions of power like yours must make such decisions.”

“Preaching to the choir, Pelly. But you do know he’s
crazy,
right?”

“Perhaps he only needs the love of a good woman to set him right,” Pelham said.

“And you think that’s me? Right. Let’s get this over with.”

Marla took her place on the hard, unspeakably uncomfortable turquoise throne beside the Sitting Death. Maybe the seat wouldn’t be so uncomfortable once she was, ahem, like unto a god. A shade glided out of the darkness and placed a crown of silver wire and tiny gemstones upon her head.

“Ready, my dear?” The Sitting Death tittered again, and now his other ear was bleeding, too. Marla figured this was a bad idea, but she was faced with a set of difficult choices, and this seemed like the best option at the moment.

“Yes, my…uh, you.”

Pelham and Ayres stood as witnesses for the living and the dead, respectively—though Ayres still insisted he wasn’t dead—and the Sitting Death performed the ceremony himself, intoning words that slithered into Marla’s head and then promptly vanished. Having the bridegroom do the officiating seemed questionable to Marla, but she supposed he made the rules. When the words were done, the cavern rang with thunder, and Marla didn’t feel any different at all.

“Say ‘yes,’” he prompted.

“Right. Yes.”

“Now you are my wife,” he said, and after a long moment’s deliberation, he lifted his right hand from the throne’s arm. The world didn’t end or anything, and he reached over to take her hand. His fingers were incredibly cold. “Marla Mason”—she’d insisted on keeping her last name—”queen of the underworld.”

“In absentia.” Marla hopped down from the throne and rubbed her numb ass. She didn’t feel a bit like a newly minted demi-goddess. “As we agreed. I’m not interested in staying down here with you, not even for six months out of the year.”

“But at your moment of death, Marla Mason, in the fraction of a second before your life departs, I will come for you, and bear you back here, and you
will
sit at my side, for all eternity. Until then, your mere existence will be enough to keep the seasons running their courses. The first night you join me here, we will consummate our union, and that will be the lushest spring in human memory.”

Consummate. Marla wondered if the rest of him was as cold as his hands. “That’s the deal.” Kind of a terrible deal, but you play the cards you’ve got, and make the best hand you can. “Now, how do I get back to Felport?”

“I will arrange transportation.”

“And the banishment won’t work on me anymore?”

The Sitting Death waved his hand. “You are the queen of the underworld. You cannot be banished by your”—he smirked—”stepson, the Walking Death. Would you like a cohort to ride out with you?”

Marla considered. Riding out with Hell at her back sounded good, at first, but then again, was that really the best place to stand in relation to Hell? She thought about how Rome fell, sacked by barbarian mercenaries who were once in the city’s employ. Bringing a horde of hell-spawn to Felport seemed like a bad idea. “No, just me and Pelham. Is there anything I, ah, need to know about…”

“Try it,” the Sitting Death said. “You are not mortal anymore. At least, not
only
a mortal. You are family.”

Marla took the dagger from its sheath, and it changed in her hand, the blade lengthening, the hilt thickening, and now she held a sword in her hand, a long slender shining rapier tipped with a single drop of some yellowish venom. The weapon was beautiful, but simple, the hilt still wound with bands of purple and white electrical tape. It was no heavier than the dagger had been. Marla wasn’t much of a swordswoman, but she thought she’d be able to do some wicked things with this blade.

“With that sword, you can kill the Walking Death, and secure my reign—our reign—forevermore,” the Sitting Death said. “The sword will give you an edge, but my son—our son—is still formidable. Be careful.”

Marla snorted. “I’m not worried about beating him. I could carve a better man out of a banana.”

“I wish I could go myself, but if I leave my throne while the Walking Death lives, he will flow into this spot like air rushing into a vacuum, instantly. So it must be you, my love.”

“Shut up about love, or I might just try cutting
you.
” It was a tempting idea. Widow herself and get the crazy guy out of power. But if she killed the Sitting Death, the other Death would take over, and he was an evil, entitled little fuck. Should she support the old, mad, stagnant regime, or the new, violent, nasty one? Neither one appealed, but she’d made her choice. “Let me get my
real
clothes back on, and then you can send me home.” She swung the blade through the air, and it hummed. She’d go to Felport. She’d kill the Walking Death and let her—shudder—husband retain his power. And then she’d sit down with Hamil and have a very, very serious talk about life-extension. She’d never feared death, not as a concept, but she wasn’t too keen on the notion of sitting forever on a throne made of jewels next to a guy who was, even for a god, pathologically megalomaniacal. Better to put that off as long as possible.

