Bad Dreams & Broken Hearts 23: “If you'll excuse me, mother, I have a train to catch.”

I was at Candi's again, drinking cider and watching the city lights winking below me. She walked out onto the roof in a red velvet sheath dress that turned heads and took the seat across from me without asking.

“Hey, Sam,” she said in a small, almost frightened, voice.

I nodded. “Marji.”

“I've missed you.” She laid her hand on the table, palm up, inviting.

I didn't take it. “How's Jake?” I asked.

She smiled. “Oh, he's good. He's making a difference, really. This city is going to owe a lot to him, even if almost nobody knows it. Did you know that the Lady Agni awarded him a knighthood?”

“Really?” That did surprise me. “I hadn't heard.”

“There hasn't been an official announcement yet. But it's part of the new compact with Thermidor. Jakob Karnes, Knight of Chaos.”

“He's earned it,” I agreed.

“He's a good man.” Marji's smile was genuine and warm.

“And Karin?” I asked.

Her smile mutated, from contented to wicked. “Oh, she is taking the artistic world by storm.” A laugh, the girlish laugh that never failed to stir me. “I always knew she would. It isn't just the news stories. People are taking her work seriously. I couldn't be prouder of her.”

“And you two...” I let the question trail off.

“If you are asking if she is still my lover, yes,” Marji said.

I nodded. “It sounds like you're keeping busy,” I observed. “Not much time for missing me.”

She was quiet for a long time, long enough for me to finish my cider.

Then she asked, softly, “Do you think I'm a bad person?”

I laughed. “You're asking me? You know what I am.”

“I know what you are,” she agreed. “And I want to know. Do you think I'm a bad person?”

She was serious, I realized. My opinion really did matter to her. “I think you risked your life for someone you care about. My understanding is that bad people don't do that.”

She shook her head, looking suddenly angry. “That was pure selfishness. I didn't want to lose something I thought I owned.”

Her hand was still on the table. I took it. “If you thought you owned her you would have kept her at home. You would have talked her into taking Tak's deal and walking away.”

Again a long silence. I got up. “I'm getting another cider. Do you want anything?”

“Whiskey,” she said. “please.”

I went and fetched drinks from Mick. He gave me a lopsided smile and a raised eyebrow as he poured. I pretended not to notice his implied question.

I got back to the table and handed Marji her drink. She gulped down half of it.

“I like sex,” she said aggressively, as if she expected me to challenge her statement. “I like sex with lots of people. I want—,” she reached suddenly to cup her own breast, the movement furtive, although no one but me was near enough to see, “—I want to feel different hands on my tits, and different tongues in my mouth.”

I nodded. I knew that about her already.

She knocked back the rest of her drink. “And I'm not going to change. I'm almost forty, Sam, if I was going to turn into a proper healthful wife I would have done it already.”

“Are you happy?” I asked her.

She spoke looking down into her empty glass, as if addressing some spirit of the spirits that had been in it. “I am. I really... I love being me. I am a very happy woman, and I'm scared because I shouldn't be.”

“Then don't worry about it,” I said.

She glared across the table at me and started to speak. I cut her off.

“Do you think you're the only person who isn't what you're supposed to be?” I asked her sharply. “You've got a life most people would kill for. You think you're a bad wife? Jake loves you. Karin loves you. You're rich, your healthy, you've got everything. Enjoy it.”

She nodded, accepting my rebuke like a schoolgirl. Then she said, “I want you to take me home with you. Tonight. Take me home and love me. Can you do that?”

I could.

Somewhere in the darkness I remember wondering if Jake was watching and decided that I didn't care. She was warm and willing and she would never be mine, but she could be mine for the night. I took it, happily, and afterward I lay beside her and I watched her sleep, watched the dreams trip and glide in the trembling ballroom of her mind.

The next morning I made her breakfast and she left me with a bright smile, eager to begin a new day. We didn't make plans, but we both knew that it would happen again. There wasn't any urgency, we'd fallen back into a comfortable domesticity as if we'd never left.

I sat and I thought. And then I went out to my club and swam, doing laps until I was exhausted, then went back to my apartment and thought some more.

Then I called Mo and told him that I was going to be out of town for a while, and could he manage without me? He said sure, as I knew he would.

I packed a bag, locked up my apartment, and went downstairs. I told the doorman I was going out of town and would he call me a cab to the docks?

