Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9) (32 page)

“Oh, good.” Genevieve stood, the string vanishing from her hands. “Can I go home? I... seeing my attacker, and then St. John again, it was hard on me. I can feel myself starting to fray.”

“I’m so sorry I brought you into this, Genevieve.”

“Don’t be. I’m glad I could help. I don’t often feel
useful
. Mostly I have to be happy with the fact that I’m not making the world worse, so it’s nice to be able to say, this time, that I made it better.”

“Can I hug you?”

Genevieve consented, and Marla kissed her cheek, too, before sending her back to Earth. Genevieve could make her own way to her personal bubble universe from there.

Marla sat on the throne of emerald and put her chin in her hands. Now that the immediate threat had been dealt with, she had a moment to brood a little about the future. Maybe she was being childish... but if so, it was nice to be able to
be
childish, sometimes, and soon she would have to put away all those childish things.

“Ahem. Ahem ahem
ahem
.”

Sighing, Marla waved a hand, and the golden cage that held Elsie disappeared.

Elsie came out dancing. “You slurped the New Death into the same pot where you kept the Outsider, didn’t you?”

Marla nodded. “It seemed like the best way to get rid of him without bloodying my own hands.”

A pirouette, on point. “I thought that’s what you were doing when you insisted on spending time alone in Felport. You could have told me. I might have helped.”

“Sure, if the coin flip showed heads. If it showed tails, you might have warned the New Death, or shoved me into the evil genie’s bottle instead.”

Elsie stopped twirling and said, “Ahhhhh. Is that why you had Genevieve lock me up in a cage?”

Marla shrugged. “I thought there was a good chance that at the moment of victory you’d hit me in the head with your pickaxe, yes. You know, pull off a last-minute betrayal. That’s the sort of thing you’d do. We both know it.”

Elsie started to sit on the sapphire throne, then clearly thought better of it, and conjured herself a three-legged stool made of diamonds to perch on instead. “Yes, but the idea of me betraying you is so obvious that it’s not actually unpredictable. In fact, it’s the opposite of predictable, it’s practically
inevitable
, so of course, I couldn’t do it.” She sniffed. “Still, it’s good to see you still have the sort of mind that plans for contingencies. I don’t like being put in a cage, though. It’s possible I’ll hold a grudge, assuming I remember to.” She shifted a little on the stool. “Congratulations, your majesty. You’re the one and only reigning monarch of the underworld now.”

“Hurray for me.”

“Of course, you’re still just the second fiddle. Or banana. Banana fiddle. In another week or two or three, the primordial womb will barf up another principal god of death.”

“Wombs don’t barf. You should’ve said stomach. Or birthed. Either one.”

“I do so love your literary critiques, Mrs. Mason. But my point stands.”

“Except it doesn’t stand. You know that. You figured out what I had in mind ages ago.”

“I
am
very astute. But I wasn’t sure you’d have the guts, or, forgive me, the heart, to go through with it. Who knows, maybe the next god of death will be a benevolent philosopher king.”

“I’ve met three death gods. They were megalomaniacal, smugly superior, and sadistic. I made the second one into a better man, but I don’t have much confidence in the natural, or supernatural, processes doing the same. I could perch on the edge of chaos with my terrible sword and try to carve out the bad parts of the next god who emerges, but it’s a risk. They come out pretty powerful, it seems.”

“You don’t have to talk me into your plan,” Elsie said, “and I assume you’ve already talked yourself into it. So. Are you going to follow this to its logical conclusion now?”

“I don’t have much choice.” Marla rose from the throne. She held the terrible sword of death—her sword, now—aloft. The weapon twisted, shrank, and became a dagger: her old dagger of office, from the days when she’d been in charge of Felport.

The alteration was entirely superficial, though. The blade remained the sharpest thing in any possible universe, capable of cutting astral tethers, carving up time, sending souls to oblivion, killing dreams, and performing metaphysical surgery.

“Do you want me to do it?” Elsie said. “I’ve got a steady hand.”

“No. I need to do this myself. Also, I don’t trust you.”

“You gods are so wise.”

Marla closed her eyes, turned the knife in her hands, and plunged it into her own mortal heart.

