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“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.
Someone knocked on the door.
“B?” Marla said, thinking he might have returned, thinking better of his mission, or to
ask for advice, or to take this last opportunity to go to the bathroom. But when she
peered through the peephole, it was not B, but an old man with a long face, wearing a
beaver hat.
Her mystery follower, here. Was it an attack, then, or something else? She’d never seen
his face before, not this close, and there was something oddly familiar about it.
Marla eased the door open, keeping her foot braced against the door so she could slam it
and hold it closed if the old fellow tried to shove his way inside. “Can I help you?” she
said, looking at him through the crack between the door and the frame. He was short
and slim, but held himself with tremendous dignity.
He looked at her, his face blank, then nodded. “I think so,” he said, his voice scratchy
and attenuated, as if he had not used it in a long time. “You are the most powerful
sorcerer in this city, except for two others, who are both palpably mad, and therefore
made weak by their own faltering minds.”
“I know you,” Marla said. “You’ve been following me since I got to the city.”
“I have been following lots of people. I have been trying to figure out a great many
things.”
“But there’s something else…you’re familiar. Where have I seen your face?”
“I can’t imagine,” he said, as if the question amused him. “Unless you are much older
than you seem—and I don’t smell that kind of age on you—you were not born the last
time I walked in this city. It is an impossibility that we have met. But I do need your
help, I think. There are two mad sorcerers at large in this city, and now that I am here,
there are two who are sane, which rather improves the odds, I think.”
Marla stared at him, trying to place his face, and then she found it—she’d seen his face
only yesterday. But not in the flesh—in stone. In a statue of his younger self, in another
universe, where his exploits were known in the world at large—as opposed to this
world, where his history was known only to initiates of certain Mysteries. “I know your
name,” she said.
“I’m flattered.” He took off his hat. “But allow me to introduce myself all the same, for
I would hate for you to think me impolite. My name is Sanford Cole.”