Will felt the force of Florian's urbane smile with the same intensity as he did the manticore's unblinking stare. He was in terrible peril here. He would have fled, if only that were possible.
"No."
"Try to pick it up."
Will did. Casually at first, with one hand, and then with both. It did not budge. He set both feet under him and tried again, with more force. But though he strained so hard that sweat came to his brow, the box did not move.
"That's quite a trick," he said at last. "Electromagnets and an iron bar inside?"
Florian laughed lightly. "Hardly. The box was carved of heartwood from Yggdrasil, the world tree. The combined military might of all the nations could not move or open it. Only those of my family can do so. Yet of itself, the box is a trinket. It serves only to hold something that truly is precious.
"This," he said, opening the box, "is House L'Inconnu's greatest treasure."
The box was empty.
Florian paled. First his skin turned white as snow and then with a crackle of ozone the hero-light blazed about his head. His face seemed a skull, his eyes pools of black savagery. A wind whipped through the room, setting newspapers to flight and their racks clattering to the floor. Elf-brat though he was, Florian was also a Power. He swelled up in Will's sight a full foot taller than he had been before, and correspondingly larger. Rounding on Will in a fury, he seized Will's jacket in one hand and lifted him off the floor. "What have you done with it?"
"I don't know what you're talking about!" Will cried.
Florian ripped off Will's domino and studied his face grimly. At last, voice trembling with suppressed rage, he said. "You don't look familiar. How can somebody I1 don't even know have done such a deed?"
"He didn't do it while I was here, boss," the manticore said. "I was watching the rat-bastard like a hawk."
With a roar of frustration, Florian flung Will away from him. "Stay here. Watch him," he commanded the manticore. "I'm going to fetch Thalwegsson, he'll know what to do." He paused in the doorway. "If he tries to leave, rip his limbs off. But leave him alive so he can face an inquisition."
The doors slammed and he was gone.
After Will had picked himself up off the floor and donned his Pierrot costume again, the manticore yawned hugely and lay down flat on the rug. "You're skunked now," he remarked conversationally. The quills on his back folded down neatly, but his segmented and stinger tipped tail thrashed back and forth as restlessly as a cat's "I don't know how you worked it — that box is only supposed to open to a pure-blooded L'Inconnu — but you chose the wrong folks to rip off." "I have to get back to the dance," Will said.
"I think we both know that's not gonna happen." The manticore closed his eyes. "But if you want to try, I'm willing to give you a ten-stride head start."
His breathing grew slow and regular.
He's overconfident, the dragon murmured. Let me loose and it's even money he'll be a dead little bug-cat before he knows what he's fighting.
Will did not think much of those odds. So he thought back to all he had learned since coming to Babel. What would Nat do under these circumstances? Something clever, no doubt. Will wasn't feeling at all clever. What would Salem Toussaint do? That seemed a more productive line of reasoning to pursue.
"There'sno reason you and I shouldn't be pals," Will said. "What would it take to convince you we're on the same side?"
The manticore opened his eyes the merest slit. "Nothing I can think of."
"Let me make you a proposition." Slowly Will slid his wallet out of his pocket. Even more slowly, he opened it and fanned the contents. "I've got thirteen hundred dollars in here." He laid the wallet down at his feet and then stepped back three careful paces. "Let me leave unmolested and it's yours."
Lazily, the manticore stood, arching its back like a cat, and then padded over to the wallet. One claw delicately teased out the bills. He looked up and his piercing blue eyes met Will's. He grinned.
"Pass, friend."
In three heartbeats Will had slipped out of the library and closed the door behind him. Then he ran up the stairs as fast as his feet would take him. Get the hell out of here, the dragon advised, and for once Will agreed with him wholeheartedly.
But no matter how Will searched, he could not find an exit. It was as if he were trapped in a labyrinth. Every twist and turn he took sooner or later inevitably took him looping back to the ballroom.
He was in a bad position here. Yet, strangely, he felt elated. The energy that all the dancing and flirtation had taken out of him had returned in force. He was in savage danger and he could handle it. Provided only that he could get away from the ballroom.
As apparently he could not.
Well... if he could not, there was only one thing to do.
