The Dragons of Babel (40 page)

“'Lo, Allie. What's the news?” asked the one Alcyone had identified as the war strategist Lord Venganza. The others were the Lords Jaegerwulf and Lascaux, and the Fatas Caldogatto, Misericordia, and Elspeth, all highly placed in offices that mattered.

“You must have heard that the West moved. Pestilence, doom, and universal destruction are imminent. So what else is new? It's been nothing but paperwork for me ever since. And you?”

“There was a minor rebellion in Ys, easily crushed. The War continues and shows every intention of continuing forever. Who's your friend?”

“His name is Tenali Raman.” The group's glances traveled briefly over Will and were gone forever, just as Alcyone had foretold. “I'm showing him the sights.”

“Nobody cares about the sights anymore.” Fata Elspeth pouted. “I've been at this party almost fifteen minutes and nobody's said anything about my tits!”

“If I start praising your breasts, we'll be here all day,' Speth,” Lord Lascaux said.

Fata Elspeth smiled appreciatively. On the balcony below, one of the dwarves grunted as he took a blade in his side, to light applause.

“Heads up, our next lady-mayor approacheth,” Lord Jaegerwulf murmured. There was a crackling in the air, and a whiff of ozone. An elf-lady strode toward them, wrapped in an aura of darkness, as if she were a storm cloud. “Time to tug forelocks,” she said.

“Tell me I didn't forget Fata Bloduewedd's envelope.” Fata Misericordia dug frantically in her purse. “Oh, gods, I did. No, here it is.”

“Wait here, Tenali,” Alcyone said. “We have some entirely voluntary and completely legal contributions to make in a venue in no way related to the apparatus of state, for which we will expect no return whatsoever either in terms of influence or of access. This will only take a few minutes.”

Will watched them go, feeling awkward and out of place. Then he went to look for the shrimp bowl. In his experience, these functions always had an enormous bowl of iced shrimp somewhere.

A woman dressed too emphatically high-elven to actually
be
high-elven stopped him with one outstretched leg. She wore high-heeled boots and black leather pants. Her red vinyl jacket was zipped low to reveal a bustier with eye-popping decolletage. It was exactly the kind of self-mocking, faux-trashy look that Will would have been drawn to (despising himself for it, but drawn nevertheless), had he not been here with Alcyone. “Hello,” she said. “I'm Fata Jayne.”

“I'm nobody in particular. Have you seen the shrimp bowl?”

“No. Why don't we go back to my place and look for it?”

“Um… If I'm not mistaken, we just met. Let's not rush things.”

“That's exactly what I'm looking for. Somebody who knows how to take it nice and slow.”

“Look. I don't know why you're behaving in this extraordinary fashion, but I'm here with somebody. So whatever it is you want, it's not going to happen.”

“But you do like me? I mean, you
are
attracted to girls?”

“Actually, no, I'm not,” Will lied. “So why don't you go away?”

“Okay, let me give this one last try.” Fata Jayne leaned close and lightly sang the refrain from
The Ballad of Oberon,'s Arse
in his ear:

“Oh, she pegged him high

And she pegged him low

She pegged him where the sun don't go
.

She made him do things that a fella don't do…

If they could play thus… Why not me and you?

“Try something new,
mon petit serin
. Expand your horizons.” Smilingly, she sucked on one red-nailed fingertip and then touched it to his cheek. Instantly, he was hard as a rock. His face flushed and he could scarce breathe, so great was his physical desire.

Through gritted teeth, Will said, “Your penny-ante aphrodisiac magicks notwithstanding, I despise your offer. Yet as I am a gentleman and out of courtesy for your gender, I shall simply bow and withdraw.”

Lightly, the fata said, “No? Ah, well, then I must find somebody else. But fear not, cheri, I shall always remember you as the One Who Got Away.”

A minute later Alcyone swept by with her friends in tow. “Let's go,” she said. And, as they left, “I saw you talking with that trashy little man-eater. Did she hit on you?”

“No, we were just talking.”

“That's good. Fata Jayne is notorious in our circles. Nobody who leaves with her ever comes back. You have to wonder what she does with them.”