The Dread Queen on Her Throne

Bradley and Rondeau sat alone on the floor beside Pelham’s bier. Jenny Click had flown off a while ago, saying something about having worlds to burn.

“We haven’t been beheaded and sentenced to spend eternity in a Goya painting or something yet,” Bradley said. “So maybe things are going okay?”

“Why did Marla kick us out?” Rondeau said. “We came with her this far. Then she ditches us?”

“I’m guessing, after losing Pelham, she wasn’t willing to risk losing us, too. Her and the New Death and Elsie and Genevieve are probably lobbing some major bombs at each other, anyway.” He glanced around the marble hall. “This place is still intact, though. Seriously, I’m hopeful.”

“Good for you. You know who else was always hopeful? Pelly. He was such an optimist he made
me
feel like a cynic. Look where that got him.”

Elsie Jarrow strolled out of a door in the wall that hadn’t been there a moment before. “Boys! Good news. Mr. Bones is no more. Marla opened a portal to the Outsider’s prison and dropped her husband into it, just like you’d feed a newborn mouse to a pet snake.”

“Wow.” Bradley got to his feet. “That’s... well, she always comes up with something, doesn’t she? Where is she?” He narrowed his eyes. “Wait, you didn’t
turn
on her, did you?”

“Ugh, no, why does everyone think that, it would be so
boring
. Her one-time assassin trying to kill her again? Where’s the twist? No, I was true blue until the end.” She wiggled her fingers. “Surprise!”

“So why are you here instead of Marla?” Rondeau demanded.

“She’s got a whole underworld to run, not to mention, I don’t know, seasons and things, cycles of rebirth to oversee, she’s
busy
. She’s also currently slicing out her own heart. Want to see?”

Before they could answer, Elsie spun around, her skirts twirling, and then the whole
room
twirled, and when it settled down again, they were in a black-walled room before two jeweled thrones... and Marla was sitting on the floor, dressed only in a white shift, surrounded by blood. Her chest was a bloody ruin, and she held a pulsing red
thing
in her hands.

Rondeau launched himself at Elsie, howling, but she froze him in the air with a gesture. “Bad boy.
I
didn’t do this. Marla’s wounds are self-inflicted.”

Marla seemed entirely unaware of them, gazing at the twitching thing in her hands.

Bradley reached out for her, but stopped himself. “What... why did she do this? I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t, Little B. You’re only human.” Elsie knelt and looked at the heart in Marla’s hand. B noticed it was still faintly beating. “Marla is cutting out her own mortality. Slicing out her mortal core. She has to give up her humanity entirely, and become wholly divine. Otherwise, the primal god-womb will sense the absence of such a spirit, and produce another death god to fill the vacuum. We can’t have that.”

“Wait, so... what does this mean? What’s going to happen to her?”

Elsie shrugged. “It means Marla has to give up her own immortal soul, for one thing. She loses her ticket to the human afterlife, and she’s stuck with... whatever it is gods get. There’s a lot of debate about that. Some of the gods think they get a whole afterlife of their own,
way
better than the one you mortals get, but I doubt it. The pure gods emerge from primal chaos, shaped by who knows what forces—human belief, human need, some metaphysical vacuum that nature abhors, I don’t know. But I suspect that, when they die, they return to that undifferentiated state, like a metal sculpture that gets melted down into raw materials again. One-hundred-percent recycled gods. That’s why you won’t see me give up
my
mortality. If I ever get tricked into losing my status as a trickster god, I’ll at least get my own afterlife down here to play in.” She shook her head. “That Marla. Selfless to the end, huh?”

“You can let me go now.” Rondeau spoke through gritted teeth, barely able to move his mouth. Elsie chuckled and waved at him.

He stumbled, then caught himself, and glared at the chaos god. “So, what... Marla’s going to go full-dread-queen now? All skulls and black tongue and no pity and laying waste?”

“Hard to say! Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” Elsie peered at Marla, then whistled. “No, wait, I take that back. It looks like she did a little
more
surgery on herself, now that I’m looking more closely. She cut off some her god-self’s nastier attributes. Let’s see, what’s on the cutting room floor... looks like she got rid of the total indifference to individual human lives, and the sense of detachment that in a human would be termed psychopathic, and the vengeful streak. Well, well, well. Marla’s committed some acts of radical self-improvement. I guess she figured out a way to do better, after all.”

