The Iron Dragon’s Mother

by Michael Swanwick

  “I understand perfectly. You’re hoping to be reborn with higher status than you have now. There aren’t that many openings, you know.”

  “I am threefold bound to the railroad—by birth, by contract, and soon by death. I have earned my place on the Wall.”

  Looking thoughtful, Grimalka said, “Let me ask you this. When I put in for promotion, why didn’t you write me a letter of recommendation?”

  “Why, because there was nothing in it for me.”

  Grimalka’s mouth twisted into what might conceivably have been a smile. “Just so. I shall require money. A great deal of it.”

  “There is a check on the end table. Pick it up and tell me if it is satisfactory.”

  Grimalka examined the check. Then she tore it in two and let the pieces flutter to the floor.

  “Edderkopp said that might not be enough. There is another check in the drawer of the end table.”

  Grimalka opened the drawer. After a glance at the check, she folded it over once, placed it in a jacket pocket, and buttoned the pocket. “It will do. The entry is yours.”

  “Good.” Narcisse turned to Cat. “Cat, darling, my mother and father are both long dead. I have no siblings. If I don’t adopt, House Syrinx dies with me. And House Syrinx is all that keeps Avernus from sinking into anarchy.” She took Cat’s hand and stroked it weakly. “My dear, sweet, precious Cat, I can think of no one more worthy of this honor than you. Counselor Edderkopp has drawn up the papers. I want to adopt you as my legal sister and heir. I want you to be the Syrinx of House Syrinx when I am dead and gone.”

  Cat felt as though she had been hit by a board. “I … I … can’t.”

  Those dark eyes bored into Cat from the depths of their skull sockets. With the waning of her strength, the glamour was unable to entirely hide her sickly state. Yet there was not the least suggestion of pleading in Narcisse’s voice. “You must.”

  Taking a deep breath, Cat said, “We will speak privately.” With an imperceptible nod, Grimalka turned and left. The medical hags withdrew as well. Then, when Josie did not move, she said, “You know too much already. Go.”

  The haint faded away.

  “I cannot accept your offer,” Cat said. “I am a fugitive and a dragon slayer.”

  “The head of a great house is immune to all laws. Surely you know that already.”

  “I do. But…” Cat drew herself together and took a deep breath. “I was hoping to avoid this. I regret that I cannot.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I have spoken with your sister, Echloë, and she told me everything.”

  Narcisse’s eyes went wide with shock.

  “You only wanted a sister so you could fob off the title and obligations of your house on me. Echloë is weakening and the railroad needs a new sacrifice to replace her. As the Syrinx of House Syrinx, you’re it. Unless you can adopt some poor sucker, make her heir to your title, and then die before the soul surgeons get their claws into you.

  “And here I, conveniently, am.

  “But for your scheme to work, you need my signatures on those papers. And the signatures have to be freely made, don’t they?”

  The look of terror on Narcisse’s face would have been heartbreaking under other circumstances. Now it served only to fuel Cat’s wrath. “Thus ends your little scheme. The surgeons will separate your souls from your body, leaving only the spark within it. Your body will stay here, neither alive nor dead. Somewhere, the body that you would have been reincarnated within will be born without sentience. Possibly it will be taken to the House of Glass to serve as a host. Alternatively, it may simply be killed and discarded. All that matters is that you will take Echloë’s place and she will be allowed to die.”

  “Little sister. You cannot be so cruel to me.”

  Cat discovered that she was shaking with anger. “That was the exact fate you planned for me. How is this any more cruel?”

  “You would be raised in estate. Admittedly, it would take some time for you to benefit from it. But when you are, eventually, reborn…”

  “My mother,” Cat said, “is the Dowager Sans Merci of House Sans Merci, an old and noble family. By comparison, the line of House Syrinx is composed of upstarts and parvenus.”

  Horrified, Narcisse said, “Your mother is really Fata Sans Merci? You’re not just shitting me, are you?”

  “Dowager Sans Merci, actually. But yes.”

  “Oh, sweet Kernunnos. Sweet fucking Kernunnos. I owe allegiance to her.”

