Broken Mirrors Page 4

  But then again, if this was a new universe, one where San Francisco hadn’t been taken over by the Jaguar, one where Susan Wellstone still lived, then maybe anything was possible. Maybe this was a wonderful fairy-tale world where the sorcerer known as Marla Mason had never discovered a certain white-and-purple cloak, and put it on, and conquered most of the world.

  #

  “She’s here.” The Mason had been standing with her back against a wall, not moving, staring into space, which was the closest she ever came to sleeping, and Crapsey had been dozing himself. He yawned, forced some extra oxygen to the Warden’s brain – which was a nice brain, very zippy, sorcerers tended to have good brains, robust and perfect for fast thinking – and got ready to play his part.

  A blonde woman – who looked pretty much like Susan Wellstone, insofar as he remembered, but he’d only met her the once, right before the Mason put a knife into her throat – strode down the middle of the cell block, the lights overhead coming on as she walked. She was flanked by a couple of others who reeked of sorcery: one a burly guy decked out entirely in black leather, complete with a motorcycle cap, and the other a sort of elfin-looking chick in a tie-dyed dress with crystals tinkling in her hair. Crapsey kept his eyes on the hippie. The obvious bruisers were often dangerous, sure, but it was the sparkly types who came out with shit that surprised you.

  “Warden.” Susan crossed her arms and made a great show of looking around. “I’m here with my two most deadly guards. I’ve got all the sorcerers in the city surrounding this godsforsaken rock. Where is this deadly incursion? If you mixed up the codes, so help me, I’ll –”

  “I believe I’m the incursion.” The Mason stepped out of a cell and gave a little wave.

  Susan narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “Marla.” She frowned. “I never took you for vain – is that pretty young face an illusion, or did you have that mad doctor Langford douse you with the water of youth? Or is it just plastic surgery? I’d think if it was surgery you’d have done something about that nose.”

  “You’re still a bitch.” The Mason stepped closer, bruise-purple cloak swaying as she walked, revealing glimpses of the creamy white lining inside. “Now you’re just an older one.”

  “I don’t know why you’re here – if you wanted a meeting with me, there are channels, you didn’t have to beat up one of my lieutenants. I could have your head for trespassing.”

  “Crapsey,” the Mason said, “take out the bookends, would you? Then you can go back home.”

  Crapsey planted his metaphysical feet on the metaphysical soil of the Warden’s body and pushed off. Leaving a living body brought with it a certain tearing sensation, not pleasant, but no worse than ripping a band-aid off an especially hairy portion of one’s anatomy. He floated in the air for a moment, reveling as always in the full 360-degrees-plus-up-and-down vision the bodiless state afforded him. The Warden had already dropped, still breathing for the moment but brain dead. Crapsey allowed himself to drift onto the face of the nightmare hippie girl. She stiffened, fighting back – she was a better fighter than the Warden, had a stronger will, maybe her boss should have given her an island of her own to play with – but Crapsey had the kung-fu of soul-destroying down to a science. When she was ousted he jumped out of her body, letting it drop, and landed on the bruiser, attacking his soul and throwing its mangled body out of the nest too. For a while he’d tried getting people to call him The Cuckoo – he fucking hated being called Crapsey, it was the Mason’s little joke, and it was a mean joke, as all of hers were – but the nickname hadn’t stuck. The ones you gave yourself never did.

  He leapt from the biker and flew across the room toward the cell where his body was stashed, admiring Susan’s cool as he went. She glanced at her fallen bodyguards, sighed, and crossed her arms. Susan had been pretty stoic the first time the Mason killed her, too, but there was a nice soupcon of weary annoyance in the mix now. More life experience suited the woman well.

  Once back in his own body, he strolled out of the cell, playing with his butterfly knife, making sure he’d gotten reintegrated properly and that all his reflexes and muscle memory were working right. Sometimes he came in a little crooked, tried to move muscles that belonged to other bodies, and in those cases it took a while to readjust, but this time, he’d stuck the landing.