The moon had risen during his absence from the ballroom. It hung low in the sky, as big and orange as a pumpkin. Ignoring the murmurous regard of the assembled elf-horde, Will scanned the room for Alcyone.
Across the terrace he saw a burst of red.
He went straight to her.
Alcyone's eyes flashed with anger when Will took her arm as if they were old friends about to take a stroll. Her free hand rose slightly as if she would slap him but had restrained herself. It was a warning. 'The attentions of a small time hustler are not required here, sirrah."
"Smile," Will said quietly. 'They've discovered your theft." "That's impossible. They wouldn't—"
"Florian wanted to show off the ring." Will placed his lips by Alcyone's ear, as if he might nibble on the lobe, and whispered. "I'm going to kiss you now. Enjoy it if you can. Otherwise, fake it. Then pull back, take my hand, and tug me out the nearest door. Don't try to be subtle. I'm your trophy. They all envy you. We've got to leave and it's important that nobody guesses why."
There were servants in the hall — dwarves and haints in livery — so they walked without any particular haste until the corridor took a bend and there was no one in sight. Instantly, Alcyone released Will's hand, kicked off her heels and, holding her dress above her knees, fled like the wind.
Will ran after her.
"This isn't the way out," he said. "All ways to the exits lead past Fata L'Inconnu and her dwarf consiglieri. By now they'll be guarded. Luckily, I foresaw this contingency and I have a way to get myself out."
"Ourselves, you mean."
"Only if I have no choice."
"You don't."
Alcyone stopped at a nondescript door. It unlocked itself at her touch and they went within.
The room was shadowy, but even so, Will noted the canopied bed that billowed invitingly in the night breeze from the open balcony doors. Astarte herself would not have felt disgraced by it. The room smelled of talcum powder, perfume, and roses. Under other circumstances, he would have wanted for the two of them to linger in it.
Alcyone stepped out onto the balcony. Are you coming, asshole?"
Will did, Outside Alcyone's hippogriff stood saddled and ready, placidly eating the heads of potful of geraniums. Its eyes were as large as saucers, as red as garnets. They studied him thoughtfully.
He reached up to stroke the creature's head.
"Watch yourself," Alcyone said carelessly. "He bites."
Will snatched his hand back just as the beast's serrated beak clacked together where his lingers had been an instant before.
Alcyone didn't reach a hand down to help Will up onto the saddle, but neither did she try to stop him from climbing on behind her. Briefly, her dress caught on the horn. With both hands she ripped the skirt from hem to crotch so she could straddle her mount firmly. "Damn," she muttered. "That was a Givenchy." Then she slapped the reins and the hippogriff launched itself from the balcony.
Enormous wings snapped wide to catch the wind.
They flew.
The hippogriff's surging flight felt nothing like being on horseback: it was simultaneously smoother and more unsettling. But it suited Wills mood, which was ecstatic. He had escaped! He was alive
! He could do anything! It was an incredible sensation, the best one in the world. He wanted to go right back in and escape all over again.
Alcyone was laughing aloud and so, Will realized, was he. Meanwhile, the hippogriff was flying strongly, steadily, out over the Bay of Demons. Behind them, the windows of Babel grew steadily smaller, while the city itself did not; it continued to fill the sky. The air was chill and freighted with accents of hyacinth and diesel fuel.
"Tell me something," Will said when their laughter finally died away. "This beast wasn't hobbled. Me came when you called. Why didn't you simply call him from the dance floor?"
Alcyone's head whipped around and she fixed him with a hard stare. Then her mouth twisted up in a complicated smile. "What an odd question for a buffoon to ask." She tied the reins to the saddle horn and then lithely swung first one leg and then the other over the hippogriffs back, so that she wound up facing Will. "Let's take off this mask and see what you look like." She flung aside his domino, and his Pierrot glamour whipped away with it. "Hmm. A little rough around the edges, but nowhere near as bad as I was expecting."
"You haven't — what are you doing?"
"Don't be dense." She pushed back his jacket and undid his tie. They went flying off into the night. Then she seized his shirt in both hands and yanked. The studs leaped and scattered. The air was suddenly cold on Will's chest. "I saved your butt back there. So now I'm claiming the hero's traditional reward. Lie back and enjoy it if you can. Otherwise, fake it."