  “I am not entirely surprised. Mother seems to have a hand in everything. Which is why, darling Aerugo, I must charge you by your own true name never to speak of these matters to anybody else.”

  Fata Narcisse frowned, her voice fading. “You weren’t quite the little sister … I imagined you’d be. But maybe I was expecting … the wrong things.”

  The last words were almost inaudible. Having completed them, Fata Narcisse closed her eyes with such finality that Cat knew she would never open them again.

  The door flew open and Grimalka hurried in, followed by so many soul surgeons that Cat doubted they could all fit in the room. “Have the papers been signed?” she asked.

  “No,” Cat said. “Nor will they ever be.”

  “Then you must leave immediately. The surgeons have a great deal of work to do and some of it is going to get ugly.”

  “I’m as good as gone.” Cat started out, then looked back at Grimalka. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “I must stay and see the work is done properly,” Grimalka said. “The railroad takes care of its own.”

  * * *

  Cat went outside to discover that night had fallen. The servants had set out flambeaux along the paths in case anyone cared for an evening stroll. She followed a line of them toward the knoll at the center of the compound. As she passed by the potting shed, there came from it a smell so foul that she almost puked. Echloë’s body, she presumed. Which meant that the soul surgeons’ work had begun.

  Now she understood why the haints had been so eager to have the corpse removed from their workspace.

  At the top of the knoll, Cat stared up at the stars until they swam in her vision. At last, having no one else to ask, she said, “Helen … tell me. Did I do the right thing? Maybe I shouldn’t have confronted Narcisse. Should I have pretended to sign the papers and let her slip away believing that I had been tricked into taking over her title? Or would that have just made her coming to awareness anchored to the Bell of Liberty that much more cruel?”

  “Who? What? Me? I’m not the one you should be asking. I botched up every relationship I ever had. My parents. My friends. The marriage that didn’t make it to three months.” Helen grew thoughtful. “Now, though, I wonder if maybe that was a feature instead of a bug. Maybe the purpose of friends and family isn’t for everything to go right all the time. God knows, I learned a lot from all those awful relationships. Did I ever tell you I was married three times? I was a slow learner, I suppose. Each marriage, hideous as it was, taught me new truths about myself and the nature of the world that … So maybe I was supposed to … There was this one time when Jeremy and I…”

  She fell silent.

  Cat did not feel she had the right to pry.

  * * *

  Esme was wearing her Hello Kitty knapsack with the gooly-doll peeking out of the top. Cat’s heart quailed at the sight. No, not now, she thought. Not when I’m drained and sweaty and emotionally exhausted. But duty was as duty did. She let Esme reach up to take her hand and start to lead her away. “How much time do we have?”

  “Dunno. Not much. Why do you ask questions all the time?”

  With an inner smile, Cat replied, “Dunno.”

  At which very instant her cell phone rang. “Yes?” Cat said.

  “Don’t talk, just listen. It’s Rabbit. I couldn’t reach you any other way than this, wherever you are must be glamoured something fierce. Never mind that. The brass know where you are, and that’s not the worst of it.
The head of House Syrinx is dead and soon the compound will be visible to everyone. It’s right in the middle of the poorest neighborhood in the city. That’s where you are, isn’t it? It all makes sense now. Listen. There’s going to be riots. Don’t bother to grab the witch-girl, just run.”

  “How did you know about Esme? No, forget that. I know how you know. I’ve figured out everything, Rabbit. How you contact me, how your superiors track me, everything.”

  Silence.

  There comes a time to, as Counselor Edderkopp put it, clear the decks. On the spot, Cat decided that the moment had come to stop fooling around. Emptying her mind of all else, she cast her thoughts northward. “Rabbit,” she commanded, “come to me.”

  So, of course, there he was, standing on the grass before her, shivering with fear.

  “I can explain,” he said.

  “Shhh.” Cat touched a finger to Rabbit’s lips. “You’re my shadow, of course. That’s why the other pilots didn’t remember you. That’s why the brass were able to track me so easily. They just asked you. Didn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s all over now.” Cat opened her arms and stepped forward to embrace Rabbit.

