Don't let it show.
The defeated dwarf was being carried through the party on the same silver platter that had earlier held the flayed horse's head. It took six straining children to bear him up. Revelers surged about them, vying to dab a sprig of holly in his blood for luck.
Smiling oddly, Rocket took a tentative step her way.
"Get lost," Jane told Ferret. His teeth flashed in a brief, astonished hiss, and then Jane was pushing her way through the merrymakers, through the hot crush of bodies and out onto the balcony.
The air was cool and fresh; it cleared her head wonderfully. Two dwarves in Galiagante's livery were sweeping up, dumping the last dustpanfuls of sawdust over the edge. They took their brooms, nodded curtly, and left.
Jane stared out over the Great Gray City. The buildings were black and mysterious, their lights a message she could not decode in a language she had never learned. She started to put her drink down on the rail, then impulsively cast it away from her. It tumbled and glittered on the way down, a temporary star.
Rocket came out on the balcony, as she had either feared or hoped he would.
"Who are you?" he said. "I know you. Why?"
She favored him with a scornful look. "Perhaps you've had too much to drink."
"I know you," he insisted. "Your fate and mine are bound together in some way. If not in this life, then in another."
"Your premonitions and fancies mean nothing to me, sir. Good night."
"I am a dragon pilot. Every day I deal with machines that would eat my soul from the inside if I gave them the chance. I assure you, madam, that I am not one who is prone to whimsy."
"Ah." Jane was not deaf to the boast in his statement. A very macho thing, handling dragons. Strapping those great black iron machines between one's legs and then opening the throttle. Sure to get the young ladies' juices flowing. "You are one of those gentlemen who make their living by enslaving children."
Rocket flushed. "There is more to my job than harvesting changelings," he protested.
"Is there?" Jane felt light as air, conscienceless, amoral. "I should think the one would be quite enough."
His face was taut. But Rocket managed to construct a plausible smile and an apologetic bow. "We seem to have somehow gotten off on the wrong foot. If you would allow me the privilege of starting over again—? My name is Rocket. I would very much enjoy the pleasure of your company."
"Are you witless?" This was wonderful fun. "You have been dismissed, sir."
The dragon pilot made an abortive movement toward her, as if driven by some great emotion. It seemed he must either leave immediately or else strike her. Jane stared at him coolly, feeling an unhealthy excitement, an irresistibly unwise desire to see exactly how far she could provoke him. Then, with a strangled cry, he strode forward and seized her chin. Roughly, he tilted her head back and to the side. "By the holy wolf, you're a changeling!"
Jane wrenched herself free. "Is this how you usually treat ladies? Good night, sir."
"I've been through Dream Gate seventeen times. This is nothing I could be mistaken about."
"And just what do you intend to do about it?" Jane demanded. "Will you turn me over to the Hospitalers? I'm old enough for them to start breeding me, aren't I? They ought to be able to get ten or twelve mestizo bastards out of me before my womb collapses."
Had she slapped him, Rocket could not have turned more white. He stepped back from her, hands clenched, eyes afire. He opened his mouth to say something, closed it again.
Still, he did not leave.
"There you are!"
Galiagante strolled out onto the balcony. His entourage followed, shedding glamour and sparks. Jouissante said, "We're going slumming," and Incolore explained, "We're forming up a little group to visit the Goblin Market," and Galiagante himself asked indifferently, "Would you care to come along?"
"Yes," Jane said. Why not? "Yes, I would."
"I'll come too," Rocket said grimly.
* * *
There were seven in the party: Galiagante, with Jouissante and Incolore in uneasy balance on either arm, Rocket, Jane herself, and two elves from one of the lower houses, Floristan and Esplandian, more functionaries than actual guests. Servants fetched their cloaks. Jane, along with the other fatas, pulled the hood up so that only a slim oval of face showed. They all donned white masks.
They took the elevator down to the street, the functionaries shortened the way, and the entire party strolled easily into the Goblin Market.
"Gents, gents, gents!" a goblin barker cried.
