The Iron Dragon's Daughter (43 page)

A star.

Without fanfare a second star appeared and then a fourth, more and more until there were billions of suns arranged in galaxies and nebulae, and those arrangements contained in still larger structures. Jane seemed to be standing somewhere aside from Creation, watching dispassionately while everything shrank toward nonexistence. Or else it might be that she was rushing away from everything at unimaginable speed and ever-increasing acceleration. Until finally all the stars and their attendant worlds merged into a single structure whose shape she could hold in her mind.

Jane saw the universe whole then, all of space and time pulled by the totality of gravitational forces into a saddle-shaped solid. Melanchthon rotated the vision through the higher dimensions so that the universe fell in upon itself, growing in complexity from the saddle into a nine-dimensional butterfly and finally into an n-dimensional ziggurat. It was the summation of futility, for the ziggurat was all there was. It had no exterior, no beyond. It was not that there was nothing outside it, but that an "outside" did not and could not exist.

Staring at the radiant involution, Jane realized that here was the perfect and exact model for her life: She was caught in an ascending spiral maze, always coming around to familiar places she had never been before, always returning to dilemmas that in retrospect she should have seen coming. She was moving in diminishing circles, being twisted around in ever more limiting ways, until by some final twist or kink she would arrive at the omega point of inertia, with no options, no directions, no future, no way out.

It was obvious at last how thoroughly, how pitilessly, she was trapped. Everything she tried—trickery, compassion, inaction, patience, ruthlessness—led inevitably to failure. Because that was simply the way things were. That was the way the game was rigged.

The stars had melted together into solidity. The universe burned in Jane's sight like a monstrous white seashell. It was not the first time she had looked upon that shape. With a sickening lurch of revelation, she recognized it and put a name to it.

Jane looked upon Spiral Castle and despaired.

Melanchthon must have been waiting for exactly that, for now at last he spoke. His voice surprisingly gentle, he said, "In the Riphaean Mountains there are still wild trolls, their primitive tribes protected from modern culture and their territories held as vast preserves. They are brutal creatures who lead simple lives. Their males are savagery personified, but the otherwise admirable character of their females is diluted by an inexplicable love of beauty.

"Knowing of this weakness, hunters will leave moonstones alongside the mountain trails. A day goes by, a week, and a troll shambles innocently by. She sees a glimmering in the dust. She stops. She is caught by the subtle interplay of colors. She wants to look away, but cannot. She yearns to snatch the bauble up, but she fears to approach it. Hours pass and her strength wanes. She sinks to her knees before the moonstone. She is helpless, unable to look away even when she hears the approaching feet of the hunters.

"What makes this a sport and not mere slaughter is that there are two breeds of trolls, outwardly indistinguishable. One of the first breed will die with her eyes fixed on the moonstone. Ah, but in the second the love of beauty is overmatched by her strength of hatred. This troll will gouge out her eyes with her own fingers to free herself of the tyranny of the stone. Blind, she could then escape to the lightless caverns of her birth. But she does not. Instead she crouches unmoving for as long as it takes, though it be days, awaiting he who set the trap. She knows she will die. But she is determined to take at least one of the hunters with her.

"Which is why you should never approach a captive troll alone but always in the company of a friend. A friend who does not realize he is a little slower than yourself."

For a long time the dragon did not speak. The air was chill in the cabin; the air-conditioning had been set too high. At last, fiercely, he said, "The time has come for you to choose. What breed of troll are you?"

"Can you really kill the Goddess?" Jane asked.

"You stupid gobbet of flesh! Don't you understand yet?
There is no Goddess
."

"No!" Jane cried. "You said yourself—"

"I lied," the dragon said with a fearful complacency. "Everyone you have ever met has lied to you. Life exists, and all who live are born to suffer. The best moments are fleeting and bought with the coin of exquisite torment. All attachments end. All loved ones die. All that you value passes away. In such a vexatious existence laughter is madness and joy is folly. Shall we accept that it all happens for no reason, with no cause? That there is nobody to blame but ourselves but that accepting the responsibility is pointless for doing so cannot ease, defer, or deaden the pain? Not likely! It is so much more comforting to erect a straw figure on which to blame it all.

