The Dragons of Babel (45 page)

“The amulets of power, I was thinking,” Will said.

“Follow me.”

Dame Serena glided down the aisles, not bothering to look to see if Will was keeping up. She stopped before an exhibit case and one by one its drawers glided open at her glance, each containing hundreds of amulets. Will pointed at random to an amulet that was set with garnets. “What does this one do?”

“Place it around the neck of whosoever you desire and he or she will fall completely and immediately in love with you.” She sniffed. “I imagine that makes your eyes light up, eh?”

“Alas,” Will said, “getting someone to love you is the easy part.”

“Quite right,” the docent said crisply. “Though where in the world one so young as yourself learned such a salutary lesson is more than I wish to know.” She nodded and the drawers slid closed. “What else would you like to see?”

“There was another drawer with some interesting amulets….”

“You'd be thinking of the unicorn-ivory amulet with the secret name of fire carved into it. The one you tried to snitch
the last time you were here. No, I don't think that you need to look at that. What else?”

Will drew himself up. “Dame Serena. I am the king apparent, not only of this tower but of all Babylonia and half the civilized world beyond. So that amulet is properly mine. You may doubt the legitimacy of my claim, if you wish, but even if I were an imposter—what conceivable difference would it make? Where could I possibly go with it?”

The docent's face grew taut with anger. Old though she was, there was no denying that she had great cheekbones; it was easy to imagine what her dead lovers had once seen in her. She jabbed him hard in the chest with a long, bony finger. “Don't you try to pull rank with
me
, you young jackanapes. I've got tenure. And it's been a long time since I was impressed by mere royalty. Once you've seen an absolute monarch drunk, covered in his own puke, and weeping because he can't get it up, you lose all sense of awe for the institution. Now. At the risk of repeating myself, what next?”

“Um… winds?”

The cabinet of winds held a suite of shallow drawers divided into partitions like typesetters' trays. Each partition in turn contained a short length of rope tied into a witch-knot, and each witch-knot different. Dame Serena lightly touched four knots at the cardinal points of the tray. “These are the Anemoi, according to the Greek system: Boreas the North wind, Zephyros the West, Notos the South, and Euros the East, which are also known as Tramontana, Po-nente, Ostro, and Levante in the medieval compass rose system, whose octave is completed by Maestro, Libeccio, Siroco, and Greco. The subdivisions are theoretically infinite, of which this collection contains several hundred particularly select exemplars.”

“These are from Lapland, right?” Will said, fingering the tray. He lifted a knot. “What happens if I untie one?”

“We shan't ever know, shall we?” Dame Serena slapped
his hand. “Drop it,” she said, adding, “You're a regular font of mischief today.”

“It was only a zephyr,” Will said placatingly. He placed the witch-knot back in its rectangle with such exaggerated care that Dame Serena didn't notice that he had palmed the original knot, while leaving a carefully tied duplicate of it in its place.

T
he hour went quickly. (“Ten minutes, sir,” Ariel said, and “Get stuffed,” Will replied.) As Will was turning to leave, however, Dame Serena slid open yet another drawer. “There's something in here you'll want to see,” she said. “This is Your Majesty's smallest territory. It'll take no time at all to inspect.” Within the drawer were blue ocean waters with spouting whales smaller than earwigs and a mountainous island no more than a yard across, complete with harbors, a bustling port, and wee stone cities.

Holding his breath to avoid afflicting its inhabitants with a tempest, Will bent low to examine the tiny prodigy. But when he did, the land blurred before his eyes and he looked up to discover that he was standing in a pavilion by a white-sand beach. Bright tropical foliage blossomed all about him. “Where am I?” he asked. An elf-maiden, tall and lissom in a turquoise sarong, lounged against the railing. She was beauteous even beyond her kind.

“You can stop staring at my tits now,” she snapped. “You'll wear your eyes out.”

Will recognized the cheekbones then and gasped. “Dame Serena?”

“You needn't act so astonished,” the elf-maiden said. “It's hardly flattering that you find it so hard to believe that I was once a looker. As to where we are—this is the Land of Youth. We can't stay here long.”

