The Dragons of Babel (37 page)

“Excellent. You can provide references, of course.”

“References?” Never had absolute astonishment been so mildly expressed.

“Satisfied users. For those who have used this particular formulation, I mean. A turquoise-and-sapphire user's acclaim would be worthless. And Schuyler is more than just a racing beast to me. I daren't take chances.”

“Hmm,” Alberecht said. “Let me see what can be done.”

He disappeared into the back room.

Minutes later, he returned with an envelope. Will opened it and glanced down at a short list of four names, nodding with casual recognition. The first was
Pippin Droit-de-Seigneur
. “
Oh, yes, old Stinky
,” he murmured. The second was
Fata Melusine Sansculotte
. He pursed his lips and shook his head slightly, as if she might be beyond his asking, a former lover, say, who knew how to carry a grudge. The third was
Eilrik von Fenris
. He grunted noncommitally. Then he came to the fourth:

Alcyone L'Inconnu
.

15 T
HE
R
USING
F THE
W
EST

The offices of the Mayoralty coiled like a snake around the air shaft at the core of Babel nine loops up and then another nine down, so that it crisscrossed itself like a parking garage. This meant that there were two floors per level, intersecting and interpenetrating each other in a manner that, when taken in combination with centuries of alterations, subdividings, security glamours, and curses laid down by disgruntled office-seekers, guaranteed that only the cognoscenti could find their way about its endless warren of rooms. All others were lost in a matter of minutes and had to hire a local guide if they hoped to ever get anywhere.

Alcyone had an office on the third gyre of the upward serpent. Will hired a grig who claimed he had originally come to the Mayoralty to obtain a business license, lost his livelihood in the years-long and ultimately futile pursuit of that document, and now never left the building, eating at public receptions when he could and from vending machines and employee cafeterias when nothing better presented itself, and sleeping in the visitors gallery of the City Council caucus chamber. He was a cheerful little cricket of a fellow, and Will tipped him a silver dime when their journey ended safely at an undistinguished door whose brass plate read:

308

A. L'Inconnu

Asst. Director

Signs & Omens

Will opened the door without knocking and stepped inside.

Alcyone looked up from her desk.

For a long moment neither spoke.

At last Alcyone said, “It's you, isn't it?
Tell
me that the bastard prince and heir to His Absent Majesty that everyone is talking about isn't really you.”

“Well… it is and it isn't, if you see what I mean. May I sit?”

She nodded with chill grace toward a chair.

“I used to have a job that brought me to this building two or three times a week,” Will said musingly. The office had good furniture and a grim view. Its window faced across the air shaft to the Criminal Vengeance Division, where the heads of malefactors insufficiently notorious for a place above the city gates were routinely hung from spikes on the windowsills like so many cheeses in a delicatessen. “I had no idea you were so near.”

“And why should that matter to you?” Her manner was all business. There was not a scintilla of flirtatiousness to it.

“You know why,” Will said. “I'll say it out loud if you like.”

“That won't be necessary.” Alcyone lifted a stack of papers from her inbox and let it fall again. “There was a rain of snakes two weeks ago. A three-headed calf was born in Hell's Kitchen the day before yesterday. Just last night, a blood-red comet sped across the sky shrieking. Citizens spontaneously burst into flames. Tap water turns to blood. Tatzlwurms infest the Upper West Side. Statues weep and hogs fly. On Sixth Avenue, a merchant tries to
give his goods away. There's never been such a season for portents, signs, and plagues of owls. My sleepy backwater office has suddenly become one of the focuses of governance. All of which, apparently, is your doing. And for what?”

“Wealth, obviously.”

“But you won't live to enjoy it!” Alcyone slammed her hands down on her desk and stood in a fury. “Yours is a fool's ambition, Master le Fey. I have seen the death that awaits those who, with whatever rationale, are ambitious enough to seat themselves down upon the Obsidian Throne, and I assure you it is far from pleasant.”

“Please,” Will said mildly, “don't use that name. I have reason to believe it's been compromised. As for the Obsidian Throne, I plan never to get that far—quite.”

“Then what is the point of this elaborate charade?”

“How can I best explain this?” Will cast about in his mind. “Let me tell you a story.”

R
aven was walking, just walking
(Will began). He wasn't looking for trouble. But he wasn't looking to avoid it, either. That's just the kind of guy he was.

Well. He came to Scorpion's house and Scorpion invited him in. Scorpion poured him a drink. “Will you stay for supper?”

“Yes, I will do that thing.”

So Scorpion got out his good silver and his best china and served Raven a fine meal. Then he said, “Would you like coffee? Would you care for some tobacco?”

“Oh, I will do those things as well and I will stay the night, too.”

