by Adam Roberts
He went out onto the balcony and watched the night sky for a while. The stars were all clearly visible. The sublime transparency of night, through which we see the stars; before dawn comes to solidify the sky to a wall. Käal recalled to himself that Helltrik had promised him a great treasure, if only he could solve the mystery of young Hellfire Vagner’s disappearance. Once he had that, he wouldn’t need to worry about the court case, or about the Saga going bankrupt, or anything at all. ‘What I need to do,’ he said aloud, to himself, ‘is solve this perishing mystery!’
It was natural, accordingly, that his thoughts turned to Lizbreath Salamander; for she would surely be able to supply the research to crack this case wide open. But though he had sent her several ravens, she hadn’t replied. Käal permitted himself a certain righteous indignation at this fact. She was a researcher, after all! If she would only do her job, he could put her data to use, solve the case, collect his considerable reward.
‘If I go to Starkhelm,’ he told himself, ‘I could look her up, chivvy her along. There’s no excuse for laziness!’
Away to the north: a comet, like an icicle embedded sideways in the night. Käal watched it for a while. There it was, Käal thought: endlessly pulling its bridal train around the solar system. There seemed to be some symbolic significance in that; but he wasn’t sure what it was.
Shortly he went back in and lay down next to the snoring she-dragon.
12
The following day Käal left the island and flew down to the ground. The nearest town with an airport was a neat little place called Burnlänge. From there he caught a slightly raddled Skylligator for the hop across to Starkhelm, arriving after lunch. He went straight to the Köschfagold Saga offices. Beargrr was there.
‘Good,’ she said, without preliminary. ‘Our backing has pulled out.’
‘Our backing? You mean, our financial backing?’
‘No,’ said Beargrr, sarcastically. ‘Our musical backing. Of course our financial backing!’
‘That’s terrible!’ said Käal. ‘Why?’
‘Oh I don’t know,’ Beargrr said, with sarcasm so heavy that light could not escape its gravitational pull. ‘Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Wintermute is in the process of suing our tails off? That the legal liability we are almost certain to incur will not only seize your personal hoard, it will snaffle all funds legally associated with the Saga itself?’
‘Only if Wintermute is successful in court,’ Käal pointed out.
‘Well I suppose our financial backers consider it likely that he will be successful. They have indicated that by withdrawing all their funds.’
‘That’s terrible!’ said Käal again. ‘But how will the Saga continue?’
‘We’ll have to find alternate funding,’ growled Beargrr.
‘Wait!’ said Käal. ‘Ooh! Yes! I’ve got it! Helltrik Vagner has promised me the Siegfried treasure if I successfully solve the mystery of his grand-niece’s disappearance! We can use that to bankroll the Saga!’
‘I see,’ said Beargrr. ‘And have you?’
‘What?’
‘Have you solved it?‘
—solved the mystery? Not yet, no. I have found out one secret though…’
‘Yes?’
‘The Vagner family, though it is one of the wealthiest and purest-blood dragon nests in the world, has a shameful secret. Several important family members have a political commitment to… democracy.’
‘I know,’ said Beargrr.
‘You do?’
‘Loads of people know that.’
‘They do?’ said Käal, in a disappointed voice. ‘It was news to me.’
‘Well, you’ve never been a dragon who has kept his ear to the ground. It’s been gossip on the Starkhelm journalistic circuit for centuries. Literally centuries. Have you found out anything else?’
‘No,’ Käal conceded.
‘This Hellfire girl – is she dead?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So you don’t actually have the treasure? You’re not, for instance, carrying it about your person right now?’
‘No.’
‘Then that’s not very much of an icing solution to our woes, is it!’ she yelled. Visibly reining herself in, she went on with more self-restraint: ‘There’s only one thing for it. We have to go into the den.’
The blood in Käal’s body dropped several degrees. He actually gasped. Blue smoke seeped from the corners of his gawping mouth. ‘There must be another way of raising the money?’