“Is this some kind of allegory?”

Smiling, the elf-maiden leaned forward and pinched him hard. “Does this
feel
allegorical?”

“No, I suppose not. Why are we here?” Will said, rubbing his arm.

“The Palace of Leaves may be an architectural wonder, but there's no expectation of privacy to be found in it. It's quite the fascist state, actually. There are spies and hidden microphones everywhere. But in the Land of Youth there are no such hazards. Marduk XVII and I used to come here to… well, never mind. But if his subordinates had known, I'd not have lived to such a disgustingly old age. We can talk safely here.”

“Uh, okay, I suppose. What about?”

“They know you want to escape. Please don't try.”

“I am a prisoner in the palace, Dame Serena,” Will said quietly, “and the first duty of a prisoner is to try to escape.”

“Well, if you must, you must. Far be it from me to stand between an idealist and his conscience, however disconnected from reality they both may be. But not this afternoon. They're expecting you to try something then, and they'll be ready for you.”

“How do you know this?” Will asked.

“I told you that Eitri was a gossip. We get together for tea in the afternoons. It's the only vice I have left to me.”

The Land of Youth wavered and was gone, and Will found himself standing in the cabinet of curiosities again. Dame Serena, old once more, pressed something into Will's hand. It was the ivory fire-amulet he had failed to steal the other day. “Take this,” she whispered. “Just in case you need it.”

“Why, Dame Serena!” Will said in astonishment. “You
do
like me after all.”

“Oh, zip your lip, or I'll give you the back of my hand. You're a fool, like every other king I've ever known, and I'm doubly a fool for trying to help you.” Her look softened. “But I've always had a soft spot for kings.”

T
hey were expecting him to make his move that afternoon. So of course he did.

Will was taking the air in the garden when Ariel said, “The Master of the Tests wishes to see you, sir.”

“Florian? Send him to the reception room. Make him wait.”

“He says it's urgent, sir.”

“Then tell him I'll be with him as soon as possible, and an hour from now remind me that he's waiting.”

Will stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit up. It was a deliberately provocative gesture, and one that engendered a response almost immediately. Eitri came running up, wringing his hands in alarm. “Sir! Sir!” he squeaked. “You can't smoke here.”

“Why not?”

“There's a city ordinance against smoking in a government park. Which your gardens, technically, are.”

“You have a smoking room, sir,” Ariel said. “It's rather well appointed.”

“Yeah? Well, I can't be bothered to go there.” Will blew a mouthful of smoke in the general direction of his major-domo's voice. “So what're you gonna do about it?”

“I can't touch you, of course, sir. But I can dock all of the palace staff a day's pay for every incident.” Eitri, who had a gambling problem he fondly imagined wasn't common gossip, looked stricken. “If that is what you want.”

Will cursed and threw the cigarette down on the ground and stomped on it. In a flash, Eitri was on his knees, sweeping the ashes into his hand. “Just… bugger off, all of you, okay? Leave me alone. If I can't smoke, at least let me have five minutes alone. Go away, both of you, and take the rest of the staff with you.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Eitri said fervently.

“As you wish, sir.”

The creepy feeling that Will always got when Ariel was near evanesced.

As soon as he was sure he was alone, Will flipped over the wicker table so that it made a basket shape with a short
pedestal-well at the center, rather like the mold for a bundt cake. He dumped the fruit from a large copper bowl on a nearby table and placed the bowl snugly atop the pedestal. Then he tossed the fire-amulet into the bowl and activated its rune with a muttered word. Heat washed up from it, not enough to make the canopy lift free of the ground—that would come later—but enough so that it tugged lightly against its guy lines. These Will untied from their stakes and retied to the edges of the basket. The tent poles he let fall to the ground.

He was ready!

Will hastily set several armfuls of potted plants into one side of the basket to balance it and then climbed into the other.

“Sir? What are you doing?”

“My duty,” Will said. He muttered a second word that brought the fire-amulet to full power. Heat gushed up from the copper bowl and with a great
whoosh
the canopy overhead billowed as it filled with hot air.