  For a long instant, she felt the warmth of his body, the hardness of his muscles, the terrified heart thumping within his chest. Then the closeness and solidity and rapid beating melted to nothing. When she opened her arms again, they were empty.

  Cat was whole once more.

  She didn’t feel in any way different. But she supposed that was all to the good. Taking Esme’s hand, she headed toward the gate.

  * * *

  At the guardhouse, the dwarf on duty touched two fingers to his cap and opened the gate for her. “Going out on foot?” he asked. “This might not be the night for it.”

  “I didn’t feel I had the right to ask for a car,” Cat replied. “Anyway, I’m not going far.”

  “Be careful, ma’am. The natives are restless tonight. If you know what I mean.”

  Then they were out on the street. The same seedy folk who had ignored the limo were staring hard at Esme and her. Somebody shouted something after them. Cat ignored it.

  After a few blocks they came to the Greyhound station.

  They went in.

  A giantess crouched in the corner by the ticket booths, staring at an iPad resting in one palm. Two hummingirls played tag in the air overhead until a lutin, obviously responsible for them, scolded the pair back to the ground. Cat bought tickets on the next bus heading west and casually dropped her cell phone in a trash can. Then, leaving Esme on a seat with some comic books, she drifted to the windows.

  This high up on the central tumulus, there was a good view of the inner slopes of the volcano walls. Looking out over Avernus, with its myriad windows burning bright, Cat was struck by the notion that if she could lift up the city, turn it upside down, and then shake it, enough misery would flow out to drown all the world.

  Far off in the French Quarter, almost unnoticed, a fire suddenly appeared where a second ago had been a patch of darkness. Then, blocks away, more flames blossomed.

  “Hey! Look!” somebody cried.

  Passengers surged toward the windows, murmuring.

  “Is it starting now?”

  “Maybe it’s just a fire. Fires happen.”

  The dispatcher cleared her throat into the microphone. “Attention all passengers. The westbound coach is now leaving. Please board in an orderly fashion.”

  * * *

  By the time the bus had pulled out of its bay and merged onto the street, there were fires in at least three different sections of the city. Dark masses of what might soon be rioters were gathering here and there and when the bus drove past one, a rock flew out to strike its side and everybody gasped. Then they climbed the ramp to the Diamond Sutra Tubes and so left Avernus and emerged onto the Interbahn. The lip of the volcano behind them was black and enigmatic as the bus disappeared into the vastness of Europa.

  Conspiracy: The pleasant fantasy that somebody, somewhere, has seized the reins of a universe that is self-evidently mad, malignant, and completely out of control. (with apologies to Ambrose Bierce)

  —Helen V., notebooks

  If there was a worse place for an exhausted woman to be than a crowded bus, Cat did not know of it. Every seat was taken and the aisle was crammed with crates of piglets and sphinx cubs and bundles of mandrake roots and a clutch of migrant gnomes smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and making snickering remarks in Niederdeutsch whenever something female squeezed past them to use the toilet at the rear. Everybody seemed to be poor and tired. The seat beside her was more than filled by a blubbergut goblin with curved ram’s horns and embarrassingly large breasts who shoved an elbow into Cat’s ribs, let her head loll onto Cat’s shoulder, and promptly fell asleep, snoring loudly and noisomely.

  Cat, who was far too uncomfortable to drop off, envied the lout and Esme, asleep on her lap, as well. As the bus hummed down the midnight highway, Cat tried her best to ignore a growing catalog of discomforts: aching muscles, incipient headache, uneasy stomach, bowels that threatened to send her past the gnomes to an uncertain refuge in the rear …

  Lighted buildings dwindled and disappeared from the roadside. Once, on a long curve, Cat saw the black sides of the volcano behind them and the lights lining the roads descending from it. The interior glowed with a city’s worth of electricity. For an instant, she fancied she saw flames, but no matter how hard she stared, she could not be sure. Then the highway swerved again, shunting Avernus firmly into the past. Trees flashed by the window and twin moons chased the bus through the summer night. Blearily, she watched them fade to nothing.