  “Rondeau.” Susan shook her head. “Except… not quite Rondeau. Interesting.”

  “Haven’t heard that name in a long time,” the Mason said. “Not since he was just a grubby little street kid – well, in a grubby little street kid’s body, anyway. Once he was able to talk again, after what I did to him, he told me he called himself Rondeau. Because he’d heard it somewhere, thought it sounded nice. Naming himself after a kind of French poetry. I said I had a better name for him, another kind of poem – Crapsey. He’s been Crapsey ever since.”

  “The Crapsey Cinquain.” Crapsey didn’t bother to disguise the weariness in his voice. The Mason told the same stories over and over, and she never gave enough context. “Invented by a poet named Adelaide Crapsey. Five lines, 22 syllables – two, four, six, eight, and two again. She was inspired by haiku.” He shrugged. “The name just kinda stuck.”

  “I like it because it sounds like a type of shit,” the Mason said.

  “This shouldn’t be possible.” Susan stepped over the body of her hippie bodyguard, staring hard at the Mason. “You’re from another universe? Many-worlds theory allows for such things, of course, new universes born every moment to allow every possible quantum outcome to take place, but passage between the worlds should be… Well. I’ve been a sorcerer long enough to know you shouldn’t say ‘impossible.’ But it should be very, very difficult. How did you do it?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” the Mason said. “Someone else did it. Brought me here. I thought maybe it was you – I know you used to like the big spells, the complex precise ones that took months to get going. But I see now it wasn’t your doing.”

  Susan scowled. “What do you mean I used to like those kind of spells? Why the past tense?”

  The Mason waved her hand. “Oh, you’re dead in our world. I killed you, hmm, must be a dozen years ago. But apparently my… counterpart here… never struck you down. Tell me, is the Marla Mason of this world… still active?”

  “Last I heard,” Susan said, revealing her ignorance of the fact that Marla had been in her city tonight. Sloppy, Crapsey thought. The Mason never missed an intruder. “So you killed me in your world, did you? Well, I was much younger and less experienced then, I’m sure. But about the Marla of this world – are you interested in killing her? ‘There can be only one,’ that sort of thing? Because if so, we might be able to help each other.”

  “Mmm. We’ll see. Another question. An important one. Does she – Marla – have a cloak like mine?”

  “She does. Well. It’s white, only the inner lining is purple, so it’s the reverse of the cloak you’re wearing. I know she can reverse the cloak, that when the purple shows she becomes a deadly force of borrowed magic, but I’ve never actually seen her do it.”

  “You’ve never seen it in this universe, at least,” the Mason said. “How interesting.” She stepped closer to Susan and linked arms with her. “Let’s take a walk around the island. You can catch me up on the history of this world, and once I figure out where things… diverged… I’ll consider my next course of action.”

  She glanced at the bodies on the floor. “Jericho and Raine were good bodyguards. It annoys me that you killed them.”

  “You know their names,” the Mason said. “How… cute.”

  “I could call down an army to destroy you with a thought,” Susan said. “Why should I take a stroll with you?”

  “Because your army would die, not me. But forget the sticks. Let’s talk carrots. I probably do need to kill Marla Mason. As a means to an end, if nothing else. And if you’re willing to help, I can make it worth your while.”

  They walked off talking together – Susan sti
ll bitching, but not as if she were about to do anything violent – and Crapsey trailed along after them, wondering how long he’d have to listen to the Mason pump this cross-dimensional version of her old rival for information before she let him jump in and toss Susan’s soul out a metaphorical window into a very real darkness.

  Or maybe the Mason would kill Susan herself, for old time’s sake. The personal touch meant so much.

  Chapter 4

  Marla didn’t bother going home to sleep, just curled up on the battered couch in her office. She was loath to go even that far away from B – the new B, the alternate B – but he was a twitching moaning bad-dreaming sweaty wreck, and she was a light sleeper at the best of times, so she’d retreated a couple of rooms away to grab some shuteye.