I booked passage on a Pluviose freighter to the City Of Dreadful Joy. I just had time for steamed crabs at a dockside shack before we set sail.

It was a slow freighter. I had time to lean against the rail and look out into the mists and brood.

When we reached my father's city I took a cab to the train station and booked a private car on the first train headed inland. I was going all the way to the end of the line, to the Empty City.

The norn expressed polite surprise, but sold me the ticket with no questions.

My father would know that I was here, of course, but I felt sure he would forgive my not calling on him when he realized my destination. The norn stewards on the train were very solicitous, stopping by my cabin every few hours to ask if I needed food or water or a blanket or something. I got the feeling that they had never seen a human in the flesh and blood before. I could see their curiosity that someone like me was going someplace like that, but of course they were too polite to ask.

I was the only one who got out at the station for the Empty City. The train reversed its engine and began backing down the track as soon as I was clear. Even norns don't like this place. A very old law requires trains to stop at this station. I suspected, though, that if it hadn't been for me and my ticket to the end of the line, they might have stopped and reversed engines outside the walls.

The Empty City. Places in Nightmare tend to florid, overwrought names, but this one fit. The soft sound of my feet on the brick street echoed in the silence. The streets were broad and lit by the unchanging crimson sky. The structures that lined the streets were not buildings, but tombs.

It is said that there is a tomb prepared in the Empty City for every human who will ever live, and that when the last tomb is filled the world will have come to an end. My grandfather, who alone could be expected to know the truth, is silent on the matter, as he is on every other.

Death is notoriously reticent.

My mother let me wander through the streets for several miles before she put in her appearance. Death has no citadel, nor do Death's daughters. This makes visiting them rather difficult.

That wasn't the reason I had been staying away, of course.

At last I turned a corner and she was there, seated on marble sarcophagus, her robes of state draped around her. Her skin is indigo and her eyes are like polished jet and her hair is a smooth waterfall the pale yellow of aged bone. Her robe was red and glistened wetly.

I bowed. “Lady of Pestilence.”

She smiled and gestured for me to rise. “My son.”

I had thought a lot of how to begin this conversation and had settled on the direct approach.

“Why didn't you ever tell me?” I asked.

Her blank eyes gave back nothing. She didn't ask what I meant. Instead she said softly, “Because I feared that you would react as, in fact, you have.”

“Did you ever—,” My voice was echoing, so I lowered it. “Did you ever stop to think what finding out the way I did would do to me? How that would effect me?”

“You are what you are,” she said with maddening serenity.

“I am a disease,” I said bitterly. “A vector. That's all I am to you.”

“Samhain.” Her voice was cool. “Do not despise your destiny.”

“Fuck my destiny,” I told her bitterly. “I want a life.”

“And you have a life,” she said.

“As long as I never love anyone,” I shot back. My voice was rising again, but I didn't care.

“That human girl—”

“She had a name,” I shouted, and fuck the echoes. “Her name was Peggy. Peggy Bailey. Say it!”

“I know that the death of Peggy Bailey was difficult for you,” she said softy. “You've too much of your adopted parents in you. I told your father that was a mistake, placing you in that home. I had hoped that you would spend more of your nights with us.”

“It took her four months to die, mother,” I said. “Four months in total isolation because the doctors couldn't tell how the disease was spread. I loved her, and I watched her die through a pane of glass.”

My mother's face was impassive. The Lady Bloodpox, who birthed monsters.

“I killed her. I loved her, and I killed her,” I couldn't sustain the rage, too much was directed at myself, and the words came out in a ragged whisper.

“It was your own free choice, son,” she said. “No one forced you to take her into your bed unwed.”

I closed my eyes, fought to steady my breathing. “And if I'd married her first?” I prompted.

“You know,” she said. “You know what you are meant to do.”

“A plaguebringer,” I said. “That's your plan for me. My destiny—” I spat the word “—is to take a bride that you can use as a conduit. A carrier, infected but sustained by my vitality so she doesn't die. How many do you intend to kill? All of the settled lands, or just the city?”

“Don't be hyperbolic,” she chided me gently. “You know that Nightmare would not let humanity die. All I ask is a small harvest. One in ten, perhaps, no more than that.”

I turned away. “You won't get it from me.” I started walking. “If you'll excuse me, mother, I have a train to catch.”

I didn't look back, all the way to the platform. If anything followed me, it was as silent as the grave.

The End