The Iron Dragon’s Mother

by Michael Swanwick

  Hanging behind Lord Pleiades’s desk were twin maps of Faerie and the sky above it, with ley lines marked on each. The sky lines were more familiar to Cat than the back of her hand, for they were the fastest routes a dragon could travel. The earth lines were less so. Whenever she came into Barquentine’s office, she wondered if there were ley lines within the ocean as well, and if so why there were no maps of them. This time, however, she saw with a start that the maps had been taken down. In fact, all the personal items in the office were in cardboard boxes lined up against the wall. Had he been fired?

  “Sit,” Lord Pleiades said without looking up from a document. “Let me finish this page and my attention is all yours.” After a bit, he put down his reading glasses with a sharp click. “Raguel has lost his position here.”

  “Imagine my dismay.”

  “There were any number of gaffes on his watch—he lost Rabbit and all twelve of the Glass Mountain revenants. And of course the dragon slayer is still at large.” (Cat did her best to look like she had no idea what he was talking about but was trying to look like she understood every word.) “It was inevitable that his failures would catch up with him in the end. But it was you who pushed him over the edge.”

  “Me, sir?”

  “Or, rather, your suggestion that I ask Istledown about him. I decided to do just that. It took a great deal of wrangling to get Underpool to agree to a supervised question-and-answer session, but I finally managed it. His harassment of you was a trifle—everyone here has done worse this week alone, I’m sure. But once Istledown started talking about Raguel, she couldn’t stop. Did you know that there are five woodwoses buried in the cellar of his summer place? He lured them in from the forest, killed them, and drank their blood. Something to do with sawdust, apparently.”

  Cat suppressed a shiver.

  “I also asked Ms. Istledown about you. What do you imagine she said?”

  “Good things, I trust.”

  “Nothing. Underpool immediately shut her down. But not before Istledown favored me with the most extraordinarily knowing smile.”

  Against all expectations, Cat found herself enjoying this. It was exhilarating to play a part, she was discovering, particularly when there was real danger involved. “Oh, dear. Have I been having an affair with her too? Why is it nobody ever sends me the memos?”

  “The point being that there are hidden depths to you, Ms. Gallowglass. Depths I intend to plumb. But that’s a topic for another time.” Barquentine stared at Cat steadily. “Raguel’s position was left vacant so I was promoted into it. Hence the disarray here in my soon-to-be former office. Your congratulations are accepted, thank you. The very first action I took as Division Head was to fire his snotty little dwarf-bitch of an executive secretary. What would you say if I offered you the position?”

  “I’d … say … that I need a little time to think over the offer.”

  “Somehow I knew you’d be the only individual in the entire building who wasn’t interested in more money and power. All right then. Suppose I offered you a position as my interim mistress? Jewelry, furs, clothing, use of a car, a generous per diem. That’s on top of your current salary. Guaranteed minimum of two months, maximum of twelve—though that’s not likely. What would you say?”

  The offer took Cat by surprise. When she could breathe again, she said, “Thank you very kindly, sir. No.”

  “I could make you very unhappy.”

  “Is that supposed to be an inducement?”

  “Happiness,” Lord Pleiades said, “is banal. I’ve known women who could be made happy by a glass of Chablis and a paperback collection of sudoku puzzles. A deep, romantic misery, on the other hand, fills one’s life with all the ineffable emotions that give rise to poetry: yearning, despair, resentment, furious anger, inconsolable grief, and of course lurid fantasies of revenge. This profound discontent is what makes all forbidden loves so irresistible.”

  “Who’s forbidding our love?”

  “You, apparently.” Barquentine rose, chair scraping back noisily. Cat leapt up as well. “Be aware: I’m having your references looked into.”

