by Adam Roberts
‘Oho!’ said Fang. ‘I see. In that case, I shall make a suggestion. Take an eye too.’
‘Do I need an eye?’
‘With just an ear,’ said Fang, ‘it can be difficult pinning the words on a particular individual. They can deny that it was them speaking; or say that it’s a vocal impersonator. But if you have both the words in the ear, and the sight in the eye – well, even the most sceptical policedragon is liable to be convinced.’
‘I shan’t be going to any policedragons,’ said Lizbreath.
‘Of course you won’t,’ said Fang. ‘But you see what I mean.’ He went to the back of his cave, where a huge pile of metal items, of all sizes and shapes, was heaped in seeming abandon. ‘Here,’ he said, throwing a small item to Lizbreath. ‘There’s your miniature ear. I’ve got a miniature eye back here somewhere too. You going to pay me in pins again?’
‘Pins are legal tender,’ she noted, turning over the tiny ear in her hands. It was a weirdly rounded shape, flesh set in a silver-coloured metal rim. ‘It doesn’t look like an ear.’
‘It’s not dragon,’ said Fang. ‘Ah – here’s the eye.’
‘What’s this metal it’s set in?’
‘Chrome.’
‘Is it what I think it is?’ Lizbreath asked, holding it close against her eye. There was a funny little whorl, or curling ridge, in the middle of it. ‘That shape?’
‘Sure. Pins may be legal tender, but they’re fiddly.’
‘They’re gold. Stop complaining.’
‘Here’s the eye,’ said Fang, coming to the front again. He handed it over: it was tiny. It was, at least, eye-shaped; properly globular, although it was a bleached white colour, and the pupil was oddly squashed top and bottom; almost a circle. ‘How do they work?’
‘There’s no need to sound so suspicious,’ said Fang. ‘You’re the one who came to me demanding miniaturized technology.’
‘They’re perfect,’ Lizbreath clarified. ‘I was just asking from a practical perspective.’
‘The ear records when you twist the metal rim. Then when you want to listen to what’s been overheard, you just twist the rim the other way, and pop it inside your ear –like this.’ Fang demonstrated, and the little device went into the gaping flap of his ear. ‘You need to be sure you don’t lose it, is all.’
‘And the eye?’
‘That’s a little trickier. With a regular eye, you pop your own eyeball out and replace it with the device, yeah? Well, with this one you don’t need to have your own eyeball dangling on your cheek like a conker on a string. You just fit this miniature eye into your tear duct… like… this.’ He balanced the little globe on the top of his talon, brought it gingerly up towards his own eye, and, grimacing, slid it into the duct. Then he made a series of bizarre faces: opening his mouth very wide, blinking like an epileptic, shutting his mouth, and going ‘uurrrghh!’
‘You all right?’
‘It takes a little getting used to, that’s all. But once it’s in you’d hardly know it was there.’
‘Your eyes are watering.’
‘Oh, hardly at all.’
Fat drops of hot fluid were banging noisily onto the granite floor of the cave, burning craters in the solid rock and sending up reeky clouds of acid-smoke. ‘I’ll just,’ said Fang, ‘get it out of there.’
Lizbreath sat back on her hindlegs and folded her forearms as Fang rummaged around in the corner of his eye with his talons. ‘Nearly,’ he said, several time. ‘Oh! Ah! Uh!’
‘Do you want me to have a look?’ she offered.
‘No! It’s OK! I’ve nearly got it, with a… uh! Oh! There it is! Easy – see?’ Fang held the object he had retrieved from his eye in front of his other eye. ‘No,’ he said, matter of factly. ‘That’s not it. That’s a ripped out portion of my cornea. Try again!’ Back in went the talon, and after a five-minute rummage, he finally brought out the miniaturized eye.
‘Easy,’ said Lizbreath, dubiously.
‘You might need to practise it a little,’ looking pained and blinking rapidly. ‘But you did ask for miniature!’
‘Thanks.’