"Some bow down before the Goddess and others curse her every name. There is not a fart's difference between the two approaches. They cling to the fiction of the Goddess because admitting the alternative is unbearable."

"Then what—why—what do you want me for?" To her dismay, tears coursed down Jane's face. Oh how Melanchthon must be enjoying this, she thought. What satisfaction it must give him. "You've toyed with me, made promises, gone through Hell-knows-what machinations to bring me here. Why? What's the point of it?"

"I want your help to destroy the universe."

Jane barked a short, bitter laugh. But Melanchthon neither spoke nor by any other sign indicated annoyance. A cold sizzling sensation ran up her spine. He was serious. In a small voice, she said, "Can you really do it?"

The seashell image burning in the swimming darkness lap-dissolved to a schematic of Spiral Castle, lines diving dizzyingly into one another, swooping in wild curves, always returning to converge upon a central point. "The universe is built upon an instability. A point source of weakness at the beginning of time and the birth of matter. One trembling instant from which all else arrives. A child with a sling could upset that point if he could only reach it. And it is upon the centrality of that instant that the entire system derives its structure. Disturbed, all collapses."

It was unimaginable, and yet hooked into the dragon's systems, Jane could not doubt his sincerity. "What happens then?"

In the iron depths of darkness an engine came online. The couch trembled. "You ask a question that cannot be answered without knowing the nature of the primal chaos from which being arose. Is Spiral Castle like a crystal, once shattered, forever destroyed? That is what I prefer to believe. Or is it like a still pond, whose mirrored surface may be shattered and churned, but which will inevitably restore itself as the waves die down? You may believe this if you choose. You can even believe—why not?—that the restored universe will be an improvement on the old. For me, so long as I have my vengeance I care not what comes after."

"And us?"

"We die." An involuntary rise in the dragon's voice, a slight quickening of cadence, told her that she had touched upon some unclean hunger akin to but less seemly than battle-lust. "We die beyond any chance of rebirth. You and I and all we have known will cease to be. The worlds that gave us birth, the creatures that shaped us—all will be unmade. So comprehensive will be their destruction that even their pasts will die with them. It is an extinction beyond death that we court. Though the ages stretch empty and desolate into infinity and beyond, there will be none to remember us, nor any to mourn. Our joys, sorrows, struggles, will never have been.

"And even if there is a universe to come, it will know naught of us."

So all-encompassing was the dragon's nihilistic vision that Jane could not at first speak. It reduced her to inconsequence, made her feel clownish, a triviality, a ridiculous squeak. By slow degrees Melanchthon had shut down his external senses, leaving her afloat in the void, her ears stuffed with silence, her eyes blind and unseeing, her mouth and throat choked with paralysis. There was only his voice and, when it ceased, the reverberations it left behind on the silence.

Then there was nothing.

"All right." Jane took a deep breath. She felt cold and hard as a stone. "All right. Just so long as we understand each other."

TWO DWARVES, ONE RED AND ONE BLACK, FOUGHT GRIMLY on the balcony. Their bodies were slick with sweat and their knives gleamed in the floodlights. Their feet kicked up puffs of the sawdust that had been strewn over the flagstones to soak up blood. They were both naked.

Jane watched from the roof garden, resting her drink on the rail.

The dwarves circled each other warily, like scorpions, looking for an opening. Suddenly one swung wildly and stumbled. It was an incredible gaffe for a fighter of his quality to make. The second feinted as if about to take advantage of the lapse. But when the first pivoted on a stiff arm and whipped his legs around to knock him off his feet, his opponent was out of reach. With a scream the second dwarf leaped. The first only managed to block his blow at the cost of a finger. Luckily the finger wasn't on his knife hand.

Partygoers thronged the balcony. Jane was not the only one watching from above, but the rail was far from crowded. The serious aficionados all wanted to be close enough to hear the combatants grunt, close enough to smell their rage and fear.

