Dragon Book, The

by Gardner Dozois

  She did not notice but tucked the boy away in the bed, not letting a single one of her ladies help her.

  As Rasputin backed away, he instinctively admired the Tsaritsa’s form. She was not overly slim like her daughters, nor plump—zaftik, as the Jews would say. Her hair was piled atop her head like a dragon’s nest, revealing a strong neck and the briefest glimpse of a surprisingly broad back.

  Some peasant stock in her lineage somewhere? he thought, then quickly brushed the ungracious thought aside. Not all of us have to raise ourselves from the dirt to God’s grace. Some are given it at birth.

  The rest of her form was disguised by draping linens and silks, as the current fashion demanded, but the monk knew that her waist was capable of being cinched quite tight in the fashions of other times. Her eyes, the monk also knew, were ever so slightly drooping, disguising her stern nature and stubborn resolve—especially when caring for her only son.

  She turned those eyes on him now. “Yes, Father Grigori? Do you require something of me?”

  The monk blinked twice rapidly, realizing he’d been staring and that perhaps “desiring her not at all” was overstating things a touch.

  “Only to implore you once more to keep the bloodsuckers away,” he managed to say, covering his brief awkwardness with a bow. The Tsaritsa nodded, and the monk shuffled quickly out of the chamber.

  Where is the girl with the swan’s neck? he thought. I should like to take these unworthy feelings out on her. He rubbed his hands together, marveling at how smooth his palms had become during his time at court. Perhaps it is not too late to find a whip.

  “WHERE did you get them? Where did they come from? What do you plan for them?” Borutsch’s voice trembled slightly on the last phrase.

  Bronstein felt a sudden urge to slap Borutsch. He’d had no idea his friend was so woman-nervous.

  “Quiet yourself. We approach the shtetl.”

  Borutsch didn’t answer, but took another quick sip of the schnapps.

  “And if you say anything about … about what I have just showed you … anything at all …”

  Bronstein’s voice trailed off, but there was a hard edge to it, like nothing Borutsch had ever heard from him before. He took another sip of the schnapps, almost emptying the flask.

  “I’ll not speak of it, Lev,” he said quietly. He tried for the schnapps again, but sloshed it over his shirtfront as Bronstein grabbed him roughly by the shoulders.

  “You won’t!” Bronstein almost hissed. His eyes seemed to gleam. “I swear to you, Borutsch. If you do …”

  Borutsch bristled and shook himself free. “Who would I tell? And who would believe an old Jew like me? An old Jew with fewer friends in this world every day.” He peered up at Bronstein and saw the manic light slowly dim in his eyes. But suddenly Borutsch realized that he feared his friend more than he feared any dragon. It was a sobering thought.

  “I … I am sorry, Pinches.” Bronstein took off his glasses. Forest dirt was smeared on the lenses. He wiped them slowly on his shirt. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “They say that caring for dragons can make you think like one. Make you think that choosing anything but flame and ruin is a weakness.”

  Shaking his head, Bronstein said, “No, it’s not that. This world is untenable. We cannot wait upon change. Change must be brought about. And change does not happen easily.” He frowned. “Or peacefully.”

  Borutsch took a deep breath before speaking. What he had to say seemed to sigh out of him. “The passage of time is not peaceful? And yet nothing can stand before it. Not men, not mountains. Not the hardest rock, if a river is allowed to flow across it for long enough.”

  “You make a good, if overeloquent point.” Bronstein sighed. “But he would disagree.”

  Borutsch frowned as if the schnapps had turned sour in his mouth. “He is not here.”

  “But he will return. When the dragons hatch …”

  Borutsch looked stunned. “You have shown him the eggs, too?”

  Shaking his head, Bronstein said, “Of course, I have shown him the eggs.”

  “If they hatch, Lev. Do you know what this means?”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Of course I know what this means. And they will hatch. And I will train them.”

  Neither one of them had spoken above a whisper, as all the Jews of the area had long been schooled in keeping their voices down. But these were sharp, harsh whispers that might just as well have been shouts.