  She could get along fine on about four hours of sleep a night, but after less than half that, not long after dawn, someone pounded on her door.

  Marla rolled off the couch, pulled an enchanted Gurkha knife from the concealed sheath underneath the couch, crouched at the ready, and said in a businesslike tone, “Who is it?” The club was relatively well-protected, but she didn’t usually sleep here, so the technological and magical security wasn’t at the same paranoid level she had at home.

  “Hamil.” The voice was muffled by the door, but it certainly sounded like her consigliere and closest confidant among the city’s leading sorcerers. She hadn’t talked to him much since he helped clean up after the mess Marla’s con artist brother made in her city recently – a mess that had led to Rondeau’s bodily death and subsequent hijacking of Bradley Bowman’s body, among other casualties.

  “Come on in.” She waited until the door swung open and Hamil stepped in before she relaxed, tucking the blade away in its sheath, its enchantments of compulsion unspent. Her dagger of office was very good for killing things, but sometimes you needed to get answers out of an intruder before they died, so she had other tools, too. Mostly knives. She was partial to knives.

  Marla went around the desk and dropped into her chair, lack of sleep weighing heavy on her. Normally she could go two or three days without sleeping and suffer no noticeable lapse in her faculties, but she hadn’t slept well since Bradley’s death, and she’d had a hell of a night. Going into inter-dimensional space and confronting personified forces of the universe took a lot out of a person.

  Hamil looked perfectly well-rested, though – tall, broad, and the kind of fat that was really just a deceptive layer over a core of muscle, dressed in an impeccable black pinstriped suit, complete with pocket square. The deep brown skin of his shaved head didn’t sport a single bead of sweat, and his face was placid, but she could tell by his eyes that he was anxious. “Good morning, Marla. Did your trip go well?”

  “Yeah, it –” She frowned. “How’d you know I left town?”

  He sat in one of the two chairs on the visitor’s side of the desk, crossed one leg over the other, and laced his fingers together over his bent knee. “I am one of the ruling council of sorcerers of the city of Felport, Marla. When our chief sorcerer and protector leaves unannounced, giving no notice… I am nevertheless notified. As are the others.”

  The others. The handful of people in the city whose opinions she couldn’t simply ignore, the way she could the opinions of, say, the mayor, or the chief of police. Technically she wasn’t in charge of the other sorcerers – she was first among equals, tasked with protecting the city from supernatural and other threats – but she could give orders if the city’s security was at stake, and the others had to obey, though they’d bitch about it.

  “I have to get a permission slip before I go on a field trip, now?” She wanted coffee. Where was Rondeau? He usually brought her coffee. He was probably still sleeping. Possibly he was still avoiding her. Now that B was back – some version of B, anyway, even an unconscious version – she found her towering rage at Rondeau shrinking considerably. He’d fucked up, worse than he ever had before in a long history of fuckups, but Bradley’s death had been an accident. There needed to be consequences for the transgression… but he was already suffering, and he’d tried to fix things. Marla decided to put him on friendship probation. Not that she’d tell him that, of course.

  “Marla.” Hamil’s tone suggested that it wasn’t the first time he’d said that name, and she shook her head.

  “Sorry.” She ran her hand through her hair – greasy, right, when had she last showered? – and sighed. “I haven’t been sleeping. What were you saying?”

