by Adam Roberts
‘No – not that. What did you say, just before that?’
This wrongfooted Vagner slightly. ‘What?’
‘Just before the stuff about the soil?’
‘So desperate was I to glean…’ the old dragon offered.
‘No – no – after that.’
‘Erm… to glean any facts that might uncover my…’
‘No,’ said Käal. ‘I said after that.’
‘That bit came after that! I mean, that was the bit that came after the other bit.’
‘In that case, what did you say after the bit that came after the other bit?’
‘Wait,’ said Vagner. ‘I’m confused. What do you want me to do?’
‘If you’ll be so kind, I’d like you to repeat the, eh, the,’ said Käal, losing the thread himself a little. ‘The bit you said immediately before the last bit you said, but after all the other stuff you said previously, that you’ve just repeated to me, and which you described as the bit after the came after that other bit.’
Vagner stared gloomily at him for a long time. ‘My brain is not,’ he said, ‘as lively as once it was. Perhaps if I repeated the whole thing?’
‘OK,’ said Käal.
‘I searched them anyway,’ old Vagner said, in a beaten-down voice. ‘Many times so desperate was I to glean any facts that might uncover my grandniece’s fate and when that proved bootless I…’
‘There!’ said Käal. ‘That’s it! That’s the bit I wanted you to repeat before, er, the last bit but after the bit that you initially repeated with the, er…’
‘What?’
‘The boot bit.’
‘“Bootless”? said Vagner. ‘That?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? Is it important?’ He stuck his long neck out and brought his big snout nearer Käal’s. ‘Is it a clue?’
‘No. I just don’t know what it means.’
Old Vagner surveyed him, and very slowly drew his neck back in. Speaking slowly, he said: ‘You don’t know what—’
‘I don’t know what it means. No.’
‘It means fruitless. It means that nothing came of it.’
‘Oh!’ said Käal. ‘Ah. Good. I understand now. Please, continue.’
‘You’d never heard that word before?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a very,’ said Helltrik, ‘common word.’
‘I’m sure it is. Please, go on with your story.’
‘Well,’ said Vagner, collecting himself. ‘I was telling you how I had the soil searched, very thoroughly, by…’
‘Why boot, though?’ Käal interrupted.
‘What?’
‘I understand fruitless, because a tree comes into fruit, and if that isn’t, er, fulfilled then the tree is fruitless. But why boot?’
‘It’s just a—’
‘Is it a cobbling metaphor?’
‘It’s just a word! It’s just a turn of phrase! Can we please leave it?’
Käal opened his eyes very wide. ‘I’m curious,’ he said, in a hurt voice, his nostril smoke turning sepia. ‘That’s all. It’s why you want to hire me, isn’t it? My curiosity?’
‘Yes, my dear Käal, of course,’ said old Vagner. ‘I only meant that it does not seem to me relevant to…’
‘No-no,’ said Käal, waving his right forearm, ‘please, go on. Please carry on. Don’t mind me.’
Vagner harrumphed a little. ‘I was only going to explain how I searched the soil.’
‘How?’
‘I hired earthwyrms.’
‘Oh!’ Käal was surprised.
‘Perhaps you are prejudiced against them?’
‘Prejudiced?’ said Käal. ‘Not, not at all. I knew several earthwyrms when I was at universerpenty. But they are a little… oh I don’t know…’
‘Slimy?’
‘Well – yes.’
‘I agree.’
‘I mean, that’s a neutral observation. It’s empirically the case. Earthwyrms are a little…’
‘Slimy yes. But who better to search the great mass of soil upon which Doorbraak is built? I hired half a dozen, the younger no bigger than a Salamander, the oldest longer and more muscled than I am myself. They spent a year and a half going through the soil. Nothing.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Earthwyrms can tell when soil has previously been disturbed, and when it is virgin and undug. It’s a sort of sonar they possess. Hellfire was not in any of the old tunnels, and nobody had dug any new tunnels.’
‘So, she’s not in the top half and not in the bottom half,’ said Käal, ruminatively. ‘So she must be off Doorbraak.’
