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tall and coltish, her features stark but beautiful. “We were friends, once, long ago.
Lovers, actually.”
“I’ve heard,” Marla said, looking past her to the silver astral cord that stretched from
Susan’s back into the darkness, across psychic space, all the way to Susan’s body in
Felport. If Marla could get her dagger and sever that astral cord before Susan could
recall her spirit, her soul would be loosed from her body forever, and she would be as
good as dead. That would solve one of Marla’s problems nicely.
“So for the sake of my past with Hamil, I’ve come to offer you a deal. I’m willing to let
you live.”
“Sure,” Marla said. “I assume there’s a catch.”
“A small one, yes. Abdicate. Name me your successor. Swear you’ll never return to
Felport. That’s all.”
“How generous,” Marla said.
“Actually, it is. I could dispose of you forever, and you know it—that’s why you ran
away, isn’t it? Hoping that distance would weaken my spell? But it won’t. That works
for some magics, but not this one.”
At least she didn’t know about the Cornerstone. No one back home did, except Hamil,
and he wouldn’t have said anything—he’d been close to Susan once, but that was a long
time ago, and these days he was scarcely more fond of her than Marla was.
“We’ll see,” Marla said. “I have no doubt that one of us will be dead before this thing
between us is finished.”
“Why not abdicate?” Susan said. She stepped forward, shimmering. “You know it’s the
sensible thing to do. You never deserved your position. I was the one training for it,
rising through the ranks, making negotiations. But you—you short-circuited
everything.”
“I did it the old-fashioned way,” Marla said. “Sauvage was in charge, until Somerset
killed him, taking his position. Then I killed Somerset, so I got to run the city. I am, by
definition, the strongest.”
Susan laughed. “We’ll soon find out, won’t we? You never fought me.”
“Please. It would hardly be a fight. This spell you’re planning, it’s craven, and you
know it. You’re afraid to face me head-on. I’ll never abdicate to you. I love Felport. I
live in its streets. I believe in protecting it. You never even come out of your climatecontrolled
skyscraper. Why do you deserve to run the city?”
“Felport is a shithole,” Susan said. “Just another rapidly oxidizing chunk of the rust belt.
But it’s a stepping-stone to bigger and better things, more power, more control. That’s
all.”