‘If can think of one, then let me know,’ said Beargrr.
Käal spun his mental rolodex, but came up blank. ‘But – the den? There must be another way.’
‘There’s not. We’re going there right now.’
‘“We”?’
‘Of course you’re coming. Why do you think I sent you that raven?’
‘But why do I have to come?’
‘Because you’re a bloodline dragon.’
‘Aren’t you?’
Beargrr put her her face into her foreclaws. ‘How long have you known me? We have worked in the same office, and had sex together. You may be the most self-absorbed individual I’ve ever known. No, I’m not bloodline.’
‘But you are a dragon?’
‘Of course I’m a dragon! Are you a complete idiot?’
‘Then from whom do you claim descent?’ ‘Glaurung.’
‘Glaurung? You’re a Glaurungian? Well well!’ Käal scratched his nostril, abstractedly. ‘You learn something every day!’
‘I’m glad this afternoon is proving educational,’ said Beargrr, in a tone of voice that suggested, in fact, that glad was very far from what she was. ‘And now you and I are going to the den.’
Käal started. ‘What, right now?’
‘That’s right.’ She took hold of Käal by his wing-elbow and steered him to the door of the office. ‘We need this investment, Käal,’ she told him. ‘Or it’s curtains for Köschfagold Saga.’ Käal looked rather pitifully at the actual office curtains. But there was no help for it. The two of them were through the door and out on the street on their way to the den.
The den had once been an actual cave, reputedly both dark and dank. But the need for proximity to the centres of business and commerce had resulted in a move to an empty warehouse near the waterside. Simply stepping through the main entrance gave Käal the kollywöbles. As they waited their turn, he started hyperflameinating. Beargrr kept telling him to calm down. They were approached by Evildavis, a boss-eyed firedrake in charge of shepherding applicants before the den dragons. When he announced that it was time for them to go up, Käal almost passed out. Although, to be fair, this had something to do with the weirdly unbalanced orientation of his two eyes.
‘It’s too nerve-wracking!’ Käal wailed. ‘My nerves are overwracked. I need to perform a nerve dewrack immediately.’
‘You’re being ridiculous,’ hissed Beargrr. ‘Pull yourself together. And most of all: don’t say anything. Let me do the talking.’
‘All right,’ quavered Käal.
Up the wide stairs they came together, and onto the wide floor. The four den dragons sat, each on their own portable heap of gold, looking down on the new entrants into their domain with towering condescension.
‘Hello, dragons,’ said Beargrr. ‘My name is Beargrr. This is my associate, the celebrated Saga writer Käal Brimstön.’
‘Is he descended from Regin?’ drawled the dragon on the far right: a plump dark grey creature with a smug face.
‘He is.’
‘How pure is his blood?’ asked the smug-faced she-dragon in the middle.
‘He is two-fifths pure…’ Beargrr began saying.
‘Can’t he answer for himself,’ interrupted the dragon second from left. He had a thick North Snakeland accent, and a smug fa— Look, I tell you what: rather than repeat myself, perhaps we can take it as read that the faces of all the den dragons could be described as ‘smug’. ‘Hasn’t he got a tongue
in his head?’
Käal blinked, and blinked, and looked about. An industrial-sized eye, hung from the ceiling, was watching everything. It was astonishingly nerve-wracking. He tried to keep his mind focused on what was being said to him, but it kept sliding away into irrelevance. ‘I have a tongue!’ he squeaked. ‘Nobody’s cut my tongue out and sent it through the postal system!’
The four dragons looked at him.
‘By which I mean to say,’ said Käal, trying for a smooth recovery, ‘hello.’The dragons continued looking at him.
‘Hi,’ said Käal. ‘My name’s Käal.’
‘What’s your pitch?’asked the fourth dragon: a sleek-scaled younger beast.