Bad disco music gushed from aging speakers, all fuzz and repetitive bass thump. Galiagante gestured, the goblin stepped aside, and they ducked through a doorway into a lobby with mirrored walls.
Bank notes crinkled and sighed. They were ushered into a small, dark screening room. The linoleum floor was sticky underfoot. On the screen the magnified head of a kobold was noisily chewing food open-mouthed. They stood in the back, watching as beefsteaks, bananas, oysters, chocolate bars, and endless bowls of hot oatmeal disappeared into or fell in moist globs out of that enormous maw. There were only a few patrons in the cramped rows of seats.
Just when Jane's temples were beginning to throb in time to the sound track, Galiagante abruptly strode to the rear and threw open the fire door. They all followed him down a corridor that stank of disinfectant and up a narrow set of stairs. More paper whispered, and another goblin stood away from a turnstile. They passed through.
The room they entered was dominated by a horseshoe curve of doors. Galiagante went through one. Jouissante opened another. One of the functionaries—Esplandian?—dropped several tokens into Jane's hand. She opened her own door.
There was a chair. She sat down. A single dim light revealed a device on one wall with a slot for tokens. She inserted them all.
A window covering slid up. She was looking at a semicircular stage. At its center a troll writhed on a flat couch. He was naked save for a pair of socks and tight-laced brown shoes and the upper half of a gray undershirt. His great hairy belly protruded like a continent rising from an ugly sea of flesh. His eyelids had been sewn shut so long ago the flesh had grown together.
Jane saw Rocket in a window opposite. His mask stared at her.
The troll groaned. He had the most amazing hard-on. It was a raw pink for most of its length, as if the top layers of skin had been abraded away, shading to a bruise-like purple at the tip. From the slow way he twisted about, Jane thought at first that he was masturbating. But then he turned over on his side, and she could see the stump by one shoulder and realized that he had no arms with which to perform that function.
When the tokens ran out, the windows shut again and the party emerged with a clatter of doors.
"I want to arrange a private showing," Galiagante told a goblin with a mustache on his upper lip like a thin line of grease. They conferred briefly. Then the goblin led them two landings downward, through a storage room with leaking pipes, and into a vest-pocket theater.
A weak attempt had been made at glitz. Small tables were scattered about a low stage. Heavy metal played from a boom box, and scattered points of light bounced from a mirror ball to swirl about the theater. They took up chairs.
"This should be good," Jouissante remarked.
"Are you looking at me, sir?" Jane asked.
Rocket shook his head and sullenly stared down at the mask clenched in his hands. "I'm not sure this is my sort of scene at all."
"If you're not here to have fun, then why did you invite yourself along in the first place?"
A nymph wearing not much at all came by their table. "Falernian," Galiagante said, and tucked several bills in her underwear. He removed his mask and laid it down by the ashtray. The room was hot and stuffy, but Jane decided to keep her own mask on anyway.
Shortly, the same troll they had seen earlier was led onstage by two dwarves. They removed his dressing gown; he was dressed exactly as before in undershirt, shoes, and socks. One of the d
warves had a stick and prodded the troll with it.
He crashed to his knees in the center of the stage.
The nymph returned with their wine and baskets of silver coins for each table. The goblin with the grease-pencil mustache plugged a microphone into the boom box, and his voice overrode the music.
"LAYdeezangents," he said in a wash of muzzy sound. "Lordzanfatas, revered patronzovza ardz—"
"Shitheadzandwarves," muttered one of the lesser elves.
"Seekerzafterwizdom," Incolore laughed.
"—welcomdawr show." The lights over the tables came down. Blue and red spots pinned the troll. "TONIGHT weerproudabrezent duhmazing and todally unprezadent Tooooby CLUNCH!"
Jane joined the others in a polite smattering of applause.