"Hey!" Will cried as his shirt went flying away like a great white gooney bird. The rags of Alcyone's dress were fluttering wildly, stinging his face and arms. Her hair thrashed like a medusa's. "You didn't save me — I saved you!"
Alcyone put a hand on Will's chest and shoved him backward, so that he was all but lying flat. Then she ripped open his trousers — by now he was hard, of course — and said, "Let's tell this story my way, okay? Raise your hips off the saddle." Will obeyed and she pulled his trousers off and threw them away, too. He was naked now. Alcyone's gown fluttered and snapped like a flag. Bits of her flesh appeared and were gone too fast for him to be sure of what he had glimpsed.
Slowly, Alcyone bent low over Will. He could feel her mouth approaching his cock.
Then, grabbing one of his legs, Alcyone yanked it up and over her head and down again on the far side of the hippogriff.
He tumbled off into empty space.
"There was an instant's pure terror as Will went into free fall. Then water slammed into him, hard as a hoard. Bubbles surrounded him.
Choking, Will fought his way to the surface.
The hippogriff came skimming in a great circle, its rider howling with delight. "Oh, Will!" she cried. "What a delightful ending to a perfect evening! Nobody ever had a better first date!" Will shook a fist. "You harpy! You harridan! You bitch!" Alcyone pulled up and the hippogriff hung in the air, its enormous wings laboring mightily. She'd discarded the shreds of her gown and donned a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt from her saddlebag. Now, while she held the reins one-handed, she pulled out a pair of jeans, gave them a shake, and struggled into them. "Be seein' ya, chum. Can't say it hasn't been fun."
She shook the reins and headed for the sky.
Will stared up after the dwindling hippogriff with mingled rage and lust, willing it to come back for him. But it did not. It lofted up into the big full moon and grew smaller and smaller until it was a single mote among thousands swarming in his sight.
All this time, Will had been treading water. Now he turned around and saw that he was less than a mile's swim from the shore. Apparently the hippogriff had not headed straight out into the bay as he had thought, but had turned and angled up the Gihon. So, really, it was not so bad as it might have been. Alcyone could have dumped him so far out to sea that he'd never have made it back.
Will took a stroke toward the docks. Then he stopped and stared back over his shoulder at that big watery moon. Somewhere out there was his thief.
"Ah, well," he sighed. " Third time's the charm."
Then he began the long swim to shore.
Starting penniless and naked on the docks, it look Will three days to steal, beg, wheedle, charm, and swindle his way back to Babel. He could have done it in one and a half but pride demanded that he return home with enough cash in hand to pay for his tux if Nat called him on its loss.
Still, those first few hours had been cold and disheartening ones.
When Will told the story, only lightly edited, of his evening, Nat laughed until he almost choked. "You're good, son! You're almost as good as I am!"
"I thought I'd screwed it all up. The political police are onto us. Florian hates my guts. And Alcyone knows pretty much everything." "Does anyone have any proof?" "Uh... no."
"Well, then! Don't worry about making enemies — we need enemies to make this scam work anyway. The important thing is that you had fun, after all. And you did have fun, didn't you? Of course you did."
Two immense marble lions guarded the steps to the Public Library of Babel. Will sat down between the paws of one to read the books he had just checked out. It was an unseasonably warm autumn day and, because the library fronted on the esplanade, the steps were in full sunshine.
Nat had a cold-water railroad flat not half a block from the El, but it was less than an ideal place for reading. The upbound cog train rumbled by every ten minutes, shaking the apartment like thunder and bringing Esme running to gaze wonderingly out the window. The stairway smelled of cabbages and laundry and ancient lead paint. A clutch of trolls lived on the first floor, a pianist on the second, and lubberkins on the third, and if for a miracle they all fell silent at once, it would not be long before one or another were pounding on the ceiling, angry at some noise he had made. The street outside echoed with the shouts of children playing wall ball, flipping baseball cards, or quarreling over bottle caps. Young elle-mays and their lemans, lacking lodgings of their own, sought out the shelter of the brownstone's doorway in the evening to screw standing up. Delivery trucks rumbled by day and night.
