Midway through the photocopying, Cat came upon a clutch of letters tied together with a velvet ribbon. She undid the ribbon, and a square of paper fell to the floor which, unfolded, revealed a lock of coal-black hair.
Puzzled, Cat read the first letter.
My beloved beast,
Too long has it been since I enjoyed the raging storms of your passion, the heave and swell of your body beneath me, the taste of salt on my tongue. Too long since I set sail on the frigate of your lust for the distant isles of the South.
You receive my letters. I know this because you answer them. But you cannot possibly believe what I write, for if you did you would be here with me now. How am I expected to live without you? You are as precious as Oceanus itself to me, as deserving of my love and devotion, and, alas, as capricious in your moods.
You ask me to tell you how I fill my days. I do not, I assure you, waste them languishing away after you. In the morning, I take my small skiff out upon the sea. This I do regardless of all but the most violent weather, for the ocean is life itself to me, even as you are. If the waters are clement, I throw aside my shift and dive deep, deep within them, so deep that at times I am close to strangling on the water and never coming up again. When the waves are wild, I exult in the danger. Then I return to the city and walk the seawall, examining it for weaknesses of all kinds, to make certain the harbor is safe from the tides and storm surges that menace it. In the afternoon, there are court cases to be held, petitions to be heard, ceremonies to be attended, sacred fires to be kept burning. I am a king’s daughter. I know my duty and I do it well. In the evening, unless there is a formal banquet, I eat abstemiously, listen to musicians, watch dancers, marvel at jugglers. Or else I practice my calligraphy, write poems, read books. It is only the night that makes me weak with desire for you, but oh, how the nights are long!
You say that it is physically impossible for you to live with me. Then make it possible! You say it was a once in a lifetime confluence of moons and tides that enabled us to meet. Are you not your mother’s son? Surely you have power enough to make the tides and moons converge again.
But now I pause and the anger leaves me. In this one thing only am I weak: I cannot scold you as I should. When will you return to my loving arms again?
With all my heart,
Dahut merc’h Gradlon
* * *
Every schoolchild knew the history of the ancient city of Ys. Conquered by the warlord Gradlon, corrupted by his daughter Dahut with orgies and licentious behavior, sunk beneath the waves when the key to its sea gates was stolen by Dahut and given to a demonic lover who seemed to have no name or identifiable personality. It was a tale particularly appealing to teenage goth girls. But faced with physical documents originating in the lost city, Cat had to, for the first time, question what she had been taught. Supposedly, a storm surge had inundated the city, destroying it, and that seemed reasonable enough to anybody who knew the ocean’s power. But when the tides had ebbed, Ys had stayed submerged, and that made no sense at all.
Nor did Dahut sound like the sex-maddened wanton the chronicles made her out to be. Certainly, there was no mention of orgies in the letter. Only of her yearning for her lover. Whose identity remained unknown.
When Cat had Xeroxed the lot, instead of shredding the originals, she hid them behind the bottommost drawer of her desk. She would read them for entertainment. She could always destroy them later.
* * *
Evenings, Cat reunited with Esme. Sometimes they played board games. Other times they walked the battlements and tried to spot the canal serpents that reared their heads out of the waters at dusk and fed on rats and wharf pixies. Esme was endless fun. There were days when that was all that kept Cat sane. The work she did was varied and easy enough to perform, but the demands for her labor came from all directions and added up to far more time than she had to give them.
One week after she started work, Raguel filed a formal complaint against Cat for insubordination.
“That was fast,” Annie Hedgewife said when the news got out. “Took me a month.”
“I’m still waiting,” Rackabite said, mock-dolorously. “Why does Kate get to skip ahead of me in line? I have seniority.”
Letzpfenniger crawled out from under her desk with a stack of newly completed requisition forms. “She’s cheerful is why. His kind feeds on misery. Metaphorically speaking, I mean. Literally, he feeds on blood and sawdust.”
