Grim Tides (Marla Mason) (24 page)

“If you wear it?” The turtle didn’t quite smile – Marla wasn’t sure turtles
could
smile – but it somehow contrived to look amused. “It will be very pretty, and sparkle, and make you feel loved, if you are the sort to feel loved. But that is all.”

“No power to shoot fireballs from my fingertips then? Oh well. I mean, I can do that
anyway
, it’s just hell on my fingernails.” She sighed. A ring that
was
magical, but wouldn’t allow her to
do
any magic, struck her as an especially useless ornament.

“We thank you for your wisdom,” Rondeau said. “What can we offer you in return?”

“The world is dangerous for my children,” the honu said. “We lay our eggs in the sand, and the young hatch and make their way to the surf, but death is all around them: cats, rats, birds, the hated mongoose. Even a hole in the sand, or a bit of wood in the path, can delay their rush to the safety of the waves, and the false lights of humankind confuse them, and send them crawling to their deaths in the streets instead of their lives in the sea. You will go to a certain beach on a certain day next summer – I will send you a dream – and you will see to it that none of the children are lost, and that all reach the water.” The honu bobbed her head again. “This you will do.”

“I will,” Rondeau said solemnly, and the honu vanished beneath the waves. Rondeau let out a long shuddering breath. Then he smacked Marla on the arm. “I have to go save a thousand baby sea turtles from being eaten by rats? That’s a hell of a price to have to pay – it’s because you ask so many questions. And what if one of the turtles gets snatched up by a seagull or whatever?”

“What, you’re afraid of a turtle god now?”

“That wasn’t a turtle god. That was the
mother
of a turtle god. That’s even worse. You’re not allowed to die in this fight, Marla. I’m making you go with me to that beach.”

“It’s a date.”

As they waded back out, Rondeau said, “So, uh... now what? We know who, but, shit,
Marrowbones
is after us? How do we fight someone like her?”

“That’s a good question. If she’s here, it means she escaped from Blackwing, and somehow found a body that won’t die of cancer – maybe it’s a robot or something. I’m worried about what she did to Dr. Husch...”

Rondeau stopped walking. “Marla... . I just talked to Dr. Husch. Like, a
day
ago. I called her, I mean, we were friends, I stayed with her for a while, and... .” He shook his head. “She sounded
fine
.” His expression became thoughtful. “Better than fine, actually. She sounded like she always does, and I didn’t think about it, but I thought when she got put back together...”

“Her voice was ruined,” Marla said. “That’s what Hamil said, right?”

Rondeau nodded. “Maybe she... got better?”

“Maybe somebody made her better. Maybe somebody made her a
deal
. And maybe getting torn to pieces tore apart something in her mind, too.”

“Do you really think Dr. Husch is part of this?”

“I don’t want to think so, but she went through a lot... getting ripped into little pieces probably leads to a certain amount of posttraumatic stress disorder, even if you are a homunculus.”

Rondeau closed his eyes. “Shit. Marla, I
told
her things. I told her about what the eel oracle said, and about Pelham coming back, I don’t remember
what
all I told her – what if she’s working with Jarrow? What if I told her stuff that’s going to hurt us?”Marla considered. “Well... call her again. If she doesn’t answer, we’ll assume she’s a victim in all this, too. Then we’ll get in touch with Hamil, and tell him Jarrow is loose, and that he might want to send somebody to make sure Dr. Husch is okay, and that the other patients at Blackwing are secure.”

“And if she does answer?”

“Then you tell her
more
. Give her some juicy disinformation. And if Jarrow and company act on that bad information, we’ll know they got it from Dr. Husch, and... we’ll take appropriate action.”

Rondeau nodded. “Okay. Leda. I can’t believe she’d turn on us. I don’t
want
to believe it.” They continued on toward the shore. “What should I say to her?”

“Isn’t the Place of Refuge like fifty miles south of here? I’ve got an idea...”

PLACES OF REFUGE

“The closest hotel is, let’s see.” Jason squinted at the guidebook in his lap and compared it to the sheet of names he’d scribbled down at Marla’s office. He was in the passenger seat, next to Christian, who drove along the dark highway. “A bed-and-breakfast called the Rainbow Plantation. Doesn’t sound much like Marla does it?” He yawned. “Are we really going to try to hit all these hotels tonight? Maybe you people don’t need to sleep, but I do. I’ve been teleported, flown on a plane, and ridden on a stolen boat. I’m exhausted.”