  “What do you know about training dragons?”

  “What does the Tsar know?”

  “You are so rash, my old friend.” It was as if Borutsch had never had a drop of the schnapps, for he certainly seemed cold sober now. “The Tsar has never trained a dragon, but his money has. And where will you, Lev Bronstein, find that kind of money?”

  Bronstein laid a finger to the side of his nose and laughed. It was not a humorous sound at all. “Where Jews always find money,” he said. “In other people’s pockets.”

  Bronstein turned and looked at the morning sun. Soon it would be full day. Not that there was that much difference between day and night, this far north in the Russias in the winter. All was a kind of deep gray.

  “And when I turn my dragons loose to destroy the Tsar’s armies, he will return.”

  “If he returns,” Borutsch shouted, throwing the flask to the ground, “it will be at the head of a German column!”

  “He has fought thirty years for the revolution!”

  “Not here, he hasn’t. By now, Ulyanov knows less about this land than the Tsar’s German wife does.”

  “He is Russian, not German. And he is even a quarter Jew.” Bronstein sounded petulant. “And why do you not call him by the name he prefers?”

  “Very well,” Borutsch said. “Lenin will burn this land to the ground before saving it, just to show that his reading of Marx is more oisgezeihent than mine.”

  Bronstein raised his hand as if to slap Borutsch, who was proud of the fact that he didn’t flinch. Then, without touching his friend at all, Bronstein walked away down the hill at a sharp clip. He did not turn to see if Borutsch followed or not, did not even acknowledge his friend was there at all.

  “You don’t need to destroy the army,” Borutsch called after him. “They’d come over to us eventually.” Bending over, he picked up the flask. Gave it a shake. Smiled at the reassuring slosh it still made. “Given the passage of time,” he said more quietly. Bronstein was already out of earshot.

  Borutsch wondered if he’d ever see Bronstein again. Wondered if he’d recognize him if he did. What did it matter? He was not going back to the shtetl; not going to cower in that burrow ever again; not going to drink any more cheap schnapps. “If there’s going to be a war with all those dragons,” he said to himself, “I will leave me out of it.” He’d already started the negotiations to sell his companies. He’d take his family into Europe, maybe even into Berlin. It would certainly be safer than here when the dragon smoke began to cover all of the land. When the Tsar and his family would be as much at risk as the Jews.

  I took the stairs two at a time. Coming around the corner on the floor where my apartments were situated, I told myself that it no longer mattered who was there with Ninotchka. Out they would go. I would send her to her room. Though I rarely gave orders, she knew when she had to listen to me. It’s in the voice, of course. After I locked her in, I would send out invitations to those I knew were already against the monk. I counted them on my fingers as I strode down the hall. The Archbishop, of course, because Rasputin had called rather too often for the peasants to forgo the clergy and find God in their own hearts. The head of the army, because of the monk’s antiwar passions. To his credit, the Tsar did not think highly of the madman’s stance, and when Rasputin had expressed a desire to bless the troops at the front, Nicholas had roared out, “Put a foot on that sacred ground, and I will have you hanged at once!” I had never heard him be so decisive and magnificent before or—alas—since.
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br />   Perhaps, I thought, I should also ask Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Pavlovich, who have their own reasons for hating him. And one or two others. But another thought occurred to me. Too many in a conspiracy will make it fail. We need not a net but a hammer, for as the old babuschkas like to say, “A hammer shatters glass but forges steel.”

  I already knew that I would have my old friend Vladimir on my side. He had called out Rasputin in the Duma, saying in a passionate speech that the monk had taken the Tsar’s ministers firmly in hand. How did he put it? Oh yes, that the ministers “have been turned into marionettes.” That was a good figure of speech. I hardly knew he had it in him. A good man with a pistol, though.