The clerical pool were located in the basement, where there were no windows and the walls were wet when it rained, and given modular cubbies rather than offices such as the Upstairs Crew (as they were known below) enjoyed. On the plus side, the stairway down was a great beast of Victorian metalwork that boomed and clanged with descending footsteps whenever anyone came down it, looking to impose work upon them. So they always had plenty of warning and, between visits, the freedom to gossip.
“Does he really? Sawdust? Why?” Cat asked.
Annie Hedgewife made her face go wide and bland. “No idea. Ask Istledown, she knows everything. Well, not what you had for lunch or where Her Absent Majesty is now. But facts about things, she knows them all. Just so long as they don’t benefit her personally. That’s part of the curse that was laid down on her.”
“Curse?” Cat said. Istledown was a researcher and as such properly belonged in the Division of Corruption. But somehow—rumor had it that a poker game was involved—Lolly Underpool had gained ascendancy over her position and moved her to the basement, where she had an office—a small one, admittedly—entirely to herself. Now she could be accessed only with Lolly’s near-unobtainable permission. “How did she get cursed?”
“It was part of the terms of her employment,” Rackabite said.
My darling, my demon, my damnation, my dark destroyer,
I enclose a lock of my hair, as you requested. But why are you content to settle for so little when all of me is yours for the taking? When the tides are high and the winter storms hammer on the seawalls like a great fist, I imagine that thunderous sound is you coming for me at last. Yet it never is.
Daytimes, I do my devoir: talk with lawyers, disburse funds, walk through marketplaces eavesdropping on the mood and gossip of the people, hear the reports of the harbormasters, hold polite luncheons where I chat with grain merchants from the hinterlands, pale-skinned ambassadors from distant courts, mercenaries hoping to interest me in a war with our inoffensive neighbors … They all turn to faces in a dream the moment I look away, indistinct in an instant and forgotten soon thereafter. Only the nights seem real, for then I imagine you are there with me. I toss and turn until my skin glistens with sweat. By morning the sheets are damp and rumpled. The servants, seeing the aftermath, whisper that I have taken on an invisible lover. I laugh when my spies report this to me because the alternative is to weep, and if once I started weeping over you, I would never stop.
You villain! Your words are pretty and your sentiments all I could desire, but I would trade them all for a single hour sitting quietly in your presence. I curse you with every foul name I know. Come to me and you will be forgiven.
I have told you about the codex that a dealer in antiquities sold me and the solution I found within it. You respond that the price is too dear. It is not love that hoards coppers when it should be strewing golden suns and silver moons at my feet. Along with your worthless, desirable carcass, of course. Had I the Horn of Holmdel within my grasp, do not think that I would hesitate to steal it and to the Dark Lands with the consequences. Am I more man than you? Then seize the main chance and do what you must!
But now my hopes grow too high and I cannot breathe.
Yours only,
Dahut merc’h Gradlon
* * *
Cat was eating lunch—a cassoulet with a glass of wine—in Place Marcou when, as gracefully and silently as a shadow gliding across a wall, Lord Pleiades slid into the chair opposite her. “I thought it best we meet outside of work, where we won’t be overheard,”
he said.
“Are we having an affair? Shouldn’t there have been a memo?” Cat kept her voice light and amused, though inwardly she felt nothing of the sort.
“I’ve been noticing your work, Ms. Gallowglass.”
“Oh, that’s not good. Work should never come to the attention of the people who assume it somehow gets done all by itself. They’re sure to do something unfortunate about it. Mind if I keep eating? I don’t want to be late getting back to the office.”
“You are unfailingly punctual. Also diligent, hardworking, and competent. You don’t mind it when your coworkers take credit for your work or your superiors for your ideas,” Lord Barquentine said. “Even your posture is excellent! You can see why I am suspicious of you.”
“I could slump a little, if you like.”
“It is true that you are the exact opposite of deferential. However, that only makes you stand out all the more. You are the spitting image of an ambitious young woman on the make.”
