The Iron Dragon’s Mother

by Michael Swanwick

  Saoirse put down the combat knife she had been using to open her mail. “You’ve got brass ovaries, I’ll give you that.”

  “I’m innocent and my lawyer refuses to enter that as my plea. I’m being framed and she knows it, but she won’t do anything to uncover the truth. I want another attorney—a real one, someone who will fight for me.”

  “Lieutenant Anthea is what you’ve been assigned,” Saoirse said. “If you want independent counsel, that’s your right, of course. But you’ll have to pay for it yourself. Do you have the resources?”

  “I don’t. But House Sans Merci does. If I wash out of the Corps, that fact will be written down to the discredit of our line in the Book of Steel in letters of flame. That’s a penalty even my mother would not relish.”

  “Then go to it. I wash my hands of you.”

  Alone in her room, in her best hand, Caitlin wrote:

  Mother,

  Caitlin stared at the word for a very long time. Then, in her best and firmest hand, she set about writing the most difficult letter of her life.

  * * *

  That evening the other pilots who shared the women’s quarters with her held a moot. Not counting Caitlin, there were an even dozen of them, and of course they had no official right to try her. But she had known it was coming. A great deal of how she was treated in the coming weeks would depend upon how good a defense she put up now.

  They arranged the chairs in the common room in a semicircle and stood Caitlin against the wall at its focus. Ysault lit the sage and performed the smudging ceremony. Brianna, as presiding judge, stood rather than sitting; she called down the lux aeterna and with it lit a spirit candle on the table set midway between her and Caitlin. Because the moot was not authorized, instead of sewing her eyelids shut, which would leave marks, she tied a blindfold over them. Saoirse, as the inquisitor, stripped Brianna to the waist and with a razor-sharp silver knife drew a crescent moon on her abdomen so that live blood might flow throughout the proceedings. Fiona turned off the overhead lights. And Meryl flipped open a notebook in order to take the minutes.

  They had all been Caitlin’s friends. Better than friends, because together they’d gone up against the male hierarchy and achieved something no women had before. They’d been asshole buddies. Now, in the candle-flickering darkness, she saw not one kindly eye. Even Ysault’s face was set in stone. Already, she was sick of this charade. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get on with it.”

  “It isn’t for you to say when the ritual starts or ends,” Saoirse said curtly. “Nor how it is to be held. Nor what punishments shall be meted out. Do you understand?”

  Caitlin choked back her indignation. She managed a curt nod.

  “What happens to you doesn’t matter,” Saoirse said. “But we’re the first generation of female pilots and we’re held to a higher standard than the men are. We will all be judged by your selfish, lustful actions.”

  “I did nothing.”

  “Your own dragon has testified against you. I’ve seen the transcript.”

  “I refuse to believe that.”

  Saoirse placed a finger in the candle flame. Her brow tensed with the effort of not wincing. Then she held up the finger, unblistered and unburned. “Do you doubt it now?”

  “If 7708 testified against me, it lied.”

  “Dragons don’t lie.”

  “They can.”

  “They don’t. They’re too proud for that.”

  Which was true, and everybody present knew it. Who could possibly know this better than they? “Look,” Caitlin said, “I don’t know why my mount would lie. I only know that it was acting strangely after we came back through Dream Gate. Before that, everything was chill. How in the name of the Lurker Within could I have even taken off, if I’d been corrupted? Who could I possibly have done it with while I was in flight?”

  There was a rustling among the seated pilots. This, too, they knew to be true. “She’s got a point,” Ashling said.

  Saoirse looked ready to spit. “No, she doesn’t. She has the taint on her, I can all but smell it!” In the heat of her certainty, several of the pilots nodded. This was the way her real trial was going to go, Caitlin realized. All evidence she produced that she had been framed would be discounted. The simplest accusation mounted against her would be repeated over and over until it was magnified into something monstrous. She would not be allowed to challenge anything 7708 was reported to have said. Her innocence or lack of it mattered not a whit to Saoirse or Brianna or anybody else now confronting Caitlin.

