Blood Engines(93)

 

B looked at her, his tropical eyes full of understanding, almost more understanding than Marla could bear. “Don’t worry,” he said gently. “I’m not your weapon. You’re not the one wielding me. I’m making this choice myself.”

 

Marla nodded, though she didn’t believe it—she was setting B on this path, and the killings he did on her behalf would weigh on her even more than the lives she’d taken personally. She could stomach the killing she’d done herself. She never did so without good reason, not anymore, and as she grew older she found fewer and fewer reasons to kill, because there were almost always other options. But she was far less comfortable with making B—affable, solid B—into a murderer. “I just want you to understand,” she said.

 

“I guess this is a big thing,” he said. “The decision to kill somebody. This isn’t a heat-of-the-moment thing. I’m going in there with this as my goal. It’s not quite as big a step as actually doing the deed, but deciding to do it…” He shook his head.

 

Marla nodded. She knew what he meant. The first time she’d consciously killed someone, it had changed her entire understanding of the world. There was no act more monstrous than the taking of a human life; all the worse acts were merely matters of scale. The only real justification for such an act was to prevent greater bloodshed. And even then, it was philosophically uneasy ground, even for someone as relentlessly practical as Marla. She tried not to think about the killing much, which was, she knew, one of the few ways in which she was truly cowardly.

 

“It’s going to be ugly, B. Go in heavy. Reverse the cloak as soon as you see the Celestial. You won’t attack Rondeau—you’ll recognize him as an ally, the same way you recognized me.” That last was as much a hope as a declaration. “Go for the sorcerer. And if they’re both there, go for the young one, because that’s the real enemy, in the apprentice’s body.” That would spoil Rondeau’s wish to restore the apprentice to her own form, but he’d get over it, if the end result was the preservation of his own life.

 

B sat up, his injuries healed. He stretched his arms over his head, testing his flexibility. “What about, ah, magic? Won’t the sorcerer try to fight me?”

 

“Don’t worry. Spells slide off the purple like water slides off a duck. You won’t have a problem. It’s…going to be messy, B. It’s best you don’t look back at the mess you’ll make of them when you’re done. Just take Rondeau, and come back to the hotel. Then wish me luck, because I’ll be tussling with Mutex by then, if all goes well.” She wanted to tell him to resist the moment of inhuman coldness that would come over him after he reversed the cloak, but why bother? Even she couldn’t resist it. She would just have to hope it wouldn’t last long.

 

B frowned. “Shit, Marla, I just realized—if I’ve got the cloak, you don’t. You’re going to face Mutex without your best weapon.”

 

“I’m my best weapon, B. Don’t worry about me. If I can get past Mutex’s frogs, and his hummingbirds, and deal with his tendency to move at mind-blurringly high speeds, I shouldn’t have any trouble taking him out, even without my cloak.”

 

“That’s a lot of ifs,” B said.

 

“This is an iffy business. Come downstairs. We’ll order room service. I know we ate already, but using that cloak burns calories like you wouldn’t believe.”

 

 

 

 

 

Marla felt ridiculously like a mother sending her son off to his first day of kindergarten, but in this case, she was sending a seer and oracle-generator into mortal danger. She wanted to pat his cheek and tell him to be careful. Instead, she said, as gruffly as she could, “Bring my cloak back in one piece. And you’d better be in one piece inside it.”

 

“How about Rondeau?” B said, smiling, still pumped from his first experience using the cloak. “How many pieces do you want him in?”

 

“No more than two,” Marla said. “As for the Chinese guy, you can break him into as many pieces as you want.” She hesitated, then decided to give in, a little, to the protective impulses she was feeling toward this man, her newest brother-in-arms, who had so recently been a stranger. “I appreciate your doing this. You don’t have to.”

 

“I know,” he said.

 

“Don’t die.”

 

“Yes, ma’am.” He sketched a salute, kissed her cheek—impulsively, and she accepted the kiss gladly—and opened the door. He walked out, the cloak looking strangely right on his shoulders, absurd yet regal. The door swung closed after him, and Marla turned back to the bedroom to meditate a bit, and prepare for her own confrontation—with Mutex, what would be their last meeting, unless things went improbably wrong for both of them.