The Dragon Book (11 page)

NEXT morning, Smith was carrying a case of pickles up from the hotel’s cellar when he heard Mrs. Smith calling him, with thunder in her voice. He emerged to find her clutching her grandchild.

“What?”

“Perhaps you’d better go and see what Baby found when I took him outdoors for his sunbath,” she said grimly. Smith, expecting a dead dragon, sighed and trudged off to the garden, followed closely by Mrs. Smith. When he stepped through the back door, he beheld the garden and back terrace scattered with thousands of rainbow-colored pellets.

“And guess what Baby went straight for, when I set him down?
‘Yum yum, look at all this candy!’
” said Mrs. Smith.

“Gods below!” Smith looked up into the tree and saw the two empty pails swinging on one end of gnawed-through cord. Five or six dragons perched along the branch above it, watching Smith with what looked like malicious glee in their little slit-pupiled eyes. As Smith stared, they defecated in unison and flew back to the hotel’s roof.

“I trust you’ll have Mr. Crucible sweep it up immediately,” said Mrs. Smith with icy hauteur.

“Damned right I will,” said Smith. “And then I’m taking it back to Leadbeater’s and demanding a refund.”

“And what’ll you do then?”

Smith rubbed the back of his neck, scowling. “Go ask a priest for intercession?”

“A fat lot of good that’ll do! What self-respecting god gets rid of household pests, Smith? No, go and do what we ought to have done in the first place and hire a professional. There’s that fellow in the marketplace. ‘Are you afflicted with DRAGONS?’ and all that. A big fellow in oilskins. One-eyed.”

AFTER a brief unpleasant interview with the Leadbeaters father and son, Smith walked out of their emporium counting his money. He put his wallet away, and, sighing, looked around. He spotted the column of Duke Rakut’s monument, two streets away.

“May as well,” Smith muttered to himself. Picking his way between fishnets spread out for mending, he made his way over to the marketplace in Rakut Square.

Approaching the monument, Smith saw only a skinny youth seated on its steps, next to a handcart loaded with empty cages. The youth, who had a rather bruised and melancholy look to him, was feeding shrimps to a fat little dragon perched on his shoulder. The dragon ate greedily. The youth watched it with a mother’s tender regard.

“Is there a man hereabouts says he can get rid of those?” Smith inquired, staring at the dragon. He had never seen a tame one before.

“That’d b-be my m-m-master,” said the youth, not meeting Smith’s eyes.

“Well, where is he?”

By way of answer, the youth pointed at the wineshop across the way.

“Back soon?”

The youth nodded. Smith sat down on the steps to wait. The dragon climbed batlike down to the youth’s knee and squeaked at Smith. It ducked its head and shook its wings, which resembled fine red leather, at him.

“What’s it doing?”

“Sh-she’s begging you for t-t-treats,” said the youth.

“Huh.” Smith scratched his head. “Smart dragon.” The youth nodded. The dragon waited expectantly for treats, and, when none were forthcoming from Smith, it squealed angrily at him and clambered back up the front of the youth’s tunic, where it settled down to groom itself, now and then casting an indignant glance at Smith.

A man emerged from the wineshop. Smith, watching him as he walked across the square, saw that he was big, wore a curious long coat made of oilskin, and had one eye. A leather patch hid where the other had been. The man was red-faced and genial-looking, even more so than might be accounted for by having just emerged from a wineshop.

“C-c-customer, Master,” said the youth. The man rubbed his hands together, grinning at Smith.

“Are you, sir? Are you afflicted with—”

“Dragons, yes, I am. What’re your rates like?”

“I will completely eradicate your dragons for absolutely free!” the man told him. His voice was a hoarse bawl. He grabbed Smith’s hand in his gauntleted own and shook it heartily.

“Free! What’s the catch?”

“No catch, my friend. Etterin Crankhandle, at your service. And let me tell you what those services include! No appointment necessary. I will personally come to your premises and arrange for on-site removal of any and all dragons infesting your property. All wyrmin are humanely trapped—no dangerous poisons or other chemical preparations used. I will then conduct a complete and thorough examination of your roof, shed, or outbuildings, and remove any nests or caches and repair any damage I find such as loose leading, tiles, or slates. I, of course, reserve the right to any contents of said nests or caches. Your roof, shed, or outbuildings will then be sprayed with my Miracle Wyrm Repellent, guaranteed to prevent any reinfestation for a full year. All absolutely free. Interested?”

“I wish I’d run into you before I spent a fortune on that Gettemol crap,” said Smith, panting as he helped Crankhandle and his assistant push their cart up the street. Crankhandle laughed and shook his head.

“Ah, sir, if I had a gold crown for every time I’d heard someone say that, I’d be a wealthy man!”