  “I was saying you don’t need permission, but you do need to let us know if you’re leaving. You must remember, Marla – you serve at the pleasure of the council. They appointed you, and you –”

  “Screw that noise. Who saved the city from getting taken over by the king of nightmares this past winter? Who stopped the god of Death from making Felport his own little principality on Earth? Who neutralized the beast of Felport, and stopped Roger Vaughn from sacrificing hundreds of people, and dealt with those things that came crawling out of the ground in Fludd Park calling themselves elves? Me. And every one of those fights cost me something. I’m doing my job. I’m taking care of the city. And what’s the council going to do? It only takes a simple majority to get this job, but getting rid of the chief sorcerer takes a unanimous vote of the council.” It was a reasonable provision – the person in charge of the city’s security sometimes had to make unpopular decisions, and the requirement for total agreement to stop her was meant to help weather those periods of unpopularity. Getting a group of sorcerers to all agree on anything was generally about as easy as getting a rhinoceros to play chess. “As long as I’ve got you and Ernesto on my side, who cares what those crybabies and bellyachers say? Hell, I’d lay even odds the Bay Witch would take my side, too, though she’s… unpredictable. Or are you here to tell me you don’t support me?”

  Hamil sighed rather dramatically. “I have always supported you, Marla, from the moment I became aware of your talents and your potential. And, no, I don’t think you’re in danger of being ousted, but things do run more smoothly when you make some concessions. For a little while, you seemed to be making great strides in the area of diplomacy, but lately…”

  “I’ve been distracted.” She didn’t like making excuses, so when she had to, she tended to spit out the words and make them sound more like accusations instead. “My apprentice died. Like, he just died. And my right-hand man is the one who killed him. Except, if you want to be less direct about apportioning blame, it was really my scumbag liar of a brother who killed him, or at least caused his death. So I’ve had some issues lately.” Her brother Jason had breezed into Felport running a line of bullshit, trading on her familial affection to rope her into a scam he was running, and when things went bad, Jason shot Rondeau and left him for dead, and when Bradley tried to save him, Rondeau stole Bradley’s body. Jason had tried to murder her, too, but she couldn’t blame him for that. She was trying to kill him at the time, after all.

  “We appreciate that, and we’ve tried to be understanding. Well, most of us have. Viscarro is still upset, and calling for your resignation – he did lose a leg in all that unpleasantness, you know.”

  Marla didn’t answer. Because it was true. The subterranean sorcerer was a nasty underhanded scheming lich, lurking like a spider below the streets of Felport… but she was supposed to protect him, and instead, that crap with her brother had led to Viscarro’s stronghold being invaded. Marla had cleared things up – pretty much – but she was supposed to protect the city from problems, not create problems. “All right. I’ll go see him.” She gritted her teeth. “Apologize. Make restitution. He loves stuff. I’m sure I can give him something to cheer him up.”

  “No doubt a gift would be appreciated. But the more important thing, Marla, is – are you done? Have you, ah, come to realize that Bradley is gone, and cannot be retrieved? Will you be returning your focus to the city and its interests? If the answer is yes, if I can assure the council that you’re still dedicated to Felport, I’
m sure this will all go –”

  The door to her office slammed open. B – the new B? Beta-B? – stood swaying in her doorway, naked except for a pair of tattered boxer shorts. His torso was covered in raised scars, but they looked like purposeful designs, not just evidence of past violence. “You.” He raised his hand and pointed his index finger at Marla. “I know you. I’ve seen you before. In my dreams.”

  Then he puked on her rug, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed to the carpet in an ungainly heap.

  Hamil stared at B’s fallen form, then turned back to Marla, who’d only gotten so far as rising from her chair. “Well,” Hamil said. “You did have a busy night, it seems. You’ll have to tell me exactly how you managed this. But first we should get the poor boy a doctor.”

  #

  Langford the biomancer wanted B brought to his lab, but Marla refused to move him, and since Langford made about eighty percent of his income from Marla, he agreed to make a house call. Marla’s office had been transformed into a sort of makeshift examination room, with everything swept off her desk and B laid out on the surface. Langford had an old-fashioned black doctor’s bag, but there was some spatial enchantment on it, judging by the endless array of needles, vials, and diagnostic equipment he pulled from the slim valise, including everything from a stethoscope to some bit of homemade mad-scientist kit that looked enough like a tricorder from Star Trek to make Marla wonder if humorless, rigorous Langford was a closet fan.