Pelham helped her get dressed, and as she was tying her boots, he whispered, “I knew you’d become an aristocrat.”

“I like you, Pelham. I do. But you better cut out that aristocrat shit, or I might leave you down here.”

Ayres shuffled toward them. “Take me with you, please,” he pleaded. “I don’t like this place. The smell…”

“Nope,” Marla said. And then, after a moment’s reflection, she added, “Fuck you. This is all your fault anyway, Ayres. I’m glad you’re dead.” Not very queenly, she supposed, but she’d resisted the urge to kick his ghostly ass, and that was a little bit genteel, wasn’t it?

“H
ow do I look?” Rondeau struck a pose as best he could, given the fact that they were standing in a damp steam tunnel.

Langford eyeballed him. “Like a man in a white-and-purple cloak. So a bit like a gay Latino Elvis.”

“I like you better when you don’t make jokes.” Rondeau adjusted the silver pin that held the cloak closed at this throat. The pale white side was showing now, the purple lining inside, but with a mental command he could reverse the cloak, and make the purple show. That would turn him into…well, into a badass killing machine, more or less, one capable of soaking up tremendous amounts of damage and dealing out absolutely hellish punishment. He’d seen Marla destroy an armored car with her bare hands once while wearing this cloak. He wouldn’t be able to use it with as much finesse as she did, but he figured he could get the job done.

“I joke when I’m nervous. I get nervous when death is imminent.”

“Just give me, oh, fifteen minutes, then set off the stink bombs, okay?” Rondeau put on a black Zorro mask and shot the cuffs on his ruffled tuxedo. The Founders’ Ball was a grand masquerade this year, which made matters of disguise easy anyway. The cloak was recognizable, but after Marla first became chief sorcerer, when she wore the cloak all the time, several of the suck-ups in sorcerous society had commissioned similar but nonmagical garments, so if anybody noticed, they’d probably assume he was some upstart sorcerer wearing his master’s hand-me-down knockoff. “You think they have those little crab-puff things at this party? I love those things.”

“Perhaps you’ll survive to eat one again someday,” Langford said, which was probably as close as he was going to come to wishing Rondeau luck.

Rondeau proceeded down several branches of the steam tunnels, up a ladder along a vertical shaft, through a hatch, and into a by-god escape tunnel that one of the founding fathers had built from this mansion—more intel from the Chamberlain’s rogue apprentice. The tunnel was well maintained, but currently unoccupied, which was good. Invited guests weren’t likely to pop out of the false back of a coat closet. Rondeau figured once he got mixed in with the milling mass of Felport’s finest, he’d be less noticeable. He hoped.

Rondeau came out of an empty closet and carefully closed the false panel behind him. He wasn’t familiar with the Chamberlain’s mansion, but the party was in full swing already, so he just followed the noise, going down marble hallways until he encountered a group of young apprentices lounging in a corridor. They were dressed in fine garments and small masks, except for one, who’d gone for a full feathered-and-sequined carnival mask that covered his whole face. One of them, a woman in a lemon-yellow mask and a slinky dress, berated the others. “Don’t you idiots read? It’s a reference to ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ by Edgar Allan Poe. The whole party, with the rooms draped in blue, purple, green, orange, violet, and black. The red-tinted windows in the dark room. ‘The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine.’ You know?” The other apprentices looked at her blankly.

“I’ve read that story,” Rondeau said. He’d spent several months reading all sorts of things, in an effort to impress a smart woman he’d had a crush on, and he’d discovered a certain pleasure in the experience. “A prince throws a big party for all his nobles in a fortress, while outside everybody dies of a plague, the Red Death. But then there’s an uninvited guest at the party, a guy dressed in a gray robe and a mask of a dead guy’s face. Turns out, he’s the incarnation of the plague, and he kills everybody at the party.”

“Finally, somebody here who knows something,” she said, still cranky.

One of the other apprentices glanced at Rondeau. “He doesn’t know much about fashion. That cloak, really! Unless you mean it ironically, since Marla Mason has been deposed. Is that it? Is it irony?”

Hipster apprentice.
Rondeau ignored him.

“Anyway,” the woman said, “my point is, we should all take off as soon as it’s halfway polite to do so. That guy in there is
Death,
and he’s decorated the place to look like the setting of a story where all the party guests
die.
Aren’t you even a little worried about that?”

One of the other apprentices belched. “You worry too much, Cherie. Nobody would be dumb enough to spoil the Founders’ Ball, especially not the guy throwing it. The ghosts would never forgive him. I’m gonna hit the punch bowl.” He beckoned, and his friends followed him back toward the party.