Rondeau sat in the swivel office chair by the desk and began spinning around. “So now that Lao Tsung is dead, you’re planning on asking San Francisco’s big boss where to find the Cornerstone?”
“Sure. Might as well start at the top.”
“If some hotshot out-of-towners came to our city, and came up to you, and started asking about some big magical artifact, would you help them?”
“Doubtful,” Marla said. “I don’t think they’d be as persuasive as I can be.” She took a long, ornately carved teak box from the bottom of her bag and set it on the bed. She touched several particular places on the intricate carving, and the lid popped open, revealing the carefully folded piece of fabric resting inside. Marla removed it and shook out the wrinkles. It was a cloak, dazzlingly white on one side and bruise-dark purple on the other. A cloak pin in the shape of a stag beetle was attached to the collar.
“Damn,” Rondeau said, reverently, his spinning stopped. “You haven’t worn that in ages.”
Marla held the cloak at arm’s length, examining it, then shook her head. “It misses me. It misses being used. But I was never sure, wearing it, whether I was using it or it was using me. It’s big magic, and that always comes with a price, or an agenda.” The cloak made her into a formidable killing machine, and she’d used it often during her rise to power, but each use exacted a price in her own humanity. Not in some touchy-feely guilt-and-regret way, but literally—for a short time after she wore the cloak, Marla lost her human emotion, committing atrocities without hesitation if they advanced her goals. During that period of inhumanity, she felt as if she shared her body with a cold, alien intelligence that wanted to take over her life. Each time she wore the cloak, that alien intelligence lingered in her head a little longer, and became stronger. If she’d continued using the cloak regularly, she had no doubt that its intelligence would have eventually supplanted her own completely, forcing her mind and humanity down forever. She’d given up using the cloak, but she’d kept it, of course, because it was too valuable to let go. Marla had only brought the cloak here because her life was in danger, and she couldn’t ignore any advantage that might save her. She prayed she wouldn’t have to use the cloak, and hoped that its influence had waned in the years since she’d used it last. “Just holding it makes me want to put it on again,” she said. “Even though I don’t like what I become when I wear it.”
Rondeau rubbed his jaw, and Marla looked away. There weren’t many things in her life she was ashamed of—in her line of work, shame could be a fatal emotion—but a long time ago she’d done something terrible to Rondeau during the cold, inhuman time that followed the use of the cloak. When Rondeau was just a boy, Marla had ripped off his jawbone and kept it in a jar to use as an oracle. A few years ago, when Rondeau had more or less saved Marla’s life, she’d returned the jaw to him. It was too small to be put back on his body, even by a magical surgeon, and he’d long since acquired a new jaw anyway, but having it back had comforted him. It had also secured him as an ally, and no matter how honest the gesture had been, Marla was always aware of the advantage to be had from her kindness. She never stopped figuring out the percentages. That was why, even though she had a reputation as a ruthlessly straightforward, point-A-to-point-B strategist, she’d maintained her position as the most capable chief of sorcerers her city had ever known.
Marla folded the cloak and put it on the bed. She took a long, straight-bladed dagger from the bottom of the box, the hilt wrapped with alternating bands of purple and white electrical tape. “And your dagger of office,” Rondeau said. “You’re planning on going in heavy, aren’t you?”
Marla admired the knife for a moment, then slid it into a simple black leather boot-sheath. The dagger was quite sharp, a handy close-quarters weapon, but it could also cut through the immaterial. Marla could carve up ghosts with that knife, cut off astral travelers from their bodies, and make smoke-demons bleed. Hamil had told her that, according to legend, the blade had been made from a shard of the Angel of Death’s sword. The cloak was Marla’s personal property, but the dagger only belonged to her while she served as custodian of Felport—it was a weapon of office, passed from one chief sorcerer to another. Though it was seldom passed on willingly.
“You know I believe in choosing the right weapon for a particular job,” she said. “But I wasn’t quite sure what this job might entail, so I brought everything I thought might be useful. The only two bona-fide magical artifacts I own.”