  “Look all you like. You won’t find anything wrong with them.” Cat knew this for a fact, because the task had already been assigned and shunted downward as a chore no one wanted, from superior to inferior, until it landed in her lap. For the last three days, she had worked the phones, entering each call in the logs in a disguised hand, listening to the baffled declarations of her supposed employers and educators that they had never so much as heard of a Kate Gallowglass, and then written down the exact opposite of what they had sworn. Being careful (since it would look more convincing) to make their commendations sincere but not glowing. She expected to have the documentation in apple pie order and delivered to Barquentine’s desk under the signature of somebody up-rank of her and happy to take credit for her toil by this time tomorrow.

  Cat was, she had discovered, the single most efficient flunky the Conspiracy had. Which, given how much time she spent engaged in amateur espionage, wasn’t saying much.

  “Oh, and as long as you’re going that way,” Barquentine added, before she’d made it to the door, “take this bundle of etchings to Underpool and ask her to add it to the Ys file, would you? There’s a good girl.”

  * * *

  In the run-up to the Plague Carnival, there was a great deal of discussion in the clerical pool of masks and gowns and underwire brassieres.

  “I’ve never had one where the wire didn’t break and poke me in the boob,” Misabel said.

  “Oh, I know!” said Annie Hedgewife. “Plus they’re so uncomfortable to begin with.”

  The Croaker shook her head sourly. “They’re not so bad if you get them properly fitted. You’re right about the wires breaking, though.”

  “It’s the troughs the straps dig into my shoulders that get to me,” Slugabed Peg groused. “You have no idea how lucky you are not to have tits the size of mine. I tried that weight-reduction talisman you hang between the cups and it only gave me a rash.”

  “It made my skin tingle.”

  “I tried it twice and threw it away.”

  “This is so disillusioning!” Rackabite cried in mock horror. “I’m in the middle of a klatch of females discussing their breasts and it’s not sexy at all.”

  “Welcome to our world,” the Croaker said.

  “Have you bought your mask yet?” Annie Hedgewife asked Cat.

  “I’ve seen the posters, but I have to say it really doesn’t look like my idea of fun,” Cat said. “People in costumes dancing and looking moody.”

  “Oh, it’s much, much more than just that. It’s called Carnival, but it’s actually an orgy of excesses of all kinds: deep-fried Mars bars, pink martinis, so much moondust your nostrils bleed, so much mead you puke your guts out, barely enough brandy to make you decide that maybe just this once you’ll take it up the butt and skip the condom…” Annie Hedgewife pretended to fan her face with her hand. “C’est tres hot, as the swells say. And of course you’re wearing a mask, so you can be anything you want: a lady, a slattern, an easily misled innocent … Everybody else is pretending to be something they’re not, so why not you?”

  “At Carnival, nobody knows you have the face of a dog.” Rackabite grinned like a hound and licked his furry chops with a long, loose tongue.

  “It still doesn’t—”

  “Anyway,” the Croaker said, “attendance is mandatory for all employees. It’s in your contract.”

  Somebody came booming down the metal stairs then and they all scattered to their desks. Where Cat, sorting through the etchings which Lolly had told her to Xerox and then shred, came across an image of the exact same tavern that Fingolfinrhod had disappeared into on the day of their father’s death.

  * * *

  Fingolfinrhod was in Ys. Thus was half her quest completed.

  Cat considered coming in the next morning to drop her letter of resignation on Barquentine’s desk—just to see the expression
on his face when he read it—and then catching the next train to the coast. But payday was only four days distant and the money would be useful in the coming weeks. So she decided instead to wait.

  Thus it was that the first night of the Plague Carnival found Cat in a green silk consignment-shop gown and a Columbine half mask alone in the crowd that crammed the public square before the Viceregal Palace, watching the fireworks spread themselves across the sky above the city spires in explosion after explosion after explosion of ecstatic beauty. She bought a corn dog from a vendor and oohed and applauded along with everybody else when the display came to its breathtaking crescendo.

  An orchestra had been waiting for this moment and began to play. As it did, a tall figure wearing a Portunus mask appeared before Cat and bowed. “Care to dance with a stranger?” he said. “Who knows? Perhaps we’ll fall in love. Unlikelier things have happened.”