“You can sleep when you’re dead,” Elsie said from the first row of seats in the back, where she sat next to Crapsey, one hand resting companionably on his knee. “Are you sure you’re that sleepy?”

Nicolette’s phone rang, loud in the rented SUV.

“No personal calls!” Elsie snapped, turning to glare at Talion and Nicolette, or “the bad kids,” as she’d started calling them for reasons of her own. Lupo was back there too, still looking like Dr. Husch, all glares and snarls.

“It’s for you,” Nicolette said. “It’s Dr. Husch.” That just made Lupo glare even more ferociously, and bare her teeth. It must really suck, Crapsey thought, to know you aren’t even really
real
.

Elsie took the phone and put it to her ear. “Doctor Prettyface! Don’t you inhuman homunculi
ever
take an evening off? Listen, we’re on the case, don’t worry – ” She paused. “Oh,
really
?” She covered the mouthpiece with one hand and grinned at Crapsey. “Our friend Rondeau called Dr. Husch with another tale of woe.” Back to the call: “Did he tell you anything useful, or just whine some more? Or both? Hmmm. Really? That could be fun. How long ago was this? Thanks, Doc. We’re on it.” She pushed a button on the phone and tossed it over her shoulder, eliciting an “Ow” from Lupo. “Christian!” she shouted. “Fire up that fancy GPS and tell it we’re going to Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park.”

“Uh,” Christian said, “I’m going to need you to spell that.”

“Jason, look it up in the book, would you? Starts with a P, as in Place of Refuge, which is what it’s
also
called. According to Rondeau, Marla’s taking that name literally, and she’s going to hole up there. Let’s go pry her out of that hole, what do you say?”

“What is this place?” Crapsey said.

“You’re right to ask me, since I know everything,” Elsie said. “You know about taboos? They didn’t have those in old Hawai’i, or rather, they did, but they called them kapu – the old Hawai’ian laws. If you commited some terrible crime – like, say, touching a chief’s fingernail clippings, or wearing red and yellow feathers, or casting a shadow on the grounds of the palace, or letting a woman eat a banana – you were breaking a kapu. The punishment was usually, poof, instant death. If only we had a legal system like that now – so simple! But, just like in that great Disney cartoon
The
Hunchback of Notre Dame
, there are places of sanctuary where the authorities can’t get you. If you broke a kapu, you could flee to a place of refuge and throw yourself on the mercy of the priests who lived inside. They could absolve you and set you free, sometimes, or other times they’d just put you to work. People who wanted to avoid battle, or losers in a war who didn’t want to get their brains bashed in, could come take refuge in a
pu’uhonua
too. The place of refuge was inviolate, nobody was allowed to take anybody out against their will, because the ground is
sacred
. Isn’t religion grand? You can build stronger walls out of faith than you ever could with steel and concrete. So it makes a certain amount of sense for Marla to go to ground there – I bet there’s still some magic in that place, even though the bones of the chieftains buried there were all stolen or scattered or hidden away, and the snarling tiki statues are all reproductions.”

“You don’t think it’s a bit convenient that one of Marla’s friends told Dr. Husch where she was hiding?” Christian said. “You said her psychic friend Rondeau predicted Marla would be captured – couldn’t she be lucid enough to realize that Dr. Husch is the one coming after her? Or paranoid enough to suspect so?”

Elsie beamed. “You deserve a lollipop! And by ‘lollipop’ I mean ‘head of an enemy on a stick.’ Yes, it’s almost certainly a trap. That makes it more
fun
. But I’m not a complete maniac. Just a partial one. We’ll deploy our resources strategically and blah, blah, blah.” She clapped her hands together and bounced on the seat. “Finally! Two
days
I’ve spent planning to catch Marla, and the time has come! I’m so glad. I was getting bored. And when I get bored, Talion could tell you, I get cranky.”