The dwarf with the stick cued Toby by slashing him in the throat. The troll shivered, and in a high, clear voice said, "The Cold War is over. We stand at the dawn of a new world order. But many dangers and uncertainties are ahead. You've got to read all the tea leaves and listen to the nuances. I know we're in hard times. Out of the loop. But I never felt kind of—you mean, along like the Rodney Dangerfield kind of thing? Crematoriums of a thousand pointed lights. This is no Johnny-come-lately vicious assault. I put confidence in the American people smart bombs stealth drawing a line in the sand. The vision thing. I put my hand out to those crazy guys." Toby twisted, a conduit for madness, words bubbling out of him faster and faster, voice rising to a shriek. "To sum it up in one word, it's jobs!"
Dwarf One silenced him with another slash in the throat.
Dwarf Two grabbed his ears from behind and pulled down. The troll's chin rose and he made an incoherent, gargling noise that might have been protest. Dwarf One tapped his lips with the baton. Slowly, painfully, he forced his mouth yet wider. A creaking noise sounded from the hinges of his jaw. Still he strove to enlarge that impossible gap, forcing it bigger and rounder, until it was a great hole in his head, an immense funnel down his gullet. Something popped. The goblin with the painted mustache pumped up the music.
Galiagante dipped a languid hand into his basket. He cocked his arm and chucked a coin. It flew over the stage and into the troll's mouth-hole.
"Bravo!" cried Jouissante. She threw one herself. Down it went. Incolore threw another. A fourth coin, Jane's, looked about to miss. But Toby, guided by some primitive sense, wrenched his neck to one side and caught it.
Then the air was full of silver, like shooting stars etching white streaks toward the stage. Toby Clunch bobbed and darted comically, desperate to catch them all. It was amazing how many coins the wretched creature managed to snap up.
Jane paused, glancing sidelong at Rocket. He was drumming his fingers on the table. Alone of them all, he had not pitched so much as a single coin. She slapped one down before him. "Join in, 'sieur dragoneur!"
Rocket shoved back from the table so violently it almost tipped over. The chair crashed to the floor.
He strode from the room.
Unaccountably offended, Jane scooped up a handful of coins and threw them all at once, as hard as she could. Toby half-rose from his knees in his eagerness to intercept them. He managed to swallow some, but most bounced from his face and body, leaving small red marks.
Laughing, Fata Jouissante placed a warm hand on Jane's shoulder. "What do you think? Could you catch so many coins if you had to?"
"Oh, I could never get my mouth open so wide."
"I was thinking you could stand on your head and catch them in your bel chose." She turned to Galiagante. "How much do you want for her?"
"Straight sale?" Galiagante considered. "Three times investment at a minimum. But I'm not really ready to sell yet. I want to see if I can get a package going, use it to shoehorn my way into television. So much of my money is tied up in the trade. I'd like to see it diversified."
The nymph came by with fresh baskets. Toby Clunch was filling up. Each coin made a harsh clinking noise now as it struck coins already in his throat. "Excuse me," Jane said. She gathered up her purse and stood. The goblin jerked a thumb over his shoulder and she followed it to the ladies' room.
It was filthy. Jane could tell without looking that some of the toilets were stopped up. She stepped around a rancid puddle of water, went to the sinks, and removed her mask. Her mascara was a mess.
The door swung open. Fata Incolore came in. Doffing her mask, she went to the mirror. She peeled up a lip and scraped a bit of something off a canine. Then she took out her compact.
"Toot?" she asked.
"All right."
Incolore laid the compact on the edge of the sink and measured out two lines. She offered a rolled-up bank note. Jane held one end to her nose and bent over the powder.
It hit the back of her throat and the top of her skull almost simultaneously, with an intensely artificial sensation of clean green meadows. It was like a little light going on in a room you hadn't known was there.
Incolore did up the other line, then crumpled the bill and tossed it away. "What's this thing going on between you and Rocket? You've really put a burr under his saddle."
"Have I?" Jane said carelessly. "I guess it must've been something I said."
"Hum." Incolore's hand closed about the compact and pushed it into nonexistence. "First Fata Jouissante, and then my brother. You seem to be at war with the world."
"If I am, it's certainly no business of yours."
"I'll be blunt. My brother is clearly attracted to you. For reasons of my own, it is an alliance I would not mind fostering."
"Dream on." Jane reached for her mask.