  “I recognize your voice,” Cat said. “Not to mention those eyes. How did you find me, Barquentine?”

  “Oh, please. I’m the Division Director for Persecution now. If anyone has the resources, I do.”

  Then somehow, effortlessly, they were dancing. Barquentine led well, so well that Cat found herself having trouble maintaining the sassy, irreverent persona of Kate Gallowglass. So she stopped talking and simply let herself be swept across the slate courtyard, a single green silk leaf in a windstorm of bright flower petals that smelled of jasmine, carnations, lust, red wine, and attar of rose.

  There came a break in the music to allow the dancers to catch their breaths. Leaning close so he could be heard, Barquentine held up a hand with an opal-and-silver ring. “You see this? It’s the single greatest treasure of my house, a Class Three artifact left over from the creation of Faerie. As you can imagine, I don’t wear it very often.” The hand fell away an instant before its nearness would have become offensive. “Anyone whose skin the ring touches is rendered incapable of lying. Ask me anything.”

  “What was the worst thing you ever did?”

  “I won’t tell you that. It was very bad, I’m afraid, and knowing it would make you think the less of me.” The music started up again and once more Barquentine took Cat into his arms. The night being warm, she wore a scarf rather than a cloak. He slid his hand beneath it, so that his ring touched her bare back. “Now we cannot lie to one another. Yet neither are we required to reveal any truths we do not wish to. Do you think you could outwit me under such circumstances?”

  Cat heard herself say, “Yes. Yes, I honestly do.”

  “Then let us play. I’ll let you ask the first question.”

  “All right. Why is it called the Plague Carnival? Why not just Carnival?”

  “Because it was only a century ago, with modern medicine and sanitation, that cities achieved replacement capacity. Before then, more people died in cities than were born in them. Population was maintained by the influx of immigrants from the country, seeking better lives for themselves. The chief engine of death back then was plague—and in Carcassonne, plagues commonly came in late autumn. Hence the Plague Carnival—one last fling before the dying season. With the rise of sexually transmitted diseases, ironically enough, the Carnival itself became a means of reducing the surplus population. It can’t be helped. Periodically, each of us wants to go off our diets, throw caution to the winds, and just this once do what we most desire without thought of consequences. Who’s to say no? You’ll admit, I hope, that I’ve answered your question adequately.”

  “You have.”

  “My turn, then. Are you a virgin?”

  “That’s not a question a lady will answer.”

  “Touché. Next question.”

  “Since you’ve wasted your question, I’ll waste mine. Just what is the purpose of the Conspiracy?”

  “You think I won’t tell? Our ultimate purpose is to plunge all of Faerie into an age of unending war. To this end, we are ensnarling the Dragon Corps in an escalating series of scandals that will ultimately break the Treaty of Hyperuranion, thus enabling dragons to carry nuclear weapons without the authority of Her Absent Majesty. The railroads’ infrastructure is being systematically sabotaged to weaken their independence to such a degree that the Treaty of Shamayim can be renegotiated, forcing them to transport the souls of children from Aerth in such great numbers that we can import more dragons. All of which, taken together, will be an act so heinous that the ruling class will be collectively complicit and thus immune from transcendence practically forever. You’d have learned all this and more during orientation, if you’d taken me up on the secretarial position. Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “Fair enough.” A dancer with a white mask covering all but her mouth twirled past and her cloak flew open to reveal that she wore nothing beneath. Then it closed about her, so that all that showed of her skin was an ambiguous smile. Lord Barquentine spared her only the briefest of glances. “Your turn.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Ah. How much do you know about me, Ms. Gallowglass? Precious little, I’ll wager. I have wealth, social position, and have amassed by various means as much power I am likely to wield in this lifetime. The Conspiracy is working to ensure an end to transcendence. Without the fear of which, our owners will have no reason to die and be reborn and thus can stay in their social roles forever. So tell me. What can I aspire to which I do not already have?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You. I know your secret.”

