Poison Sleep (30 page)

The shadow-men hesitated, and Ernesto and his roiling golem took the opportunity to step back and get some breathing room. Marla looked over at Zealand, still on the floor of the cell, but when she saw the pool of blood running out of him she made herself give up hope. Zealand had gone from trying to kill her to dying for her.

No, to be fair, he’d died for his own cause—for Genevieve—and Marla would do her best to see he didn’t die in vain.

Reave entered the room, his men making way for him to pass. He sniffed. “I smell a dead man. Poor Zealand. Though, to be fair, killing him wasn’t really
homicide,
it was
herbicide
. Amazing what a bucket of weed killer will do to someone who’s more mold than man. I’ll have to kill the rest of you more conventionally.”

“Where’s Genevieve?” Marla said.

“Not far, just on one of the lower levels. I did keep her up here in my chambers at first, it’s true, but a little bird told me I might have visitors, so I thought it better to remove her. Now I’ll remove your head.”

Marla, Ernesto, and the golem backed toward the balcony. “Ernesto,” she said. “Leave the golem, but you get out of here.”

“No way. This is my fight, too. This bastard’s on my
land
.”

“Ernesto,” she said quietly. “I’m going to reverse my cloak, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Shit,” he said. “Okay.” He ran for the balcony and vaulted over the side with a grunt. Marla didn’t worry about him. It was easier to land gently than it was to fly, and he was leaping into his own junkyard, where he knew every fold and cranny of hidden space; he’d be okay.

Marla didn’t want to reverse her cloak. Letting that killing rage overtake her meant giving up a little of her humanity, and each time she used the cloak she got that much closer to full-on monsterhood. But it was a sure way to rip through Reave and his men, a pure desperation move, but better than no hope at all.

Marla reversed her cloak, and all her human concerns fell away. The alien intelligence that lived in the cloak flowed into her mind, and she saw everyone before her as targets, each holding equal weight. She didn’t see friend or foe, only victims, and she leapt into the midst of the shadow-faced men with her arms extended and her teeth bared. A shadow of purple darkness clung to her like a bruised aura, and when she lashed out with her hands, she struck with purple talons. When she snapped her teeth, jaws of darkness leapt from her face like the muzzle of an animal, biting through throats. The shadow-men fell before her, and the one with the pale white head fled. She didn’t pursue him. She’d reach him eventually, of course. She’d kill everything that moved across the world. Why had she bothered with mercy, with diplomacy? She should take what she wanted. Why didn’t she wear this cloak every day? Why was she so afraid of her own power? The pollution-golem fought on, too, swarmed by shadow-men, and she ignored it for the moment, focusing her cold killing intent on more active attackers. She ripped her way through the men, clawing over them and out the door, into the twisted corridors of Reave’s tower. Women in bloody wedding dresses fell before her, and she crushed the skulls of fanged infants underfoot. This was the purpose of life: to exterminate life.

The enemies all fell away, eventually, and she made her way halfway down the spiraling length of the tower, finally reaching a room with a throne made of skulls and bones. Reave sat upon the throne, gazing at her with some expression Marla couldn’t read—facial expressions conveyed no information to her anymore, not in this state. She leapt toward him, moving faster than a cheetah.

And only stopped when a great crushing weight fell from the ceiling upon her. Reave had triggered a collapse, dumping heavy ceiling stones on her. She fought and scrambled and dug her way out, feeling bones snapping in her limbs but not slowing until she saw light from the smoky torches that lit the room. She willed herself forward, to kill, to fight, but her body was overwhelmed, and without her conscious will the cloak reversed itself, from violent purple to healing white.

Marla moaned. God, she’d almost lost it. If she hadn’t been so catastrophically injured, the purple would have overtaken her mind completely, and she might have been lost forever to the strange parasitic intellect that lived in the cloak. The purple hadn’t always been so powerful, but every time she wore the cloak, the urge to kill and kill forever became harder to resist. Now the white was repairing her broken body, and what had she achieved? She’d murdered a few disposable nightmare monsters. Hardly worth the effort.

“Ah, Marla,” Reave said. “I didn’t expect to use my collapsing ceiling quite so soon, but you seemed worth it.”