As she flew away from Fang’s cave she went through it in her head. Her plan was, she hoped, straightforward. The sunlight was hard as chalk; the air as hot and blue as smoke. At the very top of the sky, a passing Skylligator on its way to some far-distant destination drew a white vapour trail after it. It looked as though it was cutting a white slit in the sky. Closer to the horizon, the sky was cluttered with pellet-hard white clouds. As she flew east, the cellophane shimmer of the ocean came more and more into view. The flexing and warping of light into life, the poisonous cold of the sea somehow, magically, transformed into brightness and flame.
Burnblast had told her to come to his office on Cinderday, to collect her money. That in itself was suspicious. Nobody conducted business on Cinderday, the dead ashes of the week. But Lizbreath had an inkling of why Burnblast had specified that day. Or if not quite an inkling, then certainly a pencilling. She figured he wanted to talk dirty to her again, the way he had done before. Him on his huge pile of gold (a good chunk of which was rightfully her gold!), her on the ground below him, and nobody else about in the office – the ideal environment to indulge his disgusting peccadillo. Lizbreath did not relish having to sit and listen once again to him going on and on about oral sex, and who-knows-what other repellent sexual perversions. But, she told herself, she could endure it one more time.
Plan: go to Burnblast’s cavern, and act the meek little Salamander whilst he slobbered over her with his bizarre fantasies. But record everything in the miniature ear she had just bought! At a later date, compel his obedience to her with the threat of blackmail. After that things would change: after that the tables would be turned. Burnblast would no longer have the power over Lizbreath Salamander.
She wouldn’t torment him too much, she decided, alighting outside her apartment. She wasn’t a sadist. And blackmail wasn’t the right word either, not exactly. A blackmailer extorts what doesn’t belong to him; uses his or her leverage to steal from their victim. Lizbreath had no intention of stealing anything. She wanted two things only, and they both – really – belonged to her already. She wanted her gold. And she wanted to be left alone.
Cinderday came round, and she flew over to Burnblast’s office with a certain sense of trepidation. It was more than trepidation, in fact. What she felt was more like quadripidation, perhaps even quintipidation. But one thing that Lizbreath’s life on the margins of dragon society had taught her was how to hide her inner uncertainty. She had the miniaturized eye and ear wedged unobtrusively in at the cracks between two of the scales on her rump. Only the most minute examination would have discovered them there, and Lizbreath had no intention of letting Burnblast undertake any such exam.
She took one last look about the street – almost entirely deserted, of course – took a deep breath, and blew out a blast of scorching, white-flickering flame. Then she ducked in at the door and slunk down the stairway.
As she turned left at the bottom, through the empty reception and unmanned desk, she had a sudden access of doubt. What if Burnblast did want to inspect her rump? What if he wanted to do more than just talk dirty to her? What if he wanted to have sexual relations with her?
That made her stop.
Knowing the filthy old brute, it was certainly possible. She rebuked herself, inwardly, for not considering the idea earlier.
Lizbreath was no virgin-dragon, of course; and the thought of having sex with Burnblast – whilst certainly not a pleasant one – was not entirely intolerable to her. She could just turn around and fly away, of course; but that would leave her stuck in the same horrid situation as before. Maybe he’d want to talk dirty, or maybe he’d want to climb on her back. If he did either thing, she could bear it, and she would come away with the incident recorded by both eye and ear. Indeed, if Burnblast took advantage of his legal status as her protector to shag her, she would have much better material with w
hich to blackmail him.
She decided to risk it.
Her only residual worry was that she had placed the eye and the ear in the wrong place about her body. If the old boy was going to mount her, then he might conceivably dislodge or perhaps even crush the technology. She paused by the cavern entrance just long enough to pick the two tiny items from her rump and fit them in between two neck-scales. She was ready.
In she went.
As soon as she entered Burnblast’s cavern, though, she could tell something was wrong. For one thing, Burnblast was not alone. As she came through, the granite door to the chamber was slammed behind her by a fat, brutish-looking male with deep purple scales and eyes of piercing, malicious redness.
Burnblast himself was not lying on his hoard. Instead he was on the far side of his cavern, standing on his hind legs and holding in his forehands a large, angular piece of ironmongery. ‘Lizbreath, my dear,’ he boomed. ‘Delightful to see you again.’
‘Who’s this?’ Lizbreath demanded, spinning about to face the nasty-looking male.
‘This? This is Human, my dear.’