  Cat could not lie. But that did not prevent her from assuming the Kate Gallowglass persona. “Now you’re just fishing.” Pushing Barquentine away from her, she said, “Everyone has secrets. Even a dull little clerical drudge like myself. That doesn’t mean I have to blurt them out in front of a two-bit bully like you.”

  Seizing her wrist so roughly that his ring dug into her flesh, Barquentine said, “You are Caitlin of House Sans Merci, runagate and dragon slayer. Deny it if you can.”

  “I…” Cat blushed from head to toe. Her throat seized up, so that she could not speak.

  Barquentine’s eyes burned tiger-bright. Cat could not look away from them. “We are going to my rooms now. You know what we will do there. Will you go with me peacefully?”

  “Yes,” Cat said, lowering her eyes. “I will.”

  * * *

  Lord Barquentine’s rooms were everything Cat expected them to be: spacious, interior-decorator perfect, and a little too calculatedly opulent to impress anyone who knew what real wealth looked like. There was nothing old or shabby or cherished in them, nor the least trace of his personality. He would have servants to make sure that such things were whisked away and discarded.

  Not that there were any servants present tonight. All Carcassonne was at the Plague Carnival and so Barquentine had to go through the rooms turning on the lights and (in the bedroom) kindling the candles himself. “The law forbids the rich and the poor alike from sleeping under bridges, begging in the street, or stealing bread, yet the poor do these things often and the rich never. Have you ever wondered why?”

  “No,” Cat said, more weakly than she would have liked.

  “It is because the rules bind those with power more strongly than they do those without. We literally cannot break them. Only the powerless have that freedom. Which is why Ys is such a problem for the Conspiracy. But let’s not bring business talk into the boudoir. My point is that at times such as now, when the rules are held in abeyance, nothing is forbidden me. Tonight I can do whatever I wish to you, and in the morning … well, the rules are much laxer about what happens within an already-established relationship.”

  With elaborate insouciance, Lord Pleiades threw his mask on a nightstand and moved toward Cat with an amorous smile. But she forestalled him with an outstretched arm, saying, “I have to freshen up. It won’t take me long.”

  “The master bedroom’s bath is through that door.” Barquentine sounded amused. “You’ll find that it doesn’t lock from the inside.�
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  “Such a reassuring thing to hear,” Cat murmured. She used the toilet, then took off her mask and washed her hands. As she did, she stared at her face, pale and expressionless in the mirror.

  “Having second thoughts?” Helen asked.

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “There’s a first time for everything, I suppose.”

  Thin-lipped, Cat systematically scanned the toiletries, dismissing most of them as unsuited to her purpose. She picked up an ivory-handled hairbrush, a heavy thing with a chased silver back, hefted it, and was satisfied. Then she re-donned her mask.

  Cat emerged from the bath, brushing her hair. When Barquentine moved to take her in his arms, she said, “Is that my compact on the floor behind you?”

  “I don’t think—” Barquentine began, turning to look.

  Cat hit him with the hairbrush, putting all her strength into it, and he dropped to the floor like a slaughtered ox.

  Cat put a finger to Barquentine’s nostrils to make sure he was still breathing. Then she used tissue paper to wipe the brush clean of fingerprints, restored it to the bathroom counter, and flushed the tissue.

  People always thought of pilots in terms of their primary function, guiding dragons through the sky, as if they could do nothing else. They forgot that pilots were first and foremost career military and that all military personnel were taught a multitude of brutal means of killing or incapacitating an enemy.

  It was time she got out of here.

  In movies, recovering from being knocked unconscious was a simple matter of groaning and rubbing the back of one’s head the next morning. But this was real life. Barquentine would almost certainly have a concussion. Even with the sort of medical care his kind could afford, he would probably have to go through months of rehab to recover full functionality. Parts of his memory might never return to him. Nevertheless, he would live.

  Not that he necessarily deserved to. But Cat had never killed anybody and didn’t want him to be her first.