The Dragons of Babel

"Again the ring! I begin to wish I'd left the thing at home. It's all anyone seems able to talk about."

"Do you pretend not to know that you wear the signet of House sayn -Draco?"

"It is nothing of the sort. Why worry yourself over it? So the ring is in the form of a Wyrm and the bezel in its mouth is red. Any jeweler can make such a thing."

"So you have emphatically told at least a dozen elf-ladies. Yet oddly enough your denials simply make the imposture more convincing. The entire room gossips about you." Will shrugged. He did not need her to tell him that. Everywhere he looked, eyes stared back, some glaring, others with frank interest, some few simply amused. Knots of young elf-lords discussed him with brooding intensity. Elf-ladies primped. "Florian, in fact, seems obsessed by you."

"Oh? Who's he?"

"Our host." His partner favored him with the coldest of smiles. "The scion and heir apparent of House L'Inco

Beneath a crystal bowl in which a gold-and-green-tailed mermaid swam in endless circles, trying not to look bored, an elf-lord in the seeming of a dancing bear was staring fixedly at him. Will stiffened as he recognized the face beneath the muzzled snout.

"You know him," the lady prompted.

"Yes. I doubt, however, that he would recognize me. I was quite a different fellow when last we met."

It was true. Back then, Will had been Captain Jack Riddle, champion of the johatsu who lived in the subways of Babel, and Florian of House L'Inco

"Well," said the policewoman, "since I have learned all I will tonight, I'll leave you two gentlemen to your conversation." The song ended and without obvious haste, but with no waste motion whatsoever, Will's interrogator deposited him at the edge of the floor. "Thank you for the dance," she said. "I look forward to another—something more lingering next time, I hope. My name is Zorya Vechernyaya. Perhaps someday I will hear you scream it in agony." "You insist on being unpleasant."

"Trust me—this is an unpleasant town to be caught trying to pass yourself off as undocumented royalty in, kid." She left.

The music started up again. Zorya Vechernyaya had left him on the same side of the floor as Florian L'Inco

Then Will recognized her and stopped dead.

She wore makeup, as she had not before, lips and nails redder than blood, and her scarlet gown, floor length with a slit up one side, was a far cry from the hoydenish outfit he'd seen her in (and out of) last. Nevertheless, beyond the least breath of doubt, she was the hippogriff rider who'd flashed him the finger on the day he'd emerged from the underground.

She was the stranger he loved.

For a heartbeat that lasted half as long as forever, Will stood paralyzed. Then he shot his cuffs in a kind of prayer to his tuxedo: I paid enough for you; now give me the confidence I need. He went straight to the elf-maiden, said. "Dance?", and waltzed her out onto the floor before she could answer.

She smiled him with frank interest. "You have set the birds a-twitter. Everyone is wondering who you are and whether that ring is real."

"It's real enough. But it's only a ring. Nothing more."

"They also say that you have more names than all the social register put together."

"Forget that," Will said. "Who cares whether I call myself Phobetor or Hotspur or Baal-Peor? It's all bullshit, anyway. The only thing that matters is that I saw you once from a distance, more than a year ago, and lost my heart to you in that instant. I've been searching for you ever since."

"What a load of codswallop! I hope you haven't been using that line on everybody."

"I'm perfectly serious."

"In my experience," the hippogriff rider said, "sincerity is vastly overrated, and only peripherally related to the truth." "Every word I say is true."

"Being male, you would believe that, of course." Her eyes gleamed as brightly as twin emeralds lit with green lasers. Releasing his shoulder, she slid her fingers into a hidden pocket in her dress. Then she touched his cheek. "Who are you? What are you? Is the ring real?"

"Will le Fey. A confidence trickster. So far as I know it is not." Will's face turned red and he stumbled and almost tripped.

His partner laughed. "Oh, la! If you could only see yourself." Her breath was warm in his ear. "You are not the only one with a ring, 'sieur clown."

With a quick grab, Will closed his hand tight about hers. "This ring?" He saw the hippogriff girl's eyes widen with alarm. "Does it work by contact? Will it work for me? Who and what are you?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes. Yes, obviously, it does. Alcyone. A thief."

She broke away from him. Almost brutally, Will caught her back, and they rejoined the dance. He was terribly aware of the feel and warmth of her waist under his hand, separated from him by only the thi

"If I cared," Alcyone said hotly, *I would have asked already."

"Look. We seem to have gotten off to a bad start—"

"Do you think?"

"—but that doesn't mean we can't—"

"Yes, it does. That is exactly what it means." They were at the edge of the dance floor now. She stopped dead in her tracks and held out a hand to the nearest male, a fop in a Green Knight costume. "Thank you," she said, though he had not asked. "I'd love to dance." Perforce, Will surrendered his salamander to her knight. Away they spun.

For a second, Will contemplated the terrace full of beauties, lovelier than flowers, any of whom would be delighted to dance with him, flirt with him, dally with him till dawn. Save only the single woman he wanted most. What were the odds of that? It was as if he'd been cursed by a Maxwell's imp of the perverse, capable of inverting all probabilities, of turning a cold room hot and a warm one frigid, of making terms of endearment loathsome to the ear of his beloved and rejection only make him desire her the more.

In the distance, meanwhile, the dancing bear waved to get his attention.

Maintaining his outward aplomb, Will ducked and dodged his way through the crowd. Outside the ballroom, at the buffet tables, he asked a servitor for directions to the gent's. "Past the chafing dishes and to the right," the dwarf said with a shadow of a bow.

Will fled, almost blindly.

After he'd vomited into the toilet bowl, Will removed his domino and the Pierrot costume faded to nothing. He rinsed out his mouth, splashed water on his face, and combed his hair. There were two gold smudges on the jacket of his tux. He dabbed at them with a dampened washcloth and tried to regain his calm. He was weary and achy and he suspected he was coming down with a headache.