“You ought to charge something, then,” said Smith, leaning away from the dragon on the youth’s shoulder, as it stuck its neck out and nipped at him.

“Oh, no,” said Crankhandle. “The dragons themselves are payment enough. And in any case, you wouldn’t have found me there before last month. I’m new here.”

“A traveler, then?”

“I am, sir. Have to be. When I clear wyrmin out of a town, they don’t come back. Pretty soon business dries up, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose it would. Here we are,” said Smith, opening the garden gate. They wheeled the cart in over the lawn and parked it under the canopy-pine. As Crankhandle’s assistant scrambled to slide chocks under the wheels, Crankhandle turned and peered up at the roof. The dragons looked down at him. Crankhandle grinned wide. Smith saw that his teeth had been capped with gold.

“There you are! Uncle’s come with treats, my little darlings. Oh, yes he has.”

SMITH went indoors, got a beer, and came back out to watch as the youth unloaded all the cages from the cart. He set them up in a row and opened each one. His master, meanwhile, opened a panel in the floor of the cart, and, from a recess, brought out an iron strongbox. When he opened it, Smith glimpsed a dense greenish stuff, looking like damp compressed sawdust. Crankhandle broke off a cake of it and went to each of the cages, baiting each cage with bits of the cake. The dragon on his assistant’s shoulder turned its head and watched jealously. It began to squeak, doing the same head-bobbing and wing-fluttering routine it had gone through at Smith.

“Here you are, little sweeting,” said Crankhandle, holding out a morsel of the stuff. The little dragon snapped at it avidly and gobbled it down. “That’s the way. Now! Arvin, send her up there.”

The youth, Arvin, took the dragon in both his hands. He kissed the top of her head—she tried to bite him—and tossed her up in the air toward the roof. She unfolded her wings and flew to the roofline, landing among the other dragons there. They hissed at her, but only for a moment; presumably, they had caught the scent of the cake on her jaws, for they suddenly mobbed her, biting her in their excitement, snapping at crumbs. She squawked and fled, jumping off the edge and flapping back down to Arvin’s waiting hands. He clutched her to himself and dodged behind the open cages, holding her against his chest protectively as the other dragons came winging after her.

But the whole flock—and Smith saw now there were a lot more than a dozen, more like twenty—pulled up and wheeled in midair as they noticed the bait. For a moment there was a confusion of beating wings, loud as spattering rain on rock, then each dragon had zipped into one of the cages and was ravenously eating the green cake. Crankhandle stepped forward and slammed the cages shut, one after another. Arvin stepped around to help him, as his dragon scrambled back on his shoulder.

“And it’s done,” said Crankhandle, beating his gauntlets together. Arvin’s dragon peeped and begged. “And here’s your reward, good girl!” Crankhandle added, going to the strongbox and taking out a last bit of cake. He handed it to Arvin to feed to her and put the strongbox back in its compartment, shutting the panel.

“Damn,” said Smith. Crankhandle swung round to him, grinning, and held up an index finger.

“But wait! I have not completed my comprehensive removal! Arvin, get the ladder.”

“Yes, Master,” said Arvin, as the dragon screamed in temper and bit him because the last of the cake was gone. He dabbed absentmindedly at the blood streaming from his ear and went to pull an extendable ladder from the side of the cart.

Crankhandle loaded a basket with tools and, slinging it on his back, climbed the ladder one-handed, while Smith steadied the ladder for him and Arvin loaded the cages back on the cart. Arvin sustained a number of other bites doing this, amid a tremendous racket, because the dragon flock was in a group rage and hurling themselves against the bars; but Arvin kept working and only paused to tie a couple of bandages on his wounds before throwing netting over the cart’s top to fasten everything down.

“I’ve got it figured out,” said Smith, who had wandered over to watch the dragons once Crankhandle was safely on the roof. “He sells the little bastards to the umbrella-makers, doesn’t he?”

Arvin shot him a pained look. “N-n-n-n-n-no!” he said reproachfully. “He l-lets them g-go. G-goes inland a l-long way and r-releases them. G-gone for w-weeks sometimes.”

“Aha,” said Smith. “Yes, of course.”

CRANKHANDLE was up on the roof a long while, scraping and clunking and hammering. Mrs. Smith came out to see what was going on, and, on learning, was very pleased indeed with Smith, so much so that she went back indoors to prepare his favorite fried eel for dinner.

Having repaired the leads, removed the nests, and dug dragon shit out of all the rain gutters, Crankhandle came back down the ladder at last, looking smug.

“Very nice haul,” he said, slinging the basket down and pulling a tank with a spraying rig from under the cart. Smith got up and looked in the basket. He glimpsed something bright glinting among the ruin of nests and flat, sun-dried dragon corpses.