It was an appalling sport. Jane couldn't understand its appeal at all. But the spectators, now—she chewed her lip. She had promised Melanchthon fuel; nearly any of them would do. Which to choose?

She was reaching for her drink when the down on the nape of her neck and the tiny hairs on the backs of her arms and the insides of her thighs stirred and lifted. It was an electric, crackling sensation, akin to the abrupt realization that a millipede is crawling up one's leg. Galiagante was approaching.

Jane waited until he was almost upon her, then turned as the flirtation coaches had trained her: lips parting at the same time that one eyebrow rose ever so slightly and both eyes widened in a way that was subtly mocking and challenging all at the same time. Put together her expression said, Let's see what you've got.

Galiagante was not impressed. "You should be mingling." Flambeaux dotted the banks of an artificial stream. With the torches burning at his back, he looked like one of his own savage ancestors, a harkening back to a time when his kind could not be invoked without forfeiting a geld of blood in one form or another. Jane leaned back against the rail, feigning nonchalance.

Never apologize. That was the first thing they had taught her. "I am mingling." She raised the glass, looked at him over its rim. "Mingling and showing off my costume." Turning, she sat, and lifted a high-heeled boot to the rail beside her in a way that showed off her black leather pants to good advantage. "And very popular both it and I have been, I might add."

She leaned forward, letting her zippered jacket display the truly stunning décolletage that was largely its own creation; the bustier lifted and squeezed her breasts so, she felt as if they rested on a shelf. "Do you like what they've done with my spoon?" She teasingly dandled it at the end of its chain.

Galiagante took the spoon and glanced at both sides. The handle had been twisted into a complex spiral by dwarven crafters to make its allegorical meaning more obvious. The bowl had been hammered flat and worked into a relief of the Goddess, the front all boobs and cellulite, the back all butt and mystery. "You are a cartoon." He let it swing back. "That's not good enough."

"I could do a better job of selling myself if I knew just exactly what you're going to package me
as
."

"You're still under development. The exact details are unimportant."

"But I—"

"If you don't work out," Galiagante said, "I'll put you back where you came from." The emphasis on those last five words was too distinct to be unintended. He snapped his fingers and over his shoulder said, "Show her about. Keep her circulating." Then, like a mountain wrapping itself in fog, he withdrew his presence.

"Fata Jayne," someone said deferentially.

For servants the chin should be lifted in a way that is aloof but not arrogant. Servants, dwarves, and creditors are never important enough to snub. Meet their eyes firmly. Look away before you've finished speaking. Don't treat them like friends unless you have good reason to want to make them squirm.

Jane turned. Her jaw fell. "Ferret!"

"Madame remembers me." The gray-haired fey smiled gravely and dipped his head. With his mouth closed and eyes lowered, he looked not in the least dangerous. "I am honored."

The only time Jane had ever encountered Ferret was the once in la jettatura when he'd caught her shoplifting. She remembered him vividly enough, though, to find his presence alarming. "What are you doing here?"

"Lord Galiagante ran a background check on you. In the course of which he found me. Galiagante likes clever things. He offered me a position on terms I could not refuse. Here I am." Ferret offered his arm. "Have you met Fata Incolore?"

"Not yet. She's Galiagante's inamorata, isn't she?"

"Oh, much more than that."

Chatting amiably, he steered her into the heart of the garden.

The Fata Incolore stood by a shallow pond made luminous by the skylight beneath it. She was deep in an animated discussion with three Teggish intellectuals. Dark fish darted over the shimmering dancers of the ballroom below. The watery light showed off her fashionably ghoulish pallor. Her clothes made Jane feel like a cartoon.

In Jane's ear, Ferret murmured, "The one in blue is Fata Jouissante, a hot prospect to be the Left Hand Path candidate for senator in the coming elections and an even hotter prospect to replace the Fata Incolore in Galiagante's affections. She'll have to choose soon. She can't have both. Beside her is the Lord Corvo. Corvo is archetypical of his class, aloof but quick to wrath should you engage his dislike. Laugh at
all
his jokes. The lean one in crimson with the plumed hat is a parvenu. Ignore him." He released Jane's arm and faded back.