“Thank you, I think.”
“It wasn’t a compliment. You’re too capable to be real. Where did you come from?”
“It’s in my application. I was the secretary of a Teggish land baron. He started paying me late, on one pretext or another, until he owed me three months’ salary. Then one day when I was on the edge of starvation, he gave me as much cash as I earned in a month and sent me to deposit it in the bank. It’s an old, old scam. But instead of skipping town with a fraction of what I was owed, as I was expected to do, I went straight to the bank and deposited it. Then I wrote out a check for twenty times that amount from another of his accounts. Because the tellers knew me, and because I’d just deposited money, I had no trouble. Which is when I ran as fast and far as ever I could.”
“So you had money. What happened to it?”
“I kept it safe. I told you I’d be working this job even if I were wealthy. I am and I will. But I still need to be paid—it’s part of my cover.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“It’s possible, I suppose.”
“I note that your fictitious employer was not high-elven.”
“Oh, now you’re just borrowing trouble,” Cat said. “Yes, I spotted you as Teggish when I interviewed for the job. But there’s nothing mysterious about that.” The Tylwyth Teg were all arrivistes and social climbers. To one who knew the aristocracy intimately, they were easily spotted by their exaggerated pose of sophistication. “As tense as a Teg trying to look casual,” her mother used to say. Not that she would throw away her job by telling Barquentine that. “It’s your haircut. Sculpted to reveal that your ears are foliate but disguise the fact that they’re falcate rather than lanceolate. I had a job in a beauty salon once, so I spotted that right away.”
“Hmm.” Barquentine stroked his chin, almost succeeding in smoothing down a small smile. “One last question, not that I expect to get a straight answer out of you. I’m sure you are aware that Raguel has filed a complaint against you. Mind telling me exactly what’s behind that?”
“I’m no snitch,” Cat said. “If you want an answer for that, you’ll have to call Istledown into your office. She knows everything.”
* * *
Clerical Services took up one full half of the basement, with the independent fiefdom of Shipping and Receiving and the exiled colony of Information Technology sharing the other. Istledown being Lolly Underpool’s chief trophy, her office was in the corner farthest from the other departments, alongside Lolly’s, where she would always be under the hen-wife’s watchful eye. She never associated with the clerical pool, but occasionally she flitted through, on her way to the washroom or back from lunch.
On one such occasion, on impulse, Cat said, “Hey, Istledown, what is the Horn of Holmdel?”
Istledown stopped and fixed Cat with a hard stare. “It’s a Class Four artifact and none of your business. How did you hear of it?”
“Oh, it was in one of the comic books my kid likes, and I kind of wondered,” Cat lied. “That’s all.”
“Ah. Well. That’s different.” Istledown drew up a chair and began talking.
The Horn, she said, was a tool left over from the creation of the universe. Once, it had been wielded by one of the Demiurge’s flunkies. To what purpose, none could say. There were few such artifacts remaining and, as such, its value was beyond calculation. Never mind that almost nobody knew how to use them anymore.
There was a chapbook, Istledown would lend it to her, that recorded some of the songs that could be played on the Horn and the effects these would have. Not that Cat was likely ever to see the Horn itself. There had only been eighteen confirmed sightings of it in all history, the first of which …
An hour later, Lolly came through, saw them, and said, “What’s all this jabbering? Get back to your desks. We have work to do.”
Gratefully, Cat did so. Later that day, however, Istledown dropped by her desk to lend her the chapbook—“I need it back this afternoon!”—which, as she hadn’t time to memorize its contents, Cat was careful to Xerox before returning.
Just in case it turned out to be useful.
A clean and innocent conscience fears nothing.