  But it mattered to her.

  “Strip me naked, flay me dead, render the flesh from my skeleton, and grind my bones to bake into bread, and you’ll not find a fleck of corruption.” Caitlin held her hand over the spirit candle.

  The pain almost made her cry out. But she kept her hand motionless.

  “You froze the flame with a hex-word. I saw your lips moving,” Saoirse said.

  Caitlin’s hand was in agony. Nevertheless, she slowly moved it so that the flame licked at her wrist. The sleeve of her dress blues caught fire and the flame ran up her arm and threatened to make the leap to Caitlin’s hair before she slapped it out with her free hand.

  “There,” Caitlin said, holding up her unburnt hand and charred sleeve. “There’s your proof.”

  “How dare you!” Saoirse’s slap landed so hard that Caitlin’s face slammed against the wall. Dazedly, she lifted a hand to the cheek she could no longer feel, though the part of her skull that had bounced from the wall blazed with pain. “I don’t know how you pulled off this little stunt. But I swear to the Goddess you won’t be able to do it twice. It doesn’t fool any of us. Nobody!” She looked around. “Am I wrong?”

  No one spoke.

  After a long silence, reluctantly, Brianna said, “The verdict is: Not Proven.” She took off her blindfold and, accepting a basin of soapy water from Maeve, began washing up.

  So Caitlin’s fate was left to the official hearing. Also, she had to buy a new jacket. But, though they still shunned her, the others agreed that they were bound by their own ceremony to allow her to see trial unbeaten and with all parts of her body intact.

  Where, the conclusion was implicit, their work would be done for them by the proper authorities.

  * * *

  Caitlin did not cry that night. She would not give the bitches the satisfaction. But as she was drifting off to sleep, she heard Rabbit’s voice. “What are you wearing?”

  “I’m in bed, trying to sleep, so nothing at all. If you like, I can get up and put on some underwear. The lights are out, so I can’t guarantee the color, though.”

  Briefly, Rabbit was silent. Then he said, “It should have been me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I would have defiled myself for you. Whatever you did, I would have done it better, longer, harder, filthier, more lovingly than whoever it was you did it with could have.”

  “Your career—”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Look, Rabbit, it’s very sweet of you to try to raise my spirits. But I know you better than this.”

  “No,” he said. “No, you don’t.” Then, “I heard you were going to fight it. Don’t trust your lawyer.”

  “At last,” Caitlin replied sadly, “you tell me something I already know.”

  * * *

  On the way to seeing her counsel, Caitlin spotted Aurvang Hogback coming out of the BX with a carton of Chesterfields under his arm. He looked up, saw her, and, wheeling about, ducked back inside to avoid having to salute. With tremendous sadness, she realized that there was not a single person on the base who believed in her innocence.

  “Bad news,” Lieutenant Anthea said when Caitlin sat down.

  “Things have gotten worse? I can’t imagine how that’s possible.”

  “You’ve been charged with the murder of Lord Sans Merci.”

  “That’s ridiculous. My father died a natural death.”

  “That may o
r may not be so. But we’re not talking about him. You’re to be tried for the death of your brother. Your half brother, I mean. I’ve got his name here somewhere.”

  “What?”

  “Ah! Here it is. Lord Fingolfinrhod, Sans Merci of Sans Merci presumptive.”

  It felt like Caitlin had been kicked in the side of her head. Carefully, she said, “There’s been a mistake.”

  “No mistake.” Lieutenant Anthea drew a sheet of paper from her portfolio. “This is a sworn affidavit from the Dowager Sans Merci that she saw you commit the crime.”

  “Mother!” Caitlin found herself clenching her jaw so hard her muscles hurt. She took a deep breath. “This is a new low, even for her. I would hardly have thought it possible.” Then, urgently, “My brother is alive. We can find him.”

  Lieutenant Anthea said nothing.

  “So what is our first step? What are we going to do?”

  The attorney shrugged.