Marla couldn’t see him. She was buried in rubble, her neck twisted at an odd angle, with nothing but torches and a bit of the collapsed ceiling in her view. A booby-trapped ceiling. This guy was a real piece of work.

“I brought Genevieve to see you,” he said, and Marla’s neck healed itself with a pop. She turned her head and began dragging herself from the rubble. Reave stood with his arm around a cringing, glassy-eyed Genevieve, her head shaved, probably to make a wig for the decoy that had killed Zealand. “See, Genevieve? Zealand is dead, and Marla can’t help you now. Your champions are broken.”

“Genevieve, don’t listen,” Marla said. She could move again. Adrenaline and shock kept the pain from her broken-and-reset limbs from overwhelming her. But she couldn’t reverse her cloak now, not with Genevieve in the room. She could kill Reave, yes, but she’d surely kill Genevieve, too, and then die herself for breaking her oath. The death of Reave and Genevieve would save Felport, she supposed, in the short term, but the other sorcerers would bicker and infight after Marla’s death, and a war of succession would result. None of them were devoted enough or as qualified to run things as she was. She couldn’t sacrifice her own life to save the city, then—her city
needed
her. Which meant she had to pull back and regroup. But how?

The pollution-golem saved her. It had never stopped fighting, apparently, and it burst into the throne room and went for Reave. Marla finished digging herself out of the rubble and prepared to grab Genevieve and spirit her away. But a horde of faceless men boiled from the shadows and seized Genevieve, dragging her to the back of the throne room and through some hidden passage. Marla cursed, but she couldn’t go after the woman. There was no way Marla could face the combined might of Reave’s army without reversing her cloak, not even with a few magic rings, magic boots, and her dagger of office. Without the element of surprise, she was outmatched. But for now, Reave was busy fighting off the pollution-golem, whipping his knives through its oily smoke, and that meant she could get away.

She made her way back up to Reave’s rooms, kicking through a few of the shadow-men on the way. She reached the balcony and jumped onto the chimera, which her enemies had either ignored or never noticed. The harness of vines had disintegrated into fine dust, which gave her a pang—Zealand had been a good fighter, and dedicated to this particular cause. She had to squeeze tight with her thighs; thank the gods she’d kept up with her squats. She took the reins and the extra strength of the chimera flowed into her. Reave shouted behind her, and the smell of burning rubber wafted onto the balcony. The pollution-golem was being pushed back. Marla sent the chimera flying off the balcony and into the night, racing toward her home base. Rondeau’s club was well defended tonight, turned from a public place into a fortress. If she could just make it back there, she’d be safe, and there would be time to regroup and…

What? Lead another attack? Reave would be even
more
prepared next time. How had he known she was coming? He’d mentioned a “little bird,” but it was possible Gregor had just gotten lucky with his divination. Marla had tried to shield their plans from future-telling, but on such short notice her efforts had been limited. Or, much as she hated to consider it, she might have a spy. Hamil and Rondeau were both above suspicion. As for Ted or Joshua…Ted had saved her life when Zealand attacked her, and—quite apart from their love affair—Joshua had stepped in during her battle with Reave to let her escape. If either one of them was working for the enemy, why would they have helped her that way? To keep up appearances? She couldn’t believe it. Trust came to her only with difficulty, but she’d been through a lot with both of them in the past couple of days, and unless she found real evidence to the contrary, she’d keep trusting them.

The giant blackbirds pursuing her cawed. She was over Fludd Park, where tree spirits still battled nightmare monsters, when the birds caught up with her. Something struck her shoulder, almost knocking her off her chimera, but she bent low and clung to its neck. Her white cloak began healing the wound in her shoulder—was it from a bullet or something else? Whatever it was, it had gone clean through. She mumbled a painkiller spell, which made her hands go a little numb, but that was better than being laid low by shock if she took a more severe injury.