Will untied the witch-knot and a brisk west wind sprang up, scattering napkins across the patio and pushing at the swollen canopy.

Alarmed servitors came running out on the roof just as the makeshift balloon lifted up into the air. Some crashed into the rose hedges and others ran around them, vaulting or stumbling over the new garden furniture. They leaped up, trying to catch at the basket, and failed. Will laughed into their upturned faces and—

“Enough.”

The air grew cool. The canopy-balloon ceased to flutter. In the center of the garden Ariel had manifested in his physical form: a slim figure with a chalk-white face, lank black hair, and a rooster's coxcomb. His mouth was twisted and bitter. Yet his voice was calm and dulcet.

Ariel raised an arm and twisted a hand and the balloon returned without fuss to its point of origin. Servitors ran up
to hasten away the fire-amulet, to right the wicker table, to restore the scattered fruit to the copper bowl, to reerect the canopy. In seconds all was as it had been before.

They had caught him. But of course, there had never really been any question of that.

Now that Ariel stood before him in visible form, eyes cold and mouth cruel, Will found himself more convinced than ever that the creature was his household's spy-master, the one that Eitri and the yakshis and for all he knew Dame Serena as well, reported to.

Slowly Ariel faded back into insubstantiality.

“Sir?” his voice said out of nowhere. “This is perhaps a little early, but… you wished to be reminded that Florian L'Inconnu is waiting.”

L
ike most of the rooms in the Palace of Leaves, the reception chamber was far too big and far too ornate for Will to feel comfortable in. The ceiling was white with rose-colored plaster swags of fruits, ribbons, and medallions. If Fabergé had made a pink Wedgwood teapot the size of a bus depot and turned it inside out, it would look much like this.

Florian, of course, looked right at home. He rose gracefully from a leather chair at Will's approach, stubbing out his cigar in a nearby ashtray.

“I must speak to you in absolute confidence,” Will said without preamble. “The other evening in the garden you said things I am certain would not have been spoken had you thought one of the palace spies might overhear them. So I presume you have means of ensuring our privacy.”

Florian removed a BlackBerry from his jacket, tapped several keys, and pocketed it again. “You may speak your mind freely.”

“Tell me,” Will said. “Am I truly the king?”

“Yes,” Florian said, “I honestly believe that you are.”

“Then kneel.”

“What?”

“Kneel!” Will repeated with force.

Florian L'Inconnu, Master of the Tests, holder of a permanent seat in the Liosalfar, and scion-and-heir of a great house though he might be, went down on one knee and bowed his head, just as the merest peasant or byre-slave would have. “Your Majesty.”

“Both knees!”

Florian's face hardened, but he obeyed.

“Touch your forehead to the ground.”

Flushed with humiliation, he did so.

So, thought Will, this is what true power feels like. He could grow to like it. It would be the easiest thing in the world to abuse. Which in and of itself was another compelling reason for him to leave this place immediately. “Stand,” he said, “and take off all your clothing.”

Warily, Florian did as he was told. “May I ask what all this is about?”

“Absolutely.” Will casually picked up a heavy crystal ashtray. Then he smashed it into the side of Florian's head. “While you're in the hospital recovering from that concussion, I'll be making my way out of Babel.”

T
he spell Will used to disguise himself as Florian was the flimsiest of things, cobbled together from tissue paper, moonlight, cobwebs, and filched fingernail parings. If an inmate in a state penitentiary had employed it, it would have worked no better than a gun carved out of soap and blackened with shoe polish. Which is to say, well enough to get him in trouble, but not so well as to get him over the wall. But the Palace of Leaves was unique among prisons in that its wardens had forgotten that it was one, and thus were not prepared for a break.

Wearing Florian's stolen face and his clothing as well, Will walked unmolested to the main elevator bank where a haint so deferential he almost wasn't there at all, rang for a
car. The great bronze doors opened and he got in. “Ground floor,” he told the operator. Downward they went. The car stopped only once, at the seventieth floor, to let on a passenger.