  But we would have to be careful. Rasputin was thought by the peasants to be unkillable. Especially after that slattern tried to gut him, calling him the Antichrist. She had missed her opportunity. Yes, her knife slid through his soft belly, and he stood before her with his entrails spilled out. But some local doctor pushed the tangled mess back in the empty cavity and sewed him up again.

  Oh yes, he might be the very devil to kill.

  And realizing that I’d made a joke—rare enough for me—I entered the apartments, giggling.

  Ninotchka was alone, working on her sewing. She looked up, the blond hair framing that perfect heart-shaped face. “A joke, my darling?” she asked.

  “A joke,” I said, “but not one a man can share with his adorable wife.” I cupped her chin with my right hand.

  She wrinkled her nose. “You stink, my love. What is that smell?”

  I had forgotten to wash the stench of dragon off my hands.

  “It is nothing. I was talking to the horses that pull our carriage, reminding them of what sweet cargo they will have aboard tonight.”

  “Tonight?” The look in her eyes forgave me the stench. It was not yet the start of the Season, and she was growing feverish for some fun. I would take her to the Maryinski Theater and to dinner afterwards. And she would reward me later.

  “I have planned a special treat out for us. It was to have been a surprise.” It was amazing how easily the lie came out. “And now I have business,” I added. “I beg you to go to your rooms. You and your women.”

  “Government business?” she asked, so sweetly that I knew that she was trying to find out some bit of gossip she could sell to the highest bidder. After all, I alone could not keep her in jewels. Later in bed, I would sleepily let out a minor secret. Not this one, of course. I am a patriot, after all. I serve the Tsar. Even though the Tsar has not lately served me at all.

  I smiled back. “Very definitely government business.”

  After she went in, I locked the door from the outside. Then I sat at my desk and wrote my letters. Satisfied with the way I had suggested but never actually said what the reason for the meeting was, I called my man in to deliver them and to make a reservation at the Maryinski and Chez Galouise, the finest French restaurant in the city, for their last sitting. I knew I could trust Alexie completely. He, at least, would never shop me to my enemies. After all, I had saved his life upon three separate occasions. That kind of loyalty is what distinguishes a man from a woman.

  SPRING would break in Russia like the smiles of women Bronstein had known: cautious, cold, and a long time coming. But now they were in the deepest part of the winter. Snow lay indifferently on the ground, as if it knew that it still had months of discomfort to visit on the people, rich and poor alike. But, Bronstein told himself, on the poor even more. The peasants, at the bottom of the heap, might even have to tear the thatch from their roofs to feed the livestock if things got much worse.

  He’d visited the eggs a dozen more times, going each visit by a different route and always brushing away his back trail carefully. He spent hours with the eggs, squatting in the cold, snowy field and talking out his plans as if the dragons could hear him. He had no one else to tell. Borutsch had fled to Berlin, and Bronstein feared that the old man had spilled his secret before leaving. But he spotted no one following him, and the eggs had never been disturbed.

  But not this time.

  Bronstein could see something was wrong as soon as he spotted the lightning-split pine. The ground beneath it was torn up, the leaves scattered. Running up to the tree, he gaped in horror at a hole in the ground that was completely devoid of eggs.

  Mein Gott und Marx, he swore in silent German. The Tsar’s men have found them!

  There was no time to tear his hair or weep uncontrollably; he knew that he had to flee.

  Perhaps I can join Borutsch in Berlin. If he’ll have me.

  Bronstein turned to run but was stopped cold by a rustling sound in the brush behind him.

  Soldiers! he thought desperately. Reaching into his pocket and pulling out the small pistol he’d taken to carrying, he waved it at his unseen enemies before realizing how useless it would be against what sounded like an entire company of soldiers.

  Swiveling his head from side to side as more rustling came from all around him, he came to a grim decision.

  So this is how it ends.

  The gun shook as he raised it to his temple.

  “Long live the revolution!” he shouted, then winced. Oh, to have not died with a cliché on my lips!

  His finger tightened on the trigger, then stopped just short of firing as a dragon the size of a newborn lamb—and just as unsteady on its feet—pushed through the bushes and into view.