O
ff to the side of the stage, a pianist was playing “Stardust.” As the clubbers filtered in and sat at their tables, he spoke into his microphone in a soft and insinuating tone:
“Bienvenido, señors y señoras, a Le Club Frottage
.” He was a pencil-thin haint with a garter on one arm and a derby hat cocked to the side.
“Heute abend haben wir eine Festlichkeit für Sie
. A show, a performance, a star unlike any other.
Je vous presente—El Sonámbula! Der Träumengeist! L'Oneiroi des Reves!
The one and only Nanshe!”

He slammed both hands down in a dramatic discord and three cacodemons with needle teeth and malicious eyes pushed and propped up and prodded a slumping figure twice their height onto the stage. It was a large breasted and womanly hipped hermaphrodite in an open silk bathrobe.

“Oh, this is a wonderful show,” Fata Misericordia said. “I've been here every night this week.”

Nanshe's head, cornrowed in tight Scandinavian-blond braids, lolled on a shoulder. His penis was a slender and shockingly pink tube emergent from the folds of her labia. The cacodemons whisked away his robe and scattered, leaving her standing alone and naked in the center of the stage, bathed in golden light. The pianist segued into Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 in c sharp minor, the Moonlight Sonata.

Briefly, nothing happened. Then a cacodemon returned with a tube of K-Y Jelly, squeezed a dab into the hermaphrodite's hand, and darted away. Nanshe's eyes opened a crack and the hand floated up to the face, where heavy features studied it puzzledly. Then down it drifted again to delicately anoint the genitalia.

Slowly, languidly, s/he began to masturbate.

“Dance?” Lord Lascaux said.

Alcyone stood and gave him her hand. Caldogatto and Misericordia followed them onto the floor. Elspeth tugged at Jaegerwulf's hand and, reluctantly, he went, too. Which left only Lord Venganza staring fiercely and fixedly at the stage act.

This was as good a chance as Will was going to get. Assuming his generic-exotic-foreigner accent and in the timid manner of someone keenly aware of his lowly status, he addressed the war-elf: “Sir? I was hoping you could tell me something. I've asked this of everybody, but no one seems to know.”

Lord Venganza started. “Eh?”

“Why does the War exist?”

“It exists because I work extremely hard to bring together billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of soldiers requiring supply lines half a continent long and enough medical facilities to service a medium-sized nation. You should be grateful it's not
you
charged with such a task.”

“No, I mean what caused it?”

“Arrogance,” Venganza said. “Laziness, greed, lack of foresight, bad intelligence, an unwillingness to negotiate, a disinclination bordering upon an outright refusal to listen to reason, a reflexive undervaluing of the enemy's resources and resolve, an unseemly haste to resort to force—and I suppose there may have been faults on our own side as well.”

“But what is it meant to accomplish?”

“Hum. Well, I suppose the West wants us to pull out of their territory. We can't do that, of course, or they'd advance their armies across our borders, looking for vengeance. So ultimately we have no option other than to seek complete and total victory.” He shrugged. “Which, given the lockdown on our most powerful weapons occasioned by His Absent
Majesty's abdication of his duties, isn't likely to happen anytime soon.”

“But… if there's neither reason nor purpose for the War, why can't you simply put an end to it?”

“For the same reason an avalanche can't be stopped. These things must play out their natural course.” Lord Venganza smiled faintly. “At any rate, war is required in order that we may exercise our talents to their fullest. Should I be moving tankers of oil about the world, or speculating in wheat harvests? That's a bloodless and ignoble game.”

“Then exercise your talents to end the War! That would surely be noble. If you—”

The dancers chose that moment to return, swooping down on their seats like a flock of roosting birds. They chirped and twittered, continuing a conversation that seemed to have no proper beginning and to be in no danger of ever reaching an end.

“… find it harder and harder to care.”

“Darling, nobody cares anymore. Not anybody who matters, at least.”

“What do you make of the rumors about the king's heir? Who's putting them out?”

“It's a grassroots thing, for certain. If it were a conspiracy surely one of us would know.”

“Perhaps one does and isn't speaking,” Fata Elspeth said, with a significant glance at Alcyone.