‘“Human”?’
‘An associate of mine. Not his actual name, of course; a nickname. And you can be assured he didn’t acquire a nickname like that by behaving with honour, restraint or kindness.’ Burnblast chuckled, a hideous cooing-clucking sound, like waves in Satan’s lake of liquid ice lapping at the pier-legs of Hell itself.
Lizbreath’s heart started galloping in her breast. This was not what she had anticipated. It required a conscious act of will to keep her outward composure.
Human approached her, and spread his ugly face in a wide grin. ‘Guardian,’ Lizbreath said, over her shoulder. ‘I’ve only come for my allowance – that’s all.’
‘In good time, my dear,’ said Burnblast, walking over towards her awkwardly on his hind legs. As he approached, she got a better view of what he was holding in his forehands: a pair of large metal pincers linked by an iron chain to a large, half-folded oval of iron. It looked rather like a mantrap. ‘In good time. First you and I will work on our friendship.’
There’s a dragon expression: too close to the water. That was, metaphorically speaking, where Lizbreath found herself now. Her whole blackmail plan was starting to look laughably naive. She scuttled round to face the massive bulk of her Legal Guardian, and then, hearing Human moving behind her, leapt about again to face him.
‘Oh, she’s a fidget,’ said Human. His voice was low and gravelly even for a dragon.
‘Full of energy, my lovely Lizbreath,’ said Burnblast. ‘It’s a mistake to judge by appearances, don’t you think?’
‘Oh!’ said Human, his voice rumbling and rolling about the roof. ‘Very true.’
‘If you judged little Lizbreath by appearances,’ said Burnblast, tapping the two weighty iron clamps against one another to make a dull, clunking sound, ‘then you’d think she was a simple-minded, immature little Salamander. You’d think lead wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But that’s not the truth.’
‘No?’ grinned Human.
‘Stop this charade,’ said Lizbreath, swinging her head from the one male to the other. But there was no force in her words; it trembled – she was deeply afraid, and it showed in her voice.
‘For example, you’d never guess what she and I discussed the last time she was here,’ said Burnblast.
‘Go on,’ said Human.
‘Oral sex!’ said her Guardian.
‘No! Shock-ing! Dirty girl!’ Human’s voice was dead-pan. It was beyond deadpan. It was zombiepan.
‘Perverted, no?’ chucked Burnblast. ‘You’d never guess it – to look at her. She looks so innocent, on the outside. Although she has painted the picture of a human girl on her back.’
‘It’s not painted,’ snapped Lizbreath.
‘Such a pretty dragon,’ drawled Human. ‘To have such a creepy thing painted on her!’
‘Stop,’ said Lizbreath backing away. Human moved easily to get behind her again. ‘I don’t want my gold,’ she said, unable to keep the desperation out of her voice. ‘I just want to go – I’ll leave and not bother you again.’
‘Not until we have repaired our friendship, my dear,’ said Burnblast. ‘I feel – I have been remiss. You are my ward, after all. But our relationship has become chillier, of late.’
Lizbreath felt a spurt of warmth in her breast. Cowering wasn’t going to do her any good, after all. ‘That’s because you’ve stolen my rightful gold, you hideous old sack of damp!’
The two male dragons laughed throatily at this. ‘Oho,’ said Human. ‘Do you bite your mother with that mouth, little girl?’
‘A little fire in her breast,’ said Burnblast. ‘I like that. And now, my dear, it’s time for us to become better acquainted. The last time we spoke, you seemed very interested in oral sex. Let me show you how that is done.’
‘No!’ she cried.
But Human had already pounced, and landed on her back. He was stocky and heavy, and squashed her easily against the floor. Both his hind- and forelegs were immensely muscled. His back legs grabbed her back legs, strong claws clamping her left and right thigh. His forelegs seized her wings, and pulled them hard backwards, to stop her spreading them. It was a very painful heave, wrenching the socket and scraping the leathern membrane hard.
