The Dragons of Babel (48 page)

Will looked around vaguely. “What is that sound?” he wondered. “I hear a sound.”

“Pay it no mind!” the dragon snapped. “We have more important—” But Will had already opened his eyes.

S
omebody was crying.

Will looked around groggily and saw nothing. Then he turned to the side and there was a small child tugging at the leather strap that held his left arm fastened to Obsidian Throne. It was a little girl.

“Esme?”

The strap came undone and Will lifted his arm. He could move both arms, he realized. The strap about his chest was gone. So was the one around his legs. He was weak as a kitten, though. It was all he could do to reach up and push the crown off his head. It fell to the floor with a clatter.

“Come here, child.” Will patted his leg and Esme climbed into his lap. “Don't cry. How in the world did you get in here?”

“I know how to do things. How to slip past guards. How to pick locks. How to walk through walls. How to… I forget what else. But it wasn't hard for me, I know how to do almost everything.”

“Yes, I remember.” It seemed like something from another time, another world. Then a thought came to Will. “Why are you still here? With your luck, you should have left Babel days ago, Esme. This isn't a safe place to be.”

“I know. You want to knock down the city. You want to kill my toad!”

“You have a toad?”

“She's big. I think you know her. She's so big she can't leave her bar and she listens to the radio and reads the newspaper all day. She said something about you, but I forget what.”

“Do you mean the Duchess? Esme, you should stay away from her—she's a treacherous creature.”

“Wait, I remember what my toad said now. She told me you don't like her. But I
do
! She's nice to me. She gave me pretzels.”

“You've got to leave, Esme. You've got to go someplace safe. The city is burning.” But then Will realized that it was not. The war-dragons he had seen smash into it were a vision that Baalthazar, his dragon-aspect, had shown him. The city was yet whole, and the mighty metal war-drakes were all locked down, unable to fly until he himself released them. With a convulsive shudder he hugged the child to him. He had almost killed her! The thought filled him with revulsion. How could he have thought to destroy an entire city when he hadn't the stomach to kill even a single child? “All right, Esme,” he murmured through his shame. “I'll be good.”

She struggled out of his embrace and put her forehead against his, staring solemnly into his eyes. “Promise?”

“Promise. But it's still not a good idea for you to stay here. Can you get out of the palace without being caught?”

“Of course I can. I'm lucky.”

“Can you take me with you?”

Esme looked doubtful. “I don't think it works like that.”

“No, I was afraid not.” Will kissed the child on her forehead, then set her down on the floor. He was about to swat her behind and send her off when something caught his eye. “Why is there a safety pin clipped to the front of your sweater?”

“Oh, yeah. I had a letter I was s'posed to give you. Only it got in my way, so I put it somewhere.” Esme dug into her jeans and emerged with a wadded-up envelope. “Here.”

“Thank you,” Will said solemnly. The envelope said
READ IMMEDIATELY
on the outside. He pocketed it without looking inside. “Now, go! You'll be fine.”

“I know,” Esme said. “I'm lucky like that.”

She scampered away.

Now Will had to decide what to do with himself. He dared not sit on the Obsidian Throne ever again, lest his dragon aspect overcome him. Nor did he care to be used by the Lords of Babel as a weapon against the lands of the West. The power he had inherited was simply too great to be safely employed by any single person. As king, he was a constant threat to the safety of his city and of the world, and thus he must absent himself.

One way or another.

T
wo twists, one turn, and a flight of stairs upward, and Will was lost. To be lost is a wonderful thing if one is in a position to appreciate it. Everything is new and surprising. The spittoons startle. The existence of a warren of access corridors to keep the servants unobtrusive astonishes. Will would have lingered to marvel at the stenciled royal service only on the scuffed backside of a door whose front was surely distinguished, had he not heard voices echoing up the stairwell. The staff had regained the building. He plunged through the doorway and found himself surrounded by alabaster statuary and ormolu clocks.

A hunted animal does not run full-out until the predator is in sight, but saves its energy for the crisis. So, now, Will. He loped down a hallway and, when the doorway he had passed through slammed open, slipped into the nearest room.

It was yet another conference space with too-high ceilings and mahogany trim carved into life-scaled nymph heroines
in Greek helmets. There was a kitchenette to one side, but only the one door. The stentorian clamor of booted feet grew louder.

Will threw open the windows and climbed outside.

The ledge was narrow. The wind was cold. Will closed the windows behind him and edged to the side, out of sight. Then he looked down and almost fell.

It was a vertiginously long way down. From here, the ground was half-obscured by clouds. It looked distant and impossibly romantic. He wished he were down there now, by the side of one of those gossamer-thin roads, thumb out and about to hook a ride that would carry him halfway to Lemuria.

