The Dragons of Babel (32 page)

And so Will entered the ballroom.

T
he ballroom was a semicircular terrace with only a canopy of stars overhead. Apparently spells protected it, for the rain cloud that had drenched the streets outside had not let fall so much as a drop here. A dance band played at the far edge, between two enormous cut-crystal bowls containing mermaids wearing faux-seaweed bikini tops and nothing else. Those guests who were not on the dance floor stood in knots at the railings or sat in scattered chairs set beneath the flambeaux that lined the terrace perimeter. The elf-lords wore holographic costumes like Will's own—phantom jugglers, river gods, and astronauts, through which might be glimpsed formal evening wear if one stared hard enough. The ladies wore costumes that were fantasies of feathers and gems with layer upon layer of overlapping glamour. Will assumed the worst of the ruling classes. However, spoiled though the elf-maidens doubtless were, there was no denying their beauty. They were as glossy and mouthwatering as a basket of poisoned apples. He went to the nearest and bowed. “May I have this dance?”

She looked him over with skeptical hauteur. “Do I know you, Lord Pierrot?”

He responded with his best wise-guy smile. “Does it matter?”

“I wouldn't know. It's just something I inherited. Let's talk about something else. Tell me something about yourself. Something unpredictable and telling.”

With a mischievous smile, Fata d'Etoile leaned forward to whisper in Will's ear, “At home I have a godemiché of great antiquity and impeccable provenance. It has known three empresses.”

“I don't know what a godemiché is.”

“Silly! It's a dildo.” She narrowed her eyes and smiled through her lashes. “Do I shock you, my prince?”

“I am no prince.”

“Oh? Perhaps I am mistaken.” A dangerous look fleetingly possessed her face, as if she were repressing a sudden impulse to slide a knife in his back or a hand down his trousers. “There's only one way to be sure.”

“What's that?”

With a hint of a blush, Fata d'Etoile said, “Well… you know what they say about the touch of royalty.”

Will did not, and would rather have liked to find out. But Nat had directed him to dance with as many partners as possible and so, with a frisson of regret, he returned Fata d'Etoile to the sidelines, thanked her graciously, and extended a hand to another.

“Is your name truly Christopher Sly?” his fourth partner, Fata Kahindo, asked. Her skin was tawny and her eyes were flecked with silver. Firefly lights blinked in the air about her head, like virtual particles popping in and out of existence. “' Tis hardly a royal name.”

“I am hardly royal.”

She pressed herself closer to him. “And royally hard, to boot.”

So the conversation went, from lady to lady. “Have you come to reclaim your throne?” asked Fata von und zu Horselberg.

“I understand you're telling everyone you're not the king,” said Fata Gardsvord. “So why, then—?”

“… your hands.”

“… your ring.”

“… your highness.”

“May I cut in?”

A woman in a dark gray uniform with red piping inserted herself between Will and his partner as deftly as a butcher's knife slides between flesh and bone to dejoint a capon. As she danced him away, Will threw a wordless look of apology toward his last partner, standing beautiful and alone and furious at the center of the floor. Then he glanced down and saw a silver lapel pin depicting an orchid transfixed by a dagger.

Will's blood chilled. But lightly he said, “That's an interesting costume. Palace Guard at Brigadoon?”

His partner did not smile. “It's the dress uniform of the political police.”

“What an odd choice. Why are you dressed as
unepoulette?”

“Offensive language won't put me off. I've heard what a troll has to say when his nuts are crushed with a pair of pliers. And I wear my uniform because, as I'm sure you've already figured out, I'm here on official business.”

Will put on a fatuous, here's aline that'll-get-me-laid expression that had cost him many an hour before the mirror to perfect. “Are you here to arrest me? You might as well—my heart is already in your custody.”

“Almost you convince me that you're a complete and utter twit. But then I ask myself, Wouldn't a real twit be trying to convince me that he's
not
a fool?”

Will sighed. “You dance well, lady. You are not uncomely. You are obviously intelligent, which I find appealing, and if you put your mind to it I believe you could flirt as well as anybody here. Yet you do not. Why do you intrude your seriousness into an evening that was heretofore superficial, pointless, and altogether delightful?”