Old Vagner looked at him.
‘That’s logical!’ he said.
‘So if she’s not on Doorbraak – then where is she?’
‘I believe her body was smuggled off the island at a later stage,’ said Helltrik. ‘That afternoon, when we realized Hellfire was missing, we did look through the castle – although the extensive searches I talked about, they didn’t happen until many days later. So, conceivably, it would have been possible for somebody to murder Hellfire, hide her body somewhere – in the subterranean tunnels, maybe – and then, when the drizzle had stopped, to smuggle the corpse off the island.’
‘Smuggle how? The eyes above and below were still functioning, weren’t they?’
‘Indeed. But there are two ways. One would be to smuggle the body inside a cargo transport. We have deliveries by Skylligator, for instance, once a week. The top eye might see the Beast fly in, and fly away again, without seeing what was inside it.’
‘And the other way?’
‘One of the first things the authorities did, when we notified them of Hellfire’s disappearance, was to consult the eyes. A police dragon flew up to check the top eye. That took, I suppose, an hour or so. It’s not possible to go through all that visual data in an instant. Plop out your own eye, stick in the surveillance eye… depending on how rapidly your brain works, it would probably be closer to two hours. Obviously, the eye can’t record any new data when it’s being checked like that. Maybe the murderer flew off with Hellfire’s body whilst that procedure was under way.’
‘Right under the noses of the police? I mean – literally under their noses.’
‘Literally under their entire bodies.’
‘Yes. Sounds risky to me.’
‘I agree,’ said Helltrik. ‘But when you have eliminated the improbable, whatever remains, however impossible, must be the truth.’ A look of uncertainty flickered across Old Vagner’s face. ‘I think I’ve got that right.’
Käal thought about this. ‘So, this beautiful young dragon was murdered here – by one of her own family.’
‘It must be. The only dragons here were her own family!’
‘What about servants?’
‘Well, none of them are dragons, of course,’ said Vagner. ‘Most are lowly wyrms. I don’t see how a firedrake, say, could murder a dragon. I don’t see how they’d even go about it.’
‘Well that’s an issue, isn’t it?’ said Käal. ‘How was she murdered? Even if she was young, it’s not easy to imagine how it could have happened. I agree: no lowly wyrm would be able to penetrate her scales. So what does that leave? Poison? Drowning?’
‘The last is out of the question,’ said Vagner, firmly. ‘There’s no open water on Doorbraak at all. There’s hardly enough water to moisten a Dry-Wipe.’
‘So, poison? Why would Hellfire be so foolish as to ingest anything? And wouldn’t her death cries have resonated throughout the whole island?’
‘You would think so. Yet I know she is dead.’
‘How?’
‘Because the killer sent me her tongue.’
‘Ugh! Her tongue?’
‘Cut from her mouth.’
‘How do you know it was hers?’
‘When she was a little Salamander she did something foolish. She played a dare with some girlfriends. They urged her to lick an ice cream. You know the sorts of foolish things kids get up t
o. So she licked the ice cream, and of course her tongue was scarred by the substance. It was unmistakable: a blotchy discoloration on the right fork of the tongue’s end. That’s how I know the tongue was hers.’
‘Why would the killer send you her severed tongue?’
‘I assume he was gloating.’
‘“He”?’
‘Or she. But there’s more.’
‘What?’
‘Every year, on the anniversary of Hellfire’s death I have received a new tongue.’
‘You have received a new tongue?’
‘In the post.’
‘A new severed tongue?’
‘Well, yes. How could I receive a tongue through the post, if it were still attached to a dragon?’
‘I suppose: somebody would have to mail you the entire dragon.’
‘That’s,’ said Helltrik, ‘not what has been happening. Just severed tongues, one a year, every year, since her disappearance.’
‘Every year? That must be – what, three hundred tongues?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Good Woden, that’s horrific! What have you done with them all?’
