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“We should leave,” she said, but she stood still for a moment anyway. Because where
would she go once she left this island? How would she track down Mutex and the
Cornerstone? In her own city, she had access to innumerable contacts and wielded
considerable influence. She had seers, sibyls, and oracles, and while their information
might be obscure and cryptic, she could usually glean something useful from it,
especially when she sought more than one reading, engaging in a sort of psychic
triangulation. But here in San Francisco…the only person she could ask for help now
was a snake god who hated her guts, and besides, he didn’t know how this city worked,
who the players were, or how to find the sort of people who were good at finding
people. Sure, she could tell Ch’ang Hao to find and kill Mutex, and he’d do it
eventually, but gods worked on their own timetable, and he wouldn’t do it fast enough.
Marla would have to wander around, try to sniff out magic, try to find other sorcerers
and tell them about Mutex, and convince them he was a real threat. But she didn’t have
time. Susan wouldn’t wait. She was putting her spell together, making the proper
arrangements, and preparing to loosen the couplings of reality and seize control of
Felport. Marla had to find the Cornerstone, and soon.
“Um, frogs, Marla,” Rondeau said, and, indeed, they were still there, still spreading,
hopping incuriously in their direction.
“Shit,” Marla said. Because, yes, the frogs—even if she did manage to track down
Mutex, she had to contend with his toxic menagerie, didn’t she? Tiny killer frogs were
rather outside her realm of expertise. Still, Mutex didn’t fear them, which meant there
had to be some antidote, or antivenom, or charm—something. If she could find out how
to protect herself from the frogs, she would at least stand a chance when she went up
against him. Maybe if she wore her cloak with the white side out, its healing powers
surrounding her, then the frogs wouldn’t hurt her…but one look at Finch, turned into a
feast for flies, convinced her otherwise. The cloak’s healing powers wouldn’t make her
any tougher than a sorcerer with the totemic power of a bear, and Finch hadn’t lasted
long.
“Let’s go,” Marla said. She still had the frog she’d found by the gallery, safely wrapped
in a plastic bag. The frogs probably couldn’t survive for long outside the steamy,
magically balanced environment inside Mutex’s wicker basket. If she could just find
someone knowledgeable, get some information…maybe she could get Langford to fly
out here. Though without access to his lab and library, she wasn’t sure the biomancer
would be able to tell her anything. She couldn’t think of anything else, though. She
didn’t know any San Francisco area frog-experts.
“That sucks about Finch,” Rondeau said, subdued. “He should have climbed a tree or
something.”
“I think that’s only black bears,” Marla said, recalling a special she’d seen on television.
“Sucks,” Rondeau repeated. They went down the hill in silence. “So I guess we have to
go after this Mutex guy now,” he said.
“Looks like it.”