Her pursuers changed tactics, though, and some projectile struck the chimera in the side. The chimera screamed, the cry emerging from Marla’s throat, and she instinctively swooped down closer to the park, trying to lose the pursuit by weaving through the treetops. Her cloak
didn’t
heal the wound in the chimera, of course, but while she held the reins Marla felt the injury, as she felt the next ones—the painkiller didn’t help with the transmitted pain, either. Something heavy struck one of the flailing bull’s legs, and then a hot pain ripped through the left wing, severing the wing tip and sending her into a spin. The edges of her vision darkened with agony. The chimera fell fast toward the park, and Marla gripped the reins, pulling up at the last moment, hooves dragging in the snow. The chimera lost its footing and slid to a stop on the edge of the duck pond, and a tremendous pain ripped through Marla’s—no, the chimera’s—body. Marla fell numb from the chimera’s back. The creature’s rear legs were broken, bent at horrible angles, and Marla moaned and crawled a little bit away in the snow. The blackbirds were circling, and they landed in a ring around her, shadow-men dismounting and approaching warily. Marla twisted the rings on her fingers and struggled to her feet.
Now
she could reverse the cloak. They might kill her, but she…she would die pointlessly, killing disposable and easily replaceable enemies. The idea depressed her utterly.

Then the pond rose up, a thing the shape of a bear but made of water, and came lurching from the banks. Marla danced back, out of the way, as the thing silently waded onto the land and struck at the blackbirds and the shadow-faced men. This was one of Granger’s many elementals, an avatar of nature trapped here in a city park, and sworn to defend it. The elemental recognized Marla as a fellow champion of Felport, apparently, because it paid her no mind, but struck viciously at Reave’s men. The tree-spirits arrived a moment later, completing the rout, and soon most of the birds lay broken and dead in the park along with their riders, both already melting into viscous puddles. The water elemental slouched back into the pond when the last of Reave’s men were killed, and the tree-spirits went about their business as well.

Marla sat down, and reached out to pet the chimera’s head. After she’d stroked it half a dozen times, she saw that the bridle had fallen from its beak, straps broken during the fall. The creature turned its head to her, and its black eyes looked not dead now but soulful, and its tiny tongue flickered out pitifully. Marla went to the pond—which was just liquid again—and scooped water into her hands. She returned and held her hands out to the chimera, and it flickered its tongue into the water. The poor thing. It had been ridden hard and broken, and it had never sipped water, nor eaten food.

The chimera drank two more handfuls of water before it died.

Marla sat by its corpse, under the dark sky, huddled in her cloak. She needed to rise, and move on, and try to salvage things, but she’d never felt more defeated. Hamil said she always won because she was too stubborn to lose, but the idea of just curling up in a ball and sleeping had never seemed more appealing. Sleep was a wonderful drug. She understood for maybe the first time why Genevieve spent so much of her time in retreat from consciousness.

Marla wasn’t sure if she was crying, or if it was just snow melting on her face. After a while she got up, and found a few fallen branches, and laid them across the chimera. “You were good,” she said, petting its head again. “Better than we deserved.” The branches were wet, but she conjured a hot and all-consuming fire, though she had to sacrifice some of her own body heat to do it. Soon there was only a blazing pyre where the chimera had been, and even under the protection of the spirits of the park, Marla was hesitant to stay for long by such a beacon. Watching the chimera turn to ash was too depressing anyway. She pulled her cloak around her and began the trudge back to Rondeau’s club, sticking to side streets and avoiding confrontations. When she was two blocks away, she called home. Ted answered. “Tell the other sorcerers the attack failed,” she said. “I’m almost home. They should pull back their forces, try to hold their own positions, and wait for further instructions.”

“Oh, Marla. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. Listen, when I get there, I’m going up to my office. I want to be alone for a few minutes. I need to think. I can’t explain everything yet. Just…give me a little time, okay? Nobody bother me unless there are barbarians at the gate. You can do that for me?”

“I’ll make sure of it,” he said. “That’s what I’m here for.”

N
icolette came in quietly. Gregor sat with the Giggler, watching him draw pictures on a whiteboard with a hunk of runny blue cheese. The Seer drew something that looked like a tower, and a few M shapes that might have been birds.

Gregor looked at her, and she didn’t say anything, and he shook his head. “Tell me,” Gregor said to the Giggler, “is it safe for me to go outside?”

“While Marla Mason lives, there’s nothing outside this building but your death,” the Giggler said, as he always said, more or less. He threw the cheese at the wall, where it stuck with a plop, then he rolled over to his pallet and crawled beneath a dirty baby-blue blanket.