Incolore stopped her with a touch. "Galiagante is overextended. This notion of his to expand into the entertainment media—" She shrugged. "Hopeless. He can't even make up his mind what he intends to do with you. Do you follow me? If he can't find funding, he'll have no choice but to try to recoup some fraction of his investment. He'll sell you to Jouissante." Her eyes were dark, serious, glimmering with anger. "I promise you it's a bargain you would learn to regret."
"I'm not for sale," Jane snapped. "Galiagante doesn't own me. Jouissante can't buy me. And you're not even in the game."
"What a strange creature you are." Incolore passed a hand over her mouth and a lit cigarette drooped from her lips. She blew smoke out her nostrils. "I'll tell you what. I have no particular interest in funding any more of Galiagante's follies. But I'll string him along for a week or so, if you'll agree to let me show you something."
"What thing?"
"Nothing you can't live with." She picked the coal off the cigarette and swallowed it live. The rest she dropped on the floor. "Call my secretary, and we'll set up a date."
* * *
Galiagante was impatient to go. They followed him down the blind gut of yet another kinked set of stairs. A broomstick jammed between the walls shunted them aside and into a room lined with glass booths from which houris in hot pink bikinis and chrome-studded leather harnesses beckoned. It came to Jane suddenly that the Goblin Market might well have no end. There might be an infinite number of windowless rooms and orgy pits beneath the City, all redolent with incense and ammonia, charged with overamplified rap music, and tended by uncountable dawdling lowlifes. She was hopelessly lost, hopelessly tired, and hopelessly bored. She stifled a yawn.
"Fata Jayne doesn't seem to be enjoying herself," the one who was probably Floristan observed.
"I'm all right."
"Perhaps our pleasures are too refined for her," said maybe-Esplandian.
"Why don't we go to a place Jayne would like?"
"If there is such a place."
The lesser elves advanced on Jane, eyes glowing spitefully behind their masks. Backing away from them, she suddenly panicked, whirled, and discovered herself standing before an archway. Over the glass doors, surrounded by blinking lights, was a sign:
RUN WITH THE APES OF HELL
* Dreams Realized * Addictive Drugs *
* Disgusting Fantasies *
"I think," Galiagant
e said, "that we can provide Jayne with what she wants." He held open a door. "In here."
* * *
"Yes, certainly, delightful, oh yes." They sat in the anteroom on chintz chairs, listening to a fat, hairless old goblin run through his spiel. He bobbed and bowed restlessly, rubbing his hands together. "Oh, we know," he said. "We know what you want, before you do. Secret things, private things, revolting things that you would never admit to another. True love, enemas, eight yards of old lace turned brittle and brown with age. Your heart's desire." He leered at Galiagante. "Fishhooks. Other things."
Galiagante produced a mass of bank notes. "Serve her." The goblin bounced toward him, hands extended. But Fata Incolore intercepted the wad. She counted out half, and folded the rest back into Galiagante's jacket pocket. "If we're going to be business partners," she said, "we must first institute some financial accountability."
He looked at her with new interest. "Are we going to be business partners, then?"
"Wait and see."
"In through here." The goblin put his hand on an undistinguished-looking door. "Filthy nasty, very nice, oh my yes."
Jane hesitated. She was loath to enter. There was something fearsome inside. She could feel it. Something she knew she would forever regret seeing.
"You're afraid?" Jouissante said.
The two words hung in the air, a challenge.
"No, of course not." Jane went through the door, pulling it firmly shut behind her. Be damned if she was going to let the others see this, whatever it was.
She entered a room the size of a basketball court, and empty. Half a dozen dwarves sat on the floor in one corner, huddled about a portable television set. At her entry, they snapped it off and scattered through several doors. Two returned, wheeling in an old hand-cranked console record player. A third hurried after them with a wax cylinder. He snapped it in, spun the crank, and lowered the needle.
Scratchy waltz music came on.
Ladders slammed up against the walls. Strings of crepe-paper bells were stretched across the hall with dazzling speed. There was a clatter on the stairs as the remaining three dwarves returned.
The Iron Dragon's Daughter Page 34