‘We have come before you, dragons,’ said Beargrr, glancing crossly at her companion, ‘to raise funding for our publication, the Köschfagold Saga. We’d like to offer you a twenty per cent stake in the Saga for one hundred thousand crowns.’
‘The Köschfagold Saga,’ said the she-dragon. ‘What’s that?’
‘We are Scandragonia’s premier financial services Saga,’ said Beargrr. ‘We are a weekly publication, covering all the affairs of money-making and business investment in Scandragonia. You may have heard of us.’ She looked from dragon to dragon, but they met her gaze with indifference. ‘Seeing,’ she prompted, ‘as you are all financial players? Anyway, many of our readers are big financial players like, er, you yourself. We contain investment advice and, um. No? You don’t read the Köschfagold Saga? No? Well, believe me, lots of rich dragons do. Also, we carry pieces of investigative journalism, written in the appropriately Saga style, by our star reporter, whose fame is really peninsula-wide.’ She gestured to Käal. ‘Monster Käal Brimstön.’
She looked expectantly at Käal, but his anxiety at actually being in the den – with the eye focused upon him, and the four den dragons glowering silently at him – was growing larger with each moment that passed. He started to speak, but the words underwent a peculiar transformation as they came up his throat, emerging as a sequence of bubbling gurgles. He stopped, grinned widely, coughed, and tried again.
‘Hi,’ said Käal. ‘My name’s Käal.’
‘What my colleague means to say,’ said Beargrr, ‘is that with appropriate investment we feel that Köschfagold Saga could expand into new markets and maximize profit share.’
‘What are your profits?’ boomed the dragon on the left.
‘Over the last quarter,’ said Beargrr, ‘our profits have been broken through the, er, midpoint on the number line.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked the she-dragon. ‘The midpoint on the number line? That’s zero, isn’t it?’
‘You put it very well,’ said Beargrr, ‘and if I may… your solid-gold chain adornment? Very chic.’
The she-dragon frowned. ‘Your profits have broken through zero in the last quarter? You mean, in more conventional parlance, you have started turning a profit?’
‘You could put it that way,’ said Beargrr. ‘Although, honesty compels me to add that if you were to put it that way it would not be, precisely, true. The breakthrough being in the, er, opposite direction. But direction is a relative concept, isn’t it? From-me-to-you is a direction only from where I’m standing.’
‘When you say you “broke through zero”, are you saying,’ said the dragon on the far left, looking, if possible, even crosser than normal, ‘that you went from profit into loss?’
‘Just so. That would be the to-you-from-me way of putting it.’
Käal became aware of an awkward silence, and wondered if he should say something. But his mind was dancing into wilder and wilder territories. He thought again of all those severed dragon tongues, delivered once a year to Helltrik Vagner on his lofty floating island. Surely the mutilation of so many dragons must have left some record in the official annals? Presumably the dragons who had suffered this horrible fate had died. The premature deaths of three hundred dragons, even over some centuries, would surely be a matter of international scandal! Assume that a serial killer were at work: perhaps whoever it was started with young Hellfire, and went on to murder a dragon a year, and cut out their tongues. That they sent this grisly token to Helltrik surely meant that the crimes had some connection with the Vagner clan. But what?
He became aware of silence. Everybody was looking at him. ‘Hi,’ he said, looking around. ‘My name’s Käal.’
‘And that,’ said the she-dragon, ‘is why I’m out.’
‘Wait,’ said Beargrr, desperation evident in her voice. ‘With investment the Saga would go from strength to strength! Or, if you prefer, from weakness to strength! But that’s still pretty good. Better than going from weakness to slightly-less weakness. Although that would still be going in the right direction! And we’re not even talking about that!’
‘What are your projections for the next four quarters?’ asked the dragon on the far left
‘A seven hundred per cent rise in profitability,’ said Beargrr, with the air of someone too-obviously picking a figure at random.
‘And where’s that profitability going to come from? What’s your advertising budget?’