There were muffled sounds from the room he had just left. Will held his breath. But nobody looked out the windows, and after a minute or so the sounds died away.

He was stuck. He dared not go back inside, and he was physically incapable of moving anywhere on the ledge. Will stuck his hands in his pockets against the cold, and discovered the letter that Esme had given him.

He took it out and began to read.

Dear Son:

So now you know! I'm sorry to have played such a shabby trick on you. But what choice did I have? Babel needed a king and I've grown a little too long in the tooth and independent-minded to play the part. Nor was it my decision to involve you. The Throne had been empty too long, and so it began searching for you. It drew you to itself. Without my interference, you would have been found on the train from Camp Oberon—and when they made you king, you wouldn't have been prepared to make the decision you just have
.

Of course I can't know what you decided. That choice was yours to make. But I think I know the kind
of person you are. So, if I'm right—and when am I ever wrong?—you're looking for a new line of work, and trying to figure out exactly what you should do with the world
.

But here's a secret that only you and I know: The world doesn't need doing
.

The world is not perfect, nor can it be made so. But despite all the pain and heartbreak, it's a fine place to live. It gave me your presence, however briefly, and as far as I'm concerned that pays for everything. Learn to praise the imperfect world. You're a trickster, like me. Only achieve joy, and you'll be a great one
.

Love,
Your Father, (Nat), Marduk XXIII, by Grace of the Seven, Absent

Will let go of the letter and the wind whipped it away. Then he took a long and ragged breath. The air was cold up here and invigorating as iced wine. He felt more alive now than he ever had before. Life was correspondingly more precious to him as well. He looked down the side of Babel. It looked so fragile from this perspective. So beautiful.

It would not be an ignoble thing to die protecting.

There was a small dark speck in the air in the distance dancing against a cloud. Something about it felt vaguely familiar.

Will wasn't sure he was going to be able to jump. All his body resisted the thought. Against all expectations he realized that what he had thought at the time to be an unending cascade of misery and calamity had actually been a pretty good life. He was sorry to be leaving it.

He took a deep breath.

Alcyone swept down out of nowhere, her hippogriff screaming under her, and reined up just below the ledge. “Get on, you idiot!” she cried. “They're going to be after us in another minute.”

Will blinked.

Then he leapt down behind her and put his arms about her in a hug. “How did you know I'd be here?” he said gratefully.

“I head up the gods-be-damned Division of Signs and Omens,” she said. “If I didn't know, who in seven hells would?”

Ararat grew slowly smaller behind them. Ahead, the sky was vast and unending, with continents of clouds adrift in it, and on them harbors and cities and billowing castles. “We can't stay together. A month would kill you.”

“Don't talk like a fool. I know all that. But I don't suppose you can make me too happy in a week or three. And after that… well, there's always next year.”

“I bet I could make you too happy in three weeks if I tried. I bet it would only take me ten days—tops.”

“Asshole!” Alcyone laughed and wheeled her beast up and around in a great arc, and they were flying, and he was young and joyful and in love and his sweetie was here with him, and she loved him, too. All the world was theirs and bright with possibility.

So it couldn't last. Who the fuck
cared?

20 T
HE
E
ND
F THE
S
T
RY

Returning to Babel was, for Will, like returning to a beloved book that one has all but memorized. It of course contained a thousand thousand stories—its very name meant “book” in the primal tongue, though some scholars interpreted that to mean “library”—and those stories were always changing, always coming to an end, always beginning again. But if one could sit upon the Obsidian Throne and be given the power of the Dragon King to comprehend everything in the city at once, he would see that it was all one glorious and heartbreaking tale and that tale as recurrent as the seasons.

It had been about two decades since Will was last in Babel. Its every brick and smell tugged at his heart. He was young when last he had trod these streets. Nobody could say he was young anymore. But what he had lost in years, he had gained in guile. Old Nat would have been proud of how he'd turned out. Nobody, seeing him now, could have guessed that he was waiting for somebody, nor how anxiously. Had anyone happened to glance his way (but they did
not
glance, not when he had decided that they shouldn't), they'd have thought him a boulevardier loitering for a moment before proceeding on to a destination of no discernable importance. The facial scar they would dismiss as resulting from some youthful sporting accident.

He had been waiting for hours. He was prepared to wait forever.

Suddenly, his heart leaped up.

The tenement door he had been surreptitiously watching opened. A girl came out of it. She was lean and dressed in punk leather, but she had the foliate ears of one with noble blood in her veins. There was mortal blood in her as well, though it took one like Will to see it. She wore black lipstick. Half her head had been shaved. She looked like she could use a meal.