Will began by going through the stack of papers Nat Whilk had saved for him.
14
The Petrified Forest
Nat's plan was working beyond all expectation. It had taken Will three days to beg, steal, lie, and con his way back home, which turned out to be exactly the length of time it took the media to sniff out the story. On his arrival, the rumor of the king's return was front page news in every newspaper in Babel. rumors of restoration haunt city stated the Times. his not-so-absent majesty? Asked the Post. previously unknown prince-apparent sought proclaimed the Herald Tribune. And, taking up all the front page of the Daily News, was his favorite: heir here?
The editorial pages were filled with wild speculation. Why, they wondered, had an heir suddenly appeared? Was the king dying? (That he was not dead was certain, an insert explained, by various signs and omens, foremost among which was the quiescence of the Obsidian Throne. So long as His Absent Majesty lived, it would obey none other than he himself or those of his blood lineage, and was death to any other who dared sit upon it, a suite of attributes that even those who supported an absolute monarchy deplored for reasons that the king's absence made manifest.) Why, if the heir had returned, did he not reveal himself? Why, if he wished to remain hidden, had he made so little effort to conceal his identity during his first quasi-public appearance? If, indeed, it was his first. Another special insert of newsroom sweepings and convoluted reasoning argued otherwise.
Will put down the last of the papers and picked up a book.
"The Care and feeding of Hippogrffs?" a stone-deep voice grumbled. "Why read about them? Hippogriffs are nasty beasts. Rats with wings."
Will turned and glared. "Don't you know it's rude to read over somebody's shoulder?"
"I can't help it," the lion said. "I'm a compulsive reader. Newspapers, cereal boxes, anything with words on it. It's my only vice."
"You have no room to complain, then. This has words."
"That doesn't mean I don't have preferences! Sometimes a lounger brings something worthwhile. Faulkner, Woolf, Shelley. One summer there was a knocker who came here every day until he'd read all the way through War and Peace." The lion shivered. "That was glorious." Then, delicately raising one toe, he tapped on Will's stack of books with a stone claw. "These, however, are mere compendia of facts. Why on earth are you wasting your time on them?"
"Well, there's this girl..."
"There's always a girl."
"You wouldn't understand."
"Oh, no. I suppose I wouldn't. What would a lion know about females? We only keep a pride of seven to ten of 'em happy at a time. Anybody could do that!"
Will put down his book. "And where are they now, this pride or yours?"
"I have the happy honor of informing you that currently they are in labor."
'What? All of them? At once?"
"You wouldn't want me to play favorites!" the lion said indignantly. "Every wife, every night, as often and as long as they please. That is the way to promote marital harmony. Take my word on it, so long as you adhere to this simple regimen, your marriages will never fail."
"If they're in labor, shouldn't you be with them?"
The lion smiled pityingly. "Flesh is transient but stone endures. To us, you guys are as fleeting as the glimmer of moonlight on a summer lake. No wonder you never get anything done! Our lives, however, are long enough to be savored. When I was young, there was only one continent. Imagine my astonishment when a rivulet so narrow I used to hop across it without a second thought widened and became a sea! How dizzied I felt when one land broke into many and went whizzing to all corners of the globe! Sometimes I would have to shut my eyes and clutch the ground with all twenty claws for a few thousand years just to stop my head from spinning.
"Unluckily for me, I was courting at the time, and my intended brides wound up on a different continental plate from me. I was beside myself with anxiety. Had I been as rash as one of you flesh-folk, I would have plunged at once into the water and drowned in a misguided attempt to swim across the ocean floor to rejoin them. But though lionesses demand passion, the one trait they value above all others is dependability and thus they despise impulsiveness. So I was patient. I waited. And after what seemed, even to me, to be an ungodsly great deal of time, my continent and theirs closed in upon one another again. I stood by the shore and watched the waters narrow. I saw the lands collide and a mighty range of mountains rise up where they met. When things had settled, I located the least difficult pass between their continental plate and mine. "Then I sat down.
The Dragons of Babel Page 23