  “Gods damn you! You’re my lawyer—you’re supposed to prove my innocence.”

  “No, I’m supposed to arrange the best possible outcome for you. There’s a difference. The good news is that if you plead guilty to the murder, I should be able to get the charges of corruption dropped.”

  “I’m supposed to be happy about that?”

  “It would mean that you’d die as an officer in good standing in Her Absent Majesty’s Dragon Corps. That’s something, anyway.” There was an electric kettle on a shelf behind Lieutenant Anthea’s desk. She put a tea bag into a cup, poured hot water over it, added milk and artificial sweetener. Then she handed the cup to Caitlin. “You’ve had a shock. Drink this. Take a few minutes to absorb all you’ve heard. We’ll talk about inconsequential things in the meantime.”

  Lieutenant Anthea stood and went to the window, paws tangled behind her back. “According to your files, you ride a motorcycle,” she remarked. “So do I. See that Kawasaki Fūjin outside? That’s mine.”

  Caitlin glanced at the bike. “You left the keys in it.”

  The lawyer reached out, grabbed a pawful of nothing, and lifted it, rippling, into the air, revealing a side table. She opened her paw and, rippling, the table disappeared again. “Ordinarily, I’d lock it, pocket the key, and drape a tarp of invisibility over it. But here—who would steal it? How could they get it past the guards at the gate?”

  The tea was still steeping. It would be a bit before it was drinkable. Meanwhile, Caitlin held the cup in both hands, savoring the heat. The cup was thick and round and white. It felt like the only real thing in the world. If she were to let go of it, she fancied, the cup would stay, unmoving, where it was while she herself fell to the floor and shattered.

  Lieutenant Anthea said, “I need a smoke. I’m going out around back for a cigarette or two. I might be a while.”

  She extracted a money clip, fat with banknotes, from her purse and dropped it on the desk. She did not close the door behind her.

  Caitlin found herself staring through the open doorway at the Kawasaki, its key ring dangling from the ignition. The bright green cowling was angular and abstract, as if the bike were a chimeric machine-insect with matching saddlebags. Silently, it called to her. As in a dream, she closed a hand about the money clip and stuffed it in a pocket.

  Act now, she thought. Explanations later.

  Even as Caitlin moved toward the door, however, one arm reached out without her conscious intervention and snagged the leather portfolio that her attorney had left on the desk. Odd, she thought, tucking it under an arm. The other hand snatched up the tarp of invisibility from the side table and threw it over a shoulder. Then she was outside. She crammed tarp and portfolio into a saddlebag and mounted the Fūjin. Kickstand up, open the clutch, rev the engine.

  With a roar, she put the building behind her.

  * * *

  The trees closed their boughs about Caitlin, fragrantly resinous, and she throttled down the motorbike. She’d gone up this path far too fast many a time, and wiped out on it once or twice as well. It was a popular spot for pickup races by off-duty pilots. But today she wanted to keep the engine noise down, so as not to draw attention to herself.

  Half a mile in, Caitlin cut the engine and, laying the Kawasaki down on the pine-needled forest floor, threw the tarp over it. The bike shimmered and took on the colors of its surroundings. It would take a sharp-eyed thief to spot it now. Not that she expected anyone to wander by. But Caitlin hadn’t gotten into the Academy by cutting corners.

  The base was surrounded by a hurricane fence topped with razor wire. Here, at one corner of the property, there was a shallow depression under the fence, where it was possible to slide beneath it. Many a young officer had slipped out this way in order to spend an officially unsanctioned hour or two at a bar in town. She couldn’t take the Kawasaki with her, of course. But she could …

  Crumbs, she thought.

  A memory from her girlhood rose up within Caitlin of Nettie telling her the story of Clever Gretchen. It took her only an instant to realize the import of the thought. But later she was to recall the story at her leisure, exactly as she had so often heard it:

  On the edge of a dark forest (the old woods fey said the exact same words with the exact same emphasis every time), there lived a clever girl named Gretchen with her brother Hans and their mother and a woodcutter. Alas, the mother died and so the woodcutter took up with another woman.