  “Gevalt!”

  The dragon emitted a sound somewhere between a mew and a hiss and wobbled directly up to Bronstein, who took an involuntary step back. Even as a hatchling, the creature was fearsome to look at, all leathery hide and oversized bat wings, and came up to his knees. Its eyes were the gold of a full-grown beast, though still cloudy from the albumin that coated its skin and made it glisten in the thin forest light. He wondered if they would stay that color, or change, as babies’ eyes do. He’d heard the Tsar’s dragons had eyes like shrouds. Of course, the man who told him that could have been exaggerating for effect. And though the pronounced teeth that gave the adult dragons their truly sinister appearance had yet to grow in, the egg tooth at the tip of the little dragonling’s beak looked sharp enough to kill if called upon. And the claws that scritch-scratched through the sticks and leaves looked even now as though they could easily gut a cow.

  But Bronstein quickly remembered Lenin’s advice.

  Dragons respect only power. And fresh-hatched, you must be the only power they know.

  So he pocketed the pistol that he still held stupidly to his head and stepped forward, putting both hands on the dragon’s moist skin.

  “Down, beast,” he said firmly, pressing down. The beast collapsed on its side, mewling piteously. Grabbing a handful of dead leaves from the trees, Bronstein began scraping and scrubbing, cleaning the egg slime from the dragon’s skin, talking the whole time. “Down, beast,” and, “Stay still, monster!”

  More dragons wandered out of the brush, attracted, no doubt, by the sound of his voice.

  Perhaps, Bronstein thought, they could hear me through their shells these last months. Whether that was true or not, he was glad that he’d spoken to them all that while.

  “Down!” he bade the new dragons, and they, too, obeyed.

  As he scraped and scrubbed, Bronstein could see the dragons’ color emerging. They were red, not black.

  Red, like fire. Red, like blood.

  Somehow that was comforting.

  THE mad monk had heard talk of dragons. Of course he’d often heard talk of dragons. But this time there was something different in the tenor of the conversations, and he was always alert to changes in gossip.

  It had something to do with a red terror, which was odd, since the Tsar’s dragons were black. But when his sources were pressed further—a kitchen maid, a bootboy, the man-boy who exercised the Tsar’s dogs and slept with them as well—they couldn’t say more than that.

  Red terror! He tried to imagine what they meant, his hands wrangling together. It could
mean nothing or everything. It could have nothing to do with dragons at all and everything to do with assassination attempts. A palace was the perfect place for such plots. Like a dish of stew left on the stove too many days, there was a stink about it.

  But if there was a plot, he would know about it. He would master it. He would use it for his own good.

  “Find me more about this red terror,” he whispered to the kitchen maid, a skinny little thing with a crooked nose. “And we will talk of marriage.” That he was already married mattered not a bit. He would find her a mate, and she knew it.

  “Find me more about this red terror,” he told the bootboy, “and I shall make sure you rise to footman.” It was his little joke, that. The boy was not smart enough for the job he already had. But there were always ways to make the boy think he’d tried.

  He said nothing more to the dog’s keeper. As his old mother used to tell him: A spoken word is not a sparrow. Once it flies out, you can’t catch it. He knew that the dog boy spoke in his sleep, his hands and feet scrabbling on the rushes the way his hounds did when they dreamed. Everybody listened in.

  The truth that peasants speak is not the same as the truth that the powerful know. Having been one and become the other, the mad monk knew this better than most. He wrung his hands once more. “Find me more about this red terror,” he muttered to no one in particular.

  But even as he asked, he drew in upon himself, becoming moody, cautious, worried. Walking alone by the frozen River Neva, he tried to puzzle through all he’d heard. It was as if the world was sending him messages in code. He asked his secretary, Simanovich, for paper, and wrote a letter to the Tsar telling him of the signs and warning him, too. But he did not send it. It was too soon. Once he found out all about this red terror, he would personally hand the letter to the Tsar.