“Using yourself as bait is a bad idea,” Rondeau said. “Using me as bait is even worse.” They sat together in a grove of palm trees, the ocean at their backs. The night was that rich quality of dark you only get some distance away from cities and their halos of light pollution, the skies clear, the air cool. They were well within the ten-foot-high L-shaped wall of ancient unmortared stone that divided the inside of the Place of Refuge from the old royal grounds and the rest of the national park. The area was guarded by fierce tiki statues, and nominally patrolled by park rangers to keep people out of the historic area after hours, but Marla had cast a little misperception loop that would keep the rangers distracted elsewhere until morning. “I feel way too exposed here.” There were reproductions of traditional Hawai’ian huts on the other side of the wall, but within the sanctuary, there was no shelter of any kind – the closest thing to a structure was a massive platform of stones that had probably once been a foundation for houses.

“Nah, this is a great defensive position,” Marla said. “Anybody who wants to get to us has to pass through the visitor’s center, walk along the trail, either circle around the wall or come through the one opening, and then make their way across all those vicious volcanic rocks without falling in a royal fish pond or falling and getting shredded by cold lava. We’ve got great sightlines. I like it.”

“What if they come in by canoe?”

Marla shrugged. “There’s a plain of black rock between us and the water. There’s no cover there at all – anyone walking in would be totally exposed. It’s a good position.”

“If it’s so good, what do you need me for?”

“Please. Without you, this place is just a historical curiosity. With you, it’s
actually
a refuge. You’re telling me you can’t sense the ghosts? Even I can.”

Rondeau sighed. “Yeah, there are ghosts. Priests who spent most of their lives here, and some chiefs, but they’re a little more faded – their bones were kept here for a while, but they got moved at some point, so the spirits are sort of doing a time-share thing between locations. There’s one incredibly pissed-off old white dude in some kind of military jacket. I think he’s Captain Cook, the guy who discovered Hawai’i – well, you know, ‘discovered,’ the way white dudes discover all kinds of places that plenty of brown people already know about. When Cook first showed up, the Hawai’ians thought he was their long-lost god Lono. He got a longer welcome than he would have otherwise, but he eventually wore it out. The locals kept some of his bones here like he was a chief, showing him respect even though they killed him themselves. I don’t know how much help Cook’s ghost will be, but the priests seem to accept us as legitimate sanctuary-seekers. They know they’re dead, but they don’t seem to mind much. They should be some help.”

Marla nodded. “Good. We’ve got Pelham out beyond the wall, watching the road, so we should get some advance warning before the bad guys arrive.”

“
If
they arrive,” Rondeau said. “I’m still hoping we sit out here and nothing happens. We don’t know if Dr. Husch is involved at all. Maybe Nicolette just helped Jarrow escape –” His cell phone vibrated, and Rondeau picked it up, listened, and grimaced. “Thanks, Pelly.” He put the phone away. “There’s an SUV coming down the road, no headlights. Pelham looked through those binoculars you gave him, the ones with the night-vision enchantment, and he says there are at least five people in the thing, and they look enough like the people in the video that he’s ninety-nine percent sure they’re our villains. Do you want him to proceed?”

“I think the odds that they’re just tourists who didn’t check the park’s operating hours are pretty low,” Marla said. “But tell him to stick with the strictly non-lethal measures, just in case. And call Hamil, now, I don’t care if it’s going to wake him up. Tell him... shit. Don’t tell him what we suspect about Dr. Husch, I guess. We could still be wrong. Just tell him that Elsie Jarrow is loose, and that he might want to check on Leda, and make sure the other patients at Blackwing are secure. He’s smart enough to go in on his guard.”

“Fuck,” Rondeau said. “Leda. I
liked
her. I always did.” He made the call, keeping it short and simple, and disconnecting quickly. “He says he’ll get some of his people and head to Blackwing right away.”

“Good. I helped put some of those people
in
Blackwing. Somebody needs to make sure the patients stay locked up, if Leda can’t be trusted to do it anymore.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I wish I could be there. I
should
be there. But instead, I’m here. There’s nothing I can do about what’s happening in Felport. So I’d better be here all the way.” Marla looked around the grove of palm trees. She’d laid out a certain number of weapons, enough to level the playing field, but the only thing that had a chance of hurting Jarrow was the dagger Death had forged for her. The problem would be getting close enough to strike. “I wish Reva hadn’t wandered off,” she said. “He’s a presumptuous annoying little shit, but we could use some god-powers here.” After their plane landed the god had promised to catch up with them later, saying he had errands to run, but he hadn’t been in touch yet. “I also wish to hell this ring did something useful.”