  Their new mother did not love Hans and liked Gretchen even less, so one day she laid a trail of pearls, cleverly spaced, deep into the forest and then sent the two children out to play.

  Hans and Gretchen followed the trail of pearls into the trees until the forest grew so gloomy and menacing that they turned back and ran all the way home. Hans had wanted to pick up the pearls but Gretchen had told him not to. Now they were glad of this, for the pearls gleamed softly in the shadows, showing them the way back safely.

  The next day, when they went out to play, Gretchen and her brother found a trail of gems leading into the forest. Again they followed it, again Gretchen would not let Hans pick them up, again they grew frightened, and again they ran home. This time it was the gems, winking brightly in the shadows, that showed them the way.

  But on the third day, when they went out to play, the children found a trail of bread crumbs. They followed them, of course, but because their new mother had not given them any breakfast that morning, as they did so they ate up every one. So when they grew frightened, they discovered that they had no way of knowing in what direction their home lay and, perforce, they continued onward into the darkness.

  At last they came to a smokehouse with a roof as high and steep as a witch’s hat. In its doorway stood a wolf. Or so they thought on first glance. But when the figure came walking toward them, on two legs rather than four, Gretchen saw that it was actually a hag in wolf’s skin. And when she came closer yet, Gretchen saw that the hag was their new mother. Well …

  It was a bedtime story for little warriors, because it was resolved by Clever Gretchen killing an enemy who deserved no better. In that sense, its moral was simple: Kill or be killed. But hidden in the earlier part of the story was a more useful moral:

  Nobody who means you well lays a trail of bread crumbs for you to follow.

  Caitlin wrapped the tarp of invisibility around herself like a poncho, then climbed onto the Kawasaki again, and drove it slowly back the way she had come. She had time to think, though not a great deal of it. Her flight would not be “discovered” until she was far enough away to put to rest any doubts that she was trying to escape but not so far that she would be difficult to find.

  Which meant that she needed a hiding place. Somewhere within the base, because it would be assumed that she’d fled into the surrounding forest. Somewhere quiet. Above all, somewhere no one would think of looking for her.

  When it was put like that, the answer was, to Caitlin’s mind at any rate, obvious.

  * * *

  The hangar, though most of it was no more than em
pty space where dragons could be maintained and repaired, was a treasure trove of machinery and materials—all of which, since the ground crew had been reassigned for the duration of Caitlin’s prosecution, was unguarded and available for her use. She searched through the tool lockers until she found a sprayer and a canister of soot-colored paint. It took her less than half an hour to turn the Kawasaki matte black. Then she wrapped the tarp of invisibility about herself again and went outside to watch the sunset.

  The sun touched the horizon, flattened, split into several slices, gave up the briefest flash of green, and melted into nothing.

  At first, there were few signs of the search for her. But as time drew on and the sky darkened, the metallic baying of cyborg hounds sounded from the depths of the trees, and flares were shot up high into the air. Giants waded slowly through the firs, stooping occasionally to part the greenery, which made them look for all the world like children hunting for shells in a shallow lake. A triad of witches flew by in formation, their brooms scratching lines of fire across the sky.

  Her pursuers were beginning to grow desperate.

  Good.

  Caitlin gathered an armload of magnesium flares and kindled them, one by one, with the lux aeterna, freezing each before it could ignite with the same hex-word she had been accused of using on the spirit candle during her trial. Then she rode the Kawasaki to her slumbering dragon and dumped one apiece into each of the drop tanks and all the rest into the main fuel tank.

  The weather being warm and dragons resenting confinement, 7708 had been left outside. For fear of contamination, it had been parked as far from the other dragons as was possible. Caitlin climbed up into the cockpit. The leather couch shifted under her weight and closed about her body like a pair of loving hands. Being surrounded by so much cold iron raised dark impulses within Caitlin. She never felt so ruthless as when she was inside her dragon.