‘I’ve sewed them together to make a waistcoat,’ snapped Vagner. ‘Idiot! I’ve given them all to the authorities, of course. What did you think?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m just a little startled by all this,’ said Käal. ‘Why cut out her tongue? Why send it to you? And then – three hundred other tongues! It’s positively apean in its cruelty! None of it makes any sense.’
‘It is a great mystery,’ said Vagner. ‘It has dominated my life for centuries. That’s why I’ve approached you.’
Käal made up his mind. Rising from the couch, and pulling his tail from the (comfortably larger) slot at the back. ‘I’ll solve it, Monster Vagner. I’ll write your Saga, and get to the bottom of your mystery. It is intriguing. We have a murder victim: but we don’t know why she was murdered, or how, or by whom, or even if. An enterprising dragon could write a Whodunnit, a How-dunnit, a Whomdunnit or an Ifdunnit! I don’t believe anyone’s ever written an Ifdunnit before! It’s a real three-smoke problem.’
‘I’m delighted you feel you can agree to take the case!’ said Vagner, rising similarly. ‘I’ll have a servant show you to your room in the castle. In due course you’ll meet those members of the family who live here. You’ll begin to understand the sorts of pressures under which poor Hellfire lived – the moral contagion that has polluted the entire clan.’
Käal made his way towards the exit. He stopped at the threshold. ‘There’s one other thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Your theory is that Hellfire was murdered here on the island that day, three centuries ago; and then her body was smuggled out some days or perhaps even weeks later. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘And I’ve agreed to investigate her murder.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well – what if it turns out that she’s not dead after all? That there is no murder to investigate, that Hellfire simply hid for a day and then smuggled herself, alone or with an accomplice, off the island? If the tongue was a red herring, to throw you off the scent?’
‘What are you saying?’ Vagner asked.
‘Well – you’re offering a fabulous treasure for me to solve a murder. But what if there isn’t a murder? What if she’s been living a new life, under a pseudonym, in some faraway place like Brazenilia, or Hostileia?’
‘Well,’ said Vagner, scratching in between his front teeth with his talons. ‘That would be… what’s the word?’
‘Anticlimactic?’
‘Yes, exactly. That’s the word. That would be a big anticlimax.’
‘It would be rather disappointing,’ said Käal, ‘wouldn’t it, though?’
‘It would. Disappointing is exactly the mot juste. I might even feel… cheated…’
‘Cheated, exactly,’ Käal agreed.
‘… by such a resolution to my lifelong, centuries-old mystery. For that reason, if for none others, I find it hard to believe that such a… how could we call it? Facile solution?’
‘Facile, yes,’ said Käal.
‘Nothing so crude or, yes, so facile would deserve the reputation of a great mystery,’ said Vagner, in a decisive voice. ‘Do not fear, young Mon. Brimstön. The mystery will be a good deal more convoluted and surprising than just that she is living in Hostileia under an assumed name.’
Käal, nodding, left the room.
6
The fact that Lizbreath Salamander needed money meant that having access to her inheritance would have been very useful for her. But more than that: the fact that Burnblast had access to her hoard – her rightful hoard! – and she did not filled her with the resentment that attends injustice. Chronologically old enough to be counted a dragon, the frustratingness of the situation rankled. She felt the rankle from nostril to ankle: that was how wide-ranging a rankle it was. Frustration, I meant. Not ‘frustratingness’. That’s not even a word.
Anyway.
There is an old dragon proverb: ‘Don’t get mad – get even more mad than your enemy.’ It’s one of many dragon proverbs that imply that the true route to satisfaction lies in giving oneself over wholly to a towering, flaming rage.
That worked for Lizbreath.
Not that she was skint, exactly. She worked for a number of Financial and News Sagas, who made use of her extraordinary talent for finding things out – a talent that very few dragons could match. She found stuff out; the Sagas stuffed her finds in; their circulation rose and everybody was happy. But it was pin money – gold pins, naturally, but small ones. It would take many hundreds of thousands of them to even begin to resemble a reasonable-sized hoard. Plus, a hoard made entirely of gold pins would not be terribly comfortable to lie upon, even for a dragon. Lizbreath didn’t try. She kept the pins in a lockable silver-coloured box, in her chichi Starkhelm apartment. They might have paid her mortifyingage, and kept her in fresh mutton (she really didn’t eat very much), but it wasn’t enough to buy the various gadgets and tech-toys that filled her home. She had a great many of these, but she still needed more. And that meant crawling on her belly and abasing herself before horrible Burnblast.