The policewoman's nails tightened on his shoulder. “I begin,” she murmured, “to wish that I could take you into custody and interrogate you personally. I believe that with a little care you could be made to last for hours before you broke. However, that is neither here nor there. A concerned citizen has informed my department that you are wearing a ring to which you are not entitled, Master Cambion.”

“Again the ring! I begin to wish I'd left the thing at home. It's all anyone seems able to talk about.”

“Do you pretend not to know that you wear the signet of House sayn-Draco?”

“It is nothing of the sort. Why worry yourself over it? So the ring is in the form of a Wyrm and the bezel in its mouth is red. Any jeweler can make such a thing.”

“So you have emphatically told at least a dozen elf-ladies. Yet oddly enough your denials simply make the imposture more convincing. The entire room gossips about you.” Will shrugged. He did not need her to tell him that. Everywhere he looked, eyes stared back, some glaring,
others with frank interest, some few simply amused. Knots of young elf-lords discussed him with brooding intensity. Elf-ladies primped. “Florian, in fact, seems obsessed by you.”

“Oh? Who's he?”

“Our host.” His partner favored him with the coldest of smiles. “The scion and heir apparent of House L'Inconnu.” She gestured with her chin and Will spun her around so he could see.

Beneath a crystal bowl in which a gold-and-green-tailed mermaid swam in endless circles, trying not to look bored, an elf-lord in the seeming of a dancing bear was staring fixedly at him. Will stiffened as he recognized the face beneath the muzzled snout.

“You know him,” the lady prompted.

“Yes. I doubt, however, that he would recognize me. I was quite a different fellow when last we met.”

It was true. Back then, Will had been Captain Jack Riddle, champion of the johatsu who lived in the subways of Babel, and Florian of House L'Inconnu had been leader of the Breakneck Boys, who preyed upon the homeless for their amusement. Will did not even know for sure if they actually had met, or if their brief, watery encounter
had
been undone by the death of Lord Weary. It hardly mattered, however. Whatever the truth might be, he had his memories of the murderous young Master Florian and, based upon them, his opinion of the fellow's worth.

“Well,” said the policewoman, “since I have learned all I will tonight, I'll leave you two gentlemen to your conversation.” The song ended and without obvious haste, but with no waste motion whatsoever, Will's interrogator deposited him at the edge of the floor. “Thank you for the dance,” she said. “I look forward to another—something more lingering next time, I hope. My name is Zorya Vechernyaya. Perhaps someday I will hear you scream it in agony.”

“You insist on being unpleasant.”

“Trust me—this is an unpleasant town to be caught trying to pass yourself off as undocumented royalty in, kid.”

She left.

The music started up again. Zorya Vechernyaya had left him on the same side of the floor as Florian L'Inconnu. So when he saw his host's bear-seeming lumbering toward him, Will quickly turned away to choose his next target from among the smiling many who were subtly jockeying to catch his eye. He fixed almost at random on a lady in salamander drag. A mask of red feathers burned from her face in stylized flames and twined into her upswept hair so that it seemed as though her head were afire. Perhaps there was a touch of glamour in that, but if so it was subtle. Her, he thought, and strode briskly forward.

Then Will recognized her and stopped dead.

She wore makeup, as she had not before, lips and nails redder than blood, and her scarlet gown, floor-length with a slit up one side, was a far cry from the hoydenish outfit he'd seen her in (and out of) last. Nevertheless, beyond the least breath of doubt, she was the hippogriff rider who'd flashed him the finger on the day he'd emerged from the underground.

She was the stranger he loved.

For a heartbeat that lasted half as long as forever, Will stood paralyzed. Then he shot his cuffs in a kind of prayer to his tuxedo: I paid enough for you; now give me the confidence I need. He went straight to the elf-maiden, said, “Dance?”, and waltzed her out onto the floor before she could answer.

She studied him with frank interest. “You have set the birds a-twitter. Everyone is wondering who you are and whether that ring is real.”

“It's real enough. But it's only a ring. Nothing more.”

“They also say that you have more names than all the social register put together.”