  Then there was a bump and a lurch and Cat was awake again. The bus was pulling into a parking lot illuminated by tall light stanchions with harsh white LED lamps, so that it seemed to be a raft afloat in a sea of darkness. A low brick building squatted on the far end of the lot and the stink of refineries was in the air.

  “Pit stop!” The driver threw open the doors. “Y’all got fifteen minutes.”

  * * *

  The night was warm with sultry breezes, and Cat’s head buzzed from insufficient sleep. A nation of tiny flying creatures filled the air between the tarmac and the lights with their myriad pale bodies. Only Cat was looking at them.

  A young man with thick black hair combed straight back got off the bus, cigarette in hand, and said, “Hey, beautiful. Got a light?”

  Cat dug out the book of matches she had used to light candle sconces what seemed like an eternity ago in the Blinded Cockatrice. “Keep them.”

  “Thanks. You’re a real hero.” The youth lit the cigarette, took a deep drag. Then he threw back his head, shaking out his hair and exhaling the smoke through both nostrils, and in that instant revealed herself to be undeniably female. She started to laugh, coughed, hacked, and recovered. “Oh sweet gods, but I love doing that! You should see your face. You look like a giraffe just popped out of your handbag.”

  “Very funny.”

  “It’s just my way of breaking the ice.” The young woman dropped the cigarette and ground it underfoot. “Name’s Raven.” She ruffled Esme’s hair. “Hullo, monster. Remember me?”

  “No.”

  “Of course not. How could you? You never remember anything, do you, Esme?” To Cat, the stranger said, “Thank you for taking care of her.” With which words, Raven was for a second time transformed. She didn’t look at all friendly or quirky or harmless anymore. She looked like trouble on the hoof.

  Cat’s stomach clenched. “You know Esme,” she said as casually as she could manage.

  “Well, of course. We’re family. Esme’s my great-great-something-great-grandaunt. The genealogy is a little murky, I admit. It’s been centuries since you sold yourself to the Year Eater, hasn’t it, little grandmother? Or longer.”

  Esme shrugged. “Maybe. I forget.”

  “Aeons,” Raven said. “Maybe more. Only the Goddess knows and she’s not t
alking. Have you tried looking at Esme through the holey stone? She’s a lot older than she appears. And she knows a lot more than you’d think. She may not remember people or events for very long, but she never forgets a skill. Plus, she’s lucky—which is something you really need when you periodically find yourself in places like a hobo camp. It helps to have the knack of finding somebody to carry you away from it.”

  Cat stared hard at the young lady. Who, undaunted, grinned like a cockerel. “You know too much.”

  “Too much? Pfah! I’m a trickster. Secret knowledge is my stock-in-trade. Knowing things I shouldn’t is in the job description. And the stone is kinda the reason I started this conversation with you in the first place.” Talking fast, Raven said, “Way I hear it, you’ve got a demon on your trail and she has eleven bloodhounds that are drawn to your presence. Wraiths can’t be stopped. They don’t tire. They’re incorruptible. You can draw ahead of them for a few weeks, but they’ll always catch up. You don’t dare stop running because if you do you’ll go to bed every night knowing they’re a little closer to you than they were that morning. What terror you’ll feel! What sleep will you get? You need my help. We have a common cause, you and I: Keeping you alive.”

  “Esme,” Cat said. “Get back on the bus.”

  “Can I have a candy bar first? I know how to jigger the machine.”

  “Just go back to our seat. I’ll get you some candy and give it to you in a minute.” Cat watched Esme scamper back to the bus. When the child was safely aboard, she said, “Okay, what’s your pitch?”

  “There are plenty of cars on this lot, and I can talk any one of them into letting us steal it. You want to sleep in a luxury hotel tonight? It won’t cost either of us a penny. Drinks, meals, spa, and extravagant tips included. Male company if you want it. More importantly, I can find anything and con anybody out of whatever you want. I don’t know what you’re searching for, but I do know that you’re not just on the run—you’re looking for something. I can help you find it. All I want is the stone. In exchange, I’ll make all your problems go away. Kapeesh?”