The situation was so intolerable that she brooded over what to do. A different sort of dragon might have contemplated approaching the authorities – perhaps even petitioning the Dragonlords themselves – and complaining about her Guardian’s behaviour, demanding legal recognition as a dragon and access to her inheritance. And although every dragon regarded Lizbreath as fruityloops and non-combust-mentis, nobody could deny that she was high-born, and that meant that approaching the Dragonlords was within her rights. But that was not Lizbreath’s way.
The truth was she despised almost all older male dragons. Since dragon society was a rigid hierarchy, in which political, social and cultural power was in the talons of a group of absolutist elderly dragons – almost all of them male – that fact meant that she was bound to be a misfit. She didn’t lose any sleep over this. If the older male dragons who ran so much of society just left her alone, she would have been perfectly content. But her experience was that they didn’t. Take Burnblast, as an example. It was hard to imagine a more senior, respectable and widely respected fellow. To all intents and purposes he was the very model of draconic rectitude and elevation. But the truth was that not only did he withhold Lizbreath’s money from her, he used his power over her to force her to listen to his talk of the most disgusting and foul sexual perversions! If respectable dragon society found out about that side of his personality, he would be shamed – perhaps even chased from his position of legal responsibility.
Lizbreath liked the sound of that.
She hatched an idea. Ideas, you see, are hatched – like dragons. And like dragons, ideas can burn. But unlike dragons, ideas are not four-legged scaled creatures that weigh anything from one to forty tonnes. The analogy is not precise in every particular.
She had a commission from the H
rothfjngleraxlotls Saga to supply data concerning the seasonal alterations in polar ice – one of their senior Saga writers was composing a piece of speculative Saga Fiction, a world in which all the oceans were covered in ice, drowning was a thing of the past and Dragontopia a possibility. But that wasn’t going to take her very long. In point of fact, she could do it without leaving her apartment, thanks to her collection of high-tech devices. By lunchtime she had completed it, scrolled the results, and sent it by raven to the Hrothfjngleraxlotls office. That left the rest of the day free to plan her revenge.
She flew to the fashionable Lundalligatar district, to a discreet cave where one of her friends ran a shop. ‘Fang,’ she said. ‘I need to buy an ear. But a really small one.’
Fang was a stout, black-green dragon, not much older than Lizbreath herself. His snout was short and almost retroussé, his two front teeth unusually long, sharp and a creamy yellow (hence his nickname), but the thing that struck you most forcefully upon meeting him for the first time were his piercings. He appeared to have had half a dozen or more metal bolts inserted through his scales: three in his right ear, one through each nostril and another in at the corner of his mouth. It had to be an illusion, of course, for after all, there is literally nothing in the world that can pierce dragon scales. But it was a very convincing illusion. Visitors would peer closely at them, and try to work out how it was done. The most popular theory was that Fang had fashioned a series of elaborate clip-on bolts, and then applied them to areas on his body where he happened to have naturally occurring little indentations in his scales, such that they really looked like they went all the way through. A sizeable minority believed that magic was involved. If asked, Fang would snort grey-smoke and evade the question.
Lizbreath knew how it was done, of course. She just wasn’t telling anybody.
‘A small one?’ Fang repeated.
‘I need to eavesdrop on somebody. I don’t want them to know that I’m carrying an ear.’
Fang knew better than to pry into Lizbreath’s affairs. ‘I can do that,’ he said. ‘Though, obviously, a smaller ear is less good at, you know, hearing stuff than a proper-sized one.’
‘Just so long as it can record what an elderly dragon says, so that others can hear it at a later date.’