“Forget that,” Will said. “Who cares whether I call myself
Phobetor or Hotspur or Baal-Peor? It's all bullshit, anyway. The only thing that matters is that I saw you once from a distance, more than a year ago, and lost my heart to you in that instant. I've been searching for you ever since.”

“What a load of codswallop! I hope you haven't been using that line on everybody.”

“I'm perfectly serious.”

“In my experience,” the hippogriff rider said, “sincerity is vastly overrated, and only peripherally related to the truth.”

“Every word I say is true.”

“Being male, you would believe that, of course.” Her eyes gleamed as brightly as twin emeralds lit with green lasers. Releasing his shoulder, she slid her fingers into a hidden pocket in her dress. Then she touched his cheek. “Who are you? What are you? Is the ring real?”

“Will le Fey. A confidence trickster. So far as I know it is not.” Will's face turned red and he stumbled and almost tripped.

His partner laughed. “Oh, la! If you could only see yourself.” Her breath was warm in his ear. “You are not the only one with a ring,' sieur clown.”

With a quick grab, Will closed his hand tight about hers. “This ring?” He saw the hippogriff girl's eyes widen with alarm. “Does it work by contact? Will it work for me? Who and what are you?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Yes, obviously, it does. Alcyone. A thief.”

She broke away from him. Almost brutally, Will caught her back, and they rejoined the dance. He was terribly aware of the feel and warmth of her waist under his hand, separated from him by only the thinnest scrap of silk. It called to him. He pulled it close. Her body was soft without being fleshy, muscular without being thrawn. It was tense as well; it resisted his embrace, without being able to escape it. “You still wear the ring. If you doubt I love you, just ask.”

“If I
cared
,” Alcyone said hotly, “I would have asked already.”

“Look. We seem to have gotten off to a bad start—”

“Do you think?”

“—but that doesn't mean we can't—”

“Yes, it does. That is exactly what it means.” They were at the edge of the dance floor now. She stopped dead in her tracks and held out a hand to the nearest male, a fop in a Green Knight costume. “Thank you,” she said, though he had not asked. “I'd love to dance.” Perforce, Will surrendered his salamander to her knight.

Away they spun.

For a second, Will contemplated the terrace full of beauties, lovelier than flowers, any of whom would be delighted to dance with him, flirt with him, dally with him till dawn. Save only the single woman he wanted most. What were the odds of that? It was as if he'd been cursed by a Maxwell's imp of the perverse, capable of inverting all probabilities, of turning a cold room hot and a warm one frigid, of making terms of endearment loathsome to the ear of his beloved and rejection only make him desire her the more.

In the distance, meanwhile, the dancing bear waved to get his attention.

Maintaining his outward aplomb, Will ducked and dodged his way through the crowd. Outside the ballroom, at the buffet tables, he asked a servitor for directions to the gent's. “Past the chafing dishes and to the right,” the dwarf said with a shadow of a bow.

Will fled, almost blindly.

A
fter he'd vomited into the toilet bowl, Will removed his domino and the Pierrot costume faded to nothing. He rinsed out his mouth, splashed water on his face, and combed his hair. There were two gold smudges on the jacket of his tux. He dabbed at them with a dampened washcloth and tried to
regain his calm. He was weary and achy and he suspected he was coming down with a headache.

Will took out his Hermes phoenix-leather rune-bag and removed a razor blade, a cut-down McDonald's straw, and a vial of pixie dust. He chopped the powder on the granite countertop, laid it out in two lines, and snorted up both.

It was as if somebody had opened the Gates of Dawn: Energy flowed back into him. The thought of a moonlit room full of beautiful sylphs all competing for his attention no longer filled him with dread.

Donning his mask again, Will left.

A bear waited for him outside the door. It leaned against the wall, arms folded, alongside a modest Rembrandt etching in an elaborate gold frame. “Caught you at last.” It placed its domino in a jacket pocket and became Florian L'Inconnu.

“I saw you talking to the witch from Political Security.” Florian took out a silver case and flipped it open. “Smoke?” When Will shook his head, he removed a cigarette, tamped its end against the case, and placed it jauntily in his mouth in a complex and fluid combination of motions that Will was certain he could, with practice, duplicate.