“Oh, please.”

“Your, um, friend,” Lord Venganza said, not-looking at Will, “thinks we would be best employed bending all our efforts to end the War.”

“One cannot address all the ills of the world,” Misericordia said. “There is only so much time, money, compassion, hours in the day. Only the king could address everything at once—and pray the Seven he never returns to try!”

Shocked, Will said, “But everyone yearns for the king's return.”

“Everyone is an ass, then. What possible purpose does it serve to put all the power we have into the hands of an individual of uncertain morals and competence, idiosyncratic enthusiasms, and unknown temperament merely because his father was king? None whatsoever.”

“He could end the War, for one thing.”

“Yes, but at what cost? In a representational democracy, even one as clotted and corrupt as our own, all groups are represented and, from self-interest, defended. Do you honestly believe that a king would understand the needs and interests of a venture capitalist, a kobold, or a small businessman as well as they do themselves? The abuses of tyranny more commonly arise from ignorance than from malice. And if you think that a monarchy is any less prone to foreign adventure than a democracy, then I suggest you need to reread your Herodotus.”

“At least one person can be held accountable.”

“No, one person can be killed. The entire society is held accountable.”

“Yes, but—”

Alcyone had been staring moodily at the stage act for some time. With sudden decisiveness, she stood and said, “We're leaving.”

“Already? Are you sure?” Fata Misericordia asked. “It's considered good luck if Nanshe spurts on you.”

A
t the exit, a red-skinned devil with short horns and a tuxedo jacket bowed slightly to Alcyone and said, “The show wasn't to madame's liking?”

“I liked it fine. But I'm looking for something a little more… sordid. Squalid? No, sordid
c'est le seul mot juste.”

“Ahhhh. Something low and vile for the highborn and genteel lady.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well. For a thousand dollars I can offer you the decaying corpse of a sea lion. For three thousand—” He looked down at the
bundle of bills Alcyone had slipped into his hand and his eyes widened. “I think I know what you want.”

They followed him through a door marked
PRIVATE
and then down a warren of back ways and narrow stairs. The farther they went, the shabbier the halls, the older the paint, the worse the lighting. Will's skin itched with the memory of his days as Jack Riddle.

They emerged in an alleyway beside an overripe and overflowing dumpster. In the wall opposite was a blue metal door with stenciled letters reading:

FORBIDDEN

“What's in there?” Will asked when the devil started to unlock it.

“Why, whatever you want, sir!” the devil said ingratiatingly. “Everything you fear most, oh, yes—atrocities and meaningless cruelty, alienation and despair. Very loathsome, very disgusting, very pleasant, a distinctly refreshing change of pace.” He held it open for Will. “Through here.”

Will could not make out the any details of the interior for the murkiness within. But there were flames inside and the smell of gasoline and cold iron.

Stark terror gripped his heart and squeezed. But he could not bear to display cowardice in front of Alcyone.

He took a deep breath and stepped forward.

“Oh, no, you don't.” Alcyone slammed the door shut before he could pass through. “You're only here for support.” To their cicerone, she said, “This has nothing to do with him, understand? It's my own worst fear I need to confront.”

With an apologetic smirk, the devil unlocked the door with another key. It opened onto an entirely different space.

Alcyone stepped within. The door shut behind them.

Will almost gagged from the mingled stench of stale urine, feces, and physical decay that rose from a hospital bed at the center of the room. But the room itself was clean and
well-appointed, with blue rose-patterned wallpaper and lace curtains so thick that only a joyless gray light shone through. To one side of the bed was a table with a vase of dried flowers and a bowl of dusty wax fruit. At its foot was an aquarium in which a lone Siamese fighting fish swam around and around a ceramic castle in slow and unvarying circles. A clock on the wall ticked steadily, its slimmest hand twitching in place once a second, perpetually three hacks from the hour and never quite reaching two.

At first Will thought that the crone lying in the bed was but a shadow or a trick of the light. Then, with the slightest shift of perception, there she was: transparent, like a glass filled with water. Straps had been tied about her waist and chest to keep her in place. Her mouth hung open in a frozen gasp of pain. “Who is she?” Will asked.