Scorpion brewed Blue Mountain coffee in his samovar and gave Raven Turkish tobacco to smoke in his hookah. He showed his guest all the rooms of his house but one. And afterward Raven said, “I hear that you have a room full of treasure. Everybody says so.”

“There's nothing special about it,” Scorpion said. But he showed it to Raven anyway. The room was full of gold and silver and gems. But Scorpion was right—there was nothing special about it. It was just ordinary treasure.

Nevertheless, Raven's eyes gleamed with avarice. “This is excellent treasure indeed,” he said. “But I do not think it is very safe. Somebody could climb through the window at night and steal it all.”

“I never thought of that,” said Scorpion. This was long ago when everyone was better behaved. “Could such a thing really happen?”

“Oh, yes. I think I should sleep with your treasure tonight to guard it from thieves.”

But innocent though the times may have been, everybody had heard about Raven and his roguish ways. So Scorpion said, “No, no, no. That is too lowly a job for a guest. You must sleep in my own bed tonight. It has silk sheets and an Irish lace coverlet. I will guard the treasure myself.”

And so it was.

Scorpion went into the treasure room and locked the door and piled all the treasure in a heap, and crouched over it, pincers open and tail raised, ready to sting. He did not sleep a wink that night for worrying about what sort of tricks Raven might be planning.

When morning came, Scorpion emerged from his treasure room to discover that Raven was gone. Along with his bedclothes, silverware, plates, samovar, and hookah.

Will spread his hands to indicate the end of his story. “That's all.”

After a brief, tense silence, Alcyone said, “In what sense is this an allegory?”

“Well… I have an associate. While I'm being prepped for the coronation, he'll set up an enterprise to sell titles and offices to the ambitious and gullible at prices just barely steep enough to be plausible. Those who suspect I
am a fraud—and there will be many such—will refrain from arresting him, lest I become aware they are watching me. I will be housed in the Palace of Leaves, after all, and the treasure there is not at all ordinary. A nimble man could stuff enough in his pockets to make him rich forever. So my adversaries will set traps for me, baited with such wonders as no cracksman could resist. But while they're guarding their glitters and geegaws, I'll skip town. My profits will be relatively modest. But I'll have my life and that's worth something, too.”

Alcyone scowled and pinched the bridge of her nose as if she were coming down with a headache. “Oh, you idiot. Why, out of all the denizens of Babel, should you tell me these things? I am a functionary in His Absent Majesty's governance. I'm a Lady of the Mayoralty and heir to the female line of House L'Inconnu. There's a legislative seat in the Liosalfar in my future when my brother has moved on to bigger things, as he surely will, and with luck I might even rise to the Council of Magi before my dotage. I am all your enemies rolled into one.”

“No.” Will stood and took her hands in his. “I don't believe you are. I came here today wondering how much of what I felt for you was but a romantic illusion—the image of freedom I saw in the Hanging Gardens the day I emerged from the underground—and how much was mere aspiration for the unattainable adventuress I met at your brother's masked ball. You received me coldly, proffering not one kindly word nor a single smile. And yet I find—”

A russalka stuck her head in the office. “Allie, we've just gotten word that the West is moving.”

“Yes, thank you,” Alcyone said, subtly shifting her stance so that her coworker would not see her holding hands with a stranger. Then, when the intruder was gone, “You find—?”

“I find that—”

A muera rode into the office atop a bureaucrat who
walked bent over and leaning on two short canes, so that the saddle on his back was level to the floor. There were blinders on his eyes and a bit in his mouth. She was a goat from the waist down and went naked, save for her tattoos, and with her hair all in tangles and witch-knots as an outward sign of her devotion to the welfare of the city.

“The West is astir!” she cried.

“Yes, yes, I'll get to it soon.” To Will, Alcyone said, “You have to understand—”

“It's moving! The West! It moves!”

“Thank
you, Glaistig.” She pulled away from Will just as a black dwarf came in with a crate of chickens and a requisition slip for her to sign. Two haint messengers arrived almost simultaneously, striding through opposing walls, and began speaking at once. A follet knocked on the door and waved a sheath of telephone message slips.

The russalka reappeared. “Allie, the Lord High Comptroller wants to know—”

“Enough!” The battle-light shone about Alcyone's head and her hair whipped in a wind that touched nothing else in the office. Beautiful beyond enduring was she in that instant, and terrifying as well. “Cover your eyes,” she said.

She clapped her hands and thunder pealed.

They were flying. The hippogriff swam strongly upward beneath them, and Will's arms were about Alcyone's waist. The crate of poultry was lashed to the back of the saddle behind Will. They were high in the air outside of Babel.

“How did you do that?” he gasped.

Alcyone glanced over her shoulder. Her face was stern and strong, like unto that of a warrior. “You're playing in the big leagues now, feyling. If you find this startling, then maybe it would be a good time for you to reconsider the wisdom of continuing in your rash and fraudulent impersonations.”