But that wasn’t the worst. Burnblast, with a foul smirk upon his face, approached with his strange equipment. He danced ponderously to the right of her head, and pressed down with one hindleg, putting pressure exactly between her eyes. Then he heaved her mouth open with his right forearm, and rammed the odd-shaped iron ring in behind her teeth with his left. It forced her mouth open: with it digging painfully into the tissue of her gums she couldn’t bite down or close. She was as surprised as she was physically hurt by this, but there was nothing she could do. She tried shaking her head from side to side, but Burnblast’s foot was too strong to dislodge. Then, the worst got even worse. He reached down inside her mouth with his right forearm. She got one quick blast of white fire out, and he grimaced briefly, but then she felt something unyielding clamp round the flesh of first one and then the other fire duct.
It was deeply horrible: a combination of intense physical discomfort and a kind of existential horror. Burnblast pulled his arm out of her mouth, and came round to the front. He was gloating. ‘There you are, my dear,’ he said. ‘Not so bad, when they’re in, I daresay.’
Lizbreath couldn’t speak. She drew a breath and tried to send a wave of incandescent fire straight in his face. His scales were so thick, and old, he would probably have barely even felt it. But it would at least have melted this ridiculous ironwork clamping her mouth open. But, push with her flame-diaphragm hard as she could, no fire came out. The ducts were completely closed off.
Behind her, she heard Human’s grumbly laugh. ‘She’s trying to puff the clamps off, boss.’
‘I’m sure she is,’ said Burnblast, settling back on his hindlegs. ‘It’ll do no good.’ From the hard exterior sheath under his belly he brought out the pinky-purple exposed flesh of male member. ‘Now, my dear,’ he said. ‘The last time we spoke you raised a number of perfectly valid objections to the very idea of oral sex. And now I find myself in the position where I can demonstrate how it is possible to use the mouth as a copulatory site without getting anything more than a pleasant tingling in my tender member. How widely you have opened your eyes, my dear! All the better, I suppose, to… see… this… with…’
And so he advanced upon her, his swag-belly wobbling and his organ coming, horribly, closer and closer to her face.
The ordeal lasted an hour. On more than one occasion during it, Lizbreath really thought she was going to suffocate to death. The gagging was profoundly horrible. When Burnblast had finally finished, and removed himself, she gasped and sputtered, sucking air in her lungs and feeling her oesophagus pulse as if her whole stomach, lining and all, were about to come splurging out. Burnblast chuckled to himself, padded about his
cavern.
‘I think she liked it, boss,’ said Human.
‘I think she did,’ mewed Burnblast. ‘Oh I think she did.’
Then the weight on her back was released, as Human jumped through the air with a brief thresh of wings, the sound of a flag fluttering in a strong breeze. He was directly in front of her. Lizbreath felt the appalling, plunging fear that Burnblast’s henchdragon was now about to enact the same violation upon her as his boss. But, for whatever reason (either because it wouldn’t have been appropriate to trespass upon the senior dragon’s object of pleasure, or perhaps simply because he didn’t like the thought of it) he didn’t. Instead he reached into her mouth, released the clamps, and pulled them out. The iron brace followed, and Lizbreath was able to close her traumatized mouth.
She coughed, gagged, coughed, and drew a long painful trail of hot phlegm out of her throat. But she couldn’t flame: the fire ducts had swollen agonizingly under their brutal treatment. They had effectively sealed themselves.
She quailed, and backed against the wall: completely cowed. Burnblast had climbed up upon his hoard. ‘I’m going to give you a banker’s scroll, my dear,’ he said, ‘for your allowance. Drawn on my personal hoard. You’ll find no difficulty in cashing it. My name is good for it.’
‘I’d say she’s earned her money, boss,’ chuckled Human, his wicked tongue slopping wetly over the fence of his lower teeth.
‘Oh, indeed,’ said Burnblast. ‘Here.’ The scroll fluttered down through the air, and – despising herself – Lizbreath reached out and seized it. She couldn’t say anything; her mouth was too raw and painful to make any articulate sound at all.
Human went over to the granite door and swung it open. Seeing the exit clear, Lizbreath scuttled towards it. But before she got to it, Burnblast leapt into the air and swooped down upon her, pinning her under his weight.
‘I think we have gone some way,’ he whispered, directly into her ear, ‘to repairing the breach in our relationship, my dear. You will come back here the same time next week. Don’t say anything – I’d be surprised if you could say anything! Just nod your head.’