—Queen Elizabeth I
A month passed and the year turned on its hinges into autumn. Posters for the Plague Carnival began to appear on walls throughout the city. Meanwhile, ensconced as she was within the metaphoric heart of the Conspiracy, Cat found her situation confining but comfortable. The clerical life was like a madhouse-mirror reflection of the Dragon Corps: The pay was small but adequate to her needs; she always knew what she was supposed to be doing and, thanks to Lolly, whom she had to obey and whom not; and there were objective metrics for how well she was performing her job. But where before she had flown between worlds, now she filed documents in triplicate.
In her cubby, Cat had hung up a map of Carcassonne. The city was in outline shaped rather like a hominid skull with protruding jaw and small braincase. Extending the fancy further, its streets curled like the simplified convolutions of a cartoon drawing of a brain. The Conspiracy she thought of as a tumor within that brain and she as a small black dot within that tumor seeking to undo its workings, a cancer within the cancer.
One morning, after fixing herself a cup of tea but before sitting down at her desk, Cat checked her mail slot and among the usual disposable memos found an unopened letter, so densely stuffed that it bulged and threatened to rip open at the seams, with the name and return address of the Dowager Sans Merci at the top left corner. It was addressed to:
TEMPORARY HEAD CONSPIRATOR
THE CONSPIRACY
7 RUE SAINT-JEAN
C. L. DE CARCASSONNE
For a long, still moment, Cat did not move. There were two obvious options here: To slip the thing into the THC’s mail slot and pretend she had never seen it. Or to open it and read the contents.
Instead, she went upstairs to the Employee Resources office and walked in without knocking. Barquentine looked up in mild surprise. “Sir,” Cat said, “somebody left a fishing hook with a fat, juicy worm impaled on it in my mail. I’m pretty sure this belongs to you.”
She handed the letter to Lord Pleiades and returned to her desk.
Cat was just getting her morning chores sorted out when Lolly Underpool dropped an untidy mound of flimsies on her desk, saying, “Letzpfenniger screwed up the invoices and when I chewed her out, she started crying and crawled under her desk and barricaded herself there with boxes of old brochures. She won’t come out, so these are all your responsibility now. I’ll need them corrected, retyped, and sent out by this time tomorrow.”
“Yes’m,” Cat said.
When Lolly was gone, Helen said, “Maybe it’s time you left this job for greener pastures.”
“I’m not a quitter.”
“Maybe you should be.”
“There are still things I hope to find out.”
* * *
What had she learned so far? Surprisingly little. That the Conspiracy
was badly organized she could see with her own two eyes. From unguarded comments made by her superiors, she knew that it nevertheless had tendrils everywhere in Faerie and that some of its operatives, distance limiting oversight, were surprisingly resourceful. That the Division of Corruption not only entangled powerful politicians and businesswomen in scandal but reaped the benefits of this through blackmail. That the Division of Persecution was a tremendous, if necessary, drain of resources. That the Conspiracy had a particular interest in the lost city of Ys (not, apparently, in its location but in its restoration, as unlikely as that seemed), as well as in the railroad, the Dragon Corps, and the changeling industry. That the Dowager had taken an active, though distant, role in overseeing its operations but had of late fallen inexplicably silent.
And that the Acting Chief Conspirator (Lady Jane Iron, though nobody was supposed to know that) had a paper thermometer outside her office, showing 87 percent progress toward some undefined objective, while the Temporary Head Conspirator (Ana Kashalyi, also blissfully ignorant of how universally known and despised she was) had a plaque on her door reading ONLY 843 DAYS TO MISSION OBJECTIVE. Some days that number went down; other days it went up. But on the whole, the number grew smaller, the colored-in parts of the thermometer higher, and “mission objective,” whatever that might be, closer.
Cat was mentally assembling this catalog while running the copying machine one day when a haint materialized before her and said, “Lord Barky Bark wants to see you in his office. Stat.”
“Oh, goody. How come nobody ever brings me pleasant news?”
“Just the messenger, toots. Whatever’s between you and His High-and-Mightiness has nothing whatsoever to do with me. Not my dwarf. Not my fight.”
* * *
The Iron Dragon’s Mother Page 18