Still seemingly unaware of them, Marla squeezed her hands together, crushing her own heart between her palms, squeezing hard. Tears leaked form her eyes, sparkling in the light that shone from the cracks in her fingers. When she opened her hands, a single diamond rested on her palm.

After a moment, the diamond crumbled into dust, and Marla lifted her eyes to them.

“Hey, guys.” Marla cleared her throat. The blood around her vanished, and her disheveled shift was replaced by a loose white silk shirt and matching pants. She stood up, absently wiping her tears away with the back of her hand. “So. Uh. I’m afraid I have to regretfully announce my... imminent retirement from public life.”

“What are you talking about?” Rondeau said.

“No more month-on, month-off deal. I’m the one and only deity down here now. I can’t do the part-time god thing anymore.” She sighed. “I used to talk about duty, you know? I was so upset when I was ousted from Felport, because protecting that city was my responsibility, my life’s work. But when I was offered the opportunity to take on a much
bigger
duty, I didn’t want it. I felt this job was being forced on me, and, well... I’ve always had a contrary streak.”

“I notice you didn’t cut out
that
part of yourself,” Elsie observed.

Marla ignored her. “I was selfish, and I fought against accepting my new role. I was happy to take the advantages of being a god, while shirking the responsibilities. I can’t afford to do that, not any more.”

“Oh, well, I’ll miss seeing you around upstairs,” Elsie said. “I –”

“Elsie, I thank you sincerely, and I owe you a favor I’m sure you’ll call in one day, but for now—please fuck off.” The queen of the dead waved her hand, and Elsie vanished. “Gods, I was sick of her.”

Bradley couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, us too. So... that’s it? You’re withdrawing from mortal life? Doing the god thing full time?”

Marla nodded.

“Why can’t you still hang out in our world sometimes?” Rondeau said. “Reva wanders around up there, you know? Elsie does too.”

“Elsie does whatever she wants, and Reva’s people are the living, Rondeau. My people are the dead. I might make the occasional appearance on Earth, I’m not going full isolationist like Skully did, but... gods shouldn’t dwell too long among mortals. We distort things. Alter causality. Make people join cults, or commit murders, or burn things down. We have a spiritual gravity—even during my months on Earth as a mortal, I drew trouble to myself, and summoned cultists, and....” She shook her head. “It’s just time for me to move on, and step up.”

“I played Dungeons and Dragons in high school,” Bradley said. “Our characters were eventually so badass they became demi-gods. After that, the dungeon master wouldn’t let us play them anymore. They were too powerful, so they got transformed into non-player characters: handing out quests instead of going on them them.”

Rondeau and Marla looked at B for a moment. “Nerd,” they said, in unison.

Rondeau smiled at Marla, then frowned. “Seriously, though? First Pelham, then you? I have to lose
both
my best friends today? I hope you’re ready to level up, B, because I’ve got vacancies in my innermost social circle. I’m not playing Tunnels and Trolls or whatever with you though.”

Marla snapped her fingers, and Pelham emerged from behind her throne. He looked just as he had in life... except, if anything, he seemed happier.

Rondeau hooted with joy, ran to Pelham, picked him up, and spun him around. Then he put him down and frowned. “Crap, you’re still dead, aren’t you?”

Pelham nodded. “I am, regretfully, no longer among the living, though I am coming to terms with my new circumstances. I will be very sorry to see you less often, my friend.”

“Yeah, yeah. It wouldn’t bother me so much if I thought
I
was going to end up here someday, but I don’t know what happens when I die. Who knows if the band will ever get back together?”

Bradley put a hand on Rondeau’s shoulder. “We’ll do some research, man. Maybe we can figure something out.”

Pelham turned toward his queen. “Mrs. Mason. You look well. Pure divinity suits you.”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure I won’t get pimples or split ends anymore. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe, Pelham.”

He waved a hand, like his death was a matter of no importance. “To die in your service is a privilege.”

“I’m glad you feel that way... because I’m wondering if you’d be willing to do a little
more
service for me. I know you’re owed an eternity in an afterlife of your own choosing, so it’s entirely okay if you say no.”