‘Advertising is vulgar,’ said Beargrr. ‘We don’t stoop to it.’
‘Then how are you going to attract new readers to your Saga?’
‘Let me turn the question around,’ said Beargrr. ‘Our present readership is four thousand dragons. If you don’t invest, we will go out of business. In that circumstance our readership will be zero. If, however, you do invest we will retain our four thousand readers – an increase of four thousand over the alternative situation. Now, surely you can’t turn your snout up at such a massive increase?’
‘Your market is shrinking,’ said the dragon. ‘You have no plans for increasing your customer base. I’ve never heard of you, despite the fact that I ought to be one of your core customers. You have no collateral at all, except your personal hoards which – you readily admit – are modest. For all these reasons, I’m out.’
‘Me too,’ said the third dragon.
Prompted by he-knew-not-what, Käal said: ‘I have the Siegfried treasure.’
Everybody in the room, including Beargrr, turned astonished faces upon him.
‘You what?’ said the fourth dragon.
‘The Siegfried treasure,’ said Käal. ‘I have it. Doesn’t that count as collateral?’
‘Käal!’ hissed Beargrr.
‘Well, I don’t have it yet. But I’ve been promised it, and will have it by… the end of the week.’
The one remaining dragon studied Käal carefully. Of course, a dragon of the blood would never lie. Still: this statement seemed so extraordinary and fantastic it strained credulity. And although a dragon of the blood never would lie, he or she might joke, or use irony. ‘You’re being serious?’ asked the fourth dragon.
‘Yes.’
‘This is… the truth?’
‘Of course!’ said Käal, bridling at the thought of his honour being impugned.
‘Well this changes things. You can have your hundred thousand crowns. But in return I want a forty per cent stake in the Saga. And I want a portion of the Siegfried treasure as collateral, until the Saga begins to turn a profit.’
‘Agreed,’ said Käal, airily.
‘Wait!’ said Beargrr. But it was too late. The dragon lifted himself off his hoard, and came down to smack tails with the pair of them, thereby finalizing the deal. ‘If I don’t get my collateral by the end of this week, though,’ he growled, as their tailends clacked together beneath the eye, ‘I shall take your offices and stock, break it all down and sell it to recoup losses.’
‘No problem,’ said Käal.
Beargrr, though, seemed to think that there was a problem. ‘What have you done?’ she fumed, as they left the warehouse. ‘You told me you only get that treasure if you solve the mystery! And from what you said earlier, you have no idea about this mystery whatsoever!’
‘Ah,’ said Käal. ‘But something occurred to me, as we were standing
under the bright lights, there, back in the den. A crucial element of this mystery that has been overlooked by the authorities but which, just perhaps, will crack it wide open. A kind of revelation, actually.’
‘What? Tell me! What?’
Käal put his lips together and nodded sagely. ‘As it happens,’ he said, ‘I can’t remember. I definitely had the revelation. So it’ll probably come back to me.’ He nodded again. ‘Something to do with tongues, I think.’
‘You outrageous moron!’ cried Beargrr. ‘I sent you to Doorbraak to get you out of harm’s way, not so that you could specifically endanger the future of everything I own and everything I’ve worked towards! You’ve tied the destiny of the Köschfagold Saga to your ability to solve – in one week – a mystery that has defeated the family concerned and the authorities for three hundred years!’
‘I’m pretty sure I can do it,’ said Käal, vaguely. ‘More to the point, I missed lunch, though. Shall we go get something to eat?’
‘Käal,’ said Beargrr, in a calm voice. ‘You’re going to have to go away from me now. Because if you stay in my immediate vicinity, I’m afraid I will cause you lasting, painful physical damage.’
Käal tried his most winning smile, but that only seemed to outrage her further. In the end he took the hint.
13
Lizbreath Salamander went home via the office. Had she gone straight home, things might have turned out rather different. But, having spent several days out of official circulation, she figured she needed to check in.